thisnameistaken

Sustain is quite important to me because I use octavers a lot. As a consequence, dead spots really wind me up! I set up my basses higher than most to give a longer, clearer note for my pedals to chew on, and I have sold basses in the past because they gave me poor performance from my pedals. I would agree though that for most people it's probably not an issue.

In my (admittedly limited) experience, it's worth trying a few different piezo pickups. Some seem to suit some basses more than others. For example my bass is quite deep-sounding and the Bass Max I had fitted just doesn't suit it because it seems to emphasise that characteristic. I run through a Plat Pro to try to shape it a bit but I'm always disappointed with the sound. Whereas I heard the pickup on a friend's bass a couple of weeks back into another friend's GK 10" combo; she's not a great player and her bass is a cheap old ply thing, and it sounded excellent! Really woody and vocal-sounding. I've also heard that my bass had a Realist fitted to it before I bought it and that wasn't suitable either. I am going to try a Full Circle next. So I would say don't give up on piezos, just try some different designs and tweak the fit for a while before you dismiss them, you might find one that works very well for your bass.

[quote name='Maverick' post='1291676' date='Jul 4 2011, 12:06 AM']I wouldn't entirely agree with this, with respect to the general public you're definitely right, but I think musicians actually will listen to or go to watch someone like that. In fact, I'd say there's a fair number of acts out there made a living from this.[/quote] And there are people who've made a living from activities ranging from being able to consume aircraft parts to being able to insert beermats into unusual parts of the body and subsequently retrieve them. Good for them.

[quote name='Maverick' post='1291265' date='Jul 3 2011, 06:20 PM']To take it one step further, is a 4 string with a 24 fret neck an ERB?[/quote] Now that you mention it, my Thumb bass has 26 frets, so the highest note is an A. If you had a 21-fret bass with a high C string, the highest note would be the same A. But as some clever clogs will surely be along to point out, the main benefits of more strings are polyphony and additional range without changing position, rather than absolute extended range (although the fifth below is useful, the additional fourth at the top isn't, so much).

I don't really go for this supergroupy stuff but PP turns up on a lot of great records and makes them better, he's such a great player and so versatile but always sounds natural, there are very few players like him.

I would absolutely love a baby bass, I played one in a music shop in Howell NJ back in the '90s but I couldn't afford it. How much did you pay for it if you don't mind me asking? I've no idea what market value is these days.

Suppose it depends if you're a collector or a player. I just don't like playing Stingrays or Precisions so I'm unlikely to buy any, I think Rics are overpriced although I think they look good, I think Foderas are laughably overpriced and look bad, Yamaha make some nice basses but they are covered by the stuff the Fenders do so if you bought decent Fenders they're not a requirement in any way. IMHO, to cover everything, you need a bass with roundwounds (maybe a 5), a passive bass strung with flats, a fretless, a double bass, and maybe an acoustic bass. This business about needing lots of different types of bass guitars is a load of knackers. [quote name='Al Heeley' post='1285382' date='Jun 28 2011, 04:12 PM']No bass collection is ever complete without: 1) Fender jazz 2) Fender precision 3) MusicMan Thingray 4) Rickenbacker 4001/3 5) Decent Yamaha workhorse 6) Custom Fodera 5-string. Now its just a question of which order you get them in.[/quote]

[quote name='Pete Academy' post='1291440' date='Jul 3 2011, 08:51 PM']Bubinga is dead right. Why knock that guy. He's a great player. So what if the backing track is 'lift music'? He has great technique and isn't showing it off for technique's sake.[/quote] Taste is more important than technique, and judging by the majority of responses this man has very poor taste. Nobody listens to music because the musician has great technique, if the music is rubbish.

When I see listings like this I assume they're stolen goods.

Ah I remember JobFinder.

Both are synths. The first one you could use a bass guitar, palm muting (or foam under the strings at the bridge) and a good low-pass filter to achieve pretty much the same sound. The second is synthier-sounding, so you'd be better off with an analogue octaver, but then you wouldn't be able to do the fast decay using palm muting or using a foam mute because your octaver would glitch. So to do that you'd need some ADSR amplitude envelope downstream of your octaver. My Octavius Squeezer can do it, if you've got an EHX BMS you could get a similar effect using just the Guitar voice, and its low-pass filter with the resonance turned off, stop frequency off, and the right Rate setting. No doubt there are other ways to hack it. For the basics of these old dancehall type sounds all you really need is an octaver and a feature-packed low-pass filter. But your typical envelope-following filter pedal isn't going to do the job.

Embarrassingly enough I have spent £5 on a pick. Around 1990 there was a company selling picks made out of weird materials and I bought an animal horn one for a fiver because I saw it in a shop and I thought it was cool. In my defense, the guitarist friend I was with bought himself a bone one for £6, which didn't look as cool as my horn one.

There are a lot of Americans.

TBH a couple of oscillators / octavers, some dirt and a chorus would have a similar effect. The hard/impossible part would be the amplitude envelope - any triggered sound generator with a bass guitar as its source is going to crap out quite soon as the note decays.

I imagine if I tried to do a 'floating thumb' my picking movements would just move my hand towards the string rather than the string towards my hand. Surely you need something to provide the equal and opposite force to your plucking finger, and if your thumb isn't doing it then what is?

I've always done it. My music-reading is rubbish, however. Could've included something about the subject of your thread in the title or subtitle field by the way. </pedant mode>

Do whatever allows you to play comfortably and cleanly. The one thing I would advise is - if you're picking with two fingers - try to play consecutive notes with alternate fingers as much as possible, otherwise you end up in a situation where when changing strings you favour a certain finger, or playing certain patterns you find it hard to start on the other finger, etc. It can cause problems later on where you will end up tripping over yourself due to bad habits.

Yeah an '80s G&L L2000. Bloke in the shop tipped me off that they had a sale starting the next day and it would be half price, then I went home and got drunk, didn't crawl out of bed 'til noon, went to the shop and it had gone.

Yeah can regular plebs buy these yet? If so, where?

Looks a bit like a Godin but cheaper.

My Thumb has 26 frets so no, I don't feel like I'm missing out. I have been known to use them all. Maybe if it was a six string I wouldn't.

As she explained she couldn't hear herself. How do you judge your tuning without your ears?

When I used to go to gigs on the bus (when I was too young to drive) I fitted castors to a 100W combo and rolled it up the street. Our guitarist put his combo on a skateboard.