thisnameistaken

The geezer with the autoharp is often outside the Minster with his pair of little Peavey combos - how does he get away with it? To be fair he's never very loud but an amp's an amp and he's got two!

You'd be surprised how far the sound of a double bass carries without an amp. It easily keeps up with an un-amplified acoustic guitar and can be heard much further away. The original reason I bought one was for busking.

I think fretless basses with the dots between the frets (as they are on a fretted bass) are basically unplayable. I played fretless exclusively for years and I now play double bass. Intonation on fretless bass is just as hard if not harder than double bass, and without any reliable visual cue it's much harder because the bass can move much more in relation to your body and thus fingers. Fretless bass is an effing hard instrument to play.

[quote name='lxxwj' timestamp='1344436905' post='1764470'] Pretty lights though. I'll admit though, I don't know scratch about areas of England..[/quote] Referencing the accents and the stereotypes. I've lived in Raleigh and Myrtle Beach. I've never met friendlier people than the people in the Carolinas. Sincerely.

Funny you bumped this thread today: York had a new attraction open a couple of months ago (a chocolate museum) and last week they applied for permission to operate a cafe space in the street outside their premises. But their premises is on Kings Square in York, one of the best busking pitches in the city, quite small but it makes for a great atmosphere with an audience of 50 to 100 people, we get jugglers and escapologists and all sorts there (The Clash actually busked there back in the day). Anyway the local buskers protested and their petition was [i]massively[/i] supported by local residents. The chocolate museum insisted that their application had been misunderstood by the buskers but today they withdrew it. Don't mess with York's buskers.

When you put new strings on it can take quite a lot of playing to take up all the slack on the tuners (assuming you didn't trim them at all), so that might be part of the problem, but really, no tuner is going to declare you to be in tune and actually be a tone or a minor third out. If anything it will tune you a fifth out if the harmonic is heard instead of the fundamental. After you've tuned up all the strings, get your bass guitar out and tune that too, and then check - by ear - that the strings on the upright are all tuned to the same pitch as the corresponding strings on the double bass. I don't like the sound of this at all. This and your D-string breakage issue is making me worry about your bass. If I were you, given how totally flummoxed you seem to be, I would try to find a friendly local(-ish) DB player who would be willing to give it the once over, and get over to see them as soon as you can.

Is the damping on the string afterlength another anti-feedback measure?

He seems to play better on that Streamer Jazzman than he does on anything else, I reckon that's his #1 bass. Also the Warwicks will probably sound better on that track just because we're used to hearing a Warwick on it. Personally I liked the Jazz and the Streamer sounds the best. Wasn't that impressed with the Star bass.

I like your voice. Music's good although not to my taste, but your voice really shines on that track.

I see you're using Yorkshire tuning. I've been experimenting with Liverpudlian tuning recently.

[quote name='ChrisF' timestamp='1344374689' post='1763751']I definately need some lessons..my technique is rubbish [/quote] I keep meaning to arrange more lessons, they are very worthwhile. I was struggling with confidence about getting my intonation right as I got further up the bass, but having received a few pointers that I could consider something of a 'system' - as well as some exercises to practise to drill it in - it got much easier. Don't fumble around on your own for too long, your practise time will be better spent after a couple of lessons and you'll learn much faster.

[quote name='Spike Vincent' timestamp='1344421090' post='1764110'] I preferred them them when they were underground.... [/quote] Nice!

Maybe he bought one during the time that they all cut their hair and bought vintage tan leather jackets. I'm surprised they didn't put out a disco record.

Take out the bridge pickup, put in a neck pickup instead. You've already got all the wiring, the only problem is your pickup is in the wrong place. You're welcome.

I remember the first time someone described me as a 'musician', I said 'No, I'm a bass player' :-)

I've sung harmony in every band I've done. I get a bit bored if all I've got to do is play bass.

One caveat with powering your pedals: Before you go plugging them all into a single PSU like the Diago, first find out (if you don't have a manual then look on the web, you'll find the info) what current each of your pedals draws - this will be a figure in milliamps (mA). Add them all up. Now look at what the maximum current output of your power supply is, and make sure it's a bigger number than the total current draw of your pedals. This should help you to avoid anything melting or catching fire. With the Diago you'll probably be fine for a long time (I think it gives you 3000mA to play with) but do check. Analogue circuits tend to draw very little (anywhere from 5mA to 50mA) but digital pedals can be [i]considerably[/i] more demanding.

I suppose they don't look the part but the valve in the preamp will go fuzzy with a hot enough signal so it can do the sound if that's what you want. I was really surprised at how good the pre sounds to be honest. Apparently the limiter on the power stage is also intended to emulate power valves, with similar compression characteristics and harmonic generation, but I haven't cranked mine yet so I don't know how well it works.

Incidentally this is why some companies make bass distortion pedals with lots of EQ controls on-board. Like the MXR Blowtorch. It doesn't sound so great on its own but use it in a band context and it suddenly makes sense. Shame it's 18v or they would sell loads of them.