maxrossell

[quote name='cheddatom' post='681129' date='Dec 11 2009, 11:19 AM']Is this your motto for life? [/quote] Pretty much. Well-placed confidence p*sses off all the right people.

[quote name='MythSte' post='681109' date='Dec 11 2009, 11:07 AM']Thats a good point. As i said before to you Max, I felt well out of my depth in my old band. But i didnt really know what i was getting myself into! If these guys see something theyre not sure on they'll probably just panic and stick with what they know![/quote] Sure man, but as I said, I know the guys out of your old band, and you were well within your depth. Don't be so darn modest.

Thanks guys, I believe I have a basser sorted now anyway. The drummer's proving a bit harder to pin down though.

[quote name='cheddatom' post='681066' date='Dec 11 2009, 10:33 AM']He didn't say he was in a band. All I will say is that my most productive years learning guitar and bass were spent practicing through a zoom multi-effects pedal into my headphones - could be the right choice for the OP.[/quote] Sure, but I think the point is that there's not much point in distinguishing between good and bad effects if you're going to put them through a £70 amp.

[quote name='Marky L' post='681067' date='Dec 11 2009, 10:34 AM']So where are you based and what stuff are you doing?[/quote] Preston Lancs., sort of heavy rock alt grunge type of stuff. [url="http://www.myspace.com/ukmarch"]http://www.myspace.com/ukmarch[/url] for some examples.

[quote name='Marky L' post='681051' date='Dec 11 2009, 10:20 AM']It's breaking my heart..... [/quote] If it's any consolation I've lost many a beautiful deal to lazy bastard UK eBayers who won't ship [i]at all [/i]because it's too much of a big deal for them to make their way to the post office.

[quote name='maxrossell' post='680922' date='Dec 11 2009, 06:01 AM']And the kicker is that he didn't even like the music these kids played, and wasn't really mates with them because he was a good five years older.[/quote] [quote name='Hutton' post='680945' date='Dec 11 2009, 07:59 AM']Maybe he liked the guys in his band. Maybe they weren't judgemental and had a good time playing together. Maybe they had a good laugh and didn't take themselves too seriously. Maybe they liked to keep the atmosphere light.[/quote] I have no doubt they liked to keep the atmosphere light - but we're not exactly a band of funeral directors ourselves. As I said, my band aren't anything special, the question isn't "why won't people join my awesome group", it's "why won't good musicians leave terrible bands".

[quote name='NancyJohnson' post='680959' date='Dec 11 2009, 08:32 AM']Who cares whether he doesn't know the year or the country of manufacture, he probably has more to worry about as to how he's going to dispose of all the old fridges and CRT screens. If he didn't put the word Genuine in his advert people would have been moaning it was a fake. It's no win for the bloke.[/quote] Well yeah, but you see fake Fenders on eBay all the time, and mostly people are decent enough point out that they're not real ones. And if this guy doesn't know whether or not it's a fake, he could at least have the decency to not make the balls-out claim that it's a "genuine vintage", and to not contradict people who contact him directly indicating that it's not real. I don't honestly give a sh*t what his other business consists of, if he doesn't have the time to know what he's selling he shouldn't be selling it. And this is quite clearly a guy trying very hard to pass off a shoddy counterfeit as the valuable genuine article.

[quote name='scott22890' post='680919' date='Dec 11 2009, 05:47 AM']I have an Ibanez GSR 200 bass guitar with a Fender Rumble 15w amp. I want to get a pedal for playing metalcore and thrash metal, what do you guys recommend? I have heard that the Boss OBD-3 and the EHX Bass Big Muff Pi were good distortion pedals and the Dunlop Crybaby Bass Wah is a good wah pedal, what do you guys think? I was also wondering if I could hook up a distortion pedal and a wah pedal together? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.[/quote] My advice is that as long as you're playing through a 15w practice amp, the difference between good effects and bad effects is all relative. If I were you I'd save the money you were going to spend on effects and upgrade your amp to something bigger and better asap, and then start thinking about what effects to put through it, because there's no point in spending good money on nice effects if you're going to put them through a tiny little underpowered amp. Otherwise all of the effects that you've listed are very good, but whether or not you like them is going to be a matter of trying them out.

As you will have seen from rants on other threads, I've been on the hunt for various bass players and drummers for quite some months now. One of the weirder phenomena I've encountered while on this search is decent musicians who seemingly have no interest in joining a decent band. Now my band's nothing special, but we can play in time, none of us are tone-deaf, we can actually play all the songs in our set, and we're usually even in tune. And yet weirdly I've encountered a biggish handful of reasonably good bassists and drummers who are in bands that can claim none of the above, and yet are not even vaguely interested in joining a better band - not necessarily my band, but just [i]any[/i] better band. One instance stands out, a good bass player I spoke to briefly in August, whose explanation for not being interested in joining my band despite being extremely into our sort of music was that he played bass in this other band. I checked out said other band, and they were awful. Total beginner, practice-amp, argos-guitar, I-know-three-and-a-half-chords awful. I think the drummer had half a kit because he couldn't afford the other half (he was about fifteen) Despite this they practiced three times a week and two of the days conflicted directly. The weird thing is that he had to travel all the way to Garstang to practice with this band, but jamming with us would have meant walking down the street. And the kicker is that he didn't even like the music these kids played, and wasn't really mates with them because he was a good five years older. I have yet to figure out why this guy turned down an offer of working with an experienced gigging band in his favourite style of music in favour of staying with a band that would have had trouble getting through a Nirvana cover and were probably about three years away from being ready to get on any kind of stage. I can't even begin to contemplate that he didn't know how bad they were. That's completely impossible. Have any of you guys encountered musicians who for some unknown reason will obstinately refuse to improve their lot even when there's literally no effort required and no downside?

[quote name='phil_the_bassist' post='680872' date='Dec 11 2009, 12:28 AM']i'm not disputing, merely want to see what to look out for...what is it about this bass (apart from the tw@-esque answers) that give it away as a non-genuine mid-90's fender?[/quote] The clues are mainly in the listing. Firstly you don't advertise that you have a "genuine vintage Fender", and then forget to put the year on. Especially if you're also claiming to have the original tag. Additionally to that, actual vintage Fenders comfortably fetch four figures. If the guy thought what he had was a real vintage Fender he'd have put up a starting price of anything over £1,800. Five hundred quid is clear evidence that he knows he's got a fake and is trying to overprice it, but doesn't want to push his luck [i]too[/i] far. Then in the questions, what ends up being funny is, as well as contradicting people who point out that it's not a real Fender, he then goes on to eventually state that he reckons it's a '93 MIM Precision, which takes it squarely out of the "vintage" definition, and also clearly indicates that five hundred quid is still too much (even if it were a real MIM Fender - a good '93 MIM P might get you four hundred if you're lucky). That and he won't give the serial number. Why he'd be so protective of a mass-produced '93 bass serial is beyond me, but the obvious answer is that there isn't one. Finally, you look at his other items for sale. Diesel Jeans, bit of old Dyson hose, horse blankets, some hi-fi speakers and a bunch of bathroom appliances. Not that this on its own is reason enough to suspect the seller, but when added to everything else, it becomes clear that this is some guy who has an online junk shop, and fancies himself a bit of a Del-boy. Then you look at the instrument itself, going from what photos are available. The #1 big giveaway that this is a faker is the fact that the black goes well into the arm contour. The reason cheaper basses overspray the black is to hide the fact that the bass is ply. The shape of the arm contour here is also a giveaway. This contour is beveled in a curve. Real Fender contours are beveled straight across, and the black is uniformly wide all around the body, as you can see here: Compare it to his body, where you'll also notice that the spray is uneven around the jack socket area. Also God knows what those vol/tone buttons are from, but safe to say they ain't standard Fender, and that's something you'd point out if you were selling the genuine article. Also I did a bit of looking and there were no MIM Fenders that came with bridge and pickup covers in 1993. In fact I don't think you could even get a maple/3TS/tort MIM Fender Precision at all in 1993. Also the logo is wrong for a '93, but you'd have to look hard to find that out if you didn't know. All of these things are what don't fool big nerds like me for a second, but are entirely susceptible to fool some kid into paying more money for this piece of fake crap than he would for an actual MIM P. That's why I hate d*cks like this, and I wish eBay would actually do their jobs properly and shop these people to the police.

[quote name='pete.young' post='680788' date='Dec 10 2009, 11:05 PM']Hmm, did Vintage (the company) ever make a Precision copy?[/quote] Given that the first line of the ad says "GENUINE FENDER PRECISSION BASS GUITAR", I don't think the seller is going for the "Precision by Vintage" angle.

[quote name='Born 2B Mild' post='679937' date='Dec 10 2009, 09:35 AM']Click [url="http://www.shukerguitars.co.uk/"]here [/url]and try and resist[/quote] Yep. He's got this one on at £1250. Mmmm gooooood.

Yeah, I think C is only first from the Do Re Mi etc perspective.

How about a nice Warwick Corvette $$?

Do you have any preference on styling and that kind of thing? I'm assuming you want an active bass?

Personally to me slapping is the least impressive form of bass playing. I like pickstyle and fingerstyle, I think picking works in a kind of punk rock way, whereas fingerstyle has more feel and variety, but both work really well. Nah, slapping, tapping and all tha stuff is for the birds, it doesn't interest me at all. It doesn't ever do anything intersting musically or melodically and just makes it all about the bassist.

[quote name='EdwardHimself' post='677948' date='Dec 8 2009, 02:31 PM']I guess you might be right. Well next year with a bit of luck i should hopefully be off to the north west to study so there should be a hell of a lot more musos out west than over here. I might ask the bass player what he thinks. Its just that we wanted to actually do something rather than be stuck at my house practcing all ' time.[/quote] I'm in the North West, and although it's not always easy to find good musicians to work with, there are quite a few to get going with. Again, I'd say that "doing something" is all well and good, but you may find that doing a few gigs here and there isn't necessarily that much more fun than jamming in your house, especially if you're gigging with people you don't get on with. I guess what I'm saying is take your time, don't feel you have to rush it. Having regular jams can be really great fun if you don't treat it as preparation for something else. Get a few beers in, smoke up, spin some records and just enjoy making music with friends. Who cares if you don't even have a guitarist? There are some great bands out there who do just fine without guitards.

[quote name='skankdelvar' post='677856' date='Dec 8 2009, 01:35 PM']Sadly, older is no guarantee of maturity. Most of the knobs I've dealt with recently are middle-aged - like me. The young 'uns, by contrast, have been a pleasure to work with. One's mileage may vary, I s'pose.[/quote] I find that being a musical d*ck isn't age-specific. I think if you're a musical d*ck you tend to stay one, it just changes over time from "I know better than you because I'm so amazingly awesome" to "I know better than you because I've been around the block a few times, Sonny Jim". I've met more young musicians that I can count who reckoned they were literally the best at everything, even when faced with irrefutable evidence that this was anything but the case - but on the other hand, there's nothing worse than playing music with "arrogant dad" types, who always think they're going to give you a good schooling on [i]how it's done[/i], even if you've been a working musician for ten years and they've been noodling in their garden shed for six months. Older guys do tend to have better gear though.

[quote name='EdwardHimself' post='677645' date='Dec 8 2009, 11:05 AM']That's pretty much what me and the bass player have decided. We'll keep him on until we can find some real musicians then get rid of him. Make sure he doesn't write too many of the songs lol. Everyone who is saying i shouldn't bother playing with people i don't like. Well obv i'd like to but it's very easy to say that if you live somewhere where finding musicians is no problem. But sadly we live, as i've said, in the middle of nowhere basically and no-one is interested in being in our band whatsoever.[/quote] Sure dude, we appreciate that, but without wanting to come across all older-brother, you're only eighteen. I remember back when I was eighteen, I also lived in a place where good musicians were rarer than unicorn sh*t and no-one was interested in being in my band, and back then it did seem like a massive deal, but within a couple of years I had moved away and had two phonebooks full of local musicians' numbers. Right now it doesn't really matter if you don't have a full line-up. What matters is that you have a good time doing music, and you definitely don't want to be p*ssing about with unnecessary band politics like having to keep someone happy until you can safely boot them. If he's being a pain in the arse, tell him to shove off and just do your own thing until you're in a better position to hire people. Seriously, guitar players are ten a penny in most places.

[quote name='Born 2B Mild' post='677568' date='Dec 8 2009, 09:52 AM']From Led Zepp III. My ears say Precision, but my eyes (via archive footage) say Jazz. Anyone know for sure what JPJ used on the album?[/quote] I believe it was a Jazz with the bridge pickup rolled off.

That's pure minimum-effort "I'll turn this copy into a real Fender". A quick decal and a neckplate off Ebay. The hole in the neckplate is for a micro-tilt adjustment socket that you obviously don't get on Indonesian clones.

[quote name='chris_b' post='677501' date='Dec 8 2009, 08:46 AM']If you quit every time someone did something you didn't like then you'd never play! What is the point of the band? If you just want a bunch of mates, ok, but if you want to make music then, can they play? I've been in bands with some awful people but they were fantastic musicians. Surely that's the point of a band?[/quote] Well, that depends. I've been in bands with people who didn't care if the other guys were Nazi child-rapists as long as they could play well. Most of the guys I've been in bands with, however, did it mainly as part of their leisure activities, as other people play golf or tennis. If you're going to spend your leisure time doing something, I reckon most people would rather do it with people they get on well with.