dclaassen

1 hour ago, dmccombe7 said:

And an upright piano. Would hate to be roadie for your band 😂

Love the Pedulla bass 

Dave

pisno is the club’s…we did not use it.

Good gig at the Felton Club in Peterborough depping with Stevie Daniels. Nice club, good stage, fun and engaged crowd. Played well with a couple of minor goofs. Pedulla MPV fiver through elf head and Genzyme Benz 1x12’s. Justin boots.

12 minutes ago, Bluewine said:

 

It seems like in some circles playing with a pick is frowned upon.

 

As a teen I was " all in " with finger playing. I switched to playing with a pick about 25 years ago. For no reason other than the type of grooves and riffs I play are easier to execute with a pick.

 

Daryl

Well..it sounds great!

Blu…nice job…love how calm you right hand is. Wish I could look that cool when performing! Don’t personally use a pick, but really like your sound!

I find playing at home to be really relaxing.

1 hour ago, snorkie635 said:

MPV fiver - love it, love it, love it! Would I gig it? Yes indeedy.

Lovely…I need to get mine refinished sometime…

1 hour ago, snorkie635 said:

MPV fiver - love it, love it, love it! Would I gig it? Yes indeedy.

do you get much punch out of the bridge pickup?

Thinking about this as I prep for another dep job. My MPV fiver has not been out of the house for a while, but I’ve been playing it almost exclusively whilst practicing. It’s such a joy to play, and inspires me to try more creative kinds of bass lines. I think I’ll unleash it this weekend. Would you take a basically irreplaceable instrument to a pub gig? Why or why not?

On 22/10/2024 at 12:54, Grahambythesea said:

I had the earlier model with EMGs except mine was a 5 which came in 35” scale. Excellent basses, shame Spector have pulled the plug on manufacturing them.

Got this lovely bass from yourself….still loving it!

I get really good results with lighter gauge (.125 B) Elixers on my MPV-5. I also get a pretty good B tone with the HB flats on my Dynabass. Less happy with the B on my fretless Spectracore using low tension flats. I do use the B up the neck and find, like many on here, have tone and intonation issues above the 5th fret with fatter B strings.

I also don’t gig regularly. I try to play about 30 minutes or more per day…lots more if I do have gigs coming up. I alternate between a band’s set list, other stuff I know, and new material.

Intentionally not in a band full-time and happily retired, but also looking for dep gigs to keep me sharp. 68, very experienced and can read pretty well. My preference would be classic rock or country, pit work, or big band/ swing, but can also do other genres.Comfortable on fretted and fret less, but don’t have or want an upright. Can also do bg vocals on stuff I know.

I’ve used both and now use neither. For me, it was always about playability. A really good jazz neck is perfect for me, and an active jazz can give a pretty wide tonal range. There is, however, a big difference, as many have pointed out here, between living room tone and gigging tone, and, for me, that’s almost always going to mean using an active bass. Right now, that’s a Peavey Dynabass 5…which has a wonderful jazz-like neck bur also monstrous super ferrite soap bars.

2 gigs today with Stevie Daniels. First one was an afternoon noon car show somewhere deep in the fens. (Why do all those fenland towns look the same?). We were placed on a flatbed stage across the entry road from the bar and the crowd. As a result, very little crowd interaction and lots a dust every time a new vehicle came through. And, we were facing the sun…hot!. 
 

Second gig at the Burleigh Club in Peterborough. Nice pub and small but enthusiastic crowd. Used the Dynabass, trace head, and GB 1 12’s. Footwear was Justin western boots. No gigs now until the end of June.

1 hour ago, HeadlessBassist said:

Visually, it looks like a £400 bitsa. Sorry, but it does.

 

Questions: Did they clear all the Woodworms out of their delicious home?  (I've seen the resultant damage on plenty of 2-300 year old Cellos.)

 

Why is Lee Anderton trying to hawk a £7k bass when he knows most professional musician's cars aren't worth that much?

There have been many times in my life, including now, when the bass I’m carrying is worth more than the car it is in…having said that, can I charge more for dings, which are asynchronous unintended organic tone divots?

2 hours ago, Gasman said:

Maybe it's an attention-span deficit in the  audience's young'uns - jazz is about exploring a melody, chord sequence, harmonies, over a reasonable number of choruses, but usually a lot fewer than guitarists belabour in a 'Red House' rock/blues jam and a lot prettier...

In an ideal world, this is true…..but very few “Jazz players” are capable, and many rely on a few licks, don’t listen enough to respond musically to other ideas, and usually (sax and guitar) play wayyyyy too many notes. Tbf, I can’t solo like Ron Carter either…

On 15/04/2025 at 10:36, zbd1960 said:

As a sax play and someone who has an interest in jazz, one of the things that I get frustrated with going to listen to a jazz gig is the typical way that playing is approached. The typical method is: play the head, perhaps repeat head with some variation/decoration, everyone takes a solo for 16, 32, 64... bars (cue perhaps solo sax, trumpet, guitar, bass, keys, drums...). After 15 minutes of boring the audience to death, return to head and finish. Repeat process with next tune. 

 

You do not need to have everyone taking a solo in every tune, but that's what a lot of jazz groups do. They then wonder why their audiences almost no one under 70 in them.

 

I don't go to a lot of jazz gigs, but I've been to enough, first one in my 20s, and they all operate this way. More imagination would go a long way. 

 

This is exactly my experience with jazz jams. I do not find it enjoyable.

Sat in with Stevie Daniels at the White Swan near Newmarket. Great crown…lots of dancing and compliments. Debut gig for my new Elf head paired with Genz Benz 12’s. First set was with my Spectracore 5 fretless, then used the Peavey Dynabass for set two. All worked really well, and the Elf didn’t even get warm.

1 hour ago, Bilbo said:

PS a '10 finger' piano reader friend of mine said he took 15 years to get that good at it. Bass is relatively easy as it is mostly monophonic. Couple of years would see you better than most of your peers. The important thing is to keep going and don't neglect it. 30 minutes a day is enough.

This is great advice!

There are, imo, different steps involved in learning to read notation. First comes understanding the actual notation for pitch and rhythm. The other step is being able to read music at tempo. I guess the last step is being able to sightread at tempo…this takes years to master. The other complication include key signatures, choosing where to play a passage on the neck as you are reading it, and, in the case of a lot of written out jazz parts, dealing with rhythms that are not exactly as written and parts produced by non-bass players that are unplayable as written. Then, at last you master all of this, get a pit gig for a musical, and have a singer need to go down a step on the night….

please don’t get discouraged though…all it takes is time

I picked an Elf up last week and have been using it with a Genz Benz 12. Very well pleased, especially with a bass with hotter pickups. Not at all bothered by the fan noise.

2 hours ago, patrikmarky said:

New for this weekend..biggest regret was selling my gk 550 a few years ago finally one turned up on basschat ..it’s got the typical GK sound and my it’s got some noise 🤟

Nice! I have the Focus version of this 12…wonder if there is a tonal difference 

I’ve got a dynabass 5 with the super ferrite pickups…massive sound and a very slim, jazz bass-like neck.

3 hours ago, Beedster said:

 

Indeed, the old quantity versus quality debate rears its head again.

 

I was gigging recently through my Ashdown Drophead, which has a lot of tubes and a lovely fat and full tone through the 15" cab, exactly the sound I was looking for. A fellow bassist - who I know really well and who's a lovely guy - came up and said something along the lines, "Your bass sounds really dull, muddy, and boomy". We all have a sound in our head and we all have different ways of achieving it, and as is the case with basses, no matter which model/configuration we use, we often end up getting close to that sound, one person playing a PJB cab with 4x5" speakers can make it sound more like a 15" cab than another player actually using a 15" cab. The science and numbers are really helpful guides, but they're far from the whole story

….tone is in your fingers….ducks

On 21/02/2025 at 14:41, Woodwind said:

This thread is really doing me no favours.

 

Getting very interested in the idea of a nice old trace head, mounted in a new lightweight sleeve partnered with a modern high power 12" cab (X2)

This is exactly my current rig…

I’ve pick up the 5er version….those pickups are massive!