Colledge

thanks for all the info and help. i've been keeping an eye on the classifieds, a lot tasty stuff on there. also thanks for the heads up on the jap market, one more thing to look out for. I'm fancying something with a bit of a vintage vibe (hence the cv squires) and theres a lot of japs that tick that box.

I'm on the verge of committing myself to the purchase of an olympic while squier vm but i'm calling on the power of BC for some advice of choices. i'm in the odd position of having been playing for a good 4-5 years with a single bass. at most i've only laid hands on 4 other basses in that time and even then, its only been for a couple of minutes. I've been playing a washburn force 4 all this time and its now pretty much an extension of my hands. But i actually have no idea how good a bass it is because i have nothing to compare it with. well long story short, a combination of GAS for classic looks, trying something different and also the fact that my new band is finally started to gig (need a backup). I'm in the market for a bass for around £300, top runners are squier precision vm olympic while or cv fiesta red. Gimme any and all of your suggestions. and fyi, The band is pretty much exclusively classic rock orientated, but i like to experiment with a bit of stoner/desert rock and the odd bit of metal. cheers

have a browse arround the for sale section... theres lots of great deals to be had and something might catch your eye.

i miss having my big ol' trace 2x15 and the novelty both the visual and aural presence. My current v-type combo is less of a pain in the arse and sounds great.... but i don't feel as "f*** yeah" when i'm playing it. Might see if i can make myself a nice matching lightweight extension cab to help my ego out. Does anyone know where i cab get the trace green carpet? i'll get pics up at some point... the combo is in great nick... but nothing that'll make you pitch a tent.

i strongly believe that as long as a cable has an appropriate gauge, shielding and good contact at both ends, the sound quality is completely indifferent between cables. i've in the past bought a reel of generic shielded cable and used it to make my own instrument cables and can truthfully say that i can't tell a difference between my cheaply made cables and my more expensive fender and monster cables for either bass, guitar or vocals. the internal resistance and material inconsistencies of a pedal even with a true bypass will far surpass that of a cable. I mainly use my fender cable because its tweed so it looks better and doesn't tangle at all like rubberized cables.

there are quite a few amps out there with a poweramp in. its just a case of looking at a few spec sheets.

now thats the stuff

if you hooked up the actual lb to the propper cab for the loveliness and poweramp to a deep cab for the extra thump and throw, that would be one hell of a setup. might be easiest to just get an el-cheapo amp off here like an ashdown, could be easier than a seperate poweramp.

bass is the only one i really have a connection with. when i have a riff in my head, my hands seem to manage to play it exactly... i can't do that on guitar or keys... i just don't spend enough time with them.

another (imho easier) option is to get another 4ohm cab and run the 2 of them in series for a 8 ohm load. i think that way you will have less of an imbalance of power between the cabs.

[quote name='bigjohn' post='888661' date='Jul 7 2010, 05:03 PM']Series is a bit more complicated but if you've got matching cabs you divide the impedance by the number of cabs. So you'll have an impedance of 2ohm.[/quote] i think you mean parallel [quote name='geoffbyrne' post='888692' date='Jul 7 2010, 05:28 PM']Be careful here!!! Very few cabs, to my knowledge, have standardised series wiring. If you take a cable from cab to cab you will, most likely, still be connecting in parallel. I remember once, a long time ago, seeing a Vox cab with 2 black plastic-nutted jacks marked "parallel" and one white-nutted socket marked "series", but apart from doing custom wiring, that's all. Geoff.[/quote] +1

the roland bass micro cube seems like a pretty good amp. guitarist in my band swears by the guitar version. also that power pack has the ability to run from an external 12v source so you could add extension batteries for longer playing.

i too prefer open backed as i think i've played with too many players who have a really bassy tone who take up too much of my frequency real estate causing me to have trouble getting through the mix. open backed imo gives a better vintage style sound.

[quote name='Magnolia' post='883909' date='Jul 2 2010, 01:02 PM']I anchor my thumb on top of the pickup, and where im quite a heavy handed player press down quite hard with it. Balls![/quote] damn, sounds just like me..... better lay off it a bit then.

i can't see you running even bass through that pa, considering a lot of bassists have more power then that in just their amp, ad thats through dedicated bass speakers. 400w would probably be enough for vocals alone for that size venue. see if you can get away with an un mic'd backline.

man that looks cool as hell. is the saturation meter basically a tube behind a phosphorus screen?

if you can't get the mixer to work, a litte thing i used to do is use some normal ipod headphones for music and some bigger home headphones over the top for bass. It worked surprisingly well.

those strings look awfully thin

theres people on ebay that do custom waterslide headstock decals, i'm sure they'd do one of those for you for not very much.