thisnameistaken

Thumbs are really nice basses, especially the older NT models, and can often be picked up second-hand for £7-800 for some bizarre reason. Whether it's considerably better than your current Streamer I couldn't say - I haven't tried any Streamer Standards. It wouldn't surprise me if your bass is really nice though, I had a bolt-on Corvette years ago that was as good as anything I've played.

I saw a full-on Wayne Rover while out walking my dog this morning and thought you'd have to be mad to buy a giant gas-guzzling monster like that these days but clearly there are plenty of buyers for them. Innuendos aside I can only assume that the people who buy stuff like that have a different attitude to money than me, or a strong desire to be seen driving a bling car.

Yarr look after any cable and it'll do you for years. I've still got one no-name shop-bought cable that I've never had to resolder been gigging it since 1995. In terms of sound quality, I find there's little difference. The big factor is cable length and with 30ft+ of any cable I can hear the top end being lost. Fortunately I've got a really good line driver from Max/SFX.

I don't think there's a good middle ground, not that I've found anyway. To bow you need high tension, to slap you need low tension. Even the so-called light ('weich') string gauges aren't really loose enough to be slapped, you need a string that will be very supple.

I've had mine for a couple of years now. I only keep pedals for that long if they turn out to be practically irreplacable. Positives: Great for whammy effects, octave divider is convincingly analogue-sounding, delays and reverbs are really good and varied, a few interesting modulation effects (barberpole phaser, ring mod particularly, also pattern tremolo), synths aren't bad and tracking is very good, there's a good squishy-sounding compressor in there, fuzzes aren't bad either. Tap tempo across all the effects and tempo can be synced to MIDI. Can hook up two expression pedals and either one can be set to modulate any param on any effect, or even several params on several effects at once. This brings some massively cool possibilities. It's also very quick and easy to edit patches and they automatically save as you're editing. It's got the quickest, easiest interface of any multi I've ever used. Negatives: Filters aren't great, envelope-following filters in particular are pretty useless because there's no sensitivity control and the better ones boost gain annoyingly. Chorus/flange options aren't good IMO but I'm not a fan of chorus/flange on bass anyway. One downside to the tap tempo rates on stuff like delays is that you can't set two speeds and swap between them with exp. pedal (so you can't have a crotchet delay modulating to a dotted quaver or whatever) which is a shame because it does work when you've got the rates set to millisecond values. It depends what you want it for, basically. I use mine to add modulatable craziness to my 'core' sounds from my OC-2, Octavius Squeezer and Bugcrusher, but my my it's good at that!

I'm not normally a fan of compression on bass (well, on my bass anyway) but I might get one of these just to see how it does in the studio.

It depends partly on how low the string height is set (you need decent clearance to bow) and what strings go on it. In my experience strings which are designed for slap playing don't sound too good bowed.

[quote name='risingson' timestamp='1328192112' post='1523339'] ... The guy's excuse for this was "we don't have time to set up every guitar and bass in the shop". I told him in no fewer words that he should probably find the time, [/quote] That's the other thing. Always excuses. I want stuff, not excuses. Like the guy who wanted to buy flats I always get 'We can order them in for you' - I can order them in for myself, cheaper, but I was hoping to get it today which is why I trudged across here to find out you've got as many of them as I have. I know it's expensive to stock a guitar shop but really, if all you're going to offer is budget basses, bedroom amps and six different sets of strings then you can't grumble when you get no bass players buying anything from you.

[quote name='TimR' timestamp='1328178976' post='1522996']Mainly it's a lack of dynamic customer service but I do realise that it must be the hardest thing in the world continually being nice to tyre kickers.[/quote] I stopped going in guitar shops because they seem to treat everybody like that now. I don't think I've sat down with a guitar in a guitar shop since the late '90s (and that time I bought it) because it seems whenever I go in the staff are being twats to whoever's in there and I don't have the patience to be on the receiving end of their bullshit any more.

I started a thread the other day wondering how hard it would be to learn sousaphone. Consensus seemed to be that it takes quite a lot of commitment to keep up the physicality of it so I gave up the idea, but I would still love one.

Worst bit was I'd thrashed the fingers of my left hand all night so they weren't too happy about having to solo. :/ And no I wasn't too happy about having it thrust upon me by a guy who was directing proceedings and who happens to be a much better DB player than I am...

If you can't get the sound in your head from your current gear, and you think a Sadowsky pre will do it, why not sell all your basses and buy a Sadowsky? I don't have much experience of Ibanez basses nor do I know what the sound in your head is, so I can't tell you either way whether your current bass will do it.

I like the strings a little bit higher than that purely so I can get some purchase on them when I have to play acoustically (busking or the odd 'social'/casual gig/jam). I have an adjustable bridge and I've tried around 7-8mm on the G, 10-11mm on the E but it makes it difficult to really pull the higher strings when you need to.

I've seen psychobilly players use a mag pup along with a piezo transducer under the board to pick up the click and get a very good, very loud sound out of that setup. But they're going for a very particular sound and they need a lot of volume - I don't think a mag would be a good choice for general-purpose DB amplification. I'd rather see what I could do with a decent piezo and a decent preamp first.

I did 3 hours on the DB last night and apart from a couple of blisters (keeping up acoustically with drums, piano, guitar, and three horns) I was fine, compared to the crippling wrist injuries I get from bass guitar these days it's positively therapeutic to play this thing. I hadn't played with those guys before and bless them they threw me a solo in the last tune. I don't play solos at all but this tune was right in my comfort zone (reggae feel, harmonic minor) and it was just me and the drummer so I gave it a good bash.

I seem to recall the first thing I did was learn the bass line to 'Stand By Me'. Then I learned the blues scale. From there I think I figured out that the odd-numbered intervals of a scale made up chords and I was suddenly better than all the other bass players I knew. I'm not now of course because my education stalled quite soon after that.

I'm not convinced Chuck Rainey would contribute to my medical costs if I had a problem that was preventing me from working. I don't like the idea that people in the USA can be financially ruined simply because they got sick but there's not a lot I can do about it either. There are many more people than Chuck Rainey in exactly this position right now.

I wondered why it was S and not T, and it turned out you weren't talking about different sexual identities at all.

[quote name='yorick' timestamp='1327674200' post='1515195'] UFO? [quote name='grimbeaver' timestamp='1327867723' post='1518007'] one person has been very near in this thread, near not accurate just very very near [/quote] [/quote] CFO? UFC? UHT?

[quote name='mrdreadful' timestamp='1327861259' post='1517832'] Okay, so the context was a bit obscure, but I would see no reason to mark whether a link is 'safe' or not unless it was actually 'unsafe'. It's not like I'm some teenage troll.[/quote] The web has been dumbed down a lot in the last ten years. People don't like links using semantically-relevant phrases any more because they can't understand them. I got a bollocking once for using <sitename>@mydomain.com to register for a forum - they accused me of trying to impersonate the administrators. Too many cretins online now.

Ah man if I'd known you were coming down to York I could've tried to be in and offered you a go on mine, although today was a bit mad tbh I wasn't home much. Out all day tomorrow too. I did warn you about the G4M showroom though!

Do you play with a pick? I've found everything is more tense when I play with a pick for some reason, I suppose because I'm having to pinch something with my fingers while I bounce it off strings. If not - and it's just that you're digging in too hard - the best solution to this is to turn up your backline/monitor. If you can hear yourself clearly you won't pick so hard. I used to break strings all the time because my amp on stage wasn't loud enough.

[quote name='JAUQO III-X' timestamp='1327771087' post='1516561']People on forums come up with reasons to dislike a person whom they have never ever met in person before.[/quote] Do you form an opinion of people based on how they behave online or do you assume everybody would be really great if you met them in person and disregard the stuff they type completely? Well there you go. I've said nothing about your music but since you brought it up: I don't like your music but at least it's different and I appreciate anybody trying something different. As for your skill as an instrumentalist I don't rate anybody by chops alone, I think it's a poor measure of a musician, so I won't comment on your playing. I do think it reflects your personality though and I don't like your personality.