neepheid

It's not the bass line that concerns me, it's just the song as a whole - I find it a snoozefest. It never shifts gear, it never powers home for me. I play it for the punters, not for me. Each to their own, I guess.

Songs we play that rarely fail to get audience participation: P!nk - Who Knew ABBA - Waterloo Journey - Don't Stop Believin' Bryan Adams - Summer of '69 Lewis Capaldi - Someone You Loved (super simple song and great for the second last song of the night before something rocky to finish - might just be a Scottish thing though. One time we ended up playing this three times - they just kept asking for it *shrugs*) I effin hate playing Don't Stop Believin' (boring song which doesn't seem to go anywhere) but punters love it, doesn't seem to matter what age. If the PlayStation Generation are in the house then Feeder - Just a Day works well (thanks, Gran Turismo). If it's a football crowd, Sweet Caroline might work off the back of the Euros.

Do I have a "main bass", now that I've bought one which cost more than my car? No, I have never experienced this. If I did try a bass which blew my hair back and cost half the price of my G&L L-1000 then I guess I would be a little rueful but it would have to be AMAZEBALLS. Then I'd solve the issue by finding a way to own both of them

Nothing? EUB, stretch, double meaning of stretch? Ba-doom, tish! Come on! Tough thread

No-one mentioned EUBs until you did, that's a bit of a stretch.

I get what you're saying, but none of these are /good/ reasons in my opinion to discount any particular bass for any particlar gig.

Is bass X good for genre Y? Yes.

First gigs back this weekend. Friday was pretty good, last night not so good. Less busy, a lot more mistakes and generally people with their backs to us down at the bar, no-one seemingly giving a monkeys if we were there or not yet somehow moaning when we announced it was the last song. Grumpy all round, I made a few clangers which I wasn't happy about. Singer was paranoid that we were going to run out of songs despite me rejigging the set list to counteract this - told him so and we even ended up nixing a couple in the end. Drummer briefly looked at me like he wanted to kill me when I interrupted him packing away drums to ask him for the car key. Perhaps two gigs back to back 2-3 hours away was a bit of a stretch for the first time back. One of those nights, got to brush up the bloopers, learn any lessons from it then move on I reckon.

You live somewhere small/rural?

Continuing a 12 year old zombie thread revival - anyone who looks down on a Yamaha BB is an idiot. Anyone who worries about people looking down on them playing a Yamaha BB should shut them up with their playing or feel free to tell naysayers that neepheid says shut up. Also I have owned several BB basses (614, 300, 350F, 450, 434) and they've all been excellent. I particularly miss the metallic red 450 - I sourced it incomplete and managed to find its guts and other stuff here on BC and put it all back together. Took it to a festival and it did me proud.

DBs are one of the reasons Gibson bought Epiphone in the first place.

Late to the party here but here's another person with a can of Servisol Super 10 which has lasted for a decade or more

Diameter? No way. Would I notice the extra tension? Maybe.

I've got a couple of basses which came with 45, 65, 80, 100 strings and I've historically used 45, 65, 85, 105. But it kinda grinds with my rural Scottish tightness to whip off brand new, perfectly serviceable strings for the sake of a tiny increase in string size on two of them. Am I being mad?

Does your singer warm up by going "me-me-me-me-me!"? If so I'd say that's a warning sign

Modular all the way for me. Right now I use a 1x10 combo and when I need more oomph I take an extra 1x10 with me and stack them. Might get a second cab (or more likely 2 matching shiny new ones) so I have the option of using the removable head + 1 or 2 nice, lightweight cabs because the combo is a bit of a lump. But for now what I have works great for me. The 250W 1x10 is more than enough for rehearsals and small gigs, lifting up the combo and bumping up to 500W is useful for bigger gigs.

I don't hate the English, they're just w... I don't hate Gibson either, I just like Epiphone better right now. Sly attempt to get things back on topic...

We've got our first post-lockdown gigs this weekend. At the last rehearsal I decided to make sure everything I would be using at the gig is working. Extension cab - no sound coming out of it at all Overdrive pedal - has developed a fault, I think it might be the switch. I fixed the cab - a wire had come out of its internal connector. It's back up and running. I haven't got time to tinker with the OD pedal so I took the opportunity to experiment with a different one and it arrived today. Moral of the story - in the excitement to get going again don't just rock up to your first gig back without checking ALL your gear, otherwise you might end up looking like a right berk

I think that video was very fair and was at pains to attempt to temper the viewer's expectations of what an £89 guitar can be realistically expected to be - much more than I was expecting, given that they're in the selling business. They pointed out that the stock strings are the cheapest garbage and disclosed that they had restrung them for the video, they mentioned they were using amps and pedals which cost many times what the guitar did (which goes some way to explain how good it sounds in the video), they pointed out the limitations of the wraparound bridge/tailpiece, they pitched it almost exclusively at beginners and even discussed the financial of buying it to modify/upgrade and the ceiling you would hit of its basic construction and nature, they even said something like it was a 5/10 player (I think that's in the bit where they discuss the word "overwhelmed" and whether or not you can be underwhelmed or even simply whelmed). That's just what I remember from one watch through. Having watched the whole thing, I feel I'd be able to approach this guitar eyes open with a realistic expectation. I don't see how you could have gone wrong, unless you skipped all the talky bits and just listened to the playing? My point (in which I wrote far too much so no-one read it) was not that all cheap products are amazing these days - it was simply that today's cheapest instruments have never been closer to the mid/high range of the market. What would you have got for a tenner in 1975? Some Woolworths monstrosity that you didn't so much play as wrestle with? What would forty quid have got you in 1990? Not much, I'm guessing. I've never played this E1 (and I wouldn't know where to start) but I'm willing to say that it'll be better than anything you could get for the equivalent money in times past. Before I took up the bass, I owned an Epiphone Special II, early to mid nineties I think. I don't remember much about it, apart from pretty awful tuners with a lot of play in them but I do remember it put me off playing guitar for life so I thank it for (eventually) pointing me in the direction of where I am today.

It's a reasonable question. Unfortunately for Gibson, there are several reasonable answers to it at the moment.

In my opinion there has never been a more precarious time for mid/high priced instruments. Overall quality at the bottom end of the price range has been steadily improving and the quality gap which the premium products used to command has never been narrower. Keeping it focused on the Thunderbird, the current Epiphone Thunderbird Vintage Pro is more Thunderbird than the contemporary Gibson offering ever was. What is that more than doubling of the price getting you? A hard case (fair enough), Gibson on the TRC (which doesn't really carry that much cache in the bass world anyway as we're all well aware), two more layers in the neck laminate, a worse choice of colours, tired old TB+ pickups and arguably a worse bridge (in terms of functionality and operation). I can't see any way the Gibson Thunderbird is the degrees of better than the current Epiphone Vintage Pro commensurate with the price premium it commands. I'm not even sure if it is actually better. Gibson should be scared by this. Their premium products need to blow the cut price ones out of the water to justify the prices they're listed for and frankly speaking, I don't think they do. I don't think facsimile is a fair word - Epiphones are genuine, sanctioned Gibson products in their own right. If some other company started making Thunderbirds, I'd call them copies/facsimiles. I find the pickups interesting on the NR Thunderbird Gibson have brought out recently, if those chrome covers (which I really hope aren't hiding TB+ pickups) aren't a tacit admission that Epiphone have been getting it right with regard to the Thunderbird of late then I don't know what is. At time of writing, I am of the opinion that Gibson basses are not worth worth the price they are commanding - partly because I think they've gone stale and partly because of the excellent job Epiphone have been doing of late. I have 2 Epiphones currently, both bought from new. The Jack Casady, which I have felt the need to make no alterations/upgrades to, and an Embassy to which the only thing I've done to it is swap out the tuners - they were a bit crap admittedly. In terms of quality, build and playability, I can't fault either of them. Well put together, well finished, good fretwork, needed nothing more than very basic setup (action/intonation/relief) to play the way I like. I don't expect any volume produced bass regardless of how much it cost to be tailored to me right off the bat so I don't think that counts. Some people may have viewed me as a bit of a Gibson fanboi/apologist in the past but the je ne sais quoi allure of the brand was lost on me some time ago. I still have a soft spot for the old Gibsons, but I'd want my head examined if I bought a Gibson Thunderbird new today.

The neck through Epiphones* (the Vintage Pro/60s Thunderbird - the one with the separate bridge and tailpiece - in particular) are leagues ahead of the bolt on thing. The bolt on is cheap - it's half the price and the only part of the Thunderbird experience you're getting with it is the body shape. Nothing else about it is even remotely legit. The controls are also VVT - I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel now for similarities There was the Classic Pro, which had the 3 point bridge and Gibson TB+ pickups (the same ones which were used on the Gibson T-bird at the time) - that was similar to the contemporary Gibson model but some might say even it has lost its way somewhat. * I'd rather ignore the active "Pro" model with the very obvious neck laminations - it's a generic active bass in a Thunderbird body. Still better than the bolt on, mind. TL:DR - get a Vintage Pro/60's and THEN decide if you like Thunderbirds.

If it's any consolation (and to bring some balance to your world) I have never knowingly listened to Jaco play. All I know without resorting to Google is he played a fretless Jazz which didn't start off being fretless (something about boat varnish?) and I think he died as a result of an altercation outside a licensed establishment. Also I dislike Jazz basses, I think they sound weedy (passive ones anyway) and I can't stand their big, goofy, ungainly, slightly melty body shape. Better? Hate spread a bit more equally now?

Thread revival! Guess what? My Redsub combo is still working. Over 9 years of service and counting. OK, it had a year and a half off, much like myself. Still being a boisterous little so-and-so in the rehearsal room as a 250W combo. I've been a lazy git and left it in the boot of the car many times in all climates and it's just not bothered. First post lockdown gigs happening next weekend - looking forward to pairing it up with the secondary cab again.

That's terrible news, condolences to his family and friends.