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Hey Guys! Just stumbled over this thread and thought I'd chime in a bit about what is unique about my JHB signature bass. After the Warwick 35 years celebration in September 2017, Warwick asked me what would it take for me to come onboard as an endorser. My answer was simple, "You have to make me a bass that I'll want to play forever!" I was imediately flown out to Germany to the Custom Shop and spent 4-days with their head designer going through all the details of what had to be in this model. It has to be said that the Warwick JHB is totally different to any other Warwick bass I have seen and/or played, and when I was at the factory, I played everything they had. The Fortress body shape was chosen for two reasons. Firstly, Warwick did not want to design a completely new body shape, they wanted it to be representative of one of their basses- that was the only restriction. I chose the Fortress because at 24 frets, it was the only body shape they do that balanced properly. The shape was cutomised slightly in that it had a deeper angled curved where the forearm goes across and deep scoops on the inside of both the upper and lower horns. One of the most radical changes made, was the use of a different bridge. Historically, Warwick has always used a 2-peice bridge which is highly adjustable, but I never liked the sound of those 2-peice bridges- too clickly and hi-fi sounding. Instead we used an All Parts 'Omega' bridge which is a copy of the Badass II bridge. Badass went out of business sometime ago and All Parts waited until their patent expired and have done an exact copy- IMO the best sounding bridge ever. This single customisation makes this bass sing head over heels compared to any other Warwick bass I've heard. I love the sound of the Aguilar Super Doubles. I had those in my Fodera, but that was something I switched out as the Fodera came with Seymor Ducans. I also wanted the EM Bass Mute, which is a switchable bass muting system which emulates the palm muting technique. The circuit was designed by me and Warwick did a terrific job in manufacturing that exactly to my personal specs. The body wood is swamp ash which is considerably lighter than the American Ash on the Fodera and has a much more agressive and responsive sound. There's an ultra-thin AAA Flame Maple top. This was crucial as a lot of basses are made with top woods that are too thick which messes with the sound. The neck is also completely different from the garden variety Warwick bass. For starters, it has 19mm spacing which was the first bass they've produced with this spacing. In addition the depth of the neck is super thin and instead of a "C" shape, it's more of an assymetrical shape much like a teardrop, where there's a little more weight at the low strings and less weight at the higher strings. While I was at the Custom Shop, I played the Lee Sklar model. Although I diddn't really like that bass, they used small madolin fretwire which was incredible, so we added that as well to the JHB. The neck is made from Flame Maple, with a Bird's Eye Maple fretboard. This was finished off with a graphite nut. The playabitlity is amazing and all in all Warwick has done a fabulous job in reproducing all of my original ideas about this wonderful instrument. So many people were shocked when they heard I had gone to Warwick, but when I posted the original sound samples people were amazed at how good this bass sounded. Many stating that it was a lot punchier than the Fodera. I did like the Fodera bass, but my JHB bass is so much better. This is the bass I use now. You'll see a lot of guys who have endorsements who will never play the basss they endorse unless they're at a trade show. Not me. From the very outset with Warwick, I said that the only way that I will work with you is that you knock this out of the park and build me something that I'll play forever! They in turn came up with the goods! Bavo Warwick!

Well, there are a number of us female bass players on here - one of them is even a mod, and she can reply to locked threads! While we are all very, very pretty indeed, most of us are not exactly 'young', so our reaction tends to be a weary shrug of our shoulders, before moving on to another thread or back to practising on our basses.

Here's my old one: And here's my current one: And the two of them together cost less than he wants for the one in that listing!

The thing is though, the OP is claiming that's not what he meant, which I find disingenuous at best. If you want to make a leery, boorish nudge- nudge type comment about a girl on a publicly visible forum (which I think is the real point here), at least have the balls to admit it. Or possibly just keep it in your head where it belongs.

Time to address a couple of common ideas often spoken around these parts. The first was brought up in a recent thread and I see the second one a lot, too. Interested to hear your thoughts. 1. "Whatever bass you play, you'll sound like you'' / ''It's all in the fingers'' I suppose to a degree it's right - someone will recognise the style of playing of an individual regardless of what bass they play. A good example would be Victor Wooten playing that Sire jazz bass recently posted here. It sounds like him. BUT - I don't think it's even remotely true to say it doesn't matter what bass you buy, it's all in the fingers. Nobody can make a Precision bass sound like a Musicman just by the way they play. It's impossible. Maybe in front of an audience with poor monitoring and a poor bass sound it would be immaterial - we've all been there - but recorded, or properly monitored, it's obvious to me that basses sound completely different. Otherwise why would we even discuss them? 2. "It doesn't matter what you play (gear wise), the audience won't be able to tell the difference" Maybe not. My mum can't even identify what sound is the bass. But is that a reason not to buy XYZ? Do we do it slavishly for the audience, or do we enjoy knowing our own sound works, and the nuances, even if known only to the player, are worth the journey? Would you be happy playing a really horrible - but adequate - sound as a bass player?

It would take less time asking every member of the audience than it would asking every member of the band in some of the places I've played in!

Lads I already feel bad for regurgitating it all over again. We can all just get along. The new bc rules should be no political chat, no religious chat, no compression chat!

Maybe try reading the thread next time...even the title would have been a start😉

I find it quite disturbing that a Belgian has a better English vocabulary than I do 😁

The audience can hear the difference, they just don't know they do

It is yellow....very yellow! And I like it!

Thought this was cool - Martin Kemp from Spandau Ballet's GK rig, as used with a pair of Wals

Time for a story, sorry Many years ago lighting was expensive and I was broke. For our band I kibbled some lighting together, ahem health and what? Anyway I had two kitchen spotlight units with three different coloured halogen spots in each, a strobe attached to each and a smoke machine. It was all wired through a homemade footswitch to turn it all on and off. The smoke machine was tucked behind my massively over the top bass rig consisting of a bi-amped pair of 15's and a pair of 12's, aiming behind the drummer. When we did Motorheads Overkill I would stomp on the switch turning off the coloured lights and turning the smoke and strobes on when it got to all the false endings, if you know the song you'll know when I mean. At one gig I stomped enthusiastically on the switch at the correct moment which immediately fell to pieces leaving the smoke machine and strobe permanently on only able to be turned off at the wall. The drummer slowly disappeared from sight, then the guitarist and I and it stayed on for the remainder of the song until the stage area and crowd were completely lost in the fog and blinded by massive white strobes bouncing off the cloud. Oh how we all laughed, well apart from the drummer who was having some sort of epileptic asthma attack

Think we've got very similar if not the same ones Les. They're ok for a colour wash but I wouldn't use them on their own. I've got a couple of more expensive brighter ones that I use for main lighting. You're welcome to pop by to check them out if we're in your neck of the woods - we're at the bowling green in Dec. I use an O clamp with some speaker pole mounted to the ceiling mount screw holes on the top of our PA tops. Then I can just hang the par cans off them.

I've gigged and rehearsed with about ten different basses in my current band over hundreds of gigs/sessions. Not one band member or punter has ever noticed the difference 😞😞

I’d totally try out a the HL comp and if it works ‘ better’ than my Cali I’d consider the possibility of swapping. If a product is noticeably better or adds something to the whole then it makes sense to consider the options especially if it’s important to you to have the latest version of a pedal. I enjoy what my Cali does I like the sound so not actively in the market but if anyone wants to A/B one in Edinburgh with my Cali just let me know 😀 @Al Krow most audiences aren’t going to consciously notice a lot of what you list over and above the singer and the songs. I believe that unless actively out to scrutinise a band rather than just have a few drinks and a dance folks aren’t that bothered. I know we’ll disagree over that but playing a bum note or screwing up a passage might not even get noticed by many let alone some of the other stuff listed. I’ve hit the occasional bum note and no one on the dance floor stopped dead and eyeballed me with contempt for killing their groove... Ok maybe the drummer 😀 Recently doing our Ska ‘7 Nation army’ cover I didn’t bother with the heavy drive on one chorus but did in another and again there wasn’t any noticeable different in the crowds response to the song as they kept on singing along. Generally folks were more interested in their immediate friends and surroundings than my choice of note, technique or effect be it in their face or beyond the realms of their perception. Ive said it before I’m not apathetic to the audience, I love gigging and a bit of banter with folk when playing. I understand that while many of us do understand where and how important a bass works in a mix a lot of the drunken hen parties we see don’t and would be bored to death if we tried to tell them. I’m happy that they remain as oblivious to my gear if it means they kee dancing and singing.

+1 The pleasure of the chase, and acquisition [rpt]. A couple of times I have bought The One, only to sell and buy again, because I can't bear the thought of the chase ending.

Can you Photoshop my belly to make it smaller please.

perfect. I've ordered one of the other ones you posted, to see what they're like. Thanks for your help folks

I recently started to do live looping and wanted to avoid a computer so I bought an Akai xr-20 used for dirt cheap to act as the master clock for my Pigtronix Infinity looper. Sure, if you want to record it, you need a computer, but for playing live, this setup would not require a computer. In some ways it feels very liberating. Here´s how my setup sounds:

I always thought ‘all in the fingers’ was nonsense. I get the thinking behind it but people who say that are confusing chops / playing style with choice of equipment. A really good example is Jaco playing Jerry Jemmott’s bass on the Electric Bass video. Jaco is playing in the way he plays, and it’s great, but it sounds completely different to the rest of the video where he plays the Fender. They’re Jaco’s chops, but with a different tone.

Nail on head. Hubba hubba indeed. FFS.

Later Without Jools Holland.

I don't want to out myself as a Snowflake SJW but I can't help wondering what I'd think if I was a young female bass player reading this thread.

And she’s hot i do have a liking for the work of Michael Steele of the bangles

Its a misconception that all power amps are the same and uncoloured. They are mostly different - the higher end power amps are much more full sounding, with more pronounced bass and bottom end. It debateable what difference it makes for bass guitar, but there is a big difference. There is also a big difference between traditional amps and class D, (the dreaded heft word). BUT class D is more than acceptable - you wouldnt know the difference if you werent A/B ing them. I currently have a QSC RMX1450 which works really well with bass. (i use a tech 21 VTRM) Flipping heavy though. I had a Crown 1502 - very light and clear - but if youre going to get one id just consider a couple of things: 1) how many cabs/speakers are you driving? (i used one to power a barefaced sc 1x12 and it was really struggling. 2) if you are bridging you WILL need a different speakon cable to put the amp in bridge mode. It needs setting to bridge, then using a differently wired speakon.

Ok that's a deal. So I definitely won't be able to confirm or deny whether I've splashed out £63 for a multi-band comp that's going to let me: dig in to get a different texture but without an accompanying volume spike (whereas a single band comp might rob my low end when I dig in hard); shapes the attack by letting the peaks through before clamping down by providing a fast attack to catch the peak, yet the low end still pulses with a slower attack to accentuate the thump; and, according to some, represents an "upgrade" from a Cali 76CB; [source: the legendary db ] Plus: takes up precious little pedal board real estate; has just one knob for simpletons like me to worry about.

IMO..... you take what you need from instruction, take from it what's useful to you, and ignore what isn't. Like someone said earlier, you can loose a bit of your individuality if you follow to the letter what someone else is showing you. Singing/lessons is the same, keep your own voice and take on board the stuff that helps you improve your own technique. Be yourself, always.

Good point Jez. The inner devil’s advocate tells me that as double bass player we hardly contribute to mass slaughters, but still, the synthetic options have got to be the future.

I was a full time pit player for about 25 years or so. I must say WSS, along with Jesus Christ Superstar were my favourites to play. Both very different of course.

We use Drop pedals in our band - both guitarists and myself. We have a few originals that just sound right played lower (three half-steps down from already-half-step-down with our last singer and from standard tuning with our current singer) and whilst we used to change guitars to achieve it, it put a break in the flow of the performance while we changed over and checked tuning, which we didn’t like; it was even worse if we then had to change back, especially given the average set length for an original power metal band playing local support slots etc. For the guitars it was a bit of a no-brainier - the Drop pedal works great as intended. For me on bass it was a judgement call; do I still change bass and work on the speed of changeover, play the line further up, play the whole set on a 5, or try the Drop pedal. I tried it and initially wasn’t sure as it sounded a little modulated, but with the Thumpinator in front of it to give it the cleanest possible signal to process, I decided it wasn’t out of tune or unpleasant and it was plenty close enough alongside the other elements in our live performance. Tuning up half a step to standard when we changed singer helped very slightly again in terms of accuracy, though I still wouldn’t want to go any further than 3 half-steps down with the pedal no matter what the starting point. I wouldn’t use it always-on and certainly wouldn’t record with it, but for an instant change in feel for a couple of songs to vary a set, it does more good than harm. We’ve been using them for a good while now and nobody’s ever come up and said “that sounded dodgy”! 🙂

Exactly this. I don't want to sound different, just to sound the way I want to sound.

I’m not sure the origin of “it’s all in the fingers” is really related to different instrument sounds. It’s more about the player, and attitude to playing, and deciding what is going to get you to where you want to be. For some, the bass, the amp, the effects etc etc seem to be the be-all and end-all on getting good tone, and getting a sound that they really want. But the reality is that at the end of the day it’s all in practise, good technique and hard work. For me, that’s the spirit of it - buying all the expensive gear and expecting to sound like your bass heroes isn’t going to happen - because their tone is in their fingers - which have had years of practise, hard work, and experience.

I still wonder what's that switch this woman flipped inside John Lennon to have him be her pet. After her it was all downhill for him, like sketchy musical outcome, alienation from Julian (save for the "lost weekend", BTW, his most productive post-Beatles period, connected with lots of top cats and recorded whole diversity of stuff), then getting secluded for some years to raise Sean on his own (Yoko gave up any task as soon as the poor child was born). It's sort of sad. IDK, I often re-read the Playboy interview and what's splashed all around is the smell of a pretty fake guy that not only is a big b/s'er (some of his own and some with Yoko's script writing contribution), but who also seems to firmly believe his own b/s. The kind of thing "intellectual inbreeding" (contact with few people and mutually reinforcing/feeding back of some ideas or doctrines to extremes) does to an already emotionally abducted person's brain. The most repulsive part is probably where he's like "Julian's still my son but Sean's first" (not literally but along that "morale"), as a father that's really f*ed up to me. I definitely think Yoko would still be anonymous (as she deserves, based on her own lack of merit) if she hadn't been so skilled at manipulating the guy for so long. No, she didn't break up the Beatles, listen to the music, they simply weren't a musical (nor personal) turn on for each other anymore. With some less important storms along the way it all came apart; but those storms were not only Yoko, it was also management/production/corporate disagreements. Yoko was just one more mishap along the path to the Beatles' end. The mishap, as explained by Bill Burr (I 100% subscribe)

Yeah that's the problem. I even found some of the books somewhat suspect back in the day. I find tabs are good for a reference point but you still have to use you ears and play what sounds "right".

I feel the same after upgrading my Cali CB to a Spectracomp. I can really notice he multiband when I dig in aggressively and it’s reigned in by the upper band with a fast attack to catch the peak, yet the low end still pulses, with a slower attack to accentuate the thump.

Cant go wrong with a Rumble 500. Light, powerful and fosters easy to get a great sound. Ideal for a bit of P bass goodness. It puts out about 300 watts on it`s own, add another cab to get yer 500 watts. There is a monster thread on Talkbass about these. Fosters?? Damm you profanity filter!

I thought they were all universities now...?

Well at the next bass bash you could organise a blind audience fingering and get answers.

Whether it's in the fingers, or you have good or indifferent bass gear, one of the main (and overlooked) elements regarding how you sound is how everyone else in your band sounds. It's no good being the world's best bass player if you're in a band with the world's worst drummer or the UK's loudest guitarist. Whether or not you're heard and appreciated is also down to how other people play - do they listen, are they selfish, do they leave space in the music, do they have good timing and groove? Some people (even when playing covers) will fill every nanosecond with noise, so ultimately you can't hear anything much and whether you're a good bass player or not and whether you have good gear or not becomes moot.

If you think that's dodgy, I suggest you have a look at TC Electronic!

think you're probably right, there's nothing else out there like it, maybe a change of presenter would help Jools certainly gets on my tits. I've been thinking for a while that it's been some time since anything big happened, it's either Rap or ballads these days it seems, tried watching a BBC4 program about Grime last night, they went on about the evolution of the Rap genre but it seemed pretty much the same to me apart from the words seemed even more incomprehensible and I had the subtitles switched on, but then, stuff you don't like does sound the same. I starting to sound like my Dad