uncle psychosis

My only bass is a 5 string. The only thing the B string ever gets used for is as a thumb rest! I'm going to get another 4-string bass at some point, but I'm in no rush.

[quote name='Truckstop' timestamp='1350257810' post='1836601'] How can someone be such a poor musician with gear that lovely? [/quote] Sadly this is not a phenomenon restricted to drummers. Take a look round the gear listed in signatures on guitar and bass forums (yes, even basschat) and ask yourself what the ratio of touring-pro-class-gear to touring-pro-class-talent is Drummers are hard to find. We had a good one but he's moved down south. Finding a replacement has not been straightforward

I just bought some Status flats on recommendation from some people here. Not tried them out yet though.

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1349816324' post='1831024'] The studio is an instrument to be played just like any other. It's all subjective. One mans "groove" is another mans unacceptable timing imperfection. Also what's good enough for a live performance isn't always good enough for when you're going to be hearing it over and over again on a recording. Besides unless you are recording live direct to 2-track everything in the studio is fake to a degree, so quit being so precious and embrace the possibilities. [/quote] +1. Technology isn't the problem. People's use of technology is the problem. Better to have a great vocal track with a bum note that you can fix electronically than a mediocre but pitch-perfect take. Arguing that studio technology leads to decreased musicianship is like arguing that having frets on your bass leads to decreased musicianship. "Real bass players intonate by ear, these new fretted basses are for lazy untalented people..."

[quote]Beach boys? Not relevant anymore, go away. Wish jools would get Rush, Rammstein or Slayer on his show to,liven things up a bit. Or Joe satriani.) [/quote] I love the thought that the Beach Boys aren't relevant but Rush, Slayer, or Satriani would be [quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1349209613' post='1823434'] Brian was regarded as the genius but that is mostly self-hype in some ways. [/quote] You're joking, right? [quote]No idea how old he is..or what he has been through, but for live he just about is still there... which is the same as you could say for other big artists of his day..or maybe more so.[/quote] Brian has just celebrated his 70th birthday. Given the fact that he's been deaf in one ear for about 60 years and had numerous drug, health, and mental problems its amazing he can still perform live at all, really. [quote]Maybe he was the writer all along and the main singing was carried out by Love and his brothers. [/quote] The beauty of the beach boys is that they all had very individual voices and they were all used for different things. Brian was never really the main singer, but thats not to say that he was never able to sing. His main talent was definitely for songwriting, arranging, and producing though.

you could do it with two LS-2 pedals. I think.

What always amazes me is that there are no bad basses out there. At least, there aren't any for sale. People only ever sell great instruments that they'd love to keep but can't afford to. No-one ever has a bad bass that they just don't like...

The musicradar forum is good and whilst there is not *quite* the same community spirit that there is over here on the whole people there are nice (and trustworthy).

If you really want a killswitch then wire it to ground like flyfisher suggests. If it were me, though, I'd probably wire it so that I could leave my bass plugged in and not drain the battery by just breaking the circuit with the switch.

[quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1348826400' post='1818705'] While I agree about his then genius (I have loved Pet Sounds throughout my life) his inspiration was listening to the Beatles. [/quote] And The Beatles' inspiration was Brian Wilson They spurred each other on: "It was [i]Pet Sounds[/i] that blew me out of the water. I love the album so much. I've just bought my kids each a copy of it for their education in life ... I figure no one is educated musically 'til they've heard that album ... I love the orchestra, the arrangements ... it may be going overboard to say it's the classic of the century ... but to me, it certainly is a total, classic record that is unbeatable in many ways ... I've often played [i]Pet Sounds[/i] and cried. I played it to John [Lennon] so much that it would be difficult for him to escape the influence ... it was the record of the time. The thing that really made me sit up and take notice was the bass lines ... and also, putting melodies in the bass line. That I think was probably the big influence that set me thinking when we recorded [i]Pepper[/i], it set me off on a period I had then for a couple of years of nearly always writing quite melodic bass lines." ---Paul McCartney The Beatles were great. But Brian Wilson was better* *in my opinion

[quote name='KevB' timestamp='1348737514' post='1817450'] I'm not defending Love in any way but it isn't quite that simple. Love already had a touring BB band without Brian, Jardine and David Marks. These three members were added in for a reunion tour which has now finished. The intention was always that the stripped down (profitable) version of the band would then do some more shows later and this band doesn't include those members, it's just business. As I said I'm not defending Love and it is always upsetting seeing the founder and main talent in a band lose control over it but then I get quite uncomfortable watching Brian anyway in his current state of health. [/quote] Mike Love pretending that *he* is the Beach Boys and freezing out the rest of them---particularly Brian, without whom they would be nothing---is a ridiculous state of affairs. Frankly I find his claims that his "touring" band are more profitable rather laughable. I'd never consider going to see them in that format, they're little more than a tribute act (and I'd probably rather see a tribute act that didn't include Love, ironically). Add Brian, Jardine, and Marks and I might actually be tempted to go. I think many Beach Boys fans would feel the same way, and the people who don't care about the band politics who just think "ooh, the beach boys" aren't going to care either way. Given that Brian Wilson's Pet Sounds and SMiLE tours sold loads of tickets at upwards of £40 a head in the UK, there's obviously still enough people interested in the real deal...

Vintage make some really nice basses. I've had two---a J and a MM type---and they were both really good. I'm gassing for a precision myself just now, I would happily get another Vintage but I think deep down I really want something a bit fancier, I intend it to last me a very long time...

[quote name='Beer of the Bass' timestamp='1348785086' post='1818361'] I've found that this sort of hum (the sort that stops when you touch the strings) diminishes greatly or disappears completely when the control and pickup cavities are shielded with copper foil. Presumably this is because the pickups and wiring are being shielded from my big antenna of a body. [/quote] yeah, I had a telecaster that did it, but it stopped once I got some copper slug tape and shielded the pickup cavity and the electronics. You can also get copper paint, which would be my preferred solution but costs more and is more hassle. There is a website which has quite a lot of info about this kind of thing on it: [url="http://www.guitarnuts.com/wiring/menu.php"]http://www.guitarnuts.com/wiring/menu.php[/url] The site is a bit dated and hard to navigate, but its got a lot of good info about shielding/wiring/dangers of electric shock that are relevant to guitarists and bassists.

Yes, humans can be a path to ground but as a general rule we make pretty poor earth connections. Especially when wearing shoes. Synthetic fibres in our clothes and carpets don't help much either.

[quote name='lowdowner' timestamp='1348765708' post='1817951'] Oh, so if I ground myself (maybe a cable to a copper pin sunk in the ground) the hum would stop? I'm not going to go to the faff mind, but I'm really pleased to know what's actually going on. Mind you, I *could* be tempted to experiment with a tin foil pointy hat thing - I've seen them on films so they probably work? [/quote] As a quick test to yourself you could try waving your arms around or putting them near a CRT monitor or strip light whilst *not* touching the strings. You should hear the hum change as you do it.

A lot of people get this the wrong way round. The noise stops when you touch the strings because the bass is grounding you, not because you are grounding the bass. The human body is like a big antenna, so by being in close proximity to the electronics of your bass you induce a lot of noise. When you touch the strings you ground yourself and the noise disappears. Humans aren't normally grounded- that's why you occasionally get static shocks and have to wear those ESD bracelets when working on delicate electronics. You can reduce the noise by shielding the pickups and control cavity.

[quote name='casapete' timestamp='1348733490' post='1817380'] And still it goes on - Mike Love has now sacked Brian and Al Jardine from the Beach Boys!! Unbelievable - what an utter tw*t. [/quote] Mike Love owes everything to Brian. What a horrible, ungreatful, treacherous thing to do. According to the papers they were only told about it when the press release was issued.

My wife tells me I have a "bass face". I find this especially amusing because she tells me its different to my "guitar face" :-D

[quote name='paul torch' timestamp='1348491404' post='1814220'] Interesting, I never knew that. Seems as though I now need to read something from Brian. Any recommendations? [/quote] "Wouldn't It Be Nice" is well worth reading. Just remember to take it with a pinch of salt.

[quote name='Hobbayne' timestamp='1348481092' post='1813989'] Thanks for posting that Uncle, The man sounds a complete w***er! [/quote] A lot of the "evidence" against him is "he said, they said" but he certainly does not appear to come out of the Beach Boys story with much appeal (and the legal battles alone would suggest a fair amount about him). I should point out that its not fair to blame him entirely for Brian's troubles, and he certainly wasn't the only one who piled pressure on Brian or cast doubt on the more experimental direction that was being taken. One of my great regrets is that I never bought tickets to see Brian on either the Pet Sounds or SMiLE tours. I don't think I'll get another chance now

[quote name='Hobbayne' timestamp='1348440605' post='1813761'] Mike Love? The singer? Tell me more [/quote] Its a long, complicated story. Essentially, Love was opposed to Brian's experimenting on "Pet Sounds" (and even more so to Smile---Brian was asked why it wasn't released and his first answer was "Mike hated it"). He was one of the main sources of the pressure on the (very young---he was only 23 when writing Pet Sounds!) Brian to produce hit after hit and go on tour, which was a major factor in the mentally fragile Brian's nervous breakdown(s). Once it became clear that Pet Sounds and Smile were both critically and commercially succesful he has engaged in endless revisionism to pretend that he was supportive of them all along. He has sued the other Beach Boys numerous times and at one point had "exclusive rights" to tour under the Beach Boys name. Here's an extract from his Wikipedia page: [i]In 1994, despite numerous session musicians and Wilson's "Pet Sounds" collaborator Tony Asher[sup][url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Love#cite_note-17"][18][/url][/sup] testifying that his input was minimal, Love won a legal proceeding to establish what he considers proper co-authorship credit for many of the Beach Boys hits. On November 3, 2005 Love sued Brian Wilson and the [i][url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_On_Sunday"]Mail On Sunday[/url][/i] newspaper, arguing that both misused the Beach Boys' name and Love's image in a promotional CD that was given free with the paper to promote the 2004 SMiLE release. Love's case argued that the unauthorised (by the legally franchised Beach Boys) free CD resulted in loss of income for the band. He sought several million dollars in damages plus a million dollars to cover costs of advertising to correct the perceived damage to the band's reputation. The lawsuit was dismissed on May 16, 2007 on the grounds that it was without merit. [/i] He sued Brian Wilson. His own cousin. Because the "Beach Boys" (Mike Love plus extras---no Brian, no Carl, no Dennis) lost income. On a record that he himself helped to supress. I think that says a lot. I won't even get into his politics, but they're not very nice either.

Brilliant. Never mind Lennon/McCartney ---the real hero of the 60s will always be Brian Wilson as far as I'm concerned. In a world where the word genius is thrown around far too often he really does fit the bill. I get very sad/angry at the thought of what he's been through and what else he might have achieved were it not for the likes of the hideous Mike Love.

All a sound is is a superposition of periodic waves. Patenting or copywriting such a thing would be insane (you'd be patenting entire fields of maths and physics). Sounds have been around for so long that it would probably fall foul of the "obviousness" criteria for starters. Its also nigh-on impossible to define the "tone" of an amp. How would you do it? Some of them have dozens of controls and thats even before you consider the effect of the input signal (what you plug in has a massive effect) or the output path (whats it being plugged in to?), or the non-linear nature of sound. There are, essentially, an infinite number of sounds available from any amplifier. What you *can* patent is a unique way of making such a sound. So you can try and protect the IP of your circuitry or your bass design. But if someone else can make the same sound by completely different means then thats completely fair game.

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1348135221' post='1809704'] For me they are all equal. We are no longer stuck in the 60s or 70s where there were a limited number of quality instrument manufacturers and unless you were a fan of one of their designs the chances were you would have to compromise on at least one attribute. These days there are thousands of luthiers and manufacturers each with their own ideas as to what makes the perfect bass and somewhere there is the bass for you which has everything right. There is no longer any need to put up with an ugly bass because it has the right sound or playability and conversely you don't need to struggle to overcome the physical limitations of an instrument that looks cool. [/quote] +567,890,345,672. Unless you are buying at the real budget end of the market there is absolutely no need to compromise on looks, sound, or playability anymore. As a firm believer that image is an important part of being in a band, I do believe that some basses look wrong when used for some genres. Its not necessarily to do with cost, either. A Gus bass would work great for a punk band but an ornately carved single cut would probably look completely out of place. Similarly someone playing a pointy BC Rich rock machine in a jazz trio would look a bit odd. Personally speaking, I prefer understated basses with classic designs. Thats just an aesthetic choice though, nothing to do with whether or not I'm a "fancy" player. Even if I had the chops of a master you wouldn't catch me playing a coffee table bass!