bassbiscuits

Aargh my eyes! I'd go as far as 'fugly' on that one.

Yup - I've got a few old songs in the bag which I'm revisiting and looking to rejig a bit for possible use with a current band. There's quite a few bits in each which I've totally forgotten how to play tho. Had to sit and listen to work out what on earth is going on.

My 1970 Fender P i bought back in 1994. It's not perfect, but its my bass for life as the best compromise between sound, weight, vibe etc. I briefly owned a black/maple 2008 USA Jazz bass with Aguilar Hot pickups - that was very close to being absolutely perfect for me, but I had it at a point where I'd injured my shoulder and couldn't take the 4.3kg weight, so i sold it.

[quote name='dood' timestamp='1509487824' post='3399428'] Cheap "Guitars for kids". Awful and totally embarrassing, because they are rubbish for kids to learn on. They sound bad, they play even worse and don't even get me started on the tuning problems. [/quote] This. I did some guitar teaching last year for kids aged about 7-14. The younger ones all had cheap beginner acoustic guitars which were universally dreadful - impossible to tune and a struggle to play. Ive just picked up a Tanglewood travel-sized acoustic which will hopefully prove a bit more useful should my lads decide to learn when they're a bit older.

I had an awful Satellite short scale bass with sky-high action, and my brother had the corresponding guitar. Our other mate played the drums by hitting our bed mattress and pillows with some sticks while we fizzed away through our five-watt practise amps and tried to play U2 and Thin Lizzy songs.

I've bought very little this year - actually been doing the opposite and selling off kit I'm not using. Best purchase: An Allen and Heath Zed 10FX desk for my solo gigs (best as in I've already earned back a lot more than it cost me) I've also just picked up a little Tanglewood travel size guitar which I'll hopefully put to good use. Worst purchase: Luckily, I haven't bought anything that's a real dog this year, so lets hope I can keep that going until December!

Welcome Mark, I'm just up the road from you in Leicester - and the annual East Midlands Bass Bash run by Basschat is in Enderby every May - worth popping by to meet up and try each other's gear, chat and eat cakes! Nice one.

I did one of these last year in a pub in Leicester city centre. I narrowed dodged being caught in a scuffle which erupted behind me as I was getting a pint, but got a drink thrown across my back while getting away from it. The group of people involved got bundled out of the door, where they carried on battering each other and one guy got knocked out cold on the pavement. Yeah, Merry Christmas indeed. I'm not gigging on Black Friday this year as far as I'm aware, and I can't say i'm shedding a tear.

Cool - i've played the equivalent Jazz version of one of these and it sounded great - full of good usable sounds. I imagine the P would be even more to my tastes tho as I'm not really a J player. Glad it sounded so good and did the job nicely!

[quote name='FinnDave' timestamp='1508456368' post='3392395'] Just back from a mid week gig in Oxford. Fourth time at this venue this year, and by far the biggest audience. Lots of people dancing, very uplifting gig. I played my new Fender Classic 50s Precision, through an Ashdown Rootmaster 800 and Super Compact - and it sounded epic! Also tried finger style for the first time in nearly two years, after a motorcycle accident left my right hand damaged. I tried using the knuckle joints with the hand flat on the bass rather than having my hand at almost right angles to the string and using the finger/hand joint. Amazingly, it works and I got through the entire gig without a pick! So much easier to control my sound. So, a significant step for me tonight. [/quote] Well done on both respects there FinnDave. Glad the new P did the job nicely, and good news about the fingerstyle. Sounds like real progress!

I struggled with the Mike Lull PJ4 I had. I loved the look, the amazing feel of the neck, the light weight and perfect balance. It sounded brilliant by itself, but in a gig, with a band, I could never get it to sound like i wanted. I swapped pickups, swapped strings from rounds to flats and back, but it just didn't do the sound in my head. It came to a head when i bought a £200 secondhand Yamaha which got closer to the sound I wanted than the Lull, for less than 10% of the cost of the Lull, so I sold it. It was a great bass, but just not for me.

I had a Tokai Thunderbird copy once which i couldn't get on with. It looked great, and I'd always lusted after a T-bird alike of some sort. But it felt like wearing a dinner table round my neck. Weighed a tonne, it was huge and I couldn't get it to hang comfortably. And it gouged my right forearm every time i used a pick. Lasted about two months before being sold on.

[quote name='FinnDave' timestamp='1508246331' post='3390797'] I'm certainly very happy with mine, but I've only had it one day so the newness hasn't worn off yet! I haven't played it with a band yet either, that's the real test. [/quote] Do let us know how it performs live - be interested to hear how you get on.

I've had a couple of both over the years. I originally found that the USA P I had was much fuller and meatier sounding than the MIJ Jazz i had - exactly what I needed for a rock/pop band. But as band diversified and i needed to play some slap/more intricate stuff, I ended up with a USA jazz fitted with Aguilar hot pickups - it was the best sounding bass i've ever owned. It had the fatness of the P, but with greater note separation and clarity, instead of the slightly blurry thud that the P had. I sold the J in the end tho as it was too heavy for me - my main bass remains a Precision. I think I'd miss the full fat boom of a Precision more than I miss the high end articulation of a Jazz.

Nice one - I love the look of these maple/sunburst/gold 50s basses. My favourite colour combination of all P basses. I've been resisting getting one of these for a long time.

Looks great - I've got a standard goldtop one and it looks awesome. Annoyingly it seems its taken me to play a big gold bass on stage for punters to actually notice I'm in the band.... But yeah it works for me. Looks mean in black too. Very cool.

I also wish I'd realised that there's a whole world of musicians gigging, teaching and performing to make a decent living. They aren't famous, or household names, but they are proper, genuine, working musicians. When I began, I had the impression that unless you were on Top of the Pops or on some huge world tour, you weren't a real musician. There are a tiny percentage who achieve that, and at the other end are the people who never get past being a bedroom player. But the rest of us are people whose lives involving making music at varying levels of professionalism, maybe as a lucrative hobby, maybe as our main job. I wish I'd known they existed back when I started. Would have helped make it all seem a bit more achievable and reasonable, rather than just a wild dream of wanting to be a rockstar.

[quote name='bassbiscuits' timestamp='1507462013' post='3385554'] I wish I'd known how much of my life was going to be spent playing music. I'd have actually bothered learning to read and write music properly and taking GCSE and A Level music at school perhaps. [/quote] In fairness this might be a blessing in disguise tho. Pre Internet era, I worked out stuff by ear, from records, tapes, and live videos. This formed my approach to playing, and has given me a good ear for dissecting the different parts of songs and instrumentation which I wouldn't have ever developed if I'd just googled everything or read it from a chart. Still I think a better command of music theory somewhere along the way wouldn't have hurt at all. Though in the 30+ years since I started playing I've kind of worked out pretty much what I'm doing, even if it's taken me a bit longer to get there!

I wish I'd known how much of my life was going to be spent playing music. I'd have actually bothered learning to read and write music properly and taking GCSE and A Level music at school perhaps.

Oh dear! Guilty as charged re the hat. Never worn at same time as a waistcoat tho.

Mine was December 1988, for the Christmas party at the sixth form room of the school i was at in Swansea (I was only in fourth form, tho my brother and rest of band were sixth formers) I was 14. My bass was a white Westone Spectrum ST. The amp was a borrowed Carlsbro combo, as i only had a tiny practice amp of my own. Set list was about eight songs of 60s/70s/80s rock, including stuff by Poison (Every Rose has its Thorn), Cinderella (Falling Apart at the Seams), Wild Thing etc - can't remember the rest. Someone videoed it, and the set is interrupted by some halfway through announcing there's still some sponge cake available for sale... very rock and roll. I had a mullet, a bright yellow shirt and puffy white trainers. Oh dear. First gig at a proper venue was in 1989 at the Biko Bar at Coventry Polytechnic, when i was 15, with a four-piece band called Wile Air (again it was my older brother and some uni mates, with me on bass). I used the same Westone bass, and a Thunder 1A too, this time with my Peavey TNT 130 combo. We did covers from Marillion, Bon Jovi, Georgia Satellites etc. It was a really busy battle of the bands type thing and i felt like a god for the rest of the evening (we didn't win tho!)

Croeso y Basschat Amy, Another Swansea native here, tho I've lived in Leicestershire for the last 13 years, so it's all changed a bit since then. In terms of basses, Epiphone do some medium-scale (or even short scale?) SG-shaped EB basses i think. I'm no expert on short scale basses, but as the others here have mentioned, there are some very informative threads and more knowledgeable people on here who can help. We're a nice bunch generally!