Muzz

Can be the first person to jump in with the bassist's equivalent of Godwin's Law and mention a certain skinny-necked Jazz player called, now, what was it again? Jacob Pastorian, or something?...

I love a very slim neck; in fact, the last three basses I've had built (by Jon Shuker) have all had neck profiles modelled on an earlier bass of his that is very, very slim indeed; even my incoming JJB Sig P-Bass has one of these. One of the reasons I've never got on with a 5 (or more) is the relative neck size. And I have very large hands, and pretty good technique. It's simply personal preference; I don't like front fret markers (or rosewood boards), either, so only one of my basses (my workaday £150 Yamaha) has those - I don't expect anyone else to like it, but I do. And it's my money.

This is one of the best versions of the song I've ever seen (and one of the best live songs, too) - OK, it's the last song and it's in Manchester, but there's an energy and a real vibe to it... Two basses, too...😁 And miles, miles better than the mimsy New Order version the other two are doing these days...

Ohhhh, I love playing The Flyer...always a lairy (in a good way) night there...and yeah, the PA's always in danger by about midnight... 🙁🙂

Just a slight mod for you there... 🙂

Sounds like you avoided a rubbish drummer to me...

The awkward ones, though, are the songs with iconic bass lines, which have to be right to get any idea of the song (I'm thinking stuff like A Town Called Malice); they're a bugger to get just right and then find they never get played again...I've learnt a few of those...

I've never veto'd a song in my life, and similarly, I've never insisted on a song. I'm a bassist, for crying out loud...I've suggested plenty, but I'm never miffed if they don't fly with the rest of the band. I'll generally go along with the overall vibe, and I completely understand that the singist has more right than anyone to object to a tune; they are the primary seller of the song to the audience, and if they aren't feeling it, it won't come over well, no matter how great the actual music.

I've used my Stomp every gig now in a couple of years since I got it...it takes some experimentation (especially with compression and the LPF/HPFs), but I got it useable pretty quickly, and I've been refining it ever since...

I've just watched that, and it's amazing: all them knobs (operative word) allowed him to get it to sound like a semi-acoustic bass played with a pick... 🤪

I saw a stat the other day that made me gawp; there are 100,000 songs uploaded to the streaming services (Spotify, Amazon Music, etc, etc) every DAY. Now, they won't all be new, and even if 99.9% aren't to personal taste, that still leaves a whoooole lot of new music (that's a hundred songs every day) which may well be...the issue is finding them - I use the Radio suggestions on the service from a track I like, and wander from there; it's a rabbit hole of clicking Next, but it's always worth a listen, and can be very rewarding...I also go and see bands playing small gigs, and I've found some great new artists this way... I don't listen to mainstream music radio much these days...

In a similar vein, Jon Shuker isn't a player, either...

I'd second this approach; I had a LMIII for a while, but its' inherent smoothness and politeness wasn't my cup of Darjeeling, so I added a preamp pedal to rough things up a bit. After a while I realised I never switched the preamp pedal off, so I looked for an amp that would sound the same as both together, and save the hassle of an extra piece of kit, power supply, lead, etc...

I bought a brand new 4003W a few years back (online, from GAK IIRC); it was also very poor in terms of QC. I'd had a 4001 decades before as my first 'proper' bass, and I loved it then. This was, in the cold hard light of day, QC-poor for a £400 bass, let along the £1600 I'd just paid. For that sort of money I wasn't willing to complete the jobs which the factory should have done. It went back the next day, and for the same money I got a luthier-built bass that was perfect.

I've just acquired a headless (courtesy of Pete Young on here) short scale - a Honda Alien- and although it was bought for a very specific purpose (getting a bass onto a plane as cheaply as poss), I'm enjoying the form factor of it round the house...

I was happily being a Metal God playing my black and white Aria ZZB (look, it was the 80s, OK?) when I turned on the telly and there was Rick Mayall using one (upside down, left handed, admittedly) in Bad News 2... 🙁

On the other side of the coin (slebs who have a signature bass (or several) and move on), the reverse of that is JJ Burnel, who's played nowt but his Shuker sigs for about 15 years now...and there was a bloke who really should have had a Fender sig, but they refused... Oh, and on that...Hooky has TWO of his Yamaha sig basses on stage every night with The Light; played by him and his son...

I used to love my MkVIII head, especially the built-in chorus...this was the 80s, mind... 🙂

Oh, great...just when I thought my GAS was completely done, now I want a mandocello... 🙁🙂 And I want to hear The Sisters Of Mercy done on mandolin and mandocello...

Just for some perspective, I'm old enough to have had an SVT and 810 as my Bestest Big Rig back in the day (and I worked up to that via other various heads and cabs, like a Peavey MkVIII and a V-4B), then I went down in size to lots of different heads (including a lot of Class Ds), a MB 410, a 2 x 15 Roland stack, then a Schroeder 215, and then Barefaced cabs took over, and now my Big Rig is some folks' Small Rig, but it's still capable of drowning any drummer...at which point the PA comes into play... I'm playing a lot of pubs, bars and functions now (tho some big stages occasionally, but they're always well monitored, which makes a big backline redundant anyway) with three bands who all have a decent PA. I just stand at the desk during setup with my XLR in my hand and say 'What channel am I in?', and that works... 🙂 The Stomp is the one constant piece of kit I use (and I have a dozen or so presets for different songs (like a Sledgehammer preset, a Wolstenholme preset, a Motown preset, a Gnarly Rock preset, etc, etc)), so I sound like that through everything...after that it's just about room EQ-ing... I play with a time-served (cruises and Middle-Eastern Hotel residencies) Pro guitarist occasionally (the sort of guy who inspires this conversation: 'Does Johnny know xxxx (insert just about any song)?' 'Don't be daft: Johnny knows everything'), and he has some fantastic geetar sounds, including some of the best Rock sounds I've ever heard, and he turns up with just a QSC 12" PA speaker and his FX...

So I was thinking (in another thread) about a previous rig, and it occurred to me that when I was doing relatively few gigs, I'd like to turn up with a bigger rig (even though that isn't that big: a Walkabout and a 38lb 212, and in extreme cases a 30lb 115, too, for stacktasticness), but now I'm out twice a week, I really can't be bothered with the bigger rig, and lean much more toward in-ears where possible, and the 112 combo and DI when not. Am I being more realistic, or just a lazy old toad? I should add that after some tweaking, my sound isn't compromised either way: 90% of it comes from the Stomp...

The irony being that for several years now I've only needed one cab. Still like the vibe of 3 x 12s, but I'm gigging a lot these days, and I can't be bothered with 90lbs of cab, even in three chunks...in fact wherever I can, I use inears, and when that isn't an option, it's the 112 combo and DI...

This one, perchance? Ohhhh, I really miss it now... 🙁

Ohhh, I loved the triple Berg stack I had...trouble was, I could never resist bringing all three everywhere...no self-restraint, y'see... 🙁 🙂