ThomBassmonkey

If a band spent £10,000 making a CD then it sold 0 copies, everyone just copied it, try telling that band that they haven't suffered a loss. If you think it's OK for you to pirate CDs (or any art) then you think it's OK for everyone to do it (unless you think you deserve special treatment?) so by justifying your own piracy, you're justifying that the above situation is fine. If you invest in a company then they tell you "We're now worth 5 times the amount you invested, but sorry, we'll only give you your initial investment back. But it's ok, you haven't lost anything", I assume you wouldn't be happy? What about sneaking into a cinema, is that OK? Why not screw over musicians completely, sneak into gigs for free, it's not a loss right?

This topic comes up fairly often and I'm always surprised that people are happy to pirate music (or any other products) when they're obviously interested enough in producing it to be on an entheusiast forum. I'm in the process of booking a gig for my band in Manchester. We won't get petrol (why would they pay us petrol when they have plenty of local bands?) but if there's a decent crowd there (which I'm assured there will be) it's not a problem because we can make money on our CDs to pay for petrol. If people copy our CDs instead of buying, we won't make any money and we won't be playing Manchester again. We lose out on a potential fanbase and potential fans lose out on a band they might like. I'm sure big bands don't need petrol money but why are they any less deserving of the money their art is making?

He must've forked out a fair bit, pitch shifters are notoriously dodgy on bass due to the long wavelength of the notes. That or he sounds.....uh...."extremely not good". Either way, it seems pointless to me. I can imagine for something like fast riffing when the guitarist drop Ds his guitar without a care in the world (assuming you don't have a D-tuner or the capability to reliably drop D quickly) but for anything else it just seems like a waste of time and sacrificing the sound of your gear for no real advantage.

It depends. There's some songs my band has that have got to the stage of being played live and I still don't have a bassline I'm happy with and there's others that I play along with the first time I hear it and it's like I already know the bassline, it feels so natural. It totally depends on a) my mood and how "into" the song I am.

[quote name='pobrien_ie' timestamp='1359553241' post='1956480'] Sorry to hear that. Unfortunately I don't think there's anything a moderator can do to help. I think the T's and C's clearly state BC is not responsible. Did you use paypal or anything else that might have offered you some protection? [/quote] Mods can't do anything legally but they do hold some sway within the BC community and even if nothing else, they can stop the offending member trading over BC again. I got sold a bass which then needed over £100 of repairs. I went ahead after speaking to the seller and he agreed to cover half the costs. After getting the repairs sorted, he ignored anything I sent to him. To cut a long story short, instead of sticking to what he agreed to, he'd gone around telling as many people as would listen that I was getting the bass modified and was expecting him to pay half for the mods (despite him seeing the reciept). He still owes me £50 but he won't be trading on BC again and I did get a long winded and totally pointless reply from him trying to worm his way out of the mess he'd caused.

The singer in my band has a Squier J that he's de-fretted himself (and didn't fill the holes) and the neck is now basically U shaped (I think it could double as a bow in the hands of a decent archer). Add that to the fact that it's a 4 string that's been modified (badly) into a 5 string (drilled headstock for the extra machine head, badly cut uneven nut and a bridge that's been fitted wonky), it's pretty nasty. I've played quite a few that were terrible but they're usually in bad shops so I don't know if the bass is actually a dog or if it just needs a bit of TLC. The Warwick Thumb 5 BO I had was pretty bad when I bought it. The neck was so twisted I had to pick between half inch action under the E string or for it to feel playable to me, the G string would be almost resting on the frets unless I set up the bridge seriously wonky (and even then the action was far from consistent over a string). But that was fixed before I sold it on and turned it into possibly the best playing bass I've ever had..

I don't really look in that section much. If I scroll down too far I'm scared I'll end up in the basses for sale section and find myself with a considerably thinner wallet and a spare bass I don't need. I know a basschatter or two has been to see me, unfortunately I'm usually too busy running around at gigs (one of us in JWP has to be organised at gigs) so don't really get much time to speak to people. If anyone does ever come to one of my gigs, be sure to shout up and I'll definitely have a bit of a natter when possible! I've also gigged with a few bassists that are on here too which is cool since there's usually more time to speak between soundchecks and the actual gig.

Too old is when you're dead. If you like a bass, can afford it and want it, get it.

What's wrong with it? "It makes me squirm" isn't even justifying why you think it's wrong. There's nothing wrong with referring to inanimate objects as "she" or even naming them IMO. Posting publically on a forum that (I assume) will contain a lot of people that do what you don't like accusing them of not being in touch of reality or asking them to stop really makes you look very judgemental without any kind of justification.

That's odd. I'll ask Jim about it. We did have a website, but that's down for some reason now, I don't know about the FB and Myspace things, me and the other two from JWP play more in a session musician capacity so we're not really involved in the organisation.

Attaching the strap to the headstock would move the bass further to your right. If you want to move the bass to the left, you'd need to move the strap further right. The only way to do this really is by moving the strap pin out, there's certain strap locks that can move the strap an inch or so to the right or if the horn's long, you could try moving it further in towards the body. You might lead yourself to have balancing issues with the bass though which could create more problems.

Personally I'd suggest going with an 8Ohm 212 if weight/size is an issue, they'll be louder than 210s and smaller and lighter than 410s. Going 8Ohm also allows you to add another at a later date, though if you get the right cab, that shouldn't be an issue. I've never struggled using one of my GK NEO212s at any gig from small acoustic shows to outdoor festivals. The model of cab is more important than the speaker configuration though. I'm sure there's 1x10s out there that can go louder than some 4x10s. Speaker config is only useful for a rule of thumb impression, it's by no means definitive.

Thanks for the feedback on the band, I'm glad you enjoy it! We do an odd mix of covers, all in our own style. We're not particularly Zydeco any more, that was the initial intention but it's ended up far more rocky. We just play to have fun and the crowd seems to enjoy it so it's good all-round! If anyone is going to the Gloucester Cajun and Zydeco festival, we're playing on the Friday. I'll put forwards the suggestions to him, I don't know how he'd feel about getting an electronic accordion, he still does acoustic gigs in his other projects. I think maybe a feedback destroyer, A/B switch and a 2 channel EQ/DI would be the best bet for him, it'd be cheaper than a new accordion and make swapping accordions/inexperienced sound engineers less hassle. I'll just leave this here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFWMgwPgstw

Yeah, fingers crossed we'll be able to come up with something. There's lots of things that would be an improvement, it's just trying to do it as cheap as possible. Thanks, it's good fun! It's been an interesting process too, it has roots in Zydeco and the guitarist and drummer had never even heard of it, so it's been fun putting together something that's based in that but feels far more rocky. I describe it now as being almost ska punk but with an accordion instead of a brass section.

I play a variety of my band's songs using various techniques like 2 hand tapping and slap (yep, in my band's songs, they're not really showy though, just melodies or percussive). I've not tried a bass in a shop in a long time though, I'm happy with the basses I've got and tend to buy 2nd hand so I don't see the point wasting shop staff's time trying out their gear.

I wish it were possible, but I know for a fact that it's not realistic for him to spend that kind of money at the moment however much he'd want to (and he does, he's definitely not just being cheap). He really doesn't like the accordion he's struggling with but needs must so he's got to use it until he can afford another.

That'd potentially fix the feedback issue, it doesn't address that he'd still need a decent EQ anyway though. I'll definitely bring it up next time I speak to him though, see what he thinks. He's had problems with his internal mics (on both accordians) more than once so it's definitely something to look into. Thanks for the suggestion.

The microphonic pickups don't agree with your average rock venue in my experience. He's using internal pickups (I can't remember exactly what, but iirc they're basically a 58 diaphram) rather than an external mic, he moves about far too much to be stuck on an external anyway. The EQ's there for two reasons, mainly because one of his accordions (dunno why I was spelling it with an a in my previous post) is relatively cheap and he uses the EQ on it to try and get it sounding better, it sounds very thin and gets lost quickly in the mid. Secondly the volume difference between them is rather huge and he used to use one DI and switch leads on the accordians so he was using it for a volume boost too. Bearing in mind we play a lot of dingy rock venues, a lot of engineers haven't even EQd an accordian before, never mind enough to know what they're doing with it and it's rare they even know what they're supposed to sound like so ideally it'd be good to have an EQ that we can set and send a signal that we know will sound OK before the engineer gets it instead of totally relying on them to get a usable sound out of a sub par accordian. Obviously in an ideal world he'd get a new accordian but lack of funds takes that option off the table for the immediate future. To give you an idea, here's an idea of our sound (at a big Zydeco festival so they did a good job with the accordian, though it's recorded on the camera): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D82xWeWjlvM

One of my bands has an accordian player and last night reminded me how painful it can be to be in a gigging rock band with an accordian. There's various problems but the main one is feedback. Currently Jim (the accordisnist) owns two accordians, an awful EQ (danelectro) and his jack leads. One of the accordians doesn't sound great anyway and he's been using the EQ to try and fix that but with limited results and the pedal has it's own problems (reliability and destroying the signal). Me and the guitarist both have experience in studios and effects and we've been trying to think of a cheapish way to sort out the feedback (which affects both his accordians) and try and get him an EQ. The best thing we've thought of so far is for him to get a dual channel rack EQ with built in DIs. Hopefully giving him his own decent EQ would mean that he could try and figure out the problem frequencies for the feedback and tweak them without spending ages with engineers doing it and also let him get a sound for his cheaper accordian that sounds much better. The DIs would just be there for simplicity, turn up to a gig, point out where they are to the engineer, go (currently, partially because of the problems with his accordians, we go through a chain of DI boxes before the complete signal gets working). The other options are a feedback destroyer or noise gate (which could work fairly well with an accordian since they're not the most dynamic of instruments anyway.) Are there any other options? Or specific ideas for EQs/DIs or other helpful gear? Bear in mind that price is going to be a big factor in what he gets. Thanks

I'd be up for this, would only be able to use it for a song or two as I need a low B for my band but it'd be fun! Plenty of people around the midlands too so it'd be easy to move on around here if people are up for it.

Quick update on this: I used the Polytune at a gig last night and couldn't be happier. I can see the polytune mode without my glasses on (my sight isn't terrible, but it's bad enough that I can't easily read things on the floor) and the two dots make up for the fact it's a bit blurry (if anything's out, the wider size makes it more obvious what). In single string mode (which it changes to automatically) it's perfectly clear. Polytune mode is great for clicking on then spending 5 seconds checking that you're all in tune (it's not as accurate as single string mode but it's more accurate than other tuners I've used anyway). Otherwise there's nothing really exceptional, it just seemed solid. I was in tune, it muted when I pressed it, the bypass worked, definitely no complaints. As for Boss tuners, just because they're the standard, it doesn't make them the best. On [url=http://www.bossus.com/gear/productdetails.php?ProductId=1046]their own product page[/url] it says they're accurate to +/- 1 cent.the polytune (in single string mode) is accurate to +/- 0.5 cent. A brief look at the prices on google shows them at about the same, it's a no-brainer to go for the more accurate tuner that has a polyphonic mode and true bypass over the one that has no benefits IMO.

It doesn't sound like a good situation if you're paying out more for this stuff than the other band members, maybe it's worth having a chat about it. My band pays for it's self, we tend to spend whatever we have on promo, acoustic gigs and a few festivals and stuff pay the bills. For proper PR, it can cost thousands a month. Sites like Bandzoogle make a band website easy to keep going and relatively cheap. Everything else kind of depends on what your audience is and how much you think you'll benefit from them.

I've not read BGM in a while, but since Top Gear's been mentioned and I watch that and don't read BGM, I'll say why (apologies if there's been a similar post, I've only read the first 7 pages or so of this). TG is entertainment, it's about cars and does include some factual things but it's primarily a general entertainment show that can be watched by anyone, even if they're not into cars. Lots of entheusiast mags can go too far the other way and concentrate on presenting facts and figures, interviews with respected players etc but lose the entertainment side. If you can strike a good balance between articles such as interviews with well known bassists and technical articles with sillier things that would appeal to more people, then it would probably appeal to a wider audience. People just starting out are unlikely to buy the mag because of one or two bits of tab that they could find online and interviews with Pino (who a lot, especially younger players, wouldn't have heard of) and reviews of £3000 basses (basses just aren't as exciting as a car that can be raced or wheelspun). Coming on a forum like this is a good thing though and has my respect. BGM doesn't have the best rep here and signing up and facing up to that, offering us to give our opinions is admirable and hopefully it'll help turn opinions on the mag.

Pretty much what Dood said. Channel 2 isn't designed to be a distortion channel, it's identical to channel 1, it just gives you footswitchable gain options. They're not really channels anyway, just different gain stages (again as Dood said).

His website reads more like he's a paranoid schizophrenic than a serious musician. Between the constant flicking between first and third person and all the conspiracy theories, it doesn't look like it's been produced by someone that takes his craft seriously and wants to make a good impression.