thisnameistaken

I use a different amp at home, so no! (either a Hartke HA3500 or a little lousy Laney combo at home, an LH500 live and in rehearsals). But FWIW I rarely touch the EQ. I get the right amount of bass boost and that's me done.

That dude who's got the horn is looking at you.

Parts like that are difficult to do with effects. You can't really use a synth pedal because it won't track quickly and cleanly enough, and you will need an ADSR envelope generator to either apply to the amp or the filter to get that staccato sound. There aren't many of those available, and again it would be a matter of finding one that triggers regularly enough to make a convincing synth sound. I did make a patch on my Octavius Squeezer that sounds a lot like that but I am not at all confident that it would perform well enough for a tune with 16th notes like that one.

[quote name='CHRISDABASS' post='1007106' date='Oct 31 2010, 10:44 AM']Its an Xotic [url="http://www.xotic.us/guitars/xj1_5st/xj1_5st.html"]http://www.xotic.us/guitars/xj1_5st/xj1_5st.html[/url][/quote] Nice ironic name for a jazz bass copy.

Yeah how did your hand hold up?

[quote name='Oakbear' post='1006021' date='Oct 30 2010, 06:43 AM']SWMBO not being keen on me gigging,[/quote] She sounds like a proper ray of sunshine.

Get a loud, portable amp - something that will get you gigging. Your bass is quality, your priority should be a quality amp. FWIW until recently I was gigging a 100% stock Squier Jazz, despite having a '91 Warwick Thumb on the stand behind me.

We don't do any songs I don't like. One of the key benefits of not playing covers.

If there was ever any doubt that the OC-2 was the best stomp box ever designed, this puts an end to it! What a great little box.

This link was posted in a thread today on Talkbass, thought it was worth reproducing here: [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up5SKmEOZeI"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up5SKmEOZeI[/url] If you look in the related videos you'll find the guy's original video demoing his mod. How awesome is the OC-2? I always knew I needed more than one of them.

[quote name='4StringFortress' post='1003280' date='Oct 28 2010, 06:41 AM']Yeh when i said acoustic i should of said electro acoustic since thats whats im looking for lol my SX is electro acoustic but i want something different to move on with i love the sound of electro acoustic bass sounds really cool![/quote] Agreed: Although I bought a double bass instead, for volume reasons. And clunge reasons.

[quote name='JTUK' post='1004529' date='Oct 28 2010, 11:04 PM']If you get a horn section in a pub/function band, they'll have dots, ..because that is how they invariably learned. That means the song will have a degree of structure and the band will have to get it.. No horn player I know cannot read.[/quote] Until recently I was in a band with a trumpet player and a trombone player. I'm assuming both can read, but neither ever did. They each wrote their parts in their own shorthand, and neither could read the other's scrawlings. I did learn a couple of the trombonist's parts to bow them on my DB when we did an acoustic set without the brass once, I just figured them out by ear. Way quicker than having him write them down and then me reading them.

[quote name='skej21' post='1004518' date='Oct 28 2010, 10:51 PM']The thing that troubles me is, how do you know that playing pit gigs/reading jobs is something you want to do, if you've never done it? I learned to read from the beginning with my first tutor and I can't imagine having to acquire that skill in isolation in order to test-run an area of gigging potential. The thought of the workload would put me off![/quote] Well maybe one day I'd like to be a truck driver but I'm not going to start studying for my HGV license now just in case. Edit: For me though, pit work would be awful because I hate musicals, and I wouldn't want to play covers because I hate most pop music too.

[quote name='skej21' post='1004468' date='Oct 28 2010, 10:18 PM']What's the difference between reading tablature to learn a set of covers for your band, and playing covers by reading dots in a function band? I'll tell you... When you learn songs from tab, you still have to spend HOURS rehearsing. With dots, everyone is literally reading from the same sheet.[/quote] Well I don't play in covers bands, but maybe the guys who do can tell us how often they use sheet music? Incidentally I don't think I've ever read a tab either, it looks like a crap way of describing music.

[quote name='skej21' post='1004446' date='Oct 28 2010, 10:02 PM']It seems to me that Sliddx cannot have a valid opinion, having never learnt to sight read himself.[/quote] That's no better an argument than saying JTUK can't have a valid opinion because he doesn't know what it's like to not be able to read music. I can appreciate that for musicians involved in some styles of music or musicians for whom music is a full-time job, it's essential to be able to read, but 99% of gigging guitar and bass players cannot read a note and have never been required to. So for them - unless they just had a personal desire to learn for their own satisfaction - it would be a complete waste of their time. In response to your last line: I would never discourage anyone from learning any new skill, but the thread starter asked if it was essential ("Do I [i]need[/i] to read music") and the answer, whether you like it or not, is "No".

I've never been asked to read a note in nearly 20 years of doing bands. I have endeavoured to learn to read in the past but the skills get rusty quickly because there's never any reading to do, other than practising it at home, so it often seems like a big waste of time.

My LH500 is dead silent, even with my lousy Squier jazz plugged in the front. Honestly I've never heard a peep out of it. Do you have a lot of treble boost in your bass sound? Always-on distortion or something? It sounds like something is up.

Ah cheers man it's nice to hear positive noises! We actually did have some CDs of these tunes last summer, we were knocking them out for £2 at gigs, but I don't think we have any left. They're also on Spotify now if you use that at all. We're recording another five tunes at the moment and trying to get websites and merch and stuff organised properly, so we'll have a better way of selling CDs hopefully when the new EP is ready, and maybe get another run of the old one printed while we're at it.

[quote name='Stewart' post='1002787' date='Oct 27 2010, 05:57 PM']I wouldn't be sure that's dried mud...[/quote] Congratulations on purchasing a cab that can produce brown notes!

It's on iPlayer [url="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vn2dn"]here[/url]. How does that compare to the new Jamiroquai record btw?

[quote name='bartelby' post='1002729' date='Oct 27 2010, 05:17 PM']I'm in a band with just one guitarist. Some times I'd like a second one to pop in for a few bars then bugger off again.[/quote] Our trombonist just chuffed off to Banbury of all places, so we're trying to come up with ideas to replace him. We're currently drums, bass, guitar, keys + trumpet (one instrumentalist) and three voices, we've thought about a second guitarist or another trombonist or whatever but I think what we'll end up with is a brass player who can do something else, whether that's guitar or percussion or keys or voice I don't know, but it'll be someone who can provide some variety, not just a second guitar on every song or a trombonist standing idle in the verses or whatever. If we had two full-time guitarists I think we would get very rocky very quickly and I'm not really a big fan of rock music, so I would probably move on I think.

If my band got another guitarist I would have to kill one of them.

Very cool.

[quote name='Clarky' post='993324' date='Oct 19 2010, 11:28 AM']My 2p. Get piezo pickups that sit in the bridge wings (Underwood or Shadow) so can easily be installed or removed if necessary. Then a Fishman Platinum Pro preamp (which you can use to cut out the feedback and shapes the sound). Bingo! Thats what I have, into a MarkBass CMD121P combo.[/quote] I've got a K&K Bass Max in the bridge on my laminate bass and it sounds pretty good live, both pizz and bowed. Using it with my bass guitar amp (Hartke LH500 -> Schroeder 1212L) I run it through a Fishman Platinum Pro EQ Bass first, but I've also run the pickup straight into a GK MB150 and got equally satisfying results. In both cases I got plenty of volume without feedback problems. A local guy I know has a Realist on one of his basses and a Full Circle on the other, both his (fully carved) basses sound lush amplified. He did say, though, that the bass I currently own has had a Realist on it in the past and it didn't work out too well, so maybe bridge wing pups are a better choice on basses like mine with laminate tops.