FDC484950

They have indeed. Yes, the HS is gone, only H or HH. I too wish they’d update with the Stingray Special spec and some more colours. It does feel like it’s a bit like the poor younger brother. A slightly smaller headstock with lighter tuners would helps the balance, too. Still my favourite MM, but do hanker after an HH Stingray V, if only to have the contrast of the 5 pickup positions in parallel.

Unreadable in tempo? It’s pretty much unplayable in tempo 😲

You would, wouldn’t you. It must be at least 7-8 years old as they haven’t done a Sterling in that colour for ages. mind you it not far off used prices now...

You young’uns don’t know a good thing when you see it. When I started, tuition consisted of some crap books, ropey VHS videos, deciphering stuff off records/tapes and, if you were very lucky, your local teacher was half decent. It’s paid for and I don’t subscribe as I’m good as I want to be, but i would have killed for such a resource (and others online) when I was starting out.

I’ve tried a few F-basses over the years. I get both points of view. I played one fiver many years, not sure but I think it was ex Julian Crampton. I think it was cherry sunburst with maple board, and well road-worn. Far and away the best bass I’ve ever played, and wish I’d bought it. I also played a BN-6 which was very heavy and dull as ditchwater (not dead strings, they were new DRs), so like many bespoke high-end basses they seem to be quite variable. I do like the design and shape and the BN-5 felt very comfortable to play to me.

One other thing I might consider in the hand written rhythm above is a quarter note with a staccato dot above it rather than an eighth/eighth note rest. Technically they are not the same thing (the eighth note is a direction to play the note for an exact length, whereas a staccato quarter note is open to interpretation), so it depends what your are trying to convey. IMHO if it’s not a complex piece or some classical work where it’s required to be very precise, both options end up sounding the same, and a quarter note is easier to read. Which goes to show that, despite some basic rules, there is quite a bit of leeway in interpretation

It’s not about whether it’s better-protected, but whether it’ll be covered (sorry, terrible pun) in the event of damage or loss. This is why it is foolish to assume the shipping risk as a buyer, unless you insist that all terms and conditions are complied with and/or you are happy to take the risk that you may lose your money.

I assume they’ve had to cough up to the courier? Or is it just a fine for being naughty? I believe the Ts and cs indicate all instruments need to be in a hard case and in a box. UPS certainly insist on it in their (very hard to find) rules. All these sellers offering courier with only a gig bag are asking for trouble, even if it is well-packaged. Their list of items they won’t carry/insure is so long it would be shorter to say what is permitted!

Your second point should read “mostly don’t have notes that cross over crotchets” - eighth, quarter, eighth or eighth, quarter, quarter, quarter, eighth are two standard rhythmic figures that cross over the quarter-note (and the middle of the bar in the second example) and dotted notes also do this. In all cases the goal is simplicity - the alternative is a lot of notes and ties that is actually harder to read. E.g. bar 1 of your linked transcription crosses over both the quarter note and the middle of the bar.

Well... the reason for this is that by and large chords are built in 3rds. So if you count from root you get Root/3/5/7/9/11/13 (15 would be two octaves). If you substitute notes for the chord steps (on a major scale) you get C/E/G/B/D/F/A. Rearrange in alphabetical order and it’s just a major scale. They’re the same notes, but the function is different depending on whether you’re talking about degrees in a scale or tones in a chord. As we tend to look at music from a harmony (or chordal) rather than a strictly interval Liv perspective, then D/F/A in the example above are thought of as 9th, 11th, 13th. This is usually to distinguish when a chord is using “extended” intervals. In terms of where they appear it makes no difference - you could voice a C13 chord with the 13th at the bottom and the root as the highest note - it’s the combination of notes in the chord that decides what it is, so C, E, Bb,A would be considered C13, however the notes are voiced. Some clusters of notes are less certain and could appear in several different chords, as I mentioned above. Chords can have intervals of 2, 4, or 6 but these normally take the place of an existing chord tone within the octave, so Csus4 Or Csus2 replace the 3rd with the 4th, a chord with ‘add’ often implies that we omit the 3rd and a chord with a 6 (e.g. Cmaj6) would never also contain a 7th.

It’s not My Girl, is it? 😁

You’re dead right - and it highlights that a bass amp with one or two speakers that is usually pretty directional isn’t great for onstage sound. 20-30ft away it could be very loud. Ideally a monitor or IEMs and DI to a PA but as has been said, a big band makes a lot of noise and also takes up a lot of room, so pragmatism takes hold and you want to be heard. There’s nothing worse than a fast swing tune where you’re struggling to hear and have to resort to gluing your eyes to the fretboard and “pre-reading”. I used to solve this by... sitting down

I played a lot in big bands when I was younger. I echo Steve’s comments above. A big band gig is not like a rock band gig. Blasphemy, I know, but you’re not really there to be heard but to be felt. That can be a challenge live as boosting bass is probably the worst thing you can do as it just adds boom. As others have said the brass section sucks up a huge range of frequencies and there’s some good advice about some mid- to upper-mid frequency boost for a bit of definition. I also agree with getting the amp off the floor and away from a corner/parallel to the wall, as many cabs are very directional, which may account for the drummer struggling to hear you. In a big band it’s likely your role will be walking fours, trading hits and on the one for the big finale. You don’t need compression, you don’t need a fancy amp or bass and you don’t need to radically change your tone (other than to cope with the acoustics in troublesome rooms). Your amp does however need headroom and the ability to cope with a “big” band! The SPL level of a brass section in full flight is scary, and partly accounts for my hearing loss... You need to swing with that bouncing ball feel and a sound you and the band can hear (just), but more importantly, feel. Bear this in mind when you get a chart in Gb - wrong notes that swing is far better than right notes with no feel

I ordered one custom bass once to my spec, was clear about what I wanted and compromised where I thought the luthier had better judgement. I hated the result - it looked wonderful but sounded terrible. A change of pickups and preamp made no difference whatsoever so that puts paid to the “wood has no effect” brigade. Although visually stunning I’m convinced something in either the woods themselves or the construction was badly wrong. That put me off and ever since I’d much rather accept/work around the limitations of a bass I can actually play before I buy it. The only custom bass I might consider is a Ken Smith because the one I owned was extraordinary and I’ve played 5 or 6 since which were uniformly excellent. Off the peg, modern (newer design) MusicMan Stingrays would get my vote as they have top-notch construction, light weight and sound fantastic.

The rules don’t get bent at all. It’s just that, given a particular group of notes, you can describe them multiple ways. If you take any tritone interval, for example G and Db, these could be part of an Eb7 or (if you call Db but it’s enharmonic C#), A7. This concept forms the basis of tritone substitution, where, depending on context, you can reharmonise a 7 chord with the bass note shifted a tritone away. So a fairly prosaic Dm7 / G7 / Cmaj7 becomes a more interesting Dmin7 / Db7 / Cmaj7. Another example are the notes F A C D as a chord. Depending on the context, this could be an Fmaj6 chord or a Dmin7. At a push it could also be Amin11b13 or Csus add9(13) however, all I did was pick a note and express the remaining notes as intervals from that root. The beauty of this is that the same group of 2 or 3 notes can be kept the same across multiple chords. Chords with a tone other than the root in the bass are simple inversions, so C/E or C/G. True slash chords generally contain a bass note not in the core chord and can be used to imply a much more sophisticated harmony, e.g. A7b9/C or C/Db. After all that rambling and returning to the OP - yes, exactly. If your chord contains CEG it’s a C major chord. On a piano you’d choose either root position (CEG), 1st inversion (EGC) or 2nd inversion (GCE), all of which have a slightly different sound And a different note at the bottom, but all are C major. Intervals larger than an octave (9th, 11th, 13th) are often called extensions and come into play when you want more of a complex flavour in a chord. They don’t usually take the place of a regular R, 3rd, 5th, 7th in a 4-note chord. So a C9 is C E G Bb D and an Fmin11 is F Ab C Eb G Bb. In practice most piano and guitar players may omit the less essential tones to a) make the chord clearer and b) to make it easier to play!

SF looks interesting with the coil tap humbucker and P with a bunch of preset positions

Definitely try before you buy. Build quality is uniformly excellent but I tried one just like that - sounded great but must have been more than 11lbs. Others I’ve played are stupidly light ( 7.5lbs or less) - probably basswood or something similarly light - but most were a bit lifeless. A good few year ago Far East Guitars were importing Japanese Fenders and they listed the standard 62 jazz but also a 75 reissue with blocks and binding and a similar model with PJ layout. Spec’ed with US pickups. Candy apple red and lake placid blue with matching headstocks IIRC. Stunning but even then they were close to £1,000 before Fender put a stop to grey imports.

I’m pretty sure I read a thread somewhere over on TB (no, I don’t visit oftempn, it was a Google search result) where someone weighed the tuners and despite being spec’ed as heavier, the licensed ones were actually slightly lighter? Maybe it was a one-off. And to avoid confusion: the licensed tuners are non-reversible; the USA (double the price) tuners are reversible. There also seems to be almost no weight difference between elephant ear and Y-key versions.

Too late. I can’t remember what this thread was originally about. It gone right off the rails.

Get an amp that goes up to 11. Sorted!

Glad you’ve got it back. I do wonder about the different neck, sounds like both a design and a manufacturing fault.

They could have at least put the headstock on a slant too so it lines up with the body. Then it would look even bett... oh, hold on, it’d still be awful!

Isn’t she ironic?