KingMacca

Lots of good things to look at in here thanks. Somebody said buy a squier and with the savings get decent lessons - it's actually a good shout, I'd like to get to the next level before I treat myself to a new bass I think give me a reward to aim for. Another good point is why not just buy custom instead of off the shelf - some of those ACG's are just so desirable, and for the price I think are probably a better buy. So in the end I got what I wanted out of the thread thanks

[quote name='Musicman20' timestamp='1357812445' post='1928655'] Perhaps in this case you have too much headroom? [/quote] I was wondering if this was the case - but not had the chance to (honestly) get the master vol on the head past 2 with the gain set to where I want it. I'm basically driving the channel pretty hard to get close to where I want it so I can't turn up the master too much. I need to have another go at getting it set up properly when I'm in a rehearsal room I think.

Can someone who has played or owned these basses give me some opinions please? http://www.gak.co.uk/en/fender-american-vintage-75-jazz-bass-natural-maple/15812 http://www.thomann.de/gb/fender_squier_vint_mod_jazz_nt.htm The fender is obviously significantly more expensive than the squier, but to my very novice touch and feel I couldn't find anything radically different about them other than the name on the headstock and a higher end finish on the Fender. I really like that style of Jazz and almost bought a 2nd hand Fender recently until someone let me play their Squier which was virtually identical. What am I missing here? or am I missing nothing except brand name snobbery? ta

When using my GK MB800 head on the 2nd channel with a lot of gain, it just doesn't seem to go far enough in to the 'bite' of the sound I'd like out of it. I play a Yamaha Jazz mostly on neck pup with not a lot of treble dialed in. This goes through a 2x12 GK cab. The tone does bite when I hit it hard enough but I'd like a bit more of the bite to be there, more of the time - if that makes sense, not just when i'm spanking it. I'm now wondering if I'm just expecting the wrong thing from the head as I see they've released the same head but with a tube pre amp on it - doh Anyone else use an MB head and gets a big biting GK tone out of their 2nd channel? Maybe I'm just dialing it in wrong, or should play more bridge with more treble, no horn etc?

superb bass and keys - not too fond of his bass tone, just a touch brighter would have been great but it might just be a bad recording - didn't think the guitarist lent too much to it though

Thanks for watching and the feedback chaps! We're all loving it big time. I think we stretch what little talent we have quite well - we're in the "next new songs" phase at the minute which is a right pain when there's 5 of you and you all have different backgrounds and tastes(as I'm sure you're probably aware of!) Any advice on what I should do next to progress as a bass player? My current practice routine is currently based around the bass guitar exercises for dummies book(yeah I know), but it's pretty decent content wise. I've also ordered the MarloweDK slap bass dvd as I've watched a few of his lessons on youtube and they're pretty decent. I've not had any lessons but I have jammed with family members who are muso's with over *a lot* of experience amongst them and been given tips and good advice. I learn a lot every time I jam with any of those guys as my game has go up so much lol. In practise I'm currently just running scales, patterns to play in scale over chord tones, scale runs etc, ear training, warmups and learning new songs and blasting through some that I like. My goal is to be competent at playing songs that I play in the band, but also when I'm jamming with the band, family or friends I want to be able to keep up and even lead the jam where possible. I've found that nothing is as good as getting out there and playing with better musicians, but are there any good "must have" skills/resources that would really help? I've got plenty of time to learn [quote name='Oopsdabassist' timestamp='1357722562' post='1927102'] ooh just listened to some of your other songs on You tube.....Times Like These...well played sir! I introduced that song to an old band and none of em could get that 7/8 time sig nailed [/quote] hehe it's a good tune to play. It's only tricky the first 2-3 times you attempt to play the intro together, but it does click eventually and is actually not that bad once you've nailed it. Only 2 parts of the song are 7/8, the intro and bridge part after 2nd chorus, rest is 4/4 - so it's like 'let's just make it through to normal time again' when you're in 7/8 timing. We do cheat slightly, the drummer is meant to play an off time hit in the 7/8 timing, that was killing us, so he doesn't play it but you can hardly tell. You can hear my oldest brother at the end of that video - he gigged that song for a long time - say "it's actually a really hard song to play that" - whooop!

Started playing bass last year after having a go on a very old Fender Jazz and found I loved it to bits. I'm 34 and have not played anything other than computer based stuff on Amiga's etc back in my teens. Naturally the missus says it's a midlife crisis but nothing ventured n that. So after playing the Fender in my parents house, I went in to work the next day and stopped in at cash converters on the way. I bought a Yamaha rbx 374 that they had on the wall and went in to work, by the time I got home after work I'd organised 4 other work colleagues 'who sort of played a bit in my teens' or 'haven't played in over 20 years' to go to a rehearsal room near by in 2 days time. We learned Dakota - Stereophonics and Wishing Well - Free, turned up and played them absolutely terribly for about 4 hours but had loads of fun. We carried on rehearsing every week, bought better gear and eventually a few months of generally just having a great time in the rehearsal room and jamming, getting drunk, blowing off work stress - other people in work basically organised a function room for us in a nice pub and invited themselves along to see what we had been up to for months! Someone filmed the gig on their mobile and I've put the video's on youtube for other members of the band and work peeps that couldn't make it to see - I've linked the playlist of the ones that got filmed - what do you guys think of my playing? Any tips/advice for me to use/learn from? There's a stack of mistakes(especially mine in The Seeker where my brain just switched off!) but we pulled it off and the 50+ people seemed to genuinely enjoy it [url="http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvo1OCAVgr0hM-Xs3N5JY9yU2eO-__Rjq"]http://www.youtube.c...5JY9yU2eO-__Rjq[/url] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFUygkQowio&list=PLvo1OCAVgr0hM-Xs3N5JY9yU2eO-__Rjq&index=1[/media] All feedback welcome cheers

update for anyone watching this thread. I never sent this back in the end. I took the back plate off the cab and noticed that the problem was the massive capacitor on the horn channel when the horn switch was enabled - it basically melted the capacitor leg in to the board (although still works). So I cut a leg on the horn switch to permanently disable it regardless of the switch position. I've since used the cab 3-4 times for long periods and it's absolutely fine. The horn was too harsh sounding imo anyway so no loss really. I have mailed GK on all the email addresses I could find to ask about purchasing a replacement board direct but I've gotten no reply in days so have given up. I don't think they have a UK site and I can't find anyway to get in touch with a UK contact for them. Bit of a mixed bag then - good value but poor quality GK kit. Useless trying to get hold of GK direct (I'm UK based, might be different if you're in the states). I hope nothing else goes wrong with my other GK kit!

I spoke to them yesterday - their GK guy was on his lunch but it was a good chat and they're looking in to it. He was as confused as I was about how the board can melt though - very strange. Going to ring them back today.

For people just buying these units, don't be put off! They are fantastic in every way, I just think I got a problematic one.

I took the back plate off and there is a long white component that links the snapon to the jack inputs, the right hand leg of that component has basically melted the board - looks like it has gotten way too hot. I'm slightly worried now as to why this has happened - I tried the head through an ashdown 515 passive cab I had lying around and basically drove it very hard for a long time, but it doesn't appear to have had any similar problems with overheating etc So I hope its just the cab being faulty and not the head pushing out too much power. Anyone know if I can order a replacement back plate for the 212 cab from GK? I can see the fault and I don't fancy shipping the whole unit back to Germany this week when it's just a 3 minute job to replace the whole back plate.

Hello folks - I've had an MBE 212 for a few months, only rehearsed with it a handful of times. I bought a new GK MB800 head to pair with it I was using the dire ashdown little giant(orange). Both GK items are fantastic. My entire rig including Yamaha bass is a one trip to the car carry and sounds great for my needs. However - rehearsing the other night my cab started smoking about 10 minutes in to using it and it literally filled the entire rehearsal room with acrid burning smoke. We stopped playing, I flicked everything off and cleared the smoke, then had a sniff around the cab, the backplate appears to have had some sort of fire! The cab worked fine when I tested it, but that was the end of rehearsal. Emailed Thomann and I've got to package it up, take it to the post office and they are sending it back to GK to get fixed. I am gutted. The cab sounds quite boomy at volume, even with the great EQ on the MB800 dialled out most of the mid/bottom. The cab is still very new but as I am so happy with it in every other regard I didn't want to add the padding as others have done in other threads. I think it was a wise decision not to mod it anyway, as it would have burned the building down had the padding material caught fire! I suspect that there is a poor quality component behind the jack plate that has let go which doesn't inspire me as I've spent almost £1k on Gallien Krueger kit in the past few months :S The cab is the 8ohm version rated at 600w and I was using my brand new GK MB800 head with it(one cab) for the first time in rehearsal. gutted. Anyone else had any problems with this cab? I was going to buy the GK 210 to stack with the 212 but Thomann no longer sell it, then this happened and I'm now not sure if I'm going to keep any of my GK kit, even though I love the tone, weight, price, power - everything about the GK kit. Chris