Muzz

Looks like a £150 bitsa with a horrible headstock and nasty-looking pickups. I'll pass.

I'm entranced with the idea of the Norwegian King's Guard getting the stinkeye from a flightless waterfowl who outranks every single one of them...

What with Sweden's nobility having a Royally Appointed Throbmonger, and Norway's knighting penguins*, I'm agog to find out what the crowned heads of the rest of the Nordic countries are doing to redress the balance... * Sir Nils Olav - see below for possibly my all-time favourite Wikipedia picture/title combination... Oh, and it's bassist...like anybody really gives a flyer...

Well, not quite that, but we started with a quick huddle, during which we nixed the Rage Against The Machine and Muse numbers...oddly, though, Dirty Old Town went down like a French kiss at a family reunion...

We were booked the other week by a chap in his 40s who'd been bouncing around Mulligan's Irish Pub in the city centre with his pals, chucking Guinness all over. When we got there. the gig turned out to be for his Mum and Dad's 50th wedding. It was in a room in the posh Lowry Hotel; there were 27 people there, of whom him and his wife were the youngest by some 30 years. It was all very pleasant, we were the quietest we'd ever been, but it was a bit like playing for your Nan...needless to say, we adjusted the setlist. One of those days where a flexible potential setlist from a lot of different genres comes in handy... 😕

A brand new stand turned up in the post this morning - the design of the grip that had failed has changed, so there was clearly a design issue. Nevertheless, exemplary customer service from Hercules/Stringsandthings... 👍

It also depends on how large a neck profile you are comfortable with, plus the additional weight a 5 can bring. Both those are important to me, more important than the need for the low B. As has been mentioned above, a Hipshot Drop D tuner gives me all the flexibility I need; I have one fitted to all my gigging basses (and I play all sorts of music). YMMV, IMHO, etc, etc...however, I'd definitely be going to a music shop and trying some out...

If I was being very, very sensible, I'd sell the ST and the Compact and buy a pair of SCs, but since when has sensible counted for all that much? 🙂

Just spotted a typo I can't correct properly - I meant 'under 4 ohms' rather than 'under 2 ohms'. A ST and a Compact is 2.667 Ohms, so there's a few amps'll do this (a lot of the newer Class D 8/900w modules will) and my Walkabout is fine with it. Yep, it's complete overkill, but a proper bass stack that weighs less than a single 410? Falls into Just Because I Can territory... 🙂 Sadly, the SC doesn't stack properly onto the ST*, otherwise I'd have a SC instead of the Compact... 😕 * Yes, I know: I'm OCD and as shallow as a puddle...

If you're feeling especially epic (and your amp'll go below 2 ohms), you'll find the ST stacks onto the Compact rather pleasingly... 😃

I still think they look fantastic, especially the walnut ones. Having owned and played two, however, nothing would induce me to buy another. That Kay looks poke-your-own-eyes-out awful, tho...

Very quick reply from Strings And Things requesting pics and details, including my shipping address. Fingers crossed.

Thanks for the heads-up: I have done. Let's see what they come back with...

With an odd synchronicity, my 3-holder Hercules stand disintegrated over the weekend; I've not had chance to have a good look at it yet, but it's knocked my confidence in it...

Mulligans Irish pub in Manchester city centre tonight, the Hop & Hazelwood in Tyldesley tomorrow night. Played both before, they're good venues...

2mm is as high as I like to go, I've got a couple of basses that are happy at less than that, but it's all very personal taste...

Shuker Horn x 2 Shukerbird Dingwall ABZ Yamaha BB414 Michael Kelly Acoustic Aria ZZB project HB PB50 project Bitsa PB project Which equals...nine... This means something, I tells ya... 🙂 Although I have a new Shuker incoming in the next coupla months which will ruin the theory, but do I care? 😀

Two pub gigs, both good payers: one Satdy in an Irish pub in the centre of Manchester - it was just loopy hot in there, but the place was jumping, and then last night a pub in t'suburbs, again warm (but nowhere near the over of Satdy) and again jumping - one of the punters paid us a ton for another half hour, so we asked him what he wanted to hear and busked a lot of it... 🙂

Yeah, there's a huuuge IEMs thread, with chaps who know tons more about it than me (our singist is the driving force behind it), but I have a mixer on my phone (or iPad) with which I can adjust my in-ears mix independently of the others and the FOH. And yes to the latency, tho that's much more apparent if I'm using two lots - with the in-ears feed, it's really not noticeable. It depends on kit, but we have Sennheiser in-ear kit, which is very low latency...oh, and an ambient mic stuck on the stage helps massively with the isolating effect of in-ears: we've only recently started using that, and it's a revelation... But I digress... 🙂

They're actually labelled 'Round Wound NikkL', picture of a 4-string on the packet, and the aforementioned 105/115 E/B? A top quality product all round. Buy with confidence... 😃

I absolutely love that...blimey, I might be poorly... 😕🙂

Very interested, too: I've liked the NYXLs, and kinda alternated with Elixirs - the Elixirs won out in the end, but it wasn't really a level playing field, as one was coated and one not. These new XTs will definitely be worth a try...wonder how much they'll be? And yeah, Elixirs are the best coated I've played by a long way...

Hey Dave, If you liked the Streamliner then I can recommend the Genzler Magellan - I've had both (concurrent with my Walkabout), and again, there's a lineage of design. The Magellan might not have the glass valves of the Streamliner, but you wouldn't know without looking, and it's got a later gen power unit, which I found to have much more about it than the earlier Genz, Markbass, Tonehammers, etc... I only moved the Magellan on because I went properly Helix/In-Ears, so there was no need for a 'middle ground' rig: If I need backline, it's for a gig I want to take the Mesa to; if I don't, then my backline's in my rucksack... 🙂

I've never, ever needed more than a passing familiarity with the techniques (and then only for a couple of covers, things like LVD's Never Too Much and Paul Simon's You Can Call Me Al), so I learnt enough to be able to play what I needed to play and moved on with things I am interested in. The virtuosity of Messrs Wooten, Manring, Patitucci, King et al leaves me appreciative of the talent but cold to the effect, and I can't abide bass solos longer than a couple of bars. And then again such virtuosity for virtuosity's sake is a busy playing field these days with, as has been said, the competition of hordes of YouTube players. The only bassist I can listen to playing solo is Bobby Vega, then again he appeals to me because I'm primarily a pick player, and his pick-funk is just terrific. As JamieMills said above, there's a million ways to be a great player, and none of them are compulsory...

I'm enjoying mine - bought for a specific project - more than the 1024 I had. I thought I'd need to do lots to it, but the only thing I'll be changing will be the tuners, as they're a little...vague. Oh, and that dobbing great selector switch: I've never understood why Yamaha puts that on all their BBs...other than that, it's a real PJ-killer, with a genuinely useful J-pup.