maxrossell

I feel bad now, I just put a want-ad in the bassists wanted section. But just to provide some balance, tonight our bass player quit for the second time, and although I sincerely hate trying to find musicians, you do end up with some great anecdotes. - The first time this guy quit, he did so by text. No phone call, no face-to-face, and considering we'd been playing together for a year and a half, I'd have expected a little more from him, if only because we're supposed to be mates as well. Not only that but his excuse is that he doesn't feel he can commit to being in a band - A couple of days later I run into the drummer from the other band he was in, and find out that he hasn't quit that band, just ours. - Out of the dozen or so bassists who claim to be available, to have their own gear and to be really psyched about trying out, we manage to get ONE to show up for an audition without either cancelling multiple times will bulls*** excuses or just outright no-showing. The guy turns up, and instantly starts talking like we've already hired him. We tell him we play in Eb, he says he'll "play through it" (apparently it's beneath him to take thirty seconds to tune down half a step). To his credit he's sort of learned the two tracks we asked of him, but he starts throwing in all this flashy slapping and popping stuff that make the songs sound terrible. And of course he can't play the basslines properly because he hasn't tuned down. Then he tells us he can't do half the days we practice, looks at his watch, packs his bass away and says "see you next week". You can guess how that went. - After several months of no viable bassists whatsoever, our old bassist tells our guitarist he feels terrible about the way he quit and he'd like to come back. But he can't do one of the weekdays we practice, so we rearrange (at some considerable inconvenience). Also because he's still in that other band, he can't afford to also pay his share of room rent for our room, so we say that's fine, we'll all just pay extra. In hindsight I suppose we shouldn't have bent over so far backwards to get him back, but we were fairly desperate for a bassist at that point. And today, about a month and a half later, he swans in and says that he's quitting again. And what's more expects us to pat him on the back because he had the balls to do it in person this time. So it's not always bassists getting f***ed about by bands, a lot of the time it's the other way around.

Hey guys, After our unreliable tool of a bassist quit for a [i]second time[/i], even after we'd rearranged our rehearsal times and dispensed him from contributing to room rent so he could rejoin (at his own request, might I add), we are looking for a new bass player. The band is called March, and you can hear some of our stuff here: [url="http://www.myspace.com/ukmarch"]http://www.myspace.co/ukmarch[/url] We're based in Preston, so ideally you'd be either in Preston, or near enough to get there of an evening. Our rehearsal times are Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, although they may be subject to change depending on job requirements and so on. Also ideally you'd have your own decent gear. We're looking for someone who likes Jeff Ament and bass players of his ilk (slapping and other stuff like that is nice but it really isn't our cup of tea). We're looking for someone who understands where great bass lines fit into good songs and isn't interested in ego tripping. We're a sort of grunge-rock outfit, we like good rocking uptempo stuff with a bit of an edge. We have a management deal in the pipeline (subject to achieving a full lineup, obviously). We're all in our twenties and have a good deal of experience, we're all very competent at what we do and although our songs aren't technical in the strictest sense of the term we do need someone who knows his way around a fretboard. We're not picky about age either, but if you're around our age that would be ideal, although younger or older is fine as long as you have the same kind of dumb immature sense of humour we do. Drop me a line via the board or the myspace if you're interested. Cheers!

Done, new wiki page now.

In my experience, both with Marshall amps and in general, the difference a preamp valve makes is minimal when it's going into a SS power amp. A constant pretty much across the board these days is that the majority of the time, a single valve wedged into an otherwise solid-state setup is not much more than a selling point, and rarely presents quantifiable advantages over an all-SS rig. At most there might be some colouration of the sound, some more perceived warmth, but a lot of the time this is actually to do with EQ presets that favour that impression, of the variety you get on SS amps that only simulate valve sound. The "valve sound" that most people refer to in terms of amplification has in my experience a lot more to do with power section valves than it does with preamp valves, which are generally more to do with gain ratios than overall tone.

[quote name='OldGit' post='476537' date='Apr 30 2009, 11:44 PM']Maxrossell, you should write a leaflet ...[/quote] Okay - a leaflet might be an overstatement here, but here's some more or less useful advice, for how to practice effectively, with a good sound: [b][u]REHEARSAL SPACE[/u][/b] 1. Make sure you have a rehearsal room that is at least tidy, if not clean. Untidy rooms, as well as just not being particularly nice places to be, will lead to things getting lost and damaged. Pay particular care to how your cables, instrument and power, are organised, as jumbles of both together can lead to noise issues, and being tangled up can damage an instrument cable. Moreover, you may not realise it, but that massive heap of junk piled up against the wall might be having more of an effect on your sound than you thought. 2. Is your room a cold place? If it is, chances are you won't sound as good. For a variety of reasons, instruments don't sound as good when they're cold, and that's compounded by the fact that your ears don't work as well when you're cold. If your rehearsal space gets cold, do yourself a favour, get in early and run an electric heater for a while before you start practicing. And a few nice hot brews for everyone will make a pleasant start to the rehearsal as well. 3. Look at the walls in your rehearsal space. Bare breezeblock? Maybe that's why you don't sound as good as you could. Sound bounces as much as it can, and a lot of sound in a small room with hard walls will create your very own short echo chamber, guaranteed to muddle everything up and kill all the detail in your music. A few offcuts of carpet stuck to the walls will be cheap (or free if you find them in a skip ) and will help the problem considerably - and might brighten the place up a bit as well! [b][u]GEAR[/u][/b] 1. First of all, is your gear in good condition? It may have been fine a few months ago, but several months in the abovementioned cold rehearsal space, punctuated with a few boisterous outings to pubs and clubs, might just have taken the edge off your gear's condition. If you can't store it in a clean, warm, dry place, then you should at least endeavour to keep your gear clean (amp covers are a great idea), and get it checked at least once a year to make sure everything's working the way it should. If you get to know your gear well enough you can check it yourself, which will save you costly technician fees. Treat your gear well, it will last longer while you play it, and it'll make you more money if you sell it. 2. I don't mean to offend anyone, but is your gear good enough? Of course, we all know that a good musican can make anything sound pretty good, but that becomes quite relative when said musician is playing a cheap guitar into a cheap practice amp. You don't have to break the bank to get good tone, but you do have to spend your money on the right things. Notorious false economies are "budget" stacks (full stacks for under £400 are out there, but they're not good) and anything loaded with dozens of DSP effects. The second-hand market is your friend, but be careful what you buy. If you're trying to buy cheap, try to avoid anything too complex. 3. Is your gear [i]the right gear?[/i] It might sound obvious, but if you're in a thrash-metal band, you may find that a Rickenbacker into a Fender Twin isn't getting you that raw aggressive chunk you're after. Think about it when you're shopping. You may have always wanted to own a top-of-the-range Ibanez RG with a 24-fret neck and a Floyd Rose, but there's really not much point in all that if you're going to be playing Oasis covers. Take a look at the pro bands in your genre - what gear do they use? What gear do they NOT use? What gear wouldn't they use even if it came with a free b***j**? 4. Don't get duped by the notion that such-and-such a piece of gear is an open door to a whole new dimension of playing. In fact, most gear advertised on that basis tends to be inferior to gear advertised on its own merits. Good gear, some talent and bags of practice are what make a great performing musician, and in the vast majority of situations you will be able to get by using just that, so think long and hard about what you really need before putting down any money on that Digigadget UberFX-o-Tron 3000. [b][u]SETTING UP[/u][/b] 1. Think about your position in the band, and the position of your gear. The drums and bass are the backbone of most rock sounds, so have them in the middle, next to each other. If you have two guitars, put one on either side. Arrange your PA to have an even spread. And everyone should stand in such a way that they can hear pretty much what everyone else is hearing - and try to get that as close to what you'd want to hear from a stage as you can. 2. A rehearsal is a live situation, so you need a soundcheck. You have to make sure the drums sound right, and then the bass with the drums, and then each guitar with the bass and drums, and then lastly the vocals. Don't rush it, take your time, really listen to what's going on. A good balance now will save your ears and make you sound so much better. And soundcheck here is not just "how loud", but also "does it sound good". A guitar on its own needs good bass to fill the bass end. But in a band, there's already a guy playing bass - so maybe you can turn your bass control down a bit? Hey yeah, the sound is clearer, and I sound louder! Magic! 3. Turn down. You play too loud. Yes, you do. Remember that this is a rehearsal, you're not playing Wembley (yet). You need a bit of ballsy volume so you can get a good vibe, but is there really any point in deafening yourself? Right now you need to hear not only everything you're doing, but also everything everyone else is doing. The best way to do that is for everyone to bring their volume down a notch. And do it BEFORE you start playing, not after. If you do it after, when you turn down it will seem too quiet. [b][u]PLAYING[/u][/b] 1. Talk to each other. I know we're all hairy manly men and all that, but we have to communicate to get stuff done. Few and far between are bands that make it without discussing their common goals and how to achieve them every now and then. You don't have to hold a conference or anything, but just keep in mind that there are other people in this with you, and they want things too. If you care about what other people want, they'll care about what you want, and chances are the middle ground will be good music. 2. It's about the song. Not your lead playing, not your bass solo, not your amazing drumming. Whether it's a piece of music you wrote or someone else wrote, people will always know if you chose it because you love the music, or because it gives you a chance to show off. Forget your ego for a minute, and just enjoy the fact that the music is good without trying to be the best thing about it. 3. Take breaks. Smoke cigarettes, have coffee, drink a coke, rest your ears. Get some perspective on what you've just played. You won't achieve much by tearing through your set in record time and then going home. You rehearse to improve, so take the time to think about how to do that, and then try to do it. This is your ideal chance to iron out creases in your songs, a process that is infinitely more difficult if you've just played seven songs in a row. 4. Stay away from that volume knob. "But I can't hear myself!" Stand closer to your amp, then. Stand more in-line with the speakers. Move around a bit. If you turn up, you'll be too loud. Then other people will have to turn up, too. Hey presto, volume wars. You don't want that. [u][b]AFTER PLAYING[/b][/u] 1. Pack your gear down. Be nice to it. Take the extra time to make sure it's all squared the way you want it to be - it'll save you more time at the beginning of your next rehearsal. 2. Make arrangements for the next rehearsal. If it's tomorrow night or a month away, talk it out and make sure everyone's on the same page for when you're doing it and what you plan to work on. If you can't make it, people will thank you for giving them plenty of notice, as opposed to cursing you if you let them know an hour before you're due to turn up. Your band may not be your best or closests friends, but even if theyare, it's a good idea to remain businesslike. Keep money matters and such until the end of rehearsal - starting a rehearsal with an argument over rent owed is a sure-fire way to have a bad jam session. But do keep tabs on who owes what, to avoid resentment and misunderstandings down the line. 3. Make mental (or physical) notes to yourself about where you felt you could do with some work. It's easy to criticise others' failings, but not so easy to identify your own. But this is when it'll be freshest in your mind, so think about what you could improve about your playing, and do some work towards correcting it for the next rehearsal - you may find that just seeing you improve is a much more effective way to make your bandmates try to improve also, instead of just telling them where they're messing up. 4. If it's been a bad rehearsal for whatever reason, don't dwell on it. Dwelling on it will lead to making rash decisions in a panic. For most of us this is a hobby, it costs us more than we make from it. So don't feel like if something's gone wrong you have to fix it immediately or it's the end of the World. Always take your time over things like that, talk to the other band members about it, and see if they have any ideas of their own to improve things. Firing people or quitting are absolutely last-resort decisions, and there's almost always something you can do to avoid them. 5. This is an obvious one. Practice outside of rehearsal. As much as you can. Rehearsal is not the time you spend improving your playing. Rehearsal is the time you spend working on performing music. Improving your playing is what you do on your own time, and the more you do it, the easier rehearsal time will be for all. Take that same time to come up with new and fresh ideas to bring in to the band. They don't have to be finished items, they can be just little riffs or chord progressions or lyrics or whatever - as long as when it comes to writing a song with the band, you're not all stood in a circle with nothing to work on.

My cousin was the first person who made me want to be a musician. Went to see his family in Germany, and I remember his room, one wall entirely plastered with picture vinyls of Ozzy, Priest, AC/DC, Maiden, Metallica, Anthrax, Scorpions and so on. And in one corner of the room, his red SG and his Marshall combo. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. Then my dad suggested I check out his record collection. Zeppelin I-IV, Joe Cocker, Crosby Stills & Nash, Neil Young, Blind Faith, the Woodstock gatefold, Janis Joplin, The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, Leonard Cohen and I can't even remember what else but all amazing stuff. After that, [i]not[/i] being a musician seemed like a ridiculous idea.

I'm in Paris, mid-nineties, in a guitar store in Pigalle. This old bloke comes in, bald, with a beard, followed by this gigantic dude in a Raiders hoodie, with a wooly hat pulled way down over his eyes. The old guy goes up to the salesman and says in heavily-accented French that he's there to pick up the Fender Jazz bass. Meanwhile, the big dude is poking around at the basses on the wall, and eventually takes one down and starts playing it unplugged. A Precision if I remember correctly. He turns around to sit on a combo, and I see his face, and my jaw drops by about a mile. My mate who is with me looks at me and says "what?" So I asked him if he'd heard of Tim Commerford from RATM.

We use a pair of 300w Wharfedale 15" + horn speakers from a Peavey something-or-other desk. All fairly recent. It was lacking a bit of beef, so we recent unearthed a big old all-valve 100w mono Selmer PA head and a couple of home-made 2x12 cabs from the rehearsal room next door. Now it sounds killer. I reckon you could fit the whole thing in the back of a fair-sized estate car with the seats down, with room to spare for some guitars in gigbags.

Wait, what? He saw that on the original the finish was worn through to a yellow patch, so he thought that he'd just slap on some canary-yellow paint and call it good? Unbelievable.

Shed? Hang? I must confess it's been a while since I read a bass mag, what are these terms supposed to mean?

[quote name='AM1' post='493121' date='May 20 2009, 11:30 AM']Another interesting one, because my main gig bass is never really in the case unless it's travelling. Maybe if it was, I would be able to walk past it without picking it up and noodling! Will keeping it in the case prolong the string life? If so, why?[/quote] Basically, keeping it in the case will keep its temperature stabler than outside of the case. Shifts in temperature cause humidity in the air to concentrate (hence condensation). Water + strings = oxidation. It won't be as visible as it would be on the side of a glass of iced coke, for instance, but it'll be there for sure if you leave it out of its case. Plus the material that the padding in cases is made out of is generally good at absorbing ambient moisture and keeping the instrument dry.

Salut Damien, et bienvenue! C'est ou Panazol?

Unfortunately refinishing is one of the most pricey things to have done to a guitar. £390 does sound a little bit steep for clearcoat, though. Arun Repairs through Mike's Music will do it for around £250. [url="http://www.aruninstrumentrepairs.co.uk/"]http://www.aruninstrumentrepairs.co.uk/[/url]

[quote name='bigjohn' post='493054' date='May 20 2009, 10:23 AM']Unless you'd built a recording studio.[/quote] I priced one a while back. The least money I could do it for and still achieve a workable commercial product with it is somewhere in the region of four grand, and that's not including any of the building costs. Other specs for budget setups went up to twenty grand. Okay, you could feasibly get a multitrack setup for under a grand, but you've have to have really pro skills to get something good out of it.

[quote name='Mr.T' post='493039' date='May 20 2009, 10:11 AM']I just don't understand the thinking behind 'Relic-ing'.... I wonder if anyone has ever bought a brand new car/motorcycle and relic-ed it?[/quote] Basically, there is a situation in the guitar and bass market where some very highly-prised vintage models have noticeable signs of wear on them. This is compounded by the fact that a handful of musicians who have achieved deity status in our community play or played instruments that were extremely road-worn, such as Jeff Beck's Esquire, SRV's Strat and so on. Add to that that one of the most appealing features of such democratic models as the Tele and the Strat are their "utilitarian" aspect, indeed you'll often hear these instruments described as "workhorses". As a result of this, a well-used instrument will wear its dings and scratches as badges of honour, battle-scars if you will, rather than ugly accidents. Ultimately though, few and far between are those who can afford to purchase a real vintage instrument with what some call "mojo", i.e. the lived-in, used, distressed look that you're likely to see on a beat-up '64 Strat, but some people would still like to get close to that feel. Hence the appearance on the market of "reliced" instruments, where you can buy an instrument that to the ineducated eye looks like you've been playing it hard for twenty years, whereas in reality you bought it a week ago. There are some other peripheral benefits to this, such as the degree of increased comfort that you get, even with an artificially worn instrument, plus the fact that it has compelled some manufacturers to re-release instruments in desirable finishes and configurations that had been discontinued. It has also slightly buoyed the market for vintage instruments, whereby whereas a beat-up vintage used to be worth far less than a vintage in good condition, the prices are now a lot closer to each other. However, as with guitar modding, there are good mods and amateurish mods. And the relicing process is not, in appearance at least, something you need to know a bit about wiring or woodwork to do yourself. As a result, a lot of dumb kids have looked at professionally reliced guitars and thought, hey, I can do that myself, I have sandpaper and chisels. And so we see things like the above example, where someone has obviously assumed that damaging a guitar with various chemicals and power tools will achieve the same look as careful sanding and staining.

[quote name='Tee' post='493009' date='May 20 2009, 09:47 AM']Seasick Steve. He's older and seems to be enjoying some success. Seems pretty DIY too ^_^ This is a good thread. It brings back the idea, that i always wanted to start an independent record label. I wonder how much (money) you'd need to get something like that off the ground. Any articles on that sort of thing?[/quote] How long is a piece of string? It depends on what you want to achieve. "Many thousands" is I reckon a minimum start-up cost, unless you're planning to start a so-called bedroom label and only handle production and distribution, in which case a few hundred, a telephone, a good internet connection and a lot of time is sufficient to begin with. But the minute you want to start paying to record bands, you're looking at big costs for studio time.

Yeah, if you have a good mac then software is the way to go. Logic is a good app, or you could look at one of the cut-down versions of Protools with a breakout box that will reduce your latency and noise issues to zero.

For that money you could score a pretty decent used Squier. I recently got a Squier Std Jazz for 130 with a case, and I saw a Std P/J going at the same time on eBay for around 140ish. Thay're really good for the money.

Yeah, some people are just unlucky and have fingers that, however clean, tend to gunk up strings really fast. A friend of mine gets through a set of strings a week, after that they're just black and dull and start to feel abrasive. I can make a fresh set last months if I don't break any. Best advice is to keep a cloth to hand and wipe down your strings, over and under, whenever you get a chance (a quick wipe between songs here and there, and a more thorough clean after playing should do it). This'll get the worst of the gunk off. I'm assuming you always keep your bass cased and dry at room temp when you're not using it, but if you don't that might also be one of the problems.

[quote name='owen' post='492939' date='May 20 2009, 08:08 AM']Plays like butter. That is the best one.[/quote] Is that in the same kind of area as "built like a tank"? Every other review on Harmony Central describes the product as "built like a tank". Gibson Les Paul: "built like a tank". Oh yeah? Try dropping it from a height of three feet.

Hey, I actually have one of these! Well, it's not mine, but a mate of mine lets me borrow it on a perma-loan basis.

[quote name='solo4652' post='492172' date='May 19 2009, 10:24 AM']As an Occupational Psychologist, I used to work in management consultancy and I collected these sorts of euphemisms. We've all heard of rightsizing, downsizing, rebalancing, restructuring and re-engineering. However, my favourite was "No, we're not making people redundant at all - we're in a transitional phase of ongoing negative recruitment". This sort of hiding behind word-nonsense was one of the reasons why I left the whole field of work. I just didn't feel I was being open and honest - and that's one of the things we were exhorting our clients to be with their staff! On the band front, I've recently decided to leave a band because it wasn't for me. Took some doing, but honesty was the best route - be true to yourself because you have to live with yourself in the future. Yes, I could have said I'd found another band or something, but I preferred to be straight and honest about my thoughts, while preserving my and others' dignity. I did have a giggle about some of the ideas for getting rid of somebody! However, I'm fairly certain that some people might actually seriously consider these suggestions about splitting bands and reforming without somebody, suggesting to another band that they pinch somebody from yours, deliberately antagonising somebody so they leave, forcing them to listen to somebody who's better than them to embarrass them into leaving. These are all perfectly awful, aren't they? I wouldn't want any of that to happen to me, so I'm certainly not going to do it to somebody else. Be true to yourself and treat others how you'd like to be treated. Then you'll be able to hold your head up high. Sorry. I'll shut up now. Steve[/quote] Yeah, QFT. The thing about being sacked out of a band is that even if it stings, eventually you come to see their point. But if they make up some bullsh*t story, either you know it's crap straight away, in which case it makes the being sacked three times worse because you know there's something they're not telling you for whatever reason, so you feel like sh*t because people you thought were your friends are lying to you, or you find out later, which is worse because not only do you feel betrayed, but you also feel like an idiot for having believed their crap. On the score of splitting up a band and then reforming without the guy you wanna sack, a band I was in years ago was trying to sack the bass player because he was frankly terrible (it was one of those things where the singer hired him because he had a load of great gear), and when it came time to do it, the singer said he was gonna meet with the guy and tell him the band was splitting up and then we'd reform a week later. I knew that wouldn't wash because apart from anything else we all went to the same school. So I called the guy and said "Hey look, we've all talked about it and we think that you ought to leave the band because you don't have a sufficient level of musicianship. Sorry about that, but I'd rather you heard it from me now than find out for yourself later." He actually thanked me for being honest.

[quote name='chris_b' post='492184' date='May 19 2009, 10:37 AM']He was paying from his personal income, such as it was. We had 2 months at Olympic Studios in Barnes making a pretty good album but the management company had overspent in every department and had to fire most of their bands. The album was never released. Another example; The Thompson Twins' record company had a massive and very expensive party to launch one of their albums. They were surprised when they each got a bill from the record company.[/quote] This is true. I suppose one of the benefits of the so-called DIY approach is that it makes the musicians acutely aware of who is paying for what. Anyway, f*ck business, f*ck money, f*ck all that sh*t. I'm off to play some acoustic guitar on my front porch.

[quote name='yorks5stringer' post='491459' date='May 18 2009, 03:20 PM']I think you are wrong about the custard: they'd only use that if it was Bird's Eye Maple....[/quote] Yeah, what the hell is with the yellow? I've never seen a bass spontaneously start to leak pus as it gets older, although the burnt bits do suggest that it has a nasty infection. I'm not against relicing, but I was under the impression that it was done with sandpaper and stain, not a backhoe and a flame-thrower.

[quote name='Earbrass' post='491444' date='May 18 2009, 03:05 PM']But maybe that's no bad thing. Imagine a world where people only made music because they loved making music, instead of seeing it as a way to achieve celebrity and riches. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one... ;-)[/quote] The problem is that the majority of people still getting into the business are the ones doing it for the celebrity and the cash. Those of us in the business who do it for the love of the art are fewer and further between than ever before.