maxrossell

I'll try to make a long story short. I used to be the more-or-less lead guitarist in a five-piece combo. I'm also the lead vocalist, and we had two other guitar players and a bass player. And a drummer (but they hardly count, of course). The bass player left for various reasons, and rather then f*ck about trying to find someone to fill in for him, we decided that we'd strip down to a four-piece and I'd take over on bass, since it was the first instrument I ever started playing in bands anyway, and I dig it. The other guys didn't get why I'd be so willing to do it, since they see 6 strings to 4 strings as a demotion - but whatever. Anyway, we've started jamming as a four piece, and the first thing I realised is that all the time I'd been playing guitar I hadn't realised just how piss-weak the other two guitarists' tones were. To give this some context, I'm a total gear maniac. I will literally spend entire days poring over gear websites and reading setup tips and listening to tone soundclips and watching demos and figuring out how amps work and all that jazz. My two guitar players aren't into that kind of stuff at all, they like playing, but know comparatively zilch about gear and how it works. The result of which, as above, is that they had horrible sounds, and this from a Les Paul Custom into a Mesa Dual Rec, and a modded Fender Tele Custom into a Marshall DSL100, because like most people do they just dialled in a sound that worked on its own and wrongly assumed that it would also work well in the mix. So we took a break, and I spent half an hour tweaking their sounds, showing them how to get gain and breakup from their clean channels and how to use their overdrives to boost the gain levels rather than as just a "loud noise" switch. I showed them how midrange works as a cutting tool but also gives body and texture to your sound (they both had a "mid scoop" thing going on) and explained to them how EQ, not volume, is the key to getting heard. The result is that we went from tinny garage band to glorious sizzling thick dynamic tone, with just a few tweaks, in a matter of minutes. I don't know how many bands do this, but I do know that none of the bands I know personally do it, either because it hasn't occurred to them or because they think that working on sound is gay or whatever, so most of them end up just playing volume wars and deafening themselves. Either way it was definitely worth it to me, and now we sound kickass. Bragging over.

[quote name='Baseballfan1456' post='475707' date='Apr 30 2009, 08:24 AM']Yeah, apparently the hole in my bass got bigger so the screw doesnt fit right...and to make matters worse I lost a part for my other straplock so I cant use it ;_;[/quote] Yeah, basically your two options are either to fill the hole with wood filler, let it set for a day and then redrill the hole (not recommended for the inexperienced) or to basically glue the screw in there with araldite or some other appropriate adhesive. And get new straplocks

Do you think these might be a reasonable buy then? I'm trying to keep my budget tightish because I need a bass pretty much now, but I don't wanna blow my budget on a low-midrange one, I'd rather get a workable cheapo bass now and get a really good one in a few months.

In my pursuit of cheap basses, I've come across the brand "Worship". They make a J-Bass copy, solid alder body, hard rock maple neck, rosewood fretboard. It looks pretty nice, obviously the electronics and hardware won't be anything special, but I was wondering if anyone had had a noodle on one, and if so what they thought? [url="http://www.worshipguitars.com/index.php?cPath=23_26_29"]http://www.worshipguitars.com/index.php?cPath=23_26_29[/url]

Yeah, my bass player in a band I was in a while back had a 1200 Ultrabass combo and it was frankly nasty. The speaker was pathetic. I'd rather not play than play through a Behringer bass amp.

[quote name='MacDaddy' post='475363' date='Apr 29 2009, 06:56 PM']not sure, I mean where else are bass manufacturers going to advertise to British bass players in a British bass magazine? There's not really a lot of options on the magazine racks for bass mags. 1 British, 1 USA.[/quote] That's assuming that all bass and bass gear manufacturers are going to be that sensible. It's not unheard of for a manufacturer to arrogantly burn bridges with a major advertising associate over a bad review. Plus you gotta bear in mind that many of the bass manufacturers also make guitars, and half the work of advertising is building brand recognition, so the benefits of advertising in guitar magazines are going to automatically spill over to their bass division. For those that don't there's always the internet, and making sure that their product is in pride of place in retailers' stores, both online and off. It's pretty commonplace for an advertiser to place an advert in a magazine alongside a feature on their product, with the assurance that a positive feature will lead to the purchase of more advertising space - and the automatic implication that a negative feature might prevent further such purchases. I was, for a very brief time, layout editor for a couple of magazines, and most of the advert sales were done on the basis of such back-scratching arrangements.

This is really good stuff, man.

Oh yeah, not to mention some guy a few months ago, I came across a listing for a cheapo explorer copy that I refinished and fitted with EMGs and sold for a few hundred a while back, this guy had bought it off the guy I sold it to and listed it as a "unique hand-made guitar" and charging twice the cash for it. And some poor mug bought that one, too.

Huh. Whatever you do don't bother contacting the seller. I've done it a couple of times, advised the seller of factual inaccuracies (that conveniently work in their favour, although I didn't mention that) and got told in no uncertain terms to f*ck off and mind my own business. No point contacting eBay about it, of course, as they rarely get around to anything before the auction ends. I don't think they give a sh*t that it's artificially driving up the market, because ultimately they take a percentage cut. A guy a while back, selling a used, dented Squier VM Fretless as a "discontinued Jaco Pastorius signature model" (and charging more than the new price for it), I contacted him about it and he was all like "how dare you imply that I'm a liar" and stuff. And some poor mug actually bought it.

[quote name='silddx' post='475000' date='Apr 29 2009, 01:01 PM']Fewer[/quote] Sick burn!

For what it's worth, I've never been a regular buyer of a guitar magazine without at some point ending up ditching it for exactly the problems that have been described in this thread. Beyond the obvious typos, repetition, occasional direct contradictions and factual errors, which are just signs of poor editorial work (which, agreed, all need fixing in the long term if you expect anyone to take a magazine seriously), I've observed any number of guitar magazines start to suffer from bland journalism, wishy-washy review approaches, subservience to advertisers, and a gradual tone of patronising indifference to what the readership really wants versus what the editor wants to tell them or what the advertisers want to sell them. I remember in one particular case, although I forget which magazine it was, they got so far as to start publishing inaccurate tabs for basic songs that any idiot could figure out (and accordingly see that the tabs were wrong), and just buying in articles about bands from other magazines, some of which were at best loosely relevant to guitar playing. I think the number one problem is money, and given that money comes from advertising, there's the immediate problem that if someone's buying a lot of advertising space in your publication, you can't just outright claim that their latest product is an overpriced piece of embarrassing junk, no matter how bad it actually is. But then it's of no help to me as a consumer - if I'm buying a guitar magazine to help me make a decision about my next purchase, I need to know what everything is but I also need to know what to steer clear of. And it's not just the Behringers and Line6s, either. I can totally see how these guys can't afford to state outright that Gibson are taking the piss - even though everyone's thinking it - because Gibson won't buy any more advertising. So if you hire good journalists who know their gear and have the balls to point out when a guitar is nowhere near what it should be for what it costs, you risk losing your advertisers, or having the manufacturers refuse to send you any more review models (when this happens with cars in Top Gear they just go out and buy one, but you can't exactly see Guitar Noodler Monthly going out and buying a £4,550 Les Paul Class 5 for the sake of a two-page feature, especially if you're not even getting any revenue from Gibson) - if you tell your journalists to keep the reviewers and manufacturers happy by glossing over or sometimes not even mentioning the product's most glaring faults (I've seen it happen more than once), you risk losing your readership. And rightly so, because frankly I've no interest in reading a magazine that tells me I should buy a product that sucks.

My next bass is a Kramer Focus 420S Precision copy. £126 delivered with a case from Thomann. Why? Because it beat every other bass under £800 in the store, and it also beat the £900 Fender US Jazz, on feel, playability and sound through the same amp with the EQ at 12 o'clock. It's not a matter of budget. On balance I could afford to shell out on a Mex Fender, even a 70's Jazz RI or a 59 Precision RI. But they're just not as good. Yeah, the Warwick was better. Was it £700 better? Of course it wasn't. The Kramer's made from ply, it has a cheap maple neck, it's got ultra-basic hardware. It's simple, cheaply-made in the far East and no-one will ever be impressed that I have it, but I could say the same about my alarm clock and yet I trust it to get me up every morning. The notion of "you get what you pay for" is frankly laughable when considering the purchase of an instrument these days. So few big-name manufacturers are offering value for money on their high-end basses, compared to so many small brands offering sensational value for money on their entry-level stuff, that to my mind you'd actually have to be a little bit nuts to not consider getting a cheaper model. As someone else said, to 99% of the audience it's the player that makes the difference, not the instrument, so if it stays in tune and sounds good, who gives a crap what it says on the headstock.

If you're looking for a colour other than black, white or tort, I'd go for fiesta red.

I guess it's a matter of "how do you get to Carnegie Hall". But really, one of my old guitar teachers described improvisation as "taking bits of other stuff and putting them together in a different context". And it's true. You watch anyone improvise, you'll realise they have a series of licks they build their improv around, a different set for different keys and modes and so on, and for different styles. They're just licks they will have heard elsewhere and adapted for their own uses. Learn a few dozen of those, make them your own, figure out ways to chain 'em together. That's the basis for most substantial improv. The more you do it, the more fluid you'll get at it until you know it so well that you're making up killer stuff on the spot.

[quote name='budget bassist' post='473057' date='Apr 27 2009, 01:19 AM']It seems that once you've tried one jazz bass, you've tried them all, though i'd be happy to be proven wrong! I like interesting basses right now, warwicks [/quote] Nah. There are subtle differences. Like, most of them are average at best, some of them are pretty good and some of them are just awful.

I'd say work on improving your ear. Get a load of your favourite records, and using nothing but your bass and your ears figure out all the basslines. A great ear is one of the most valuable tools you can have as a musician.

I just can't get past the way they look. I know bass amps aren't the most stylish of things to begin with, but these things look like they were designed by guys who customise big-rigs.

Hey man, welcome to the board. I gotta say though, I'm surprised that after listing all of that killer gear, you added a Behringer 1200 amp, which is one of the worst P.O.S I've ever seen, heard or played through.

So following on from my supremely boring story about taking over on bass in my band, I take myself off bass window-shopping. I resolve to go to the guitar store and try everything out without looking at the price, to get a feel for what I want (conveniently in my local store you have to ask to get a price). So I tried out: - a US Jazz bass - a MIM RI 70s Jazz bass - a MIM '59 RI P-Bass - a Squier Affinity P-Bass - a Warwick Corvette Standard - a Rockbass Corvette Standard - a Rockbass Corvette Fretless - a Jim Deacon P-Bass copy - an Ibanez SDGR something - an Ibanez ATK something - an Ashton modern-looking something - a Gibson T-Bird (yeah, right) - a Kramer Focus 420S P-Bass copy. All of these through an Ashdown Mag 300 with the EQ flat. And the one that I preferred, both to play and how it sounded, out of all of them? The bloody Kramer. What turned out to be the [i]£150, ply-body, made-in-PRC [/i]Kramer. On the one hand it's great news for my budget - On the other hand, what exactly does that say about me, that I walk into a shop and without knowing how much anything costs I go for the second cheapest thing they have? Well, to be fair, the Warwick did actually play better. But it's ugly as hell, so I wouldn't have it. But the Fender US Jazz, which I knew was £750 more expensive than the Kramer, didn't really make any kind of impression. And the T-Bird was rubbish, despite being the most expensive bass they had in. So apparently I've learned two things about myself. I like Precisions more than Jazzes, and I like cheap basses more than expensive ones.

I'm mainly a guitard, and even I've gone through this revelatory phase. I used to have a Dunlop Wha, a Noise Suppressor, a Super OD, a Metal Zone (I know) and A DD-3, and occasionally I'd also have a Digitech Whammy hooked up, all of this into a three channel amp. Before that I used to run a Digitech RP2000 modeller floor unit. One day I went mental, sold the lot and bought an Orange Tiny Terror, which is a single-channel 15watt valve head with three knobs on it - volume, tone and gain. My setup went from 41 dials to 3 overnight. The result? My playing improved more in a month than it had done in the previous four years. I'm not sayin that effects don't have their place. But when I look at a lot of the guys around me, what I see is a lot of "I bought the damn thing, so I'll use it as much as possible". That combined with guys who aren't gear-geeky enough to know how to get the best out of stuff is a lethal combination. In the future I honestly can't see myself putting anything at all between a guitar or bass and an amp.

I've been saying this for months. This amp was not my first choice. Originally I was gonna bid on another bass amp, but the guy was in London and wouldn't ship, even though I would have happily paid the thirty-odd quid it would have cost. He just wouldn't do it. I got this one because the guy was in Liverpool, and I can get there easily. I've seen guys lose a hundred or more on bids because of "local pick-up only". I reckon that a fair whack of the gear that goes unsold on eBay would sell if the guys offered postage. There's Ampegs on there that won't go because the guys live in the sticks and they won't post. Personally I'll send whatever as long as I can physically get it into a post office. I can understand when it's like a grand piano or something, but a combo weighing in at all of 60lbs, I don't see why you wouldn't ship it.

Well I got the amp I wanted (Ashdown 410 combo and 115 ext. cab), all for £280. It woulda cost me £600+ new. Now I'm not complaining, but you gotta admit that's a hell of a deal.

Hmm - I just bought a MAG 410 combo and a MAG 1x15 to go with. I hope it turns out alright.