Acebassmusic

Several different ways of doing this as you say......my experiences relate to covers bands. With bands where I've been the leader I've always asked everyone for ideas, get a general take on the track from the band whether it's one they want to do and practice it from there. Final decision whether it fits in the usual repertoire / we play it well enough / good feedback at gigs was down to me but with input from everyone. Hopefully it was seen as relatively "fair". I think its termed "benevolent dictatorship" 🤣 In the last 2 established bands I've joined I was asked for my input into the setlist. In both cases I submitted a selection of approx. 50 songs which I thought were in line with the existing setlist. In neither band have any of the tracks been taken up, even at rehearsal level. Song selection seems to be based on random tracks from the band leaders current favourite band which are immediately fast tracked into the setlist. Don't get me wrong some of the songs are good but why ask for input then just ignore it? 🤷‍♂️

It's not Mackerel....it's Bass! 🤣

To get rid of that particular earworm I thought you would have told it to "fah fah fah fah, fah fah fah fah fah, cough"....I'll get my coat 🤣 I tend to have continuous earworms. It can be bits of songs, basslines, just random elements that rattle round my head at all times I'm not concentrating on something else.....aaaargh!

Well Matt brought the bass round to mine last night and I had a go on it. Due to the shape / semi hollow / single pickup I expected it to have a quite warm maybe wooly soft edged sound to it. How wrong I was 🤦‍♂️ Its passive but the way Matts wired it up gives a great range of tones from the deep dubby through mid focused onto a nice top end. I wasnt originally expecting it to be a slappable bass but the clarity and set up would easily allow it. (I did refrain from actually slapping it though 😅 ) Great bass Matt and those changes you made make it very useful and flexible 👍

Ah you fell for that old sales scam.....er I mean I'm glad you like it and hope you have lots of fun with it. 🤣 It's a powerhouse in a small package 👍

Good to hear the gig scene is still good. It's much reduced here since I moved in 2001. Nice collection of basses, amps and theft detterent devices! or is your day job now as a sniper? 🤣

Hey Ian, welcome to Basschat. It's been a long time since we last met. I dont know if you recollect but I bought my first real amp from you a WEM Dominator 30w around 1982. I do remember seeing you playing the Gibson a few times in the local pubs round Kirkby and must admit to being in awe of your playing and being encouraged by it. Glad to see you're still at it 👍 My advice for being on here.....beware of the for sale section......it's too easy to aquire new gear....🤣 Mike Oxley

I got a couple of ideas from TalkBass and tried one tonight. Instead of using the Octaver I used the Smart Harmonizer. Usually you set a key and then choose 3rd / 5th / 7th etc of the chord and it provides up to 2 notes in harmony with your root note. I had to play around with the settings and eventually came up with a balanced bass guitar to octave sound that I think is useable and tracks better than the Octaver down to open E! Result.👍 Just need to try it out at gig volumes to check and tweak paramaters as needed. For those that might want to try it here are my settings: Smart Harmonizer: You dont need to set a key as you ar only using the octave part of the app. Mix: 60% VC 2 Vol: 0.0dB VC1 & VC2 Detune, Glide: 0 VC1 & VC2Delay: 0 Sync: Off VC1 & VC2 Harm: Oct Down

Yesterday I tried tweaking the Headrush Octaver settings and got a slighly better sounding output. Octave 1 set at 60% and Mix set at 70%. The search continues.......

Hey Pete, I did see the FB group but thought I'd try here as we're more bass orientated. I will drop them and Headrush a line to see if anything can be done. Thanks, Mike

Revival of the Headrush thread to see if someone can help me.... I bought @petetexas Headrush Gigboard and think its an excellent piece of kit which does just about everything I want it to.....apart from the octaver. I occasionally need a sound which is a mix of my bass tone plus 1 octave down mixed in. The problem I'm having is with the Headrush is the tracking of the octaver. When I play an F (3rd fret) on the D string it tracks but anything lower than that sounds farty and fragmented (technical musical term for you there 🤣). I have tried different settings and routings but its still the same. My searches in t'internet result in mainly guitar settings etc. Any ideas or has someone solved the problem? I also have a TC G-Major 2 which I have set up with its octaver and it tracks great down to a very useable B (7th fret) on the E string. I'd love to replicate this with the Headrush 🤔

Last minute offer but unfortunately due to weather etc I can't make the 6 hour round trip to see Brother Strut tonight so I have 1 free ticket for whoever wants it. It can be transferred to you via email. The only problem I have at the moment is intermittent internet so PM me here with your phone number and we'll try and get things organised. 10 Years of BROTHER STRUT - Live at Oran Mor, GLASGOW Òran Mór, Byres Road, Glasgow, G12 8QX, United Kingdom Saturday, October 21, 2023 from 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM (United Kingdom Time)

Yes, yes and "yes...sort of"! 🤣 I've lost count of the number of great bands I've seen that you can't hear the vocals very well and in a number of cases I mean "can't hear the vocals AT ALL!" As @Lozz196 says it's usually due to kick drum canon syndrome that everything else then tries to match. @GreyBeard makes a great point. To me when I'm at a gig where the volume is too loud for the venue space, the sound seems to distort and become unpleasant. @BassAdder60 Many bands & engineers seem to have the ethos of "if you can't hear it......turn it up" Well, shock horror, news flash, volume knobs work 2 ways up AND DOWN! 🤯 If you can't hear the vocal turn everything else down a bit. I have tried this approach with my band but has fallen on deaf ears....literally. This applies to all instruments. When I go to a gig and theres an instrument on stage that I consistently can't hear then to me the mix is wrong. I may be in the minority but I'd rather see a band thats got a great sound and not simply a loud sound. I suppose with the advent of cheap watts its much easier to twist a knob and be loud than put some work into learning about sound 🤷‍♂️

Yes to a number of your comments. I have hit that wall several times over the last 40 years of playing. Sometimes its down to me getting frustrated with my playing / progress, sometimes the music or gigs, whats happening with my life and sometimes my fellow musicians I can fully understand the demoralising effect of projects falling flat and having a negative effect. I've gone through similar and thought why bother and then the next band puts a smile back on my face. 😁 As far a equipment is concerned my turnover of basses (or other equipment) has subsided (not stopped of course) as I've tried many different ones and can pretty much look at a bass / specs and rule many out. This is not 100% accurate but due to the experience I've gained is usually pretty close and has saved me a lot of money 🤣 I still "bass chase" but the number of times it turns into an actual purchase are now very reduced. Maybe your desire to buy gear has been sated through your experiences. You know "got the tshirt" and all that. Sounds like you have a supportive partner and I would say that if its financially sensible, hold onto your gear for the moment. Don't force getting back playing and take a bit of a break. Who knows in 6 months the desire might be back 👍

That used to be my bass which I bought 2nd hand in 2009. Great bass and very easy to play for a six. I played it for 4 or 5 years and the only thing I would have changed was to have had graphite rods fitted as the neck was a little susceptible to the weather. Must get myself a 5 string Sei........

I've modded a number of basses over the years sometimes for aesthetic reasons and sometimes to "upgrade". The first one I did was when I was about 17. I had bought myself a brand new Squire jazz in white poly about a year beforehand but was obsessed with the look of neck through wood basses and wanted to try and emulate one. In my wisdom what did I decide to do? Yep, break out the nitromors / heat gun / sandpaper and take it back to wood. Part 2 of the plan required me to mask off the centre section of the bass so I could stain it to look like my desired neck throughs. Did it end up looking like a prized Ken Smith.....er not quite! 🤣 I'd underestimated the ability of stain to leach into the other areas of the wood. No photos have survived thank goodness. Did I learn my lesson and decline to modify basses after this first calamatous excursion?....nah! Over the years that followed I've refinished a JD calibas, replaced several bridges and hardware with more functional ones and changed out several pickup / preamp combinations. All much more successfuly I might add. 😁 Apart from installing a updated preamp into my Overwater which was a simple swap out, the last major modification I did was to my Roscoe. It'd had several owners so at some point the original Bartolini pre had been removed, an hole drilled in the body for a mid-control and the pre swapped out for something else. This setup wasn't working correctly so the last owner had taken it into a shop to get it changed out to an Audere, all now working tickety-boo. 👍 I quite happily bought the bass and played it for a number of months but was never quite happy with the Audere sound and as I had a Sadowsky preamp going spare.....Only problem was it was a 4 knob pre going into a 5 hole body. The solution was to wire the pickups to a double DPDT switch so I could fill the 5th hole and get parallel / single / series options. Reworking the electrics / pre / wiring was the easy bit. Once I got into the cavity and emptied out the old pre it was aparent the wood had been "modified" as well as a heavy coating of shielding paint. This was no recent change as there was evidence of years of tinkering in there. There was only one thing for me to do, break out the Dremmel to remove the shielding and router to flatten the cavity for the pots. Rather nervously and VERY carefully I spent hours Dremmeling (?) the shielding off and routing small amounts away. Eventually I got it so that all the pots and switches would now fix flat and copper shielding would adhere successfully. I've added a couple of before / after photos showing the controls and the cavity. The sound from the bass is now what I was looking for with the flexibility of the DPDT switch added in 👍 Controls before and after: Control cavity before and after:

The subs is extra to your standard login. Well worth it I think to help keep the site going👍

Oops, sorry didnt realise that. 😬

Not an easy question to answer as there are so many different ways of interpreting "the value of an item". The only info we have to go on is: 1) it's a bass - depends on the make, model, features, condition and desirability of the bass. A Wal will currently hold it's value, my old first kay bass would not even make good firewood! 🤣 2) its discontinued - why was it discontinued? Was it a limited run, end of production, bankruptcy or did people just not want them? Theres another thread about Fender Dimension basses where they are rated as a good bass. However traditional Fender fans didn't buy them in lorry loads as they weren't the traditional Fender shape / spec etc. Some basses that were discontinued in the 80's or 90's now attract mythical status (which changes over time). 3) not many sold - is this due to availability, exclusivity, not a good design, limited run etc? Over the years I've owned a number of "non-standard" basses that were not easy to determine the value when I came to sell. Usually searching the internet for similar basses helped give me a range of values. What would I pay to own the bass? What would I be happy to let the bass sell for? There's also a forum on here that you can post photo's and further info and the community will help you assess it. It's linked here - "Wotzit werth?!!" The responses to valuation questions are pretty accurate as there is a lot of knowledge on the site. Also in so much as "keeping it real", if a price is proposed that is too high or too low then someone usually comments to bring some sense into the proceedings. I would post the bass details on "Wotzit werth?!!" first which will hopefully give you an idea of the range of value. Decide what price you would be happy to sell the bass for then advertise it at that price. If it doesn't sell then re-evaluate (it could just be a slow market and nothing to do with price). Good luck.

What???? Turn DOWN??? 😲 Radical statements like that will get you in trouble 🤣🤣 How many time have I heard that phrase "I cant hear XyZ...can you turn it up?" I've found in many cases turning up just compounds the problem. The book Basic Live Sound is a great little book. 👍

Yes, one guitarist has just had their ears tested and found 50% hearing left in 1 ear. 😲 Another thing to consider during any technical rehearsals is the tone / sound of each instrument and how they interplay. I mentioned in another thread about earplugs that my time with the band may be limited because of volume levels when rehearsing that when I mimed for 4 songs, because of the bass heavy guitar tones and volume no-one noticed I was missing. 😭😭🤣🤣