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Ed_S

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  1. Heh, I'm tempted to go and get an isopropyl alcohol wipe for my monitor after having that on it Different strokes innit.. some people like the smell of an old library, and some like the smell of a new bookshop. I like the new smell. Unless it's a toaster. New toasters smell terrible. But I'm still not buying a second hand toaster.
  2. Aah, in that sense my personal preference is to look for any bass arriving brand new in its box - extra points for intact factory tape/seal/staples - from an authorised dealer with full warranty support. Fakes and scammers aside, I've heard far too many tales of the weird and wonderful things people do to their basses (like oiling the fretboard with their own nasal sebum, for example) to find the second hand market in any way appealing.
  3. I got my first 5 (a trans-red Jackson C5A, which I kinda wish I still had) very soon after starting playing, and my first gigging band was a duo where I accompanied an acoustic-guitarist-singer-songwriter friend from school. She was a 'proper' singer - done her grade 8 and all that - and she'd see where her voice felt strongest that day as she warmed up... and then change key/capo accordingly without a great deal of warning. Having a 5 made that a much easier gig to deal with. There was a 10 year period in my metal band where, despite all the songs up to that point having been written on a 5, I stopped gigging with them due to a 4 string P being the only thing my lower back was comfortable with at the time. I enjoyed playing a 4 in its own right, but now my 5s are lighter and more sensibly shaped (as am I, and my back is a bit happier for it) I hope I can stick with the 5s going forward, as they're definitely what I'm most at-home with. I've seen a much greater number of 7 string guitars on the heavier-music scene recently than I ever have before, and it seems to follow in my very unscientific observation that in bands where the guitarist plays a 7, the bassist usually has at least a 5. Perhaps one reason that there are a few more around? Our two have just gone for a 7 and a baritone respectively, but when they tried to sneak the songs currently played in C# standard down to B, the singer told them to get stuffed, so they're back on their 6s and Drop pedals for those. I got rid of the Drop from my board when I returned to playing 5s, so I'm back to a bit of transposing as I go.
  4. I’ve used both and would use both again quite happily. Of the two, I have a slight preference for Bax if things are in stock and it’s just a box-shifting exercise, as I’ve found them very efficiently geared up for that. Thomann are indeed also a safe bet.
  5. I admittedly have limited experience, but from that limited experience I agree. A few years back I had a SR5 that looked nice and had a very comfy neck, but was a bit of a slab, kinda heavy with it and suffered from a weak top couple of strings. Just a bit of a ‘meh’ bass. Still have a pic.. Now I’ve got a SR5 Special and it’s nicely contoured, looks and feels great, weighs 8.3lb and sounds absolutely spot-on. Wasn’t cheap, but it’s so much better - I have no regrets.
  6. Didn't like reading the dots.
  7. I've found both the Markbass CMD121p and Fender Rumble 500 to be great combo options. They're convenient and very capable standalone, and both have matching cabinets to add 'more of the same' if needed down the road. Where heads and cabs are concerned, I'd generally recommend a similar end result; a compact 500W head in your preferred flavour, with as good a 1x12 or 2x10 cab as you can afford to begin with and the option to add another identical cab in future. I know a lot of people get very good results with the Trace Elf and therefore understandably recommend it, but I tried one with my pair of Barefaced One10s and whilst the tone was quite nice, it couldn't produce anywhere near the volume I needed.
  8. If you're in a 'tallica tribute... M&S.
  9. We don't routinely record rehearsals, but have always recorded auditions so we're free to just play, but can then listen back at home to find out exactly what was going on. One singer, who wasn't comedically noteworthy but absolutely wasn't getting the gig on vocal merit, asked for the recordings. We didn't think that was an unreasonable request so clipped out the best take of each song, polished them up (as much as you ever can with a stereo mp3 from a field recorder in the middle of a rehearsal room) and sent them over, along with only a fairly brief "thanks for coming and nice to meet you, but we're going to keep on looking", since we assumed the recordings would explain all. They were fine with that - thanked us for our time and said it had been fun - but to our surprise also said they thought the recordings were great and asked whether they could use them as a demo to send to other bands. 🤷‍♂️
  10. We auditioned a guy for lead vocals who learned a couple of our original songs and sang them perfectly out of step with the music. It was quite impressive really - like taking the multitrack session and just dragging the vocals a couple of seconds to the right. The natural reaction was to try and 'correct' the music to match the vocals, but we held out and it remained perfectly wrong throughout. The vocals for one track actually concluded acapella after the rest of us had played the last note, and even that didn't get a glimmer of concern.
  11. I've returned stuff to Bax before without any problems or drama - last time was a bass in early Jan '23. Just clicked a button and filled in a form, printed a label, dropped the box off at the post office, gave it a week or two and the money reappeared. The time before that was similarly uneventful but long enough ago that they were still sending couriers to pick stuff up at that point, so ironically it was probably more of a drag as I had to wait in for a day to get the thing on its way. A recent order had some strange tracking events meaning it wasn't clear whether it would arrive on the expected day, so I gave them a call to see if they knew anything more as the sender than I could see as the recipient. The phone was answered reasonably quickly and the guy I spoke to confirmed that they'd had a problem at the warehouse and gave me a revised delivery date. It turned out to be accurate and the item was perfect.. also cheaper than anywhere else I could get it from by a substantial margin.
  12. Yeah, I’ve had that happen before. Also had one with two grooves for the strings to run in, which gripped the thicker of the strings tight at the same taper point since the groove was only wide enough for its thinnest section. Took a bit of strength to get the string out, but it was an easy enough fix - just turned the top of the retainer through 90 degrees so the grooves were parallel to the nut and no longer involved with the strings.
  13. Ed_S

    5 to 4 on

    Yup, that was my experience when switching back to a P from the pointy 5ers. Sound techs started to just instinctively make it sound like I was playing a bass, instead of trying to give me a clanky, percussive, nu-metal-ish tone that many seemed to feel was how the owner of a pointy, black, 5 string bass would want to sound. Guess I'll be having those conversations again now.
  14. Ed_S

    5 to 4 on

    I played all 5s for the first 10 years, then switched back to mostly 4s for 10 years, and now I'm back to all 5s again. At the point where I switched from 5s to 4s it was likewise caused by a Fender P - I ended up trying it, liking it, and buying it, but the plan was to just play it at home for a bit of fun. However, since my main 5s at the time were a Warwick Vampyre and a BC Rich Warlock, I thought it'd be funny to take the white/white/maple 4 string P to the next gig. Nobody blinked, it felt and sounded great, the sound guy didn't make the usual mess of it in the main mix, and my back didn't hurt at the end of the night. The pointy 5s left, and I was a P-bass guy. 10 years later, lockdowns hit and gigs stopped, and I found myself mostly reaching for my Ibanez SR 5er to the point where the 4s were feeling less 'me' every time I picked one up. By the time we went back to resume rehearsals it felt natural to take a 5, and now the 4s are gone and the 5s are all I use. The circle really is about to be complete, too, as right now there's a DHL van on its way to me bringing a Vampyre 5 like the one I used to have!
  15. I got a One10 as a birthday gift but had no real use for it at the time so just stored it. Then I started fairly aggressively downsizing my gear, which involved selling my 4x10 that lived at the rehearsal studios, so I bought another One10 to use with the one I already had and they became my rehearsal cabs. I was so impressed by their ability to replace a 4x10 that I sold my Fender Rumble 500 combo and ordered a Two10 to use for gigs. I know that technically they're engineered slightly differently, but with the same amp and the same bass playing with the same band in the same place in the same room, I honestly can't hear the technical differences. I use the 2x One10s stacked portrait with the vents on the bottoms and the Two10 also portrait with the vent on the bottom, so they're configured as similarly as possible. If you play some gigs where you'll only need a single One10, then the pair makes sense. If you'd always be taking the pair of One10s then the Two10 probably makes more sense unless having the size and weight split into two chunks is personally advantageous.
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