JapanAxe

Last night was a wedding celebration for about 150 in a massive marquee with a proper stage, out in the wilds of Wiltshire. We were well looked after with a place to change and a meal in the bride’s family’s house, and whatever we wanted to drink. I played my ‘73 Precision (recently fitted with rounds for the first time since I’ve owned it) through my Demeter head and BF Super Twin, and it sounded fantastic as you might expect. I finally got to set up my own IEM mix properly and that’s a game changer. The crowd loved us, in fact the bride and groom barely got in a couple of steps of their first dance before just about everyone piled onto the dance floor. I’m just about recovered now!

Woah! I can’t unsee that now.

Or an ironing board.

I started to teach myself guitar at 17, and quickly realised I wanted to understand the theory too. At around 40 I decided to learn bass too. I was well aware that it was a different instrument which required a different musical approach. Initially I played with a plectrum but after a couple of years I cracked finger style, just by dogged persistence really. For a long while I had used music notation to write down material that I was working out, so I did the same with bass. I was then thrown in the deep end when I started playing with a dance band that used 99% written charts. I’m now a reasonable sight reader! I would say that I’m still learning, particularly when it comes to theory - every so often I stumble across something I didn’t know that I didn’t know - hats off to Adam Neely!

I’ve heard one played with a big band, which can have a huge dynamic range, and it more than kept up.

I think a lot of it is down to the guitarist. Around 20 years ago I played in a couple of covers bands where the guitarist used Line 6 Flextone amps. One guitarist always seemed to make the thing work for him and he sounded great; the other invariably had a thin sound, frequently with an overcooked (and usually completely unnecessary) chorus effect.

I guess we're talking scooping out the mid-range to benefit slappity-poppity shenanigans?

All of the different amp modelling units have their adherents. I was looking at the HX stomp but I dread the option overload that comes with programmable do-everything gadgets.

I have been depping on bass (sometimes) and rhythm guitar (other times) in a tribute band where all the regular guys use Kempers. Both guitarist sound absolutely stellar, having done the hard yards in setting up their sounds beforehand.

Was trying to contact a member, contact now made

I used to have this setup in my car. It could sound a bit weird...

I had one of these and you definitely need to turn up all the stages to get the full beans out of it. I re-biased mine and ended up fitting a multi-turn trimmer to achieve this reliably - see this thread (sorry, pics are long gone). Be aware that if you blithely twiddle the bias trim pot you risk sending the output transistors into thermal runaway, which will burn them up before you even realise something is wrong.

The one I chose to start with had flats and just wasn't cutting it, so I switched to the other (with rounds).

And mine! And Christmas of course. Sorry - used the C word…

I’ll add my own ‘ooh’ to those already expressed here. If the pickups are like the one in the MIM Mustang that I had, they may be all ‘whumpf’. Mine was greatly improved by reconnecting it as parallel coils instead of series. EDIT: ‘Expected in stock December 2023’? Screw that, something shinier will have come along way before that!

I went from Chromes to LaBella 760s on one of my Precisions. I didn’t notice any change in feel or playability but the LaBellas sound fatter in the mids. No way would you get the same effect simply by rolling off the treble with the Chromes - I know because I often do this anyway.

As a current player of solely P-basses I'm used to brutish!

OK cheers - guess you just have to try these things and see how it pans out. I've got my eye on something else on here but if that doesn't come to fruition then a trip to Bass Direct may be in order!

Are we talking neck or body comfort? Still got my (your old) Super PZ5 btw

The unfretted strings tend to be higher off the fretboard as you go further up the neck, and fretting them then moves them closer to the pickup. This will be more noticeable if you are playing with quite a high action.

@Machines and @krispn - how are you both getting on with your D-Rocs? And why am I asking? No reason really, definitely not Dingwall GAS.

I keep it quite low, just high enough that I can hear the cues e.g. 'chorus-2-3-4'.

I believe Stew is referring to a band that I have done some gigs with, and in fact I have 3 wedding engagements with them this summer. To answer some of the questions/comments above: - Yes they have a drummer. - There is no option of keeping things going without completely abandoning the click. - The light show is automatically controlled by DMX form the same program that provides the click. Also each player can control their own mix using the Qu-You app on a phone or tablet. Enjoy the gig @stewblack!