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You really are an over opinionated racist fool aren't you i grew up in Tottenham listening to reggae [both uk and Jamaican] and have played it for most of my fifty years i play with a band that consists of Jamaican, Indian ,Polish, Bermudan, mixed heritage and uk born some of the white members of the band have played with some of the biggest names in reggae without any problem i play the music from the streets i grew up in but reggae music is loved the world over ,and its message of unity and love is open to all.

Two things: first, Bob Marley's dad was a white guy from Liverpool. Second: you live in a flipping colony!!!

Just double checked the thread title, thought it must have been “How dare you play reggae”

I think that we make it hard for ourselves - we study great bass players on TV, YouTube, Spotify etc, we chat with other great bass players on this here site, and so as a result we can have a tendency to take a harsh view of our own abilities, because we set ourselves such difficult standards to meet up to. But then once you're up on stage, you have to remember that you're probably the best bass player in the room, and you're doing things that, to the majority of the crowd, is like witchcraft. I don't think that we should get too complacent though. I like being well prepared, I like knowing that I've done the best that I can do. But I also agree that some of my most memorable gigs were the ones where things went wrong, but the band held it together by sheer musical intuition. S.P.

Good luck with your endeavours. If anyone, of whatever colour, tries to tell you that you shouldn't be playing a particular type of music because of your ethnic background, then they are being racist, and should be ignored, however much they may try to conceal their racism behind such fatuous pc terms as "cultural appropriation". It's no different from someone telling a black person that they shouldn't be performing opera or playing in a string quartet. Music is music, and has always benefitted from cross-cultural fertilization, without which much of the music we enjoy, and which has enriched our lives, simply would not exist. Enjoy!

Stringnavigator I’ll ask you nicely to go and do something else before you get a Basschat holiday. I’ve spoken to you before about that chip on your shoulder and it looks like you’ve ignored it. So last warning. Thanks.

I started in live music by playing at one of the better jams in West London (the Drayton Arms, Ealing, formerly the King's Head, Acton jam). Quite literally everybody in the room was a better musician than me, and the great majority (including the guitarists) were better bass players than me. So? You have to start somewhere. If I could get in a time machine and go back those years - taking my bass with me, natch - there would still be plenty of better musicians there. There will always be better musicians than yourself somewhere, if you look hard enough. So stop looking and enjoy what you do.

I can't even do that after 6 months rehearsing with the same band. 😂

I kept getting drawn back to drool over Derek's Stingray 5 stealth on the for sale boards so last weekend (after a couple of beers) I sent him a PM. Now it's mine! It's heavier than my other fiver (a Maruszcyzk with a chambered body) and the neck is significantly chunkier but it's subjectively 'tighter' in all areas, to play, in tone and particularly on the low B. Given that I'm in an 80s covers band I ordered a set of DR neons and, well, look at it! Happy boy. Not sure if the Maruszcyzk is going to go as it does a very different thing, but the ray instantly fit the band sound at rehearsal this week.

You really are an unpleasant individual, you know nothing of my ancestry. FYI, my ancestors fought tooth and nail for civil and workers rights, my father died very young as result of poor social conditions when I was a kid. I was brought up to love all people, all colours, all religions, all backgrounds. You would do well to do the same.

Once we get these in ears fired up after Xmas my only FOH sound will be from the RCF 735s and hopefully the guitarist will be ampless too, that should kill rock and roll off forever!

OK 'third fitting' completed - strings off, neck off, nut off, bit more scraping, full length and 3-fret rock checking, found a couple of high spots, scraped, resanded, checked, nut back on, neck back on, strings back on And it plays great So that leaves a few tidy up jobs - there's a rough edge at one of the neck join areas, as I said above, two of the side dots need replacing and this time in the right place lining up with the others , fretboard edges need softening, fretboard needs sanding progressively to 12000 micro-web polishing level (no treatment), final slurry and buff, fit the p/up and electrics and straplocks. In fact, there aren't many areas there where I can completely c**k it up so, you never know... By the end of the weekend it should be finished just resting a week to let the oil fully harden before shipping to @eude I hope he likes it once he's got it.

All of the ones that are in installs will be switched on and off on the wall all the time.

AC8B34CD-E149-48EB-AA53-E5BE3899E64B.mp4

18 years off the radar is a long time, and means you're pretty much starting from scratch. I gave up playing live for around 10 years, until my old drummer came round and tapped me up for starting a new band. Granted, it's "dad-rock down the Dog & Duck", but it's a lot more fun than it was before. I get out and play, and I make a few quid from it. We had contacts from years ago that sprouted again, and now we're merrily rolling along at 2-6 gigs a month, with bookings through next year. Our one problem was finding a decent singer - absolutely none available in our age group (40s-early 50s). We ended up with a young karaoke hero who has a great voice but no concept of fronting a band. He's slowly getting there, though. There are few pub bands left around here now - they've all grown or given up - but it has to be said that there are also a lot fewer gigs. The youth of today generally couldn't care less about live music, and they just don't turn up to pubs where there's a band on. Pretty soon, a proper, all-live band playing down the pub will be history. Acoustic blokes and chintzy duos already rule the roost in these parts. Anyhow, if you're looking to accelerate back up the league again, you may have to track down old associates and look for a leg-up. Otherwise, if you really want to get out and play, you're going to have to relive your youth by playing with less experienced musicians and all that entails. But, if you're honest with yourself, you knew that already.

It helps when the design allows such an easily tweaked action via the spoke wheel truss rod. Ive reset both of my Specials recently - the 5 taking a bit more to and fro than the 4 - to be fair it was probably still settling as I only picked it up last month - and as we all know the weathers been up and down quicker than the proverbial - if Virgin Trains air con can't keep up (I've had a couple of sweltering journeys recently - on warm days following freezing ones) what chance your brand new living, breathing wood with low action!! Anyway they are both now perfectly set for me and are staying like it, so I'm very happy!!

He’s gone now folks.

You conveniently left out part of what I wrote when you quoted me, the fact that not a soul in Jamaica cared 😉 you assume I'm not from an island, although I love the UK, , I'm from the mainland where there are Germans playing fabulous funk (nope, not from Germany either) And yeah, blocked

No time for this...blocked. Seeya.

Au contraire, my judgemental and proscriptive friend...and you can pack it in with the 'Euros', too...

But it does come from streets of London, Birmingham, etc. due to the huge influx or Caribbean peoples to Britain back in the mid/late 1900's.

Do you wear one of those pointy hats ?

Right oh - I was musing the same thing. SE Bass Bash in the spring? I'll check with the school and report back here...............

Thanks for this thread, its made me remember things! Personally my ideal sound is basically anything REM have recorded, particularly Orange Crush. Or Duff Mckagan on anything Velvet Revolver. Its a shame Scott Weiland was such a nong, VR were good up until the occasionally WTAPF?! jarring lyric... See particularly: and:

The best bit of advice I was given when I started was that as long as you start together, stop together and smile together, no one notices the bit in the middle. I thought they were joking but it’s surprisingl true. There have been a couple of car crash moments when we have murdered a song but never has anyone commented on it. Quite the opposite on one occasion where we did a short set and for some reason just weren’t on it (borrowed kit, no set up time didn’t help) but we had people raving about us, in a good way, on Facebook.

That is GORGEOUS!

I suppose if this was a fancy made-to-measure suit, this is the '2nd fitting' stage I'm working on the fretboard now that the neck and fretboard will have settled down and everything is OK to do a trial setup. There was a slight back bow on the unstrung neck, leaving the lower frets a bit low and a little unevenness along the fretboard so I've been gently flattening it with light work with a cabinet scraper and levelling beams. Almost there with the fretboard. It's now fine all the way from the 3rd fret to the top on a fairly low action on all strings but there's still just a bit of buzz on the 1st and 2nd fret positions so I've just got a touch more fettling to do. Also noticed two of my side dots are just a touch out of alignment - I'll redo those once the messing about with the fretboard is finished Andy

Ha good to hear that view Earbrass, my ear tunes to all kinds of music and I'd like to think my playing benefits from that open mindedness to all genres. I have been constrained by that when I was playing guitar in a couple of major touring reggae bands because I was playing bluesy, sometimes rocky lines and funky rhythms which worked and were on some of the covers they did. On the cultural appropriation in the context that you put it I absolutely agree with you. There is another side to that which is completely different and not something I want to get into. 👍🤝

Also use a standard bass to demo an amp. Something that most of us can relate to and will know the tone. And tell us what the bass settings are too. If a Jazz bass where are the pick up controls set and where is the tone set. Likewise a P bass or probably just need to know the tone setting on a P bass. Dave

Yes, I have two of the new series and they are the only basses I play now. I also had a white 425X a few years ago. An excuse for another photo 😀

There are a few Facebook groups that can help you find function work but you'll need to be prepared to look at bands further afield if you don't already have plenty of contacts in your area. Hate to say it but age is a factor these days as many of the agencies want young rock / indie bands at the moment because thats the current trend for weddings. It's always been an image based business but it seems that what sells right now is bands that look and smell like they belong on stage at a radio 1 festival. There are agencies like DK Management based in the south that put bands together from scratch and supply PA etc and do all the marketing but you'll not earn much more than £150 per man per night in the first year. They run regular auditions for new musicians.

Using JMB is very frustrating, when you do find something you contact people and most of the time they never reply to you making you wonder why the advertised in the first place. However, I joined my last two bands from them - the first one from an advert on there of a starting band, and the second I just advertised that I wanted a band when I left the first. Just lucky on that I guess as still in that after 3 years. I don't really think that social media has much to do with the success of a band, we use it but only minimally, and I don't recognise the part time job thing. We also have 20+ gigs booked for next year, but that is just a couple of evenings of phoning and messaging. We have some regulars and a lot of the other parties etc come through people contacting us who saw us at previous events.

I'd honestly give Facebook a punt and drive things yourself. Start something new. There's plenty of musician groups on it. As an aside, JMB is a strange site; too many idiots, too many people bigging themselves up or bragging about albums already recorded and gigs waiting. It has potential to be brilliant, it's beautifully simple but for the idiots who use it. Interestingly, I found a very decent drummer through our little village FB page, I'd posted a desperate plea of, 'does anyone know a drummer?' and it went from there. Everyone knows someone who knows someone. Good luck finding something.

My favourites are: Flea on Blood Sugar Sex Magik: it was the tone that sold a million Stingrays. Until we found, out years later, that it was mostly recorded with a Wal! Randy Hope Taylor on Incognito's Postivity album. Warm, organic and so soulful. Too many others to mention, but Bernard Edwards, Tim Commerford (Rage Against the Machine), Steve Harris all had a great sound for their stand out tracks. I'd also normally try and sneak on my all time great, James Jamerson, in to these "great bass..." discussions, but let's face it, the tone was mud. It was his playing and genius choice in notes and rhythm that made him legendary.

I can't believe you let your dog sit on the sofa. V cool looking bass. Good choice.

Thank you Susie Dent.

There are a billion better bassists in London than me. No way would I get through auditions and get hired. To get around that small hurdle I've formed my own bands. Am just about to start my third in the new year: gigs in the diary, 2 hour set list sorted and talented 5 piece line-up on board. We just need to start rehearsing My advice FWIW: why look to jump on someone else's coat tails? Be bold, believe in yourself and make it happen. Age is just a number.

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Why are you being rude? What an odd reply. Literally an opinion, a point of view - my 2p. The concept of a cheaper (‘kiddy’) Flea bass in itself was acknowledged by Flea when he brought out the “fleabass” range of instruments and further addressed by the introduction of a lower price point Fleabass (street bass). I was just pointing out that Fender may have missed a trick by only having the one price point which would be out of reach for younger/less affluent fans when they’ve done broader attempts to previously... Mike Dirnt has/had a Fender and a Squier model simultaneously BB King had a Gibson and Epiphone version of Lucille (there are plenty more examples) It just broadens their buying audience somewhat and more buyers means more money. Makes more business sense. And having left the guitar/bass retail industry after 12 years in 2015 - I might have an idea of what people buy into. As a point, the cheap fleabass instruments weren’t that great - but we sold 100’s of them because people bought into the Flea name/image. But what would I know, I’m only a child.

Another great one to really get the feel for a reggae bass line is this, from my early days just starting out on bass in 1977 aged 14 😀

Quickly. That went quickly. Please remember the suffix on adverbs.

It’s not a stupid question at all, because lots of the notes are played on the offbeat ,that’s what gives the Bassline a different feel , you will also play pickup notes which are notes before the 1 if you are counting 1,2,3,4 . A good tune to practice getting the timing is Stir it up , Bob Marley . IMO Robbie Shakespeare is one of the best reggae bass players ever 😀. Also on YouTube Alain m has some great basslines

[quote name='StevieC' post='721913' date='Jan 23 2010, 08:14 AM']Dear All, Watching the Take That musical 'Never Forget' on DVD last night (nowt on the telly!). Noticed the bass playing was nicely prominent in mix and sounding extremently good - Nice tone, very assured playing and even a long solo in one of the tracks. The bass player was Ian King, who i'd (not surprisingly) never heard of. He doesn't appear to have his own website. I was wondering if he posts on here or anyone knows him. It would be good to learn what it was like playing that gig, what his set up was etc. I know we've had 'Pro-playing' threads on here before, but what the heck... Anyone help? Steve[/quote] Hey all, I noticed this thread and just thought I'd write a few lines in response.. Thanks Steve for your kind words about the 'Never Forget' DVD.. I played on the first tour of 'Never Forget' before moving onto 'Hairspray' in town in October 2007, it was only for 10 weeks but I was lucky enough to get to play on the DVD and the cast album during that time.. The tour was great fun and musically one of the better shows I've played on with a rock solid rhythm section of Chris Taggart on kit, Rob Taggart (no relation) on keys 1 and the awesome Lewis Osborne on guitar (who I'm now enjoying working with on 'Sister Act' at The Palladium).. I was playing my fretted and fretless 5 string McIntyre basses on that one and just had a basic pedal set up with headphones (as there wasn't room up on the gantry for amps).. I think I was using a Sansamp programmable bass driver DI, an EBS unichorus for the fretless stuff, the obligatory Boss TU-2 tuner, a Boss line-switcher and a Morley Volume pedal.. All pretty simple really.. Pedal wise I'm actually much more excited about the set-up I've achieved more recently and am now using at The Palladium.. I realised that certain pedals will just sap your sound and you'll always be fighting against them unless you replace them with something more neutral sounding.. The passive Morley volume pedal was the worst culprit of this and changing it over to a Visual Sound Volume Pedal made an ENORMOUS difference and essentially completely restored the midrange that I felt I'd been losing on these shows.. Anther change I made was ditching the Boss line-switcher pedal for a Lehle 3@1 pedal, it's a true-bypass switcher with no loss of sound and is super quiet.. I also ditched the Sansamp for an EBS Microbass II which is far superior, the EBS has 2 channels, the 2nd of which is a dirtier sansamp style channel but you have the added benefit of a super clean 1st channel and a parallel blendable FX loop (great for adding subtle chorus) amongst other great features.. I also bought an Analogman modded Boss GE-7 pedal which has had some of it's components replaced with better quality ones to reduce hiss and I use that for my double bass.. Oh and I use an EBS Multicomp too.. So my set up now runs like this, For the electric bass. Bass -> EBS Multicomp -> EBS Microbass II -> Channel 1 of Lehle 3@1 -> Visual Volume Pedal -> (tuner out into) Boss TU-2 For the double bass. Bass -> Analogman GE-7 -> Channel 2 of Lehle 3@1 -> Visual Volume Pedal -> (tuner out into) Boss TU-2 Channel 3 is spare in case I have a show with fretless as well as fretted and Upright I've got it all mounted on a Pedaltrain 2 with a Jim Dunlop DC brick powering it all Some might say it's overkill but it's all super quiet true-bypass stuff and it sounds killing!.. I'm not using an amp in the pit again as I'm sat very close to the string section but have had a butt-kicker attached to the underside of my chair which helps give the feel of a large amp shifting air next to you when you're actually playing away silently on headphones! Well, I hope that answers some of your questions.. I'll endeavour to get no here more often and keep basschatting! All the best - Ian King

My plan was to make my unbranded P bass look more like this.......... But when I started to sand this body to refinish it White ready to fit my new maple block and binded neck, to my surprise the body has actually got some really nice grain to it!! So I might now just Danish oil it with a black pickguard instead??.......... The body is really light so I thought it might have been Basswood or Paulownia?? But looking at that grain I'm not so sure??..........

Balls. That's horrible. I'm in Leicester so I'll keep my eyes peeled.

You are funny It's just a picture of the band 😂 Exactly what it says. Ryan Newman, the bass player, is playing behind the beat Exactly. A friend of mine loved playing reggae and got on a plane to Jamaica, lived there for 5 years, played with in a lot of the local bands, taught music and married a Jamaican beauty. Nobody ever mentioned CA

I think essentially Flea knows what he likes for live use after all these years. He likes that MM humbucker in the sweet spot and by the looks of it, a Stingray-ish thickness in the neck (not surprising after so many years playing them). He has been seen regularly with his old fender and a couple of other fender jazz basses and a Precision, and it’s pretty well documented that he uses/used a Wal and has recorded recent stuff on a Stingray. Ernie Ball don’t need to pay him a load of money to endorse a bass that is always going to be synonymous with flea that already sells well. From fragments I have read over the years I think Flea was basically being a d*ck about it and I don’t think Sterling Ball takes any crap from anyone. Modulus go out of business, Fender knock on your door offering some money and you say yes to a replica of your trusty 62 and say I also need basses that sound as close to the ones I love to use live, pretty simple really. I think that he’s obviously still peeved that Ernie Ball didn’t bow down to his celebrity, and still won’t use a stingray in public despite it being the bass everyone associated him with, that is essentially the spec and tone he still wants.

I think that’s the point. It’s a syndrome. People at the top of their game forget all those hours of work that have got them where they are and are suddenly left with that feeling of “How the hell did I end up here? Someone is bound to find me out.” With no reason whatsoever to feel like that. Although I suspect no singer ever felt like that.

I let my ears decide. There are no right or wrong answers. If you like the sound then it's good.