Wolverinebass

Thanks for the suggestions. I must confess that Warwick looks great and I'm not a particular fan of them either. I would be very loathe to spend more than £4K on a Zon as The Status Buzzard I own cost that much and IMO that's the best bass ever built. If I ever paid more than that for a bass it'd better come with a free house and be prepared to do housework as well. As much as I like the Alembic I have I prefer the buzzard as it's just so incredibly brutal. I wouldn't mind a graphite neck, but I've never played a hybrid bass before (i.e. wooden body and graphite neck). I suppose the question is which does it sound more like wood or graphite? Does anyone have any experience? I suppose it might be worth giving Status a phone to see if they do forays into 8 strings. The last model I was aware they did was the 8 string buzzard and that's at least 4 years ago. In terms of the Hagstrom, I would like to at least try one, but trying to find one is rather difficult to say the least. I assume that the fact the strings don't have individual saddles is a real problem based on the info you've mentioned regarding intonation problems. It may also be rather silly to get a bass that's £450 when the dip in quality will be rather apparent I assume in comparison to my other 2. Money isn't too much of a problem, but of course I'd like something that's good. Cheers Andy

Thanks for the advice. I must confess that the 30 inch scale doesn't bother me at all as the Alembic I have is 30.75. I did read the review of the Hagstrom you mentioned and that's what got me thinking that an 8 string might be a good idea. A mate suggested getting the Dean Rhapsody 8 then gutting the electrics and pickups, but I'm not too sure how much difference that would make as I've never done it before. On the other hand the circuitry is I suppose one of the main things and it would be ridiculous to expect a £450 bass to sound as good as one 5 times the price. Would say, getting all the bits via Warmoth be a possible solution? Certainly the tune looks interesting.

I've been contemplating getting myself an 8 string bass and was thinking of getting a Dean Rhapsody 8. Has anyone played one of these? I've been told that they're getting discontinued and when I phoned the UK distributor the bloke I spoke to couldn't tell me even how much the bass weighed or anything that wasn't on Dean's website which was more than a tad poor. I've played a Dean 8 string Edge and wasn't too impressed with the tone, though on a playability level it was good. If anyone has any suggestions as to possible 8 strings that might fit the bill of being active, (pref) 3 band EQ it'd be good to know what's good. Grateful for suggestions if you have any. Cheers Andy

I've been a bit busy over the crimbo period with my band imploding a few weeks ago and decided to get back to writing my own stuff whilst trying to fom my own band. Here's a demo I roughly finished a couple of days ago and it'd be great for some feedback. There's no guitar on this at all and aside from some (pretty appalling) vocals from myself and some sequenced drums, everything you hear is played on bass. So, if you discount my rather appalling singing (which I've unsuccessfully tried to cover up with loads of reverb and phasing), I'd be interested in some opinions. Cheers Andy

Thanks for the encouragement guys. Clearly a bit of practicing with a metronome will be the order of the day for me.

I'd certainly agree with that. There is a reasonable amount of "slop" from myself and I'd be the first to admit that timing isn't my main strong point and it never has been. I would say that the biggest mistake we made on this as well as the other couple of songs we did was that we didn't record to a click so there's a reasonable amount of push and pull. I'm not entirely sure if this takes away from the song to the extent that it's the rythym section falling down the lift shaft or not, but I can certainly appreciate that it's not too far away from said territory. On the other hand, it was recorded live with no overdubs or cut/paste fixing of anything whatsoever. I suppose hindsight is 20-20 vision here, but in truth the timing deficiencies are the guitarist and drummers as well as my own. Whether or not we've got away with it or not remains to be seen. Not to excuse my own shortcomings on this of course, but it's certainly the more precision aspects ot timing that I've always felt have let down my game so to speak. One to work on methinks.

Yeah, am using the buzzard through the Pod with a bit of subtle chorus on it (which to be fair you probably can't hear). Thanks for the positive comments.

Have been in the studio of late and was wondering if I could get some opinions on the song on my band's myspace. I'm really looking for pointers regarding my own bass playing, things I could/should be doing better, but all feedback is appreciated. www.myspace.com/thelightgateway

There you go. A couple of pics of me playing the buzzard a while back. Andy

Hi All, Joined a while back, but yet to introduce myself. Am in London, been playing bass 9 years. Mostly rock, funk and a bit of grunge. Current band sounds a bit like The Who with my previous band a bit more in the Jane's Addiction/RHCP mould. At present my gear is: Status Graphite John Entwistle Buzzard Alembic Stanley Clarke Signiture Line 6 Pod XT Hartke 5500 Markbass Traveler 102P Markbass Traveler 151P Have attached a photo of my rig if you want a gander. Cheers Andy