uk_lefty

This is it! I firmly believe in a covers band having a theme. Otherwise you end up with "stuff Dave and Terry listen to in the car and can have a go at playing" and people will not know what to expect and whether to bother coming.

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And the winner is Leo from California!

Yeah I have a P, a very good one in fact, I just don't want to keep swapping my basses around on gigs for minor differences that won't get picked up on by most people except me. Just wanting to get as close to it as I can with the Ray with a few knob twiddles.

Morning all. Before you start... I already have a P bass! However, my main bass is a 3 band Stingray. I'm looking to free up some cash and fund a jazz bass and considering letting my P bass go. I then listened to a load of Sabbath last week and had second thoughts about letting the P go, even though its kinda surplus at the moment. So if I can get close to the traditional Geezer type sounds out of a 3 band Ray with rounds I will feel better about things. Anybody have any advice for eq'ing the Ray to get close to the older school P tones, please? I usually have bass on full, slight mid cut, treble only slightly boosted because I find it a bit to trill but this sounds very modern and Stingray ish. I've experimented with cutting the treble, boosting the bass to around 75% and ramping the mids up to almost full to try and get a good "crazy little thing called love" type tone.

Haven't touched the generation 2 models but the first gen was fantastic value for money. A better neck finish and various other improvements at the same price and you're laughing. Really good reliable, solid gigging instrument I think.

I totally get that, I really like the way you've expressed your post. I can't listen to a lot of the songs I play in my covers band, if I do I realise I've been a bit off in my interpretation of the bassline! And also, I'm bored of most of them or I never liked the song anyway. There is something to be said on your DJ point, how many times we get requests we can't fulfil, but DJs with thousands of songs loaded on to a laptop can very easily. I will defend covers bands to the hilt because without them a lot of live music would die out. Where I grew up there were lots of live music venues but the only one with significant attendance was all tribute bands, me and my mates grew up despising tributes as soulless nonsense, but my opinion on that has softened a lot these days. I'd love to be able to play and write originals but the rest of my life doesn't permit the time, and there's sufficient enjoyment and internal politics in a covers band for me!

My personal view is that the Mark Bass probably does clean and compressed a bit better. However, that's not for everyone. I like a clean amp sound but with emulators now you can pretty much have what you want. My Boss board has a Trace Elliot sound that I use a lot with the Ashdown eq disabled, for example.

I was watching a video of Megadeth today, a band who has had many second guitarists and drummers over the years. Are they allowed to "pull faces" while they play if they do a song from a record before they joined? Does that make it a cover act? I'm not sure.

I get what you mean, but most of us playing in covers bands don't think we are great because we can copy the greats, we just have a great time doing it. I play in a covers band. We do play Sex on Fire which makes me wince every time. But we also play covers that I've never heard any other band attempt and yet people sing and dance along. I've seen too many singer sing writers where "and here's a fourth song about the girl who wouldn't even touch me by accident at the youth club but I still love her now and I'm 43" and the whole place empties. I could tar all singer song writers with that brush, but that would be unfair.

This is an awesome book! Bought it after reading this thread. Have had a quick unplugged noodle and the sounds and feel are way off playing what I usually would. Love some of the chord positions too.

When my brand new Stingray fell off a shoddy stand and got the smallest nick in the headstock I was the only person in my band not sh!tting my pants. Its not a Star Wars action figure to spend its life vacuum sealed and never experiencing joy. If there's no dings in a bass has it ever been played properly? Dings are an occupational hazard, cramped stages, rushed set ups, finding a punter pawing your gear during the pee break, it's all part of what happens.

Same reason my Mrs wants to see dresses worn by Princess Di etc. I personally don't care about a dress "worth" however many tens of thousands but given to an actress or whatever for free then held in a museum forever. My Mrs won't quite understand the broken bass but I'd like to go and see it as I imagine there is other stuff around it that tells a story of the times. I'd pay to go in fact.

Thank goodness for idiots! Beautiful bass and great story

If I was buying a vintage Fender two screws being replaced wouldn't bother me really. Better than having old screws so worn you can't get them out.

Have you tried a second 1x15 cab?

Lefty Rickenfooker copy on ebay at the moment.

Surely the frets should be seen as "consumables" just like the strings, otherwise if you play it to death you're then going to knacker the fingerboard and sound like crap with unevenly worn frets everywhere?!

I'm having the same quandary... I've got a lovely MIJ Precision. It's worth a good amount of money. However, I am a jazz bass guy at heart. I sold my two jazz basses when I bought a Stingray which was so expensive I can and will never sell it because it would fetch less than half what I paid, plus for covers bands it's the ideal gigging bass. However, I've been toying with selling the precision to fund a new jazz thinking the Ray does everything the P does and more. Then I listened to a load of Black Sabbath a few days back and thought "how can I live without a P bass??!" The struggle is real.

I don't think one pink highlighter is enough.

Spot on for me. Though I'd add a "I thought I was nailing it week in week out for three years but now I've listened to the original for the first time in forever I realise I'm completely off the reservation!" Case in point, I listed to Hungry Like the Wolf yesterday and thought "oh bugger!" I've got a bit lazy with my version! I do have to remember over 60 songs though so just knowing roughly what order verses and choruses come in is challenging enough without having to be accurate on the playing side of things too!

I've seen a Limelight P with an MM pup it's probably still on the gallery page of their website. Looked good.

I had one in the early 2000s, I couldn't get on with it personally, it just didn't feel up to much. Bought it for around 100 quid with a hard case, sold the case for 50ish and the bass for 70 or 80 after not having it very long. Glad you've found one you like, if the neck feels good then a decent amp etc should get something worthwhile out of it.

One of our favourite places to play has some characters who you think could go too far sometimes. Then once our singer lost track of his lyrics as he watched a fight in the smoking area. I think we need to learn the Benny Hill theme tune or something equally daft for such an occasion if it would ever happen again! I have the "Sid Vicious" white precision and am confident my Yorkshire genes mean I can deliver a swift cricket shot to the balls of anyone who might try to skirmish with my band... Fortunately, never have had to, and hope never to!

A Boss Bass Limiter/ Enhancer on the recommended "enhance" setting from the manual. Or the Behringer clone. Really helped get some character out of my Fretless (then I got a multi fx with loads of Fretless presets... And as its a Boss multi I can throw in an LMB-2 emulator too on any effects I want)