lanark

So - has anybody yet received a duff instrument from these "decoration only" items? Only there's a banjo on there at the moment that I might be interested in (along with an acoustic bass).

Can anyone suggest a good case that's relatively low-priced? Most of the suggestions here are out of my price range. I need something £50ish (may a tad higher if it was good enough) that's either hard case or a semi-rigid bag to fit a jazz / precision. The lower the price the better, but I'm tired of the floppy bag my bass came in.

I think that, on the whole, if you've paid a lot of money for something it's human nature to convince yourself that it's made an improvement way above it's actual measurable effects. You find this especially with high-end home audio equipment - and exotic woods in electric guitars. It might make a difference, but there's always a point (usually quite low) at which price has no further effect on quality and only has an effect on marketing and bullshit.

[quote name='leschirons' timestamp='1320178706' post='1423492'] This is not intended to be one of those lack of confidence posts. It's just that something occured to me over the weekend. I got a good gig last Friday opening the guitar festival here in France. Gig went well, great money and good reviews / feedback etc. Rock / blues trio doing covers. Since living here, I've had no shortage of offers to play in bands, do loads of deps etc and always seem to be playing but on the last night of the festival, I went to see Jennifer Batten. She was supporting the Michael Jones group. He's the ex guitarist for Jean Jacques Goldman and to be honest, I'd never heard of them. Anyway, I was watching the bassisit for the whole set. He made it all look so easy. Didn't play anything flash or outlandish, classy and subtle basslines and totally nailed it. Minimum movement on the fretboard and was so tight with the drummer you couldn't get a Rizla between them. Made me realise that I'd really got complacent. For the last 8 years, I've assumed I was an average to good bassplayer but watching this other player made me realise that I've not moved forward as a musician and just sat on my arse and now, have a serious amount of work ahead of me if I'm going to be satisfied with my playing. Big fish in little pond syndrome? Guilty. [/quote] So what's going to be your new practice regime?

I don't know what was around then - what Fender's colourways were at the time. 1968 was a stonking year for music, but what will be my options when I eventually have the money to buy a bass that made in 1968, the year I was born?

[quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1320062435' post='1421673'] If you mean what I think you mean by "the handgrip", that's actually designed to allow the H2 to be mounted on any standard microphone stand ... the grip is the same shape and size as a normal microphone. [/quote] Ahhhhhhhhhh - I didn't know that. I thought it was to hold onto without squashing and creaking the plasticy casing.

[quote name='Lfalex v1.1' timestamp='1319996389' post='1421033'] Like everyone else has said, Squier, Yamaha and Ibanez are all solid buys, particularly if you can get a nice second hand one. Otherwise, the previously mentioned SGC Nanyo "Bass Collection" basses are superb. If you get [i]really[/i] lucky, a G&L "Tribute" series might just pop up on the cheap, but expect it to have had a couple of owners. To put some of this into a bit of perspective for you; My first bass was a Westone. I still have it. I've had two Ibanez, and sold one on. The other was irreparably damaged, and I wish I still had it. I also own a Squier and a Yamaha. (So not much bias, then!) [/quote] Good for you, I never quite understand this yearning to pay £2000 for a guitar.

I've only ever owned two basses and I've still got both of them, so this is going to be short. [b]First Bass Owned: [/b] [b]Squier Affinity P bass, black, flats, 20th anniversary edition, 2nd hand including amp and bag for £100 still used for practice[/b] [b]'Go To' Bass: [/b] [b]Squier CV Jazz, olympic white, flats [/b] [b]'Your' Bass: [/b] [b]I gig with the jazz because I love the colour, practice with the P, so probably the jazz[/b]

[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1319540027' post='1415318'] Thats vey hard to say really. I like the Zoom series, I have an H4n, mainly because of the mic configuration which is one that I particularly like for stereo (no phase issues between the two mics) The question you need to ask is what is this for? If the answer is taking a note of what we did in rehearsal, then a Zoom H1 plus the goody bag with the extras is a very good value for money solution, if you need more options wrt mic placement in the room, faux omni directional recording the H2 is good, the H2n is a better device (easier to use blah blah blah) but watch out because you only get the power supply in the extras goody bag on that one (which is more than a bit naughty IMO) If you would like the option of 4 tracking things a bit the H4n is ok, but very fiddly to use, if I had the money again I would get the R16 as I could easily use 8 mics getting drums down.... [/quote] This! - The goody bag is worth getting if only for the AC adaptor which is a godsend because the thing seems to eat batteries while it's turned off, so I'm always having to reset date and time, and many of my recordings were made on the 1st of jan 2010 at 1am. Can't fault the quality of the recordings, you can choose the mp3 quality to save disc space, it comes with a 2gb card which is plenty big enough if you housekeep it regularly. The stand and case that come in the pack are useful too - not really used the wooly muffler and handgrip but someone must.

I'm going against the general trend here and I'll recommend OBBM. Unless you're wanting cheap as chips cables, you can't go wrong. Better than Planet Waves and about the same price, can't see why Monster charge what they do. Go with OBBM and you can specify the jacks used, the cable used, and the exact length of cable wanted all for about the same as you'd pay for a PW - plus you're keeping a local guy in business rather than a multinational conglomerate who probably gets its cable made by 10 year olds in the far east*. * [size=2]- might not be true[/size]

[quote name='skankdelvar' timestamp='1320024569' post='1421453'] Plug your bass lead into this 1/4" jack to mini jack adapter and plug the adapter into your PC's mic socket. Headphones into the headphone socket. Away you go. About a quid from Maplin's. Not as good as a bit of dedicated outboard but perfectly serviceable for rough demos. Need an amped-up sound? Lots of good freebie sims in the free VST list on this forum. [/quote] Does that work? I wouldn't have thought a passive guitar would put out enough power. Interesting though - I'll have to try it, I've got a few of those adaptors sitting about.

[quote name='Gust0o' timestamp='1318328546' post='1400525'] I've always been dubious of the Beast: Maybe you could add a pickguard; some ash trays; a thumbrest; and some relicing, to totally bollox it? [/quote] Yeah, that Buzard beast thing is truly horrible. Basically I dislike anything that looks like it's made from a coffee table by an over-enthusiastic amateur woodworker. When I first picked up a bass I always wanted a burred wooden guitar, I thought they looked great. Now, the simplicity of a Fender-style P or J gives everything that you could possibly need. Bare wood - eugh (with a few notable exceptions)

[quote name='civictiger' post='1347393' date='Aug 21 2011, 07:12 PM']Also, here's a link to their website which shows the benefits of being an MU member. [url="http://www.musiciansunion.org.uk/join-the-mu/benefits/"]http://www.musiciansunion.org.uk/join-the-mu/benefits/[/url][/quote] Whhoooooo - for a ten piece band, £165 each for the year is too steep for us at the moment, I'm afraid.

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='1344058' date='Aug 18 2011, 09:31 AM']I think the difference they make will be quite minimal. I mean if you kept a book or song sheets in there they'd probably draw more moisture.[/quote] Apparently dry rice is one of the best things to use - cooked rice is less recommended.

[quote name='Bilbo' post='1342931' date='Aug 17 2011, 11:35 AM']I have a version of Cubase Stonehenge v.1 which meets my needs in terms of home recording. I use Sibelius Orthapeadic, Transcribe Quill © and Band in an orange Box and they do everything I want them to. I get the motivation for providers to up-date software (primarily commercial) but have never really bothered with it as the core purpose of the earlier versions is working perfectly well. I still only use 'play' on a dvd player, one setting on a washing machine and 'on/off' for the central heating. Is it just me?[/quote] Me too - usually if something was good enough for purpose when you bought it and that purpose hasn't changed and the product hasn't stopped working, then the only thing encouraging change is marketing and the desire for shiny new things. It's partly what makes me wonder why you could record adequatly on a laptop 5 years ago, but you still need a state of the art new laptop to do adequate recording - surely by now even the cheapest laptop you buy should be as powerful as the top of the range once from 5 years ago. Ho hum.

I don';t see what's to fix.Well, I can see a few marks, but nothing that needs to be restored.

Awesome - I liked the Rubber Band bass too.

At some point in the next 12 months I'm likely to attack my Squier Affinity with the view of personalising it, but I'm stuck for ideas of what to do with it. I like the idea of ashtrays, but basically, I'l love to see loads of pictures of endless colours and re-modellings, but I've not been able to find much on google. It all seems to be sunbursts, black, white and red with occasional changing of scratchplate colours. I don't want to copy anything particularly, just want a clear idea of what's possible and possibly a history of what models of P have appeared over the decades.

[quote name='Commando Jack' post='1336263' date='Aug 11 2011, 11:41 AM']He probably did it... [/quote] I had my suspicions.

[quote name='bremen' post='1331859' date='Aug 8 2011, 11:26 AM']Bit suspicious that there are no serial numbers anywhere.[/quote] True - but my Squiers have serial numbers. Aaaaahhhhh - you think he's removed them deliberately.

How did I learn? I'll tell you when I do.