Linus27

Very nice indeed. This is something I thought about doing and even looked at putting a fretless neck on the yellow Mike Dirnt when I had one. he pickups are awesome and the original Mike Dirnt neck is a baseball bat so it would have made it quite playable with a fretless neck.

It does look mighty impressive but being an old skool bassist, even the Helix HX Stomp seems too fiddly for me so this totally blows my brain. It does look bloody brilliant but I'll stick with my Sansamp, Compressor, OC5, Chorus, Reverb, Tuner pedal and bit of foam under the strings 🤣

Me to, I think I might of listened to one Rush song in my lifetime.

I kind of started the other way, my bass lines sounded like a fretless despite starting out on a fretted Jazz some 38 years ago. So I eventually moved to a fretless and my bass playing came alive. I also totally agree about the reverb pedal, I actually have and use two on my fretless board. @Ben Jamin if you want to try an excellent but inexpensive reverb pedal as suggested by @Hellzero then I use the Mooer Ambient A7 pedal. It's an awesome little reverb pedal and with settings 1 with everything at 12, it will do the trick. However, setting 6 has this string pad setting which sounds brilliant, especially with harmonics.

You're welcome and you might actually surprise yourself at how not so daunting it is. My first introduction to fretless was in 1998. I had just signed and we were recording our debut album. The album cost £120k which at the time was more than my sister's brand new 4 bedroom house in Preston and was producer was Mark Wallis who did the Travis, It Bites, Primitive's albums and engineered U2's Joshua Tree so quite serious stuff 😂 The studio was owned by the singer/bassist of the prog tock group Asia and the keyboardist of the 80's pop group, Buggles. We turned up at the studio on day 1 and in the live room on the wall was about 20 basses including a beautiful Washburn AB20 fretless. I thought, let's give this a go and I ended up recording the hardest bass line on the album on it. The intonation was a bit off so I put a few bits of a post it note in places to know where to fret accurately but it was fine. So just go in with an open mind and play the bass lines like it's a fretted and you'll be fine. This is the track in question.

Just approach it just like a fretted bass, so don't try and make it sound like a fretless and do lots of slides and trying to get that mwah sound. It is no different to play than a fretted bass, you just have to be more disciplined with your technique and train your ears. Good ears and strong technique are the two key things you need to play a fretless well. Don't be scared of it either or think of it as different, just play what you'd play on a fretted and you'll be amazed at how normal sounding it can be. Over time, you'll then start to bring out the nuances of the fretless as you become more competent. The Jack Cassidy is also an unlined fretless so you either play ON the dots or in the gaps, it's that easy. Oh and buy an octave and chorus pedal, you'll thank me later I promise 😂

Oh, that's super sad, I never met her but she seemed lovely. I always think of her as the ukulele bass player.

Just remember, Victor says there's no wrong notes 🤣 Seriously though, I would of transposed on the fly and played a simplified bass line.

Is that the Mooer King or Queen? The Ensemble King is light blue and the Queen is a darker blue.

Clutching at Straws is one of my all time favourite albums.

I was on the hunt for a compressor pedal to use with my fretless and as a total noob to compression, I contacted @Osiris who recommended getting an optical compressor and to try the Ampeg Opto pedal. I could not be happier and it is a fantastic pedal. It really tightens up my tone and just adds some magic. I've been using it well over a year now and the other week I did a rehearsal without it and boy did I notice the difference. It's placed just before my Sansamp BDDI v2 which is my last pedal in the chain and run clean with no drive. Before it I have Octave, Chorus and Reverb. It works brilliantly. I am now on the hunt for a second compressor pedal to use with a fretted P-Bass and again, it will go just before the Sansamp with no drive enabled. It's more of a thumpy Motown/America sound I'm going for. I've been looking at Boss BX-1X but the Boss LMB-3 looks interesting as does the Keeley options that seem super popular on here.

My gig last night I have to say was one of the most enjoyable gigs I've ever played. It was my first gig with a new artist called Andrew Maxwell Morris and we were playing at the Bedford in Balham. Both myself and the drummer are both new to the group as Andrew has decided to expand from a three piece to a full five piece band. So after two rehearsals, we were out gigging. I've been super fortunate to have played some incredible venues in the past, including Brixton Academy, The Roundhouse, G Live, The Hacienda and various festivals to many thousands but wow, what an incredible venue The Bedford is. It's like The Roundhouse and Ronnie Scott's had a baby, so beautiful and intimate and the sound was out of the world. I was just using the in house Ampeg Rocket 210 which sounded great and my Japanese Fender 60's P-Bass strung with LaBella flats. Anyway, they also film the performance so if anyone wants to watch then here it is.

Yeah I totally agree.

That does look really interesting. Oddly enough, this came up on YouTube today and it looks and sou d absolutely brilliant and the features are amazing. It's quite pricey but not silly money.

This Thursday, 10th April, I'll be playing at The Bedford in Balham with a singer songwriter called Andrew Maxwell Morris. He is an singer, songwriter and film and television composer and has composed music for Cavendish and EMI Production Music which has been placed across the ITV channels, Channel 4 and Sky Sports. He saw me play with my main band a few weeks ago and asked if I would be willing to play bass for him. We've had two rehearsals and its all sounding rather good so looking forward to my first gig with him as well as playing at The Bedford which I hear is quite a good venue.