maxrossell

How about something Parkerish like this? Very easy to do.

[quote name='theFALLEN' post='971752' date='Sep 29 2010, 02:33 PM']Mate. why wouldn't they bid? That bass is awesome. Cheers. [/quote] Mate. It's a red precision bass. Cheers It's not actually a red precision bass mate.

[quote name='Bassassin' post='971518' date='Sep 29 2010, 11:16 AM']That should work. If the glue was still liquid when you screwed the button back on, hope you never want to take it out again... Jon.[/quote] I don't think I will. I can't see myself refinishing the guitar and I'm not really a fan of straplock systems.

[quote name='dood' post='971315' date='Sep 29 2010, 02:02 AM']'so advanced they offer previously unreachable realism in attack, dynamics, compression and aggression'.[/quote] Unreachable realism, that is, unless you actually use the real thing. Sorry to be hating in your thread, but every time I try a Line6 product I'm really very impressed with the emulation for ten minutes, but then I try out the real version and it's like going from a cheese sandwich to a Sunday roast with all the trimmings. A couple of their effects are really great, their delays and modulations in particular, but their amp emulations sound like karaoke to me.

[quote name='Wolverinebass' post='971169' date='Sep 28 2010, 09:28 PM']I can see MaxRossel's point. I don't know how he put up with that guitarist for 2 years. I'd have got rid of him long before that regardless of how good he was as he sounded like a bit too intransigent to work with creatively (no offence intended if this gent happens to be a friend). If there was a compatability issue like that and it was me, I'd have left before the 2nd rehearsal as clearly he'd walked into the wrong band.[/quote] No offence taken. As it happens, the guy started behaving like a complete bell-end after we sacked him, writing us petty, vengeful little emails, refusing to return gear that wasn't his and so on. A lot of it was "you guys are going to suck without me". So he's no longer a friend. As for how I put up with him for two years, well I guess you could say that I broke one of my own rules, in that we were good mates and I didn't want to hurt his feelings so I didn't sack him. I only made the decision that he had to go when he started openly acting like he was only tolerating our choices and we should be grateful for it. I should have sacked him a lot sooner, and I did want to, but there was a lot of pressure coming from various places to go ahead with it.

[quote name='owen' post='970778' date='Sep 28 2010, 03:30 PM']Hands up who would not charge 400% more for their time if they could? End of. And frankly, good luck to them as well.[/quote] *Raises hand* I produce and engineer records. I deliberately don't charge anywhere near as much as I could for my time. Okay, we're not talking 400% more but I could charge twice what I'm currently billing without losing any business.

[quote name='dlloyd' post='970797' date='Sep 28 2010, 03:44 PM']Will his obvious self-identification with another genre colour the way he plays?[/quote] I think this is perhaps the salient point in what we're talking about. It's not the fault of the auditioning band if the auditionee has made a very deliberate attempt to identify with a specific niche of music, both visually and through his choice of equipment. If I was auditioning to be in a death-metal band I wouldn't turn up dressed in corduroy trousers and a tweed jacket with a semi-hollow Gretsch and a '59 Fender Bassman amp, and if I did I couldn't justifiably expect them to somehow guess that I'm also a killer shredder, and I certainly wouldn't blame them for not giving me a shot at it. It's not a stretch to assume that a guy with a denim jacket with a Cannibal Corpse patch on it, who comes in holding a Jackson Randy Rhoads and pushing a Peavey XXX stack, isn't going to have spent much time brushing up on his Neil Young, and in that situation unless the guy's first words are "don't be fooled by how I look and the gear I play, I love old-style heavy blues and country rock", he probably isn't getting the gig, and I don't think that's particularly close-minded of me.

[quote name='cheddatom' post='970766' date='Sep 28 2010, 03:14 PM']"all other things being equal" perhaps it would be best to ask him if he'd mind changing his image to be more appropriate so that you might judge the two candidates on an equal footing.[/quote] In an ideal World, everyone would be honest enough to either be open-minded and flexible enough to be willing to adapt to whatever the situation demanded, or honest enough to properly evaluate the situation and admit that on balance, they're probably not right for the job. However in practice, in my experience, when you start bending over backwards to accommodate people on the offchance the dude with the Dean Razorback and the Megadeth t-shirt might turn out to play amazing slow blues, what usually happens is the guy either loses interest and eventually drops out after wasting two months of your time, putting you back at square one, or he decides your band should be more like how he wants it to be and starts trying to turn it into a thrash band. Musicians, especially young ones, are generally not thoughtful people who want to do what's best for everyone. Guitar players in particular tend to be musically egocentric and selfish.

Henry Kissinger.

Might be a tear in the speaker cone.

[quote name='lemmywinks' post='970525' date='Sep 28 2010, 11:50 AM']The one time i let our singer load my bass in the van he left it propped up against the side door and forgot about it. When the van (long wheel based LDV high-top, fully loaded with 4 blokes in) set off it slipped under the wheels and made an nice crunching/scraping sound The case was badly damaged but the bass (my old Streamer) was fine, not a single scratch. Would definitely buy a cheap Thomann ABS case again![/quote] I can see that case from where I'm sitting right now It still does a very nice job, and from most angles you can't even tell.

I just took delivery of a Les Paul, and after about two minutes on the strap, the top strap button popped out because the hole had stripped. As common a problem as this is, I've never actually had it before so I've never fixed one. What I did was take a couple of cocktail sticks and jam them into the whole, then add enough superglue to fill the hole almost to the top, then screwed the strap button in place and left it overnight. Seems pretty solid now, is this a decent enough fix?

[quote name='Toasted' post='970463' date='Sep 28 2010, 10:46 AM']If you want to view it in terms of sandwiches you'll never see what I'm saying so there's no point going further - which is a shame I normally really enjoy talking to you Max .[/quote] Why not? A bass is a product, just like a sandwich. You buy extra bits to go on it, you pay extra. I don't see what the difference is.

[quote name='mcgraham' post='970453' date='Sep 28 2010, 10:41 AM']Sorry Max, I'm going to have to disagree with you again. I don't think it's accurate to say that they are not charging you $500 merely for a pickguard. They are charging you $500 to: - draw a template for the pickguard for your [i]totally custom [/i]bass (e.g. to fit around pickup routings, complement the bass, perhaps a push-fit attachment? to allow removal without mounting holes) - make the pickguard from scratch (this could mean ordering in material that could sit around unused for a while if no-one else orders one, unlikely but other businesses suffer the same problem and set prices higher to compensate) - shape it (e.g. bevels etc) and ensure it fits correctly (to a higher standard than mass produced pickguards that may not exactly fit/complement a given bass) - drill pilot holes to mount... or ensure it push fits correctly so you could leave it on, or remove it without leaving any holes. Mark[/quote] No, you're right, it's not $500 for merely a pickguard. It's $500 for a pickguard [i]that fits the instrument you bought it for[/i]. C'mon man, it's a bit of cut plastic. I know I guy who would do all the above for you for £20, on any guitar, you don't even have to buy one of his custom instruments.

[quote name='Musicman20' post='970447' date='Sep 28 2010, 10:34 AM']If I had 5-8K to spend on basses, Id just buy 3-5 fairly high end yet normal bass guitars.[/quote] Amen to that.

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='970433' date='Sep 28 2010, 10:22 AM']You'd pay £5 for a sandwich? [/quote] It'd have to be a pretty awesome sandwich. I do love sandwiches though.

[quote name='Toasted' post='970419' date='Sep 28 2010, 10:06 AM']If you have $5K to spend on a bass, and you want one with a pickguard the whole bass now costs $5500. That's not the same as the pickguard costing $500.[/quote] Yeah, it is. That's exactly what it is. The whole thing costs $5,500, and the bass without the pickguard costs $5,000. Do the math. You want to make a sandwich, the ingredients cost £4.00. You decide you want to add some cheese to your sandwich, so the ingredients now cost £5.00. That's [i]exactly the same thing[/i] as the cheese costing £1.00.

[quote name='Toasted' post='970393' date='Sep 28 2010, 09:42 AM']Max - your point does't exactly hold. Noone is spending $500 on just a pickguard... they're also spending $5K on the bass that comes attached to the pickguard. I don't think I need to add more exposition to that.[/quote] Their website lists the pickguard as a $500 option. If you don't order the pickguard, they don't make you one and your order comes to $500 less. In real terms, that adds up to spending $500 on a pickguard. Even if I was dropping five grand on a bass, I'd be dubious about spending an extra ten per cent of the bill on a bit of plastic.

[quote name='mcgraham' post='970348' date='Sep 28 2010, 08:58 AM']I can totally see why you'd say that, but I disagree in this case. Products and services in the custom world are intertwined and you can't separate one from the other in quite the same way as a ready made product in the supermarket. When you ask them to make a pickguard, they will have to spend x units of time making it. Now, irrespective of how hard that is relative to making a bass, that is still [i]their [/i]time and you are paying for a highly regarded luthier's time to make something. I also work in a unitised work environment, where my work charges by the hour. There are some jobs that will take me an hour that are small but quite hard work, and there are others that will take me an hour that are relatively easy but simply time consuming - we still charge the same for both jobs regardless of difficulty because however long it took me is however long it took me, there's more to the equation than perceived difficulty of the job (assuming I wasn't arsing about for 50mins ).[/quote] I see what you're saying, and I do understand the idea of unitised work, but I guess what I'm saying is, it makes sense to spend four grand (or however much) on a high-quality handmade custom bass, because to make high-quality custom basses you have to bring the full force of your experience and talent as a craftsman to bear on the task, and the customer is paying for that level of expertise as well as the materials and labour. But charging $500 for a pickguard because the luthier made it is like charging $1,000 for shipping because the luthier delivered the bass himself. As in, the customer isn't actually getting any kind of value for money for it. The quality of the item doesn't increase proportionally to the increase in cost. The work experience guy might be capable of cutting the same pickguard in exactly the same way, to the same standard. Again, I'm not saying that Fodera shouldn't charge $500 for a bit of cut plastic. What I'm saying is that people who'd pay $500 for a bit of cut plastic are nuts, regadless of what the guy who made it charges per hour.

[quote name='cheddatom' post='969495' date='Sep 27 2010, 02:14 PM']It's subjective obviously. He wasn't going to fit in with the asthetic of your band, that's for sure. He might have been the most amazing player though. Most people (I know) do play lots of different styles of music.[/quote] That's possible. These days though on reflection I'm not always looking for the most amazing of players either. Look at it this way: my band recently sacked our other guitar player because of overwhelming creative differences. It wasn't even that he was totally unprepared to go along with what the drummer, the bassist and I agreed would be the bet course of action, but every time it was a protracted fight to get him to even consider it, then even more coaxing and cajoling to bring him around to it. Eventually it was like everything he did in the band was some massive favour to us because he'd rather be doing something else. Sounds like he was in the wrong band, right? I thought so too. On several occasions we gave him the option of walking away, no hard feelings, but every time he was adamant that he wanted to be in the band and he loved what we were doing. But here's the thing: Above I described our music as kind of dirty old rock with a very creaky, vintagey feel, right? All tweed combos and beat-up guitars and so on. Well this dude has a Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier. For those who don't know, it's like the holy grail of heavy metal amplifiers. It's got chrome treadplate on the front, and three channels, the third of which sounds like Slayer having an Orgy with Anthrax and Machine Head. Not that the amp doesn't turn down, it's just that firstly if you turn it down it sounds like complete sh*t, and secondly the guitar player wouldn't turn it down anyway. So every rehearsal, me and the bass player and the drummer were trying to conjure up this warm old-school tone, all clangy sixties voodoo guitars and thumpy, chocolatey rhythm section (we even EQ the mics to get more lo-fi goodness) - and in one corner of the room there's this guy blaring and chugging away on his armored high-gain chainsaw of an amplifier like he's in Judas Priest. Eventually, after literally two years of pleading with him, he started to [i]consider[/i] buying another amp that would be more suitable for the band. Except the way he put it was "if it means that much to you guys, I'll let you guys help me find a new amplifier". That was pretty much the final straw, so we booted him. And how good was this guitar player, you ask? Well, the thing is that it's irrelevant. Someone who is completely unwilling to even try to fit into the band without putting up a major fight over it does nothing but hold the band back. Or you can change the band to accommodate them. The rest of us don't want to do that.

[quote name='Mark Latimour' post='969381' date='Sep 27 2010, 12:42 PM']I don't really see it as bizarre because I work in a time unitsed environment. My time has a certain value that would be paid by someone if it was not being used by you. Therefore, you pay the going rate for my time. I'd imagine that's basically how Fodera came to their option pricing. If someone wasn't using Vinnie's time on making a pickguard, it would be being used to make a bass (as they have a 2 year waiting list). They arn't going to make their bass customers wait even longer for basses because they are now making $25 hand cut pickguards. That said, I still think their pricing is more than I would pay, but then again, I am not their target audience (at least not at the moment!) [/quote] That makes sense when you're providing a service. Not when you're purchasing a product. I appreciate that the guys at Fodera are incredibly skilled craftsmen. But you're not getting the full force of that skill applied to the pickguard. There's only so many ways to cut plastic. Again, what that indicates to me is that Fodera customers have a pretty liberal attitude to what they'll pay for stuff.

[quote name='Mark Latimour' post='969332' date='Sep 27 2010, 12:15 PM']WHilst I would probably have to get Jason from Fodera to explain it better than I could, I can imagine why they charge what they do for a pickguard: IIRC there are only 3 or 4 buidlers at FOdera (and I believe only 3 who actually work on the basses). If someone is spending an hour making a hand cut pickguard, that's a hour that they are not spending on a making an actual bass. I'd imagine that the pricing reflects the fact that the builder's time has been unitised and they now assign a time cost charge to each "option". So, for something like a pickguard, you arn't paying for materials at all, but for having a builder hand cut one. For me, I would rather have a third party cut the pickguards (or hire a more "low cost" worker to do tasks like that), but it seems clear that Fodera want to maintain their small shop feel and therefore have to proce accordnigly. Its a good thing no one forces you to buy a pickguard! [/quote] That's just weird. You pay $500 for a pickguard because they guy who made it could have been doing something else at the time... That's totally bizarre. I mean, I see the point, but you see how that's kind of bizarre, right?

[quote name='cheddatom' post='969312' date='Sep 27 2010, 12:00 PM']It seemed more like you were making assumptions about his playing style based on his choice of instrument. If he came to an audition, and you said "please could you try playing it on this other guitar?" and he just refused, I think that's fair enough.[/quote] Again, it's not an assumption I would have made had it been just one of his guitars. It occurs to me I should point out that in the photos I've seen of him he's got long black hair and favours thrash t-shirts. Not again that that absolutely certifies him as being "that" type of player, but you gotta admit it's a pretty easy assumption to make. He didn't make it as far as the audition. I asked him if he had gear, he said "Yeah, I have three Ibanez RGs, won't touch anything else." I asked him if he was joking, he said no, so I "forgot" to invite him to try out.

[quote name='Bidd' post='969277' date='Sep 27 2010, 11:30 AM']For some reason this is uncomfortable reading. You say you are a singer/songwriter and if you mean hire bass guitarists as a backing band for yourself, rather than a band per se then I can see your point. However it is sad to think that you believe that any (or most) bass players that are not beginners suddenly lose the ability to play to the music and want to fret-w**k everywhere. It is experience that has taught me how to play for the music, rather than for myself. A beginner bass player you say will just do his job, but wouldn't you like someone who can not only do that job (with more ease), but to be able to contribute to your ideas and possibly make them better. A proper experienced bass player will not have ideas about being a lead instrument or want to rewrite every aspect of your music, or at least I wouldn't. At the end of the day, I imagine bad experiences has lead to your actions, and if its working, then good on you and hope you every success. But as a bass player who plays in a band with fairly simple but effective basslines, and who appreciates the song as a whole, it is rather sad that you have to look at beginners who will have no input whatsoever.[/quote] Nah, I'm not making any blanket statements. It's just a personal preference thing based on experience, as you say. I've had way more luck with beginners who grow into the band, and endless headaches with advanced bassplayers who are so averse to the idea of "rhythm section" that they do everything they can to avoid the root and the beat. I'm not saying advanced bass players are all like that, of course, but it suits me because I like the bass in my band to be very simple and direct. It's not "The Max Project" by any means, but I do write all the music (I don't impose that, it's just the way it turned out) so I feel I'm entitled to some input on how the other guys approach it.

[quote name='cheddatom' post='969261' date='Sep 27 2010, 11:10 AM']It sounds like you're trying to justify something totally unreasonable with reason. If it was purely on the basis of aesthetics then I totally understand. If you just decided that this guy couldn't get a "vintage" (or whatever is required) tone out of his RG, or if you decided that he couldn't play anything other than technical shredding without even listening to him, you made crazy assumptions IMO. I actually know a couple of guys who like their Ibanezes. One of them plays really trashy punk, the other guy will play jazz, blues, rnb etc very well, and no he doesn't play it through a mesa with the gain on 10. If you just said "I can't really justify it, but i'm not having a guy who only plays RGs in my band" - fair enough, but there's no logical reason to assume all these things about a player you've not heard! I know what you're saying - in your experience, this is just how it's worked out. I suppose i'm trying to get you to open your mind a bit. If I got turned down for a band just because of the bass i'd played I would be well pissed off.[/quote] I have a really open mind. And you're right, to an extent it is an aesthetics thing. But like I said, the judgement call was not based on the fact that he chose to own an RG. The judgement call was based on the fact that he [i]refused to try playing anything else[/i]. No single-coils, no semi-hollows, nothing. That's a degree of close-mindedness the band can't work with, specifically because of the kind of music we make and the way it sounds.