thisnameistaken

Are you in a band with a guitarist who is also using heavy dirt? If so, either turn up louder than him or turn your fuzz off - it won't work.

I recently got a Shuttle 6.0 and expected it to be a typical modern, clean-sounding amp, which it is, but the valve pre makes my Jazz strung with flats sound very '60s too which I was surprised about. Good amp. I can only imagine that the .2 models are even better.

After you re-fitted the bridge and tuned back up to pitch, did you check to make sure the bridge was still sitting perpendicular to the body? Sometimes while tuning up the strings can pull the top of the bridge towards the nut, so it ends up like this: \ You can correct it by tapping the top until it goes back to this | and then continuing to tune up, checking every so often that it's still upright. If it wasn't perfectly upright then it may have been easy for it to be squeezed by the pressure of the strings and slip out from under them, a bit like a tiddlywink. Also did you bang the bridge on anything getting it to your rehearsal? Doorway, car boot, etc.? That could've knocked it out of place in the first instance and caused it to collapse while you were playing. Check it before you play it.

[quote name='Skol303' timestamp='1343912254' post='1757207']I'm certainly not suggesting that the OP or anyone suffering from depression is "weak". I'm just offering my take on how to deal with life's downs.[/quote] FWIW I understood your original post and that's why I agreed with it. So I suppose to be clear: I wasn't calling anyone suffering from depression 'weak' either. I know it's a debilitating illness and the NHS aren't very good at treating it.

[quote name='Skol303' timestamp='1343899452' post='1756903'] You could try my own Patented approach to self-motivation. It worked for me to give up smoking - a very different issue, granted - but I'm sure it's transferable. I call it the "Don't be so f*cking weak and just do it" method. Seriously. Get angry with yourself. Switch off the telly, pick up your bass (or put down your cigarettes in my case) and just do it. You'll feel good for making a positive change in your life and it'll get easier the more you do it, especially when you start to see improvements to your playing (or health as it was for me).[/quote] The above might sound trite but in my case that's what I had to do too. When I went to the doctor to say I thought I was depressed he put me on some pills - I can't remember what they were but they were like an opiate or something, I took the first one and curled up into a warm, fuzzy ball and fell asleep. I threw the rest away. At that point I decided if I wasn't going to do the medication I would just have to try to snap out of it myself. And I do still have days where I can't get motivated to do anything, and days when I'm really enthusiastic about something but when I get around to it I'm no longer interested. I know what you mean with that stuff. But like the poster above, half the time I manage to get off my arse and force myself to do something, and I almost always feel better as a result. Sorry I can't be more helpful I do sympathise though.

Thanks for the offer but actually what I would really like is to hear your Bass Max on your bass if we could arrange that sometime. Just to see what it sounds like and if it does sound like mine, what you do to improve it. I'm using a plat pro too. TPJ suggested it might be my bridge at fault but it seems unlikely given that I've tried it on two basses with the same results, so now I'm keen to hear what other people get from one given that I seem incapable of getting anything useful from mine.

I used to always get behind the drums during breaks in band practises, and get the drummer to show me some stuff. I don't know if it improved my bass playing - probably not - but it did improve my drumming. It also makes it easier to communicate with the drummer when writing and arranging songs, and when recording, etc. It's generally a good thing to have an understanding of other instruments.

[quote name='ChrisF' timestamp='1343835409' post='1756034'] So.. thisnameistaken....what (in laymans terms ) would you say are the differences between the Honeys and the Silverslaps ?? [/quote] Lots of talk about this in the Innovation Strings subforum, but: The Honeys are a good all-rounder string. They feel like a light steel string, tension is comfortable, sound like a jazz string plucked, and don't sound too bad bowed either. They are really great value IMO. Silver Slaps are very low tension and have a rough surface to them so they feel pretty unusual to play, but they have a good gut-like sound when plucked and of course they're very easy to slap. Think '50s rock n' roll. TBH I found the Silver Slaps to be a little too loose for me and was considering trying the Super Silvers which are a similar string but higher tension, but I never got around to it and I would feel silly buying a [i]third[/i] set of strings for this bass when I already like the two I've got.

The Honeys are the set currently on my laminate bass, but I was thinking of putting the Slaps back on yesterday. Oh I don't know! They are both nice sets, the Honeys more versatile of course but I've got a second bass strung with steels now so I could feasibly put the Slaps on and have a modern-sounding and a trad-sounding bass. That was the idea anyway, but I ended up liking the Honeys and now it's not so straightforward!

I've got a set of Honeys and a set of Silver Slaps and keep meaning to sell one of them but I can't decide which set I want to keep...

Will be there in spirit. Love their basses, but gigging one of them every weekend in September.

Well yeah if you string it with slap strings you'll probably get a pretty awful bowed sound anyway. I had silver slaps on my busking bass for a while and bowing anything above the first one and a half octaves sounded like a kazoo.

OK well TPJ kindly sent me his Hurley to try out to give me some comparison of a double- bridge wing pup against my Bass Max. It's a similar sound but not as oppressively thumpy, a bit more even but still I think what I've learned from this is that unless there's a design out there that doesn't have twice as much volume during pizz attack compared to the rest of the note then I probably don't want a bridge wing pickup. Which leaves me with a choice of trying something like a BP100 blended with my Realist, or trying a Full Circle. Both of which would be quite expensive choices really. Ho hum.

'Thumpy' can be frustrating to a beginner though (I speak from experience!) - it's more difficult to hear your intonation. Unless you practise with the bow, which of course everybody recommends that you do, but I worry about whether my neighbours can hear me... But anyway, yeah, get a professional to make sure the nut isn't going to destroy any more strings before you go shopping for a replacement set.

Oh right. I just got a GB shuttle in the post today and that's what prompted my question, so I suppose that's not a sensible idea!

Good opportunity to ask for a bass with no dead spots I suppose. Good luck!

Has anyone ever used the headphone out on their amp to provide some in-ear monitoring?

[quote name='Warwick_Official' timestamp='1343407552' post='1750371']I will agree with this on all counts! I've seen it happen quite a few times, and it only made me see that some producers wear blinders when it comes to things out of their comfort zone. Unfortunately a lot of players don't want to upset the guy who's going to make their album...but in my experience it stifles creativity. I also have seen this happen more to bass players than any other member of a band...[/quote] Last time I was in the studio with a producer I didn't know I tracked everything on a Jazz bass, then the producer spotted my Thumb standing in a corner and made me track everything with that too. He ended up using the Thumb tracks on most of the tunes. So there are some good guys out there.

Where did the D break? Were the windings rubbing other strings or anything odd like that?

My laminate bass seems to hold its tuning like a solidbody bass guitar, hardly ever needs adjustment, whereas my carved bass usually needs tuning every time I pick it up - especially if the weather has changed a lot. The strings issue is that usually after fitting new strings there's some slack around the posts and some elasticity in the strings themselves that will take some time to work out. It's less of a problem if you wind the strings particularly well, and the more you play the bass the quicker the tuning will become stable. But this is a completely different issue to your bass simply going out of tune of its own accord. That is just something you'll have to get used to. Your D string: It's unlikely you've broken it from tuning it too often. If you go above the intended pitch for the string you could damage it, but if you're just tuning up to concert pitch it shouldn't cause problems.

I've never chased 'my sound'. I can imagine it's an expensive thing to pursue though.