thisnameistaken

To be honest I don't really try to go for "a sound", I just try to put my bass where it can be heard. Luckily I've got a guitarist who knows what he's doing and he doesn't try to fill the entire frequency spectrum. I suppose one benefit of not chasing a mythical tone is that I don't buy and sell a lot of basses and amps.

Don't think anybody's mentioned Roy Ayers yet. He always gets forgotten, poor sod.

I'd describe my tone as full, lush, deep, sharp, thick, thin, and probably creamy, a bit rhubarby, subtle chunks of tarmac and sycamore, a suggestion of summer mornings waiting for the bus to go swimming, hints of unspeakable acts bent over Biffa bins and a wry smile at a fondly-remembered tug job. But I can get it out of any bass.

[quote name='EBS_freak' post='419851' date='Feb 26 2009, 09:23 AM']You need a EBS Bass IQ... best sounding, most versatile filter pedal... IMHO opinion of course.[/quote] I'll let you off with sound being a subjective thing, but I'll take the versatility challenge. I nominate my Meatwad.

I had a Proline 6-string years ago, bought it used in 96 or 97. It had a white maple body (unfinished), and a maple/wenge laminate neck, gold hardware, bart soapbars and it was active. It was serial #000014 (didn't even have to write that one down). Neck had to be replaced in the end. Truss rod went - apparently the necks with maple laminates weren't stiff enough for the six strings or something, so Warwick fitted a new bubinga/wenge neck gratis and sent me a bunch of freebies, gigbag, strings, wax, etc. (bless 'em!). It was a shame though, the maple neck suited it better.

Pretty original approach, sounds good! Couldn't decide whether he reminded me of John Denver or Tracy Chapman.

All good advice above. But I especially agree with YouMa - you won't really convince anybody as a funk player if you're not listening to much of it. Fill up your iPod with the suggestions you've been given and have them in your ears as much as you can. Listen to hours and hours of good old funk records, then pick up your bass and jam along to some of the one-chord classics. You won't have to worry about hitting any changes because there won't be any, you can just concentrate on the groove and finding a place where you feel locked-in with it. Ultimately though, funk bands stand or fall on the strength of the drummer, not the bass player. If you don't have a creative drummer who's really feeling it, it won't work.

As far as I'm aware it's just to pad the input for hot signals so it doesn't overload the preamp. If you're not hearing any distortion then it doesn't matter which setting you're using, just leave it.

I had an Echo Park last year. It's very good and gives you tonnes of features for your money, but needs a good isolated power supply or it gets noisy. The main reason I sold mine was because I didn't like the ToneCore dock it slots into - the footswitch felt bad, like I was going to break it. Never did of course, but still. I don't currently have a delay because I want something compact with tap tempo - I don't want to have to plug another switch in, and that means boutique, which gets too expensive. I'm probably going to wait until the Malekko 919 is out and see what that looks like. As for "synth": It's a bit like asking what house you should buy. All the pedals that call themselves "synth" have different sets of features and it really depends which ones you want. The sort of options you can expect are: Waveform synthesis, octave doubling, distortion, low/band-pass filter, and/or some sort of modulation. There's [url="http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=520711"]a thread on TB[/url] at the moment which is trying to list all the features of each synth pedal, so you might want to look over the first post there. I'd say the EHX Bass Micro Synth is a really good choice if you want old '70s mono synth sounds. The Korg G5 or Akai SB-1 are better choices if you want more '80s soft-around-the-edges type sounds. The sawtooth octave down on the G5 is also great for early '90s hip hop stuff. The Chunk Systems unit has tonnes of potential, but the software is still catching up - it needs to mature a bit before it's a serious prospect, and it's expensive. Or you could buy a Boss OC-2, a decent gated fuzz and a filter (pref. with an expression pedal input) and see where that gets you.

[quote name='BTGAndy' post='419012' date='Feb 25 2009, 08:44 AM']I'm looking to get a filter or auto wah pedal, something funky with a throaty growl to it. I've been looking specifically at the MXR M-188 Bass Auto Q, has anyone here had any experiences with this pedal or could they suggest anything worth trying out?[/quote] The Bass Auto Q is quite tame-sounding. The filter works well and it's easy to adjust, but it's a bit polite for my tastes, and the auto-wah section seemed a bit half-baked to me. It's the only filter I've had that never even made it on to my board. Other people seem to like it well enough though. Shame you ruled out EHX because most of the Q-Trons sound great and they're cheap. For a cheap option, maybe look at the DOD FX-25. If you want to spend more look at one of the boutique Meatball clones that are out there (Meatwad, Barge Grinder, 3Leaf Groove Regulator) or if you're independently wealthy, try sourcing an original Mu-Tron III. Those are all funky-sounding filters.

[quote name='josh3184' post='418604' date='Feb 24 2009, 06:02 PM']I don't really understand why but I really, really want that...[/quote] I feel exactly the same way about it.

[quote name='ash_sak' post='418630' date='Feb 24 2009, 06:31 PM']so the Boss pedal reduces noise whilst not playing? I haven't read the pedal spec. on the Boss website but can it be used to reduce noise output from pedals yet still allow through the bass signal?[/quote] No. Noise Gates are either open or closed. You set a threshold level, any sound above that level completely opens the gate, and if the sound falls below that level the gate closes, shutting off any noise while you're not playing. Are you daisy-chaining that Zoom unit? It could just be that it needs isolated power to operate quietly, I've had a couple of digital pedals that were like that.

"noise gate". Although personally I'd be looking at changing my settings to minimise hiss, or trying to isolate which pedal is doing the damage and looking at alternative pedals to do that job.

[quote name='sshorepunk' post='418550' date='Feb 24 2009, 05:05 PM']Mission Control is a 3 channel loooper pedal,[/quote] Did you buy that on here? I wanted it - looks really handy. [quote name='sshorepunk' post='418550' date='Feb 24 2009, 05:05 PM']MXR Blowtorch[/quote] And I'm pretty sure I bought a Blowtorch off you last year, didn't I? Decided you missed it too much? Your board sounds well set up. I need to knock up a couple of mini-loopers with momentary switches...

James Jamerson a notable omission, and Flea at number 4. Oh dear...

I'm very tempted by [url="http://www.seppukufx.com/digitalpitchmodulator.htm"]this[/url], which sounds quite ring mod-ish on some settings, but does other anti-social noises too.

Octave, fuzz, filter, pitch-tracking oscillator. But a wet/dry blend control is useful sometimes. I mostly play hip-hop and funk-influenced electronic music.

[quote name='JonnyM' post='417560' date='Feb 23 2009, 04:10 PM']JHS say delivery is expected "some time in April, £239 RRP..." I imagine the street price will be much cheaper...[/quote] I should hope so. Let if you see one for sale at less than half that.

[quote name='Cantdosleepy' post='417431' date='Feb 23 2009, 02:07 PM']Never read anyone on here ever bag on Mani or Peter Hook. The occiasional 'not my cup of tea' but that's as far as anyone's gone. I've definitely read criticisms of Enthwistle here.[/quote] I think his tone often sucked. I'm going to go with Andy Rourke.

[quote name='velvetkevorkian' post='416656' date='Feb 22 2009, 03:14 PM']Ha, that's awesome- were you actually playing anything there or was that just it feeding back into itself?[/quote] It needs an initial input to get going, but you can just touch the tip of the input jack or whatever then sit back and let it go nuts. I've also found that if you switch on the gate on the fuzz circuit and set the filter to envelope-following, you can do laser noises. And I figure when they release the update that allows an expression pedal to use the aux. jack you could stick a volume pedal after it and you've got a crude theremin. Although it might be tricky to play with both feet.

Got distracted tonight when I accidentally set up a feedback loop inside the Squeezer (it's not in the manual, took me a while to work out what I'd done!) - then used the beat-locked filter stepping to change the pitch of the feedback on the "random" setting, it bleeped away like a '50s sci-fi computer. Clip below. I got a bit silly with adding both suboctaves on my OC-2 and then cranking up the beat depth (potential pitch range of each bleep), causing some of the higher notes to get too loud for my preamp, so there's some noisy moments after about 20 seconds. [url="http://teop.org/media/squeezer_robot.mp3"]Bloop[/url]

Buying and selling over for now, and I've ended up with this: Everybody loves low-light rubbish camera phone pics. Suggestions for that space on the left are welcome. I'm thinking tap delay, bit-reducers or pitch shifters, it can be my "impractical toy" spot.

Yeah I'm looking forward to trying this. It will have to be a bit special to knock my OC-2 off my board, but we'll see.

[quote name='lowdown' post='415576' date='Feb 20 2009, 05:13 PM']I know you all hate SC's.. But my one just sounds great, plays great, Sits great, Balances great...[/quote] So do all my favourite double-cuts. Actually until you posted that big picture I always thought the bass in your avatar was shot with a funny lens, but I suppose it's the body-lengthening effect of only having a 20-fret neck. I think it's probably a fashion thing, like headless basses were in the '80s. Some people will continue to play them, but they'll always be a small proportion of the bass market.