TheLowDown

Can confirm.

Mine are in a narrow price bracket at the lower end of the scale, and the ones that I have serve their purpose. Probably the biggest obvious advantage of having a higher budget is merely having a wider variety of choice, but currently I don't have any reason to spend more than I have done.

It looks like an attractive design but I would have to read up about it to see if it offers any practical advantage.

When selling things I always found that I missed them far less than I thought I would. I would just keep the one that you got for your 21st and sell the others.

The vinyl van has long since passed. I'm very much into streaming now. not least because it drastically cuts down on clutter.

"Fender". Pass.

I just use PlayerPro on Android. It's a full music player that allows balance(for split channel recordings), equaliser, and ability to separately adjust pitch and playback speed. It doesn't have looping thought which is done in another app.

I lean it against a corner.

I would look at your diet because it's so often overlooked, especially adding foods that encourage good blood circulation and prevent inflammation, as suggested above. For the gloves, I recently got some fingerless ones for £2.95 being the cheapskate that I am.

I think the Harley Benton's are decent. Pretty much any under £400. The HB Marquess is particularly nice in playability, quality, and looks

I don't measure things like that because a bass is just a tool. Unless it helps me to become a better player, then I will consider myself unworthy of a Fedora or Dingwall or similar.

I've got a 0.115 for my B string on the 5 string. It's a vast improvement over when I was using a 0.135 and 0.130, all nickel plated. I'm using a stainless steel 0.128 B string on one of my 6 strings which sounds considerably better, brighter, and similar in timbre to all the other strings. The heavier the strings, the more woofy and vague the B string will sound, at least for nickel-plated comparing like for like. The 0.135 will start to sound woofy much lower down than the 0.115.

This is so true and what so many people don't appear to realise, even now. There are still people who believe that all things made in China and the East is of low quality, oblivious to the fact that it was the parent company who instructs the manufacturing arm to make cheap quality gear, and this is why China had in previous decades, undeservedly got a bad rep. Almost all of the world's manufacturing are in that area of the world now and they will produce everything from low quality rubbish to high quality perfection depending on what they're paid and what they're instructed to produce by the company's name written on their products. This also applies to the individual factory, most if not all of which are capable of producing everything from cheap quality to perfection depending on what they're told to produce. With products like basses and the level of machining available now, I can't see anything being of anything other than very decent quality at a minimum.

I don't think the quality of the B string has much to do with whether the bass is budget or expensive. It appears to be more to do with the correct setup of the strings such as avoiding them being twisted, using a reasonably balanced set, and using stainless steel strings (nickel and nickel plated B-strings always sound awful to me, as if it was from a different set of strings that went dead years ago).

The Bugera Veyron tube is pretty decent for an amp head. Some people prefer to measure in RMS but this is often not the best measurement, but it's estimated at around 700W RMS and the cost about £270. For cabs you can try the ones from Trace Elliot and Phil Jones which weigh around 7 kg each for about 300W. at 8ohms.

It's good to have a focus and ignore the distractions. No point in playing EB if it doesn't interest you anymore. Good luck!

There are no 'benefits' in the same way that there are no benefits of the cello compared to a bass. It's just different. I don't bother with mwah and sliding all over the place, and definitely don't want to play it like Jaco did(I hate that tone and it does nothing for me), and these are things which can be done far far too much on the fretless. I don't play it much differently to how I play the fretted. Most of the reason why I play fretless is for ear training so I bought an unlined. And I suppose I sometimes like the more organic sound too and the potential for more expressive playing for home projects. Whether lined or unlined is a moot point. The side dots on a lined are the same as fretted, but on unlined they're where the frets are. If you just like the sound of fretless and nothing else, get lined. If you want the full experience and want to help train your ears too, go unlined. The beauty of the unlined is it helps you to see better with your ears and rely on them more than you would with a fretted or lined fretless.

The B string is definitely an improvement if you're not using well balanced strings on parallel frets. I've realised now that I'm not keen on using scales above 34 inch for comfort reasons. Other than an improvement to the B string without lots of tweaking necessary on parallels, I don't see them as having any real advantage and are therefore best staying a niche product.

I suppose it depends how the band formed. If it was originally one singer who initially aimed to sing to some random backing band or session musicians, then they would have to use their own name to advertise their 'brand'. They would have been new to the music business, so as time went on they may have learnt enough to realise that maybe they want to have a regular backing band for stability. It's not always about ego, but marketing.

It's upstairs in the loft, a bit knackered now but still plays last time I played it.

You don't need to go beyond the 12th because it repeats. I think it's a good idea, to begin with, to go up and down each string singing each note as accurately as you can. Some people name the sharps going up and the flats going down, and others just say "A B" for A#/Bb. After that I would play the major, natural minor and dominant/Mixolydian scales from the lowest possible note on the B string to the 12th on the C string, singing the scale degree(just say ....3...4...5...6...7....1....2.......3....) as you go. Pay attention to where the various root notes are on the neck so that you can see where all the intervals are related to the root. This helps to not only enable you to see the 6 string bass as not just a 4 or 5 string with an extra string or 2, but gets you out of the root to root thinking. It really helps for you to see where all the intervals are on the neck so that you can truly know the fretboard. One thing I also used to do was to put on a drum track find and play a random note such as Ab as quickly as possible going from one Ab to another Ab randomly. Then do the same with another note. I would do the above every day for a few months, and then after that maybe refresh every so often. Use the floating thumb technique.

@Quatschmacher@paul_5@Boodang I thought I emphasised the point about the backend of the music. Effects may be useful for things like slap and other circus exhibits that are key part of idle home noodlings, showing off in record shops, and the w#*kery section in some bands, but are much less effective for the rhythm section. Janek is more known for his solo stuff which is very much in the foreground.

I prefer a nice clean organic sound, but for the last few weeks I had considered adding some multiFX just to see how much I can make my sound even worse as well as scratching a curious itch. I don't think effects goes well with bass unless you're playing rock/punk/metal and fighting for your life for any leftover morsels of sonic space. I think effects are much more useful with guitars that are more front-end instruments. It feels quite wrong adding effects to a backend instrument like drums or bass, akin to having puppeteers in fancy dress.

In our defence, none of those littered items are British. The fact that there's a sunset makes it even less likely.

The thumb should only be used as a pivot and a sort of stabiliser for the hand, and there should not be any pressure applied by the thumb to the back of the neck. In fact, it's quite possible to play many basslines even without the thumb touching the back of the neck at all, albeit not with 100% success.