BigRedX

None of those really apply to my situation, or in a way bits of all of them do. Let me explain - this might be quite a long post... There was a piano and 2 acoustic guitars in our house when I was growing up. My dad could play the piano although I don't recall ever hearing him do so and I get the impression that it was just one of those things someone of his upbringing learned in the 1930s (along with Greek, Latin, Rugby and Cricket). He could also strum some simple songs on the guitar. My mum apparently played the violin at school, but didn't own one anymore. She could also play simple stuff on the guitar as she was a primary school teacher and singing with the kids was part of the job description. Later in life she went on to sing in several choirs (some fairly serious music concerns) and is currently in her 80s part of a Ukulele orchestra. My sister despite being completely and utterly tone-deaf expressed an interest in learning the piano and was duly sent off for lessons with the local teacher, and even managed to pass all her grades up to the point where her lack of being able to distinguish between notes or actually sing any of them with any accuracy prevented her from progressing any further. I can't really remember much music being played in the house. We did have a very old radiogram and my parents had a selection of classical and ragtime (my Dads) records but as far as I recall they were only played on rare occasions. Apparently when I was young I had a pretty good singing voice, but TBH I don't recall having much interest in music of any kind. My parents dragged me along to various classical concerts where I can remember being bored rigid. All of that changed when I went away to Scout camp in the summer of 1971 where Radio 1 was on all day every day, and I came home infatuated with the music of T Rex and Slade. I also had the vague idea that I might want to learn to play the guitar. My parents were mostly horrified that I had taken an interest in "popular music" and did everything they could to discourage me. The only radio in the house was the radiogram in the lounge and I was only allowed to listen to it when no-one else was in the room. I was also seriously discouraged from buying any records of my own as it was "a waste of money", not discounting the fact that buying even a Single at that time was at least a couple of week's worth of pocket money. The following year when I went to the "big" school I was offered the opportunity to learn a musical instrument (and consequently join the school orchestra). For some reason I decided that I would like to learn the trombone. My one lesson consisted of being asked the try one, to see how far I could push out the slide and when because of my size I wasn't able to reach to the full extent, I was told that there was no point going any further. No alternative instruments more suitable for someone of my size and age were offered or suggested. So as far as the school was concerned that was that. However a couple of my school friends had discovered that there was a children's folk guitar evening class at one of the other local schools, and so I pestered my parents to let me go until they relented. Therefore aged 13, and armed with my Dad's all but unplayable steel strung £15 catalogue guitar off I went. For the first year I could barely play anything. Whether it was the unfeasibility high action and cheese wire strings on the guitar or the fact that I was only able to attend if I had already completed all my homework for the evening I don't know, but I suspect neither helped. I knew lots of chords but could barely hold any of them down on the guitar and certainly couldn't change between any fast enough to play a song. Not a brilliant start. Folk guitar was deemed acceptable by my parents so I was given some encouragement, but school work always had to come first, so I didn't have much time left over for practice, and it was always on my own and out of earshot of the rest of the family. Then suddenly over the summer holidays something finally clicked and I went from being able to play nothing to being able to play everything that we'd been taught during the previous year. I'd also managed to master some of the simpler finger-picking patterns. Armed with this new-found skill I persuaded my parents to buy me a better guitar of my own for my 14th birthday. While we were in the music shop I did suggest an electric but that idea was quickly shut down (because it wasn't a "proper" instrument). I ended up with a £25 Kimbara acoustic, and copies of "The Beatles Complete" and "Simon & Garfunkel's Greatest Hits" music books. And that was pretty much it as far as support from my family went. The following year I sold all my model railway stuff, and with the proceeds bought a 10W practice amp and a pickup for my acoustic guitar. I didn't have enough for both an amp and even the cheapest second hand Woolies Special electric guitar, so it was either just a guitar or an amp and pickup, and I could't see the point in buying an electric guitar without an amp to go with it. My parents were not impressed and I was forbidden to spend any more money on "that awful pop music". It was then that I discovered that not having a decent (loud) amp or a proper electric guitar meant that none of the bands I wanted to audition for would take me seriously. Instead I formed a band with some other people from my year at school and we made recordings of our own quirky songs - mostly due to our quirky music equipment (no proper drum kit and we only had bass if we were able to borrow one). I got around the electric guitar problem by building my own during the 6th form in the woodwork shop at school (it was a lot easier to hide a pickup or machine heads that I just bought from my parents than a whole guitar) and bringing the finished instrument home on my last day of school as a fait accompli when I knew I was off to university in the autumn and really didn't care what my parents thought any more. After that developing my interest in music was a lot easier when I was away from home and had proper money of my own to spend. I do think that my parent's complete discouragement of my chosen musical path set me back a lot. I didn't play my first proper gig until I was almost 21 years old, and until I had major record label interest in my band the following year I was always vaguely unsure of my musical abilities. I'm sure that if I had picked a "proper" musical instrument to learn and joined the school orchestra there would have been plenty of help and encouragement, after all my sister who had zero musical ability got plenty when she wanted to learn the piano. I'm also sure that those of you on here who weren't around in the 60s and 70s will find my parent's attitude hard to imagine, but for me and most of my friends it was the norm. Ultimately though, if I hadn't had to battle so hard to be able to play the music and instrument(s) that I wanted to when I was young, there's a good chance that I would have given it all up long ago and wouldn't still be playing in a regularly gigging band in my 50s.

[quote name='visog' timestamp='1475177392' post='3143854'] Have to agree... they've not exactly been a bass players friend. In Gibson's eye's we're the guitar-players buck-tooth idiot cousin who's happy to plunk away on a short-scale thud machine. They bought and ran down Tobias... And my DAW of choice Cakewalk... and they've un-develped that. And their Victory basses were horrid. Let's raise and angry mob and go burn their factories... [/quote] Lets not forget what they did to Opcode either. I had a very lucky escape there. Having spent a serious amount of time in the early 90s checking all the major MIDI sequencing programs (Cubase, Logic, Performer and Vision) I was all set to invest in Opcode's offering until I joined a band where my songwriting partner was a Logic user, so for ease of exchanging ideas I went and bought a copy of Logic instead. Also Opcode's MIDI utilities were the backbone of every Mac based MIDI sequencing system until OS X arrived. After Gibson bought them up and stopped development these systems became more and more unreliable as they could no longer cope with changes to the OS and demands being placed on them by updates to the programs that required them. I eventually had to invest in eMagic's Unitor MIDI interface which communicated directly with logic and no longer required the outdated Opcode utility in order to run, simply because I was getting too many MIDI errors with my old interface. Every time I find myself hankering after a Gibson guitar or bass I simply have to remind myself about Opcode and the urge to buy goes away.

[quote name='Grangur' timestamp='1475099180' post='3143135'] All the joints do look ok. That said; I know looks can be deceptive. [/quote] I was just looking at the rusty area around Cap 7....

I take it you have already run your soldering iron over that board just to make sure it isn't a dry joint somewhere causing the problem?

La Bella Steels.

[quote name='zawinul' timestamp='1475061850' post='3142686'] no exactly the same, 2 octave 34 inch.. they have different strings though,,, lighter on fretless , need some meaty ones i think !! [/quote] There you go. Problem solved. Off course lighter strings are going have less tension.

Is the ACG a different scale length to the Warwick?

Are you using the same make and gauge of strings on both basses?

There used to be a card tucked into the back on International Musician that allowed you to get more information from their advertisers simply by ticking the boxes of the manufacturers your were interested in. Then many weeks after you'd sent it off and complete forgotten about it, catalogues would start to arrive in the post. I think I ticked every single guitar and synthesiser manufacturer, and as a result had a whole stack of brochures for gear I could only dream about affording one day. I think my favourite was the John Birch catalogue full of photos of weirdly shaped guitars.

[quote name='thebrig' timestamp='1474974387' post='3141908'] In 1967 I bought a s/h Burns Sonic bass for £15, this was more than THREE times my weekly wage, which was £4/10/0d (£4.50p to all you younger people). I borrowed the money from my older sister and payed her back in weekly instalments of 10/- (50P) for the next 30 weeks. Today the cost of that bass compared to how much I earned would be the equivalent of about £1400/1500 I guess, although today, £1500 would buy you a much better bass than that Burns Sonic for sure! [/quote] Thinking about it my secondhand Burns Sonic Bass bought for £60 in 1981 was far more indulgent in terms of what it cost against what I could afford to spend than any that I have bought since. Certainly nothing I've bought in the last 20 years has required me to cut back on what I spent on food so that I could buy it.

My Sei 5-string fretless. I spent over a year researching luthiers and playing as many fretless basses as I could to work out exactly what I wanted. And then another 18 months waiting while Martin Petersen actually built it. The band it was made to use in split up 2 gigs after I took delivery. Fretless bass hasn't really been suitable for any of the bands I've played with since (although it did get used on the recording of one track for the "SnakeOil For Snakes" album), so it's hardly been used for anything other than noodling about at home. Having said that I've spend far more on studio equipment most of which is completely worthless now.

Is the music any good? And can you get on with whoever is responsible for writing the lyrics and doing the singing? Everything else can be fixed after you join.

When I was 11 I had just discovered pop/rock music having previously shown very little interest in any kind of music of any kind. It would be another 2 years before I started to learn to play the guitar, but had I been playing back then it would have been glam rock songs inspired by T Rex etc. that I had written myself.

It's well over 20 years ago since I last had to personally organise hiring a PA system so my prices won't be that much use. However when The Terrortones did our first single launch gig back in 2012 we had to hire in a PA as the one in the venue we had chosen wasn't much use for anything other than acoustic guitar and vocals. Mr Venom sorted it all out but I can't imagine we paid more than £75 as the whole event was on a bit of a tight budget and we did actually manage to turn a profit on the evening. When I first started gigging in the early 80s no-where had it's own PA system so you had to hire something in. It's only from the late 90s onwards that I've started to see PA systems permanently installed in venues. These days all the places we play provide the PA and someone to work it.

Who should own the PA? The venue or the PA hire company.

I haven't heard this track in years but on a quick re-listen, to me it's obvious that the whole rhythm section is synths/samples and sequenced. In fact I suspect all the instruments except the main guitar parts are synths/samples that have been sequenced, and maybe even the acoustic guitar isn't 100% played.

I really like that. Pity the back is so boring.

A rather ordinary looking bass with an interesting concept. However I'm not keen on the way the photographs manage to avoid showing clearly what is happening to the standard strings where they pass over the fret/nut and through the fingerboard. Also I can't help but feel that this lends itself far better to a headless design rather than the current Heath Robinson arrangement to get the strings to the tuners.

[quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1474297376' post='3136910'] I read history, for pleasure and to learn things. I listen to history for much the same reason. I listen to Bach and Mozart, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, Gershwin and Cole Porter, Sinatra and Elvis, The Beatles and David Bowie. It's pleasant and I learn things. [/quote] But it is just history. As we get further and further away from the early 60s the musical, cultural and social climate that created The Beatles and allowed them to become successful and important at that time, it becomes less relevant to what is happening musically, culturally and socially today. I find the history fascinating but no more so than any other period or cultural/social happening that I am interested in.

Like the way it says "comparable to hardware solutions"... Considering that IME all the pitch to MIDI hardware solutions add too much latency to be any use unless you learn to play ahead of the beat, I too am rather sceptical. And some are considerably worse than others... However I will be downloading the demo as well to see what I think of it in practice.

[quote name='molan' timestamp='1474285633' post='3136762'] There's a reason people like Fender copies - still hard to get some gigs without something that looks like a Fender and many beginners want to start with something that's familiar. I realise BC can be very elitist at times though so maybe that's why they aren't as popular. . . [/quote] What I was trying to imply was there are already hundreds of copies of Fender basses available at all sorts of price points, so why yet another brand doing it and what do they hope will make them more special than all the others? Especially when the headstock logo is so eye-waveringly ugly! And if I was a beginner after a Fender-style bass I'd probably want be looking at one that actually said Fender on the headstock even if it was only a very small logo.

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1474290903' post='3136846'] I'll never understand why you guys mock and have very little appreciation for this incredible part of music history which is yours. Or is pride another culture difference? Blue [/quote] And that's exactly it. It is history. And while the majority of pop/rock musicians who have come in their wake have to a certain extent stood upon the shoulders of the Beatles to get where they are, as time goes on their influence becomes less and less relevant. Here in 2016 two of them are dead and the other two might as well be for all the impact they have had on popular music in the last 20 or so years. Even when I was getting into music at the age of 10 in 1971, to me the Beatles were already old hat. And as a band they were no longer playing together and therefore they weren't releasing any new material. I quite liked one of Ringo's singles and thought that Wings made a couple of decent albums, but when there plenty of bands coming out with new and exciting music, why bother with a band that isn't going to be releasing anything new? Made nostalgia is something you get more into as you get older?

I'll wait for it to be on the telly...

[quote name='molan' timestamp='1474279042' post='3136663'] Great value for money. Can't understand why there isn't more love for them here. [/quote] Because they are mostly Fender copies with a horrible looking logo on the headstock? How many more Fender copies does the world need?

[quote name='Dan Dare' timestamp='1474020155' post='3134961'] If the instrument's worth a bit, isn't a cheap gig bag a false economy? I went through a couple of cheapies before seeing the light and getting a Fusion. Wish I'd got one first off. [/quote] Having owned all sorts of cases from what was essentially a guitar-shaped plastic bag to full-flight cases you need to pick the right case for your situation. IME a £30 padded gig bag that is comfortable to wear is going to be fine. Unless you need maximum portability and maximum protection, I really can't see the point of these modern semi-rigid cases, and I'm saying that as Mono M80 owner.