Muzz

I had a new pair from ACS a few years ago - I stepped up to, IIRC, the two-driver one from the single drivers, and they were very uncomfortable getting them in and out, and wearing them. I contacted ACS, they double-checked, and they'd given me someone else's moulds. They were brilliant about it, and rushed me out the right moulds with their (at the time) top 5-drivers in... My Gran had a volume control on her hearing aids, which she used to devastating social effect when she needed to...if she reached for her ears while you were talking, you'd be in the doghouse later...

A P doesn't even have to look like a P... I've had all sorts of basses over the years in terms of makes and designs (and I'm going nowhere near what woods they were made of, nononononoooo), and the only ones that really stuck were ones with a split coil pickup in the P-position, because that's the sound I like. Pretty much all of the basses I've got now are that, tho to look at some of them you might not know: I've a Shuker Horn with a split-coil EMG soapbar, a Shukerbird with a split-coil Dingwall soapbar, a BB414 with a Yamaha split-P, a JJB Sig with a custom-wound Split-P and my current Cheapo Fave is a Squier Sonic P with a DiMarzio P. Some of them are passive, some have a John East Uni-Pre, they're all very different shapes (and woods, eeeek), but the two things they have in common are the strings and that pickup in the right position. A few of them have two pickups, but I very very rarely use the bridge pickup. I can get My Sound out of all of them very easily, and that's because they're all essentially a P-Bass. And none of them are a Fender...not because of any problems I have with Fender (I've had a fair few Fender Ps, too), it's just worked out that way.

Another +1 for ACS: I have both inears for use with the current band's posh desk (independently mixable monitor outs: it's the way forwards, kids) and more simple 17db attenuators, which I wear on simpler stages and also when going to see bands in loud venues. A good tip for attenuators is to put them in while you're setting up, so that your brain gets used to the lower levels of sound/noise coming in before it gets really loud. Do it now: I left it too long and have had tinnitus for a good while (I still remember the gig when the whining didn't stop), and you really don't want that...

A two-gigger last weekend, first on Friday at the monthly residency-type pub in Swinton, it's a late one, we don't start till ten, I was ordering a drink at the bar at nine when there was an unholy kerfuffle across the bar in the pool room, a full-on catfight (or rather an assault). Cue everyone in the pub restraining a younger woman who'd gone for a lady older than her. Ten minutes later as we're still setting up the 5-0 are in the pub, the victim had (it turned out) a fractured skull, cheekbone and broken jaw. Lovely. We went on a little late, played to an indifferent crowd (another of those 'Why do they put bands on?' pubs), and as I was leaving about midnight there was another police car outside and a couple of officers hanging about. I went home... Satdy was a teatime gig at a friend of the BL's (a bassist himself) house, in his big garden. Supposed to go on at 5:30, I shortened the day at home to be there, but there was another lot on before us (the birthday chap and his friend) needless to say we went on at about seven. Bah. Dep drummer, supplied electronic kit, different PA, it was a bit of a mishmash, but it sounded OK in my inears straight from the desk. The BL stayed and there was a jam session that went on for hours, but I was home for half nine. Modded Squier Sonic P (still pretty much perfect for the gigs I'm doing right now), Stomp, inears...some nights it pays to travel light...

Satdy was a Private Do booked via an agency. Company Summer Party, early start (6:30), early finish (2x45s), we got there to catering, bouncy castle, face painting for the plethora of kids still there when we arrived, etc, etc. What the agent had neglected to mention was the 150yd schlep of all the gear from the car park (in some faceless industrial estate Stockport way) at the front of the buildings all the way round and down to the bottom of the grounds. BL didn't bring anything with wheels on it (other than the van), so it was a PITA just getting the gear to the stage. Mostly indifferent crowd, more focused on hitting the free bar (cans and bottles, mostly lukewarm) and getting their kids back home, plus the rain about half time didn't help. Despite the lack of crowd enthusiasm or engagment, the organiser said 'You're the best band we've ever had', so I told the BL to take note and put the price up for next time. Small stage under an awning (didn't leak, a plus), but my inear mix was inexplicably awful and I couldn't get near the desk to adjust it. Two 45s, one encore and we buggered off - home for half nine, but the schlep ruined it. Plus point was I'd had that cheapo Sonic P to a good tech (Matt Ryan) local to me, and the final touch of a fret dress and good setup finished off a promising bass into a go-to one. Stomp and inears is the rest of the rig...

If it's an agency gig it's strictly 2 x 45 with a couple of encores, if it's a venue with a relationship with us we'll do a 45 and then an hour, and more encores if the crowd want them. We've got enough songs for over 2 hours, if it comes to that, but that'll need to be a good, well paying venue. Previous band was largely the same, but more flexible: we had a residency in an Irish bar in the city centre, they paid more and got 3 x 45 plus encores. That band had probably 150+ songs, so we could play as long as people wanted; we did parties where the host paid us more to keep playing, and RAF gigs where we had accomodation thrown in, and the drinks kept coming as long as we kept playing, so they went on a lonnnng time...ditto a few out of the way weddings...

Oh my word, that's lovely...

I think the question is what is commercial, and does the Hit Parade (blimey) actually cover that? You can get a Number One single in the UK with very few sales (compared to previous decades), whereas what I've found is a lot of very good bands who are around today (and by 'around', I'm meaning 'making new music and touring it, rather than touring their decades-old back catalogue') who have nevertheless got an awful lot of YouTube plays and streams. One example is Robert John and The Wreck, a Southern band whom I've been lucky enough to see in smaller venues, but whom nevertheless have YT videos with more than a million plays. It's a very different world in terms of how music is consumed, and to look at the Top 40 (which used to be the be-all and end-all of success) is nowadays only looking at a very small fraction of the wider picture, so the original piece doesn't worry me at all. There's lots of new rules for the Hit Parade (like No Artist Can Have More Than Three Songs In The Top 40), the Accelerated Chart Ratio* and the Standard Chart Ratio, so, although the Goode Olde Days saw lots of sales shenanigans, today it's even more manipulated, which is very depressing, and one reason I pay no attention to it. Here's an example: The ratio for an album stream in 1000:1. So that’s 1000 streams of a single track counting as a listen to an album. It doesn’t matter if you listened to one track 1000 times or the whole album front to back, it counts the same. * Although without this, Mr Brightside wouldn't have left the Top 40 pretty much since its release: it was in the Top 100 for 298 weeks...

It takes years off you, y'know... 🙂

Was talking about this the other day with my Lad, who's 19, likes music (tho his taste and mine don't converge much), listens to all sorts of music from 70s disco onwards, and has an 85 hour Spotify playlist. He has, however, never listened to an album, and has no interest in them as an art form. The way music is presented and consumed these days (primarily by the younger generations, tho I have to say it's a good while since I listened to a whole album) has changed dramatically. If he likes a song he likes a song, but there's so much more music available from all sorts of places that he feels no need to delve into that artist's catalogue.

Ohhh, thanks for that 🙂 Well, I don't think the Ted Hughes Award Committee's going to be troubled much, but it's a lot better. And at least it didn't, like Jon Bon Jovi did once, rhyme 'I wanna be just as close as' with 'The Holy Ghost is'...four times in one song... 😀

Oh, please; you know exactly what I was referring to by using the terms empirical and non-empirical. Bandying semantics changes nothing.

And the geese fly South early this year. Do you have the dossier? 😁

Are you new here? 😀

One of Roger's opening lines is '...over time I've come to realise...' which is, yet again, non-empirical, and rather undermines the rest of it... Show me where somebody said that. I have implied that luthiers selling expensive instruments have employed marketing flimflam (and a good read of that Alembic page illustrates that) to help sell their instruments, for sound business reasons. I've also alluded to where bass makers who don't need such a marketing edge (Fender, for example), markedly don't. Odd you mention religion (again): the complete lack of empirical evidence for any of the claims about specific tonewoods making specific tones means that people claiming (without any possible material gain) that is so believe in something without any proof. I believe in other circles that's called 'faith'... No-one's hiding behind science; a healthy request for anything, anything at all to prove any of it is hardly unreasonable. Then again, as I say, you do you, I'll do me.

Or a wedding gig with a vicious sound limiter set at 'Murmur' and a polished dance floor; you could hear squeaking shoes from the dancers, and the odd cough...it was like one of those joke Tiktok vids....

They are two different basses. No matter how you turn the argument, you don't know that, and it's your judgement. Non-empirical, yet again. We're talking here (or trying to, despite the derails) about tone coming from wood itself, not from acoustics, which you actually do refer to here: 'Rosewood...predominantly having more bass and less mid, where as Mahogany has predominantly less bass and more mid' How? Oh, and for reference, Alembic call Rosewood 'both bright and dark', if that helps... Still waiting to hear 'huge effect in sound' in terms of electric instruments, which, again, is what we're talking about here.

Non-empirical again, which is what I was describing earlier. Identical? Same wood from the same bit of the same tree? They are the same wood, right? Is the neck joint exactly the same in each?

The poetic wood descriptions are rather O Level, too, although they describe the look and construction (eeeek, I mean how the wood is worked, like spalted maple) pretty well.

Beefy glue?

It's technically plywood... 😐

I've just looked at the lyrics (for the first time, despite 'knowing' this song for decades) and Oh My Sainted Trousers it is indeed a shocker. I mean, it's not the lyricist's native language, but even so... blimey. Now I really want to hear what AI made of it... 🙂

Good grief, I'm not 'admitting'...there have been many discussions on this (wayyyyy too many, to be honest) and I've never said anything to the contrary. I already alluded (just above) to RS's very well-made (handmade) basses benefiting from this process, which is part of their construction. Now then, what about this wood? You know, the title of the thread?

Wait till you read what my manifesto says about Class D and Heft...😀

I have - construction is a factor in sound, as is pickup placement, pickup, loom/EQ, strings, yadda yadda yadda. There are many, many factors which will change the response of the instrument, some cumulative, some greater, some smaller. You've stated wood is a huge factor. Care to back that up with anything?