SteveXFR

My final gig tonight and I didn't go out on a high. Hand cramp meant I could barely hold my pick in the last few songs and my playing sucked. We were opening for a Motorhead tribute and unfortunately, the crowd weren't in to our stoner/sludge metal. Not a good night. Even the drive home was horrible with the wind and rain.

It's an Ibanez SRMS805 in brown burst. I like it but the close string spacing means it's not for everyone. Brown burst does sound like result of a bad takeaway

We had a great one last night. Our disgusting racket seemed to go down well. Everything went right and we really enjoyed ourselves.

I'm just about there now. Gigs tonight and tomorrow night and that's me done.

I've seen some fairly big metal bands using a vintage pro live. Cult Of Luna was one that was particularly memorable, his bass tone was huge. I sold mine to the current Hawkwind bassist

To be honest, I associate Rex more with Spector than a Thunderbird

I'm a big Rex fan, a huge Pantera fan and I loved my old Thunderbird but £1400? Not a chance. I paid a third that price for a new Vintage Pro only three years ago and that thing was brilliant. I really wish I still had it.

Bullet with butterfly wings - Smashing Pumpkins

One inch man - Kyuss

Demon Cleaner - Kyuss

Matt Freeman - Rancid Rex Brown - Pantera Jeff Matz - Mutoid Man & High On Fire Al Cisneros - Sleep, Om & Shrinebuilder Scott Reeder - Kyuss, Fireball Ministry & The Obsessed Lemmy

Peaches - Stranglers

I don't get why people complain about Behringers plastic casings. They're proper tough.

My Ibanez multiscale uses the same strings as Dingwalls. Options are still limited and expensive. My favourite strings on my old 4 string were DR black beauties but they're not available in XL scale

I've had someone tell me I should use old strings and not change them because Jamerson used old strings. I don't remember Jamerson playing much metal though. Maybe he played on Justice For All

My XL scale strings are £55 a set plus the Ibanez individual multi scale bridges are a bastard.

Another metal top tip is get some now strings. Nothing cuts through like new stainless round wound strings. I change my strings every two months which is rather expensive with my extra long scale bass but worth it.

A sensible starting point. It'll get you somewhere useful. Set your tone controls on your bass and amp and the pedal all in the middle as a starting point and work from there

There's a huge range of bass sounds in metal from super clean to fuzzy, clanky nastiness. My bass sound is quite mid heavy with a good amount of grit. I take a little bit of grit from the amp but most of it comes from a Darkglass vintage microtubes with gain up high but blend in the middle and then a Two Notes Le Bass preamp for added valve grit. The most important thing in a band situation is to forget about what your bass sounds like in isolation, that doesn't matter. It's all about the sound when played with the guitars and drums. A lot of bassists who hear Lemmy's bass isolated will say it sounds dreadful but listen to it in the mix and it's perfect

The zoom b2.1 won't power a cab. How about a tiny little compact 200w(ish) head like Trace Elliot Elf and a lightweight cab like a TC 2x10. They make a really light plastic cab which sounds OK.

Heresy - Nine Inch Nails

Jesus built my hotrod - Ministry

Burn the witch - QOTSA

That's what our guitarist bought. It's only a Squier but with dual P90's. It sounds great.

Because we use a ridiculous low tuning (drop A#) I've been telling the guitarist for ages now he should try a baritone guitar to get some decent definition in the lower notes. Last night he turned up with one. It's such a huge improvement to our overall sound compared to his standard strat. He complained a lot about how difficult it is playing with a .60 lowest string. I pointed out mine is more than double the thickness and told him to stop complaining. I'm not sure if it was just because the guitar sounded so much better but we all seemed to be really tight and it was a really productive rehearsal.