Dingus

[quote name='Thunderbird' timestamp='1392933741' post='2374533'] What about Grog she is a great bass player and also rather sexy [attachment=155764:download.jpg] [/quote] I suppose one man's "sexy" is another man's " Crikey, I hope she doesn't sit next to me!" on the bus.

[quote name='witterth' timestamp='1393080474' post='2375956'] bobby Paterson (from love and money, vastly underrated) and sadly no longer with us, what a great player he was. [/quote] Great call. Bobby Patterson was a superb player in so many ways and I have always admired his taste and feel . Love and Money were one of the very best British bands of that era and they should have had much more success and a much longer career than they did.

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1393005442' post='2375231'] Um... I believe I read somewhere that if you don't have your bass volume up full you're not getting all the available signal. This is true of the tone control too, I think. Makes sense, really. [/quote] That is true, especially on passive basses. On active basses there is far less appreciable degradation of the signal if you turn the volume down a touch to compensate for the boost provided by using the EQ controls.

How do I set the volume on my amp playing live? Loud. Very loud. You need to be loud because everybody else has a vested interest in stopping the bass player from being heard, and what's the point of spending all that time learning to play if people can't hear you? If I had wanted to be a f***ing mime artist I would have moved to France and painted my face white a long time ago. Loud is better, because loud is...louder. Billy Sheehan did an advert for Di Marzio pickups many years ago that said " It's easy to make a bass loud, but it's not so easy to make it heard". Well Billy, that might be true, but what's for certain is that if your bass is too quiet, people won't hear you regardless of what pickups you have got. Don't believe the hype about controlled stage volume. What they really want to do is control you using volume, or more accurately the lack of it . Make it louder and stick it to The Man.

[quote name='uncle psychosis' timestamp='1392972708' post='2374716'] The thing that I always think about in these threads is "does anyone actually think we've got [i]worse[/i] at building stuff in the last 50 years?" Thats just an insult to the skills of the modern luthier. [/quote] In this and your other posts on this subject , you have hit the nail on the head, my friend. There is a marked gap between perception and reality, but that is hardly surprising when you consider how subjective the appreciation of fine aesthetic details can be. The greatest irony about the cult of vintage is that, of all bass guitar designs, the Fender is one of the most simple and straightforward , and on the face of it should be easiest to reproduce consistently. I have played and owned a lot of basses , both vintage and new, and the difference in sound between a pre-CBS Fender and even a half-decent new one is not much at all. The characteristic Fender tones are sufficiently dominant in any case , regardless of the age of the bass. It 's far more the difference in appearance and feel that influences peoples impression of the experience of playing these basses.

[quote name='LukeFRC' timestamp='1392929715' post='2374448'] I bet the wood used on that Martin was cut and left to dry naturally over any number of years. I bet the same would be practice in American wood yards in the 50's and going into the 60's. I wonder how much of the wood used nowadays is left to sit for years and years to dry out, and how much is kiln dried or the equivalent? I remember years and years back Warwick making a big thing of their massive wood stores for drying wood naturally - they kinda stopped mentioning that when they went mass production... [/quote] But the pertinent question is : does letting the wood dry naturally over several years ect actually add up to much of a tangible difference in the quality of sound in the final finished instrument? And even if it is measurably different, is that difference actually" better" and necessarily preferable? I would venture that the difference between identical pieces of kiln dried wood and slow dried wood would be negligible , at best, and insignificant compared to other differences. Indeed, some manufacturers have a clear preference for kiln drying as it means they can control and more accurately guarantee the moisture content of their woods, especially neck woods like maple.

I love a lot of vintage Fenders and think beautiful and fascinating objects, and I have no desire whatsoever to rubbish any ones vintage collection -if that what people want to spend their money on then fine- but , objectively, I really don't think Fender paid any attention whatsoever to the" quality" of their woods back in the vintage era, in fact they probably paid far less attention to that kind of thing than they do today. Such concerns are a much more modern preoccupation when it comes to building electric guitars, although I would readily concede that guitars do start to sound very slightly different as the wood ages and becomes more brittle, but that itself if offset by other generally negative degradations that come with age such as to the sound of the pickups . I also have to be honest with you and say that I don't think there is any real perceivable superiority or indeed any real difference between the sound of a Brazilian rosewood fingerboard and an contemporary Indian, Honduran or Madagascan rosewood board . If you can hear that kind of a difference then you have got much more acute hearing than me. In the final analysis, for all the captivating vintage associations that older basses have, you can walk in to a shop and buy a brand new Precision or Jazz Bass and it will sound incredibly similar overall to a pre-CBS one , and will probably play much better , stay in tune better and be much more reliable overall.

The thing about William Burroughs is that his association with drugs, the Beat movement and his adoption various elements of popular culture , not least of all popular music, tends to obscure his achievements as a notable post-modern novelist and man of letters. At his best, he was a supremely original creative force and a genuinely subversive voice amidst a culture of stultifying conformity. He was fixated with the forbidden, most notably drugs, homosexuality and death, but he explored them from the perspective of a man who was detached from his own mythology. He continued to be relevant and creative because he had the innate intelligence and sufficient never to become enamoured of his own publicity, no matter how much others encouraged him to do so.

[quote name='badboy1984' timestamp='1392886787' post='2373744'] It certainly unique enough for me to like it lol. Only down side on that Bongo i don't like is the 2x 9v battery lol. [/quote] I love the Bongo, too, and I personally think it is by far the best EBMM bass. I love the look of it as well, and I can't understand whey some folks think they are ugly. I suppose the 18 volt circuit is essential , because it's those electronics that give those basses such a unique sound.

[quote name='Jimmyfingers' timestamp='1392853472' post='2373656'] Why is that when people go on about older guitars sounding better they are only ever talking about Fenders? Back in the 80's you'd get people crowing on about 62 Precision or whatever, and I suppose they were pretty much the only brand that could have much of a vintage being the first production basses. So somehow a 20 year old Fender sounded better than a new one. But now, you can get Warwick's or Status that are 20+ years of, and yet I've never heard anybody making claims for them sounding better. Weird. My first post, and I'm chuffed because I've just bought a 9 year old Warwick. My first bass since stopping playing about 10 years ago. [/quote] Well, that's a very interesting point. If what you mean is that it is a little incongruous that some brands and overall styles of basses are considered more apt to be considered "vintage" when they get older than others then that is absolutely right. The reason for that incongruity is that some designs are inextricably linked in peoples perception with modernity and ideas of enhanced fidelity , whereas other are associated with a halcyon age and euphonic warmth. Those descriptive terms apply as much to the romantic ideas in peoples heads as they do the sound of the actual instruments, I hasten to add, and musicians do tend to be romantics by their very nature. By and large, music is not a passion which attracts hard-headed rationalists. Some older" modern" basses like Warwick and Status may be preferable to some players, but it is mainly due to changes in how the basses are built or the overall design rather than an enhancement of tone due to the ageing process. With Warwick basses in particular, the wax finish on the bass means that over decades there can be problems with cracking and delamination, and that or a dodgy truss rod rather than an improvement in the sound is likely to be your major preoccupation with an old example . The earlier basses were built very differently , in a much smaller factory/workshop in West Germany , and with very different neck profiles to some of the more recent Warwicks, so some afficionados may well prefer those specifications. Also bear in mind that if you are marketing basses on the selling point of their being innovative and modern designs, as many bass guitar brands are, then your latest innovations and designs are most likely to promoted as the best rendition of that instrument so far. In contrast to that, vintage Fenders became sought after because there was a growing perception amongst players that the newer ones weren't as good , and so the latest version wasn't as suitable for their needs.

[quote name='Lorne' timestamp='1392904573' post='2373981'] A few things, The B.C.Rich instruments used by Thin Lizzy in the 1979 Video, were lent to them by Max Kay of E.F.R. guitars London, the new price for a Mockingbird bass from him in 1979 was £750, I own the Mahogany Mockingbird bass that Phil Lynott used in that Video, it's a late 1978 bass :-) Suzi Quattro's Bich bass, wasn't ordered in London, Len had it built especially for Suzi by B.C.Rich as it had a smaller, guitar sized body for her, as a standard sized Bich bass body would have looked huge on her small frame, I believe she had 2 built Bernie Rico Snr building Geezer's basses for him, Rico Snr wasn't known to have picked up any tools and build anything (Although he could do a killer Tobacco Burst paint job), 90% of the necks were hand carved by Juan Hernadez R.I.P. at BCR North, so Geezer's basses were most likely made by him :-) [/quote] Wow, you've got the bass from that video! I can vividly remember seeing it at the time - I was a huge fan of Thin Lizzy- and thinking how beautiful those guitars were and how expensive they looked I read in an interview with Geezer that when they started recording Heaven And Hell he wasn't happy with his bass sound, and it was at that point that one of the engineers suggested B C Rich , and that he subsequently visited the factory and that Bernie made the basses for Geezer himself. What Geezer understands by " making them " might well be ( in fact must be, from what you say) overseeing other craftsmen doing the actual work. I only wish that B C Rich had been able to continue as a company as they were in those days, building fantastic hand-crafted instruments with unique designs. Like so many similar sized concerns, they got lost and swallowed up in takeovers and buyouts , and the brand became diluted as a result.

[quote name='the boy' timestamp='1392841762' post='2373456'] Gulp..... [/quote] "Gulp"...? I personally am not worried by someone dressing up like this and performing a slapbass extravaganza. If Mark King followed suit it might make him actually worth watching. It's when this kind of behaviour spills over into public toilets that I generally get a bit anxious.

[quote name='badboy1984' timestamp='1392823756' post='2373136'] I use to own a Stingray and now a Bongo. The bongo feels like it have a slimmer neck compare to Stingray. [/quote] The Bongo has its' own unique neck profile.

The older Stingrays had a very pronounced shallow "D" profile. The knock on effect from that skinniness, however, was that they were very prone to shifting. My pre-EBMM 'Ray ( the only Stingray I have ever owned) was very unstable by comparison to the necks on my other basses ( Wal and '70's Precision) at the time. A lot of folks complain about the necks shifting a lot on post-EBMM Stingrays, too, so maybe that is why EBMM have opted to make them a bit more chunky.

[quote name='Grand Wazoo' timestamp='1392762930' post='2372582'] He's still a f*ing weirdo! [/quote] Just be glad he's playing the bass. At least you where both his hands are...

[quote name='Conan' timestamp='1392736299' post='2372129'] Nice.... but it needs more switches. [/quote] At least back in those days when you got bored with your bass because you had exhausted your repertoire of things to play then you could start fiddling with your knobs and switches and amuse yourself that way.

[quote name='The fasting showman' timestamp='1392830612' post='2373248'] I saw Rainbow at 'the cowshed' back in '83 Mr Dingus, Lita Ford as the support act. Funny that I'd forgot about that venue until I read the Sean Mayes Bowie tour diary where it mentions it as a date on the 'Lodger' tour or thereabouts. Hard to imagine heroes of mine like George Murray and Dennis Davis in my neck of the woods. I wonder if Mr White Cloud above was living in Stafford when Ozzy was getting his solo stuff together with Bob Daisley down the road in Eccleshall? [/quote] George Murray is one of my all-time favourite players , too, and I saw Bob Daisley playing with Ozzy on the Blizzard Of Oz tour in 1980.

[quote name='The fasting showman' timestamp='1392732312' post='2372074'] Great post Dingus. I sometimes wonder with me though whether there's an element of sour grapes relating to '70s Fenders; my old de-mudbuckered Tele bass converted into a P-bass probably genuinely is worth £300 and I am forced to wear it around my neck (Ancient Mariner reference) to atone for all the would be now valuable Fenders I 'modified' from reading Guitar Player magazine too much back in the '80s! To quote Joe Barden, I've a lot to tell St Peter about regarding trashing guitars... I do struggle when I'm in some music boutique and I hear a sales man waxing lyrical over a 2 grand 14 pound '78 p bass! . [/quote] Yes, I suppose anything will become "vintage" with the passing of time, but some people fail to grasp that, as with wines, there are good vintages and bad vintages. A lot ( not all) of the mid to late '70's Fenders were the very reason why the older ones became highly sought after in the first place. I love Fender basses and enjoy playing good ones a great deal , but, unpopular view as it may be with some folks, I find the new ones Fender make today to be as good as any I have ever played. Call me a peasant if you like, but to me , once you strip away the bullshit, in the scheme of things the Fender is a relatively simple bass. That is its' great strength and the real secret to its' enduring popularity. There was nothing particularly magical in the way they were manufactured in the past, and there is no real reason why the ones from today can't be just as good. "What has any of this got to do with Geezer Butler?" I hear you ask. " Plenty!" is my answer. When it comes to basses, Geezer is on record in the post-Millenium era as saying that he wanted to get back to playing Fenders , but that their inconsistencies and downright unreliability put him off, until he discovered Lakland basses on a visit to the Bass Centre at Wapping, and he realised they could offer the sound a feel of his vintage Fenders but with all the benefits and advantages of modern high precision manufacturing and expert craftsmanship. He has stuck with Lakland for over ten years as his main touring basses, and this year they have finally unveiled the new Geezer Butler Signature model. The only available prototype is for sale at a shop in Chicago: [url="http://www.bassclubchicago.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=LLUS4460GEEZERNAMM"]http://www.bassclubc...S4460GEEZERNAMM[/url] Seems like Sabbath Inc. have denied Geezer and Lakland permission to use the devil inlay. Oh well... These basses will feature the new Geezer signature EMG pickups: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcKRho-h2_c"

[quote name='The fasting showman' timestamp='1392735132' post='2372118'] I think you are right Sir, no matter what a deluded poseur I was in the mid '90s you can't ever forget first hearing Master of Reality can you? 'Into the void' and all... In the Midlands (I live in Ye Merrie olde Lichfield, but have lived in Brum on and off) there's so many links to people who knew Sabbath either at School or via families and the massive factories, IMI for instance, in the Witton/ Aston area. Lots of ex-pat Brummies here in the sticks. I was in a band with a bloke who's uncle had road managed them way back when. I'm sure lots of people could say the same thing. I believe (could be wrong) that Sabbath's first gig as Black Sabbath was in a now long gone pub in Lichfield. Others will know for sure. [/quote] [quote name='White Cloud' timestamp='1392735984' post='2372127'] Master of reality was immense. Incidentally, having been born in Stafford I myself am a midlands boy. Its a pity that Brum has hit the headlines lately regarding TV's "Benefit street". I'm certain that the members of BS knew similar hardships... [/quote] That part of the World has always been a bastion of heavy rock music. Sabbath were, of course, one of the originators of that sound, and countless other bands from the West Midlands have followeed in their wake. There are literally too many associations to list. On the subject of Stafford, does anyone else remember what big events the concerts were at the New Bingley Hall were back in the 1970's? It really was one of the top venues in the country, and I remember bands like Sabbath, Rush, Bob Marley and the Wailers, Queen, David Bowie ect doing shows there that people travelled from all over the country to attend.

Essex =mullet central ! Essex was also a hotbed of would-be fancy Dan bass players back in the day, probably due to the enduring popularity of funk ,soul and R&B music in that part of the world. I can see now how you probably couldn't help yourself and those triplets just spontaneously and involuntarily cascaded from your thumb. Secondary schools in Essex probably offer a G.C.S.E in Level 42, Bass player from Essex = slap.

[quote name='White Cloud' timestamp='1392717119' post='2371831'] I totally agree....I just cannot get excited over Fenders for the same reason...ever. The 80's were such a special time for me. On reflection so many boundary's were being smashed in all aspects of traditional British life. The youth of today have no concept of the massive impact that Colour TV, Video players, cremola foam and micro wave ovens had. I still have a laugh when I remember my Fathers disgust when seeing Boy George singing "Karma chameleon" lol. Musically this emerging technology was weaved into a willingness to push the envelope to new heights....just think of Yes breaking their prog shackles and releasing "90125" & "Big Generator", and Geddy Lee brandishing Steinberger & Wal basses and tearing it up on "Power Windows". Odd that here we are 30 years later ...and everyone wants to play mass produced 1960's passive basses. [/quote] I suppose every age is modern to those people living in it, and people of our age group will always regard the 1980's as the decade which defined what is modern because it was an era in which people were [u] absolutely and completely obsessed[/u] with modernity. In cultural terms, everything which had gone before was summarily dismissed as irrelevant, outmoded and worthy of distain, and everybody joined in with that ethos. To say that you liked or enjoyed things of the era which had immediately proceeded the 1980's was to invite scorn and ridicule upon yourself. Everything had to have short hair, narrow collars and be "designer" in some way or other. By contrast , the last twenty years of popular culture have been equally as obsessed with nostalgia and a retrospective longing for the past . Both these respective cultural trends were reflected in the kind of instruments bass players aspired to at the given time.

[quote name='The fasting showman' timestamp='1392716231' post='2371821'] I totally agree with Dingus and White Cloud. I started playing bass in such a great era regarding the shops and the stock carried ('82 to say '88) in Birmingham. I well remember seeing the Superyob guitar (or did I dream it?) before Musical Exchanges moved to Snowhill. I also remember being unjustifiably sniffy about the many John Birch 'copies' as I then saw them, I didn't see their true worth, or the value in the music of Slade, Jim Lea's great bass playing etc. I think starting bass playing back in the '80s has forever altered my perspective on '70s Fenders, much as I like them they will always be a £300 instrument to me. Also I'm always more attracted to EBMM 'Rays due to the impact they made on me as a kid when they burst onto the market around '87 with their boiled sweet finishes. Back to the OP, from having John Diggins work on my old wreck of a Fender I've seen some of the newly made Iommi SGs up close and the workmanship is fantastic, the stainless steel metalwork in contrast to the dense black paintwork looks great. It seems a shame that a corresponding Geezer EB never got established, or a John Birch like Jim Lea's say for example. I can't praise John Diggins highly enough as a woodworker, or as a bloke! Always been a great help to me with my gear. Martin [/quote] Birmingham has always been a very bass-orientated city, and certainly was back in the 1980's. I remember walking round Birmingham on a snowy day looking for the Bass Place ( a lot of interesting secondhand stuff in there , from what I remember), and Musical Exchanges, which had loads of everything , new and second hand, and was absolutely brilliant in those days. I totally agree with your assessment of 1970's Fenders, too - £200 for a Precision , and around £300 for a Jazz Bass. I have upset a few people and had a few rows with folks on Basschat when I have tried to suggest that ,as instruments to use as working tools, these basses are not worth in excess of two grand and that it is like paying brand new BMW money for an old clapped out Ford Escort, but it seems many people are not receptive to that message. John Diggins made me a custom bass at the end of the 1980's and it was fantastic, with the most impressive woodworking of any bass I have ever owned at any price, Unfortunately, at the peak of John's success in the 1980's his quality control went very seriously awry, as he is the first to admit, and he had some very disappointed customers, such as our own White Cloud, who received seriously substandard basses as a result . I always found John to be a lovely bloke, too,as well as a conscientious and supremely skilled craftsman , and he was very unhappy about the situation he had gotten into with being under so much pressure to satisfy demand for his basses. He seemed relieved to get back to building the basses himself, the way had done originally .

[quote name='Mark Dyer' timestamp='1392719136' post='2371865'] I did a teeny weeny slap solo in the middle of Superstition last Saturday night, is this acceptable? [/quote] Current E.C Regulations clearly state that slap solos[u] must [/u]be accompanied by a mandatory mullet hairstyle. This Health and Safety legislation is intended to warn any potential audience that there is the very real risk of unexpected exposure to the 1980's. I cannot help but notice that you are based in the Liverpool area, and therefore there is actually a very real possibility that you are already sporting such a hairstyle, but if for any reason your hairstyle has deviated from the local norm , I would suggest getting extensions at the first possible opportunity to avoid future prosecution . There are orange-coloured women working in hair salons all over the city that will be able to help you with that . (And before anyone gets offended, can I just add the disclaimer that mullets are also available in other cities across Britain.) EDIT: I found this clip on You Tube of a young bass player complying with all the current dress code and male grooming regulations regarding overly self-indulgent bass guitar playing : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFFQwYMZ40U Role model/ hair model .

[quote name='Big_Stu' timestamp='1392670857' post='2371508'] I would be the right era (1978) if he'd had the bass for a couple of years or so (JB's peak for copying - and selling - copies of classic basses) but the only NSD video I can find it's an actual ........... Rick. [/quote] That is probably the live at Hammersmith Odeon video where he is playing Glen Hughes' bass. On the Sabbath TOTP appearance Geezer is using the Birch striped EBO bass. The truth is probably lost forever due the the fact that no one ever thought it was important at the time. .