Leaderboard

The usual Marta thread always descends into pointless garbage. If she was fat and ugly this thread wouldn't even be here.

The Trace Ah250smx brings back some jolly memories for me. Was in my early 20's playing in a loud rock band. There were 2 guitars, one playing through a Marshall Superbass 100w to one side and to the other side having to deal with a Hiwatt 100w valve head. Also had a hard hitting drummer at the time also.I can't remember what I was playing through but I stood no chance volume wise. I really needed something more powerful, and as things were moving forward with bigger and better gigs I just happened to come into some money at the time so off I went to the music shop to investigate the options. I remember Hartke was just starting to make a name over here at the time but didn't do much for me when I tried it out. They had that awful Warwick stuff also. Did nowt for me. Then I had a look round the corner and saw the new Marshall DBS stuff and I was in love instantly . It sounded absolutely killer, looked amazing, but the problem was the cost... That rig was around 2 grand if I remember correctly! Next to it was the Trace Elliot stuff which I didn't know much about but was within the price range. I plugged into the 250SMX rig and it blew me away (literally)… Needless to say it was purchased on the spot. Fast forward to next band practice which at the time took place in a medium sized hall with a big stage. I really wish I had a camera to take a picture of guitarists faces when I bought in my new rig (with a bit of help), and setup up on stage … a Trace 1x15 , 4 x10,and a Trace 250SMX It was truly monolithic.... "ok lads when you're ready ….1-2-3-4 …." Needless to say it solved that volume issue forever anyway. ** EDIT Just noticed it's my 100th post 🤩 … I've only been here since 2007 to be fair though. 😐

It looks good on the website, just the sort of book I would buy EXCEPT for one thing, the tab immediately below the music. At the risk of opening the perennial tab/notation can of worms again, I really hate that, as where my sight reading is right now, I want to concentrate on the notation and not have my 'brain' have a cheeky crib from the tab fingering. Now if the eBook is formatted such that I can see only the music, then I'll buy straight away. Any chance of that please @Rob MacKillop? I guess not, but nevertheless all the best with your venture. Ralph

No Dreadful name, I know, but still very much on-topic... if you get my drift. 😀

This thread would be here, because i posted it due to her abiilty on a bass. I never mentioned anything to do with her looks, or this ballacks about JK. I didnt even know about that story.

Yeah I don't think it will really make a difference to neck stability it's just more annoying than anything Looking at other 4 to 5 string conversions the strings will still sit OK over the poles but if it's not I can just change the pickups for a rail magnet instead White or black body and I think a matching headstock looks nice but I don't think it will suit a blue one but it's certainly not a dull looking bass 😀

Thank You! You really should get patented that body shape - it`s perfect every way and won't be surprised if this design will be stolen from You! and forget to mention headstock shape should be patented too!!!

This has nothing to do with being young, female and attractive. I am going to prove it by uploading a video to You boobs … errr I mean YouTube of me playing my best average renditions of "Sex On Fire" and "You Sexy Thing". I will be naked while I do this. I will be expecting a thread to start shortly afterwards, commenting on what a seriously groovy player I am, and that it has absolutely nothing to do with me being a slightly below average looking white male in his mid 40's being naked. (I'm single by the way).

Reminds me of a gig we did at the Goth and Giggle one night... Moany Ben had worked up an arrangement of Disco Duck and was dressed as Count Duckula. I had misunderstood at rehearsal and I'd learnt Joe Dart's line's from Funky Duck. As we launched into the intro Antwaun Stanley got up and started to sing... Well. Moany Ben was all about the Rick Dees lyrics and Antwaun was all like oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo The crowd loved it. Disco laced with Funky, Goth garnished with Disco cheese... we got a nomination for Mash-up of the Year, a bale of pancakes and a firkin of Hoisin sauce to round the night off. Good times. I just wish Will I Am would stop pestering me to sign up.

Get some step drill bits and a 22mm Forsner bit. The step drill bit drills like a countersink and located inside the hole. Then you can drill until you get a 22mm step, then use the forsner bit to do the rest. The steps means the forsner bit won’t wonder. Step drill bits are very handy to have around.

hah ! Only 1 post and it was a balls up

This is the one I was thinking of...

In my early days many bassplayers in my area used Trace heads. Whenever I tried one I hated them. They were not made for me and that stuck in my mind longtime. >10 years later I was using a SWR SM400 which died at a gig. I went to a Musicshop to have it checked and had to rent another head for the gig this day. They only had a Trace head available, everything else was already out. I was a bit grumpy because I didn´t like the idea of doing a rock gig with a Trace amp but there was no way out, I had to. Surprisingly I got along very very well with it or lets say I never before heard myself as good on stage. When my SWR was back in business I sold it as fast as possible and bought the Trace. It´s an AH600SMX which I still play 18 years later at gigs and rehearsals - not for recording though. The SMX series is something special and different to my ears than the earlier transistor-only heads. The tube really does the trick for me. It´s always fully on.

My go to sound is in Machinehead-era Roger Glover or Chris Squire territory (although typically a little less trebly than Chris). It’s great for that sort of thing and, at least for me, does it far better than anything else I’ve heard/tried. I don’t use full-on distortion at all.

This is fantastic. I have a bunch of zenith photos in my reference folder for guitar designs. It's such a beautiful design and I'm dying of jealousy that you got the body for so little Great work.

Many thanks, Dolando. I cannot find anywhere local that does 22mm Forstner bits so I have ordered some off eBay. It looks like the project will be done at the end of August, give or take.

I think some setups are more forgiving than others. When you take adjustment to the edge of what's possible it doesn't take much to push them over that edge. Obviously instrument quality has a part to play, my Yamaha 5er is very consistent

Parker and Wal : a man of good taste, for sure.

They are so good you can't tell the difference!

Woodinblack, have a chat with the guys and Newtone strings. They can probably wind you a set and Alan fits their strings standard on the ACG basses.

Also think about further afield perhaps, something more of an adventure. It’s only a week-long course (so could perhaps fit alongside another course you do), but seriously consider Victor Wooten’s ‘Wooten Woods’ retreat near Nashville. I did it back in 2014 and it was amazing, very eye-opening. I did the ‘Music & Nature’ course which worked out to be about half bass players, and half other musicians. You get bed and board onsite, and it’s 5 days of music and nature lessons (about a 70-30 split). Lessons from Victor Wooten, Steve Bailey, Anthony Wellington, Dave Welsch and any number of other guests who happen to be available (we had Felix Pastorius for the week as a surprise....he bought the Bass Of Doom with him). My dad’s a big country music fan so we both flew out and spent a week in Nashville, judging hanging out, seeing lots of music. Then he flew home and I went to the camp, then flew home on my own a week later. The courses are beginners to advanced together, all ages (we had 16-65), so it’s a really great learning experience. Some amazing concepts, and is really inspiring. In 2014, it worked out to about £800 + flights (plus any bed/board you take in Nashville seperately). http://vixcamps.com/ Si p.s. You absolutely don’t have to be a Wooten slap fan, it’s very little (if any) of that. He’s an incredible teacher and player, the YouTube slap thing is about 10% of what he does .

I’d save for 3-4 years and get a Fodera or (insert uber priced brand here) Si

Had a tidy, new patch cables, love this board now, covers everything.

Had a chance to do a bit more routing!! After my previous router failing, today routing decided to have a go at me by disintegrating a bearing on the template cutter I was using. Luckily I was cutting the hollowed out section of this bass so no real damage done but it did take a thin strip off the template before I noticed. First job was to repair the template - relatively easy, just needed some veneer supergluing on and trimming back to the original line. The remains of a template bearing - all the ball bearings disappeared along with the other retainer!! I found a new bearing the same diameter so carried on. I've also cut the scroll hole on the top. Time to start gluing this together and routing the chambers on the other body.

Mmmmmm, could this be Andy's subtle comment about the music he's heard me play with a couple of bands? 😂

I don’t see what the problem is. The girl can obviously play and she is undoubtedly cute! She is certainly using her looks (in a pretty restrained way) to get attention for her bass playing. The same (on a much higher level) with Nita Strauss. There is no way she would be in Alice Cooper’s band if she didn’t look the way she does, but equally she would never have got the gig if she couldn’t hold her own playing wise! But so what… Ever since the beginning of rock and roll in the 50s, virtually every iconic male act has traded on their image, looks and sex appeal – be it Elvis, the Beatles, Guns N’Roses or hundreds of others. Why should a talented woman be castigated for taking advantage of their looks / image, when it is accepted that it is simply part of the package male artists usually need to be successful??

Yeah its a pickfoam insert, like lots of squares so you can pick out the shape you want

..a King size bed?

If you used the Terror with your own bass and own cab and loved it, getting one has to be the answer.

Nice bit of quick reading here http://www.theguitarmagazine.com/features/all-about-nitrocellulose/

I’ve had two, both blonde, both definitely poly.

Trace head and lightweight cabs

Just received this from Seattle The reissues are a mix of mostly new standard features and some old. The control plate, knobs, and headstock shape are old style, the neck has a new custom profile that's only available on the CLF L2000 and L1000, the rest is just like the current L2000. I wish they had put the OMG caps into the L2000 but they will be in the L1000. Something else I learned recently is that G&L are supposedly putting graphite rods in their USA necks now... I have a CAR CLF L2000 and I love it. The neck is much more comfortable than most 80s G&Ls but it does feel like an old G&L neck profile, just narrower at 1-5/8" at the nut. With the L2000s they only offered maple fingerboards. Body options were limited in colors and woods available, my CAR is basswood and fairly light at 8.7 lbs. Sound is great, one of these days I'll try the OMG caps in there. I've got a CLF L1000 on order - metallic gold, basswood body, Caribbean rw board. I'll let you know what I think, I should have it in a week or two. I'm assuming I'll like it.

I had a young, rather drunk lady shout in my ear whilst playing with my blues band, asking if we knew any songs by One Direction. I shouted back "Ask the singer". Her reply, "which one's the singer?". When I told the rest of the band at the break, the singer told us the said girl had then shouted in his ear (whilst he was singing) "are you the singer?" - not knowing the context, he had been quite confused.

Production fashions go in cycles. That much is obvious from the few comments here already. In the 80s I couldn't stand listening to most of the albums I'd grown up with in the 70s due to (at the time) sterile sounding production with their weedy cardboard box drums. Now it all, sounds fine again to my ears. I can remember someone on one of the recording forums in the late 90s berating the gated reverb drum sounds and wondering how we ever tolerated them. It didn't go down too well when I suggested that in another 10 years time they'd be saying the same about the currently fashionable ping-y snare drum sounds. And to answer the OPs question, it is for me not so much about the production as about songwriting quality control. There's plenty of albums on CD from the mid 90s onwards that are simply TOO LONG. Just because the CD format allows you to put 80 minutes worth of music on a single album doesn't mean that you should. Like most albums there are a couple of killer tracks, some other songs that are OK and then an additional 40 minutes of self-indulgent rubbish. I find that the higher proportion of poor songs makes me less likely to listen to the album as a whole, whereas if it had been a normal 35-40 minute release I'd have probably played it more often and spent time getting to like the less obvious songs. Instead I just stick with the 2 or 3 tracks I know I like and never listen to the rest.

Fair point. Anderson / Howe / Squire / White / Wakeman for me. That's not to belittle the contributions of the others in any way. (Hey, I even like Drama.)

Thanks Blue. These two are our dream team... we have a number of singers that form the line up. Jules on the left is a well seasoned singer - has been pro and has loads of experience , Jo on the right is a complete newbie - has only done about 15 gigs in her life - all with us - was very nervous at the start but now has run the lead female spot on her own a couple of times. She can nail 'Respect' - not an easy song to sing. The girls take the lead on about half the numbers and alternate with each other as Martin the guitar player and male singer can't sing all of them.

That headstock - i like the way its been shaped so that strings rub on the face. Nice touch

Aaargh amp overhang OCD alert. Must stay calm, must stay calm....... 😎😎