Dingus

Why has my post quoted you three times when I only pressed the button once ? What witchcraft is this ? That means that you[i] ARE[/i] the devil!

[quote name='bassist_lewis' timestamp='1391940809' post='2362732'] Don't worry, this is bass related! Over the last few years I've been gone through quite a few basses, I got a Clover 4 string in 2010 which I still have and is my favourite bass, but playing lots of covers in lots of keys a 5 string is much more useful (got told to drop Living on a Prayer by a tone a beat before starting, couldn't he have done that on 4 string!) Since then I sold my epiphone semi-hollow, a cort 4 string and my BTB6 but I've also bought an aria (sold it), an Ibanez SDGR6 (sold it), and last year I bought a Letts 6 fretless and a Lakland DJ 5 - and I'm thinking of selling both to fund a Callowhill 5 string shorty ( both the Letts and the DJ5 are a stretch for my short arms)! My band mates always laugh at me when I bring a new bass to gigs (oh, ANOTHER bass!), am I the devil incarnate? [/quote] If , at the end of this thread, it turns out that you are the devil incarnate, can somebody let me know? I had previously assigned that role to a girl from Essex that I used to share a house with when I was a student, who I believe is still sticking pins in a voodoo doll of my likeness. If you are in fact the devil then maybe we could do some kind of a deal to fix her and get her off my case ? If, as seems slightly more likely, you are just another bass player longing for perfection then I would recommend that you get used to feeling dissatisfied . The perfect bass doesn't exist. If it did, I would have found it by now considering the time , effort and money I have poured into finding it for the last thirty -odd years. I've ( almost) had everything and they were mainly rubbish , but some were less rubbish than others. It is often better to accept that you are travelling hopefully to somewhere where you will probably never arrive , but at least you can try and enjoy some of the scenery on the way.

[quote name='krysh' timestamp='1391922530' post='2362663'] I didn't read all the comments but I had the pleasure to try some older american mades and newer skyline basses. I am sorry I have to say this, but there is a HUGE difference between these. skyline models are nice, but older usa mades are really fantastic instruments that can do jb,pb and mm close enough. BUT - even these ones you'll have to play 1st, before you spend some big money. [/quote] There really is no difference between the USA - made basses that Lakland are turning out now and the ones from when Dan Lakin was in charge. Bear in mind that Dan Lakin didn't actually build the basses himself. He has no lutherie skills as such, and very wisely employed other people to do that job. I know the folks at Lakland, and it is quite literally the exact same people doing exactly the same jobs in the factory as have being them for several years before Dan bowed out, albeit in a new and much-improved factory nowadays. When John Pirrucello took over it was a continuation of the old regime rather than a new one. My experience has been that the Skylines, like U.S.A Fenders, can be a bit hit and miss in getting a good one. I've had two myself and one was O.K but not great and the other ( a fretless) is amazingly good and easily as good as much more expensive basses I have played and owned. The U.S.A -made basses are what Lakland is all about , though ( and I think the proliferation of Skylines makes a lot of people lose sight of that) , and they are some of the most consistently well-made and great-sounding basses I have ever played and owned. They just sound so good and feel very good to use, and that is why so many top pro's use them as their working basses. I would venture that, slightly perversely, the simpler, more straightforward basses that Lakland make are the ones that actually benefit for the most from being U.S.A- made. Or at least what I would say is that the Skyline 44-02s and 55-02s come closer to the sound and feel of the American -made counterparts than the Skyline Glaubs, DJ's and Joe Osborn basses do to the American-made versions of those passive designs. This is , of course, a big generalisation on my part, and the USA 44-94 and 55-94 are still preferable to the Skylines in absolute terms, but I just think that, to some degree at least, because they rely more on their more modern and hitech and pickups and electronics for the sound that the overall difference is slightly less than the Fender-derived designs.

[quote name='BB2000' timestamp='1391886889' post='2362359'] One day you'll find yourself a good BB2000, and settle down happily ever after I ordered a BB2024 last year after having one on loan (very impressed with that one!) and it was a disaster, sounded absolutely crap (I had to drive halfway across the country and have a quiet word in some ones ear before the shop would talk it back). So I wouldn't buy another one blind from a shop. If I'd seen this one before it had gone I'd have been sorely tempted, if there had been the slightest problem with it Peter would have pointed it out - he's a great fellow to deal with. [/quote] Could you tell us more about what was wrong with the one you returned? These basses have a reputation for being very consistent , so I am intrigued as to what was defective about the unfortunate one you received. Was this a recent event? Is this evidence that the new ones aren't as good as the old ones? I am very interested to hear about the perceived shortcomings of the bass you were lumbered with.

[quote name='SteveK' timestamp='1391859557' post='2362031'] This made me smile. My guess is that you haven't really listened to the top 40 for a few years. Of course, You're correct - you'd be lucky to come up with anything with fretless bass on it. You'd also be lucky to come up with anything with a fretted bass on it. In fact, you'd be lucky to come up with [b]anything[/b] that wasn't played by a machine. [/quote] Yes, to be fair, the bass guitar left most chart-orientated music for good around the time that Britpop announced itself in the mid-1990's , and the bass player in most of those bands and subsequent trends seemed to have revelled in their own anonymity. Other genres of music have indeed become increasingly automated in the meantime, too. In the midst of all this, pretentious fretless bass playing featured way up in the mix, indeed any kind of prominent bass playing featured on mainstream pop music , has become frowned on and distained so much that it is in effect the musical equivalent of a benefits scrounger. I don't care. Tonight I will be getting out my fretless bass- fancy wood top , active electronics, loads of knobs and switches- and playing as if it was 1984 all over again. It will make me happy for a while as I trek down memory lane, until I realise that some of the girls I was at school with in those days are now grandmothers!

I too can testify that these basses are immense, and this is the nicest one I have ever seen . What is so captivating about this model is that Yamaha have judged the sound so well. On the face of things, it's a traditional PJ and it has some elements of the classic Fender tones in its' sonic DNA somewhere, but at the same time it has its' own characteristic sound that is much more modern and , to my ears, very similar to the older neck-thru Yamaha basses of yesteryear. There is an inherent crispness and " edge" to every note you play on these basses that is very appealing, and the bottom end from that Precision pickup is massive .Compared to any Fender I have ever played, it sounds like it has got a subwoofer on it!. They just sound right somehow for any style of music you care to think of, whether you want to emulate modern or vintage tones. I rate these basses alongside the very best basses available today at any price , both in terms of sound and build quality. Apart from that crappy cheap switch that Yamaha insist on using.

[quote name='patrikmarky' timestamp='1391801534' post='2361562'] Thinking about a lakland spalted maple fiver ..with bart pups...any one got an opinion... [/quote] If you mean the special edition 55-01, whilst I wouldn't discourage you from that choice, the 55-02 with the same Lakland/Hanson pickups and LH1 preamp as is on the USA-made basses is a far superior model ( in my opinion) for not much more money. I haven't seen a Skyline 55-02 in spalted maple, but they do a Deluxe version with a quilt or flame maple top that looks lovely to me.

[quote name='iconic' timestamp='1391629335' post='2359502'] [media]http://youtu.be/5uQ4wZ5eJTY[/media] [/quote] Whilst I am just as keen as anybody to acknowledge Duran Duran's talents with the benefit of hindsight, looking particularly at Simon Le Bon's dance moves at the start of this clip, it's not hard to see why most people dismissed them as w***ers at the time. .In my social circle back in those days, admitting to liking Duran Duran, you may as well have been confessing to some kind of abhorrent sex crime( which you would probably have got away with back then, anyway) . Music like this was very much the prerogative of teenage girls and boys of, what in those days at least, was thought of as" dubious" sexual orientation, regardless of how good the bass lines were.

The problem is that fretless bass is very much a minority interest nowadays. Try and find a current top 40 record with fretless bass on it. You would be lucky to come up with anything. The heyday of fretless bass playing in mainstream pop music was thirty years ago, but since then it has gone progressively more out of fashion as an instrument. The scarcity of fretless basses in retail shops reflects that trend. There just isn't enough demand for retailers to stock them in any meaningful way I am sorry to say, except maybe the odd cheapie model. Even specialist bass shops aren't falling over themselves to fill their racks with fretless basses. When I was a teen hopeful in the early 1980's there were plenty of high-end fretless basses for sale in music shops, because that was what people aspired to and were willing to hand over their money for, but nowadays the same demographic mostly wants a Fender or something similarly retro, and will play it in a very different style to what I and others like me aimed to play like back in my day. The World has changed, and shows no sign of changing back again. Fretless bass is just one casualty of that change, and I am another. It's not all bad though. Back in the 1980's people thought that Russ Abbott was funny and that Level 42 were worth listening to. I know it seems crazy now, but it really was like that. .

[quote name='MiltyG565' timestamp='1391693074' post='2360233'] ...the future of the human race, when everyone lives in nuclear blast bunkers during the nuclear holocaust. [/quote] Future human race? With the new changes to Housing Benefit currently coming into effect, you may well find many people from a variety of backgrounds living in bunkers like the ones you describe, nuclear threat or not. It will be just like the Blitz, but instead of Hitler's bombs the people in the shelters will be hiding from Ian Duncan Smith and the wrath of angry taxpayers sick of paying for parasites and scroungers. No doubt there will be plenty of YouTube vlogs about it.

[quote name='SpaceChick' timestamp='1390856261' post='2350581'] Sweetheart, you are asking the wrong question.... High action, low action.... You'll be a feeble nancy-boy regardless [/quote] Yeah, I had heard that rumour, too. Yes, your action can be too low, but how low is too low depends very much on the individual player. Measuring your action at the twelfth fret can be misleading though, if all you do is measure the distance between the open string and the top of the fret, because in effect all you measuring is the height of the nut, and that can vary a great deal. If you measure your action at the twelfth fret with the strings depressed at the first fret ( therefore effectively taking the nut out of the equation) then you are getting a much more accurate representation of how the relative string heights are adjusted at the bridge. Funnily enough, over the years it has come to my attention that the action on my basses seems to get higher as I play them . I can start out at the beginning of a session with what seems to be a respectably low setup, on the cusp of buzzing a little bit, just how I like it, and then as time progresses that bit of buzz dissipates and the action feels higher. I used to think it was because I am getting progressively more fatigued and therefore subconsciously lightening my right hand touch , but recently I have begun to wonder if I might have some Uri Geller- like phenomena going on , where the raw power of my funky playing combined with the intense sexual energy I generate with or without a bass guitar in my hand is actually causing the necks of my basses to bow away from the strings and develop a bit more relief as I play them.

[quote name='jassbass' timestamp='1391612557' post='2359214'] Just really want a good punchy mid tight sound and punchy [/quote] [quote name='jassbass' timestamp='1391637223' post='2359710'] I've just tried a dj5 and loved it.going to try and buy it [/quote] If you have played one and like the sound and, just as importantly, the feel of it then you really can't go wrong with a Jazz Bass -style instrument , especially if you want a tight, punchy sound with strong mids. One of the (many) great things about the Jazz Bass is that it is so versatile that it will suit just about any style of music. I've never played a Dingwall , so can't comment on how the feel, but the sound , whilst great in its' own right, is very different and very modern and " processed" in comparison to the more hefty sound of the Lakland. Those Hanson pickups on the DJ sound very beefy, with a lot of cut.

File under " complete and utter bollocks". One of the ( many) problems with the internet and modern technology is that anyone can present themselves and their imaginative creations in a way that was previously the prerogative of media professionals. Historically , the mass media were themselves usually answerable to their bosses and regulators , the wider media itself and the general public. You Tube has ended that accountability, and every borderline case on the planet with a camera can share their neurosis with the World. People who would previously have been desperate to strike up conversations with strangers in supermarkets are now taking to YT in their droves. The World is full of lonely people.

Both are worth the money if you find a good example, but they are very different animals with their own idiosyncrasies. . The DJ is essentially a traditional passive Jazz Bass , and sounds exactly that. The Dingwall is a more generic modern bass, and sounds that way. In terms of feel , the Lakland has a 35 inch scale, so be aware of that and make absolutely sure you like that fact and can live with it. The fanned frets and varied scale length(s) of the Dingwall are also things you should try to make certain that they suit you.

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1391609778' post='2359157'] If you store your audio in lossless format then technically the 0s and 1s are in better shape than they are on a Red Book audio CD because the WAV or AIFF format has more error correction built in. Our course the DAC in the average CD player is going to be better than the default in a computer but surely anyone who is serious about using their PC to store uncompressed audio on will also have invested in at least HiFi (if not studio) quality DACs. [/quote] DAC's of various levels of quality are a big thing in audio nowadays, and even a modest one can transform the sound from your PC or laptop, but a surprising number of people are blissfully unaware of how depressingly thin and flat the basic sound coming from the audio output of a standard computer is . My own personal perception is that only the very best DACs that cost over a thousand quid in the current market can make the music from a computer rival a well - chosen £300- £500 CD player if you are playing the music through a decent system. By the same token, adding a £100 USB DAC can improve the sound quality of music from a computer so much that it can be very enjoyable in its' own right , even if it can't match CD. I think that the way of the future will have to be computer based audio, and surely the way technology is going to develop is to refine and improve the hifi quality of computer-based music so that it outstrips CD. That is what the market is demanding because of the way that the opublic are buying and consuming their music. CD was and still is a great format, but it has been superceeded by wider trends in society. The music industry told the general public that they ought to abandon vinyl in favour of CD and by and large they complied with that directive, but in this instance the general public are spontaneously abandoning CD and other formats in favour of what is most convenient for themselves rather than what the music industry would find most profitable , and that is computer- based audio. It's the audio equivalent of the Arab Spring.

[quote name='noelk27' timestamp='1391597821' post='2358905'] "Pop" music being the "popular" music of the day - it's not a genre. But, even if you tried discounting the likes of Colin Moulding of XTC, Derek Forbes of Simple Minds, Bruce Foxton of The Jam, and Sting of The Police, as they could be seen as coming out of the "punk" generation, you've got the likes of Paul Webb of Talk Talk, Nick Beggs of Kagagoogoo, Les Nemes of Haircut 100, Paul Denman of Sade, Trevor Horn et al working with ABC, Guy Pratt working with Icehouse, John Wilson et al working with Heaven 17. And that's just the stuff I can remember off the top of my head. [/quote] The 1980's was the Golden Age of the bass guitar! If you look at the records in the Top 40 from this week thirty years ago and compare the bass guitar content on them to the music of today's hit parade, there is no contest.Prominent bass guitar parts in mainstream pop music was a trend throughout that decade. To be fair to Damonjames, though , I think he means the music was crap rather than the bass playing. I love a lot of music from the'80's myself but I suppose others may not for whatever reason. Duran Duran were[i] [u]the[/u][/i] teen band of their day, as I'm sure many other Basschatters can remember only too well, but they were very decent players, and JT was a consummate bass player with his own style and a strong presence ( a central role, even) on all those classic records they made. The equivalent act of today would probably be One Direction. What can they do?

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1391604045' post='2359024'] IMO the CD still has value as it's the backup of the music that you've ripped into your computer. How many people have at least one complete back up of their music library stored in a different location to the primary computer/drive? [/quote] Equally to the point is, if you value high fidelity reproduction of your music through your audio equipment, ultimately it's far easier to get a superb sound from CD than from files on a computer. Yes, certain formats like flak files and lossless can sound very good and can technically exceed CD quality in theory, but that science fails to take into account the positive influence that a good audiophile CD player can have on the overall sonic complexion of the music playback, and the detrimental sonic qualities of most computer based systems. P.C's need a lot of help in the form of asynchronous DAC's ect to start rivalling even modest CD players in terms of sound reproduction. You can get a very acceptable sound from a computer, that is true , and with a little effort and small financial investment you can improve the sound from a basic computer a great deal, but your CD's still ultimately have potentially far better audio quality in practical terms than the music stored on your computer.

[quote name='RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE' timestamp='1391544511' post='2358466'] You have some of iommis cortina? I have a piece of Rob Halfords leotard:) Too much information .. [/quote] Leotard tops Cortina, any day of the week! I don't want to know how you got that dubious memento- a backstage pass is a backstage pass, I suppose- but I just want to let you know that counselling is available. Contact the Basschat member who calls himself "Discreet" via PM and he should be able to help. He may need to know the exact dimensions of the leotard before he can help you , though, and may ask to borrow the garment in order to ascertain those measurements for "scientific" reasons.

I actually think that, despite agreeing myself personally just about all of the views expressed on this subject so far, there might actually somebody in the wider world who is keen enough to buy this bass for a very slightly higher premium because of the signature, but they probably won't be a bass player, if you see what I mean. Muse have got a massive following all over the World, and there may well be someone who is so enamoured of Chris Wolstenholme that they will shell out for your bass when they wouldn't have done otherwise. All you need is for one such person to bite. You would be much better off advertising it on a forum for Muse fans than on Basschat, though. Could I just take this opportunity to mention ( again) that I have a ( small) bit of Tony Iommi's Ford Cortina , circa 1980, in my possession , given to me in person by the man himself, and I am now willing to consider cash offers for this priceless piece of rock and roll history. Form an orderly queue whilst I prepare my unpleasantly fragrant and unhygienic stick to beat away the disappointed unlucky bidders.

DVDA?!!! I just opened this thread expecting a VERY different topic of conversation...

[quote name='Leonard Smalls' timestamp='1391529831' post='2358197'] You might get a Linn Axis or Basik for the money - I had an Axis many years ago and it's a right musical performer. Other options are a Systemdek, or a Technics Sp10/1200 if you're lucky! [/quote] I used to have the Axis with an Akito arm and K9 cartridge and it sounded fantastic, but I expect you would be lucky to get one for £150 unless you were very lucky , or even a Linn Basik for that matter. The Linn name ( rightly) carries a lot of weight and commands a good used price, usually.

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1391531919' post='2358239'] That's what the marching powder will do for you. [/quote][quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1391531919' post='2358239'] That's what the marching powder will do for you. [/quote] Athletes foot powder helps with playing busy 16th note basslines? Why has no one told me this before now? Do I put it on my feet or rub it in my hands?

[quote name='omikin' timestamp='1391524368' post='2358102'] I'm going to be upgrading my turntable soon so will be looking to move it on. It's a Pro-Ject Expression II like this one (but with an Ortofon cartridge): I have all the original packaging so could post it no prob. Would be in your price range too. Just a thought... [/quote] That looks to be a great buy. Especially with an Ortofon cartridge, I don't see how the O.P will do any better. Just my 2 pence worth.