SumOne

....I have also owned a few multiscale Basses, so there's another reason for them being nerdy!

Here's my offending Bass that started me thinking this sacrilege: It is my very nice Lakeland DJ4 (yeah, not actually a Jazz Bass, but trying to as close to one as it can without a lawsuit). ...... In many ways that Cadillac is cool, or certainly was - but cool for a certain type of person in a certain time and place, nowadays to drive one around the UK gives the vibe of a 'things were better in the good old days' MAGA adjacent mindset (not meant as an anti-USA statement - all the Union Jack waving, 'vintage' cosplay, Dads Army, Spitfire flypast, throwback stuff I get living near Goodwood gets on my tits too and is the same sort of 'good old days' mindset). In fact though, that's a bit unfair on Jazz (type) Basses as it is the case for many Bass guitars that are a throwback to at least 50 years ago. I'm contradicting my original hypothesis here as I suppose I'm not actually talking about it being a 'nerdy' bass due to Geddy and Jaco being the most famous users and their noodling connections, more that it isn't cool to be a throwback and live in a cosplay version of the past. Cool is when something comes along and upsets conventions of the past and the youth get into it, Jazz did it, then Rock n Roll, then Punk, then Hip Hop, then Electronic music etc. Playing a Bass that looks like it is modelled on being played 50+ years ago in a US Diner just isn't cool. But yeah, things that are overly technical are probably more 'nerdy' territory. Multiscale, chapman sticks, lots of knobs!

Nice. Are they going to be an additional thing (like the 'Future Compact') or a size option from FI (to either buy 'mini' or 'original' size)? And any news of when available?

You know what, I take it back. The Jazz is cool compared to a Chapman stick.

What do you reckon the nerdiest Bass is? My vote is the Jazz Bass. There's something a bit 'noodling/prog'...Geddy Lee, Jaco Pastorius sort of association about them. (And I play Jazz Basses ...and am a nerd!). Cool points for the Reggae connections though. Whereas Rickenbacker are associated with Lemmy, Precision with Soul and Punk, Stingray with Disco and Funk, ESP and Warwick with Metal. .... all are a bit Americana throwback style with people thinking they're the Fonz though. Retired Dentist from Surrey with a Harley. Ibanez would be a Boy racer with a Mitsubishi though, not high-end or exactly cool - but quite 'everyman' with a bit of forward thinking and somewhat youthful....so my vote for a cool bass goes to Ibanez.

+1 again (so that must be = 4 now?!) for the Fishman Platinum Pro EQ if going for 'hands-on' analogue. I kind of regret selling it, but once you are considering £250 for an EQ and compressor I started considering multi-fx. The Zoom B1-Four or MS 60B will do the similar EQ and compression and whole lot of other stuff for half the price....Or personally, I've now gone for a Boss GX-10, £75 more than the Fishman, but decent compressor, EQ and everything else it has. I mostly just use it for EQ and compression and drive though so Fishman +Drive could do similar- but having presents is useful.

I must have bought and sold on here more times than I care to remember! Probably 50 transactions. I've never had an issue with bank transfer of Paypal F&F. As others have said, a quick check of feedback is useful, and check that they seem like a real bass player (e.g. getting annoyed about 'tonewood' opinions!) , if it is someone brand new to the forum with no feedback (or only feedback from another brand new account!) then use caution. Basses being more expensive and delicate I've tended to try and meet up with people and do bank transfer. Pedals I've usually just done by post so there is a bit of trust involved.

I'm not sure I'd accept selling via Paypal as a business as isn't the issue then that all of the risk is with the seller: If I sell a £1k Bass as a Paypal 'business' rather than F&F and the buyer scams me (e.g. says it never arrived, or isn't what it should be) then Paypal refunds the buyer and leaves the seller out of pocket. Or I imagine the onus is on the seller to somehow prove that the buyer did receive it and it was what was described (good luck with that! my experience with trying to talk to Paypal is 'computer says no').

I think sellers sometimes go off RRP and that's possibly it is what they bought it for - but often there are shop reductions a year or so later (when they are also trying to sell second hand). I'm eyeing up a new Ray34 that is £800 from one shop, RRP £1,200. Someone that bought one for £1,200 new would perhaps try to sell for about £800 after a year of owning it and they'd think that's fair enough, it is the average sort of price on eBay and Reverb. For me though, as a buyer it'd have to be quite a bit cheaper (£500 ish) for me to get a second hand one from eBay with all the risks associated and wear and tear etc vs £800 for a discounted brand new one from a shop with Warranty etc.

Any owners of new versions of the Sterling Stingray Ray34 on here that happen to know the weight? I've got my eye on one but the shop can't/won't tell me the actual Bass weight and I can't see info online apart from some old Talkbass and Reddit threads where people are perhaps talking about older versions.

Put a donk on it!

No, which is partly why even though I play a lot of Reggae/Dub I have quite bright roundwound strings - because as I also play some more Ska/Punk stuff with distortion. Can take off the highs, can't really add them if they were never there though. The general view is Reggae = Dull Flatwound, but I've heard at least one famous exclusively Reggae Bass player (I think it was Flabba Holt) say he used brighter roundwound as can take off the highs, but it is good to have the option to include them if ever needed.

I think EQ makes the biggest difference, and what your Cab can reproduce. I've gone into the finest of details testing pedals A-B and picking apart why one preamp or distortion is better than the next, but nowadays I've pretty much come to the conclusion that once it goes through an Amp/Cab and playing with a band the difference is almost imperceptible - especially if using EQ to match the sounds. Perhaps a keen audience member could hear the difference between a Rat vs Muff vs Tube screamer, but I doubt anyone could notice any more detail 'that sounds like Green Russian , they should be using a Ram's Head', likewise- bright Roundwound strings can be made to sound a lot like dull flatwounds with the right EQ.

If the band agrees that playing Bass live while a backing track also has Bass is a bad idea (it is!) then there are a lot of ways to remove Bass from a backing track (e.g. Moises app). I suppose the other option is to remove the live Bass - mime, or don't bother attending.

Nice. I've got tickets to see African Head Charge in May, looking forward to it.

Behringer B-Tron III available in March: https://www.behringer.com/product.html?modelCode=0709-ALB

Here's a challenge:

Yeah, luckily though the only issue the 7 piece ska band I'm has had from venues is actually fitting in. The main limitation is that the pubs tend to pay the same fee for a 3 piece of 7 piece, so it isn't exactly a money maker being in a bigger band. I do feel that 7 piece is a bit OTT sometimes, could potentially be trimmed down to 5, or perhaps even 4 if we were good enough musicians (myself included, I can't sing backing vocals while playing bass). Capdown managed it well with 4.

I didn't say I was a Taylor Swift fan (or that I wasn't a metal fan), just that she is popular and rock music (or 'band' music) in general is getting less-so. And I didn't say people in an orchestra wouldn't know their fellow musician names, I'm saying that that a general audience won't know their names - but they will know the conductor/composer or the 'star' of the performance, similar to a Taylor Swift concert.

Perhaps we've circled back in a way - not many could name the musicians in an Orchestra, in music halls, or in big bands, there was a frontman 'face/name' and the other musicians were quite interchangeable and unknown to audiences, somewhat similar to the Taylor Swift of Bruno Mars live band musicians. The days of pop bands with the whole band being reasonably well known as one unit was perhaps a bit of a blip in the timeline of popular music - and even in 'band' heyday there was still a lot of popular music without being a band, stuff like Motown or a lot of Reggae with session musicians supporting the singer, and solo artists like Elvis, Elton John, Bob Dylan, Madonna, Michael Jackson. It's possibly more a sign of declining pop success of rock and punk music, which are almost always bands.

Older people in the 1960s were probably saying the same things about the change from big bands to 4 piece pop bands. ..."declining society, the youth of today are clueless, media control, not proper musicians - can't even read music, record companies, commercialisation etc"

Something I like about the GX-10 is this mode: Simple but good live: One footswitch for 'clean', one for 'dub', one for 'dirt' (and press two together to scroll through to other groups of 3x presets). I set the knobs for EQ. Expression pedal for volume, heel down for tuner/mute, toe press to engage an effect (e.g. on 'dirt' it makes it dirtier by engaging a fuzz, on 'dub' it engages an echo and reverb). That does me well for live stuff without getting complicated. I think you could do similar with the Core and an expression pedal - not sure how it'd do the heel down and toe press as switches things though.

The GX 10 has some annoying interface things, but generally it is pretty good. It is similar sounding to the Core, but not as many routing options and a few little things missing (like a visual display of the Compressor levels), and I've got a suspicion things like the GX pitch shifter have a slightly longer latency. The Core is better for the 'brains'. GX 10 screen and expression pedal are nice to have though. But yeah, Core with an expression pedal and some external footswitches would generally be better.

I love trying out new pedals and mucking about with sounds nearly as much as I love playing Bass, it is sort of a hobby within a hobby. ...saying that though, I've come to the conclusion with any bands I've been in there really isn't the need for fussing over small sound details. Going through an Amp/Cab and up against a drummer, 2x guitars, singer etc any subtleties get lost and it comes down to the fundamental things: simplicity, reliability, being in-tune, transportable, perhaps stomping on something for boost/drive, and compression helps but isn't essential. At the moment a Boss GX-100 is doing that for me. Now I almost take it as two separate things: 'Bread and butter' tough, reliable, gigging equipment, and 'mucking about with sounds at home' equipment. For the 'mucking about with sounds' as I'm just doing that at home I'm finding a good Laptop, Interface and Plugins (via 'Gig Performer 5' host) to be a very deep rabbit hole as the possibilities are pretty much limitless (and using a synth/keyboard, but that's a whole other thing), it does potentially lead to too many options, and isn't very road-worthy, but then again, I'm only really mucking about with it at home for the sake of mucking about rather than Bass gigging so it's all good for that.