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 🤣 

27 minutes ago, Len_derby said:

Phew, glad it’s just not me. 

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

1 hour ago, Hellzero said:

Another trick with fretless is to use opened (sorry, but it's a past participle) strings to check your intonation while playing.

 

Use your ears to play, not your eyes and you'll improve very quickly.

 

I really started playing on a fretless bass something like 40 years ago (wow, I'm that old 😳 now) and I now suck on fretted bass as I tend to make it sound like a fretless... 🤦🏻

 

You can also add a tiny bit of reverb on your tone, it's great with fretless.

 

Welcome to the family!

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.

28 minutes ago, Ben Jamin said:

Thanks that's a very helpful mindset to go in with! It's pretty daunting as my band's in the process of recording right now, but I have no idea how soon I'll be able to play with reliable intonation!

Also thanks for the excuse to check the Effects For Sale section 😂

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.

4 hours ago, Ben Jamin said:

Got the last one from Andertons arriving on Tuesday 🥳

 

A wee bit nervous as it's my first fretless! Any tips??

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 😂

19 minutes ago, Steve Browning said:

SamIAm

 

I had been concerned about Sam for some time and decided to see if the web could provide an answer. Unhappily so. It seems she has left us. The link is to a MacMillan tribute, so I guess we can assume how she passed.

 

How very sad.

 

https://samanthamargerison.muchloved.com/

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.

3 hours ago, fretmeister said:

The little blue Mooer is a perfect clone of the Boss CE-2. I have both.

 

The Mooer also has a volume control so it’s actually more usable.

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.

3 hours ago, fretmeister said:

I wish the compressor could be used with the other 2 preamp tones.

Then that would be ace.

Yeah I totally agree.

On 25/03/2025 at 12:54, bnt said:

The new Sub-Atomic from DSM&H looks interesting, I'm looking for a price. It looks like it's taking their Simplifier Bass Station concept but made the channels switchable. (Correction: it does still use parallel processing, with the LPF on the parallel path as on the Simplifiers.) I'm actually using my Simplifier clone with an A/B switch in the loops to give me two channels, so this already has me interested.

 

PS: US price will be $259 (Sweetwater).

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. 

I use a TC Electronic 208 cab and a Warwick Gnome IPro 300. Sounds mega and easy to carry. You could also use a Gnome 200 or the even smaller BAM 200 or TE Elf.

Just a little update from me. Took the plunge on a Laney Digbeth Preamp but I'm afraid it's not for me. Nice enough pedal but I found the EQ was very subtle apart from the bass dial and the treble did next to nothing to shape or change the tonal characteristics. I quite liked the Tube and FET dials and did create a half decent tone by blending them but in all honesty, it didn't make me go wow in the same way my Sansamp BDDI v2 did and the EBS Microbass 2 I once had. It did work nicer with my fretless Jazz but did nothing with my P-bass with flats. Comparing it back to back with the Sansamp, the Sansamp was like putting an old pair of comfy trainers on. I can see me ending up with another Sansamp at this rate.

Came across this just now and despite not being my normal tone, I do love it and the amount of dirt is quite subtle. Ian is probably using a Helix to create this but if I were to use a pedal, what type of pedal would I go for? I've never used overdrive, fuzz, distortion etc. so not sure what direction I should head towards to create this tone.

Thanks for posting this, you can see how easily someone could be tricked.

35 minutes ago, DF Shortscale said:

 

I have a recent set and they only have silk at the peg, and they do have the coloured ball ends. They all feel the same though, same level of rough/smooth across all strings.

Ok, thank you for confirming 👍

They've been my go to flats on a Precision for many years also but I currently don't have any strung on any of my Precisions. So that is why I opened this new packet to string one of them with a set only to not remember them to be quite like this. I have a few packets of old opened strings and one of them says Rotosound 77 flats on a bit a paper cut for a stingray but they have red silks on both ends. This new packet I opened only has silks on the peg end but the other end does still have the different coloured ball ends but no red silk at that end. I thought Rotosound 77 Flats have coloured silks on both ends. Added to that, they do feel rough apart from the G string which is much smoother. Not silky smooth like LaBella's but much smoother than the E, A and D string.

I might drop Rotosound an email and see what they think.

4 minutes ago, Steve Browning said:

I would say they're not immediately as smooth as some other makes. They are also quite bright to begin with. 

Cheers Steve, thanks for your help.

I've just opened a brand new set of Rotosound 77 Jazz Flats and they feel very rough to me, more like rounds than what I remember flats to be like. They also sound quite bright. To those who play the Rotosound 77 Jazz flats, can you let me know if they are fairly rough to touch or are they smooth like normal flats are?

Thank you.

Not fair, I can't play, Fender don't make an unlined fretless Jazz or Precision that's not a signature bass and Ernie Ball don't make an unlined Stingray that's not got an Ebony or Rosewood fretboard. 

28 minutes ago, JPJ said:

I love my Sansamp for fretless, I start with the “Fat Tube” recommended settings from the manual and then dial the drive back until it’s just breaking up as I really dig in. Lovely tone, or at least I think so 😂 Apologies, I’m not trying to dissuade you from buying another preamp, GAS is an awful affliction 

No need to apologise, I am open to all ideas and just gathering information on all the different options. I also love my Sansamp for my fretless and it was that little bit of magic that was missing. I will also try your setting suggestions. I may well stick with either the Laney Digbeth or the Sansamp VT DI. I know they will both work very well but I am leaning towards the Laney as its £100 cheaper, has great reviews and I am very interested in the Tube and FET options on it.