uk_lefty

I had Pyramid strings on my headless and they sounded great, weren't badly priced either if I remember rightly

There are other types of time wasters though. Three years maybe back I drove half an hour to sit in a car park of a service station to wait for someone to bring me a Fender Rumble amp. He never showed, never answered his phone. After an hour I went home. All he needed to do was text me to say yes sold it elsewhere, couldn't be bothered driving out to meet me, didn't like the cut of my gib, anything. Just anything to not waste my time.

I find selling pedals takes just days on BC and also through other channels but shifting a bass isn't easy. There's some amazing deals in the lefty bass section but we are a very small market and we've probably all got what we need / can justify paying for. At any one point in time I'll be "watching" five or six basses on eBay and here but I'm not going to buy them unless a crazy deal comes up for the right bass, but it has to be a very special deal.

Good tip. I've not spent enough time with it yet but will have to this weekend in prep for a gig early June

Great, I'm now craving chocolate raisins and vimto!!! My only issue with the G75 from very limited use is that in the rehearsal room it just would not work. No obvious explanation except my guitarist had a G30 very nearby. I think I wasn't changing channels correctly or something. I took it home and it worked perfectly. However, the power cable for the receiver unit is a micro usb on a short cable. Even on top of a small 15" combo that's not got the length to get to a power socket, I don't quite get it, I'd prefer a kettle lead sized socket because you can buy kettle leads by the metre on Amazon and I have a lot of metres worth for gigging purposes. When I gig this in a few weeks time it will have to be on top of two Ashdown cabs and a head so I'm going to probably gaffer tape a four gang extension lead to the back of one of the cabs so that I can power it up. Other than that it works great. I set it up in my spare bedroom, walked downstairs playing bass all over the house and got half way down the garden before the signal got interrupted by my wife telling me to stop pratting around.

Surely the problem is your wrist, not the bass. I would go and see a physio if you can, get your wrist and hand looked at. While it may hurt less using a different bass you may have some damage to your wrist or hand that is not being addressed longer term. While this is no kind of medical diagnosis if I were you I'd get it seen to in case problems come back worse later in life. Probably cheaper than buying new basses.

My favourite is words similar to: "hand made custom Encore bass. £350" Absolutely having a giraffe. It's all over eBay, describing anything as "hand made" and "custom" even the cheapest bottom range stuff. Then asking for a premium price. Or saying "custom made" when really you've just bodged on some different aftermarket parts...

Left handed Kramer Striker five string fretless basses from the "Musicyo" era. In 2060 some hobbyist "information archaeologist" interested also in the history of basses shall dust off a physical interface computer and smile as they rifle through the now defunct Google by actually having to touch a primitive computer in order to give it commands. They will find the ramblings of an obscure amateur bassist taking every opportunity to say "it was cheap but my goodness it's good" and then will start a quest to find any that haven't been sent to the woodchipper to find out if and/ or why it was good. Unique woods and electronics? Or just because it was an eighteenth birthday present for someone who never achieved much outside of playing covers in the same Hertfordshire towns...

I had a bloke drive forty minutes to buy a knackered old vaccuum cleaner for twelve pounds. It was only thirty new many years earlier. He then complained that I didn't make it clear in the ad that occasionally the chord wind in button sticks (if it does you just wiggle it a bit, it's no biggy). Sold for a few quid some very old AstroTurf trainers that I wore once then had in a shed for years: "the tread wore out after six months can i return to you for a refund?" Errr no, complain to the manufacturer if you want to. "I'm not paying over a pound for postage on a bass neck plate!!" Well, if you aren't collecting you aren't having it. I even had eBay feedback of "seller insisted on recorded delivery which added cost and was completely unreasonable" yeah, 75p extra to give everyone peace of mind... I often find it's the cheapest stuff that attracts the most idiots.

Yes! I love my band and bandmates but playing the same covers for three years and five different voices pulling in different directions... I'd like to have something else that is completely different. I've had a few different ideas stewing for years but alas, full time job and family commitments may mean it takes a few more years before I get it off the ground.

That's really not a problem, you can EQ it out easily.

Just this morning I was listening to recordings of a gig I did last summer where I mostly played a Sire Vintage V7 fiver with Ash/ maple and switched to a Mexican Fender alder/ rosewood for one or two songs. The Sire reminded me why I loved it the moment I got it, really articulate bass. I used to keep the EQ and pickup pan almost flat and kill the EQ on my amp because the natural sound was so good. I did find the Fender sound a bit more rich and nuanced, but it did have Bartolini pickups so it wasn't a stock 90's MIM. It would be hard to choose between the two with a metaphorical gun to my head because they do ever so slightly different things. For the record, when I bought a USA Stingray I sold them both! Couldn't justify the number of basses and needed to recover some cash. I do miss a bit of that single coil jazz bridge sound though.

Shag, marry, push off a cliff?

If I was into the Cure I'd want to see them with a load of Cure fans, not in a mixed festival audience. Seeing bands with a cult following is great, whether you're into them or not, it's being among those that are in awe of them that makes it special. I've not been to many festivals but I find people are there only bothered about one act out of many a day and the rest is just filler before/ after who they want to see, it takes some of the shine off the experience when compared to being in the crowd where everyone is there to see the main event and excited about it.

I wish you'd never told me that. My American mate who tells his whole Facebook "audience" "sanded down this bad boy coffee table today, a hard job but worth it just hope the kids and dogs don't mess it up too quickly" tried to wriggle out of it by saying among his colleagues they all love to share their online restaurant reviews. As if anyone gives a flip.

YouTube has a lot to answer for. It has created this online personality cult that even ordinary people doing ordinary things feel the need to lecture you about their humdrum daily life on Facebook as if they're teaching you ancient Tibetan wisdom, when really they just want you to "like" that they gave a homeless person a quid. One of my mates puts the most tedious crap on Facebook about sanding down his coffee table and we just slay him for it every time. Worse still is LinkedIn with recruiters spouting sanctimonious shite about how they were the only person who gave the unqualified sex offender a job in a toy shop when nobody else would and now he's CEO of Disney, etc. Some are obviously bots, some are spoof accounts, some are just young recruiters trying to create a noticeable online personality for themselves, but it's funny how many have exactly the same story to share about how nice and wholesome they are. The whole "unboxing" thing baffles me. I don't want to watch some ordinary person unpack a Kenwood blender or whatever, I literally don't give a dog's Richard. My nephews used to watch YouTube videos of adults unboxing toys like transformers and other weird videos of adults playing with kids toys. This is harmful in a minor way, the boys were then just playing out what they had heard on YouTube with their toys instead of using their own imagination. Life was better when we lived in relative ignorance and had only daily newspapers, four colour TV channels and taped songs off the radio.

My mates uncle found a very rare 70's epiphone electric in a skip. My mates dad is a serious guitar collector, can't remember exactly value but they thought it was around £500 worth in the early 2000's. I think quick access to eBay and internet records of sales has wiped out a lot of bargains but if you're willing to travel you can get some good deals and I find it's mainly on amps. I got a Carlsboro bass amp that was HUGE for about thirty quid and almost two hrs drive, sold for a profit because it was just far too big. I had a Vox Escort 50 lead and bass amp for about fifty quid posted, still kicking myself for selling it in 2005. The original bassist from my first band sold me a "150 watt" Peavey TNT that was in my guitarists house, they had fallen out but coincidentally I knew his younger brother so bought this massive amp for a tenner, spent fifteen having the on/ off switch repaired and had a stupendously loud practice amp. He also sold me a more portable, for the 90's, 100 watt Torque amp that was ok for ninety quid which was a good deal and I occasionally linked them together to create a ridiculous combo stack. I bought a great Trace set up for a bargain because it was for sale right over Christmas and the guy selling it needed cash to repair his car, bad time to sell, plus he lived in the derrière end of nowhere so it was quite a detour to do the collection. Not second hand but in the old days of the Musicyo website I got my Kramer fretless for about £250 imported due to the amazing exchange rate to the dollar. It's a cracker of a bass and I still gig it today whether the gig "needs" fretless or not!

The zoom devices are great, you can just set up for ordinary volumes and balance, put the recorder in the middle of the room on a stool or mic stand and off you go. Really worth doing, you can analyse your playing a lot better and see how fills and so on are working out. And you can prove to others that their backing vocals are really, really, REALLY out of tune.

The Line6 G75 has a mode where it can emulate "cable tone". I had no idea what this meant until I read your post! I haven't used it yet so can't comment. They're going for a song at the moment though so might be worth a try for you?

It doesn't take months to work on endings but they do need work to make it tight. On the odd occasion I have depped the rest of the band have known each other so it's easier for me to follow them, if we were all strangers it would fall apart quickly I think. I respect what you do, but prefer the regular rehearsal approach myself. Though sometimes I think I would love it if my band could work on a few rehearsals pre-gig given challenges we are having at the moment!

For me weekly practice covers lots of ground. Developing a style together, understanding how each other plays, learning each others likely flip ups and how to cover for them, working on backing vocals, fun and social aspect, practicing without the backing track as a crutch or prompt, playing around with arrangements, working on song endings, testing your gigging kit, getting your finger stamina up, probably loads more reasons too. I see lots of advantages to it and would prefer this to ad hoc meeting up to polish before a gig.

Don't reply if I'm boring you senseless, I just need to vent. I joined an established band three years back and we've really grown in to something last year in particular, great fun, big gigs, reasonably pay for gigs and becoming really good friends to the point we forgive each other of a lot and we socialise away from being a band. Recently it's started to get me a little down and frustrated. After a lot of pushing in the last few years mainly by me we have developed a dynamite set. Our "core audience" is basically couples in their early to mid forties at functions or just down the pub, they bloody love big 80's tunes they can sing and dance to but we retain a rock/ bluesy edge. Terrific. The band is now getting really complacent and pulling in different directions. We added a couple of questionable songs like Parklife and Sex on Fire. I know. But when people are drunk enough they enjoy it, fair enough their enjoyment is proportional to our getting re booked. However, despite the big 80's stuff being core to our set we are not building on that but doing what I would call random "filler", in the context of this band anyway. Sweet Home Chicago, a guitarists wet dream but boring as hell and not a dancer. Our rule was they gave to both sing and dance to it. Also it just doesn't fit with what we do. Last night we cancelled another rehearsal but hot given more new songs to learn. We are up to seven new songs to learn but we haven't finished the last three new ones. Also we are doing a wedding in two months and nobody has asked the couple if there's any songs they want...??!! Gigs. We only accept gigs from the drummers friends. This is really limiting us. He controls the email account and if anyone he doesn't know contacts us he either ignores them for weeks or gets awkward with them. Some are obvious wastes of time but many... Well we will never know. So we are stuck doing the same gigs year on year. I've tried getting us other gigs in other nearby towns and got told it's not worth the bother. In-ears. Some people now want to play along to a click. Fine, this will improve our timing but I don't want the expense of s proper in ear system, I also like to be on my toes and the danger of it all falling apart of we are not on our game. Another motivation for this was to play samples of horn parts etc. I am very sceptical, we can't all learn one song in a month so how are we going to program horn arrangements, who will buy the software, spend the time on this, adjust for key...? I don't get it. It doesn't suit us. I've got a baby arriving at the end of summer so I'm taking two months out. I'm not sure I'll go back. It's a shame because I absolutely love the guys and love the nights when we tear the roof off a small market town pub, but I can't keep trotting out clichéd pub band songs, we were trying to be different now we seem to be trying very hard to be exactly the same. I always wanted to have my own three piece band doing covers and originals, realistically my time to do that was either in my twenties or its yet to come once my kids are older, it's not now. Vent over. Sorry.

A broken heart?

If I wasn't living in a second floor flat at the time I'd never have sold my Trace rig to you, but I'm glad it went to someone who appreciates it as much as I did and probably a bit more! On topic: I like Markbass but have never owned one. I read an interview with Tom Morello that really stuck with me. He had crappy gear while at college so just got the most out of it to make his sound. He did ok. That's tenuously relevant to this thread I think... Or not. I don't know I'm tired.

When you order it and they say: "great we will ship that to you by Hermes/ Yodel/ DHL... Or we could just chuck it over a garden fence in a street roughly near you?"