maxrossell

Yep, what they said. There's literally no way in hell what you're suggesting would work.

[quote name='SteveK' post='694022' date='Dec 26 2009, 11:04 PM']Any more info? Curious to know how that worked.[/quote] What do you want to know? I don't have all the details, but as far as I know Ibanez were doing a bunch of artist showcases at the time (Korn had just put out the K7s and Ib were all about the nu-metal), which is how Japanese fans started to get into them. They weren't distributed or marketed in the Far East at all, but that all changed based on the response to Ibanez pushing their music.

[quote name='SteveK' post='693923' date='Dec 26 2009, 07:23 PM']Of course, I can only speak from personal experience, and the experience of others that I work, and [i]have[/i] worked, with. It's a buzz being associated with a brand name, of course it is, but I can honestly say, that in all my years as a full time gigging musician, I have never heard the words "raised profile" or anything like in regards to an endorsement. Any benefit in that respect is pretty insignificant. It really isn't a consideration.[/quote] Okay, one example: A French band I used to hang out with called Pleymo, got signed to Epic. Their guitar players picked up Ibanez endorsements after a while. Through the Ibanez endorsement alone, their second record broke in Japan and they ended up touring out there and doing extremely well. Their second largest fanbase is still in Japan, and they wouldn't have achieved that without the support of Ibanez.

[quote name='iamapirate' post='693946' date='Dec 26 2009, 07:59 PM']I know a guy that has almost perfect pitch that he's developed. I mean, surely when it's a born thing, then the gene makes the pitch exactly to 440 tuning? What about these strange cultures that use other tunings other than 440, and where you have quarter tones? I think that you can develop perfect pitch. You can train your ear to recognise certain notes. For example, I can 100% recognise an Eb becasue of a song I used to constantly play which had an Eb nearly all the time. Unfortunately I can't really just sing it out, but I'm 99% sure that it could be something that you could develop to a pretty decent standard.[/quote] It doesn't work like that. Your personal pitch isn't tuned to one specific frequency. You "know" how to reproduce frequencies at whatever pitch you have learned. If you have perfect pitch but you're a part of a culture that doesn't use A440, you reproduce the frequencies that are used in the music of your culture. Recognising certain notes is not the same as having perfect pitch. Anyone can train themselves to pick out a C. Being able to actually sing a C without any reference, though, is almost impossible without perfect pitch.

[url="http://www.guitarampkeyboard.com/en/75471"]http://www.guitarampkeyboard.com/en/75471[/url]

[quote name='SteveK' post='693832' date='Dec 26 2009, 05:21 PM']Most artists I know don't expect to have their profiles (significantly) raised as a result of an endorsement. They just expect to be supplied with gear FOC (or at a reduced price) in exchange for a photo with said gear and/or a quote, "I use Skank basses because...".[/quote] I don't think that that's necessarily true. Unless you're Jimmy Page or Slash or someone like that, you'd have to be pretty naive to think that you wouldn't benefit from a major brand basically saying "this dude is a guitar player with enough talent and status that we want him to represent our gear". Fender are a good example of that, they have hundreds of endorsed artists, and most of them are guys who, while they no doubt enjoy getting gear at cut-prices, also benefit to a degree from the credibility that they gain from being a Fender-endorsed artist.

[quote name='MSL' post='693753' date='Dec 26 2009, 03:11 PM']A girl I know has perfect pitch, she was born with it. Her friend at music college with her learned to have perfect pitch.[/quote] You can't learn perfect pitch. Her friend probably learned relative pitch to such an extent that the majority of the time she could work well from memory, but perfect pitch is the genetic ability to "know" when a tone is vibrating at a specific cycle rate. It's a genetic thing, like an autistic savant skill, and you either have it or you don't.

[quote name='jamieariss' post='693711' date='Dec 26 2009, 01:41 PM']so having a really good sence of reletive pitch would proove more efficient as a musisian then [/quote] Relative pitch is an invaluable skill as a musician. It makes learning stuff by ear infinitely easier, it enables you to "hear" things before you play them - Someone with very good relative pitch, if they knew the key of a song, would in theory be able to figure out how to play it without seeing any sheet music or having an instrument to work it out on. Of course to apply it properly and for it to be really useful you'd also need to have at least a basic grasp of theory. Perfect pitch can be just as valuable as relative pitch, it's just a more specific skill, and it goes beyond just having a good ear into the realms of "feeling" music in ways other people don't.

[quote name='benzies123' post='693708' date='Dec 26 2009, 01:36 PM']Over the last week or so I have been pumping out lots of posts regarding the changes I am making to my Yamaha TRB5 fretless. Now, when I played a Stingray a while ago I suddenly realised one factor that for me makes the bass a whole lot more playable, is the lack of varnish on the neck. Too me i feel this makes a huge difference and really sets my hands at ease... odd I know... So I was wondering, how could I DIY the varnish off my bass neck without risking unnecessary damage? Has anyone else ever done this? Thanks everyone [/quote] If you just want to change the texture from a gloss to a satin or matt, then you don't need to remove the varnish, just to scuff the surface with fine-grit sandpaper. There's always a risk of unnecessary damage when you mod a bass, especially the finish or the woodwork, but you'll just have to be careful. Fortunately, the above operation is reversible.

[quote name='dunetune_jazz' post='693690' date='Dec 26 2009, 01:07 PM']But I still think it takes away rights from the seller if we are trying to achieve a flat and fair playing field. Jz[/quote] I don't know about that. The seller still has a right to go and auction his stuff elsewhere if he really doesn't want to set an opening price. There's a theory whereby if you don't know what the value of what you're selling is, you shouldn't be selling it. I think that that holds a good deal of water when you're trying to maintain an honest selling policy. If you know the value of what you're selling, you know what the top dollar you're likely to get for it is, and you know how to price it down if you want to make a quick sale. Based on that, I fail to see how anyone could benefit from either making people contact them privately for the price, or making people offer what they think is a fair price for it. Surely that's a waste of time, as is pretty much anything apart from saying "I want £500 for this because that's what it's worth". People can either buy it or not. Or maybe offer a bit less to see if that works. The seller's not exactly being put in an awful position. And it certainly saves time when I want to offer £400 for something that I know is worth £400 but I have to then wait around for the guy to get back to me only to find out that he's trying to get £600 for it.

I'd be interested to hear what people have to say about Squier vs. Fender guitars. Of late people have been raving about the quality of Squier basses, but I can't see guitarists being so easily convinced.

[quote name='jamieariss' post='693679' date='Dec 26 2009, 12:55 PM']It fascinates me when i see people with a perfect ear.. When i ask them, they say they have always been able to do it .. does anyone know anyone who has achieved this skill through practice??[/quote] Depends what you mean by perfect ear. If you mean perfect pitch, then you can't train to get it. Good relative pitch on the other hand is very easily achievable (unless you're tone-deaf). Perfect pitch is where you are able to indentify a note without reference. Relative pitch is where you are able to identify a note in reference to another. I think most good musicians have relative pitch to a degree. But perfect pitch is a genetic thing.

[quote name='SteveK' post='693676' date='Dec 26 2009, 12:53 PM']An endorsement deal is whatever the artist and manufacturer decides it should be.[/quote] Not really, no. The term endorsement explicitly signifies to voice approval of something. An endorsement deal literally consists of an association between two people where one or both of them benefit from one or both of them lauding the merits of the other. In most of the cases we've discussed above, what we have is in effect a sales agreement. Not an endorsement deal. A musician deciding to buy so-and-so's product doesn't mean that the musician now has an endorsement deal with so-and-so. [quote]In my formative years (musically speaking) if I was offered a 20% discount on a product that I liked, and maybe would have bought anyway, I would have snapped their hand off. And to use my name or picture [i]anywhere[/i] in their blurb would have been the icing on the cake. Unfortunately, if no one has heard of you, then, the chances are that you aren't going to be of much benefit to the manufacturer. The deal offered will reflect that. You either take it or leave it.[/quote] The point is there that if you're not worthy of an endorsement, then no-one has any business offering you one, and any company that does is basically bullsh*tting you in order to get you to buy their products. If you ARE worthy of an endorsement, then a deal consisting only of a 20% discount is at best a waste of your and the company's time. Also you have to determine what price they're offering you 20% off. I don't think I've ever bought a new guitar at full RRP. Usually if you shop around you can score at least 10% off RRP on most products, if not more. What I'm saying is that a lot of these so-called "endorsement" deals appear to be little more than a marketing technique to convince musicians to buy that company's products, and maybe even talk them up a bit, with the musicians getting quite a bit less out of the deal than they might think.

[quote name='leftybassman392' post='693646' date='Dec 26 2009, 12:09 PM'](which if true is actually pretty sneaky since most aspiring musos will still look at it as if it has the potential to do something for their careers).[/quote] That's exactly right. Just like there are an awful lot of musos out there who would sign their own death warrants if they had "record deal" printed at the top of them, for a lot of musos it's almost [i]more[/i] impressive to them for a gear company to want to associate with them (even if the association is barely more than a contrived sales pitch). I've looked into it and there are a few newish companies out there where it's possible to get "endorsed" without the company ever having heard you play, as long as you spend over a certain amount of money on their products. That frankly says it all, really.

[quote name='jamieariss' post='693633' date='Dec 26 2009, 11:48 AM']Im looking at investing in a J bass but the prices are up there .. love the feel and sound of the J but are we bassists paying too much!?[/quote] That's for you to decide. Personally I think you'd have to be insane to pay new RRP for a US Jazz, when you can get a new Mex that's almost as good for half the price. I'd consider getting a second-hand US, but even then in good condition they're more than a new Mex. The Mexican factory is a two-hour drive from the Californian factory. It's a no-brainer. But that's just my opinion. I know some people who wouldn't dream of buying anything but a US Fender. I've only ever owned Mex fenders (three to date) and I've never had anything to complain about. They've been amongst the best instruments I've owned. Yes, I've played some US models that have been slightly better, but worth the additional cost? Probably not. Again, your call.

[quote name='wateroftyne' post='693625' date='Dec 26 2009, 11:32 AM']Of course, it's difficult to make a balanced comment without being armed with all the facts...[/quote] True. But a lot of smaller manufacturers are starting to act like record labels of late. Like they're doing people a huge favour by "endorsing" them. Most of these brands offer the "endorsement" deal on the basis of a discount, to usually the same kind of cost that the musician would expect to pay for the same instrument second-hand in as-new condition. In return, the artist can expect if he's lucky to get a small mention somewhere in some hidden corner of the website. You'd think it would be a no-brainer to at least send the guys free merch and to feature them more heavily in product marketing. It's a "shared credibility" thing. Ironically the only brand I've seen doing it properly is Vintage, who will never have big-brand impact. I met a drummer a while ago who had just taken delivery of his new kit from some manufacturer or other on the basis of an endorsement deal. They'd given him a 20% discount (from RRP, not trade, so they weren't even spending any money). In exchange he agreed to feature their logo on their myspace. That was it. They didn't send him a hat or a t-shirt to wear or keyrings to give out or drumsticks to use or anything. They didn't feature him on the website. In almost every respect they treated him like any other customer. Total waste of time.

I don't think it's Xzantes getting the hard time. If a guitar maker tried to sell me an "endorsement" deal on the basis of nothing more than a discount on their high-end range, I'd tell 'em where to go. Endorsement deals are supposed to be a collaboration between the artist and the manufacturer, to raise both profiles in a mutually beneficial way. If Conklin don't feel like our friend here is worth the effort of putting him on their artist page, then they're bullsh*tting him about it being an endorsement deal, and he's entirely within his rights to come on here and pont out that he hasn't been blown away by their basses.

Only time I've done business on here it was a winner, when Lemmywinks sold me a bass no issues. That said, 75% of the time selling or buying stuff on the internet is a ballache. In a sense I've found it easier dealing with people directly as opposed to going through a certain popular auction site, but ultimately you still encounter the same issues: Selling: - You've priced the item at £1,000 - The buyer offers you £600, thinking you'll accept because it's cash. - You've stated you'd consider trades for a Fender Jazz or Precision dated 61-64. The buyer offers you an accordeon. - Your ad describes the item in painstaking detail down to the last speck of dust. The buyer arrives and turns down the sale claiming the item isn't as advertised. - The buyer guarantees he'll take it, then disappears off the face of the Earth (happened to me last week). - The buyer says he won't use any of the six payment methods you've suggested due to "bad experiences", leaving either CoD or carrier pigeon. - And most infuriating, you agree on a price, but when the buyer arrives he starts trying to haggle again. Buying: - The seller has offered first refusal to twelve other people but posted the for sale ad as a "feeler" in case all twelve pull out. - The seller apparently lives on a different astral plane from any known post office, and will only deliver within a five-yard radius of his front doorstep. - The seller is no longer sure if he still wants to sell the item, so puts up the price to find out how much you really want the item. - The seller doesn't put up a sale price, hoping for a bidding war, so puts your market-value offer on hold while he waits for someone to offer more. - You manage to agree on a deal, so you pass on everything else you were looking at... Then the seller decides he actually wants to keep his precious little whatever.

[quote name='iconic' post='688946' date='Dec 19 2009, 10:59 AM']Oh, dear, so I know even less about bass guitars than I thought I did, so just how many bass variations are there then and what is the difference in tone, or is this just big a question to ask? This is what I think I understand:- J bass has a brighter, thinner sound P bass has a duller, fatter sound Double Buck...has a fatter richer sound going to a brighter but not so bright as a jazz with pup mix right over to bridge pup. Just to let you guys know I did google before I posted and couldn't realy find anything that made me feel confident as to know what was what, please enlighten me And thanks for your patience guys on what must seem a real rookie question.[/quote] There is no real answer to your question. I've heard Jazzes that sound duller and fatter than some Precisions, and some Precisions that sound brighter and thinner than some Jazzes. I think the best way for you to approach this is to stop thinking about basses in terms of categories, and approach it in more of a model-by-model way. It's really not useful to have a preconceived idea of what a Jazz bass is going to sound like, for instance, because it might lead you to dismissing all of them, or thinking that it's the only thing you can use. Some people will tell you you need a bass with humbuckers for rock, but some bass players do just fine with single coils. Some people say that nothing is better than a Jazz for slapping, but others diagree. To employ an oft-used platitude, an instrument's sound is as much down to who is playing it than it is down to the pickup configuration, or the woods used - and then you have to factor in that the bass amp is probably going to account for the majority of the tonal character anyway. Really, it's all a matter of taste, and in some respects, how the bass feels to play is more important than how it sounds - as long as it sounds good, you can always change the pickups around if you want to improve the sound, but you can never change the way it feels to play. The RBX-374 is a good beginner bass. It's very good for the money. It's well-built, has a very good variety of sounds, and it's easy to play. With good strings on it, into a good amp, it sounds like a bass twice or three times the price. That's really all you need to know for the minute. Worry about the technical details when you've progressed a bit more with just playing the instrument.

I don't have a car. I don't even have a licence. Given that the current market value of my two basses, being generous, is about £150, they're still more expensive. I've co-owned two cars with my girlfriend and they didn't add up to more than a grand. That being said, if you add up the amount of cash I've spent over my life on gear, even just counting instruments and amps, there's well over twenty grand there.

Ther's nothing wrong with normalisation as long as you don;t clip anything and the tracks are clean, but if you're talking about a single take where some parts are louder than others, you could try some compression.

[quote name='EssentialTension' post='683602' date='Dec 14 2009, 12:34 AM']There are three things troubling me: 1. In pic ten, where the finish is chipped away from the body edge by the bridge, shouldn't the exposed wood be dirtier? Perhaps it has been stored in a very clean way. 2. It must surely be a trick of the light but in the seventh pic, looking down the removed neck, the fretboard looks the wrong colour, very rosewoody. Although if it was rosewood it would be a slab board, yes? 3. In pic four, should the pickguard screws be slot or crossheads? Some look to be slots but some are crossheads. What do you think?[/quote] 1. I wouldn't expect it to be dirty, because people very rarely handle instruments by that part of the body. It's mostly sweat that discolours exposed wood, but sweat rarely gets on that area. 2. You got it, it's a trick of the light. 3. They're all crossheads. Some of then look like slots due to the angle of the light.

[quote name='BigRedX' post='682937' date='Dec 13 2009, 12:42 PM']Sounds like a complete nightmare. I'd start by looking for somewhere else to rehearse, but if the other advantages of the place outweigh the acoustical issues, then you're going to have to look at building some serious bass traps and diffusers. It might be worth looking at making a false wall down two sides of the room by pulling one of the corners in by a foot or so. This will stop the room being a cube and remove the parallel reflective surfaces. Be careful with simply adding lots of damping without any real acoustic treatment thought, as you need a certain amount of reflective surfaces to be able to hear all the sounds, the reflections just need to be controlled. A very acoustically dead room will just have you playing louder to compensate for the damping - and still won't sound much better.[/quote] I know what you're saying. Unfortunately we're locked into using this space for various reasons that are frankly too boring to go into right now. Also, due to the nature of our arrangement with the space owners, any changes we make to the space are pretty much limited to hanging stuff on the walls and putting stuff on the floor. I wouldn't seek to attenuate all of the reflections - for instance I have a feeling that the ceilings, which are a series of brick arches, might actually help to provide room ambience in a far more random and therefore pleasing way. I think it's mainly that we need to break up the broad expanses of bare breezeblock that are currently reflecting the hell out of the drums and guitars. I think we might try experimenting with dampened risers for the bass and drums as well, just to get them off our rubbish floor.