Leaderboard

Like owning a Ford Focus you mean? ubiquitous and therefore best?

Indeed, respect comes from being rich enough to afford a US made Fender, rather than musical skill?

Our youth are far too clued up on these matters and therefore their music is very straightlaced and safe. Music is so much better when it's written by a drug fuelled, chaotic anarchist with a chip on his or her shoulder.

Little update! Neck carve next apparently Si

One thing worse than an EC gig? A snooker tournament..............

Don't get me started. I saw Brian Ferry at the City Hall, Newcastle a week past Sunday. The couple two seats along from and one row in front of us, spent the whole gig taking photos, including flash, and videos of the gig. The guy directly in front of us continued blocking my view, every couple of minutes, by leaning into his partner to say something in her ear, then lighting up his phone to take pics of Brian and the band. Why not simply stay at home and put a DVD on? Its an event, live in the moment, suspend reality, enjoy the spectacle. Why spend all the time trying to capture a "Live" concert on a phone, so you can impress the mates in the pub next weekend? Give me strength.

The band I'm playing with at the moment have the answer. You need to get a bus to another post code to be able to hear yourself think let alone have a conversation.

Alan, from ACG has just updated his profile and the bass in question caused me to have stirring that I haven't experienced in a long time.

Yup, and Steven Tyler is on a "free" stage. BTW, all stages are free except The Amphitheatre. My band doesn't have a date yet. Last year we played before Frampton. Blue

The Cult: She Sells Sanctuary Sisters of Mercy: Alice Fields of the Nephilim: Moonchild

The new A Perfect Circle CD that came out at the weekend. Much quieter than previous stuff, and I like it

Maybe the XLR isn't really darker, maybe the 1/4" is brighter... While the pedal was in development dUg used it on tour through a multitude of amps and different PA systems and the filters were set to his specifications. He prefers going into the efx returns when using backline amps though that isn't always an option. In those cases he just plugs the pedal in front of the amp. My suggestion would be to try the pedal for yourself and not come to tonal conclusions from something you read on a forum. In the video interview with Pete Thorn they are using the XLR output and there is no shortage of high end.

To be fair, I don't think she mentioned playing the P. Just owning one. Take one with you and gain all the respect and kudos. Then get out your preferred bass...

I want this bad boy for my 50th. 18 string. Forget a P Bass. You turn up with this.

A fiat fight - one that breaks down fairly quickly. (although not as quickly as an Alfa fight - which lasts until shortly before squaring up time.)

I’m not; it’s the attitude that only a Fender P (a US one at that) is sufficient. You’ve also derailed a thread about dream purchases with a very narrow minded opinion.

To be fair I can only think of one thing worse than an Eric Clapton gig, an acoustic Eric Clapton before it!

A couple of bass-centric beauts utilising the Fairlight CMI.

A sweeping statement that means nothing. I love a good US Precision, but I've played and owned better Japanese made Fender P's for half the price. I love a good P sound but have an old Tokai P that delivers an identical tone (possibly even better). The Precision is an icon and I love it. But there are imho equally good and/or better and more versatile instruments out there..... many of which suit alternative styles of playing better.....

Ignorance is bliss apparently.

The American Fender ain't no run of the mill Ford Focus. It is an icon. An iconic sound matched by nothing else and never bettered.

I used one of these, someone on here linked me to it when I was in a similar situation: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00GMM74T0/ref=asc_df_B00GMM74T051942047/?tag=googshopuk-21&creative=22146&creativeASIN=B00GMM74T0&linkCode=df0&hvadid=214462264766&hvpos=1o3&hvnetw=g&hvrand=17959555060353432343&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9046574&hvtargid=pla-421630808123 Cheap and cheerful, does the job admirably and weighs nothing. I no longer have the rig but you can see it in use here:

That wasn't a big hit but should've been as was this by Peel faves the Red Guitars

Killing Joke with that massive hit :

The thing I love about the 80's is the variety and changes the music scene went through, it started out with the last throws of punk and disco, then new wave, post punk, new romantics, electronic, goth, alternative, rap, hip hop, acid house, hair and glam metal and everything else in between, all in a decade, amazing. Here are some of my alternative 80's favs.

Everyone should own a Fender Precision. The proper American one - used to be called Standard, now called Professional. Get yourself a new one of those and understand that you own the benchmark against which all other basses are measured. Respect will be yours when you stand on a stage. An unquestionable seat at the top table of bass playing.

When I saw The Who at Wembley Arena not long before Entwistle died, Townshend went off on one about something gloomy. Being slightly refreshed I yelled out 'F**k off, Pete, you're such a miserable c**t'. In fairness to him he laughed and gave it a rest.

Good luck to them all. Any of us would be more than happy to have had so much exposure in the industry that people were discussing us on forums

For myself, I believe that talking through a band is a matter of context and degree. It's one thing if it's a willowy, ethereal lady folk singer singing a mawkish ballad about The Land of The Faerie Queene while tearfully accompanying herself on an un-amplified autoharp in a folk club. Silence is mandatory, lest one be assaulted by some ghastly old hippy in Jesus boots. Quite another if it's four hairy-4rsed blokes hammering out Sex On Fire at full beans in a boozer. Frankly, they just have to take their chances

I've always thought that if a punter can have a conversation without seriously raising their voice then we're not loud enough. Or as a guitar player I used to play with (who also owns a very successful PA hire / installation company) would occasionally announce to the audience "tonight ladies & gentleman, we will be using volume as a tool... and if necessary as a weapon"...!

You've seen Coldplay, then?

Just wanted to see whether it all ties in together, All the hardware is going to be chrome I’m still not 100% sure whether to paint the headstock Cream or would it look better Black or should I just leave it Maple???

"That's a lovely rack tom." "Agreed, but don't call me Tom."

I have fallen into one of those traps, where you see people making guitars and think, 'well, how hard can it be'. Luckily I am not stupid enough to actually believe that and assume it is harder than the talent I have, but regardless, I have decided to give it a try. So I am going to build what I want, and what I can't get, which is the shape of an Ibanez Fireman, which is an Ibanez iceman turned upside down, with a bit of a cutaway for the high frets. Also a narrow string spacing, 10mm at the sharp end and 15mm at the blunt end. No-one makes any of this (the Ibanez fireman is a Paul Gilbert signature guitar with no bass option), so my only option is doing it myself. Obviously I have to build the body myself as there aren't any (actually there are some on eBay but a lot of money and the wrong pickups), but I am not building a neck as that sounds like the step that I haven't got near yet, so I bought a neck off eBay with a paddle headstock so I can cut it like an iceman (for some reason the fireman has the iceman headstock, i.e., upside down), and luckily Ibanez did make a 5 string iceman so I know how they did that. And I have an iceman so I can measure it! Here is the neck Not the highest quality but it is straight and does have a truss rod, so that is a start. I have a cad program too, so I have drawn out the shape I want: And cut it out on plywood as a template to see how it works out sidewise. The only slight problem there is I don't know about the neck join, because turning the iceman upside down you have to cut a shape out to get the high fret access, but obviously the iceman has the cutaway on what is now the top side, whereas I need it at the bottom. Wing it I guess. I also have 2 matched bits of poplar of the right size coming from eBay, and a router from basschat. Tools wise I have a drill, jigsaw, workbench, sander, files, chisels and a few other bits and pieces. And no talent at woodworking that has ever surfaced. So, because I am one for starting something and not finishing, I thought I would put it on basschat so that a) you get to laugh at my incompetence, b) people can suggest when I am doing something really stupid and c) I can be hassled into doing something. So what could possible go wrong?.....

There is nothing different in many ways between a PA bass driver and the driver in a dedicated bass cab, they are governed by the same laws of physics. In a sense they both have to do the same job, reproduce the sound of the deepest instruments in the band, usually the bass. At the moment technology has reached the stage where a single 12 can produce enough power to enable the bass to match an unamplified drum kit, two can do this fairly easily. A 15" speaker with it's extra surface area will be slightly more efficient all other things being equal and will need slightly less excursion to achieve the same sound level. In practice all things are rarely equal and it's the implementation of the design that makes one speaker 'better' than another. The thing is to use your judgement, have a listen to the speakers just as you would audition a dedicated bass cab. if they were perfect all FRFR speakers would sound identical and clearly they don't. If you regularly struggle with a single 12" bass cab then you are going to struggle with a single 12" PA cab, and in all probability your band are too loud on stage. I've given a thorough audition to those RCF's and at the moment they beat the Yamahas hands down on the midrange transparency at least to my ears, but the proof of he speaker is in the listening.

Says the Fender troll. Go sealion some other forum.

Yup, very snappy looking axe

And another icon of the 80's electro punk scene. Einstürzende Neubauten's Tanz Debil. Specially found for @Barking Spiders

Great rhythm section. Glen's take on bass playing and Clive's jazzy rock drumming were a great mix of styles.

And to me, the best track of the 80's with the best line-up out of their best album, here it goes live and mad. King Crimson's Indiscipline :

Well, we've all experienced the dreaded 'hollow stage' effect where the whole of an insubstantially built stage is acting as a giant resonating soundbox for the bass and sending out all sorts of false information to your ears about tone, volume and harmonics. Some bass players might claim that putting castors on your cab (i.e. the same as a dolly) can really exaggerate this unfortunate effect. Personally I don't think this alone would make much difference, but other BC'ers may have different opinions. Discuss.

Surely it's the band's job to engage with the audience and get their attention so that they can then entertain them? I think that there is a reason why the 2x45 minute sets has become the norm for covers bands in most music pubs. People generally go out to see a band, but also to meet up with friends. A 45 minute first set is not so long that people will lose attention if the band is half decent, then there is a bit of a break so that people can have a chat and get a few more drinks down them. Hopefully by the time you are ready to come back for round two, punters have had time to loosen up / hang out with mates, etc and are now ready to be entertained for the grande finale. I always think that you are trying to get the audience's attention for the first set to persuade them to stick around for the second, which is where you throw everything you have to make sure that they know that they have been entertained!

Only on Buddy Rich. Probably just kept it to myself with being too nice n'that.

Stop giving sensible responses!! I'm not buying it!

Nottingham 1973 This is a band audition tale... At my first" day release " at college ( I was an apprentice plumber) I met two guys that wanted to form a band, we arranged to meet at the rhythm guitarist's garage on the following Sunday. It went well enough we just needed a drummer. I volunteered my mate who had driven me and my gear to the audition.....he had never played drums and didn't have a kit but as the rhythm guitarist's father was a resident drummer at a local working men's club, we could use his kit and rehearse in a the fabulous function room that wasn't used on a Sunday afternoons. Sounds like a recipe for disaster yes? ...not a bit of it ,Dave took to drumming like a duck to water, Six weeks after his first go he had bought a kit of his own and we did our first gig...Market Harborough Working men's club, 3x 20 mins sets, with our armoury of 12 covers...and we got paid £29.00, ok we did have a few requests to "play this song again" to get through, but no one complained. This was in the days when even a rubbish band like ours gigged at least twice if not three times a weekend; a half decent band could gig five times a weekend and pick up midweek gigs. We pottered along for six months but the (almost inept) lead guitarist/lead singer just didn't improve, in fact he got all "rock star "on us and kept missing practice without letting us know and turning up drunk for gigs. We decided to replace him, unfortunately everything came to a head at the Friday night gig of a three gig weekend and the Saturday night gig, at a pub in Chesterfield, was an audition for a new agent. Being young and brave we didn't cancel, we phoned around and got a friend, who was in a much better band than us ( they were having a weekend off), who was much more experienced than us, to come and fill in for the weekend. We ran through some songs on Saturday afternoon and everything sounded much better than before, although we needed to juggle the set list to suit his knowledge of songs and hurriedly learned a few of his favourites. When we did the gig things went very badly wrong (what a surprise :-) ) the new guy just point blank refused to turn his guitar up and wouldn't sing close enough to the mic to be heard...we missed all the cues fumbled through a few songs and after the first set decided that he was being a p*ll*ck and told him we would manage without him, we re- arranged the sets ,leaving our best stuff for the last set, and gamely went for it. During the break before the last set the landlord came up to us and paid us saying "here you are lads, don't bother going on again" We packed away in shame and drove home in silence. The new agent never spoke to us and we cancelled the Sunday gig. Rock and Roll chaps......Rock and Roll. Edited to add.... I now tell my kids and friends who complain about me "singing" along to the radio etc... "Hey I have been paid to sing and I have been paid not to sing....what have you done? "

Most of them used to be mine but are no longer with me. I ordered the Limelight because I desperately wanted a Shoreline Gold 60's P. The Limelight is a really good bass - very well made and great sounding. But it had to go when a pre-CBS Lake Placid Blue Precision crossed my path: the one shown above. My vintage Fender rotation started about five years ago with a Black/Maple 1975 Precision (I put a black PG on it, Roger Waters style): Later I traded it in for a really cool 1968 Telecaster Bass (black refin): Parallel to the '75 P I had a '74 Jazz: Both the Tele and the Jazz had to go in favour of a 1965 Precision: That one feels and sounds fantastic - I probably should have kept it. But then the 1964 LPB came along, which I could not let pass, since a pre-CBS custom colour Precision has always been my dream bass. So I traded the Limelight and the 1965 P. 2015 was a very good year (job-wise), so I was able to invest in a beat-up 1964 Jazz that sounded huge: 2017 was another good year, so when I saw the 1956 Precision (another dream bass) at Andy Baxter's, I sold the '64 Jazz to finance it: I think with the Lake Placid Precision and the 1956 Single Coil I sort of reached the top of the ladder and the rotation might come to an end. At least on the Precision side. Now that I think about it, I don't have a decent Jazz Bass at the moment. And I also find the Competition series Mustangs really cool ...