JapanAxe

[quote name='wishface' timestamp='1419586351' post='2640996'] How far back is it safe to have the saddle on any given string? There must come a point where the angle is too severe? [/quote] No idea but if you have a duff string it hardly matters - it simply will not intonate properly.

Find a P that plays well and looks great (to you), put flats on it, and you're good to go. For some numbers you may want to pluck with your thumb whilst damping the strings at the bridge.

I have the Les Paul and Strat manuals. Useful to a point, but as others have mentioned, tediously repetitive in parts.

Looks really nice now, well done Painy. When I gig my Sandberg VM4, neither the audience [i]nor the rest of the band[/i] have any idea whether it is a cheap knockoff Fender copy or a high-quality modern take on a classic design!

When this has happened to me I have had to ditch the strings and start again. Are your strings flats? They are particularly prone to problems if they get twisted, or if you get a kink in them somewhere. I reckon twisting creates additional vibrational modes that do not produce simple harmonic motion (as we physicists say).

Well it's been an hour now and no pics, so I reckon you were dreaming. Merry Christmas!

I've always bought my Chromes online. You are lucky if a generalist guitar shop stocks any flats at all, let alone in the make/length/material you want!

Another thing you can do is download a MIDI file and record the drum track (normally MIDI channel 10) into your drum machine.

I started on guitar in 1978, but didn't get round to bass till 2000. Although there were some transferable skills (fretting, plectrum playing, fretboard note knowledge), bass is a very different instrument to guitar, and needs a different approach. It was about 3 years before I got anywhere playing bass fingerstyle, and 2 years ago I completely re-thought my right-hand technique. It was a massive advantage to be able to read music (feel free to argue about this in another thread!), and I have always transcribed guitar and bass parts from recordings, so that gave me a stock of sheet music to work from. I got into playing bass in bands pretty soon, so that gave me the impetus to learn entire bass parts. At the start it was rewarding to work out and play a bass line, and thinking about it, it still is!

[quote name='Dazed' timestamp='1419120149' post='2636872'] Yip hot rods and deluxes from various years left the factory in this format. Here's a few I just found mooching through the Precision gear porn thread [/quote] Tried a Fender hot rod P (or possibly 2 of them) when I spent a day at Bass Direct, and came home with this Sandberg VM4: Reason for purchase: The Sandberg urinated all over the Fender(s) from a great height!

Has Anthony Jackson joined Basschat as a newb?

[quote name='Bassman Sam' timestamp='1418873053' post='2634348'] I going to be 60 on 9th February and my future wife, we marry on 9th March, wants to buy me a new bass for my birthday. We went to see The Who last Saturday and on the way to the gig, popped into Dawson's in Manchester. I was looking at Squier basses but she liked the look of a Gibson Thunderbird in walnut and said if I liked it, she would get it for me. [/quote] Does she have a sister? I'll get me coat....

I am happy to be in the position of the OP's putative deps, as I consider time spent learning material is never wasted; however I understand not everyone is going to share that view, or have the time to spend working on songs.

[quote name='Marvin' timestamp='1418672903' post='2632242'] Any musician that has to be loud to get 'their tone' has bought the wrong gear. [/quote] This again. Want Fender amp breakup at low volumes? Get a Deluxe Reverb. Still too loud? Get a Princeton Reverb.

[quote name='spacey' timestamp='1418680783' post='2632351'] With 13 people on stage they should be. Did they have ....music stands..... [/quote]

This is one of the reasons why I don't bother with big name gigs any more. Others include:[list] [*]Being so far from the stage that you can only 'see' the performers on TV screens. [*]Grossly over-priced refreshments. [*]Grossly over-priced parking. [*]Huge queues to leave the car park. [/list] I have much more fun these days seeing tribute bands. Last weekend I saw a Steely Dan tribute (£0) and Pink Floyd tribute (£5 to charity), and both were excellent. I cycled to the first gig, and (at Mrs Axe's insistence) drove 4 miles to the second, where parking was free.

Depends. In the band I front (on vocals and skinny-string), I never use a music stand. I occasionally forget my words, but it's worth it for the fact that I am free to engage with the audience, not looking down at a piece of paper. If I am depping on bass, I generally aim to learn my part, but if it's at short notice or very involved, I will sometimes take out the sheet music I have transcribed. Obviously if it's a sight-reading gig then a music stand is essential, and the issue then is whether to sit or stand. I am generally more comfortable standing than sitting, but this means having the music stand quite high if I want to avoid a painful neck as the gig progresses. As a gig-goer I hate to see (or indeed not see) a band obscured by a forest of music stands at chest height. IME brass and woodwind players can rarely get away without the music in front of them.

I generally go for Stax, Motown, or James Brown stuff, and listen out for phatness. If the bass starts making me improvise lines, it's a winner.

Very happy with lightweight cabs and my micro head, but also 'regressed' and got a traditional tranny head (with full valve front end) a while back. For sound, I wouldn't say I like one better than the other - they are different, and suit different gigs. EDIT: That's the Ampeg I'm talking about btw, and it's only 16kg. The Selmer is just for fun.