uk_lefty

Thanks everyone for the contributions.... I had TI's before on my Precision and really didn't like them, likewise Chrome's aren't my bag either. I'm going to give either HB or Fenders a go to see how the bass takes to flats and then possibly upgrade after that experiment.

I don't usually like the look of fan fret basses... Until now! Looks amazing.

I feel for you but it sounds like there's three big reasons why walking away wouldn't be a bad thing: the band thinks they can just turn up and gig and everything will be ok; you're the only one who sees the value in rehearsal and is trying to actually organise stuff with no decent response from the majority; they or a character in the band sees bassists as unimportant. All sounds pretty crappy to me and better off walking away if I've read it right. I walked out of a band after five and a half years for similar reasons. We had become good friends with a few points of disagreement that we always managed to work through. What did it for me was that through COVID nobody could be bothered refreshing the set, rehearsing at home, trying to do just anything to keep it going, except me. Then the drummer organises a gig on a date he knows I can't do and with no rehearsal time after months and months of no rehearsals. This was on top of criticism for having a personal life that interfered with his crackpot ideas of staging a gig at just a few days notice. Also, the way four of us found out about the gig was a Facebook message sent by the drummer, he hadn't even cleared it with the singer who owned the pub where he announced the gig was to happen! They got a dep in who was better prepared than the actual band, the gig was a disaster and I walked shortly after by text message. Five and a half years just packed in, I couldn't continue with the stress of being ordered around by someone who turns up twenty mins late for rehearsal, spends twenty mins moaning about the drum kit, then goes for a smoke.

Possibly a case of jazz musicians having more grip on reality than all the usual JMB rock-god-in-waiting types?

Yep!

Just out of shot to the side of the bass rig is a 15" 500w sub my drummer bought. He plays an electric kit so we had kick drum, toms and bass guitar all coming through the sub. The difference in sound overall for the band was phenomenal, we didn't have a bad sound before but this just helped really fill things out! Played a very large converted barn last night, at the bar, some distance away in a straight line from the stage area, you could feel the bass.

Absolutely love an old Peavey. My first gigging amp was a Peavey acquired from the outgoing bassist. It had weirdly named controls on it like "pyramid". Since then I've used a Peavey TKO 150watt combo that was putting out far more ooomph than the 300watt Ashdown Toneman I had at the time. I was looking for a backup head a while ago and the Peavey's were bargains!

I really really want a left handed fretless Stingray so if you come across one...!

Who uses flats on a jazz and why? What would you recommend? Years ago I put flats on an MIM Jazz for a while and really liked it but took them off to have light stainless steel rounds instead for slapping and bending the strings. I've just acquired an American jazz with a maple board and I'm considering flats on it to get a different sound, more like the Joe Dart Dean Town tone (yes it's all in the fingers, amp, preamp, compressor, humidity, moon cycle....)

My Kramer has rosewood and that has the least "mwaaaah", you have to really work to get it. I now have a Harley Benton with a laurel board and that has an ok amount of "mwaaaah". I've had an ebony boarded Warwick and that was "mwaaaah"-tastic. If the edges of the fingerboard (it can't be a fretboard on a fretless, surely?) weren't razor sharp I may have kept it on because it just had that 80s fretless tone in spades.

The Desert Penguins presents... The best music of the 00's decade! Support act before, DJ after. The Corn Exchange in Hertford. Hope to see you there!

Wow. Bargain

Likewise the lefties get a rosewood board on the dark night colour but righties get a maple... No idea why. There are some great colours in this range, I really like the P bass in the glittery pale green too. My wife stopped in her tracks asking how much it cost to comment on the colour!

I like how they've avoided the (IMO) ugly pickguard you usually see on five string Stingrays. Lovely!

Must have been a bad one I tried a while back. This is just quality all over. I've had Japanese Fenders and a Mexican Fender before, they're way behind this. My measure for quality is my Stingray which is from 2018, this Fender might even be ahead of that. I wasn't sure about the colour but decided to just go for it. I haven't had more than five minutes with it plugged in but I have spent a long time just playing it unplugged. Band practice tomorrow evening will be the first proper outing. The guitarist has already said he will cry if I bring it in a soft case!

Loving the colour and the feel. Really impressed with this. I tried one in a shop ages ago and wasn't impressed but the feel of the neck, tuners and the overall quality of finish has really impressed me so far. Once the kids are asleep will get it through the amp!

I'm the same! But I don't think I've got hearing damage, I've had tests done and my hearing is fine... In my case I'm investigating whether it's some other condition to do with how my brain interprets and reacts to things...

Be warned... They only find you a price with a courier, if anything goes wrong you are completely on your own. Eurosender don't give a sh!t, their terms and conditions basically say "cry me a river, sucker!" and the courier finds it difficult to help you because they don't know you from Adam, their contract is with Eurosender, who won't do sh!t to help.

The evolution continues... Off went the Fender Downtown Express. I needed a compressor and this just didn't work for me. I was ok with the EQ and distortion, it was a good pedal but I found myself mainly using it for the mute. I wanted to have something at the front of my chain so added a Behringer clone of the Boss LMB-3. I'm using this as a limiter to try and even out the volume spikes, it's a pain when we are running our own PA. I also knew that getting rid of the Fender DTE meant I could do with a distortion. I got the Marshall Guvnor 2, it can do everything from just a volume boost to cranking the gain all the way for a guitar like overdrive, think the lead guitar intro to Paranoid. This will be really useful for me. Then I knew I wanted a DI as a safety net in case I have amp issues. I bought a Behringer BDI21 and thought it was awful. It was noisy but even if it wasn't I couldn't stand the sound. I got an MXR M80, I had no time to test it, my first use was Friday nights gig! It held up very well. All these new pedals means more power needed. I could daisy chain off the wireless but I wanted isolated power, so my caline power pack is now mounted under the board and on the board I have a Donner power pack with a ton of free slots. This board is almost overkill, there's some gigs where I won't use the wah pedal or Octave, and the Reverb is used very sparingly unless I'm on fretless, which is rare on gigs. However, I'm happy I've got most sounds I could ever want covered adequately and can upgrade some of the cheaper pedals and bits over time if I see the benefit.

I felt the same, and at home it does definitely take some of the oomph out of the sound. Live, though, I appreciated it on Friday. The interesting thing will be when playing a venue with an in-house PA. I had a good chat with a sound guy at one of the venues we play regularly and he's an ex bassist. This was before I got the limiter and started using the amp compressor. His view was that he puts a bit of compression on the signal at the PA end but he prefers me to be un-compressed so that the playing dynamics come through. I suppose that's ok if you've got someone attending the desk and they can preserve dynamics but manage volume so you're not overpowering the other instruments, but when we run our own PA it can be trial and error, song by song, when playing a new venue where we don't have settings saved.

I've got the HB fretless jazz. It's very good, excellent value, I have gigged it and will again. All components could be made 10% better but I don't see the need to fit a preamp when a preamp pedal can do you the same job. If you want an active fretless there's the Site V7 which does look very nice with the coated fretboard and the pre is fantastic.

Various ways to do this... EQ pedal or a preamp pedal could be used, then you can take out any boominess if it's an issue. I had an Ashdown boost pedal before that did the job, there's plenty of alternatives too and they aren't expensive. Distortion and overdrive pedals with an EQ section could work too: I recently got a Marshall Guvnor guitar pedal that has a decent EQ as well as gain and volume controls, I press on that for passages where the bass needs to be more prominent and can have it clean or driven like a 70s guitar. I need this for things like the bass only part of the Hives 'Hate to Say I Told You So' and playing the intro on my own for the dreaded 7 Nation Army (or as I call it, Fisher Price's My First Bassline)

Used the compressor on mine this weekend.... I generally didn't like the Ashdown ABM onboard compressor for home practice but on gigs where we are supplying our own PA I need to have much more control of the dynamics. Last gig with our own PA my tendency to change from fingers to pick caused big volume spikes despite me rolling down the bass' onboard volume control. To combat this I did some effects changes and put a limiter at the start of my effects chain and now added the ABM compression always on at 9 o'clock. I got a rounder and softer sound than I usually do but the dynamics felt far, far smoother. The guitarist uses IEMs and it's the first time since going to in-ears that he's commented on my bass sound except to say "too quiet" or "too loud"; he said that the clarity across lows mids and highs was great and even the clank of the strings and pick attack was all nicely clear without any harshness, I'm very pleased with that. I EQ'd more low mid in and rolled down the bass rotary too. Overall I was pleased with the sound and will stick with this going forward. Next gig we will have in house soundman and PA so will have a chat... It's interesting what various sound persons have to say about your sound and setup, and the one I speak to most is a former bass player!

I had one for ages and used the recommended settings in the manual: enhance for fretless and limiter for fretted. I recently had issues with big changes in volume when running our own PA and switching from fingers to pick. I don't get on with a lot of compressors, they can often make your bass sound like you're hitting a mattress with a mallet, but for me the LMB-3 just adds that little bit of control. I bought the Behringer clone to have at the front of my pedal board and used the Boss recommended settings, it worked really well last night for evening out the dynamics.

A bit of a longshot.... Has anyone got one of these? Have been looking out for one for a long time, half heartedly at least. Would be interested to know anyone's experiences. I missed out on one a few years back and am still kicking myself.