EliasMooseblaster

If we're just talking about the modes of the major scale... The Ionian ("major"), Mixolydian and Aelioan ("natural minor") are probably the most commonly heard. In fact, the Mixolydian and Aeolian probably make up the majority of pop and rock music. (The flattened 7th in the Mixolydian lends itself to a lot of modern chord progressions, and when did you last hear something on the radio that used the melodic or harmonic minor?) Given their similarity to major and minor scales, you can write with the Dorian and Lydian relatively easily. The Dorian sounds particularly good in a folk context; the Lydian gives you a slightly more wistful-sounding major-ish palette. The Phrygian is handier than you might think. It sounds very "Spanish," but if you look closely you see that it still contains all the notes from the minor pentatonic. You could let your guitarist widdle freely in the Phrygian over a 12-bar blues, as long as you warn the rhythm players to stay off the 9ths. ...and then there's the Locrian. Always the last one to get picked for the team, but I'm led to believe that Bjork used it to great effect in Army of Me.

Two for the price of one here: some feet and a broken bottle. Story goes that Keith couldn't come up with anything to go over what is, essentially, a John Lee Hooker-style stomping blues before the chorus kicks in, so they settled for some footstomps and a few cymbal washes. Perhaps ironically for a Who song, I think it works better this way - I can't really imagine it working with the usual cascade of toms and cymbals that served their other songs so well.

I happened to notice a few very nice-looking Schecter and Sandberg fretted fives on the FS section. I can speak very highly of both companies' four-string basses, but I've not tried any of their fives. Not that I'd be an expert either way...I will not become a five-string owner until Wednesday afternoon.

^ now there's a good point: technically I bought two guitars last year, as I also managed to track down the specific model of acoustic guitar that Mrs Mooseblaster used to own before we met. It made for quite a challenging hunt, but also gave me the satisfaction of searching around to buy a guitar, even if it wasn't for me in the end. I'm looking forward to the day that Mini Mooseblaster is old enough to take an interest in learning bass, so I can take him shopping for a Chowny short-scale...

Almost enough for a wall of Wal?

Well, it arrived last week, and I'm delighted with it. As far as my ear can judge, it does exactly what I expect a Tubescreamer to do. The difference between the 9 and the 808 is subtle but audible, and for less than £30 I couldn't be happier. That said... ...and of course, it is just another cheap clone of a circuit that's been around for somewhere in the region of 40 years. It's been copied and modded to buggery, so the existence of a cheap Chinese clone is hardly surprising. (Even the switch between the two modes isn't an innovation, as JHS have fully outdone them with the Byobu, which offers 9 different TS variants in one pedal!) It does what I want, but it does nothing new, much like my other economy-donkey pedals. If I were a serious effects enthusiast, I'd still be looking to the boutique makers for new ways to preen, squash and bend my sound.

Exactly...it's simply designed to encourage you to pose like a rockstar!

He's a funny one, is Bonzo: I can see why people like him, and I can admire his playing from a technical point of view. Just something about his feel which seems a bit leaden (ledden?) to me. But then I have always preferred the jazz-trained drummers like Baker, Mitchell, Densmore, etc., so perhaps I prefer Paice's more relaxed feel. (Incidentally, are there any Grand Magus fans on here? Their current drummer - or whichever one played on The Hunt - sounds almost exactly like Paice...at least when he's not doing the double-kick stuff.)

I do feel like Paice gets massively underrated as a drummer. I suppose, just as Zeppelin overshadowed Purple as a whole in terms of popularity, so Bonham overshadowed Paice - which seems as a shame, as Bonham's playing doesn't really do it for me, but Paice's playing always seemed to be on the money.

Yeah, whatever I said a few weeks ago about "being good this year"...I might have to retract that fairly soon.

You can atone for your sins by posting some pictures when it arrives!

I guess for the "pub band" situation, the key is make the bass solo part of the entertainment. My Generation is a great example of how to do it, where the bass solos are snappy, two-bar breaks which work as a call-and-response between the bass and the rest of the band. If you changed that out for a full 32-bar break for the bass player to go through his/her whole book of chops, then you'd lose that pace and the queue for the bar would probably grow quite quickly. (So at least the landlord would be happy...)

It's a contraction of an old instruction that Geordie bandleaders used to give to their rhythm guitarists.

The string tension is likely to be ridiculous if you bring those four strings up a whole fourth from their intended pitch...I would have some concerns about the safety of the neck!

A cab with a built-in motor and wheels on the back, so I could lie it down and ride it to gigs, using the amp as a backrest and the bass guitar as a punt to steer it.

There's no shame in using an open string to give your ear some reference and reassurance...if the key of the song permits, of course!

I humbly beg to differ...

OK, time for a daft question. I can see why these microtonal adjustments make the difference they do, but it looks like, if you drew a line of best fit through the frets, they'd all be more-or-less parallel. Contrast this with the multi-scale/fanned-fret approach adopted by people like Dingwall, where none of the frets are parellel, and which presumably also helps to minimise these intonation discrepancies - or is that also try to achieve a more balanced string tension at the same time?

This problem sounds familiar. The crucial question is: what does everybody want from this? This is always a dangerm because everybody joins these startups with a vague agreement that they'd like to make a success of the project. The trouble is, they never get round to discussing specifics. This is not a failing on anybody's part: it's just that most people don't necessarily come into things with the well-prescribed idea that they want a given band to be, e.g., "the most popular early-krautrock covers band in Daventry, playing no fewer than eight nights a week, and ideally earning £7,000 per show." I can only speculate. It may be that the singer enjoyed those gigs so much, he now thinks this band could put itself in a position to become his primary source of income; if the bassist has a family and a new job, then he may have other ideas. It may even be that they all want to make it their primary concern, but they all have different thresholds for being prepared to leave their jobs and dedicate themselves to it full-time (I speak from experience, this does happen). Find out want everyone wants out of this project. Let them be honest; don't let one member shoot down another for "not wanting it enough" (read: being pragmatic) or "holding us back from our dreams" (read: my ego must be massaged). It should become clearer what needs to happen. Hopefully you can compromise, and the band won't need to start shedding members, but it's better to get this straightened out before things can properly boil over.

So are we any clearer on what in fornication's name a "minimill" is? At first I assumed he had just mis-spelt a popular brand of ice lolly...

It's the only amp that has ever forced me to make sure I'm properly dressed before trying to take a picture of it!

Though I see you have also fallen into the trap of photgraphing your reflection in the shiny metal front panel!

^ this will probably be the crucial question. They've survived for a long time by being the only companies that could offer "that sound" or "that effect," but now there are plenty of far cheaper options. I started shopping around for Tube Screamers last week - it's a guitar tone I've always liked - saw the options, and the prices, and wondered which model to go for...and then found out that instead of forking out £100, I could get a Chinese-made clone for <£30, which had TS9 and TS808 modes at the flick of a switch. (Obviously I won't know how good it is until it arrives, but other reviews have been quite positive...) The TS9B, on the other hand, I've not found replicated anywhere else. Seem to recall I paid ~£150 for that five or six years ago. Are we into boutique territory at that price point? Either way, that's a tone I've not found in any other bass OD pedal. It's not even an esoteric sound, but if nobody else is doing it, then nobody else will undercut them. (I realise this is probably the point at which you all bombard me with links to cheap Bass Tube Screamer clones...)