BillyBass

13 hours ago, Happy Jack said:

Do you get much of a volume variation across the pickups? Is the bridge noticeably louder than the neck or maybe vice versa?

After playing it more last night...the 5 positions are pretty much interchangeable, volume-wise.  The difference between the positions is less than changing from pick to fingers.  It makes the bass really quite versatile, it's a great covers band bass.

8 minutes ago, jd56hawk said:

Every time you see a Reverend bass hanging up at this or that music store, you can bet it's one of the best basses there.

I would say so, but then I'm biased!  Unfortunately, here in the U.K. very few shops sell reverend kit, just a shop in Scotland and another shop to the east of London.  The Scottish shop are the main dealers of Reverend in the UK, I had to bribe my missus with a spa break in Scotland to get up there to try them out.  That was when I bought my Decision P.

I had this delivered, because I live over a 7 hour drive away, but I tried enough Reverends when I was there to be comfortable buying sight unseen.  As you say, it was likely to be one of the best in the shop.

4 minutes ago, Happy Jack said:

Do you get much of a volume variation across the pickups? Is the bridge noticeably louder than the neck or maybe vice versa?

 

Positions 1, 3 and 5 appear to be similar.  2 and 4 appear to be less hot, so I'm guessing theses positions put the pups in series.  There isn't a big difference though.  More investigation needed.

Merchant City Music in Glasgow have just sent me a Reverend Triad in 'Periwinkle Burst'. 

Periwinkle Burst, is black around the edge and a sort of mauve/lilac, with a hint of grey, in the middle.  Of the three colours currently available with the Triad, this is my preference.  

The neck and headstock are lovely.  They are a dark roasted maple, which really fits the body colour well.  The neck is a 5 part sandwich and the lowest part is a darker shade of roasted maple, to the others, which I think looks really cool.

Appearance wise, I love it.  It's well made too, I can see no blemishes or poorly finished parts.

Using the bathroom scales, standing on with bass vs standing on w/o bass, it appears to weigh 3.8 kg

The pick ups look like jazz single coils but they are, in fact, humbuckers, so there's no noise.  I've been noodling with it this afternoon and I haven't yet found the position on the Strat style 5 way switch that I prefer.  I thought I would find position 3 to be my preference, but maybe not, we'll see.  The strings (D'Addarios, I believe) are new and I'll need to wait until they have lost their new round wound top edge before I really know what this bass will sound like, but so far, so good.

6 hours ago, jd56hawk said:

By the way, still better than headless.

Bloody hell!  Certain luthiers should be imprisoned.

13 hours ago, ped said:

 

It certainly does, so it must be good, right??

 

RIGHT! It's fantastic. SO many sounds in one box, it does a really nice warmed up overdrive and gets pretty close to the splattery fuzz of the dedicated fuzz pedal. The LPF is really useful in cutting the top end when you get a bit lairy with the distortion. The phase cancellation switch literally doubles the options. Super pleased... the only issues are that the LED is retina burningly bright, same as my other Valco pedals, but dimmed with a stick on filter thing. The more distorted circuits like Germanium and Silicon need a boost in the output dial or putting it another way the Op-amp and LED modes need backing off, but with so many controls that interact it'll be unlikely that I'd adjust it mid gig.

 

I think I'll keep the fuzz next to it, because together they offer a full gamut of OD/Distortion/Fuzz sounds and it'll be nice to have two flavours on tap. 

 

 

So how do they stack?  And do you lose a lot of bass and low mid in use?

The opposite of @Lozz196 I won't spend good money on black, white or sunburst basses.

The 10 basses I own pretty much cover the colours of a rainbow and when I look for a new bass, I do consider whether the colour will ruin the look of the rainbow rack I have.  Nevertheless, yesterday, a pink Reverend Mercalli arrived at Merchant City Music in Glasgow and I was sorely tempted to pull the trigger, even though pink isn't in the rainbow.  I opted for the Periwinkle burst Reverend Triad instead.

My next bass will be a pink Mercalli.

That looks like one of the gadgets Dr No used to try to blow up the world!  You must have a big pedalboard.  I'll be interested to hear your thoughts, I'm on a bit of a distortion search at the moment.

4 hours ago, Telebass said:

Oh dear...

New Blue Bass has a faulty truss rod. Back it goes.

CV 70s P incoming!

There will doubtless be a thread entitled New Brown Bass Day in the very near future...

Brown? Shame, that is a bit of a retrograde step.  After blue, you should be progressing to shell pink or metallic lime green.

16 hours ago, MacDaddy said:

I'm probably missing the point, but if something is going on my pedal board I'd be expecting something stompable. 

I'm with you on this.  I've had two non-stompable pedal shaped objects that run off a 9v supply and I've moved both of them on: The Tech 21 DI 2112 and the Rafferty HPF.  Both seemed like a good idea when I bought them but in practice, both worked better on top of my cab, rather than at my feet.  Yes, I could have made both work but there were easier solutions.

I know the Ant is powered by 230v but still, knob twiddling is easier up on my cab, and then if it is up on my cab, there is no need for a pedal sized amp.

On 24/11/2023 at 15:50, MacDaddy said:

Not a rehearsal but another audition.

 

Musically it's originals, semi-acoustic and would fit in with, without being defined by,  alt country, Americana, blues. The band line up is vox, guitar, drums, and backing vocalists. Just bass wanted.

 

I met just the vocalist and guitarist in a room above a pub and we had a play. I used my Rob Allen Mouse and it worked quite well. It was like having a jam with some mates, we seemed to get on right away, and they asked me to join after we ran through the songs.

 

The fact I'd actually learnt the songs was a big plus in my favour. Apparently others who auditioned hadn't! 😳

🤣

 

Next step is learning more songs and a rehearsal with the drummer. The backing vocalists don't get involved until the dress rehearsal.

 

 

 

Congrats mate!

21 minutes ago, JapanAxe said:

Most pub bands I’ve played with take no more than a 20 minute break in the middle of a 2-hour slot, but BL insists on ‘two 45s’ like some kind of cartoon 70s shop steward. In that half hour break you can lose an audience.

4 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

The 45 min set thing is a bit "out of date" these days. General rule of thumb is two 1hr sets. Because we have costume changes in Glam band we take a break of circa 20mins sometimes shorter and depending on venue sometimes its nearer 30mins at request of venue to allow for buffet, raffles or Bingo.

Our singer struggles with a set longer than 45 minutes and his voice needs at least a 30 minute break between sets.  Our songs are punk/indie/rock and are often a bit shouty.  He is worried he has done a bit of damage to his vocal chords.

But, the start of the second set does sometimes seem like a struggle to get the crowd back into it again, if they haven't left!

I'll do it again this week.

https://theshfl.com/album/Invariant

https://www.deezer.com/en/album/246839182

Any more links would be welcome

His twitter post suggests it's a custom shop model but I'm sure @Bassassin is on the money here.  A made in Mexico version will be on sale for between £1200-£1400, I would guess.  

The headstock is interesting.  I don't like reverse headstocks but 3+1 is cool.

I'm guessing this is an active, two humbucker bass with coil switching options.

I had the Jam Pedals Rattler but I sold it as I thought it sucked too much of the bass out.  The Lucy Dreamer, however, I have kept, I think it works really well.

I have been tempted by the Red Muck but also have my eye on the Genzler Crash Box.  I like the idea of a HPF to tailor the frequencies being distorted-and keep more bass.

29 minutes ago, urbanx said:

 

Cheers man! Exactly that. I'm an SME owner myself. We love the local business awards which are super expensive too (£180 per ticket for regional, £800+ per ticket national) We do the local ones as it's good networking, a nice meal, photo in the paper (not the crime section for once) and good all round publicity. 

In the grand scheme of things, £180 for that is good value.

I'm guessing a known musician as a public speaker would appeal to other, perhaps amateur, musicians but if this is a networking event I imagine SME owners would be your target market?  If so, getting a public speaker who is guaranteed to tell a good story and get a few laughs would be important.  A stand up or someone like Phil Tufnell, who has lots of experience ad libbing on game shows, would be ideal.  Toyah!?  Dear me no!

Networking is about building trust.  If you see the same faces at these events and other people there are using their businesses, then they must be trustworthy, right?  The bottom line for the attendees is how much new business you get from these events. Consequently, getting numbers in is important and keeping them coming to the future events is too.   Well attended events attract even bigger numbers.

Good luck!

4 hours ago, urbanx said:

So the question is: Would you pay £120 for a 3-course lunch (in a posh hotel) and an after dinner musical speaker? 300 guests. (30 tables x 10)

No I wouldn't.  I was part of a networking group for a couple of years, nearly ten tears ago.  We would meet once a week, at Saracens rugby club, or Mill Hill Golf club, have a bite to eat, network, talk about our businesses to guests etc.  I got a few interesting jobs out of it but I came to the conclusion I was putting in more than I was getting out, so I left.

This idea of yours, is it something you want to arrange instead of the sporting lunch at work or is this a separate thing you are thinking of, and are, perhaps looking at it as a business idea for yourself?

I couldn't control myself.  After a certain amount of grovelling, wifey acquiesced and I've ordered the Periwinkle burst Triad I left a link to above.  It's not in the shop yet but it left the Reverend factory last week and is 'in transit'.

Merry Christmas to me!

18 minutes ago, MacDaddy said:

 

Woody 🥰

I suppose the Bay City Rollers are from a time when you could be a top pop star, have thousands of screaming schoolgirls follow you around, and still get all your best clothes from Primark, like Woody seems to have.

Boy bands are a bit more polished these days.

I remember some of the girls in my class, when I was about 12, crowding around a poster of the Bay City Rollers that one of them had blu tacked to the inside of their desk, discussing which one they loved.

So, @MacDaddy, who was your fave?

Two thing that have struck me from this thread are:

1)  People won't listen to music if the singer is an rSol

2) @MacDaddy used to listen to the Bay City Rollers

I'll go first then.

I liked this.  I played it whilst cooking, so it was technically in the 'background', which it fits well.  It's quite an easy listen but didn't blow my socks off.  From a bassist's point of view, it's nice to hear the timbre of a double bass.

Would I go and see these live if they turned up at the Barbican?  Not by myself but my missus liked them and she would be keen, if I went too.  As background music it's great and I'm sure they would be popular in some posh hotel in central London that has their own jazz trio, but I imagine Tord Gustavsen would be insulted by that.

7/10

I can't seem to get this on Bandcamp, but I imagine we should all be able to tap Spotify for free.  I have a Deezer account so I have included that.

If anyone can't access the album, let me know.

I'd like to listen to something new while cooking this evening and as @Newfoundfreedom has chucked a sickie (we want a doctor's certificate by the way, or a letter from your mum), I'll do this:

https://theshfl.com/album/The-Ground

https://www.deezer.com/search/Tord Gustavsen Trio – The Ground