peteb

I would get someone who knows what they're doing to have a look at it. It sounds like the neck might be f***ed - it certainly shouldn't be like that, but maybe a pro can sort it.

To be fair, that sounds like one of the bad ones!!

I think that you get the benefit of Mark's 'strong opinions' if you are happy to debate with him, or if you say something that he thinks is stupid! He seems to have a bit of a 'road to Damascus' moment in recent times and now seems to think that you can find very good Fenders, but many are poorly made. Something that many of us will agree with.

Yes, I have a lot of time for Mark and have had many interesting chats with him over the years on everything from gear to politics to travel to mountain biking. He has always gone out of his way to help and once advised me to get a cab from somewhere else as he thought it was a better fit for what I was after compared to what he had in stock at the time! Not many shops will do something like that. The thing is he never got the 'customer is always right' memo and he certainly is forthright and has an opinion. I find that quite refreshing, as I hated going to old music shops where they would try and convince you that whatever old tat they had in stock was just what you needed, when it obviously wasn't. I once had a guy try to convince me that a Skyline was better than an US Lakland, which is plain nonsense if you've ever played one. I have a pretty good idea of what I want, but I'm happy for someone who knows what they are talking about to give me advice and a different view. Bass Direct isn't the place for a beginner who wants an Ashdown and a MIM Fender, but that's the point of it. It was meant to be a specialist shop and an alternative to the big box shifters...

Yes, that's an option alongside something like a Volto.

Exactly - no point in getting something that that's more faff than I currently use! . Maybe the new version of the Volto when it comes out might be able to handle something more than 9v?

But how many of those are rechargeable? The idea is that it should be smartphone sized, so that you can put it under a PedalTrain mini board, and can be charged up before the gig (like a phone) so that you don't need to run a mains cable to the board onstage.

I am thinking of getting a rechargeable pedal power supply for my mini pedalboard. It would need to run one 12v (ideally 15v) pedal and maybe three 9v pedals. Does anyone know if such a thing exists? I know that there is the PedalTrain Volto, but that only seems to work for 9v pedals.

The Xotic jazz basses are well worth adding to that list as well. Mike Lull basses are supposed to be excellent if you can find one.

For £2k you should be able to get a really nice secondhand 5 string. If you want something versatile, then personally I would go for an active jazz. As @thodrik notes above, something with a Fender vibe will never look out of place on any gig you're doing and will give the band leader a nice fuzzy feeling of recognition!

It's his job to know these things and he has a track record of developing young bands that went onto better things.

No, at least not in the midlands, but apparently he does play bar gigs around town when he's not touring!

I've had this discussion with a guy who's worked in A&R and actively tries to find great new bands - he does not think that there are that many coming through, certainly not compared to previous eras.

But look at some 'old codger' like Leland Sklar. He's very definitely a 'feel' player and doesn't have a load of chops, but he's one of the most in-demand players out there and probably the most recorded bass player of all time.

I'm part of the 'old guard' and he certainly doesn't get up my nose. I find his humour a bit twee at times but he can obviously play, most of his stuff is pretty musical and he has the sense to keep all of his clips showcasing his chops pretty short! All in all, he can be quite entertaining at times so that's cool. Like it or not, stand alone YT music clips are a thing now and lots of good young players choose to express themselves in this way rather than being part of a band. If they can make a living doing this then good luck to them, but I'm guessing that it is a small part of the reason why there aren't as many good young bands around as there used to be...

MXR M87 (settings for tonight's gig)

I don't necessarily agree (Come Taste The Band is currently on my car CD player), but Paice is certainly a great rock drummer!

Funnily enough, I preferred the Coverdale / Hughes version, especially the album with Tommy Bolin! Not the same band, but certainly more to my taste (not that I didn't like the classic Gillan / Glover line-up).

You're the guy who didn't think that there was a difference between a tax break for people buying a bike to ride to work and an offshore K2 tax avoidance scheme. Nuance is everything. I know that this something that you have no experience of, but FFS. The point is that it was a reply to Al about the relative importance of various members of a band i.e. the idea of the principal members and the more replaceable other members ('hired hands', sidemen or whatever you want to call them). Usually the principals tend to include the LV / frontperson, but there are exceptions. Obviously not all bands are the same, which is why I qualified my statements with terms like 'generally' and 'tends to be', etc. Anyway, enough of this nonsense - I'm sure that anyone who has a clue about (or is interested in) how bands above the pub circuit level tend to operate will be able to understand the point that I was making.

I said that "Generally, the most important members of a band are the frontman and the songwriters". All you have done is pointed out the exceptions that prove the rule, mainly acts where the singer wasn't necessarily the main focus of the band. You might note that three of those bands reunited with the singer who fronted them when they became famous, once the subsequent version of the band ran out of steam. You are very literal, aren't you. Nuance is something that just happens to other people...

WTF are you on about? You have just brought up several bands that illustrate what I was saying pretty well: Iron Maiden: sacked their drummer as soon as they got a record deal AC/DC: run as a vehicle for the Young brothers, with everyone else as hired hands (even the LV) and a constantly changing line-up, especially in the early years Black Sabbath: originally run more as a democratic band, but with Iommi as the leader until they fell out with Dio with singers and drummers coming and going – when Ozzy came back for the reunions, obviously the dynamic changed, and he had the biggest say due to his commercial clout Deep Purple: constantly changing singers & bass players, mainly due to the whim of Blackmore in their Mk 2 /Mk 3 heyday Genesis: a more democratic set-up with people coming and going of their own volition Pink Floyd: like Genesis until Waters started throwing his weight around – once he went the principals were Gilmour, Mason & Wright with Gilmour as the clear leader You have obviously misunderstood what I was saying and picked out bands that changed the lead singer! Certainly, the LV tends to be the frontman and as such, often more difficult to replace, but the focal point / band leader in the acts you have mentioned was not the singer.

Thanks for that - very helpful

Oh I struggled for ages to get it right, especially when I moved away from a simple two knob pedal. In the end I got a studio engineer (who was also a bass player and had the same comp pedal) to show me the settings he used. I just copied him and it sounds spot on now...