thisnameistaken

[quote name='budget bassist' post='545625' date='Jul 20 2009, 07:11 PM']For instance the nicest playing and sounding strat (i know, guitar) i've ever touched, was a classic vibe squier, and they're moddable anyway.[/quote] The nicest two strats I've ever played were: My current guitarist's '86 Squier. My mate's bitsa strat, which is a mahogany body of unknown provenance he found in a shop once, and an '80s Tokai neck. I keep threatening to take it into my care if he doesn't clean it, the poor thing is covered in crap.

To me a passive mode switch is for use when your battery is going flat. Otherwise I'd use the actives.

2003-ish I bought a '91 Thumb off eBay for £670. A couple of months ago I watched the guy I bought it from buy a replacement - another '91 model - for £1185. I suppose it depends who's around. But to be honest I wouldn't let mine go for either of those prices. The last guy I had do fret work on it asked how much one of these would cost, his estimate was £2000, based on what he remembered from old price lists and how much fun him and his bassist mate had playing it during the 24hr it spent with him. He was shocked when I explained how fashion had dumped the prices down to silly money. Prices are purely what people will pay, once you get beyond Fenders and Stingrays, I think. There's a fairly static value on those, but not on anything else.

I've been through tons of filters, finally settled on a Meatwad and an Octavius Squeezer, but the Q-Tron is a brilliant filter for the money. Nothing beats it. And if you want to run fuzz infront of a filter then get the +. It's important to have that loop feature, or an envelope in (which I have on both my current filters). Extra vote for the Bassballs, because run after other effects it produces other-wordly sounds. Don't run it as a standard envelope filter, treat it as a modulation effect. There's nothing like it. Oh and for pure synthy noises, it's much cheaper to just get a Bass Micro Synth, but try to get one of the old models if you can, rather than the XO. It sounds much better. Honestly it just plain beats a lot of more expensive pedals (and combinations of more expensive pedals) for doing Moogy synth bass sounds. Especially the original circuit - the XO can get a bit weedy, but the original is full-on synth awesome. I've got an OC-2, Woolly Mammoth, Meatwad, O.S. and stuff on my board but I still keep a BMS because it's just better for that stuff. It's really a brilliant effect.

The OC-2 is just a classic bass sound in and of itself, really. I can't imagine not having one.

[quote name='Al Heeley' post='544315' date='Jul 18 2009, 09:02 PM']Don't worry - wouldn't dream of setting up a business and making money out of it, just helping out a forum member.[/quote] I think duplicating the Mammoth is an issue in itself, rather than just buying one, but profiting from duplicating it is wrong to me. I'm surprised people are doing stuff like this. Maybe I'm naive. Al - knowing you from elsewhere I'm surprised that you'd be doing this.

That's the weirdest thing I've ever heard of. Never come across that before. I would've tried sacrificial burning of the sound guy, then maybe slaughtering some virgins, but that's just how I roll.

I was using a Squier Jazz strung with LaBella flats in my Ska band until recently, because we were mostly going for an old '60s Jamaican sound, but I had to switch back to my Thumb when we started coming up with more modern-sounding material. I'm still considering the practicalities of using both throughout the set because the Squier sounds awesome on stuff that's more rootsy. I should say though the pickups are flat as a pancake and the tone knob does barely anything, it's really not a nice-sounding bass but for that '60s sound it's absolutely fine. And it plays lovely - structurally it's as good a Jazz as I've ever played from Fender.

Isn't it rather bad form to clone pedals that are still in production?

US dollars or some other type of dollars? And are you buying in the UK or somewhere else? Obviously US dollars don't stretch very far outside of the USA.

[quote name='ARGH' post='543461' date='Jul 17 2009, 06:40 PM']those with a bent on the different style and 'boutique' taste tend to track down the custom luthiers...Fleeting,Haigh etc[/quote] Shane Haigh?

[quote name='bumfrog' post='543387' date='Jul 17 2009, 04:54 PM']in it's previous incarnation I would have agreed with you, but since it changed hands it's been a great improvement on what it used to be and they guy who runs the place now is really nice. Never had any problems with them,[/quote] I've had him do a couple of deals for me in the past, but recently he tried to sell me an instrument cable when I wanted a speaker cable, by trying to tell me they were exactly the same. I think he means well most of the time, but I've no idea why he was so desperate to sell a cable that he'd tell a story like that.

[quote name='xgsjx' post='543301' date='Jul 17 2009, 03:25 PM']I'm off to York at the end of Sept & hope there's somewhere 1/2 decent (surely there must be).[/quote] There's M.O.R. Music on Fossgate (or Walmgate or whatever it's called at that end) which only sells budget basses, cheap copies of Stingrays and P-basses, and frankly I don't trust the owner, and everything in there is overpriced. There's Bulmers right next to Monk Bar on the corner of Lord Mayor's Walk which usually has some Vintage or Stagg basses in but operates as a sort-of Smack Converters so it's mostly full of used mobiles and games consoles. And there's Banks' ... [quote name='EdwardHimself' post='543307' date='Jul 17 2009, 03:31 PM']There's a big music shop on a couple of floors in what used to be some sort of bank. I think it's near GAP or something?[/quote] ... which I think is what he's talking about, it's next to the post office on Lendal and they mostly sell score and student orchestral instruments. If they do have a bass guitar in there it will be a cheap one, like in the other two shops.

Ages since I've been but there's Music Ground which is worth a browse but overpriced to hell, there used to be a Sound Control but I don't know what happened with that. Er... To be honest I'm a bit stuck there, I don't go to Leeds, it's full of people from Leeds you see.

None of the shops are worth a look. Try Leeds.

If you buy a 300W amp head, you won't have to worry about having enough power. Anything less, and you might find yourself wanting. So save until you can afford a 300W amp head. Hartke heads sound good and they're fairly cheap. Cabs... If you've got a friend to help you load in and out, look at the Ashdown MAG 410T. It'll handle 300W happily, sound good doing it, and it's pretty cheap, especially if you can find one used. But it's a two-man lift. If you want a personally-portable bass cab, especially if you've got stairs to negotiate, you'll be looking at pricey gear.

I know 2x18 was an early adopter, he had one sitting smugly in his rack when I went to buy his LH500. Maybe PM him?

[quote name='neepheid' post='542826' date='Jul 17 2009, 01:32 AM']I use a Hartke 3500 into an Ashdown ABM 4x10. I like the sound, and it has got compliments at gigs, but it's all personal preference.[/quote] I ran that same rig for a couple of years and it worked out really well. I miss the 410 sometimes but I don't miss carrying it.

[quote name='tauzero' post='535424' date='Jul 8 2009, 09:28 AM']Reading this thread, I'm struck by how different people define "light". A Hartke VX410 "very light"?[/quote] FWIW I'm about the scrawniest fully-grown human male I've come across. I can lift my Schroeder 1212L with one hand and lug it short distances like that, or lift it one-handed high enough to get my other hand underneath. I could probably carry it as far as I could carry anything. I regularly carry it up and down four flights of stairs in and out of my flat, without feeling it when I go back to get my rack, bass, pedal board, bag of gig bits, etc. That's light. I wouldn't want anything heavier now I've heard how good that sounds for how little effort it requires of me.

I'd like to play a bass built to that kind of spec, but in the bands I play with I would look like a complete tosser. So it's back to finding good examples of "classic" basses for me. I'm still trying to find a 5 that doesn't look like a 5. Closest I saw so far was a Status Groove, weirdly enough.

Get a five or six string with a relatively flat radius on the fingerboard. Ditch the low B and string it high instead. Tie a hair bobble around the first fret and learn to play a bunch of tunes that sound much better on piano. Then get a video camera and a YouTube account and become a budget superstar to other bassists on the internet, or make a living promoting gear you don't really like at trade shows. They love a bit of that.

[quote name='Kongo' post='542834' date='Jul 17 2009, 02:36 AM']I don't like "Image" per se as it takes from the music...[/quote] Nah it doesn't. Think of any band ever that you ever liked a lot, think about what they wore and what they did. Were they all total individuals? Of course not. I remember being a big Fishbone fan in the early '90s, they got a slot on Jools Holland in 1993-ish, and I was really messy on mushrooms that night but I made sure I saw it. They had two front-men (it was after Chris Dowd had left), a trumpet player Walter who was this huge guy, and a sax player Angelo who was a much smaller. They swapped outfits so the trumpet player's suit was tiny on him, and he played a piccolo trumpet one-handed, whereas the sax player's suit draped a few inches over his hands and feet, and he was playing a baritone sax that dragged on the floor. They had eachother's bowler hats on too. It was just hilarious to look at. Image can be well useful.

[quote name='Kongo' post='542832' date='Jul 17 2009, 02:31 AM']I'm afraid that doesn't work these days LOL! I never hear ANY interesting bass in pop music nowerdays...All this indie rock...pah...Euro techno-pop? Pah (all synths)... In that sence...I don't think you'll find what your looking for...unless you like picking root notes forever? [/quote] Well... Yeah in a way I suppose I'm looking for indie-rock type stuff with talented bassists. Because that's basically what I was listing in the first post. Maybe it doesn't exist, I don't know, but I can imagine there are as many talented bass players now as there ever was, and they must be making music somewhere, so I figured people younger than me must know where and how they're doing their thing. As for Euro techno-pop, well, Justice had a single out dominated by a [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxP5YrpdQXU"]really tasty five-string line[/url]. Who would've thought France would become a centre of excellence for funk?