FDC484950

I’d be interested to know from anyone with a P34 or more importantly, a P35, whether the bass really is that much better considering it’s double the price of the 735 and getting on for 4 times the price of my 435? On the surface it looks like the same neck, tuners, hardware, pickups and maybe even body as the 735, just put together in Japan with some “vibration treatment”? Or is it like the difference between the std Ibanez range the the Japanese Prestige models?

On a curious side note, I found the 435 to be much nicer-sounding than the 735, although most seem to think it’s the other way round. Didn’t like the matt black painted neck on the 736, either.

18 minutes ago, BreadBin said:

Yes, as @cheddatom has explained above.

...and the income from selling the stuff said people might dispense - kind of the reason most venues continue to exist! IMHO the guy is an idiot, and nothing he has done is to be admired or applauded. 

Eh? It sounds straightforward enough to me. He’s playing very hard and digging right in, and the damping makes it sound nice and tight but nothing remarkable or that difficult with a bit of practice. Some octaves, a few fills and a bit of slap. Par for the course on YT.

Also, as you get more experienced/older, you have naturally tried a wider range of gear, so except for impulse purchases, most of us have a reduced range of things we are shopping for - genuinely or otherwise! I’ve got a cracking Ibanez and a Yamaha BB, and nothing out there has taken my fancy since getting them. Having tried every boutique bass under the sun, I simply wouldn’t pay £1,000+ for a bass - imho they’re simply not worth it with the amount of great used gear around from £300-£700. Then again, different strokes for different folks 😀

One problem with 1-2-1 1-2-1 - you play the third note root with 1 then have to skip two strings to play the octave with the same finger. It just doesn’t make sense in terms of efficiency or getting a reliable technique up to speed. If you are only using two fingers, 1-2-1 2-1-2 makes far more sense, will be much easier to build up speed and will sound more fluid - but may be more awkward at first. It’s like What Is Hip by TOP - start the song on the wrong finger and the octave stabs become very awkward.

The only items I’ve sold on here ended up going for quite a bit less than I bought them from used. Now I haggled when I bought them and thought I got a good price but obviously not! However, I’ve listed similar types of items at a similar price elsewhere and they’ve gone at the asking price quite quickly. I put a bass up in Bass Direct for well over £1K, having had zero interest here and it sold in 5 days, again at the asking price. It’s not Brexit or austerity - there’s just so many items for sale you can’t see the wood for the trees, and I think most people are selling but a much smaller percentage are actively buying (as opposed to the “I’d be round your house now if it had an extra string/wasn’t sunburst/had a Badass bridge/I could actually afford it” comments).

I do agree that some sellers are chancing their arm - there’s one up for sale at the moment which is essentially double the likely sale price. But we all know what will happen, right? The aforementioned zero interest 😚

The main issue is that 2 customers in the shop made it packed! It’s no fun trying to compete with someone else but at least they have nice headphone amps so you can try a bass.

I did a transcription of this years ago, definitely a keyboard part as most of it doesn’t fit under the hand very easily like a bass part might. I’ve also heard the rumours but having a close listen it sounds like keyboard only - What ‘Cha Gonna Do For Me has Anthony with either an early analogue synth pedal or doubled on synth and the tone is markedly different. That and Greg’s synth goes out of tune on one low note in this tune!

I had this issue when looking into buying a bass at the beginning of this year. The only courier to offer significant insurance on a musical instrument was UPS - a) enchanced cover tops out at £1K and b) a guitar/bass must be in a hard case. None of the other big couriers advertise musical instrument insurance - DHL, Parcelsh*te, TNT, FedEx, MyHerpes or even CityLink when they were still in business.

In the end I got on the train - got a cheap 1st class weekend ticket for only £30 more than the UPS quote, and as I was the courier I had reasonable trust that the bass would be OK. The only downside was hat it took the whole day to get there and back!

I’ve never heard of him, but a quick YouTube look - not my cup of tea and the bass sounds just as awful with the whole band playing as it does solo. Still, who am I to judge? I’m not making millions from music 😉

Get a recording and learn from both the recording and the dots at the same time. The sound bit is vital, as important, if not more so, than the written music, which doesn’t really convey the feeling or style effectively (even in classical music).

London needs most of the 2 million-plus people who have swelled its ranks and overburdened infrastructure and transport in the last 5-10 years to clear off. It’s not likely to happen, and telling people to get out of their car and replace it with cramped, sweaty, smelly, expensive, unreliable and sometimes downright dangerous public transport is a bit short sighted. The ultra low emission zone is about cleaner air, but the most polluting traffic is lorries, buses and taxis, which are at least getting cleaned up (gradually). If you want to see what pollution is really about, stand by a taxi rank next to a London terminus and look at the atmosphere with all the dirty old diesel engines running - because that’s what they do all day whilst waiting for fares!

The wider transport issue needs to be solved as, notwithstanding pollution, oil will run out, and 20 million electric cars/taxis/whatever will need to be powered by something. Public transport is pretty much woeful outside of London so is no replacement.

Great tune - synth bass line though, isn't it? I did transcribe it for a student a long time ago but don't have the copy. I'll see if it can get it done.

I’d say the hallmark of a great bass player (when coming up with a bass part) is to keep removing notes until you can’t remove any more without losing the essence of the line. Another way of looking at it is making sure that every single note you play, you mean it.

Yes, bought a Wal from there in 1989 for the princely sum of £930. Looking at what they go for now, oh how I wish I kept it...

When I was at the bass show in February I saw a prototype combustion 6-string on the Bass Direct stand. What happened to that? Did they decide against putting it into production?

Having had a ton of warwicks, you’re right about balance - the four string models aren’t too bad but the 5- and 6- strings dive toward the floor, mainly due to the short top horn on many models, but also the softwood body/hardwood neck on models like the corvette and jazzman. It’s fair to say that plenty of other brands do this as well - my Ibanez 6 is a wonderful instrument but has significant neck dive, and my Yamaha BB is even worse.

The Streamer 5 and 6 stage 1 have been broadneck with 20mm spacing at the bridge since the mid 90’s and this spacing has been available as a custom shop option on other models for a long time. I don’t, however recall a model whose stock spacing is 19mm so that may be what Warwick meant?

Now sold.

One brand new and unopened set of DR Hi-Beam stainless steel strings, gauges 30-125 (so a 6-string set) for sale. Cost £44 from Bass Direct - selling for £24 posted to mainland U.K.

58 minutes ago, No. 8 Wire said:

Is that a comment or a song suggestion?

Exactly!

It’s a jazz tune. A jazz band might play it but it’s unlikely to work in another setting. To the OP - fine if it bores you - just don’t play it. To the other disparaging comments about it - so what?

Yes, they are what you would expect a passive Fender-style bass to sound like. The neck pickup is a P, and the bridge sounds like a normal J, and mixed together it’s a jazz bass with both pickups open. There is quite a bit of 60-cycle hum with the J solo or mixed but the neck is silent as expected. The paint job is as good as I have seen - mirror-like with no flaws or rough edges. And the 45-degree strings through body is a great idea.  I played the 735 but didn’t like the tone or playability as much. Not tried the P34/35 but expect them to be very similar, but with more hand-finishing perhaps. The pickups are the same as the 73.x series so not sure whether I’d want to pay 3-4 times as much over the 435

I must say the BB435 I bought a couple of months ago is an astonishingly good bass for the small outlay. The finish, hardware and pickups are all high quality, the neck is dead straight with a nice profile, the fretting is great and it’s one of the only PJ5 basses available that isn’t silly money. The only downside was the incredibly poorly-cut nut that rendered it unplayable. The shop very kindly offered to get the bass picked up, fixed and sent back free of charge but £5 worth of cheap needle files off eBay and 30 minutes’ careful work sorted it, and it’s a lovely bass. It’s a shame about the massive tuners weighing the headstock down, but at the price I’m not complaining.

12 hours ago, leftybassman392 said:

Beginners don't need inspirational pedagogy: they need a few simple rules to get them started and on which they can build. Everybody has to start somewhere: very easy to forget when you've been doing it for a decade or three.

I don’t agree I’m afraid. Just because you’re starting out, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t know what’s possible and see a bit further ahead. I stand by my comments - as someone who has hopefully helped a fairly large number of complete beginners to get going, some of the advice in the video is plain wrong, and the rest is uninspiring - even to a beginner. The reason for starting with playing open strings, for example, is to break technique down to only executing with one hand to get comfortable with plucking the strings cleanly, then bring muting in (either with plucking or fretting hand), and then combine it for fretted notes. The technique for open strings is slightly different as they have more punch than an equivalent fretted note - but good technique overcomes this.  

I’ve also never been a fan of people banging on about what you shouldn’t do - spin it round and be positive, reinforce what works by tying what you see with what you are hearing and feeling. But as I said, it’s YT, hardly the only source of truth!

Whilst not the worst thing I’ve seen, there’s nothing there as far as I can see. Don’t play open strings, always play the root note at the beginning, keep it simple. Great advice to someone who has never played an instrument but hardly inspirational pedagogy is it? Some of the played examples of what you should do don’t sound much cop to my ears. I’m also detecting more than a whiff of pretension. But then that’s YT!

In my professional career the most common opening line from a member of the audience in the break was “nice guitar”. Second was “are you the keyboard player” - often in a gig with no keyboards. This gave me great pride about my contribution to the music!

People who don’t play an instrument generally have a very different reaction to listening to music. They’ll know when it sounds right, and when it’s wrong (especially if the band is doing covers) but other than the singer and maybe the guitar/drummer it’s unlikely they’ll see much of the detail of what’s going on - unless the bass is really out front, and even then they’ll think it’s a guitar! Of course some anoraks, sorry, aficionados, will know all about the bass.