Delberthot

From experience, one of the worst things about selling something that I hadn't used in a while was when I decided that I either needed one again or through nostalgia a few years later, the prices had gone silly.

Take the batteries out if you don't plan on using them for a long time and put them somewhere safe.

Give it long enough and every bass player who's ever lived will be in this thread 😀

It looks similar to a Telecaster II but with the mudbucker in the regular split P position

I quickly read over the names and thought that it said Jim Carey 😄

First time I heard this I actually laughed. It's such a fun song and the playing is incredible

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z9qpQRMSR1M&pp=ygUPc2x1dGUgdG8ga2FyZWVt

Have you tried adjusting the EQ on your amp or using old rounds/flatwounds/half round strings?

For years I fiddled, swapped, "upgraded" and generally tinkered with pretty much every bass I owned until I realised that the right bass for me was the one that I had in my hands at the time and the best way to get a particular tone was to adjust the EQ. (fuzzy,modulated and wobbly sounds aside) Unless something is broken or faulty I don't touch it anymore.

On the other hand if your pots are scratchy or the pickup doesn't work then go for it. I prefer things that I don't have to solder so that makes it either EMG pickups, premps etc  or Six String Supplies prewired harnesses and a set of pickups in the event that I do have to change anything out of necessity

The thing that eventually led to me deciding to leave was that the band leader was happy to take gigs 3 hours away as he thought that he was getting us work, not realising that the rest of us were trying to juggle work and family life. At the time he wasn't working so had all of the time in the world to gig at the weekends.

When he did get a job, the first thing he told us was that he couldn't take gigs any more than 2 hours away and that was what really annoyed me. The fact that he thought that we were just making a big deal over nothing when he, himself, wasn't working, only to realise that he couldn't commit to long distance gigs when he did start working.

That was what ultimately made me leave the band. the fact that one gig in particular had caused so many issues because of the distance involved, including the singer and drummer refusing to do it, but he couldn't see that and afterwards couldn't admit that he had been wrong. Had the gig in question come up after he had begun working again, he would never have taken it and the issues that it cause would never have arisen.

Friday Gig - Aberdeen, Saturday gig - Bowness on Windermere! so the travelling was Falkirk > Aberdeen > Falkirk > Bowness on Windermere > Falkirk

I've been playing since 1987 and gigging since 1993 and I quit my band last weekend.

I don't miss it yet. Unless I had songs to learn for a gig then I never picked my bass up at home and I haven't done so far but then this is the quiet time for a wedding band so I wouldn't normally have been playing much at this time of year.

It's funny but I remember reading an interview with Jack Bruce many years ago when he said that he never played at home, only when gigging and remember thinking that I couldn't imagine not playing every day (I was about 14 at the time and still driving my neighbours crazy with my playing)

I plan to keep a hold of all of my gear, I don't need the money for anything else and anything I own has a good chance of being worth more the longer I keep a hold of it.

To be honest I have been thinking about quitting gigging for about 18 months now but something that happened during last year made my mind up so I decided to keep going to the end of the year as our singer had just qualified as a teacher and was leaving so I wanted us all to see out the year together.

My wife thinks I'll miss it but to be honest I haven't enjoyed gigging for a long time now. the best part of gigging is having a laugh on the way to the gig and socialising with my band mates before the gig and at the break. The playing element became a chore.

I have lots of plans to do stuff at the weekends that I haven't been able to do before. No more missing friend's weddings, family events, celebrations, my wife having to go to everything on her own. I can finally make plans to do things and not have to worry about bookings coming in at the last minute. No more using annual leave to take half and full day holidays to go to gigs half way across the country, I can actually use them to go on holiday.

The other thing was that during the Christmas run I was working Monday to Friday, taking a half day on a Friday, driving up to Aberdeen, gigging on the Friday and Saturday, back down the road at 4am on the Sunday and then back into work on the Monday. That was for the whole of December.

I had a Lethal Weapon moment when I realised that I'm getting too old for this sh!t. Gone are the days when the gigs were on my doorstep, at least two thirds of the gigs in the diary were at least 2 hour's drive away and I just don't want to do it anymore.

For the first time in 30 years I can do what I want at the weekend, get to my bed at a reasonable hour and go back into work on a Monday having had a proper sleep at the weekend ready for the week ahead and not fall asleep at my desk.

No more arguments, band politics, crappy WhatsApp messages when I am on holiday, no more stress

2 hours ago, badger said:

this is true of music from any time period though - if you go back to a top 40 from the 70s, 80s, or whenever then there's only going to be a few songs that are still popular.

 

 

What I was implying is that the OP has been asked to learn songs from the past few years whereas my experience is that the older classics are the ones that most people want. Newer stuff is more disposable and easier to go out of favour.

There's always been garbage in the charts, it's not a new thing, so only a select few make it through to become classics, even some of the garbage 😁

The problem with modern music is that it's popular for about 5 minutes then it gets forgotten about.

We've tried to keep up with the charts but you're lucky if you get 4 or 5 months out of a song before no-one wants to know.

Tik tok, Instagram and tv/movies are giving younger people access to older songs so we try to keep up with those

The first time I saw them on Thomann they were £300 when the Jazz was £400. Shortly after this the price jumped up to match the Jazz. I thought at that time that I had missed the boat for getting one cheap until they discounted all of them to £259

Here are pictures of a Melody Grabber fretless I had a few years back for reference. As MoonBassAlpha mentioned, it did look more like pine than maple but the routs look pretty much identical

I have a theory that these have been put on the websites as bait or testers as it were.

The company have had a few ideas about what would work next so they post pictures of different potential models. They then sit back and wait for the ensuing debate amongst us here and over on Talkbs. They gather the information and then decide on the design, layout etc of the final product.

No focus groups or test groups to pay for, they merely let us decide what we want.

Then again this could backfire as very few of us know what we want 😂

I was on the way to a gig with our guitarist and he put this on. I didn't recognise it so I asked if it was John Meyer. His reply was "John Meyer wishes he was this good".

In the past I would go through basses so quickly that some basses wouldn't even make it as far as their first gig before I had sold them and bought something else

I always change my strap buttons to Gotoh EP-B3, with a touch of superglue on the screw threads before screwing them in, plus Fender rubber Grolsch type washers

Thanks for the recommendations - I'm in Falkirk so most of these places are within a short car or train journey away.

That's very kind of you. I am going to be in Aberdeen in a couple of week's time but I don't have space in the car for all of the gear and 3 basses.

A couple of times now my EBMM Sterling's jack has stopped outputting sound and instead emitted a high pitched squeal.

I've found threads on the sound cutting out but not squeeling. Is this likely to be the usual failed jack socket issue?

It happened during the first song in the set last night so I unplugged it and used my Sire D5 for the rest of the night.

I've changed the battery and tried different cables but it's definitely something wrong with the bass itself.

Secondly I ma terrible with a soldering iron so does anyone know anyone in the Central Scotland area who could repair this for me?

for me a song is always going to be easier to learn if I actually like it and harder if I don't

leaning towards...

dipping a toe into...

pedant alert

We've been doing Le Freak for years now and I was starting to get bored with it. This has given me a few ideas. 😀

I received an email at 3.30am a few nights ago asking to confirm my Facebook account with a code so I immediately changed my passwords for Facebook and Instagram just in case. Looks like it was a similar scam to this one.

I have a Sterling HH but only use the bridge pickup. I only wanted a single humbucker model but this one came up for sale at a good price

The best two HH basses I ever played were these. The G&L was stunning and the Warwick almost played itself it was so good

I'd echo the comments above about having it set up, new set of strings etc then play as much as you can.

My first bass at age 12 was a Marlin Slammer which was, like yours, a precision copy. I never changed the strings, cleaned it or anything until I got a new bass at 16. All I did was play it as much as I could to the annoyance of the neighbours 😂

Unless the bass is unplayable, don't be in too much of a rush to change it. Just play the hell out of it as much as you can to learn as much as you can.

During that time, use the forum to learn as much as you can about playing, bass players to listen out for, what gear is hot and what is not then when the time comes further down the line, by all means treat yourself to something else.

At 48 I have had around 160+ basses pass through my hands. the expensive ones aren't always the best and the raved about ones aren't always the best for you either.

To illustrate this, I currently have the following:

Harley Benton JB75 - for practicing in the house

Warmoth / Status Graphite Jazz bass

EBMM Stingray HH

Sire D5

Squier 40th Anniversary Precision bass

The Squier was the cheapest and the Musicman Sterling is worth the most but I happily gig both of them. I am currently looking into getting myself a Sire fretless as well.

If your Encore was set up with my choice of strings, I'd happily gig that as well. I think that if most of us were to be honest with ourselves, the main reason we buy more expensive basses is because we can afford to. Lower end / Budget Basses are infinitely better today than they were when I was young - for example, the chrome peeled off the bridge on my Marlin Slammer.