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Some material of possible interest here: Fender stock bass strings in the 50s/early 60s

Could it be, perhaps, because they are being transcribed by bass players?

Been looking for a backup bass with a maple board and stumbled upon a modified Chris Aiken Squier on eBay. Looks decent, accidentally won it, think I’m happy! Should I be? I have no idea! Anyone got one? Any opinions? Anyway, here it is... http://r.ebay.com/4WBUpC

...and actually, I couldn't be happier. It was like working with a psycho, Rainman and a guy who couldn't get off the fence. Huge weight off my shoulders. The first thing they did was remove my admin rights from Facebook, to a band I set up and a page I set up. I'm still shaking my head at that one, but hey-ho. What was I going to do? Remove a couple of pictures? Amazingly, I've had two offers from other bands since I quit less than 90 minutes ago. Clearly doing something right, perhaps the old act were just too stupid to see that.

Hi Al, I've had plenty of fretless basses, and I try to play ONLY fretless now, so I use them for everything. I like Steve Bailey's approach:'you don't HAVE to play it like a fretless'. The Portamento is so versatile - front pup sounds just like a Precision, back pup just like a Jazz, both together are tone heaven, and the piezo - played with the thumb over the second octave and tone halfway off sounds just like a dB (to my ears anyway). I just experimented with strings to get to tapes. Tried Rotosound Trubass and hated them. The labellas have the ideal compromise for me - smooth like flats, but with the steel core growl. I only got a five string cos I knew the four would be too narrow for me. I string it E-C, and the top C sounds like a classical guitar on the piezo (a bit). Hope that's covered your questions. The Portamento definitely works, but for me, part of the learning curve was buying, trying, and selling many fretless basses to find what I did and didn't want. Enjoy your search!

I will take a passionate young band, giving it large, over a bunch of session pro's going through there perfect motions, every time.

The singer/guitarist in my pub outfit is terrible for downloading chords and not playing with the recording to check they’re correct. Fast forward to rehearsal room and he’s got the wrong chords etc etc. The nail in the coffin from me was when we were doing All I Want For Christmas a few years ago and I vetted some chord charts and sent him the one which was impressively accurate. Sent it to him 5 weeks before the rehearsal.....the night before he messages me saying he had a different chord chart......about ten minutes later he says he found another chord chart and then later another chord chart. As long as it works with the vocals, our fiddle player sings too and she’s got a great voice, I told him and suggested he play with the recording to double check. At rehearsal he hadn’t a clue and was way off. It was made worse when I asked for his guitar and played the chords with the singer and it was bang on. Now I steer clear of songs which require him to do anything complicated!

This past Saturday night. " I know that bear is in here somewhere and I'm feeling frisky" Blue

Thats no argument. Almost everyone is influenced by someone throughout most of musical history

Love my ACGs

... it seems neither did anyone else.

Enablers!

That's the spirit

my covert message was received! yes sure, ill post something on this thread as and when i do. i mainly baught it to make dubstep style synth sounds, not as a funky envelope filter. but we will see what it can do.

Deep Purple, Highway Star. Love this version as well.

As has been said previously, there's nothing nonsense about Jaco's playing, no accidents etc. Of course, towards the end of his life he fell apart and very much relied on his past to prop up his artistry to some degree, but he was ill. And suggesting that Jameson (whom I love a great deal) had some kind of rhythmic mastery over and above Jaco is just silly, they applied it in very different ways, but Jaco was an equal rhythm powerhouse, incredible drummer too (that's him drumming on Teen Town). It also seems that you're judging his playing on how you think the bass SHOULD be, whereas actually it's simply another instrument that allows the player to express themselves, its role has simply been dictated by western musical styles. He wrote the music, and so why wouldn't he step out and fulfil what he feels he needs to play, he's not doing it for anyone else other than him, whereas Jameson was on a wage, playing through songs that were just put in front of him on the music stand.....who knows what he would have done given full creative freedom. If you haven't already, listen to Jaco play through his Big Band albums, perhaps much more your thing, because it's a large band and he understands placement within a larger context. Weather Report was a much smaller band, and so more ability to step out, fill space (where appropriate) and have fun. But just to further the conversation, I do love leaving this video hanging around :): Just to be clear, i'm not saying that everyone should like Jaco, obviously not.....but appreciate him for what he was in total, not simply that he played music you don't like. Si

Thank you!

I've done it for you For anyone else, go to your profile, edit profile and then check the enable status updates

Even though I mostly listen to funk and electronica I can't get enuff of Mastodon, Lamb of God, Rammstein, Sepultura (Max Cavalera era) and the Deftones. Mastodon's 'Once more round the sun ' and Leviathan are barely out of my in car CD player in particular

You need to go to your profile, in there is a button which says "enable status updates"

That Dry Cleaner From Des Moines clip is a 12 bar blues taken far out but there is nothing random about it. It isn't a Motown pop song. It is a Jazz blues and goes where it goes. It was clearly a showcase for Brecker and Jaco and Don Alias let go a bit. The rest of the gig was incredibly tasteful. In France The Kiss On Main Street is pure Jameson.

There is no nonsensical noodling in most of Jaco's work. If it sounds like nonsense, it is because you aren't hearing it. As a fan of some of the more extreme Jazz forms, my interest in Jaco wained a long time ago but, to continue your analogies, Jaco was pretty much Jameson plus. There isn't much that he does that isn't intensely melodic or riff orientated. Sometimes he went up his own arse a bit but that is the nature of improvisation; sometimes you fuck up. Jaco pushed the envelope. A lot of what he did had precedents but he just took it all further. Except the harmonics. That was all him.

Absolutely! But then sometimes taste goes out of the window... For example:

There’s enough music out there for everyone... I’ve found elements I like in all genres and had my own jazz funk moment but I now find it interminable and in some cases unlistenable. But when Jaco plays tastefully it’s fantastic.

Al the QSC is a whole lot more capable than the Wharfedale. I didn't think we were in that budget region. There's also the RCF to look at if that is your price range. Both fantastic speakers The Titan 's shortcomings are in the plastic mounded cab which resonates with high bass levels. My estimation is that at less than a metre from the drummer it won't need to be that loud though and it would be an order of magnitude better than the Behringer 205D in this respect. I still think it would do the original job of drummers monitor but you won't be playing bass straight through it. The advantage of any speaker with DSP is that they won't ever fart out. The limiters in the DSP will stop that happening, the QSC may even have multi channel limiters where the bass is limited separately, you'd have to look that up. If it has two channel mixing on the speaker the drummer could mix in the feed from the PA to their monitor. Dont believe the 1000W thing though, there isn't an 8" speaker on earth that could handle that. The figure you should be looking at is the output in dB which is way louder than you'd ever need,

You may have got in the slight window where I had allowed for all content (prior to it crashing the site), I'm just trying to turn it back again

This ad on Gumtree purports to be for an original 1960s set of Fender light gauge bass strings and gives the gauges as 50/64/80/95 - https://www.gumtree.com/p/guitar-instrument/1960-s-fender-bass-strings-genuine-new-old-stock-still-in-packaging-£95-ono/1272536060 1960's FENDER BASS STRINGS ‘GENUINE’ NEW OLD STOCK - STILL IN THEIR ORIGINAL PACKETS AND POLYTHENE SLEEVE! F-80 SET LIGHT GAUGE STAINLESS STEEL FLAT WIRE ELECTRIC BASS STRINGS 1st – G-.050, 2nd – D-.064, 3rd – A-.080 4th – E-.095.

It’s a very clever and useful device. If people catch on to this I could see it populating many a pedal board!

I love this band. In fact, I. love most of what Southern Lord release.

To be honest, I've not experienced any f**ting out - if you go direct in from a passive bass you can set it to instrument level input (as opposed to line) set it to Bass Amp (which is some digital sound processing - i.e. a preshaped curve) and tweak EQ I've had it at 12 o'clock on the volume setting for that channel and had my preamp at about 75% volume - there was no f**ting out - I had to stop there as the radiator was rattling off its brackets and books were falling off my shelf.. any more and the windows would have been out. No f**ting out at all.

I’m trying to reprogram my brain. As of tomorrow I’ll have 5 octavers! I’ve temporarily got down to 6 filters, at least until Friday!

Should be here next week to add to the other KMA stuff. Looking forward to trying it. I’ll have a look at Demon. Continuing with the German builders I have some Red Sun fX fuzzes on the way.

+1 Where do people find the time to discover these awful people? And where do people find the time to stick around long enough to get annoyed by them?

Everybody needs a shot of R and B, so come on down to my surgery ...

...and sometimes some people take the internet a little too seriously. These things come up on our recommendations cause click on them. If we didn't click on them YouTube's algorithm would soon give us many other recommendations. That guy seldom comes up on mine but he will now that I have looked at him once. He's good at what he does and a lot of people watch him. He must be doing something right.

You have to distinguish between 'entertainers' and musicians. There's a lot of pretty egoistic stuff on YouTube to wade through, and some of it is bxxxxy annoying, but as a learning resource it's still unequalled. Where else can you compare 8 bass players each doing their own covers of even fairly straightforward songs like Steely Dan's 'Josie' ? The general standard of bass playing is so high now compared to the average player 20 years ago it still amazes me, and I think the internet is the main reason. And some players are so good they don't need to go attention seeking - just check out anything where Rob Mullarkey is on the bass - what a supreme talent!

Just sold Jon My EBS TD650 Absolute gentleman and a pleasure to deal with. Great comms [unlike mine !!!!] Deal with confidence Thanks again Jon

The problem with a lot of XLR cable is that whoever makes them tends to cut all three conductors to the same length so any undue strain can snap either of the main signal wires. The secret is to make the signal wires about 2.5cm longer than the screen and fold them back into the shell. This way any strain is taken only by the screen which if properly soldered into pin 1 is much much stronger. I always sleeve the signal terminals with silicon rubber sleeves or heatshrink.

A driver upgrade may be possible, but you'd have to know the full set of T/S specs of the original to make that determination. As for a 212 versus a 112, the 212 will almost always sound better, no matter what the drivers are. For that matter virtually any two cabs together will sound better than either alone. That's a basic property of how speakers work. As for this: Changing from an 8 ohm to 4 ohm load will have little, if any, effect. Many factors can result in an improvement, but impedance is seldom one of them.

must admit I find it annoying when people don't reply, even if it's a "thanks for getting in touch" etc

The OP wrote about wanting better quality pickups in favour of fancy top wood. Well, I can say my Status and Overwater basses have both. Mind you they did cost a bit more than £500. I think they are worth every penny. It is always down to personal taste and who am I to say it's wrong to love a painted Fender. 80% of players can't be wrong. While I love my fancy topped basses there is also something quite special about a plain ash bodied bass. Just the simple clean lines of them look so good.

It's all choice I suppose. There's only so many colours. I like some but not all exotic wood basses. Not too keen on capped top basses, I don't know why but they seem fake to me, which is strange as I like " relic" basses. Same as most things in the modern world, give people more choice to spend more money.

You could soak your sorrows in a couple of bottles of Grolsch and use the rubber washers off the top as strap locks. Two birds killed...

Honestly, I don't mind the feedback. I know there are things to clean up and sort and I'll do all I can, if I still had hair I would be pulling it out. Thing is though, I saw this forum software before all the issues and once the performance cracks on it'll fly along and is a lovely smooth experience. Some stuff I didn't anticipate I'll try to add in as long as it doesn't clutter things up or slow it down too much. The nicest thing for everyone involved will be the fact that now we have supported software where we're in the driving seat, if there's a popular feature that people want then we can look into that! Ultimately, we love the forum and it's the members that make it up, it's nothing without our community after all.

Al Krow's comments on the Sub n Up are interesting. This is the only Octaver I've used and I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't have benefited by demoing others in a shop because the things I'm noticing are only becoming apparent at high volume in band situation. I definitely notice some latency on the octave down in poly mode. I'm not sure how much of this is the pedal and how much of it is hysteresis in the speakers when trying going very low and high at the same time. In mono mode, I can't get reliable tracking below Ab which limits it usefulness - not because I need an octave below Ab, but because of the way it glitches in and out rather than just rejecting the note. The poly setting seems to either grab it or not (I think Dood made a similar observation some pages back). The other thing I'm finding is that although the combined -1 / +1 sounds fairly organ/synthy even with a clean blend when played solo, once the band kick off much of this character is lost and it just sounds like massive low end (which is what I want).