GarethFlatlands

1) Play a few more gigs with the covers band and make a little extra cash.

2) Finish off the riff ideas and demos I have on my computer and maybe put out a little 4-5 track EP. I'm learning to draw so if I can make my own artwork for it then that'll be a bonus.

3) Either get back up to speed on trumpet (I had an embouchure collapse in August and my playing range more than halved overnight) or find something else to learn.

Been in a few bands with friends, always playing original music we wanted to play well aware the market for it was small and we'd struggle to find a decent audience out of our home town (apart from Scotland. We always seemed to go down well up there.) It wasn't worth us rehearsing and playing live more as it would just be diminishing returns. We recorded some stuff for posterity, gigged sparingly and called it a day having had a good time and made some good friends on the way. If we'd played more commercial stuff then it would have made sense to put more time into it but we didn't so we picked a level that worked for us.

Rich Tone in Sheffield is pretty good. Went in for a new guitar, told them my budget and after sorting me out with an amp & lead and a pick, left me to wander around trying stuff out with no hassle or hard sell. Great selection too. The staff seem to be the old guard from various now defunct shops in the city so they know their stuff. The guy who rang up the Strat I ended up buying was the same guy who sold me a POD and helped me out with string gauges for detuning back in the mid 00's.

Know your chord theory and begin with 12 bar stuff I guess. If you can find some backing tracks then you can get comfortable with improvising and learning lines to play under the basic 12 bar structure. That should give you a nice jumping off point to playing over chord charts without feeling like you have no idea what you're doing.

Bunch of friends again for me. We all started learning guitar and one of them had a bass as well I used to noodle around on. Got the money together to buy my own (which I still have) before heading off to uni and have spent my time since split between bass and guitar in various bands.

Great Christmas present, I wish these had been around when I was shopping for my first bass all those years ago! I'm thinking about adding a thumb rest to mine to stop my hand slipping off when I get a bit over excited playing live.

Really impressed with the quality of budget instruments from companies like Ibanez and Yamaha these days.

An Ebay purchase for £160 delivered. Chosen for the reputation Ibanez have for making great cheaper basses and the slim body as I was after something lightweight after a minor back injury earlier in the year. Owned for a couple of months now and used in bedroom, practice room, studio and on stage so I've had some time to get to know it.

Condition - Great first impressions. Really slim neck, great for my small hands, and no issues with sharp fret ends and the like. A little unremarkable design wise and I wasn't sure on the overly long upper horn but that made sense when I got a strap put on it as it helps with the instrument balance, presumably due to the light body. The intonation was a little off past the 10th fret but I'm confident I can sort that out next re-string, as well as sorting out a buzz on the low E which thankfully doesn't come through the amp at standard tuning but sounds awful when dropped to D. The input jack is also a little flaky, sometimes the cable requires taking out and re-inserting otherwise there's a terrible crackle which I hope some contact cleaner will fix. I've used another one since buying mine and it didn't have this issue so just one of those quirks I guess.

So a few minor issues with the setup but nothing deal breaking as far as a 2nd hand instrument goes.

Playability - Overall, excellent. The slim neck makes it really fast and I get my hand around it easily for any stretches. The pickup covers are arched, rising up towards the middle 2 strings and falling away towards the edges, making it tough to rest your thumb on due to the lack of an edge. According to Ibanez, this is to balance the output across the strings and it seems to work well for that purpose. I'm adjusting slowly or using the fretboard to anchor my hand but a thumb rest as standard would have been nice as it's obviously going to be a problem for finger style playing.

Sounds - 2 pickups with a balance control, volume, stacked bass/treble cut/boost and a "style sweeper" that's meant for making the bass able to go from slap to fingerstyle easily. Seems to alter the EQ as a whole in a way my rubbish ears can't describe very well but adds more girth generally at the clockwise position and scoops the tone in the other direction. I leave it just over halfway and bump it up when playing with a pick to add some growl and to stop the low end falling off on the D and G strings. A little different to the 3 band controls the current models seem to have but offer a nice range of sounds. The P position pickup has a big rounded sound but as I like a more cutting tone, I tend to balance a lot more towards the bridge PU to give the attack more definition but keep some of the P wooliness in there. Dial in a little treble and bump the style sweeper control and I'm set to go from finger to pick easily. Generally has a very zingy sound to the top end and a good amount of mids, very good with slap sounds if that's your bag but flexible enough to work very well with fingers or a pick as well with just the on-bass controls.

Overall - for the money, fantastic. I think these are £230 new but I'd still recommend it. Performs well across all playing styles thanks to the flexibility of the onboard controls. A jack of all trades rather than a master of any but what's on offer is a very usable range of sounds in a lightweight package and a great feeling neck.

Finally, what's a review without a picture! Here's me, laying down a jazzy line for a friends Christmas charity single back in November.

I'd echo Ibanez, the only "budget" bass I've ever bought but I got an SR300 off Ebay for £160 delivered and apart from a tweak to the intonation, it's fantastic. Doesn't tick all the boxes you mention in the OP but they seem to know what they're doing with low cost instruments.

I don't play wrong notes, I was just "experimenting with dissonance". It's not my fault the rest of the band chose to play it safe.

Used one that a studio had lying around on a track a few years ago,very lo fi and filthy sounding. Wouldn't have it on my board as I don't think I'd use it that much but it was perfect for that one section.

I think metal guitarists like them as they can use a lighter touch with the pick and still get an aggressive sound. Useful for someone with weak, girly hands like me. Having said that, I prefer single coils in general but have used humbuckers over the years with no issues. Like everyone said already, it's how you set your rig up as to whether or not they sound bad.

Tomorrow's controversial thread!

"Your favourite bass player: They're a bit crap really aren't they?"

[quote name='mike257' timestamp='1449573575' post='2924695']
If you can stretch to £35-£45 per mic, then grabbing some second hand AKG D5 would be my choice. They're my go-to live vocal mic and I prefer them to my Shure Beta 58A. On a tighter budget, Thomann's own brand "T-Bone" mics are generally pretty decent for cheapies and their Beta58-a-like is just over £20.
[/quote]

Beat me to it, I got a D5 after reading about the amount of fake SM58's in circulation and it's a great mic for not much money.

I'm of the view you might as well listen to work by someone considered as one of the greats. Even if you don't like the music, there's something you'll be able to take from it. I'll sit down and learn some of his stuff when I get some free time.

[quote name='MarshallBTB' timestamp='1449602302' post='2925103']
Big fan of Glassjaw, although this track hasn't clicked for me...yet.
[/quote]

Same here, a friend described this track as "album filler" which seemed accurate. Shame, as there's a good tune buried in there somewhere.

A friend of mine recorded a Christmas single for a local homeless charity called HARC (explanation below). It's free to listen to on their Bandcamp page and yours to download for £1 + possibly some VAT. All proceeds go to the charity. Hope you like it even if you don't decide to buy it!

Bass on the track by me

"HARC is a Sheffield-based charity providing shelter, hot meals and a warm welcome for homeless, rootless and vulnerable men and women between Christmas Eve and New Year's Day. Every penny that you spend on this track will go to them. We're taking nothing at all. Please feel free to spend as much as you like on the track. "

[url="https://earlycartographers.bandcamp.com/track/what-will-you-open-an-invitation-to-christmas"]https://earlycartographers.bandcamp.com/track/what-will-you-open-an-invitation-to-christmas[/url]

No problems, hope he can sort it out.

Fair warning, apparently he could talk for England!

I like it Love natural wood finish guitars, I don't know why more companies don't offer it as a standard finish over painted.

The Beatles are one of those bands my folks used to listen to and claim were amazing but I never got into but my time on here makes me think I should sit down and learn some of his lines. What little I've heard, I've had a lot more respect for him as a player having previously identified with him as the guy who did The Frog Chorus.

Any suggestions as to songs to learn as a starting point?

Gutted about this, I basically learned guitar by brute forcing my way through the tab books for the first 3 STP albums so they'll always be a favourite and an important part of shaping me as a musician. Spending the day listening to the classic STP tracks on Youtube and Spotify and getting unusually emotional.

Only synth repair place I know around here is Nightingale Audio in Sheffield but I don't have any personal experience with them. I'll ask on FB for you as I've got an old Wavestation that needs looking at as well.

Edit: Nightingale seems very well thought of by my FB friends who've used him.

There's a company on Ebay selling the Behringer at £50 with free delivery if you collect at Argos. Not a great deal but speedier and easier for me now they've shut my Post Office collection place down and I have to drive 6 miles out of town to get my missed parcels

The LD does indeed look nice but a lack of buying options from the UK is stopping me pulling the trigger on one, although I am still debating it.

If it'll translate my off notes into key then I'm sold!

[quote name='EBS_freak' timestamp='1440066686' post='2847961']
Yes. P1. It is a rip of the Fischer unit as Martin above implied. Its a lot cheaper than the Fischer offering and actually quite robust. Don't be put off by the Behringer name on it!
[/quote]

Thanks for pointing me to this thread EBS, I'm thinking about dipping my toe in the IEM world with a Behringer P1 and some off the shelf buds and it's good to hear the P1 is one of the decent Brehringer products. I was torn between that and the LD HPA1 but they seem very hard to get hold of without going via Thomann.

Thanks EBS, my sleep deprived brain failed me there.