Leaderboard

I'm in the house band for the two Sunday for Sammy shows next weekend. I can't give too much away 'cos the line-up is under wraps, but with 5,000 people at each show, it's going to be fun. I'll take some pics and that, and try not to make any mistakes. Disclaimer: I fully acknowledge this is a 'boast post'. Apologies.

Me - Could I take a closer look at this bass please? Them - ** reaches it down and starts slapping 7 shades out of it ** Me - Is that hard to play? Them - Umm...?? Me - Cos it's f**king hard to listen to.

Me - Do you sell Rotosounds? Them - Yes Me - Why?

You do know that all this could be avoided if you played properly... with your fingers...?

You know that lovely feeling when a bass you've been gassing for years shows up, coinciding with having the cash? Just happened to me..I'm over the moon. I've been drooling over this bass for many years..picked it up a few hours ago. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1977-Greco-GOB-1200-Electric-Bass-Guitar/302609356900?hash=item4674ec5864:g:dUcAAOSwdTJaY0Vf It has many dings and chips, but all the controls seem to work. Not sure whether to play it as it is or restore to its former glory. What say you fine gentlemen? PS does anybody know of a source of spares for these basses?

I'll be adding to this! After lots of uhming and ahing, I saw a post on their Instagram which had me going to see them at first given opportunity. Went up to Alpher HQ for a few hours yesterday, and this morning I ordered myself an Alpher. Words can't describe my excitement! It'll be a 5 string Mako Elite 5, with a crazy burl top and matching headstock. Ebony 'board with a birdseye maple neck. Body is single piece maple (it looks amazing), pickups will be three Aguilar Super Singles, and an OBP-3 pre amp. 33" scale (because I'm a short derrière), not much weight. Oh, and some of the offcut from the cap (the electric blue bit) will be going into a 12th fret inlay. Untitled by Dave Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled by Dave Butterworth, on Flickr

You'll miss them when the interweb has killed them all off........no nipping in to solve last minute emergencies

Looks generic and values itself too highly; therefore it's a great fit for the Chapman name.

If only we could swap local shops, all would be well in the world

Papa Was a Rolling Stone - same three notes, same pattern for the entire song, and still fabulous after all these years.

I've always been quite enamoured by Stings bass lines, always tuneful but often very empty, so I'll offer up the obvious Walking on the Moon

Use wire clips to hold the power wires in place. Don’t use those double-ended connectors, most pedal enclosures have a slight angle to the sides and therefore the jacks... using those connectors can strain the jacks and also makes it more precarious to remove those pedals from your board.

It looks like a giant steampunk phallus.

Single knob compressors are the work of Lucifer himself....

I use a Variax and while the 8 and 12 strings are decent approximations, and will do the job in their own way rather than take another bass to a gig, that is all they are, approximations. As is that pedal above. None of these will ever have the sound of real multiple courses, that slight delay between courses, the characteristics you get from actually striking more than one string. This can't be replicated by modulating the sound of a single string.

In the UK and in the USA, but you had to be there, obviously. And, featuring Ritchie Blackmore on guitar and Chas Hodges on electric bass guitar, here's Joe Meek's production from 1962 of The Chaps also known as The Outlaws ...

I’m sure DFS will have one in their never ending sale.

Me - I'm here to pick up five Yamaha tenor saxes we ordered? Them - What the f**k? We're a shoe shop.

Buy a Trace V-type preamp. Does exactly what you want and it'd be a lot cheaper than having something custom built. They sound AWESOME too!

I'd miss the good ones, but I suspect they will last longer because they're good. I certainly won't miss the arrogant chancers though...

* whilst walking through Ashdown section * Me - 'scuse me, I don't suppose you have a light?

The Sadowsky aluminium items are pretty good imho. Two screws to secure plus sleeve for those slightly thinner pot shafts. They look and feel amazing and with the little white marker are dead easy to adjust. Definitely not a 'value' item though

I read the title of the thread and immediately thought of Tina Weymouth, was going to suggest "Genius of Love" (by Tom Tom Club) as an example but there's a number of others too.

First rehearsal today - six hours' worth. It was loads of fun. The show's being shot for DVD, so everything has to be spot-on. We've got a week in the rehearsal hall, so we'll have the monitor mixes pretty much there by the weekend, so hopefully the check in the arena will mostly be tweaking stuff. The band is great.. the drummer's from Lindisfarne, the keyboard player's from Dire Straits, the other keyboard player and sax player are from The 1975's live band, the guitarist was a touring member of The Arctic Monkeys, and one of our vocalists sang on 'I Would Do Anything For Love' with Meat Loaf. And then there's me. I daren't pinch myself. Loads of pics here: https://www.sundayforsammy.org/sunday-for-sammy-2018-access-all-areas

Guitar or player?

Pitch to CV or MIDI for the bass guitar is just not feasible unless you have the world's cleanest and precise technique and are playing downtempo music. The laws of physics are always going to be against you. The theoretical minimum response time has going to be one complete wave cycle for the device to have a good guess at detecting the pitch. The open E on a bass is 41Hz, that means at the very, very best you are looking at 24ms between playing a note and the device working out what pitch it is. That's slap-back echo territory (i.e. noticeable), and in reality the actual response time is going to be closer to double that. Notice how in the demo in the OP you never get to hear the controlling signal in combination with the synth output except when it is making random glitching noises along with the drums. Also notice how the controlling signal is always something high-pitched like guitar or another keyboard. You can't blame the manufacturer for wanting to show their products in the best possible light, but I think a lot of purchasers are going to be very disappointed when they try and use these in a real world situation. There are various tricks that you can use to make the tracking quicker and more accurate but all of these take the expressiveness away from the controlling instrument, and IMO the whole point of using something like a guitar to control as synth is that you can make full use of that expressiveness. Otherwise you might as well use a keyboard and the standard synth performance controls. Also while in theory a monophonic device might be fine for bass parts, in practice one of things that makes the feel of a bass line played on bass guitar different from one played on a keyboard or other monophonic device is what happens when you play parts that swap between the strings. And once you've lost the feel of the bass part from that of playing on a bass guitar you might as well play it on a keyboard (or sequence it). There are players that can make pitch to CV or MIDI work for them. What you will find is that they are mostly guitarists and that they have spent years honing their technique and modifying their instruments to get around the inherent limitations of using pitch detection to control a synthetic waveform. I found very quickly that it was far easier for me to develop enough of a keyboard technique in a day or so that enabled me to play synth parts than it was to modify my guitar playing style to get the tracking to work well enough to satisfy my very basic requirements.

If such an inconsequential thing as pop-ups annoys you to the point of driving you from the forum you must indeed lead a charmed life. Heaven forbid anything important happens to you!

Probably best to avoid those people in future.

I thought there was just one, the key of bass

Forgotten where I got this arrangement from now, but have tweaked it a little. Played on my custom Broom acoustic bass. Sorry about all the gurning.

I had the 4x10 and the 1x15. Together, beastly. Individually, didn't like the 4x10 that much, and the 1x15 had a nice tone and the best of the bunch. Still lacking a bit in the lows though.

I did Davie, 50 quid and it's well worth the money. It's this one: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Scheppach-SD1600V-240-V-16-Inch-Scroll-Saw-Blue/112789092022?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 It works really well on a scrap piece of wood, too cold in the garage atm.

I had to...

I picked up a used one of these from Ebay for a few quid. Very comfortable for long periods. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Set-of-two-bar-stools-brown-bar-chairs-dining-stool-bar-furniture/222836996091?hash=item33e21eb7fb:g:HcYAAOSwBp9agrXA I have a butt-kicker attached to the footrest and use it during gigs with a mix of my bass and kick drum fed into it.

Awesome mate, thanks for posting this!

The worst for me is the snidey, disinterested and condescending attitude often offset with someone slapping the bass that I've asked to try for ages before handing it to me. Thankfully what was a constant in my teens and early 20s never happens now I am middle aged.

I’ve got one by Konig and Meyer. Expensive but very nice.

I'd never attempt a bass. See that router for sale in my sig ?

Another vote for them here, absolutely fantastic when I was trying to get spare parts. After a bit of tooing and froing it turned out they couldn’t get the part so sent a complete new one free of charge as show of good faith. More than impressed with them.

Ok one of my bands have had a couple of months' break due to hols and we were focusing on nailing 5 new songs for a gig with just one rehearsal to do it in. Bass tone? Lol! They didn't even notice I was playing a 5 string bass for the first time ever with them tonight!! Not until 2.5 hours into the rehearsal and I asked them what was different about my gear?

@UK_Lefty: Nah they just got better at using autotune and melodyne since then.

18 strings all straight past the nut, Rickenbacker take note

Hi Roj, long time no hear! It's the head thats a big problem for me. It looks like a moose! May very well weigh as much too. Has a 60's Eastern European look...

It was meant to be tongue in cheek :-)

Nah, i do a lot of research on YT etc, so i wouldn't just go by one recommendation, although you did put the idea in my head. I really like it, and if i didn't have the B3n i wouldn't even have commented. It was just a shock when i first plugged it in. Without a bass on the end its really, really loud. The B3n is more or less silent like this. Once im playing along to my ipad its all fine though. The patch i wanted to set up didnt seem to work as well, with all the parameters the same on both units, but most of the B1on pre-sets seem to be quite usable once i tamed the drive and level settings. I like how the amp sims have the cabs built in to them, whereas the B3n doesn't. The B1on also seems to have a few FX/sims that the B3n doesn't have. As long as i keep away from bright settings its all good. Its not like ill use it live so just one comp/amp patch is really all ill need.

I don't know if I'd agree that they are floor monitors - most are FoH speakers placed on their sides. The ABS plastic is primarily for weight reduction. If you want to move up, move into ply cabs which theoretically has less flex. But that introduces the weight. e.g. 745 vs it's wooden equivalent (NX45A) adds circa 5kg. The thing is, as you get into more and more serious PA, weight seems to be less of a concern. There's some mighty fine cabs out there, but they come without outrageous weights. Take a look at the L'Acoustic 112P for example. Powered Single 12 with compression driver (3"VC), 32kg (about the weight of a Fender twin!). Before long, you are getting into 40kg+ cabs. How far do you want to go? - remember, your FoH is more important, so it would be more wise to invest in that. Lets not forget, Anthony Jackson was doing this with Meyer long before most... and Mike Gordon for that matter. I think they clocked that PA cabs generally far out perform the bass cabs that are commonly sold. Mind you, lets not neglect to mention that Meyer tends to come with a sizeable price tag. Luckily these guys would appear to have a road crew (with fork lifts?! :P) to move their gear.

Their first pedal was a clean one!