peteb

Pretty much this, although a few hours might be pushing it, but around 30 minutes or so when the shop isn't too busy (i.e. not a Saturday afternoon) should be fine. Just go to Bass Direct (or the Bass Gallery or wherever) and tell them that you are considering buying a new bass at some point in the future and am interested in a Sandberg. I'm sure that they will be happy to let you try a few and make suggestions about alternatives you might want to consider. From what I remember, if you go to the Bass Gallery, you could be there all day and the only time they will interrupt you will be to ask if you want a coffee!

That is kinda the point I as trying to make before I started getting challenged to a bass duel at the OK coral...!

Having said that, the Fender Am Std Jazz bass that I bought from Bass Bros recently had a very good set up!

Hang on a minute, it's not me who suggested a willy waving contest about who's the best technical bass player. I'm not claiming to be a monster technician and I have no idea if laughing boy is or isn't. But I do get plenty of gigs and there is a reason for that. The only thing I would suggest that people like you take from this thread is to develop a reasonable technique and then be open to breaking the rules when it suits.

Funnily enough, most engineers seem to like the DI on my R-400

Not getting any work then these days. I wonder why? I can do a passible version of Portrait of Tracy, but it's not really my forte to be honest. How about The Song Remains The Same or Ramble On? Back in the real world, if you want to see me play, all you have to do is buy a ticket...

Shall I ask again, what gigs are you doing these days?

Because I'm too busy playing in a Led Zep tribute band that plays all over the country, not to mention a few other projects. What gigs are you playing these days?

I do't really think that's going to happen. I will tell you what, I play in a Led Zep tribute band that plays all over the country. There's bound to be a gig somewhere near you, so you can pay your £20 or whatever and come and take notes. Can't say fairer than that...

Despite laughing boy’s best efforts to make it seem as unappealing as possible, you really should learn a decent technique allow you to play as efficiently as possible. Once you have a reasonable mastery of technique, you no longer have to be a slave to it! It really doesn't matter too much if you use a pick or play fingerstyle, as long as you can do so efficiently. It is much easier to make people dance and sing if you can play the music with ease and can then concentrate on actually entertaining the audience.

I am all for people learning a 'proper' orthodox technique when they start out and if you are new to playing an electric bass then, yes, you should learn playing with your thumb behind the neck. Once you have that down and it is second nature, then you can look at times when it works better (for you) to ignore that technique. So when you are playing a major scale you will have your thumb behind the neck, but when you are playing, say Jeremy by Pearl Jam (a random example that you will probably know), then you will probably use your thumb to mute the open E string while you play the riff (basically a box pattern with hammer-ons) with the open A. I would hope that a good teacher, when teaching anyone other than complete beginners, would accept and encourage that. If anyone is going to tell me that Steve Vai, Van Halen & Hendrix have bad technique (and in the bass word Bobby Vega & Billy Sheehan et al), then I am just going to laugh at them.

Enough of this...

So me, Billy Sheehan, Bobby Vega, Andy Fraser, Joe Dart and countless others have poor technique but your tutors are right. OK...

All I can say that I'm glad that I didn't go to your teachers. To be fair, if I was teaching a beginner I would get them to keep their thumb behind the neck. But as they progress they need to develop both right hand and left hand muting techniques. Muting seems to be a very personal thing and you need to find out what works for you. For most electric bass players, that isn't necessarily strictly adhering to classical guitar technique.

Regardless of BV using a pick, it is a perfectly valid muting technique, just as it is when Billy Sheehan or many other players do it. Most players use a mixture of left hand and right hand muting techniques, whatever works for them. I would expect a decent teacher to be aware of this and to be capable of teaching it, rather than trying to enforce a classical guitar technique that isn't necessarily the best way of playing an electric bass.

He didn't mention it because it isn't an issue. It is something that most decent bass players will do when the occasion demands it. This is a clip of Bobby Vega that demonstrates it pretty well, unless you are going to say that his technique is poor as well? Notice how he sometimes has the thumb behind the fretboard and sometimes over the top.

There are plenty of studio bass players (including Sean Hurley) who will play many passages with one finger while recording. This even includes me on the rare occasion that I find myself in a recording studio these days. Bass players will, like electric guitarists, use their thumb over the neck on occasion. I am not saying that you should do it 'all the time', of course not, but it is part of many good players' technique. I've been gigging for more than forty years and, while I'm not a technical monster in any way, I reckon that I've got a pretty serviceable technique. When I went for a one-off lesson with a well known teacher / session bassist (who also plays for a very well known band, who are genuinely a household name), he pointed out a few things that I ought to look at in my playing. He didn't mention anything about not playing with my thumb over the neck! Nor did he say anything about anchoring my right thumb on the pickup...

No, they won't - they're not teaching you to play classical guitar. Will they be telling you that Billy Sheehan and countless other top players have bad technique? Obviously, your standard left hand position is going to be with the thumb behind the neck, but there are plenty of situations (such as bending high strings, etc) when it is perfectly acceptable to use your thumb over the top of the fretboard to mute strings, etc.

It isn't (necessarily) - get a better bass teacher!

Not really! The people who gravitate to being in a band tend to be very different to those who play team sports to any level. Also, performance in sport is generally quite easily quantifiable and it is all about winning and losing. However, music is far more subjective, which leads to a different mindset...

Daft question, bit couldn't you have got a dep for a gig like that?? There are plenty of guys out there who can do a pretty good take on Koss and would have been only too happy to do a high profile gig out in the sun!

My current, pretty stripped down, gear that I take to a gig is somewhere in the region of £5k. I've had plenty of £500 cars in my time, but these days they are few and far between. I tend to spend £5-6k on a car then run them into the ground! However, the guitar player in a couple of my bands recently had his car written off by an old fella doing something erratic at a junction, so he went and got a pretty decent focus for £1.5k that allows him to gig all over the country. According to the drummer (who used to be in the motor trade), you can still pick up a perfectly decent car for £1 -1.5k if you need to...

I don't have much invested in Metallica - I bought MOP and the Black album (both great) and unfortunately someone gave me Death Magnetic as a present (awful) - and I have no interest at all in what passes for 'metal' these days, so I can perhaps give a more balanced view. The new track sounds OK, better than anything I've heard from them for many years (not that I take a lot of interest). Yes, it does sound a bit like a better produced Diamond Head (from what I an remember of them), but it's not bad at all...

I know that they have their haters, but I reckon that a Fodera very similar to yours is the best bass that I have ever played...!

It has a bit more history than you might think, but not just with me! I bought it when it was a year old and I had got my first (temporary) job working backstage in a theatre. It was with me for a couple of bands oop north and then all of my time playing in London. When I moved back, I joined a band that played the 80s rock club circuit all over the north & midlands. After a while, I discovered active basses (it was the late 80s) and sold it through a local shop to a guy in Leeds who used to play sessions. He then swapped it with a studio owner in Manchester for a Squire and enough money to settle a drug debt. It stayed in Manchester for a quite a while and then he traded it to a mate who ran another studio in Leeds, who kept it for many years until he got a 60s P bass. I saw it on Facebook marketplace during lockdown and recognised it immediately (it is quite an unusual colour / neck combination and I had put a Schaller bridge on it) and sold a Stingray five string to fund buying it back...