EliasMooseblaster

They were de rigeur on a lot of the early Gibson designs - there are many people on this very forum who'll tell you that any SG bass reissue isn't worth its salt unless it has the varitone fitted (or at least the bass choke option). I do wonder if their lack of uptake elsewhere correlates at all with Gibson's general struggle to produce commercially successful basses - the Thunderbird, after all, only has a passive tone control.

Largely due to the practical difficulty of dyeing Guinness, I'd imagine...

I know a couple of guitarists who swear by Laney's guitar amps, and I've always thought some of their bass stuff is better than it often gets credit for. My last solid state amp was a Laney RB combo, and considering its price point it was a great bit of kit. If only they'd made a smaller valve head for bass, I might have stuck with them!

I try to reassure myself that I'm going through the other side of an oscillation. For the first half of my bass-playing life, I had no money. I was doing everything as cheaply as possible: getting a new bass meant selling a cheap one to fund the purchase of a slightly less cheap one, or scouring eBay for the parts to assemble one myself. Then in the second half, I had disposable income, and it all started to go downhill. I'm now at the point where the two halves are equal in length. I hope the GAS will settle down, and I won't keep itching for something different... ...unfortunately, I did try a Sandberg a few weeks ago, and I'm struggling to get it off my mind. I also quite fancy an upright. And a piano. God help me...

I think DADGAD is one of those tunings that lends itself to slide and other open-chord styles. If you've got used to playing in Open D or Open G it makes a refreshing change; if you're coming in cold from standard, it's a real sod to re-think!

May I just say what an encouraging (and occasionally entertaining) thread this has been. Now, to business: what advice do you have for somebody with a deep bass register who's pretty sure he can feel a cold coming on but is going to have to sing a couple of hours' worth of lead vocals in a couple of days' time?

As luck would have it, Youtube automatically brought that one up after Burlesque had finished - I don't normally let it autoplay but it does have its advantages sometimes!

I had to double-check that was the same Family that recorded Doll's House and Song For Me - quite a change in their sound over the years! (But yeah, that John Wetton bassline is superb, isn't it?)

I will not claim any expertise on these subjects, but I did find the grain-filing method in French polishing to be quite effective: a rough coat of shellac on the wood, then powdered pumice (dissolved in a minimal amount of alcohol) on a pad to chew up that rough coat and work it into the grain. It certainly does wonders for building up a gloss finish. I don't know if you could adapt a similar technique to other finishes/oils/varnishes...?* * because, pleased as I am with the shellac finishes on two of my basses, I won't deny that the process can be a couple of weeks' worth of laborious ballache...

Perhaps we'll have to arrange a duet of Dirty Old Town via Skype! I suspected I may come a-cropper with other BCers gigging for St Paddy's - hopefully it won't be too long before the next one!

O ye of SW London and Surrey, what plans have ye made for this forthcoming St Patrick's Day? None? Good. Then you're free to come and join me for an evening in The Norbiton, where I'll be providing the evening's entertainment with my solo project, The Elephant Collective. I'll be setting up and kicking off shortly after the rugby finishes, around 7.30. The event is free, the variety of beer is wide, and the pub is comfortable. I sound an awful lot like the bloke on the recordings at http://ralphbeeby.bandcamp.com and will be fleshing out the sets with various bits of Ralph McTell, Davey Graham, Elmore James, Muddy Waters, Tom Waits, et cetera.

Try the seventh (B) - it adds unresolved tension to the C chord, but also serves tidily as the third of the following chord, so the resolution feels very natural.

I can't remember if Brian Wilson had got heavily into having two bass parts by this point, or if it was later (circa Smile) but there may also be an upright bass and/or Fender VI competing with Kaye's picked Precision for attention!

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is very similar to my experience of the older, passive Model T - when I tried it in the shop, I couldn't quite get over the amount of honking midrange it had to spare. But then, that was the kind of thing I was looking for, so I rather fell in love with it there and then. In a band setting, I did find myself rolling off the tone control quite a bit more than normal; fortunately it's one of the more responsive passive tone controls I've had on a bass. It's worth noting that the P pickup sits slightly further back than it would on a "standard" Precision, which might explain some of the extra bark - particularly as the passive Model T had Duncans instead of EMGs, and it sounds like you're describing a similar tone to the one I'm familiar with!

They certainly are beefy. I recently put one into my EB3 to replace the stock mudbucker - it's like going from braising steak to prime rib!

Nice...is that a DP120 up by the neck?

*blows dust off ancient thread* I did it. I put two more pickups in my old Frankenbass, and now I have a P-J-J.

I think I might request to be buried with mine...

I've always been astonished by how many of my colleagues seem content to eat lunch at their desks. Never found it enjoyable myself - the staggering thing is that most of them are still looking at their screens rather than their food!

Mea culpa! The greatest epiphany I ever had was realising that most of the tone I was seeking was in the mids, not the bass frequencies, and that actually it was perfectly acceptable to dial the bass back for a clearer sound. Sadly it took me years to realise this...

Perhaps not so bizarre - I think Wakeman actually toured with Sabbath, possibly circa Born Again, when they had Ian Gillan on vocals. (Allegedly hidden off to the side of the stage behind a curtain, because they didn't consider keyboards to look sufficiently rock'n'roll...)

"Yes" with an "if." If you have a good cab, a CTM-30 will be fine. If your music suits a mid-heavy, overdriven sound instead a deep, throbbing dub-reggae type tone, a CTM-30 will be fine. I did several pub gigs running my LB-30 into a not-particularly-efficient Laney 1x15, and wasn't struggling for volume. I've done some bigger pub gigs since moving up to a Berg 2x12, and I feel like I could go bigger. That said, my preferred tone is more John Entwistle than Jah Wobble, so I can see why Ashdown are hesitant to market it as a gigging amp.

I hadn't heard that version of events, but I can believe it. I know he was quite vocal about his dislike of the design...of course, I realise now that it could have been to keep up appearances in the divorce court!

See also the SG. Initially introduced as a sort of "Les Paul-lite," but it caused such a stir that even Les Paul himself demanded his name be taken off the headstock - hence the change of name to "SG." Apparently, the design was nearly axed (no pun intended) until a few prominent players took a shine to them, and they started to prove more popular with the public.