budget bassist

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='240989' date='Jul 16 2008, 03:52 PM']Nope. I'm the same. In fact I can't even remember the names to songs anymore. I just listen out for the first 0.0001 seconds of a song and I'm in. At home I often resort to making up my own lyrics (sometimes even my own language) based on the original phonetics (somehow the phonetics stick but the actual words don't) of the lyrics in songs which really winds up my g/f as she knows the words to everything and it "puts her off". [/quote] Haha i'm the same, i find myself singing along to the guitar riffs and basslines more than the vocals these days XD I can never remeber the names of songs either, but once i've heard the first second of a song i'll know what it is most of the time. Also I think playing bass has broadened my tastes a little, but not loads, considering i'm only i think a lot of it is because of i'm just growing up and listening to new things, there's new music i'll listen to but don't play on bass. I do want to be able to get into funk and jazz and stuff a bit more but i just can't, the best i can do at the moment is funk rock like the chilis (early chilis) and RATM, but i have started listening to and playing more porg rock/prog metal.

[quote name='Sarah5string' post='240994' date='Jul 16 2008, 03:55 PM']Thanks guys.. I've not gigged before so all this is new to me... [/quote] Ahhh cool, good luck with your first gig! I can't say much apart from what everyone else said. If it's a small gig, amp only, if it's a larger gig, amp and PA so the audience can hear you better, never just PA because you won't be able to hear yourself. Also before the gig mess about with DI'ing your amp or micing it up because they will sound totally different, and if you do mic it up, some good mics to use would be a shure SM57, though they don't have a great low range response, or a beyerdynamic M88 or AKG D112, both are kick drum mics i believe, or at least the latter is and they both have good low range response, but the M88 has better definition than the D112, it's up to you, assuming you can afford it! As i say, kick drum mics are usually pretty good for bass. Also if you use a mic, mess about with the positioning of the mic, try the middle of the speaker cone (more treble), the outside of the speaker cone (more bassy, i think it's that way round anyway), somewhere in between, or if you have an air hole in the back of your amp, try micing it up from the back, you'd be surprised by the results! Of course it might all sound the same in the mix

4x10? sweet! That's the sort of rig i'll be after next year actually, i like the graphic EQs on traces and i'd quite like some nice cabs, maybe ashdown ABM, a 210 or 410 and a 115 would do nicely My 210 is hard enough to get down the stairs as it is though!

I tried an HH bongo with what i believe was a 4 band EQ the other day, and i have to say it sounded awesome, played awesome, and the pickup hardly got in the way of my slapping at all, that preamp is so powerful the pickups don't need to be mounted particularly close to the strings so there's plenty of room for slapping. I'd try one out though if i were you. And i think the piezo is to make it sound more like an acoustic bass? As someone mentioned, that's 200 quid you won't see again!

I play plugged in because i like to pay along to backing tracks a fair bit in preparation for band practice etc and i find that i can't hear myself very well over the backing track if i'm not plugged in. I COULD turn the backing track down, but i don't like to because like amps, it sounds crap at a low volume. Also it tends to show mistakes and things better.

[quote name='simwells' post='240316' date='Jul 15 2008, 07:31 PM']BUT the only thing I was wondering is that the Allu is gonna expand and contract a hell of a lot more than a chunk of wood would, which might bring some problems.[/quote] I'm pretty sure it doesn't ya know, if it expanded and contracted that much i'm pretty sure a plane flying from glasgow to dubai would be a bit forked! Yeah it expands and contracts a bit in heat, but not a lot, and it has to be a lot of heat, i'm sure it would be a lot more stable than wood.

Ooh you just reminded me, the ashdown perfect 10 mini stack... they're only about £100 and i saw one quite recently, must get one!

Yeah, squier are really stepping their game up as of late, i'm hopefully getting one (or two) soon, a VMJ fretted for sure.

a bit over my price range that... what do they sound like?

[quote name='Sarah5string' post='233360' date='Jul 5 2008, 10:23 PM']''FFS Sarah, it's an active bass you muppet... change the bloody battery...'' D'oh! *Sigh*[/quote] Sawe that coming! muppet! I've done it a few times where i've plugged the lead into my bass and not the amp or vice versa and wondered why there was no sound i usually figure it out though. Also i've had my active tobias about 11 months and my musicman about 6 months and i've never had to change the batteries in either!

I've had a korg DT10 chromatic tuner pedal for a week or so now and it seems pretty good, pretty accurate, used it on the stage on friday with no problems, bit hesitant on the bass frequencies but i managed to tune my 4 string down to drop C and my 5 down to A standard so it's all good. I also dropped a full pint of coke on it and it's still fine Nice and easy to use, very robust and nice and easy to see. Cost me £60 and for that money i'd expect no less than the best. I've had a little hand held korg GA-30 tuner that i got free for quite a while ago and it's never let me down so i'm pretty confident with this pedal tuner.

So my parents split up a couple of years ago and my mum is only just buying a new house so that me and my sister can stay there (it's a long story, in short our house was on the market for ages and only now is it all sorted). Basically i'm looking at a new cheap but cheerful rig for my mum's house, i've decided i want a squier VM jazz bass or a cheap mexican jazz off ebay for roughly the same price. Now i'm still not sure what to get amp wise. I must stress, this will NOT, nor will it ever be a gig rig, just a bedroom practice/occasional jam with friends rig. So i was looking at an orange crush 35B, i know orange make awesome amps, and at £120 with a 12" speaker and the cool orange vinyl it looks like a sweet deal, does anyone have any experience with them? Also can anybody reccommend me any other nice combo amps (preferably not smaller than 10", 12" is preferred though) for up to £130? cheers.

Yeah, you don't need to spend loads on a bass for it to be awesome, my main bass cost me £350 and i couldn't be happier with it, to the point that i'm not all that bothered about getting anything new for a while. I probably would spend more on the amp, buying it new, second hand amps can be dodgy, as i've learnt. A dodgy bass can be easy enough to fix 9 times out of 10, amps are a lot more complex.

The superfly EQ isn't that simple, i think it's 10 band graphic or something, though i find graphic EQs fairly simple compared to the normal sort of semi parametric or whatever you find on most amps...

I'd try and get the best of both worlds if i were you, at the end of the day, the amp is only half your sound, the rest of your sound coming from the bass itself and more importantly your hands.

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='238244' date='Jul 12 2008, 10:44 PM']So that's it under your belt now. It wasn't a disaster and you learned the not putting drinks on your gear rule. Result! Hope you get your amp sorted for next time.[/quote] Haha yeah i did *sheepish grin*. And the amp seems to be behaving itself now... gonna make sure it's alright at next practice though, i can't really crank it at home...

Oh yeah, i have sent a guitar (skinny stringer) through RM before no problems, lots of people do.

[quote name='yorks5stringer' post='238149' date='Jul 12 2008, 07:46 PM']1. The basses, cases and amp were all donated, mostly by fellow Basschatters. I don't think I could have gone back and said "Could you not donate your Fender/ MM/Warwick/SX instead"?[/quote] Oh yeah i know that, it's just unfortunate, beggars can't be choosers i suppose. I'm just saying, i know it was for charity but the stuff that was up for grabs wasn't that desirable, plus with the 'credit crunch' and that i think auctions aren't necessarily the route to go down.

[quote name='noisedude' post='238038' date='Jul 12 2008, 04:35 PM']Yeah obviously it'll sound a bit rubbish but for getting ideas down that will work. Audacity is a good editor/basic sequencer and for something very special go to Reaper.fm and download multi-track awesomeness.[/quote] I actually got a pretty decent sound out of it that way, but that's probably down to my MM preamp, it always sounded rubbish with my old passive basses.

awesome! grats!

[quote name='ste_m3' post='238022' date='Jul 12 2008, 04:10 PM']I'm not flaming, nor in much of a position to have a particularly valid opinion (Student, parents house yada yada) so take any of my opinions with this in mind. The items arnt particularly desirable, especially in a market so full of good quility cheap gear. If the auction was for say a Mexican Jazz signed by such and such an artist it would be a whole different story im sure! Good bass, Within most peoples "acceptable" price bracket and the desirability factor of an artists endorsement would make the whole thing that little bit more interesting![/quote] I was going to say it but i didn't want to sound like an arse, and i realise that people aren't as willing to just give away better gear, obviously, but i think maybe something like even a used squier jazz would have gone down better, i know i would have been more likely to have a punt.

So our first gig was last night, and i'm of mixed feelings about it. We all played really well, and some people genuinely said that they thought we were really really good, but hardly anybody turned up because it was at a different venue from normal and nobody knew (despite it being on ALL the flyers!). Also my bass amp kept messing up all night (i know, good timing!). During the sound check there was hardly any level coming through, no matter how high i turned it up, so i just cranked the whole thing, then during the first song it was ok, my musicman sounded absolutely perfect in the mix (despite it being too loud because after the sound check some absolute plonker turned the gain knob all the way down and i forgot where i positioned it), but during the second song my glass of coke on top of the amp fell off and made a mess of all my leads, soaked my bottom cab and my pedal (both of which worked, but it was just asking for trouble i suppose!), and then my amp decided to do the opposite of what it was doing before (the coke didn't touch the head so it wasn't that), basically the gain was just really high on a low setting and was really distorting unless i turned it down the tiniest bit, in which case the level went RIGHT down and there was nothing, so it was either no bass, or farty bass, which i wasn't impressed with and a few people commented on it. Though they did say it sounded great for the first song (i used my musicman for that one). Someone also commented on my bass, he was like "i thought it was an OLP or a vintage or something, it's an actual musicman? awesome!". You don't see them round here much i suppose. All in all, not a hassle free gig. Here's the one picture i managed to get hold of of us playing, not great quality but somebody took it on their phone, you can just about make out my SUB bass. More photos: L-R rhythm guitarists epi LP classic and '76 gibby explorer with customised diamond plate and emgs (VERY nice guitar!), lead guitarists BC rich bronze series warlock and ibby GRGsomething, and finally my tobias and SUB bass Our stage setup, all our gear apart from the marshall half stack

You're making me feel guilty I'm a poor student though and i'm trying to save some money for a camping trip over the summer, if i had some spare money to throw about i would have bought a ticket for that jazz copy maybe...

Pretty much yeah, that's what i do anyway for now. I'm not sure what realplayer is but you can record using sequencer software, for very basic stuff download audacity, google it, it's freeware so it's completely legal and it's not too bd either.