thisnameistaken

Most common reason for not getting a gig in an originals band: Your face doesn't fit. Simple as that.

You wouldn't want to get stuck backing solos in F on that thing - it'd be a hospital job.

[quote name='alexclaber' post='233644' date='Jul 6 2008, 04:42 PM']Blaming great bassists for having a negative effect on the myriad talentless hacks is akin to blaming Stirling Moss for boy racers.[/quote] Well they all drive Scoobys, so I'm blaming Colin McRae (RIP) and Richard Burns (RIP). Quickly back on to the subject of 27-string basses: Do you guys who own them ever take them out of the house? I just can't imagine getting a gig anywhere if I brought more strings to the audition than the guitarist. I did have a Warwick 6 for a while but there was only one band I could ever play it with and I already had my feet snugly under their table when I bought it.

[quote name='molan' post='232957' date='Jul 4 2008, 11:43 PM']They also had the trip wired into every single window and a set of french doors. As soon as it got warm and people opened a window the power to he stage would cut![/quote] Ooh, that's a good idea. There's a hotel across the street from me and I call them practically every weekend to tell them to shut their ****ing windows. They do pay attention though, so I've never complained to the council. I did complain to the council when they blocked up the whole street's drains from years of pouring waste fat into them and that nearly got them shut down, but a backyard full of **** is a bigger deal than a noisy wedding.

Well, I managed to find half an hour to do a quick sample (after I realised I said I would, then never did...), first clip is just the pulse synth at about as bassy as it will go - there are other sounds available of course, it can go much thinner. The wobbly modulation on a couple of notes is the LFO sweep which I've got wired to a momentary switch so I can stick it in and out, haven't had a lot of time to play with that yet so excuse me if I get a bit enthusiastic with it. I can also switch it the other way, so the LFO is always on and I can cut it with the momentary. There's also an envelope follower which varies the speed of the LFO, which I haven't really used yet but could be cool. Second part of the clip I recorded quickly for the dude who wanted to hear the Meatwad with the expression pedal. The Pulse Synth is in its FX loop. I just go from all the way up to the bottom and back again just to show the range, probably could've picked a lower starting point actually, it's pretty hissy up there, but I suppose at least that shows the range available. [url="http://teop.org/media/psynth_clip.mp3"]http://teop.org/media/psynth_clip.mp3[/url] Verdict: I'm much happier now I've had some time to spend with the pulse synth - it can take a while to find the tones you want because the controls are quite dependant on eachother. As for tracking: If you play cleanly, it behaves itself very well. I'd say tracking is on a par with my OC-2 if fed a signal it likes. The clip above was recorded with my fretless 3-band Stingray (stock electronics), with vol. full up and everything else flat. It seems to warble a bit with my Thumb bass - which has a much stronger output - but if I pull the vol. pot up to put it in passive mode it tracks just as well as the 'Ray does. Tried a few options to tart up the sound of the Pulse Synth. Blending it with an octave below really beefs things up but stays nice and gnarly. Adding some chorus (again, blended about half) is also neat, gives it some depth but without getting too thick, and of course there's lots of nasal and gutteral combinations to be had with the Meatwad. All in all I'd have to say this pedal performs better than I expected, there's a lot of buzzy, trumpy, synthy fun to be had. As for the Meatwad: I suppose some of you will be familiar with the Meatball so not much to tell you, although people who've used both seem to think there are greater extremes to be had from the Meatwad. I can imagine they're right - if I put the resonance anywhere above about 12 o'clock with the filter closed it can feed back easily if it finds a harmonic it likes, and with the filter open it twitters and squawks in pretty bizarre ways. I had wondered before it arrived whether - despite all these controls - I'd just find an envelope filter setting I liked and then never tweak it again, but nah there's a lot of useful sounds to be found. Both sweep directions are useful (I always found my Q-Tron to be a bit boomy when sweeping down, but this can be tweaked a lot more - lower resonance helps a lot), the attack/decay and sweep strength settings can really make a difference too, calming things down and making the filter sit in slower songs surprisingly well. And of course the expression pedal is handy either for long, House/D&B-type sweeps or wah effects. It's also pretty cool with the envelope follower on, so the filter quacks away while you choke it into lower ranges with the expression pedal. I did have an issue with the range available on the expression pedal when the unit first arrived - it either wouldn't go deep enough or high enough, depending on the sweep direction setting. Mario offered to take the unit back, paying shipping both ways and modifying it for free, which was very generous given that he markets it as a Meatball clone and that's the stock behaviour of the Meatball's expression pedal - there really was nothing wrong with the pedal that he'd sent to me, I just wanted it to be more extreme. He also offered to mail me a "mod kit" to do it myself, which would've been quicker, but when he told me it involved just two wires and a switch I decided to buy a switch and do it myself rather than have a long wait for stuff in the post. He supplied the instructions, it was an easy job, and as you can hear from the clip the sweep is now full range. Mario has said that this sweep range will be standard on future Meatwads with expression inputs. A quick word about Mario himself: I haven't been the easiest customer ever - both my pedals have custom mods on them, so of course the spec. had to be bashed out through a series of emails, and in the case of the pulse synth he had some experimenting to do to get the mods I asked for working well. Then of course we had this business with the exp. pedal range after I took delivery and again he was 100% willing to sort it all out for me if that's what I wanted. He's really just a great guy to buy pedals from.

Was it [url="http://www.basscentre.com/product.asp?pID=445&cID=59&c=65546"]this[/url]? There was a thread about it here the other day.

[quote name='budget bassist' post='232753' date='Jul 4 2008, 03:37 PM']Can anyone explain to me what FoH means? I've seen it being used a few times and i have no idea what it means![/quote] Front of house. Where the audience is.

[quote name='andy67' post='232408' date='Jul 4 2008, 01:32 AM']I want to return to being skint but content - how do I get there?[/quote] Stop reading bass forums.

Interesting. I've never read an interview with him before. I'd always assumed he'd be a bit of a twat, I suppose because Jay Kay is such a twat. Nice to see that he really isn't. That LP bass though - what is he thinking?

More often than not the issue I have with house sound guys is that they're rockers. Not that I have anything against rockers, generally, but they tend to have a pretty rigid idea of what the bass is supposed to sound like, and with the bands I do it's not really what my bass ought to sound like. I suppose it works for 90% of the bands they get in, but it means I always have to be "the awkward one". Sometimes you get a guy who's happy to change things up to suit the band's sound, but more often it's arms folded and staring at you like you're speaking Japanese.

Ah - I found that when I was looking for one, but it wasn't one of those. It was a relatively new combo, think it might've been a solid state amp, maybe a newer take on the Portaflex.

[quote name='Josh' post='196075' date='May 10 2008, 04:52 PM']Doug Johns, I've been getting shed loads of inspiration from this guy for a good while now, also I'm starting to get a strange liking for Pedullas.[/quote] When I was a kid they had Pedullas in Musicground in Leeds for the sort of money I didn't have - I always wanted one of those. Have to admit I don't always dig "bass virtuoso" types but Doug Johns has got a great groove. He doesn't play stuff that's just bound to sound awful like, say, Wooten does.

[quote name='alexclaber' post='229425' date='Jun 30 2008, 01:20 AM']See now I have this belief that there's a lot of bassists missing out on what a really good 15" can do on its own. People equate 'punch' with 10" speakers probably because most of the 15"s they hear are the terrible ones in cheap combos.[/quote] Actually I've got a 15" aversion that I think stems from bad cabs. Like everybody else I started out with crappy 1x15" combos, then switched to 410 cabs when I had more money. Later, for a summer, I gigged with an Ampeg 2x15" and never liked the sound of it, and never went anywhere near 15s after that. But recently I was at a friend's house and he had an Ampeg combo* with a 15 in it that sounded bloody brilliant - lots of lows, lots of high-end presence, really killer little combo. Apparently they don't make them any more. So yeah I'm currently gigging an Ashdown 410, but because I use an octaver a lot I'm a bit disappointed with it. And of course it's too heavy because I live in a first-floor flat. Next step I think is to try two 1x12" cabs. At least they'll be portable. * Maybe someone can help me find one: It was a 1x15" combo, the amp flipped upside-down into the cab for storage, and it had a metal spike that screwed into the back so you could tilt it. Cleverest little combo I ever saw.

[quote name='Fliplowe' post='195461' date='May 9 2008, 02:41 PM']Andy Rourke is a legend, great lines, heres my take on Nowhere fast (Bored on day off), forgotten how funky they were![/quote] Andy Rourke's Smiths stuff really was great. Pisses me off that Morrissey painted him as "just a session musician" during all that business in court over royalty payments. His contributions to their hits were huge. I never really spent a lot of time sitting down and working out other peoples' lines, but I had to with The Smiths. Funnily enough I've never played a P-bass with a pick. I should get one. Oh yeah, I should pick a bassist... Ernie McKone doesn't get much love. Played on all Galliano's stuff and for Push before that (anyone remember "Traffic"? That had a killer throb of a bassline).

[quote name='cheddatom' post='231174' date='Jul 2 2008, 10:50 AM']I don't think the jaco analogy is very valid. He had a playing style that was distinctive. You would recognise his playing style, but think he had sh*t tone.[/quote] That's sort-of my point. He'd still sound like Jaco, you'd still know it was Jaco. Whereas some other half-arsed faker like me given a '62 Jazz fretless and a huge Acoustic 370 rig would still sound like a half-arsed faker. I bet everybody here's gone through periods where they're frustrated with their sound and tried spending their way out of it. It never works. It's very rarely your gear that needs to change - unless you have majorly crappy gear - the only way is to learn/play your way out of it.

He's the one pro player I'm genuinely jealous of, seems to turn his hand to anything and still come out smelling of roses. Love the old cheesy fretless stuff with Gary Numan and Paul Young, love the thumpy deep stuff with De La Soul and D'Angelo, don't particular like John Mayer's music but - oh look - there's Pino again and suddenly he's coming over all John Paul Jones. Most natural player I've ever heard I think.

The geezer from Subhumans was pretty good IIRC. No idea what his name is.

When I first heard Maxwell Murder I think I clapped at the end of the bass break. I was a proper anorak in those days... Not much has changed.

If you like the DL4, maybe get an Echo Park? The tap tempo is convenient to use, sounds like a DL4, but doesn't have expression inputs or looping or memory. On the plus side it's much smaller and cheaper.