thisnameistaken

For the first 10 years or so of my bass-playing life I never practiced at home with an amp. Mostly because I didn't have a driving license so my amp stayed either where we rehearsed or at someone who could drive's house. I must admit now I much prefer practising with an amp, even if it's on very quiet.

On the squeezer there's a couple of ways to blend stuff with the fuzz, clean signal or oscillator, pre- or post-filter, so yes you do get blend options but the only other controls are gate on/off and the fuzz level (tone control is done via the onboard BP or LP filters) and I've yet to see how it sounds on low settings. Should give it a try really... But yeah it might have the same fuzz-producing-ness hardware as the Brown Dog but the controls are very different.

[quote name='EskimoBassist' post='888657' date='Jul 7 2010, 04:59 PM']Really, really nice board! Distinct lack of dirt or fuzz though, how come?[/quote] I've just shifted my Woolly Mammoth because I wasn't using it. The fuzz circuit in the Octavius Squeezer really is excellent and can also do gated sounds, plus it's got square and saw waves which can sound pretty gnarly, and there's a creamy-sounding distortion on the Bass Micro Synth if I want that, and the Bugcrusher that arrived yesterday tends to create distorted sounds too (and crazy oscillating distorted sounds if you feed it a distorted sound to begin with). So I do have options. I am missing a subtle overdrive, but maybe the Chunk can do it I'm not sure I've never tried, and to be honest I never really use sounds like that anyway. Next on the list is a delay I think, I've gone too long without one. I'll be using it more for modulation effects this time though.

Made a couple of changes this week, here's what I've ended up with:

[quote name='Gunsfreddy2003' post='888235' date='Jul 7 2010, 11:39 AM']Good point - just shows that a band and it's sound is never just one person.[/quote] It's very rarely the one person who knows nothing about music, that's for sure.

Is that recording with the Evahs or the stock strings? Sounds very full, I like it.

[quote name='Gunsfreddy2003' post='888069' date='Jul 7 2010, 07:59 AM']I think the problem is with the guitarist - he just sounds to poppy/souly and not funky enough.[/quote] The talent pool finally dried up when Toby Smith left. Nearly 10 years ago now.

"chops" and "woodshedding" are terms I don't think were in use in the UK in the '90s, they're relatively recent imports from the USA. I do call people cats from time to time but usually with a negative connotation - "He's a strange cat alright", "I give a wide berth to cats like him", etc. Not sure if that's from the same origin as the "cool" cat? But I probably picked it up in the USA. Thankfully I've just about stopped calling people 'dude' all the time.

[quote name='fingerz' post='887130' date='Jul 6 2010, 11:33 AM']I think JK is a very very clever guy[/quote] I think you're in a minority there mate.

Incidentally there are also purely mechanical switching systems which offer similar flexibility. Probably quite expensive though.

It's like their earlier songs but with less effort put into it.

This looks interesting too. Not available yet though.

You'd want a gated fuzz to do that stuff live effectively, so a Woolly Mammoth, Chunk Systems Brown Dog, Big John Hairy Balls, Subdecay Flying Tomato, etc. It's quite likely that on that recording a regular fuzz was used and the silence inserted as the bass part got chopped up and sequenced, so it's not necessarily a matter of getting exactly the fuzz that was used, if it's the on/off effect you're after.

A pick, a harmonic and a fuzz pedal.

Are you getting that buzz everywhere? Seems a bit strange - usually if it's the curve of the fingerboard you'd expect it to be buzz-free in places. Are they especially flimsy-feeling strings?

On my Warwick I have Slinkies that I change after every couple of gigs, on my Jazz I have LaBella flats and I don't change them.

My DB is set up at about that height, it will go lower without buzzing but I keep it higher so I can dig in more.

[quote name='skankdelvar' post='885854' date='Jul 4 2010, 09:40 PM']Everybody doesn't like something, but nobody doesn't like chocolate.[/quote] Thanks for reminding me I left a galaxy caramel in the fridge and it needs eating before my girlfriend gets home.

Oh sure I understand that, but it's the requisite precision that would scare me. FWIW I've got Evahs on my bass and the G can easily sound minging if I don't stop the note perfectly and strike the string with real intent. It's good for more expressive stuff but playing bop style with no vibrato and solid dynamics (or even some of the old rocksteady tunes we play acoustically where I play harmony passages on the G) it will sound foul a lot quicker than a thicker-sounding note on a lower string.

I wish I'd kept more info about that sort of stuff, but to be honest I think all the most special gigs are unlikely to disappear from memory anyway. I'm not that bothered about statistics but I would hate to forget a good anecdote.

[quote name='Bilbo' post='885832' date='Jul 4 2010, 09:26 PM']Have you had a lesson? I had really bad problems in teh past but one lesson with Jakesbass and I have had no trouble since. Worth it as a preventative measure?[/quote] I wish. So far I've struggled to find anyone with the time/inclination to teach me anything. I did recently get an offer of tuition from OTPJ but currently due to a cluster**** of contributing factors the Kev household is financially FUBAR so I won't be hiring anybody until the end of the month at least. In the meantime I'm going to get this wrist checked out. I very rarely bother the NHS (once every 7 years is my average, when tonsilitis or something flares up), and I've broken two small bones without getting them looked at in the past, so I feel I am entitled to seek some advice for this.

[quote name='Doddy' post='885434' date='Jul 4 2010, 01:11 PM']The thing with players like Claypool,Harris and Sheehan,is that they are very much 'stylists'- they do what they do very well,but that's it(although Claypool did have some basic 'formal' training).So for me,that argument doesn't work because the players I prefer have all studied music to some degree,and are more versatile.[/quote] I disagree with this way of thinking. I do think it's important to learn something about what you're doing, but clearly some very successful people never learned much about what they were doing. And let's be honest, every bass player who was ever an icon or a role model was a one-trick pony. Or maybe it's not fair to call them that, because all we're really saying is that they sounded unique. I would much rather sound recognisable and be the go-to man for my sound, than be able to half-arsedly fake a lot of different styles. Whenever I see ads like "Bass player available, can play x different styles" I just think "Well he probably doesn't care too much about most of what he plays and he probably doesn't sound all that authentic." If I wanted an elevator version of several different musical genres (say if I was soundtracking JobFinder) I'd hire someone like that, but if I wanted to do one genre properly I'd look harder and find a specialist.

Looks pretty. I have to say on my bass the string that gives me the most grief is the G, I find I have to really play it with perfect intonation and confident hands to get a good sound out of it. I would be very nervous of using a high C string, I'd assume it would be so weedy it would need a very confident player to make the most of it. That said, I would appreciate not having to change position so often. So good luck mate!

That's a shame. I had one of my girlfriend's students approach me at a rehearsal room the other day to ask about my Warwick and he was clearly in awe of the thing when I let him have a go. When I told him I actually gig a Squier Jazz he looked totally bemused, but when I let him play that one too he appreciated what I was using it for, and I hope he has since stopped apologising for his (perfectly decent from what I could tell) Mexican-made Jazz bass.

I've gone a bit that way too. I'm still gigging bass guitar but at home over the last four or five months I only play double bass, just trying to find a practical way to gig it at the moment (the plan is to start busking with our guitarist but we're struggling to find time to rehearse the material while doing the electric band too). I do still like the sounds I get out of my bass guitars but like you I'm mostly using flats on passive basses, and also a lot of effects, I don't really use typical bass guitar sounds that often any more. On DB I love the way attacking the strings from a different direction gives a different sound, and the way you can play with the resonance of the thing, it's like fretless bass but so much more so. I'm sold, I just hope my recent left wrist scratchy feeling isn't going to turn into anything serious, I'm going to call the GP about it tomorrow.