BigRedX

Probably worth it just for having the original bridge cover.

It might not for you, but there are plenty of musicians I know who treat musical theory as hard and fast rules and never step outside of those boundaries.

That was entirely the reason for the failure at the gig in question. The venue was in a basement and the gig on a very hot summer's evening. There was copious sweat from both the band and the audience condensing on the low ceiling and dripping onto us and our equipment. We used to carry a suitable screwdriver for altering the "keyboard" sensitivity pre-set pot in cases like this, but this time there were only two available settings: off and playing by itself. However it would also regularly cease to function a couple of songs before the end of most gigs and those were in far less severe conditions. When I bought the Wasp I picked it over synths with proper keyboards and a more conventional and rugged build, due to the fact that it sounded loads better than the competition at the £200-£250 price point. I also saw the lack of conventional keyboard as an advantage in that it opened up a completely different way of playing synths. Interestingly I also played the Wasp myself at gigs in my next band, I never had any of these problems, which leads me to suspect that some of them at least were user error rather than anything to do with the unconventional design of the synth or extreme climactic conditions.

Learn to be able to hear in your mind what you want to play and then know where to put your fingers on your instrument in order to play it. If I'm stuck for ideas I simply "sing" along with the track until I hear something I like. IME singing has noting between the idea and the execution - i.e. its unhampered by (lack of) instrumental technique. I also ought to point out the to others my singing is awful, but in my head its good enough for me to work out the notes I want to play This way you'll never play anything "wrong" but you are also unlikely to play anything truly musically remarkable either. There's nothing wrong with knowing your music theory, but you also need to know when it might be more musically interesting and still tasteful to bend/break the rules too. There's a reason why it's only "theory" and not "law".

The best technically complex playing is the stuff that doesn't sound like it.

I think this is the 4th time this video has been posted in the last couple of weeks. It'll soon be up there with the Drummer at the wrong gig. BTW whatever happened to the cross-dressing Korean bassist?

Depends entirely on the strings and the material the frets are made out of. It also depends how/what you play. I had a guitar where I wore away the fret at just one position on one string because the band I was in at the time had a song where I would hammer on the string with my plucking hand and then "bow" it against the fret to produce a sustained note for 4 bars of a very slow song. Practicing/playing this song every day for 2 years eventually wore down the fret at just this position. BTW this was a plain guitar G-string, so it's not just the windings of round wound bass strings that can cause the wear.

IMO that's sad in both the traditional and modern meanings of the word. Firstly no one will really cares about the bass you use, unless they mistakenly take pity on you for apparently not being able to afford a Fender or at least a Squier. Secondly I'm sure that most people on here own a car that has the potential to perform way above their level of driving skill, whether it be a 4x4 that has never seen anything more off-road than an unsurfaced car park, or just a normal car that is capable of more acceleration and speed than you could comfortably handle. At least if you play your expensive bass badly no-one is likely to get injured or die. And finally for most bassists on here even a US-made Fender is probably more bass guitar than they NEED. Most of us could quite happily get by with a modern cheap no-name P or J bass copy. But why should we want to?

Yes they are in NYC, but its Brooklyn rather than Manhattan and in the old docks area. It's a bit like saying your basses are made in London and then finding out the workshop is actually on an industrial estate in Croydon.

When I had my Gus G1 guitar made, the finished instrument was delivered to my work. One of the designers thought it was the the most amazing thing he had ever seen and if I ever wanted to sell it he'd buy off me no problem. This was over 20 years ago and back then he had never played the guitar and had zero interest in learning. I saw him last year and he asked me if I still had the guitar and when I told him I did he reminded me that he would still be interested in buying it. He still hasn't learnt how to play and likes it simply because he thinks it is a gorgeous artefact. I think the only reason he hasn't ordered an identical one from Gus for himself, is because he's too embarrassed to buy something from the maker when he can't actually play it.

I don't think any of the people on here with expensive instruments have them simply because they want to show off. I would be overjoyed if I could find cheap musical equipment that does what I want in terms of how it looks, how it plays and how it sounds, but the fact of the matter is that to have all 3, to what even a mediocre player like myself considers to be an acceptable, standard costs money. Luckily for me because I like playing and writing music and I have at various times had sufficient disposable income, I have the gear that does what I need and I haven't had to make compromises. There are other (more mainstream) consumer items that I just "don't get" and therefore I have spent as little as possible on them.

IME most people over-think what they want when it come to spec'ing up a custom instrument. Every time I've had a custom bass or guitar made (I've had four) I've outlined when I wanted in the broadest of terms (mostly with regards to looks playability and sounds) and let the luthier(s) in question fill in the details. I don't care what woods have been used and what hardware and electronics has been fitted so long as they look good (to me) and function in the manner, and produce the sounds that I expect. For that reason I still own 3 of these instruments and the one I did sell was because I no longer had a specific musical need for it (and couldn't see myself having one in the foreseeable future) and decided that it would be better off with someone who would use it rather than sitting in a case under my bed. I didn't get back what I paid for it, but that is irrelevant to me because the way I look at is that any loss was far less then what it would cost me to hire an instrument of that quality for the time when I was using it.

I have owned many expensive high quality basses (and guitars) over the past 30 years and currently own 2 basses that are close to being up there in Fodera price range. Do I have the technical ability to match those basses? That's irrelevant. The only things that matter is 1. I enjoy playing them and 2. I cannot blame any short-comings in my bass playing on the instruments.

Of course they do. I started off as a guitarist and for the longest time I had far more guitars then I had basses. I've also owned more synths at the same time than basses too. Right now I have more basses than either guitars or synths but that's only because I play bass in two different bands that require very different bass guitars (and a back-up for each) and play guitar just for writing/enjoyment and use the (plug-in) synths that came bundled with my DAW.

For a Fender-style instrument there absolutely no reason these days why one factory can't churn out instruments of exactly the same standard over and over again and to exactly the same standard as any other factory in the world. After all the wooden parts are all done by CNC machines, the design of the hardware has barely changed over the past 70 years, and the assembly is only marginally more complicated than fitting together a typical bit of flat-pack furniture. The price differentiation is done to the quality of the raw materials and the standard of QC control that is applied to those processes that require the hand assembly and finishing. That's set by what the client who's brand name appears on the headstock wants to pay per unit. That's why the factory producing these instruments is irrelevant. You'll find that to only people who want you to care about the factory itself are those selling instruments at the budget end of the range who want you to associate them with the kudos that goes with the instruments from the premium range from the same factory.

The thing is that all these factories that build guitars for multiple "brands" will build to the price set by the customer, and will differ in the quality of materials used and the amount of time a QC spent on any of the hand assembly and finishing tasks. That means, two extremely similar looking instruments from the same factory, but made for different customers may well have nothing in common other than the basic instrument shape and the fact that they were made under the same roof. Ultimately knowing which factory an instrument comes from is a complete red herring.

If it was either absolutely and utterly perfect in every other way, or I was intending to mod the flip out of it, then I would sort it out myself. Otherwise I'd be asking to send it back hoping that the retailer would give me a discount. If they didn't I'd send it back for a refund.

It's already been posted (twice) in one of the recent tone wood threads...

At the moment Logic. One band has the whole set as a single (very long) Logic arrangement with gaps between songs and uses Section Markers to define each song and Meta Events to automatically stop playback between songs where we know the singer will want to do some talking. We've been using this method long enough to know how long each inter-song gap needs to be, and one the whole it works very well. The only downside is that changing the set order on the fly is a bit cumbersome. The other band just has each song as a separate Logic file and I load each new one while the singer (who is much more verbose) talks to the audience. I've looked at MainStage, but because it won't directly import what I have already done in Logic, it seems a bit pointless that I have to recreate the whole song again in a different format, and it doesn't appear to have the most important functions IMO for live work which is on coming to the end of one song, either automatically start the next, or stop with the next one cue'd up ready. Because of this I've been looking at swapping over to Presonus Studio One which has a dedicated "show" page which integrates perfectly with the main arrangements done in the DAW and has all the stop/start/pause functions that seem to be missing from MainStage.

One of my bands played our last ever gig on the same evening as the finale of the very first Big Brother series. I think we played to the support act, the bar staff and a handful of punters. The lack of audience that night was not the only thing that killed the band off.

Fair enough. However I think in this case then the great sound with the Thunderbird is a bit of a red herring, and you should forget about it and concentrate on getting the sounds you want out of the Stingray. What you are going to need is an overdrive/fuzz pedal specifically designed to work with an active bass, as the active electronics present a different impedance to the input of the pedals compared with a passive one and this is very noticeable when trying to get dirty overdriven sounds. Other than that, I'm afraid I can't help you as I ditched pedals over 30 years ago in favour of good quality multiple-effects units that don't suffer from these problems.

Another one for my dance/rock band a couple of weeks after the London disaster. Our drummer who worked at Coventry University (and would drive to Nottingham twice a week for rehearsals and writing sessions) got us a gig at the Student Christmas Party in their shiny new Student Union building. On the way to the gig and just leaving Nottingham, I have a nagging feeling that we haven't packed all the gear. A check of the van reveals that, the case that holds all the bits and pieces including the optical drives and disks for loading data into the samplers and the floppy disk that actually holds the MIDI sequencer information that runs our backing is missing. Back at mine I retrieve the missing case and luckily happen to also notice that both copies of MIDI disk (normally one goes in the case and other with my bass just in case there is a problem with one) are still sat next to my computer! Arrive rather flustered and later than arranged at the venue, but luckily for us, the headlining band (a well-regarded up and coming band of a similar music style to us who had been picking up a fair bit of Radio 1 airplay for their debut single) are still sound checking. However the sound levels FoH are absolutely punishing! We carry our gear to the front of the stage and retreat to somewhere where we can actually hear ourselves think until its our turn to set up. Sound check goes OK, the position of the stage in relation to the PA means that we are entirely reliant on the foldback which is a bit on the quiet side. It's all a bit weird as our singer nips out the front during an instrument section and tells us the mix is good but painfully loud (although not as bad as the headliner's sound check). The Christmas party was split over 3 floors of the building with DJs on each floor and live music just on one. Before we play a check of the room reveals it's full of enthusiastic people dancing. As soon as we come on and start playing everyone stops, and we can see them visibly moving back away from the stage and then leaving the room. By the time we finish our set it's is almost empty, although as soon as the DJ set starts people drift back in. All in all not a happy experience. We decide to pack all the gear straight into the van and head back to Nottingham. I take a quick into the room to see the headlining band also playing at ear bleeding volume to almost no-one, so don't feel too bad about our performance. It has become obvious that the students simply want to dance to stuff that they know whilst trying to get off with a suitable partner, and live music at any volume was an unwelcome interlude to their evening's activities. Also in our hurry to get away we forget to pack the backdrop (which we hadn't been able to use) and which our drummer had to go back to pick up the next day. At the next rehearsal I mention that it was a pity our last two gigs weren't as good as we'd hoped and let's hope that the new year would bring us some better ones. Our drummer who was responsible for getting us both these gigs takes this completely the wrong way, as if my comment was aimed at his (lack of) organisational skills and that his drumming was rubbish to boot, and quits on the spot. (Actually he was a really good drummer although he could be a bit temperamental if he couldn't get on with the other band members - he'd already quit the band once because he hated our original singer and then had begged us let him back in when she left and we got someone even better in to replace her). With the drummer gone our guitarist announces that he's leaving as well as he thinks we're unlikely to find a suitable replacement any time soon, and doesn't want to go back to using sequenced samples and loops. It actually turns out that we found an even better drummer within a month, although it takes quite a bit longer to replace the guitarist...

So why do you want to use the Stingray when you already have a great sound with the Thunderbird?

If you've already got a sound that works well with your rig with one bass, I'd stop using the bass that it doesn't work on in this particular band. If you need a second bass as a backup or for alternate tunings get another one of the kind that does work.

My bands use a Mac PowerBook into a Focusrite Scarlet 18i20 interface. Backing tracks on outputs 1&2 and Click on 3. Audio-wise it's complete overkill for what we need, but for us an essential requirement was that everything fitted into a 3U flight case, and at the time the Focusrite interface was the cheapest decent one that was properly rack mounting. Our previous half width interface could only be properly rack mounted if it took up 2U of space and none of the bodges I did to try and make it work in 1U lasted long enough to be reliable. One thing I have discovered with the Focusrite interfaces is that all the outputs need to be balanced line otherwise there can still be cross-talk between channels. Our backing goes into an ART DTI box which completely isolates the audio interface from the PA and protects it against any phantom power the PA may inadvertently supply. We also have a Behringer headphone amp which accepts balanced line inputs for the drummer's click. Apart from the headphone amp everything else is contained in a single 3U flight case. Anything that could possibly move is cable-tied and/or hot glued into place inside the case, and the laptop as attached to a rack shelf using effects pedal velcro. IME consumer-grade computer connectors have no place on stage at a gig, so any that cannot be replaced with professional grade locking ones are fitted in such a way that once everything is in place and plugged in nothing can move. All audio connections to the outside world are made from a XLR patch panel mounted on the front of the rack. It looks a bit more messy this way, but its loads easier and quicker to set up on cramped and dark stages.