markdavid

Always get nerves before a gig, always have, probably always will, the key is too prepare as much as possible, if you get a moment where you forget what the next note is it's better to drop a note or two than to play a bum note

Thank you all for the replies

You will usually have to sand the bottom of the bridge down if you want low action, the factory setup is really high like 3mm at 12th fret but there is no reason why you have to have high action, I have had the action on mine as low as 1.5m on 17th fret but I have raised it to Fender spec action wise as i think the tone is better that way

Do you like mids? If so then Spb1 is not for you

There not bad and even if you end up not liking them they are only a fiver, they worked fine for me though and another member of this forum whos name escapes me said that he liked them just as much as Rotosound nickels

These are not bad although only in one gauge https://www.gear4music.com/Books-DVD-and-Sheet-Music/Bass-Guitar-String-Set-by-Gear4music/2UM

To be fair pretty much any flatwound will be brighter than picato which are about the darkest flat out there, Chrome's are bright for a flatwound, people say TIs are but tbh I don't hear it, Cobalt's I can't recommend as they are a flat that is made with the purpose of sounding like a roundwound, don't see the point.

Thanks, am using my thumb and index finger to pluck, will give this a try

Hi Am after some tips for palm muting, I have a song that my band plays where it features palm muting very prominently, what I am having trouble with is gauging the amount of pressure to use to mute and keeping that pressure consistent, any tips? thanks

Yes I agree.... But you really had to be there to appreciate just how bad it was, our singers are usually bang on the money but for some reason that night it was like they had never heard the songs before

Thanks for the replies, I feel better about the situation after reading them, like has been said I have to learn from the situation and move on

Well, they say everyone has at least one truly awful experience playing live, I think last night set the bar. The event was a song competition,an event that has participating pubs across the country, we wanted to enter and we agreed to lend our backline to the pub, our singer who drives has agreed to transport the backline and our drummer is bringing the drumkit. We are told before the event that we will be opening and closing the event so we will be playing at the start and end of the event,before the event we are all quite excited about the event. Anyway the event is scheduled to start about half eight, everyone is there by about quarter past Seven, we start unloading everything, about ten minutes in, our singer looks at me and says "Mark, where is your bass amp" I look at him and say " I dont know, I thought you were bringing it" , singer says to me "Can you DI instead? Do you need your amp?" to which I say "i kind of do" as I hate DI and my tone involves quite a lot of amplifier manipulation (overdrive, cranked treble ) so the singer agrees to drive back the half hour drive to get the amp and we all agree to set up whilst he is gone. We spend a while setting up and spend over an hour trying to sort technical issues with the PA, microphones feeding back, reverb unit not working etc, Anyway after we have sorted the PA issues I go to plug into my bass amp and the wiring on my Hofner decides to fail me and there is a ton of buzz coming through the amp which is of course made even worse once i engage the overdrive and boost the treble, after a while of fiddling I decide to engage the bass slider on my bass which makes me sound like mud but cuts the buzz to an acceptable level. Anyway we start our first set and we open with our new song, it all seems to go balls up with the 2 vocalists being out of sync, fluffing the words etc, it reaches a point of of bad where our lead vocalist just decides to stop the song dead halfway through and we proceed with the 2nd song. 2nd song starts, starts ok and I think ok this song might be ok then the verses start, the vocalists cannot get it together and one has started the next verse before the other has finished the previous verse, the verses seem to be finishing early, just sphincter clenchingly bad, we play the next song ok amazingly.Afterwards I speak to some friends that have come to see us and tell them that we are not usually that bad. The band after us then goes on, they have 2 guitar players, turns out we have only brought one guitar amp and no DI so we spend ten minutes finding a solution. During the bands set I find out that our drummer is so whizzed at the events of the night that he is threatening to not go on for our 2nd set later in the evening and is questioning his future with the band , we managed to somehow calm him down and get him to stay. Amazingly when we play our 2nd set later in the evening we play an absolute blinder of a set however by that point damage was already done, we have some amazing songs so this was especially frustrating Anyway vent over , that was my worst live event

Im not quite that bad, I will change my own strings lol , seriously though im not that big on the mechanics of the instrument, if intonation is in the ballpark I will call it close enough and leave it as is, I have adjusted truss rods but i dont think I have actually ever measured neck relief I just put the strings on and check for buzz, if if buzzes at the dusty end I will tighten the truss rod slightly to get rid of the buzz , if it buzzes on the first few frets I will loosen it slightly

This sounds exactly like me, been playing a while but what I know about theory i could write on the back of a postage stamp

Sounds great to me, Duff Mckagan for me, because his tone to me is what I think of when I think of Rotosound, bright, cutting, ballsy tone, great bass lines and just a good solid player, nothing too fancy but melodic and tasteful, a great example is the opening bass run on sweet child o mine, immediately recognisable,a great bassline

Fair enough, I can understand that, I know it will be more expensive but maybe get a quote on having a pickup custom made

Is routing for a 2nd single coil an option? Could get some really interesting tones with the 2 pickups

Thanks, they dont seem to do medium scale but for the small amount they cost it might be worth me taking the risk and cutting a longscale set to fit

Hi all, As per the thread title I am after finding a nice aggressive sounding set of strings for a medium scale bass, so far I have on my list to possibly try Prosteels, Rotos, Boomers, any others I should try? Thanks

I am using roundwounds on my Hofner and it is amazing how much versatility it adds. I was using Ti flats but there are some songs I play with my band that I thought would sound better with the growl and bite of rounds so I got a cheap set of rounds and it really sounds good, with both pickups on it has a midrange presence that cuts through well and with the bass slider on the on position I can get a deep, warm tone.

From gear4music so I don't think they are fakes, Hofner contemporary roundwounds. Picture below

Lol no definitely just standard electric bass strings

Hi all Changed my strings about 3 weeks ago and all of a sudden they have gone a weird bronze colour like the same kind of colour as accoustic electric strings, anyone know why? They are nickel plated steel I believe but not 100 percent certain

Thanks I will give that a try , I have been mostly playing fingerstyle and adding in the occasional pop to approximate the feel so I think you are right, I should concentrate on getting the slapping part down

Hi all Never really been crazy about slap and always hate when you see a demo of a bass and someone just slaps there whole way through it but I think when done sparingly in the right context in can work well. Have been playing a song with the band I am in where a slap part would really bring some groove to the song but I will be honest my slap technique sucks. I suspect when I slap I probably slap a little too hard and I don't get the cleanest tone as a result but then if I lighten up I find it harder to pop a note after the slap, I am sure there is some art to this that I am missing, hoping someone can give me some pointers on this. I have a low-ish action and strongly suspect that if I raised my action a little this would help but then obviously it would make finger -style playing more difficult. I also sometimes have trouble with striking 2 strings instead of one but I suspect this is due to me playing basses with very narrow string spacing thanks