EliasMooseblaster

Given the number of people who assemble an unbranded bitsa Precision or Jazz and then waterslide a "Fender" decal onto the head, there may be a surprising amount of truth to that for some people!

Howdy! Another HB-8 owner here. Not had any problems with the pots myself, though I've often thought it might be nice to have either separate volumes or a blend control instead of the 6-way switch - and maybe swapping one or more pots out for a push-pull so I could keep the coil tapping as an option! Intrigued by the switch to flats - did you manage to find a flatwound 8 set, or did you have to put one together from regular bass strings and some guitar flats?

Anyway, I finally got round to recording a demo so you can all hear it. Just to really spoil you, I've turned it into two separate videos with different audio tracks: Here it is DI'ed: And here it is through a nice valve amp:

Admittedly it's the first one of his I've ever seen in the flesh (in the wood?), but from the photos I've seen, it's clearly not alone in being a stunning specimen!

Another instructive example:

Also bear in mind that you don't have to share your early drafts with anyone. Be prepared to prune, revamp and redraft, ideally in a highly flammable notebook. And if you're ever feeling self-conscious about your lyrics, put a Human League record on and reassure yourself that some people really do get away with any old Jackson Pollocks.

Obviously the cab's voicing will have an effect on the overall sound, but I don't think it will prevent you from getting a warm, valvey tone. Most of the colouring of your tone will come from the amp itself; the cab will just emphasise certain aspects of that. I've been running my Ashdown into a similarly well-voiced, modern cab (a Berg 2x12), and it's certainly done no harm to the tone - if anything it's helped it to carry further!

Pretty much - "experienced practitioner" can often mean "Grand Wizard of the Darkest Arts of Gaffer Tape" in some of the places I've played!

Give thanks to any nearby deities that you have chosen an instrument with strings, as opposed to keys, reeds or brass tubes. Joking aside, one of the beauties of a stringed instrument like the (bass) guitar is that most songs can be shifted up or down a key by moving your hand up or down the neck a few frets. It's a shortcut, but you can go a surprisingly long way with it in some genres. But it does also help if you want to take the time to learn your scales: every type of scale, ultimately, has a "shape" on the neck which you can move up or down to move it into a different key. The key will change, but the shape won't, because the intervals between the notes are the same. So you can take it one step at a time - learn some of these shapes where the scale begins on the E-string, get used to moving those around, and then incorporate some of the other positions when you're more confident. Familiarity, unfortunately, will only come with practise!

It does depend on the sound you prefer of course, but there's a wealth of amp modelling / preamp / preamp+DI pedals which you can put in front of the DI. Never been keen on a dry DI signal myself, but when I was still mostly playing the London Toilet Circuit, I usually had to like or lump it; wish I'd known about even half of these clever little boxes back then!

Though in some venues, it's a pretty loose definition of what passes for a "drum kit"!

As several replies on this page have suggested physical violence upon or around the drummer's genitals, this response made me wince and cross my legs rather abruptly.

Do excuse me - it's Monday morning and Daylight Savings have been playing havoc with Mini-Moose's already chaotic sleeping patterns. Dominant Phrygian was the way my guitarist friend and theory buff described it to me. I'm mixing up the Phrygian Dominant with the Double Harmonic minor...which it happens to resemble very closely, give or take a flattened 7th between them!

Judging by variation in responses, it's probably fair to say that some people are more picky about it than others! It's never really bothered me personally, but obviously I can understand why you wouldn't want to own an instrument if the neck was uncomfortable to play, let alone if it actually made your left hand cramp up! I think I've only tried one bass, if memory serves, on which the neck was so small and fiddly that I couldn't see myself ever getting on with it.

Not wishing to derail, but how much of it is down to a loss of signal, and how much is the "perceived" volume? One of the things that characterises the "both on full" setting is the sudden chasm where all the mids used to be! Backing off one of the volumes a touch puts some definition back in the tone...or is this just the way the loading problem manifests itself acoustically, and that I really need to get my head round the electronics in a passive bass?

I'm sure we'll get on to Ritchie Blackmore's tasteful use of the 5th mode of the harmonic minor (sometimes known as the 'double Phrygian,' some tell me), in Gates of Babylon in due course!

I was just thinking of something like a BDI21 when you posted that! Those Behringers can be had pretty cheap; you could always use it to bypass the preamp by running the output into the effects return. That way only one bass "sees" the EQ on the your amp, and the other one has its EQ dealt with by the BDI21 (or similar), but both signals still go to the same power stage.

Admittedly it is a little embarrassing to run down a scale and end up in a key a fourth below the one I started in. It's good of you to offer to spare my shame so selflessly!

I did think exactly that as I was typing it. Matron!

I second TheGreek's warm welcome, and applaud your thoroughly entertaining takedown of our deeply troubled mother tongue! Just to reassue any people who might feel particularly precious about the state of the English language, it's not entirely alone in this respect - I remember an old office in which my French colleagues often mocked the "old-fashioned" Canadian French spoken by our particularly uptight Quebequois colleague. And in the office before that, there were two women from opposite ends of Germany, who preferred to converse in English because they found each other's Northern-German and Bavarian dialects too difficult to follow. Love the joke at the end - I will definitely be keeping that one for use on future occasions!

I don't mean to alarm you further, but while scrolling idly through the Instagrams on my commute this morning, it suggested a follow a bass-related hashtag, and the preview composite included a photo of none other than your Uberhorn - the very same photo that is your current profile picture on here! Unfortunately, when I clicked through, I couldn't find the full photo to identify the culprit.

Yesterday, I met Bassy (Nick) in a pub near Tower Bridge, and surreptitiously slid an envelope of money under the table in exchange for the beautiful Shuker he had up for sale. This is new territory for me. Not just owning a Shuker; this is my first five-string. I've been through several fretless basses, I've owned an active bass previously, but this is the first time I've owned one with a B-string. Isn't she lovely? Macassar Ebony, apparently. I've really only included this picture to get the luthiers in a lather. Head nicely bookmatched to the body, and what appears to be a brass nut. Your starter for ten: whose strings are these? The silk at the bridge ends is all blue, but at the top I have lilac (B), red (E), blue (A), black (D), green (G). They're rounds, and feel like a fairly standard gauge. Here's where the fun really begins. The onboard EQ is quite gentle, but offers a lot of very agreeable variation, especially with the sweepable mid in that stacked knob. Combined with the coil tap and blend, I could be playing around with these controls for days... The sound is quite glorious. I fancied something a bit more modern than my usual, and I certainly got that! I'm not sure whether it's the strings, the Wizard humbuckers, or that brass nut, but there's a wonderfully piano-like quality to some of the notes. I'm surprised how quickly I've got used to the wider fretboard, but I suspect the slender neck profile helps with that. (Now I just need to get out of the trap of going for the low F and accidentally hitting a bottom C...) At some point, if you're really unlucky, I'll get round to making a demo video, so you can hear it in actionUPDATE: scroll down for not one, but TWO demo videos. Until then, is a NBD thread really a NBD thread if you don't include a hokey picture of yourself playing the thing?

Met Nick yesterday in a pub, with an envelope full of cash. He swapped the envelope for a delightful Shuker fretless. Smashing feller, and a pleasure to do business with.

You could almost argue that Behringer represent a budget rival to a lot of products - *some* of their pedals sound as good as more expensive equivalents; *some* people find their BDI-21 an adequate substitute for a Sansamp; *some* of their bass amps sound surprisingly good; *some* of their microphones get rave reviews from recording engineers. I stress the word "some," because there are plenty of "misses" to balance their "hits" - and when they miss, they really miss. Tech21, Markbass, Shure, etc., need not quake in their boots just yet.

**Retraction** I have just bought a Shuker fretless 5. **Retraction Ends**