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markdavid

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Posts posted by markdavid

    Contemporary Series Hofners--high action the norm?

    in Bass Guitars

    Posted

    On 12/08/2019 at 18:34, Wylie said:

    I owned a Contemporary Series "Club" bass and liked it a lot--except for the very high action. It wasn't a structural or neck problem, but required a substantial reduction of the bridge to bring the strings down. After that, no complaints; it was playable. However, I have read that high action is the norm on Hofner basses. (I have never played a German-made Hofner.) Has anyone found this to be the case, either with the German Hofners or their Contemporary Series basses? Thanks. I need help. I am being tractor-beamed in the direction of a Cavern-style violin bass . . . 

    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

    Palm muting

    in Theory and Technique

    Posted

    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

    Bad live experience

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    5 hours ago, Dan Dare said:

    It should take a lot more than an iffy set and a few hiccups to make people consider walking off/out. No band would ever last five minutes if everyone did that. A bit of grit and determination needed by your band-mates, I suggest. Unless of course it was the latest in a long chapter of disasters and the straw that broke the camel's back.

    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

    Bad live experience

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    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

    • Sad 2

    Lack of knowledge, is a dangerous thing??

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by markdavid

    On 21/07/2019 at 14:54, BaggyMan said:

    So there are many and sometimes quite heated discussions about music theory read/not read/tab ..whatever.

    But here's a thing, I work hard at actually having my basses set up right, action at a decent level, neck relief and intonation set.  Three very basic settings on a bass and crucial to tuning and play-ability.  Yet I have traded a few basses in the last year for some of my cupboard queens and blimey the basses i have traded for, big names, basses you'd pay over say £600 for..

    The tradees (is that a thing?) say said bass is a daily player and they gig regularly with it. 

    An example of which was decent name £1000+ 5 string i traded a few months back, the action was scary high the neck relief was 'banana-esque' and the intonation was about 5mm out on each saddle  AND the neck needed a shim as all the saddles were on the deck.  I could see the diamond in the rough and post setup its awesome, but really?  it was un-tunable and difficult to play.   

    It amazes me that there are some simple to understand videos on you tube (Daves world of fun stuff is also quite funny) yet i  know many fellow bass players who just don't understand the simple mechanics of their instrument.   One guy doesn't even change his strings, he pays someone else to do that.  This seems to be pretty common, some of the basses that Dave (from Daves world..) aren't even strung correctly.  

    Weird....

     

     

     

     

    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

    Rotosound Competition!!

    in Accessories and Misc

    Posted · Edited by markdavid

    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

    Any Hofner Violin Bass Players Around?

    in Bass Guitars

    Posted

    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. 

    Slap technique - need help with

    in Theory and Technique

    Posted

    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

    Are Gibson classifieds going to be banned?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    9 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

    However you are not comparing like for like.

    A Squier bass is pretty much the same as a MIA Fender except made with cheaper labour, slightly cheaper materials and supposedly not quite as rigorous quality control.

    Most Epiphone basses share very little in common with their Gibson counterparts apart from the name and the basic body shape.

    Very true and this is why Squier seems to be held in much higher esteem than Epiphone, I do not advocate counterfeits but I have to feel that Gibson are not helping themselves by doing this

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