bozzbass

I've had two sets of helicore hybrids on my zeller and found them dull and hard to bow. The D and G strings have also broken within a year. I've recently got a set of thomastick spirocores and have been much happier. They are quite bright but they start nice and accurately under the bow and, as expected, sound nice and round for pizz. If you want something darker the superflexibles are also good. My spirocores were about £100. I seem to remember I also looked at the obligatos. It's funny about the d'addarios, I never really liked them on the upright, but I have the flatwound chromes on a fender p and they are brilliant.

if you can find one, the old TE dual compressor is cool and very transparent. i've never used it live as you want to, but it is superb for recording.

so during a trip to the garden centre in my local do-it-all, i had a look for the scotchbrite pads. they didn't have any but they did have something called the 'oakey between coats sanding pad'. i've just used it on the neck of my CIJ jazz and it has worked a treat. i used the super fine pad and did a wee test on the back of the headstock before using it on the neck. it's taken of that glossiness that gets sticky when you sweat, and now feels much the same as my MIA P-bass. It's not quite as 'wood' feeling as my stingray.

i'd agree with maxrossell regarding the majority of 'tube tone' being in the power amp. I tried an old Simms Watts head recently that had a SS pre going into a tube power section and it was tube tone ahoy, really dynamic and big. The old music man heads had a similar setup, SS pre into Tube power, worth checking out. I too hear little difference when tweaking the blend on an amp that has SS and tube pre sections and it has been said to me before that a solitary tube located on an SS board is little more than an orange glow to look at.

[quote name='Alun' post='486419' date='May 12 2009, 09:45 PM'][url="http://www.widisoft.com/english/widi-audio-to-midi-vst.html"]http://www.widisoft.com/english/widi-audio-to-midi-vst.html[/url] I've tried the demo briefly and it works pretty well, although there was a fair amount of latency ( may be able to reduce it, haven't had a good play yet). Only downside with the demo is that it cuts out every 15 seconds ( for 15 seconds!) so it's not deliberately limited. Cheers Alun[/quote] thanks for this, i will give it a spin too. cuts out every 15 seconds for 15 seconds tho!!!! that really is crippleware!

[quote name='Al Heeley' post='484500' date='May 10 2009, 07:09 PM']I give all my instruments a neck rub with those fine scotchbrite wood finishing pads, green (or grey) nylon like a pan scrubber, they do a great job of deglossing the neck without going thru the primer, and they leave the neck feeling really silky smooth and natural.[/quote] I've often thought about doing this CIJ 70's jazz I own. These pads look really good, especially as you wouldn't have to worry about bits of wire wool going in your pickups. I just wonder if a 'pan scrubber' really would cut the heavy - and it is heavy - gloss on the CIJ necks. I might do a wee test on the back of the headstock.

I use the Fishman Dual Parametric DI with a Shadow pickup and it's pretty good.

[quote name='grumble' post='483453' date='May 9 2009, 12:21 AM']Guild - Why did you stop making basses ?[/quote] +1 Every now and again I look hopefully at the Guild website

[quote name='owen' post='482713' date='May 8 2009, 09:21 AM']I tried it with 5 different basses (my wife has already told me I have too many). It was fine with them all really. I had to be careful with muting, but not to any excessive degree. If I was expecting full MIDI implementation down to low B then yes it was a duffer. However, I knew that would not be on so I was pleasantly surprised that it did what I expected it to do without overly having to modify my technique. Again, no use really beneath the 7th fret, but then we all knew that was was going to be the case.[/quote] Sorry, do you mean 7th fret on a low string tuned to E or B? Either way it sounds pretty good as that area of the neck sounds the best for using an octaver to my ear. I also notice on the Sonus website there's a few folk asking about using it on bass to which Sonus replied 'Watch this space' so I guess they are planning a bass version. For 80 quid, I think I'll get one for my microKorg and VSTi synths in Ableton. Adam

A simple way I found to start make walking basslines that sound 'jazzy' is like this. It works really well on those tunes, or bits of tunes, with 2 chords per bar. Play the root notes of the chords that occur on beats 1 and 3. On beats 2 and 4 play the note a semitone above OR below - you choose - the root of the following chord. Confused??? I think I am. Here's a wee example. Lets say you've got some changes like |A7b9 / Dm7 /| G13 / Cmaj 7 /| then your bassline could go |A Eb D Ab | G B C G | or it could go |A Csharp D Fsharp | G Csharp C G | In both cases I just put the G on the end to finish the bar, you'd probably have another chord to go to. In the second example the Fsharp under Dm might sound a bit bendy put if it goes by at 200bpm no one is going to notice. Of course the obvious answer to that is simply break my procedure and make it an F natural, the third of Dm. If you want the theory behind some of this stuff, try Googling 'tritone dominants' or 'tritone substitution'. Basically, my preceding a chord with a chromatic neighbour note is like putting a tritone dominant in front of it in a fairly melodic way. This isn't a procedure for all walking bass situations, but it's a good way to get started. rslaing's stuff looks good too.

I've used an SVTIII for years now, an amp that gets a bit of a rough deal on TB.com, and it's been great. I've also have a B100R that is ace, I actually prefer it to the big amp. Hang on, this looks like evidence to suggest I am biased. I would say if you like your amp and it does the job, don't worry about the badge.

[quote name='mrdirtyrob' post='481057' date='May 6 2009, 03:06 PM']Don't tempt me! My pedalboard is made out of shelves and I once made a speaker cabinet out of all sorts of crap, somebody needs to stop me before I have a flat with no furniture but filled with poorly made music equipment.[/quote] excellent

+1 on that Rockbass logo being horrible. I've often thought the Rockbasses were a better buy just because the woods they use (alder, maple) are more sustainable than the rare exotic hardwoods used on the expensive Warwicks. It might just be me that worries about these things though The Star bass looks cool, shame it's not shorter scale for that lovely rubbery slightly out of tune thing

What is the big pedal in the centre of the board, just below the red Alesis box? With all those knobs it looks pretty juicy!!!! Bozz

I don't know the POD or Tracktion very well but what WalMan said sounds about right. Set it up so you are monitoring your live bass in your headphones rather than the bass that comes from your Tracktion track?? I do use an Edirol FA-66, a general audio interface, into a laptop with Ableton Live and when I record live stuff, I set the monitor for the recording track in Ableton to off, have all the other tracks monitoring as normal, and then use the live/direct monitor on the Edirol box to listen to my bass. As WalMan says, I've never had to offset tracks afterwards to get them in sync. IIRC you had the latency down to 40ms or so, which isn't too bad for your computer. As I say, I think if you can figure out how to monitor your live/direct bass rather than the "ASIO"-ed bass, all will be good. Bozz

it is sooooo bright, I can barely open my eyes!!!!!!!!

Hi there everyone, I've been a lurker for about a year and thought I should finally introduce myself. I'm based in Glasgow and share my life with a lovely lady and a bunch of lovely basses, namely a couple of Stingrays, a P and a J, an old Fender Musicmaster and a tatty but much loved upright. I run a club night with a good friend at Glasgow's 13th Note called EOTMC, check us out at www.myspace.com/bozillabozilla I also do a bunch of recording work from time to time for various bands, singers and Scottish BBC radio. I'm currently working on my dissertation for a Postgraduate MLitt in Popular Music Studies at Glasgow University (an excellent course if anyone fancies it). My influences are all over the place but just lately I've been checking out a lot of Louis Jordan and T-Bone Walker, a bit of Duran Duran and have rediscovered Eat Em and Smile by Dave Lee Roth; Billy Sheehan is the Nose Cone on Elephant Gun!!!!!!!! Other music stuff I do is mucking about with synths, a bit of piano playing and making choons on my laptop with Ableton Live and Max MSP. love, peace and rock n roll x