tauzero

I bought a BSX Flip electric upright bass, which is tripod-mounted and lives in a long thin gig bag. The seller just stuck the EUB and tripod into the bag, without taking much care about the separating bit of padding, stuck a label on the bag, and sent it like that. I don't know whether the 2p-sized dent in the body was down to that or pre-existing. Mrs Zero works for a firm which sells bespoke cardboard boxes as a sideline, so I get decent boxes made up. I also keep bubble-wrap from stuff that I buy, and bits of expanded polystyrene which are good for supporting necks. I did send one bass out in a hard case wrapped in brown paper - buyer told me the bass had arrived intact but the case, a reasonably good wooden one, hadn't survived the experience too well. I did offer to put in a claim against Parecelfarce but he told me not to bother. I've had five Tsai basses from Vietnam, one in a hard case, all the rest in gig bags, and they've all survived the experience quite happily. It seems very much the luck of the draw.

Are you using an advert blocker that you've filtered these images out with? Can you see the images in the body of the post, and it just goes to the freeimagehosting website if you click them? If that's what you mean, then that's the way the images have been set up...

[quote name='dave_bass5' post='307924' date='Oct 16 2008, 03:02 PM']This is the bass i mentioned. Strange as they call it a P but it has Jazz pups. [url="http://www.thomann.de/gb/fender_squier_standard_pbass_special-02.htm?sid=4107bb7f725ac032a55dde96595c89cf"]Fender Squier P V[/url][/quote] Oh, I had one of those, briefly. Anyone who likes Jazz necks would loathe the P special, it's probably even chunkier than modern Warwick necks.

[quote name='lowrentdiscographer' post='307427' date='Oct 15 2008, 10:08 PM']I don't want the overall rig to be much bigger than a large-ish combo, so I was thinking about a 1X15 using the Electrovoice plans linked in the 'stickies' of this section.[/quote] How about a 2x10 with piezos using [url="http://www.billfitzmaurice.com/Omni10.html"]Bill Fitzmaurice's plans[/url]?

I use one which a fellow bassist gave me - he'd bought a pair from Aldi and just wanted one for his Phil Jones briefcase. I originally used one which cost a tenner or so from Ikea, which was fine but not folding. You could get something not dissimilar to my folding stool [url="http://www.argos.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=10001&catalogId=1500001151&productId=1500271143&langId=-1&engine=froogle&keyword=Theo+Pair+of+Folding+Bar+Stools"]from Argos[/url].

[quote name='dood' post='307158' date='Oct 15 2008, 03:40 PM']YOU GUYS!!!!!!!! I can see that you lot are not gonna let this lie for a second! Bloomin mustang sally!!! Grrrrrrrr!! ha ha ha ha ha ha!!![/quote] Well, I did take the opportunity to play Mustang Sally on Doodle when I played it at Northampton...

Looking at the shadow on the backdrop, I can't help thinking that you've taken a section of doctorofthebass's fence along with you to add some bassy character.

[quote name='ARGH' post='306832' date='Oct 15 2008, 08:18 AM']Alex you once wrote something along the lines of "AN instrument has to sound good acoustic before it sounds good electronically"..which is pish...we are not ..I repeat NOT playing acoustic instruments,we play Electronic instruments...all the wood in the world dosent change a P/U and eq's influence which is greater than the wood...and then the scales length which over-rides the whole thing,because it influences the instrument itself.. All the acoustic properties dont mean sh*t,when its plugged in.[/quote] If you can't hear a difference acoustically between two basses with different construction but the same pickups and electronics, you'll be hard-pressed to hear a difference when they're plugged in.

For a really cheap solution which works pretty well, there's the Behringer ADI21 acoustic DI box for £20 to £30. XLR and jack outputs, tone controls that can be bypassed if desired.

[quote name='rjb' post='306852' date='Oct 15 2008, 09:15 AM']I really like the Warwick two piece design execpt for one thing - the stringball holder. The open access is good, but the strings will often pop out whilst your're tightening the machineheads. Gets very annoying..... [/quote] That's why I prefer my older Thumb with the one-piece bridge to the newer one. I don't find pulling a string through a hole to be that onerous, but if you're doing regular waxing and keeping the same strings on, I prefer to just pull the strings off the machine heads and put them back on when I've waxed, which is simple on the one-piece but means picking them back up off the floor with the two-piece...

"Lonely this Christmas" by Mud. Classic.

[quote name='bassman2790' post='306757' date='Oct 14 2008, 11:06 PM']Far better IMHO than the SVT350 that I played through at Robanna's on Monday night.[/quote] I've played through at least two SVT350s at Robanna's and they've been crap, only surpassed by the dreadful weedy SWR they gave me because the input jack on one of the SVTs was packing up. The Ashdowns have been better, until the last rehearsal and an Ashdown 4x10 combo that made a Hohner Jack sound like a Precision with flatwounds being played through a pillow. At least it gives me a chance to cross gear off my "I might want that" list (the David Eden 4x10s went on there too).

Started on violin, which didn't last long. Then my little brother bought a classical guitar and I kept borrowing it and learnt to play it. Bought an electric guitar. Played rhythm guitar in Glen Miller tribute band. Went to university, formed a band in the hall of residence, and was volunteered to be the bassist. Put together a Hayman 40/40 from bits sold off by the Fender Soundhouse after a fire. Played two gigs. Dropped out of university and went home. Something of a musical hiatus for two or three years. Then moved to Tamworth and decided to get back into it, so advertised myself as a lead, rhythm or bass guitarist (I'm crap at lead, as it happens, but in those days so was almost everybody else...) and was recruited to a heavy metal band as a bassist. That has been my main instrument ever since, but I use guitar for songwriting and acoustic duetting.

[quote name='Josh' post='303200' date='Oct 9 2008, 05:44 PM']Just found a pretty good live version of SGS:[/quote] Is Hucknall not singing on it then? [quote name='Josh' post='303200' date='Oct 9 2008, 05:44 PM']You may hate Hucknall but the guy can sing.[/quote] Yes and no. In that order.

[quote name='neepheid' post='305582' date='Oct 13 2008, 04:05 PM']Even if I didn't have an impending wedding to finance, I still wouldn't be £299 + auction activity interested [/quote] I have a feeling that "£299 + auction activity" will = £299 + 0 bids. I reckon a similar design could be used for a 34" scale, with careful; positioning of the tuners. After all, strings are generally pretty overlength - I have to chop some off the longest string run I have, the D on the through-body 7-string Tsai, so there's a bit of surplus.

[url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320310081381"]Item 320310081381[/url] - a rather interesting take on making a headless. From what I can see of it, it uses normal tuners in a novel fashion, rather more attractively than the Warwick Nobby Wossname. Seller also offers plans for sale for his travel guitar of the same family.

[quote name='Ajoten' post='305200' date='Oct 13 2008, 08:34 AM']Over the weekend I remembered that years back another bass I played with the ace fat neck was a Hohner 5 string headless wotsit. I presume the fatness was a design choice rather than headless necessity (Mr Status Owner?)?[/quote] I'm not so keen on the fat neck but I do have a Hohner 5-string headless, bought for pragmatic reasons. I don't think there's any structural need for the fat neck - after all, it's doing less work than the neck on my Tsai unheadless which has also got to handle the weight of the tuners and, er, the head, and the Tsai's neck is considerably shallower. I'm a playability man too - that's the reason that I bought the Warwick Thumb NT (though obviously our playabilities vary, mine's the very shallow JD neck). I don't play with the tone controls and they're centre detented so you don't have to make a note of where they are, just turn them till they click and leave them there.

[quote name='5_string_death' post='298085' date='Oct 2 2008, 10:19 PM']I think you'll find its a 'Jazzcision' mate [/quote] Nah, it's an "Indecision" innit.

[quote name='waynepunkdude' post='303542' date='Oct 10 2008, 08:25 AM']"In what looks like young offspring enjoying a mixed playgroup session together, is in reality a harsh life lesson. The Impala fawn is serving as target practice for the cheetah cubs in a hunting lesson organized by their mother. The cubs eventually killed the fawn" [/quote] The first thing that came into my mind seeing that photo was that it would make a wonderful [url="http://www.despair.com/viewall.html"]Demotivator[/url] poster.

Is it just a trick of the camera angle, or is the B string a bit close to the edge, down by a river? Seasons go passing by...

Has it got frets?

[quote name='neepheid' post='301356' date='Oct 7 2008, 02:13 PM']Yeah, I've been in trouble for that before - the whole reason I never post directly in Off Topic any more.[/quote] I'm not dyslexic but I am dystypic. I use Firefox with a British English dictionary installed and it spell-checks what I type into input boxes. Which is nice.

The day before I first met my Warwick Thumb, twenty years ago, I never thought I would spend more than a couple of hundred quid on a bass. However, when I played it (to test out an effects pedal, as it happened), I was so struck by it that I paid £900 for it. Most of my basses have been in the £100-£300 bracket. I would like a custom bass or two sometime, though, but wouldn't want to pay out ridiculous amounts.

Good bits: Can pick up a tune pretty quickly Can sight-read guitarists' fingers pretty well Can add enough frilly bits to make things interesting if required Can play up to 7 strings, up to 5 of them fretlessly Can play EUB Have experience of many different musical styles, and reggae Will play Mustang Sally for money Can solo well Bad bits: Very limited slap technique (it's not that I'm desperate to play it, it's just nice to have as much in the armoury as possible) Limited theory Crap memory Will play reggae for money Can solo badly

[quote name='Dr.Dave' post='300393' date='Oct 6 2008, 12:07 PM']I defy anyone over the age of 30 to listen to Donald Fagan's Nightfly album and not be whisked back to a time when a young man's hopes and dreams had still to be crushed by the reality of 'life'.[/quote] I fell asleep. Not good when you're driving round the Birmingham ring road, but it was that bland and tedious...