Gareth Hughes

Not quite forgotten - but a few years ago I spent 3 hours trying to make a 30 minute journey due to floods to play at a wedding. Eventually gave up and went home. The sax player sang the bass parts all night - thankfully having enough lung stamina to do the whole gig. Said he had a new found respect for how constant a bass player has to be on a gig, compared to regular sax parts.

He makes Tom Waits sound like the pinnacle of annunciation.

All good dealing with Rich - he bought a pedal from me, easy and quick payment all round. Thanks Rich.

If neither of the above works out give me a shout. Whilst I do love mine dearly I've just borrowed Bigwan's Trace Elliot V-Tyoe preamp, so any fuzziness I need is taken care of for now. And just to add to your gas - I found the SFT to be just as good in actual use as the Youtube clips that made me drool. (The SFT ones, that is)

Hey Clarky - slight tangent but you may want to hold onto the foam for dampening the afterlength of the strings. This is a real culprit in generating feedback live on the upright, especially the Eminence. Sorry to hear you're having some teething problems with the bass. Hopefully checking the bridge will help. I travel a fair bit with mine and have often found that the bridge needs re-adjusting for the first few days after assembling it.

My gig last night was one that I said no to a few days earlier because it was like a drunken childcare facility the last time I played it. This time - aside from two guys in their 20's wrestling in front of the band, I had to wait for a half hour after we finished playing to wait for the drugged up idiot to stop trying to kick his way through the front door. Here's a guy that got thrown out before our break and literally spent to the next 90 minutes trying to kick the front door in. My guess was PCP.

Ya Honza!!!!!!!!!!!!! Glad to hear your first impressions are good ones. Onwards and upwards!!

Cool cool. Make sure you check about the neck - as mine was sent from Gary to Bob Gollihur, so in theory should have been given the once over (which is why I never thought to do it for years as I blamed my inexperience for my (lack of) ability on the instrument. Whether I got a Friday afternoon job, I don't know - but it sure plays a million times better since having the neck planed.

Hey Pick - Before I even get to checking out the Feraud solo I just want to say thank you for all the transcriptions you've done and made available to everyone. I think yours was the first site I found any Anthony Jackson transcriptions of a few years ago. Apologies that I've never said thank you before. And it's good to see you here too. gareth

Hey Clarky - If it's at all possible and makes things easier - you're welcome to come over and try my Eminence out to see how good they really can play. If you can make it to Belfast City Airport, there's a studio about 15 minutes drive away that I could have for an afternoon and bring down my Markbass/Epifani/Genz Benz gear for you to try everything through. Scrumptous food for thought.

I have two Epifani UL112 cabs and a UL310 cab that I run with a Markbass LMK head. With either setup of speakers I've never found volume, punch or clarity to be an issue. The light weight of the cabs is an absolute bonus. I previously owned an Epifani UL-902C amp that I found to be very dull sounding and have a very limited EQ section. It had plenty of power but I was never done tweaking things to get a clearer sound.

Only once in about 3000 gigs have I needed an alternative bass, due to seriously dodgy wiring in the venue resulting in bad earthing - and thankfully that night I was playing upright as well as electric, so I just did the whole gig on upright. And only from about 2 months ago have I started bringing two basses to a gig - and that's only because I might be digging the P for some songs but then feel like it's a J time, and when I want that tone I'll just start regretting not having brought that bass instead. On upright gigs I have a spare pickup mounted on the bass, as that's the most likely thing to stop working.

Fair play - looking forward to having a jukesie at that!!

Here's my tuppence worth (again probably but bear with me, I'm having my morning coffee at 12:30pm and loving it). I read music and I'm thankful that I can because this week it's giving me employment that I wouldn't have had otherwise. I play music for a living so being able to say 'YES' to a gig is about as important as it gets for me. Musicians who do not read music are no less musicians than I or anyone else that reads music. If you want to do reading gigs and want to communicate with others using written notation then it's important to read music. If not, then it's not. Simples.

[quote name='beyond' post='1004104' date='Oct 28 2010, 05:25 PM']What will you spend all the royalties on [/quote] Hmmmmmm......how much are plectrums going for these days?

Thanks folks. Bilbo - yeah, the Piazolla feel is great there. Maurice Seezer, the accordion player on this, loves that stuff inside and out. And both Friday and Seezer are huge Jacques Brel fans. I have a pile of Piazolla and other tango charts if you want a copy of them. PM me an address and I'll get them copied soon. I'm playing 'Seussical' at the minute - so a sneaky copy of that is needed.

Hey folks - This is a bit of self-patting-on-the-back so please just indulge me. A track I played on a few years ago, on the soundtrack to 'In America' by Jim Sheridan, has been used on the BBC's new weather ad. Nothing flash or fancy in the playing - just a nice tune with some lovely people. The band is The Friday/Seezer Ensemble - where I got to be a kid in a candy store working with Michael Blair - drummer on Tom Waits 'Rain Dogs','Franks Wild Years' and 'Big Time', Lou Reed's 'Magic And Loss', Suzanne Vega's 'Days Of Open Hand' amongst many others and also produced one of me favourite records 'Every Day I Wear A Greasy Black Feather In My Hat' by Moondog Jr. Needless to say I was a pestering fanatic coming into the studio everyday after I'd found another record in my collection that he'd played on. Here's the clip: [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7_PqXdugQE&feature=player_embedded"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7_PqXdugQE...player_embedded[/url]

Yup, I'll second Velvet's as being an instrument changer for sure. I have Blue's on my upright - makes a world of difference. For my Eminence I have a set of Kolstein Heritage string on, and the low tension/gut feel really make that bass into more than it should be.

Clarky just bought my (and his old) Fender Am. Std. Jazz in Olympic White - thus completing a very incestuous Basschat circle. A pleasure to deal with.