drTStingray

There are warning notices in Halfords regarding supply issues on bikes. I know of people who've been waiting months to get hold of certain mid- upper end ones as no retailers have them and won't give delivery dates - a bit like some types of basses!!!

I think these new colours are great and if it wasn't for the fact I already have Stingray Specials in great colours I would be in the market for one of these, in spite of the current prices. They certainly aren't out of step with other low volume high end stuff (Rick, dare I say, Fender CS) - I think we have to remember the world's changed for the reasons mentioned - anyone tried to buy a bike (pedal type) recently? They can be very hard to come by - same with parts of firms like Ikea's range - you'll find some items are fine others not available. Covid has affected production - allegedly Fender had their best year for sales ever - one wonders if that was caused by people buying stuff that had been parked in retailer's warehouses for ages, unless Covid didn't affect them the same way it has everyone else - there certainly seem to be general supply chain issues and shipping issues for goods across the board. Im reminded I paid £375 for my brand new pre EB Stingray in 1980 - it'd be worth £2750+ now!! Used prices tend to reflect how quickly people want to sell. £800 is a daft price for a 1991 Stingray!! I also have a Bongo and I'm reminded it's sat in its case - I'd better get it out and put one of the Rays away !!! I have been mildly tempted by basses in the EBMM vault - notably the Joe Dart - if EBMM want to issue another Stingray variant in one of these posh colours with a graphite neck I would probably buy one - unless any Members here want to sell me one 😏 Has to be a factory variant though - I know of at least one @hiram.k.hackenbacker 👍😂 Conversely an artist series Tony Levin 5 string (or Pino fretless) if EBMM are planning anything like that!!

I wasn't expecting the 'My old man's a dustman' gag!! 😂

First @ped mentioned cake, but what do you guys think you're doing mentioning Jam Roly Poly Thankfully at least he's one person who's hearing is capable of hearing the difference between different types of wood - however I started a thread on this once before - does the type of rug ,,in use,, (on the floor) make a difference and which is best for (,,rock,,) 😀👍

I think it's wonderful so many of us can have such widely differing views - it makes for healthy debate - although as always, it's very obvious so many are wrong 😂 😬😧👍 A tone and wood related thing that's always really perplexed me - as some of you know, I've been around for a while and clearly remember people who should've known putting forward the view back in 1975 (and I'm really paraphrasing here) that an alder/rosewood combination from 1962 was that much better than a 5 yr old combination on the same instrument model - as a bit of a rebellious (almost) teenager I thought this was complete bo**ocks - I understand these days people say the same thing and I must say I still can't hear any vast difference (perhaps the electrical bits have deteriorated this giving a 'mellower' sound - however I understand the proponents now state it's because the wood has dried out etc etc. Not sure what the difference was in 1975 as such instruments were only 13 yrs old then!!! So I haven't changed my mind after all these years on this subject 😂😂 Now put a maple board and ash body on the same type of bass - yes I can hear the difference then!!!! Just a little anecdote to assist the naysayers 😏

@hiram.k.hackenbacker I think the original has a lot of 'revving up' type slides on it. Whats interesting is that even if the fills are punched in it is more than possible to reproduce this live without missing any of them - the bits of slapping and high unison fills with the brass all have a similar tone id say (however unless those brass parts were in place before the bass part was done - (and especially the high unison bit), you would think those bits were punched in). Conversely some of this could have been played and recorded live. Thanks for posting these @Bart Funk Bass - they're always really interesting. This one is played so much tidier than one or two of the late 70s/earlier 80s famous parts you've posted (notably Rock With You)!!

It sounds like one take to me as well. I think the playing is quite restrained as well. One of the rare occasions Mark Ronson had an up front role and mix for the bass guitar!! 😬

This is very interesting - on the album the bass sounds excellent - on this the actual sound is appalling IMHO. Sounds like a Precision with brand new round wound strings. Shows what can be done by world leading engineers and producers. It's also interesting in that this is a song I've played in the past and attempted to learn note for note - there are elements of the timing which are evident here which I didn't pick up on, but the isolated sound on this is nothing like I would have thought!!

Although the bassss probably originated in the 70s I think you need an Ibanez Musician and a single pick up Aria as well to be really early 80s - maybe a Jaydee Supernatural.

That's definitely one of several generic bass sounds!! V popular in US studios in the 60s leading to popular resurgence around the millennium - no doubt if they were the Dan Armstrong plexiglass version rather than the traditional alder/rosewood combination used in Motown they'd also sound identical 😬😉😂

You won't find many guitarists saying all guitars sound the same and it won't make any difference in the band mix. Arguably they would have a bigger reason than bass players for having impaired hearing (owing to exposure to higher frequencies) such that they wouldn't hear any difference. Different sounds in different musical instruments, be they saxophones, clarinets or bass guitars are all relatively marginal - however they obviously exist. In the case of the instruments being compared here there are obvious differences - particularly in the upper register. I'm surprised so few people in this thread can actually hear it, unless some are not letting on that they do. For me the following basses all have fundamentally differing sounds, one way or another:- Warwick Thumb; Wal Mk1; Musicman Stingray 5; Ibanez Musician; Fender Precision; Sadowsky NYC; Lakland 55/94 Electronics are only one element - the construction (including wood) are also a major component. You can also get any of those basses to sound 'generic' such that they all sound the same in a mix if you want to.

And there was me thinking it came out of the speaker cabinet (or iPhone or headphones - or studio grade whatever gizmo) 😬👍 However what is definitely the case here is the fast section of high register notes sound vastly different between certain of those basses (notably the rosewood/ maple and paduak/paduak are more defined and fuller sounding). I have concluded over the years that many bass players seem to make fundamentally incorrect assumptions on bass sounds - not sure why - here are a few pointers:- 1) It'll all sound the same in a band mix - WRONG - ever listened to Andy Fraser's sound in Free - the BBC sessions show some remarkable bass sound through an Orange amp and cab and a Gibson EB3. The only time it'll likely all sound the same is when it's mixed a la mid 1960s - when you couldn't hear the bass properly anyway unless it had a clicky pick tone. Listen to any rock band mix from the late 60s early 70s and yes you can hear the bass and it does sound different dependent on who's playing and what they're playing. 2) As if to reinforce 1) above I sat in my car earlier today eating a takeaway and with the radio on - modern chart music - mostly dance orientated type of thing - I was astonished that every song had prominent bass AND completely different bass playing style and sound - granted a couple were obviously keyboard but not all were - perhaps the music industry has woken up and rediscovered the usefulness of a decent prominent bass sound (that's not all sub rubbish)? I'm confident the wood in the construction can have quite a significant impact on overall tone/timbre. I know Fender have never used piezo pick ups on their solid bodied instruments but they do exist - many other manufacturers have and the sound from these is more reliant on overall resonance than say a magnetic pick up. The current fad for many people to play Jazz or Precision derived instruments (the latter notable generally only for a couple of distinct albeit iconic tones) might contribute to some rather narrow views on any subject to do with bass tone and how it's derived? It's as if many people's minds are closed to the vast variation in bass tone and style (and instrument types recorded on) over the last 50 years or so!!

You are right - IIRC Jet stated this somewhere in a long interview he did with Licorice Locking (who was actually his replacement bass player in the early 60s). It's probably somewhere on You Tube - I think he mentions the type of guitar also - some sort of Fender (maybe Strat or Tele). Yes - late 70s and 80s - a very good player (there are some great bass parts on recordings, both studio and live from that era). Mark Griffiths was the most recent, also a great player. Licorice Locking was replaced by John Rostill, also a great player, who went on to play in Tom Jones's band in Las Vegas - apparently the band was so good that Elvis had a conversation with Tom Jones about it. Elvis's late 60s LV band was equally sh*t hot - Tom Jones's band may have been part of the inspiration!! John Farrarr played bass with the Shadows In lieu of John Rostill, who passed away at the beginning of the 70s, and also shared bass duties in Marvin, Welch and Farrarr. He no doubt earned, and continues to earn copious royalties from songs he wrote for Grease, including You're the One that I Want!!

I love that tune - appeared on the radio (Light Programme) very regularly in the 60s alongside the occassional Beat record, Cilla, Lulu and Acker Bilk. The bass line is great and a perfect example of "The Knack" bass sound. I had thought it was duplicated with a double bass. This style was used in the US studios - Carol Kaye talks about using a "Dano bass" for the tic tac sound (which she sometimes played), whilst other musicians duplicated on "string bass" and "Fender bass" - so no doubt the Dano is a good means of getting the sound. As is a Stingray (particularly one fitted with mutes) where you can boost the bass on the EQ if needed. On left hand muting, I thought everyone did that as part of playing a bass guitar - you can control the level of muting with your fretting hand very effectively - unless it's just the way I learned to play/developed my bass playing style - I've always muted with both hands - dependent on the sound required!!

Jaco was very R and B (which is where funk and disco bass had its roots) - but River People has a disco style octaved bass part with hi hat sixteenths - pure disco!! Jaco appeared to be into sequencer style lines - also appeared in River People. Even Teen Town could be considered a sequencer-style line. The real big break for 'disco' was Saturday Night Fever - not only the singles and album but the film - but it was around in R and B style bands before that. An early example being Love Hangover, Diana Ross (octaved bass part; hi hat sixteenths).

Twin humbuckers all Colin on in both, or single bridge humbucker only. Plenty of Bernard Edwards style focussed, fat note thump!!

You're right - I saw him with Hillage (may have been Gong) - prog with a groove funk bass player - fabulous!! Very hippy also. @Bean9seventy is quite right that this style of playing influenced very widely - even pure show biz orchestras started to have funk bass players - you were as likely to hear it on The Two Ronnies as anywhere else! Ive said this before here, but if you turned up to an audition in the early 80s (unless it was punk or maybe ska), if you couldn't slap you'd probably not get the job 😬 But to quote Marcus Miller in his interview with @Silvia Bluejay and @Happy Jack in those days you needed to be able to hold down a groove as well if not better than the next guy to get the job - perhaps doesn't seem to be as important these days 🤔

Now then, @Bean9seventy if you think I'm too hippy and non-street (though I will admit to having played slap bass in the street at least once or twice) you'll definitely think these two Brits were far too hippy (they certainly had long hair) but Neil Murray, in his pre Whitesnake days with one of the Canterbury sound bands with Dave Stewart, played a whole section of slap bass on a recorded piece, and I saw Alan Spenner play a sort of slap bass short solo with Kokomo..... Alan Gorrie also played some with the Average White Band (but he is Scottish.....) 😏 - more so in the 80s though (for instance Sweet and Sour; Into the Night). I agree with you regarding Larry Graham - his slap bass was not really that well known until Graham Central Station.

Bernard (from the live performances Ive seen) plucked the strings very close to the bridge - I wondered if that influenced the level of overtones on the upper strings (and maybe they're heightened by the level of compression in use). Whatever, it's a great performance of a great line. Love the bass sound as well - some modern producers could learn a thing or two from this - I'm astonished hearing modern disco with such imprecise and wooly bass sounds - just hearing the subtle use of both very short notes and longer and in some cases, slid ones in this is an eye opener - the magic is in the subtlety (although not on here the reversed hand claps in the instrumental break is another example of clever production ideas) which all combined create a magical and classic disco song.

It certainly appeared with the Crusaders (Pops Popwell) before that late 70s era - they were very much jazz funk. Thinking back, and the mention of famous players and instructional videos, I saw the Brothers Johnson when they were part of Billy Preston's backing band in the early 70s - quite by accident - they supported the R Stones on a UK tour - I'm pretty sure LJ was using the style even then - Billy Preston and his band were superb in fact blew the decidedly average main act completely off - the only saving grace was the Stones' tight rythmn section and the presence of the wonderful Mick Taylor on guitar. The rest was pure s**te!!!

The first time I heard or saw slap bass being played knowingly was Car Wash by Rose Royce (bass player Lequeint "Duke" Jobe). In fact the whole first album of Rose Royce is littered with it. The fact the song features slapped bass only breakdowns at the end of each chorus - and appeared on a popular feature film of the era, and a UK top 10 single leads me to suspect this was the biggest and earliest exposure of slap bass to the general public. Though Larry did it with Sly, and I saw Woodstock multiple times when the film first released, on those singles of the late 60s the slap bass is not really that audible - slap and pop is on Thankyouforletting etc etc and audible - but I hadn't heard that until about 20 yrs ago when it was referred to in a Bass Player article and I looked it up. The concept of properly audible bass, especially live, didn't emerge as a more general thing except in occassional situations (Andy Fraser for instance) until the early 70s (Acoustic and other solid state amps helped a lot). Rose Royce had been around for a good couple of years under separate guises prior to Car Wash and the slap bass had no doubt been a feature of Duke's playing previously given the amount and standard of it on that first RR album. In fact Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is features a slap/pop breakdown (again after every chorus) which is a direct lift of a Larry Graham fill (of which there are a cornucopia) from Graham Central Station's song Release Yourself. (I later found out LG was using double thumbing on that track - hence I could never get the sound right ) - it must be one of the most OTT bass parts I've ever heard - along with Hair from the same era - as with Funkadelic a herbal based studio fug can be imagined!!!! Except for Larry, I reckon it must have appeared on soul/funk tracks since at least 1975 as I was actually using it by then (although I was playing Jazz Rock and prog). Of course, Stanley Clarke used it quite a lot both with Return to Forever and with his own band - and the influence that turned him on to electric bass, Colin Hodgkinson also used it. For people like me who had heard it but not seen it, we didn't know they used their thumb and I for one developed a technique rather like Stan Seargent using a combination of tapped and heavily pulled strings to achieve the sound. So @Bean9seventy I think it was probably popular from earlier in the 70s than you're thinking - maybe 74-75 (I think I copied some of Stanley Clarke (with Return to Forever) and Colin Hodgkinson (with Back Door) phrases). I also copied every LG fill off Release Yourself and used them all in my own playing. The world would be a far worse and bass playing would be a much less enjoyable and exciting place without it 😏

The ash borer issue is a fairly recent phenomena - it remains to be seen whether any other manufacturers have experienced problems which have got into production - I think Musicman was the first manufacturer to stop using ash (for scarcity reasons) - Fender was at least 6-12 months later (presumably they keep more stock, or else respond to external factors slower). Musicman still use it for the Joe Dart signature bass (recently made available to buy internationally from 'The Vault' - and yes - I have been considering it!!! ) The other bass I mentioned seeing discussed on the Internet was discussed by the owner on the Musicman bass forum. Musicman make far more guitars than basses but I'm not sure what other instruments they use ash for these days. Certainly not Stingrays.

Same here 👍

Possibly one of the original Wal JG series basses - Alan Spenner (Roxymusic and Kokomo)? @TrevorR has a copy/photo of a list with names against serial numbers for the early Wal JG basses

Conversely there's only two that i haven't heard of (songs) - the Kylie Minogue and Maria McKee - also a notable year for the first in a series of overtly religiously themed Christmas singles by Cliff Richard - this one failing to make number 1 until after Christmas - much as I like Cliff's rock and roll and some of his pop stuff, these singles did result in me changing radio channel if they came on - I think this was when radio 1 banned him as well!!! The thing with number 1 singles by year, you miss out stacks of good songs, which were in the charts during the year - 1990 being no exception - wasn't there a famous Beatles single kept off number 1 by Englebert Humperdinck (he from Leicester) with Please Release Me sometime in the 60s - apparently appealed to many females, especially middle aged 😬