neepheid

Last night was great fun! Played at Wilsons in Aberdeen to a great crowd who were really into the gig. Highlight of the evening was this old guy who was sitting at a table near us. He seemed to be digging the songs and was singing along to some of them. Then we played Enter Sandman. Well! This guy goes to a carrier bag and gets out a Guitar Hero "guitar" controller and proceeds to mime playing it in front of us. He had all the moves - playing it above his head and all sorts! The crowd thought this was amazing and it made for a memorable moment for sure. Such was the energy in the room that I threw a lot more shapes when playing than I normally do to the point where the other guys in the band were wondering if I had been substituted for someone else. I did a daft bit during Highway to Hell - because there's no bass for a long time at the start (and also the second verse), I just got a chair out and sat down, looked at the audience, shrugged a few times. It nearly went wrong though because when I stood up, my strap came off its button at the bottom. Somehow managed to get through the first chorus by pushing the bass against my thigh until I could sit down in verse 2 and sort it out. Was more careful when I stood up the second time! What a laugh all in all. We played really well and had a bloody good time as well. Got asked to play an encore. Had lots of people come up after we were done and say nice things to/about us. Landlord asked about our availability for next year (we're going back to Wilsons next month too). Can't really ask for more than that. Compact and bijou

Fun gig last night in the Butchers Arms in Inverurie with my covers band Nine Lives. The landlord wanted us to start an hour later and play until 1.30am to see what effect that had on punter numbers. I think it helped - people are going out later and later - some folk still arrived as we were playing our last few songs - they must have been on a pub crawl because who goes to the pub for half an hour, what's the point? Anyhoo, reasonable crowd who were up for a dance and a singalong, a fairly young crowd so we ditched some of the older rocky stuff and kept it fairly contemporary - save for Bad Moon Rising and Waterloo - they always seem to go down well regardless of the ages of folk! Highlight of the evening - the police came into the pub for a look around just as we were between songs, so in a highly unimaginative but mischevious move we quickly decided to start playing "Breaking the Law" by Judas Priest. I'm sure that's not the first time that's happened to them but they took it in good spirits and it gave us and some of the audience a chuckle

You're generous

I drop down my E string to D for a few songs during our set and it's ok - feels maybe a bit floppy and I certainly wouldn't want to go any lower (I also use 45-105 usually). I put up with it because it's only for a couple of songs. Downtuning ALL the strings might have more repercussions in terms of overall string floppiness and neck relief (neck might get straighter because the strings aren't pulling against the truss rod as much so I think the truss rod might need to be loosened). I'm sure someone will be along soon who has actually done this and has got better advice than I can offer.

Any I've attempted to play?

I'd say that the current Epiphone is so good on a price/quality ratio that you'd be a fool to buy the Gibson. Better (to my ears anyway) pickups (how tired and old are those TB+ pickups sounding, Gibson?), better bridge (two piece with tailpiece vs. the dreaded 3 pointer), similar construction (I don't see what going from a 7 ply neck to a 9 ply on the Gibson brings to the table other than being a bigger number) and just look at all that lovely chrome on the Epiphone. Your call, but I wouldn't give a current Gibson Thunderbird houseroom right now. I had a recent Epiphone Thunderbird and thought it was great, just didn't care for the ergonomics so sold it and got an Embassy instead (same pickups, different body, set neck instead of thru). The Thunderbird was fun though and looked great at the gig - I felt quite rockstarish playing it 😎

As mentioned above, lots of bass players don't use their left pinky at all - I had to train myself to do it. Just means you might have a bit more moving around the fretboard to do than some but you'll find your technique. Wouldn't recommend going down the left handed route - I'm not saying you couldn't train yourself to play lefty (particularly as you're just starting out - now's the time to do it!) but there's much less choice of instruments in left handed and some basses look damn weird in left handed config. You know how weird your face looks if a photo of it is mirrored horizontally, I think it's the same thing.

I would have put my name down for this if I didn't live so damn far away from... everywhere Surely someone will snap this up soon and take it off your hands.

And make us do all the work? Nah mate, tell us why you left it there, then I might watch it and tell you if I agree with you. Until then, no deal.

Lazy git, use your lungs!

Agree with the music being cyclic point above. Also, it may seem that it's mostly a bunch of old farts on here with a worrying lack of young 'uns getting into bass as seriously as we do here, but that's more because only old farts use web forums these days. I'm guessing if you mentioned the term "web forum" to most Gen Z'ers (or Millenials for that matter) you'd get a blank face.

That's inexcusable. Just to balance things out (or try to counteract the confirmation bias), the G&L Tribute LB-100 I bought in December 2021 is excellent. In fact, every G&L Tribute I've ever owned (L-2000, M-2000, SB-2, LB-100) has been great.

Reverends are made in South Korea and they're less than half that price. Mine is excellent, so by your logic they must all be excellent... Am I the only one who finds these kind of blanket statements about instrument quality based upon where they're made because someone has had a bad one a bit... ikky? G&L Tributes are made in Indonesia. So are Lakland Skylines if memory serves. Absolute garbage instruments, amirite?

Photoshop?

To be fair, no you didn't. I think it's just that every other time I've seen this postulated, it's been as a way around paying any tax at all, not as a way to save a little money by the carriage cost effectively being free

Even the guitarist looks impressed

Pipe down, you two!

I've always looked at losses made on selling basses as rent. In much the same way as I look back on the places I stayed before I got on the property ladder as simply places I stayed, basses I no longer own are just basses I got to play.

Do you live in an art gallery?

That blank should only have been used for a solid finish.

Do you live in a guitar shop?

No, it's smuggling!

Another happy H2n user here. Use it a lot to record band rehearsals and what comes out of it is eminently usable - I just take it into Audacity and do a bit of normalising left/right plus a touch of compression and it's ready to use to point out where everyone else is going wrong For reference, here's some guff we've been throwing around the rehearsal room, recorded with the H2n and touched up as described in Audacity. I didn't record Dirty Harry with it, I spliced that on after because the track made me think of 70's cop stuff. http://www.ifb.co.uk/~matthew/mp3/Teaspoons/practice20220713/cold_frontier.mp3

You think that'll keep it safe from resale?

Hagstrom Super Swede, Rutger Gunnarsson?