uk_lefty

Steady on, they might have got lots of Polish / Eastern European wedding gigs!

I had a "singer" trying to form a band call me up. Made me give chapter and verse on my bass cv etc and gave quite judgemental hmmms and uhuhs. Then I asked about her experience "I've never been in a band but my boyfriend says I'm good" was her reply. At the time I was a keen sportsman and was thinking of digging up my Scottish heritage to have one last crack at international competition for the upcoming under 21 World Cup. I used this as my excuse why I couldn't be as committed as she expected for her project "WHAT??!! You'd rather do that than be in a band with ME??!!!" was the final thing she said before I hung up, not sure whether to laugh or... I don't know!

I really like the concept here of switching from tube to FET. Been thinking about it all day how I could use a bit of warm tubey tone for one of my bands and a good old bit of clean punchy FET for another. But unless I can play through one myself to test it I won't take the plunge no matter how attractive the price. And can manufacturers of Amps and Pedals PLEASE get it that some bassists want clean tones.

But who would release it if I was singing the verses and chorus and the lyrics were about something distasteful? Granted some die hard fans would buy it and it would get some clicks on YouTube but it wouldn't launch a career for me. I was about to say you can't polish a turd but then Cheryl Cole is always by knee jerk reaction to anyone using that phrase so... I'm undecided!

Back to my vanity project statement though. If I want John Mayer to play 8 bars of lead on a track of mine I'm sure there's a price he'd do it for. Doesn't mean it will be any good (the track as a whole).

It's pretty much this! A good singer will get a lot out of it. Someone trying to use it to replace good vocals, good technique etc will not get much out of it. I have the Mic Mechanic which I use for Reverb, but I find the correction awful really. If I record my vocals I don't use that function of it, I prefer trying over and again to get it right than having the weird glitch sound.

Agreed. And a demo, like education, just because you've paid for it and maybe paid a lot, doesn't mean the end result is guaranteed to be a success!

Economic outlook isn't good. Home recording, producing and marketing is at your fingertips, better quality and cheaper than ever.... It could well happen soon!

If you're doing that out your own pocket I'd say its a vanity project and won't get you very far. My mates have recorded very polished and well produced demos for less than a grand, if that gets them in front of record companies then, I would guess, the record company can advance the money for the credible producer.

Well there's two different things there. You could argue that Lilly Allen etc from privileged backgrounds are either standing up for the worse off or pretending to be something they're not. People will have their own views on that. Then the way i meant it in context which is people from a privileged background shouldn't look down on those without the same accident of circumstances for no other reason than a class divide. Because class seems to be defined by something you haven't achieved yourself and its not the 1800s anymore, despite how some might want it to be.

No. And I hate the attempt at creating a class divide wherever people want to find one. One of the old music magazines, Q or NME used to be awful for slating bands who had a "public school" background as if it mattered, I remember Keane being made an example of for this. Hate them because their music is insipid, boring shyte, not because at aged 4 or 11 or whatever their parents decided that they would pay for their kids education. Same the other way too.

I went to see Bryan Adams a few years back. Most polite audience ever. A relative was working on the Ambulances and was behind the barriers at the front of the stage. We walked through to the front by saying "excuse me, thank you, sorry, excuse me..." and got there in seconds without upsetting anyone.

I usually like to find a good spot and stand there watching. I don't need to be at the front, back or whatever. While waiting for the delayed start of a stadium gig some years back a short rotund chap with a backpack on was weaving his way through the crowd bumping off people as he went and dragging his apologetic wife by the hand and decided to perch almost on my toes. He must have been able to feel that his backpack was smushed up against someone. Loads of people around us were looking at him in disbelief. Well, during the music that was playing I had a little dance and did that move that involves one hand behind the head and the other spanking the person in front (without making contact, was all jest, your honour). He soon moved.

My ebay app/ the phone doesn't like me sharing ebay links here for some reason!

Nice looking Aria PJ on ebay at £75 starting bid. Looks like it's had at least one pickup swapped out.

Billie Jean does that to me too. Tried it in an old band, and think I've still got the recording of me stopping and shaking my hand going "aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh f***!" then starting again and it all falling apart. Luckily in rehearsal. But we couldn't gig that song. This is what loop pedals are for. If only I knew how to use one...

Oh mate... I've got a female fronted 80s band starting up. I really don't want to bring in a keys player so I'm trying to cover a lot of ground with what I play and the sounds from the HX. I had a perfect sound for the opening of kids in America which has a wobbly synth bass bit (Throbber on the HX Stomp but mixed with flanger and all sorts of stuff, took me ages) perfect it was. Sounded crap in the room with the band 😔

Awesome collection! What's the middle one?

I've been through various set ups with a few variants of old zoom pedals, a load of separate pedals a massive Boss multi and now a Line6 HX Stomp. I find I spend more time P!ssing around trying to get an effect to sound right than I do actually practicing! Having said that, a multi is a great way to get hold of effects that you think you need as you start to work on a song that MUST have a flanger, only for the guitarist to dand its dropped off the set list because they always fluff the beginning of the solo. Buying separate pedals can be a rabbit hole of finding pedals that play nicely together and don't interfere too much with each other. Then you need different configs of turning each on and off... Notes on which knobs to tweak... I'd always go multi, especially if you're not a big effects person. A lot of the good multis for bass have subtle EQ presets such as amp sims etc that can open up a lot of possibilities. For different depths of drive, chorus, then driven chorus, a multi can help you set all these up to kick in under a solo or whatever.

This has sent me down a Falco YouTube wormhole. Love everything about this. I work for a Swiss company and every day talk with Germans and Swiss Germans and will be ending every conversation, meeting and training session with "Alles Klar, Herr Kommissar?" I sent this to a mate who moved to Vienna a year or so back with his German wife. She's lived in Austria for years but she really struggled to understand this!

A few lefties have turned up over the years but usually in a bad state. Shame because I reckon there's a decent bass if looked after well.

It's a tough one because people want a lot of money for low powered amps. You may be just as well getting something with more wattage for similar money.

I wanted one so much I tried to build my own lefty version...

I was terrible at French at school.

Dans la piscine cest un cheval.