molan

Took delivery today of a brand new Genz Benz shuttle 6.0 with GB gig bag for it, a Comfort Strapp and 5 sets of DR strings. The whole lot set me back just over £400 including delivery to my hotel in Florida all the way from Baton Rouge! This must be a saving of something close to £350 or more on UK pricing? Paid for the cost of the flight out here anyway Easily small enough to fit everything into my suitcase for the journey home as well. I haven't actually heard the Shuttle but have read loads of good things about them and it will be a perfect emergency back up head for gigs as it's so light. The dealer was so helpful and friendly as well. Might be an idea to 'do the math' on stuff like bulk orders of strings for BC people as their DR strings work out at $20 for a 4 string set?

Just a quick note to say that the wonderful Youtubedownloader will first save the flv file for you and then convert it to MP3 in the quality of your choice so you can transfer to iPod etc.

I'm sure I have a Motown tab book kicking around somewhere. I'll be back home on Sunday and can see if I can find it then. If no-one beats me to it then zap me a message on Sunday to remind me

Checked out some of the bars last night but every single one had just an acoustic guitar playing solo singer. The Bull had what amounted to bad karaoke with one tuneless girl 'singing' listlessly along to backing tracks. Hopefully it'll pick up as the weekend kicks in!

Taking a day off at the pool in 30 degree Key West and plugged into my iPod. Bought a clutch of Mastercuts Funk albums with me and, apart from being great poolside music, there's some really cool bass grooves going on. Brass Construction, Ohio Players, Brothers Johnson, Kool, Dazz, Eddie Harris, Donnie Hathaway, Teena Marie etc, etc. Just waiting for the bar to open and my day will be perfect Although all this bass heavy stuff is making me miss having a bass around to play along

I have three basses that all list up in the £2K plus bracket. Sadowsky NYC, Roscoe SKB and a Warwick Infinity NT. I didn't pay that much for any of them though. Ironically the Warwick probaby has about the highest full list price but is probably worth about the least of the three!

[quote name='bass_in_ya_face' post='285547' date='Sep 17 2008, 08:23 AM']IS there anyway of slowing down youtube vids![/quote] You can download them to your hard drive & I think you could use some video editing software to slow them down. I've got something that slows video down but loses sound whilst doing so but I bet there's something out there that will do this. Downloading is easy [url="http://youtubedownload.altervista.org/"]http://youtubedownload.altervista.org/[/url] will save any YouTube file &/or convert it to MP3 for you.

This might help with Rock Steady - not the funkiest version but slightly slower than the original and bass is pretty prominent in the mix: [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7gPYVyBzL0&feature=related"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7gPYVyBzL0...feature=related[/url] I quite often hunt around on YouTube to see how people have covered songs I want to learn, gives an idea of how other people have interpreted the original (especially if the original is tough to play!)

I picked up a nice Spector Fretless for under £100 at one in North London a few years back. They had a Tom Anderson Guitarworks Drop Top Strat up for sale at about £400 - £500. At the time these were retailing for over £2K, unfortunately I din;t have enough available to cash to buy it but sent a friend to have a look less than an hour later & it had been snapped up

[quote name='john_the_bass' post='285216' date='Sep 16 2008, 04:58 PM']you can get them from axesrus (but make sure you get the right ones) or you can also get the proper schaller ones from wdmusic.co.uk -actually, I daresay that's your best bet - I can't remember how much they are if but if you're looking at spending 7 quid on a pair of buttons, you might as well buy the whole thing.[/quote] I bought a pair of full Schaller sets - black were £12 & nickel £8.50. You were right that I was being a bit of a skinflint trying to save £4 - £5 by just buying the buttons and/or not sticking to the same brand. Given that each bass is worth over £700 then spending a tenner on some straplocks isn't exactly going to brake the bank!

And they come in some crazy colours as well!

I have a couple of straps that I use regularly and both are already fitted with Schaller straplocks. However I have a couple of basses without the corresponding inserts and wondered if I can just buy the buttons on their own? I've seen some chrome ones on EBay for about half the price of the full system (which seems to make sense) but I also wanted some black ones & can't see them anywhere. Also - I've seen some made by a company called Boston that claim to be fully compatible with original Schallers - I wondered if anyone ahd tried them and thought they were any good?

[url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&item=300256084671"]http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...em=300256084671[/url]

Steve Lawson is a regular solo gig man - check his site for more details, vids, MP3's etc: [url="http://www.stevelawson.net/wordpress/"]http://www.stevelawson.net/wordpress/[/url] Last time I saw him was with Michael Manring - top solo bass night