BillyBass

I swap to both get the sound the song needs and for ease of playing. Most of our set is punk (=pick) but some songs sound better with fingers, so yes, to a degree, you are right. 'Pump it Up', for instance, I believe, sounds better without the pick attack and slides in songs sound better with fingers. I'm not sure how important evening out the tone really is, I'm sure the audience won't care/notice. I would be happier with an even volume though. I'm experimenting here.

I mainly play with a pick but there are a few songs, recently added to our set that I play better with fingers. So I've been looking for a way to even out the tone and volume between finger and pick playing, as far as is possible, easily and accurately. My favourite basses from my collection are active PJs, so, when moving to fingers, I've been dialling more bridge and less neck and then dialling in more volume. Easier than this, I discovered yesterday, is the 'Presence' switch on my Gallien Krueger Legacy 800. Flick it up and, hey presto, my fingers sound a lot like my pick tone. The volume still needs to be altered and you still don't get the attack a pick gives but the sound is close enough. Another thing I have done is to use these picks. These are my preferred range. I don't like large picks and the plastic or whatever it is made of dulls the treble and attack a bit, and the thicker the pick, the duller it gets. The thick 1.5mm pick is not ideal for widdling. We cover 'Welcome to Paradise' by Green Day, which has a 40 bar bass widdle and I started off with the 0.96mm pick from this range when I was learning it/acquiring the chops. I'm now ok with the 1.5mm. Anyone else got any tips?

Do you do everything naked in Finland? Or is it just saunas and bass playing?

Oh dear! GAS incoming.

Interesting topic. I've only just started gigging; 3 so far with another couple booked for June and others later on. My bass collection is 8 strong with all the main varieties of pick up/position: P, J, PJ, double hum bucker & single humbucker at bridge. I also have 3 heads and a few different cabs. In the 3 gigs I've played so far I've taken 3 different basses and head/cab combinations as I'm trying to find the tone that I like/suits the songs/cuts through etc. Lots more research to do but so far I am favouring a P or neck humbucker sound with a bit of bridge pick up dialled in. This maybe out of a desire to stand out rather than be swallowed up by the 2 guitarists. Another variable just added is that we have decided to diversify a bit and add a few non punk songs, mainly 90s rock and some of these songs I prefer to play with fingers rather than a pick. So I'm starting to play with duller picks and experimenting with bridge pups when changing between fingers and pick.. Lots to learn and much fun to be had in doing so!

Classy? No, quite the opposite. If a tart had a boudoir, it would be in those colours. Here's mine, the 'Tart'

Machine Gun Etiquette was a classic. Saw him play bass with the Damned a few times after this album came out, end of 1979 at the Rainbow and the Electric Ballroom. Sad day.

Have you thought about putting a better pre amp in? And while you are doing that, shielding it too.

I would agree with you re the pre amp. Fender/Charvel would have built these to a price point and anything more than a couple of dollars on the pre amp would have gone over this, I presume. I also have a Charvel fiver, the pre amp in that was ok but I swapped it out for a Nordstrand. My first 4 string got sent back because the pre amp was faulty (amongst other issues that PMT didn't check before posting it). I would have been happy to spend another £100 on these basses if they came with a decent pre amp but perhaps the general bass buying public wouldn't be. Still, I paid £699 each for both my 4 strings and the fiver, which are bargains really, considering you are getting 'Player Plus' style hardware for 'Player' series prices. I have 8 basses and these Charvels are my favourites.

How does the neck feel to play?

I have two of these, one metallic green, the other metallic blue. I love the look and how they feel in my hands, the jazz neck on a P body is great. As its a two pick up active bass, the pre amp and pups enable me to get a multitude of tones. Yes, the G string is dull when used in passive mode but its an active bass, I would only use it in passive mode if I had battery or gain issues, and then there is a treble knob on my amp's EQ. The worst thing about the bass is the pre amp, so I swapped them out for John East preamps. So @How1 why did you buy the bass? if you didn't want an active bass and the appearance of the neck and nut width wasn't to your liking?

Have you got the ejector seat? Must come in handy if the wife nags a bit too much.

👍

I’m really happy with my band mates; we get along, are happy to compromise and are generally on the same page. We are 2 guitars, bass and drums, with one of the guitarists on vocals, standard stuff. We would like to cover certain songs but can’t due to the original having keys or sax, for example, and we have trouble converting that to two guitars. Sometimes our arrangements work, sometimes they don’t and we drop the song. I’m nitpicking here, our set is 33 songs strong and we are adding more.

Hic🥂cheers

I have a Mexican Standard Precision in CAR, I swapped the pick guard for a tort on and it looks lush. CAR body, rosewood fretboard and tort pick guard 😍

Nice! That does look like it’s crying out for a tort pick guard. I have one of these in Tidepool. Good bass, slightly heavy but not too bad.

I would love to be in a glam covers band; you lot must have a blast.

NYXLs are the first round wounds I've put on a bass that didn't need a couple of days to lose the extreme bright edge to them, they sounded great straight away. So, currently, they are my favourite string. To me they sound better than the standard EXL170s. I get the impression that XTs are EXLs with a coating but the NYXLs are an uncoated improvement to the EXLs? My current band has a 34 song set list, I play 33 of those songs with a pick and one with fingers. I'm a bit apprehensive about using coated strings as I believe my pick will just remove the coating. Whether this makes any difference to the sound or longevity I don't know?

Love the growl of that Spector!

I do sometimes drool over the Sandberg basses on the bass direct website; that looks really nice. How do you find the GR cab? I know they are meant to be really light but how do they sound?

The Flint Cottage, just by the train station. They put up an awful sounding clip of us on their Facebook page, so here is something better:

Two bags of salt. Our drummer complained about the bass drum gradually moving away from him during the first few songs. The floor had no carpet, it was just floorboards so to stop it slipping he acquired a couple of bags of salt from the management. The bass is a Balaguer Select series Goliath. I got it from Guitarguitar in Newcastle a couple of years ago. Lovely to look at and play, however, I don't play it as much as I should, generally preferring my Charvels, but yesterday I thought I'd put it to work. Here is the NBD thread I started when I bought it.

Coronation celebration in a pub in High Wycombe. We were supposed to be playing in the garden but rain stopped that. Not many punters in but we've been asked back so we must have done something right.

It wasn't ideal; our singer/guitarist got there first. The placing of the PA was worse though and when I wasn't on BV duties I shifted over to the left of it all. I could hear myself but not very well, though listening to videos of the gig the sound was ok for the audience. We were supposed to be playing in the garden but the weather put paid to that.