acidbass

There is quite simply no way the fingerboard wood on a fretted bass could possibly make a difference to tone IMO. The strings never touch the fingerboard wood along the entire speaking length of the string i.e. from nut (or fret) to bridge. Metal strings touch metal frets and vibrate in the pickups' magnetic field, and that's it. I can see how fretless boards possibly might affect tone or sustain, but certainly not on fretted instruments.

There are really not too many giggable options under £300 new but if I could snag a Sire passive or a Squier CV bass I would be relatively happy.

I am surprised he made it through that tour alive! By all accounts - an absolute weapon.

Wow, I never knew this was his playing. Cool!

Very nice. Just had a look at their website - tempted by one of the Apollo Pro basses in white. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

I've had quite a few basses shipped to me here in NI with Parcelforce and DHL and all have arrived safely and without any hiccups.

Sounds like a toxic environment. I would run for the hills.

I love La Bella 760FS on a Jazz every bit as much as a Precision. They are a mainstay on all my J basses bar one which has rounds.

Any other users? I was backstage at Metallica this past weekend and played one of Rob's basses through a Fractal AX8 - the tone was unbelievable! Making me rethink my setup. I'd love to try an FM9.

Can you organise and promote your own gig at one of these rural venues? Might be the start of a regular gig and will help increase your profile locally.

It's a fairly uninspiring tone by itself but in the context of the material it is just perfect. A common theme with P basses actually!

I didn't think I would ever need more than 4 per side when I had UE11s, but then when I got JH Roxannes (12 per side) the difference in clarity was simply incredible. So I wouldn't write them off

https://www.music-man.com/instruments/families/basses/darkray

I can definitely recommend the ZS10s as a good universal fit earbud. Better IMO than similar brands at twice and 3x the price.

Bass Direct for me. I think I ordered tuners from Thomann once too.

Marshall amps are still a right of passage for young guitarists but the days of needing 100w+ amps are diminishing exponentially. The same can be said for backline in general I guess.

Hi all Just a note of a positive experience with Hipshot that I had lately I bought a Supertone bridge for my Gibson SG Bass that simply would not intonate correctly - I could get it close, but not exact. This was due to the intonation bridge screws not being short enough. I needed to lengthen the string a bit further than they allowed, which wasn't possible as the saddles are closed and therefore can only be moved back to the limit of the screw (probably not explaining this correctly!) I contacted Hipshot and they sent me four shorter intonation screws for free which solved the problem. Probably not going to break the bank for them but it's nice to see they care and were very helpful. Hope this helps someone in future Danny

I'm beginning to think that the 'Low and High Cut' EQ block is more or less essential to great tone with the Helix. I have the Low Cut set at 50hz and the High Cut at 7khz and it makes the sound so much cleaner, especially before effects such as compressor and octave. I use two 1x10 cabs for onstage monitoring and the drivers seem to work so much more efficiently because of the lack of boom and rumble. To my mind, the EQ block works so much better than the Global EQ (at the cost of a block in the signal chain of course) Does anyone know the specs of these blocks - i.e. how much rolloff per octave they offer? Line 6 don't seem to specify this in the manuals and I can't find it on the forums. I see pedals such as the Broughton HPF offering 12db reduction per octave and imagine it's something comparable, but would really like to know as it has become a key component of my tone and I'm a geek about these things TIA Danny

Welcome Daniel! I love Belgium and have played many gigs there. Great country and I love the moules frites! Enjoy the forum

Yeah I was worried but I sort of bought the bass to use on TV as I wanted something a bit esoteric! It worked out great

Lol! Yeah I thought I had them tightened enough but clearly not! I guess a hidden benefit of the compressor

Yeah we had an afterparty at The Barge Bar. It was pretty cool, the rugby guys joined us but town was pretty quiet by that point (after midnight). A great day!

He was a total gent man. Took the time to come and talk with us pre show, then remembered each of our names after. A cool guy and a lot taller than I imagined for some reason!

Thank you! Yeah it was great fun! I loved every minute really, once I got past the nerves!

LONG POST ALERT! Full video at bottom of post! So I had a pretty big thing last week that I thought I would share with you all, as it’s probably not something that happens every day for most of us! I always love reading these sorts of posts/gig blogs myself for the insight into other people's musical lives so hopefully it will be interesting to someone My band made it’s first live TV appearance on St Patrick’s Day on one of Ireland’s biggest shows – The Late Late Show. Not to be confused with the US equivalent – this is a talk show which has been running since 1962 and is broadcast on Friday nights on Ireland’s largest TV channel – RTE. On a usual week, the audience viewing figures would be around half a million, but this week, the host of 14 years had announced he will be leaving, and so the figures were expected to be in excess of one million. Cripes! We got the call a few months back following quite a successful few years and pretty exponential growth on the usual social media channels. The band plays Irish folk rock, and so St Patrick’s day seemed like a fitting opportunity to showcase our music, which by the way consists mostly of covers of traditional Irish songs arranged in a rockier context. I don’t usually get nervous before gigs – in fact, the last time I recall was before a show in 2003 – but from the day before the show I began to feel the anxiety. What if a string breaks mid song (as happened a few weeks ago at a live gig)? What if my pedalboard gives up the ghost at soundcheck? What if I play a bum note that gets broadcast online for time immemorial? The list of artists who have performed on the show over the years reads as a bit of a ‘who’s who’ of Irish and international artists – most notably U2, Westlife, Sinead O’Connor and The Boomtown Rats all made their debut TV performances on the show. Naturally, the great pedigree that the show has hosted over the years only served to heighten the apprehension even further! I arrived at RTE Studios in Dublin on Friday at 1pm and was taken to a largely unimpressive dressing room by the floor manager, who was lovely and really helpful. Our soundcheck was called for 2.30pm so had loads of time to take in the surroundings, learn the layout of the backstage (which was like a maze) and watch the fantastic house band soundcheck with an amazing version of ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered’. These guys are all pro session heads and the discipline and chops were clearly evident, all guided by a great MD. I managed to grab a chat with a couple of the guys who were only too happy to oblige, which was nice. The bassist was using an active US Jazz into HX Stomp and GK backline with in ears – not so far from my usual setup, and his tone was HUGE! Our soundcheck happened at exactly 2.30pm which was great. What really struck me throughout the day was just how ‘on time’ everything was. The production itself was super slick, and I got the impression that a delay of even a few minutes would have majorly impacted the schedule, with the show due to go out live at 9.30pm. For someone with borderline OCD – I appreciated this immensely! Rig-wise, I brought my new (to me) Gibson SG Bass which I just took delivery of last week. It’s my first ever short scale, at 30.25”, in nitro Olympic White which was a limited edition finish for 2012. The first thing I did when I received it was put on a Hipshot Supertone bridge. I use one on my Jack Casady bass and it’s a huge improvement over the stock Gibson bridge. String wise, I went for my usual La Bella 760FS flats, medium scale. A bit of a setup later and she was singing like a bird! It is truly a lovely instrument. From there, I ran it into my flyrig board which consists of a HX Stomp and Peterson Strobostomp tuner, all powered by a Cioks DC7 power supply. On the HX Stomp I use a custom patch which consists of: - Low and High Cut (set at 50hz and 7khz respectively) - Rochester Compressor (set at 4:1 ratio) - Zeroamp (Sansamp clone) set pretty flat with a slight drive boost - Bass Octaver (for octave down doubling) - Pitch Shift (drop tunes 2 semitones for Drop D songs) - Ampeg Chorus (self explanatory) I didn’t need to use any of the effects at all and relied simply on the first three blocks for my basic tone. From the Stomp I ran straight into the house DI and had the signal sent back to me via Sennheiser wireless to my JH Audio Roxanne earphones. I have to say that I was a little worried about how the short scale/mudbucker would sound in the mix, but when I heard my monitor mix, I was simply blown away! What a tone! So round and plummy. It has such a different character to my other basses – I’m mainly a Fender guy but love the aforementioned JC bass too. I play mostly fingerstyle but the plectrum tone is simply sublime also. I was also a little worried about muscle memory on the shorter scale bass, but I had absolutely zero issues on the gig and found it super easy to get around the neck. We were aided by a great house monitor engineer for our mixes, although it did take 2 or 3 runs of a tune to get the auxes spot on. Once soundcheck was complete, we had a few hours to kill before being back on location for 8pm. There was a wonderful canteen where we ate, as well as a great green room with plenty of food and drink for all the guests. All of the above was complimentary and we were encouraged to help ourselves. Some of the other guests on the show included Liam Neeson, James Martin and Ross White (from Oscar winning short ‘An Irish Goodbye’), Patrick Duffy from Dallas, Vera Pauw (Irish Ladies Soccer Manager) and Irish Rugby Grand Slam winners Jamie Heaslip, Fiona Coghlan and Dan Leavy. It was great to meet all of the guests in the green room and what really struck me is just how nice everyone was. These guys/girls all rose to the very top of their individual professions, and yet were so warm and humble. I don’t think this is a coincidence at all and reaffirms my belief in people! It was great just to sit and chat with ‘celebrities’ to assuage the nerves a bit before our performance. The performance itself went smashingly. Before the show itself, the music supervisor had asked for a copy of our setlist so that he could decide which tune(s) we would play. This was strange as the tunes that he picked were possibly not what the band would have picked, if given the choice, however it did take the debate out of our preparation. We were expressly told at soundcheck that as soon as we were cued, we had to begin without any delay. We were ushered on set during a commercial break and introduced by the show host, then immediately started into the song – the ubiquitous ‘Whiskey In The Jar’. The show music supervisor had advised us that the track was to last no more than 3.5 minutes, and so we had to play it a bit faster than usual to fit it all in! But it worked perfectly in the end. When it was over, we were quickly ushered off again and the performance area was repurposed for the next segment by the stage hands. One of our band members in particular gets nervous before every gig, but I think we all delivered when the red light was on (see video at the bottom of the post) We also had one more tune to play to close out the show at around 11.30pm. It had been a long day at this point, but we were all keen for a taste of the live performance again after the success of the first tune. The second tune had to last no more than two minutes however! We ended up played a sharply truncated version of another one of our tunes – ‘McAlpine’s Fusiliers’, which consisted of only two verses, an instrumental and a chorus. It seemed to work well however and we got to the end without any fluffs! I was really happy with my tone on the final performance and it sounded especially good in the car when I played the Youtube video! It was an experience I will never forget. I was hugely grateful for the opportunity and humbled to be asked to be part of such an occasion. I was absolutely overwhelmed with all the messages with well wishes before the gig, and afterwards was exactly the same with everyone enjoying the show. A major tick off my bucket list and I’m excited to see if any more doors are opened for us following the appearance. It has been a busy few years and it’s really nice to get recognition for our graft. It took a few days to really appreciate the gravity of the performance, but now that I’m back down to earth I am feeling very grateful for every opportunity music has presented to me over my lifetime. It’s been great and I can’t wait to see what the future holds! Feeling inspired. I walked into my day job today to a round of applause which was embarrassing, but again everyone was so full of kind words and praise. I think in 10 to 20 years there may no longer be such a thing as 'live' TV, so it's really nice to have this as a memory and something to look back on. Sorry for the long post but I hope it gives a bit of insight into the workings of live TV performances that might some day be useful to someone else 😊 Danny