bassace

[quote name='dmccombe7' timestamp='1504460379' post='3365025'] Are you guys serious about the wakes. Just i've never heard of that before and don't know whether you are kidding ? Dave [/quote] Yup, a band to escort the coffin in, sometimes a tune or two in church and then the band plays afterwards. No amps, of course.

Nowadays we don't talk about gigs, gear, tunes: it's all about appointments and prescriptions. And no, it's not about toilet breaks, we can do a 60min set, thanks very much. But only last month we had to call the ambulance out. I seem to go to a lot of funerals these days to see old band mates off but there's a lot of good music to be made by the remainers . For now.

Couldn't they have found a better house band? I'm really cross about this: a collection of good musicians led by a gurning clown who's managed to turn the whole thing into a soup of mediocrity. Compare with the Metropole Orkestr doing the Mingus Prom last week. IMHO, of course. Other indifferent bands are available.

Thumb for show, nut for dough.

[quote name='lowdown' timestamp='1503753730' post='3360730'] [size=4]Wow...1959? What a great story.[/size] [b] [b][size=4]Most Obscure Bass Claim to Fame?......[/size][/b][/b][size=4]The above from 'bassace' for me. Pure story, no name dropping .......[/size][b][b][size=4] [/size][/b][/b] [/quote] Thanks for your kind comments, Lowdown. Just a small mea culpa: it was actually 1960, I've just rooted out my A Levels cert to check the actual year. Still a bit earlier than Bill tho' but does it matter?

[quote name='Cosmo Valdemar' timestamp='1503665574' post='3360123'] I think that even beats Bill Wyman! [/quote] Yes, I suppose it does but he was well known and I wasn't. My brother made a homemade bass guitar, used the coil from a headphone for the pickup but because he didn't have the skills to put frets in the fingerboard he left it fretless. As I was playing DB back then I found it quite easy to play. Deffo 1959 tho, I played it at my school dance.

[quote name='fftc' timestamp='1503664337' post='3360107'] Ta for the reminder. Really enjoyed the Ella and Dizzy one a couple of weeks back. [/quote] That was class, wasn't it?

[quote name='ivansc' timestamp='1503661904' post='3360065'] because..............? [/quote] 1959

Is Lester Young there too?

I was at school with Les Hurdle (early Donna Summer, Brighteyes and much more) and I shared a flat with Dave Wintour (Wurzles, Wakeman and more) Oh, and I can confidently claim to be first in UK to have played fretless BG.

[quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1503480583' post='3358515'] Is that because of the horn? [/quote] Maybe, but the gen 3 12" driver seems a lot more 'open'.

I certainly agree with HJ re convenience and portability. I get a good sound with my OneTen from my Kolstein Travel bass fitted with a magnetic pickup. And it has a strong sound with my 'outside' bass, a ply bass with an Underwood pickup. But with my Bryant and Gage Lifeline pickup it is too dark with not a lot of mid range articulation. And I guess this'll be the case with the Gage Realist. You can mitigate the darkness by standing the cab off the floor a bit. The Barefaced Super Midget is a better proposition, not a lot heavier but significantly more expensive.

It's all ply.

So a seven mile trip up the road to a nice house and walled garden for a one-hour jazzer for a birthday. Vocalist, tpt, sax, keys and me on double bass. Turned up at six and sat in car while rain pissed down. At six thirty man emerged from the trees and said in two minutes this will stop and I'll get my man to help you carry your gear in. Turns out he's a multi millionaire banker and birthday is for his mum. So we set up in this sumptuous garden by a massive water feature full of coi carp and see about twenty antique iron chairs facing us on which staff are placing immaculate white cushions. At seven we are just about ready and the family come up from the house and we do an hours programme while the family are served pink champagne and canapés by the staff. We play Happy Birthday to You, the family dance and a great time is had by all. At the end they all come up and chat and ask about our instruments and tell us how much they've enjoyed the music. Then after a turn round the water feature they go back into the house for supper. While we're packing up it turns out that in addition to the agency fee the man has given us £20'each as a tip. Some plutocrats are thoroughly decent people who know how to behave without ostentation.

Spot on, bobmartin. I first started playing with dance bands and my double bass, unamplified, cut through very well. A typical band with two trumpets, three or four saxes and perhaps a trombone or two would play without PA, save for a solitary microphone for announcements or a clarinet solo. I never had a problem with drums but the arrival of electronic organs caused me a few problems. The first amplified double bass I saw/heard belonged to Johnnie Hawksworth with the Ted Heath band. He used a contact mic going into a 15" combo made by Teddy Wallace. Crude by today's standards but effective in its day. He was a larger than life character and featured with the band. If you can imagine Holiday for Strings played on the upper register of the double bass, that's your man. His bass, a blonde, never had a cover but was chucked on the back seat on his vast American car. He encouraged me to amplify my bass and I rigged a hifi amp onto a speaker cab that I built myself, starting with a 12" and progressing to an 18". To think that my favoured cab is a 10" these days. I was amused by bob's point that many players with poor intonation gave up when amplification came in. It wasn't just poor intonation, they had got away with playing the wrong notes for a long time until the amp found them out. Known to us as bassfakers. There are still some about.

And there is a very nice looking bass for sale in the DB section, a Michael Poller, for £650. Personally I'd snap that one up.

Musical Chairs Instrument Sales is good. They have a harp classification but I see there's nothing on there at the mo.

My business plan all those years ago went thus:- I'm never going to make money out of my music so settle down to forging a career and play music for enjoyment. Retired from career and still enjoying playing music. I'm comfortable, so in retrospect not a bad business plan. Mind you. Out of our five- piece one became a successful songwriter, Cliff, Hollies, Elvis; singer recorded, including TV sigtunes, her husband went into music and manufactured hifi. So did our drummer who also toured. And the baby joined Dire Straits. Still think I got it right tho'

Interesting that on the 'other' forum there is some current dissatisfaction with the Full Circle, as there seems to be from time to time. Surely the Lifeline is the go-to pickup for the gigging bassist. It picks up from the same part of the bridge as the FC and is wired much more robustly. You need a bridge adjuster, of course. Mine works very well on a plug in, play and forget basis.

[quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1500901206' post='3340928'] And, by a weird coincidence, I shall be playing Fever (complete with key changes) at the Ealing Jazz Festival on Saturday. [/quote] Got to hear it!

Hmm. If you listen to the original version by Peggy Lee you will hear that the bass phrase in each successessive chorus is subtly different from the preceding one. And they raise a semitone each chorus. It seems simple but it's not easy to play. This version sounds how I would probably play it if I was confronted by an open mike singer, ie not very well. Sorry Pete, I'm a bit grumpy this Sunday morning.

You may be interested that I have this amp for sale in the Amps for Sale section. It's one of the very best amps for double bass as it has two channels with phantom power available if you want to run a mic. Also low cut filters incorporated.