thisnameistaken

Get a solo tuning set and tune them down to standard tuning. That's a tip I got from a local psychobilly player who's been doing it for 20+ years, he always sounds great.

I think Nige had this one in the bag before anyone else turned up.

I don't like the look of his bass but damn it sounds good.

[quote name='wateroftyne' post='1373325' date='Sep 14 2011, 03:27 PM'][/quote] I really miss those guys. If you get the DVDs they don't have the music videos on, so they're missing all the fun bit, although I suppose they are saving bands from being stolen from by thieves who prefer to listen to their music while Beavis and Butthead talk over it, presumably...

Nobody should be put off playing fretless just because it looks harder. It is indeed a bit harder to play because you have to be less sloppy, but like anything you'll improve with practice. On the other hand you're unlikely to become an expert fretless bassist by spending more years playing a fretted bass. The only downside is it can be harder to get a gig, depending on the sort of music you play. I was lucky in that the years I spent exclusively playing fretless I came across a lot of very open-minded musicians to play with, but most guitarists either think it's a poser's instrument or they want to hear that clack and clang rock sound that you only get from frets. It's a versatile instrument though and it can work well in any music, really. It can get tiring on the ear if you're always pushing up the midrange 'honk' though so go easy on people.

I think it's easy to get distracted from the difficult task of learning to play by thinking about gear, and everybody likes new toys don't they. Simple as that.

I imagine it makes the machines more difficult to use, but aesthetically I think a reversed Fender-style headstock looks better, it almost creates an extra line of symmetry with the body, with the angle between the two cutaways and the 'offset body' on a Jazz. I've been meaning to stick a lefty neck on my Squier Jazz but I never get around to it.

I wouldn't pay £27 to see anybody.

[url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showuser=2770"]Narrow spacing five string... ?[/url]

The Line 6 Echo Park is the best tap delay that you can pick up for close to that money. But I would go for the EHX Deluxe Memory Boy, personally. Tap tempo is pretty much essential on bass, which rules out a lot of great-sounding delays. With the ones we've got left, in the 'budget' price range, the EHX box is the one to have IMO.

[quote name='mike257' post='1365423' date='Sep 7 2011, 04:34 PM']I'll have to swing by Dawsons and see if they'll let me have a play with one - had my heart set on the EHX delay after having one on loan from our ex-guitarist for a bit, it's going to have to live up to that![/quote] I think the Deluxe Memory Boy is a great pedal, but delays on the M9 are interesting too. There's a few great-sounding patches but the best thing is the expression control over any of the params, and the fact that you can combine an expression transition in a delay with other transitions in two other effects (say a whammy shift and a change in the pattern or waveform or a tremolo) all at the same time with one foot - these possibilities are what helped it win out over individual boxes for me. That and the editing interface is quick and easy enough to be able to experiment and come up with useful new sounds very quickly. [quote name='mike257' post='1365423' date='Sep 7 2011, 04:34 PM']Love the idea of the effects loop on the M13 so you can place your 'real' pedals in the middle of the chain, I assume using drive pedals in front of the M9 would ruin any chance of decent tracking from the Whammy - haven't got M13 cash though!![/quote] You'll be fine. I routinely feed the input of my Brown Dog fuzz into the pitch shift patch and even the smart harmony patch and it just doesn't care, no problems. My main gripe about the M series pedals is there's no sensitivity control for the envelope-following effects, meaning that I just don't use the envelope filters at all because I would have to adjust my input gain which is impractical for me in a live situation. And there are patches which boost the output level and have no parameter to adjust it back down to something normal, which sometimes means you end up using a patch set to 'volume pedal' just to correct the level, which is a waste of a slot. I really wish Line 6 would fix these issues but it doesn't seem like they're too keen to patch the firmware again.

I have used mine on guitar when recording demos but not for anything serious, and I don't gig on guitar only bass. On my bass live pedalboard it's still holding its place quite firmly. I mostly use it for pitch shifting, the 'Attack Synth' patch, one of the compressors, one O/D, one of the phasers, one of the tremolos, couple of other bits and bobs. I actually bought it as a general-purpose modulation and delay box but I've found I rarely use them. I think I'm keeping it because it does so many things well in such a small box. If I was to replicate all the functionality I use regularly with individual boxes I would probably need a pedalboard twice as big. And it would cost twice as much at least.

I tried bowing my silver slaps but I didn't like the sound. The G in particular was too reedy and weak-sounding. They are good for everything else though.

Hehehehe. Oh **** it I'll get one. It's just the idea of having 9 different kinds of wildness pre-programmed, more for colour than anything else. I don't really like typical modulation effects I find them a bit sickly, so this seems like it would be ideal for me.

Since having the Bugcrusher on my board I've thought I could use a proper ring modulator, and I was looking at the Ring Thing and thinking that the patch memory might be useful, wondered if anyone here has tried it on bass yet? Or tried it at all?

[quote name='moonbass' post='1360303' date='Sep 2 2011, 07:32 PM']Find the right drummer and the rest will follow my son.[/quote] +1. It's mostly about having a great drummer tbh. The bass just adds colour and counterpoint to the drums.

[quote name='Bilbo' post='1360380' date='Sep 2 2011, 08:40 PM']I have to say that all I hear in these videos is a journeyman (journeywoman?) player and a competent singer. I am not really a fan.[/quote] She's very pretty. Very few musicians show up and just connect with audiences on a primal level with what they're doing, you can't really be surprised that she doesn't do that (and I agree she doesn't). So she's not Joe Strummer, she's still talented and pretty. And more talented than most of the pretty acts. I don't know why this couldn't go in the Esperanza Spalding thread from earlier this week though. Or one of the other ones.

I don't know where most of my musical instruments were made, it's never occurred to me to find out. The only one I am sure of is my Warwick which is from 1991 and thus German.

[quote name='Low End Bee' post='1357316' date='Aug 31 2011, 11:32 AM']It's a different colour at each end. That's at least twenty quids worth of cool.[/quote] That's so you plug it in the right way round. Wire is directional don't you know. Your tone can get really flustered if you force it to go upstream and it can disturb its mating cycle.