Muzz

Well, there are worse problems to have - as long as you're going secondhand, it won't cost much, either, and you might surprise yourself - I've owned some basses which definitely weren't 'me' (I'm thinking Status and Alembic - oh, and three Stingrays* amongst others), but every one was a learning process 🙂 I definitely wouldn't advise a custom build if you're unsure what you want, as it's a lot of money to be guessing with. * Took me a few goes to get them out of my system - I loooove them to look at, and other people sound great with them, but....not me 🙁

Maybe my bar isn't set quite as high as it could be, but beyond some fairly straightforward spec (from the top: lightweight tuners, brass nut, slim-Jazz neck profile, split-coil pickup in the P position, East U-Retro), everything else is pretty much aesthetic (swamp ash body for lightness, drop top that appeals, birdseye board with no front markers, and the Shuker Horn is My Shape) and I'm very sure there's a number of luthiers who could make something I'd be very happy with. My first custom build (Shuker) is the bass I play most, and has been for the better part of a decade now. I had to buy/try/sell a lot of basses to narrow that spec down, tho... It sounds from the above like you enjoy some things that aren't really possible in one instrument (smoothness/tonality, weirdness/immediacy and growl/bark), so chasing that chimera would always bring disappointment. Having said that, my only custom build GAS would be a Shuker-built Fenderbird (my other Shape), but I have a Frankenstein Fenderbird which ticks so many boxes I'm not sure four figures would nail that last ten per cent without compromise somewhere else...don't get me wrong; if I had a couple of grand spare I'd be on the phone to Derbyshire like a shot, but I'm not in that position these days...

Ummmm...I used to be in a band that covered this, but it was in the charts at the time. That'd be 29 years ago...you'll understand, I'm sure, if I can't remember much about it... 🙁🙂

I read that the sensitivity of that 27 is 95db, doesn't sound like it'd make an awful lot of the 150-180w going into it...it all depends on the band (and the gigs), tho, but without PA support I'd want a bit more...I've gigged with a Fender Rumble 100w 112 (albeit with a much better/more sensitive speaker in the cab), but only for small trio stuff...

I've always lived by the phrase 'Never engage with idiots; they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with their years of experience...' 😐

Comments on FB Marketplace...enough said... 🙄

I would refer at this point to the great Michael Caine, when asked what he thought about the truly terrible Jaws: The Revenge in which he starred: "I've never seen the film, but I've seen the house it bought for my daughter..." Also, when pressed as to why he'd taken the job in the first place, he said "I got a copy of the script, and the first page said 'Act 1, Scene 1; A beach in the Bahamas', so I said 'When do we start?'" 😁

Hahahaaa....Ioved the '...and a Boss..............delay...' 😁

Ahhhh, I see - not my genre, and I hate loose strings, so I see my mistake there... 🙁🙂

Just a thought, but what about an octaver with a low octave running all the time? Something like a TC Sub n Up? Or would that muddy the sound too much?

I've lent gear a few times, and I guess I've been lucky (tho I don't do many multi-band things) but it's always been treated with respect. I even lent my Dingwall to some friends of friends who'd turned up at a gig for our guitarist's birthday so they could do a few choons. The lad was super-careful (he even took his belt and buttoned jacket off) and loved it. Whenever I've been to a multi-band thing, I usually leave the EQ alone and just adjust my Stomp...

I once got chatting to the bassist/singer from Limehouse Lizzy (who are incidentally very very good), and asked him why he used a black and maple Stingray rather than a P. 'I just like Stingrays' he said, and he's a big bloke, so I smiled and left it at that...

*Extreme pedant alert* Apropos does not require the word 'of' to follow it. Oh, and there's three speech marks* in the above sentence. Ahem. 😐🙂 *End of extreme pedantry* 😉 * Quotation marks, inverted commas...just so I haven't missed anything out. 🙂

That's a shame...although I'd say the fuzz (the Stomp's got a lot of that, not that I'm any expert or fan of it) would actually help cover any possible tracking issues going down very low (from a 4)...Impending Doom Built In... 🙂 Could be worth an hour's twiddling in a PMT near you...

To the OP: I've got a Dingwall ABZ if you're anywhere near Oldham...it's a 4, but it's the same scale as the NGs (and better made, ahem) if you wanted to try it out... Those fan-fret Ibanezes (Ibanii? I dunno) look very nice, and a 5 wouldn't have to be detuned much to get to A# Dunno how it'd be for you, but the HX Stomp Pitch Shifter works for me down to C (from E) just fine in a mix (and lets me keep the high string tension I like)...not so much on double- or triple-stops, but might be worth a tryout. I've got one of them, too... 😉

Absolutely - I refer in particular to my often-told 'I bought a 12-string and no-one noticed (or cared)' story... 😐🙂 Actually, that's not strictly true; our singer told me he liked my Stingray sound on a couple of tracks on our album after we'd recorded it. I was forced to point out that the two tracks he liked were in fact played on my then bitsa P. I'd used the Ray on two different tracks. He went 'Oh.', and he's never mentioned basses again. In his defence, they were both black and maple, so I can see his confusion... 😐

And then it's all for, as they say, a given value of 'great'. I will say, tho, that when it came to opening the biggest live performance ever broadcast (there's a figure touted as 40% of the world's population), the choice made was a certain band as a banker. And it worked. Anyone can sniff as much as they want about populism and musicality, but that fact remains.

Now we're into personal taste; and as usual, for every person that likes something, there's lots of people who don't. I managed about a minute of that. It's about serving the song in the genre it's played, and AL and CW are doing just as good a job artistically as anything more complicated. Everything else is, as I say, personal taste. LS Lowry is a reasonable comparison; a lot of people don't like his famous artwork, but anyone who's seen his earlier pencil work would know he was a very very good artist in more conventional terms. The 'matchstick men' was an artistic choice which illustrates his Salford brilliantly, and the simplicity of line and form is a choice, not a necessity from a limited skill set.

ACDC wouldn't have been the band they were without Cliff Williams resisting the urge to Jaco all over the place, ditto Quo. One of my bandmates plays in probably the biggest Quo tribute on the circuit, the attendance and fan enthusiasm is something I'd kill for... On the JT front, just for fun we kicked around Rio once in rehearsal with just me and the drummer, and the singer...it's 95% of the song, the bass line carries it all...fantastic...ditto Love Cats...

They really are a whole new level live; I've seldom seen such intensity in a live performance...I can recommend them when all this hoohah dies down and attending (and playing) gigs is back on the calendar...

Lack Of Communication is one of the great rock riffs...I always liked Dokken, too...

You might like this, then...early(ish -84) and very obscure LA/Hair Rock...more to it than a lot of its contemporaries (that bass intro is great), sadly they only ever released one EP...which I paid an arm and a leg for on import...

I was very, very late to the Rival Sons party; I'd heard a couple of tracks when they were the Hot New Thing, but dismissed them as too close to a Led Zep Tribute act, when I was talked into seeing them a few years ago. Seen them three or four times since, they're extraordinary live, but to be fair they'd moved away from the LZ bandwagon considerably by then... Ditto Creedence Clearwater Revival (I knowwwww...); I knew a few songs (and the covers thereof), but until one day on a whim I just said 'Alexa, play Creedence' and left it going for a couple of hours, I didn't know how much I liked them...

Horses for courses for me; I have a Stomp and inears for the trio gigs, for sheer convenience - we have a good PA - (and inears are a bit of a revelation - 'Maaannnn, is that really me?' - which made me up my game; there's nowhere to hide* 🙁🙂) but I've still got a backline I love (Walkabout and Super Twin), which can trounce any drummer**. I've also got a small combo for the ultimate simplicity for the smallest gigs, where we're pretty much acoustic, with just the guitar and vocals in a reduced amount of PA... Oh, and inears have the trump card, which is an overall volume control; I can hear everything I need to, at whatever volume I want...much easier on the old lugholes, and miles better in terms of sound quality than just attenuating earplugs... * It's a bit like hearing isolated bass tracks (Geddy's ones in particular spring to mind) which are really rough in isolation... ** I'm a believer in the theory that as long as I can keep up with the drummer playing acoustically, my backline's loud enough: if he gets mike'd and DI'd, then I will be, too..

Yup, I went from 3 x AE112s to a single BF Super Twin (2x12). At least as much presence and ooomph (and even in the band with TWO stooopidly loud Marshall 100+412 geetards), and nearly a third of the weight. I should add I ran the AEs with the horns off, as for me they scooped the sound...which I don't like in a band context. The only thing I'd change the Super Twin for would be a pair of SCs, just for modularity in smaller pubs with the trio, but I have a Rumble 100 (with a 'proper' Eminence 12 in it) which covers that eventuality, sooooo...I'm all good 🙂