EliasMooseblaster

[quote name='lowdown' timestamp='1485187287' post='3221901'] Dean Marley SR2000, 47-[b]127[/b], Steel Round Wounds (Use on my Fretless and Fretted). [/quote] Is that 127 a relatively light B, or an insanely heavy E?

'afternoon Cedric*, Another Belgophile here - I love your beer, your chocolate, Brel, Grappelli and Hooverphonic. Welcome to the forum! *Apologies, I can't seem to do accents on this keyboard...

45-105 - really just through force of habit, I think. I've played basses with lighter (40-100) and "hybrid" gauges (45-100) in the past, but the only time I noticed a real difference in the feel was a bass strung with 50-110. But according to Rotosound, a 45-65-80-105 set is "standard" gauge, and I've always been happy enough with that. (Generally I've found a much more noticeable difference moving between gauges on guitar than on bass!)

Some very good suggestions here, ladies and gentlemen, but I think you've all overlooked a really obvious one: [url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"]https://www.youtube....h?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ[/url] /drops mic /runs for cover

[i]Six [/i]by Mansun. The NME referred to it as a "taste apocalypse"; they loved [i]Attack of the [/i][i]Grey Lantern[/i], probably because it was a much better fit to the narrow definition of cookie-cutter indie and Britpop they had decided were the only fashionable genres of music worth promoting at the time. "Don't Mansun realise prog-rock died out 20 years ago?", they opined. Well the NME can do one as far as I'm concerned (not just regarding that review, but more generally). [i]Six[/i] is exactly the sort of sprawling, schizophrenic hot mess that drew me into progressive rock in the first place. If Mansun had pressed on in that direction (and, you know, not fallen out with each other), I do wonder whether they could have been favourably compared with Radiohead further down the line. Oh, and since a few people have brought up Deep Purple... [quote name='guyl' timestamp='1485004852' post='3220304'] Also saw Deep Purple live after the Abandon album. Everyone around me moaned that Steve Morse wasn't Ritchie Blackmore. But he didn't try to be, and I thought did a great job. A refreshing new take on Deep Purple classics. [/quote] ...I really quite liked [i]Abandon[/i]. A bit patchy in places, but as long as you're braced for the fact that it won't sound like Deep Purple MkII at their peak, it's a pretty solid album. Ditto [i]Rapture from the Deep.[/i]

[quote name='pfretrock' timestamp='1484769505' post='3218339'] B Street Band have dropped out, we now have Not Trump Rock [url="http://www.planetrock.com/news/rock-news/audioslave-reform-to-protest-dystopian-nightmare-donald-trump-at-anti-inaugural-ball/"]http://www.planetroc...inaugural-ball/[/url] [/quote] I would love to see Audioslave live...but I think for this occasion they should rename themselves Trump Against The Machine.

Met Dave in a pub a couple of days ago for a not-at-all-suspicious-looking exchange of a Telecaster for an envelope of cash. Smashing feller; and I'm delighted with the guitar itself.

[quote name='fleabag' timestamp='1484755835' post='3218156'] No moose, i didnt get much info from the inside regarding those sorts of things, because it was a mini brewery when i worked there. Just 2 small-ish vats, one brewer who was also the owner, a secretary ( part time ) and a driver. In fact when i said i lived opposite the brewery, that was later when they got big, and moved their operation to opposite my back garden. The only info i have is from the old days of working for Chris Moss ( the owner / brewer when it was small ) and he was a friend too. The story he gave me was that another guy started the brewery under a different name, which was called The Glenny Brewery, after the thieving original owner. I knew him too, but not as a friend. He eventually got my pal Chris in as a partner when the business was still tiny ( I cannot remember at which point it changed name to the Wychwood Brewery, but i think Chris did that ) Then the other guy decided to sell up his share to Chris and promptly plimsolled himself off to Canada. Sometime later it became evident why. This guy had been cooking the books and had also been stuffing the Lec company and other utilities. When the paperwork / threats finally landed on Chris's lap, he was in debt to the tune of £77,000 Chris didnt really deal with that side of things in early days of the brewery being just the 2 of them. But he got himself sorted after a few years, and decided that the best way forward was to take on some financial brewery wizzkids. Wychwood took off like snot off a wet shiny shovel At one point they owned something like 49 pubs. Sadly Chris died after falling downstairs at home, though i believe he may have been a tad drunk at the time. I went to his funeral. Very sad after all he'd been through, though he did see his baby take off, if only for a short while [/quote] Thank you for that; I had no idea the business had such a sad backstory to it. Perhaps unsurprisingly they didn't go into much detail on the brewery tour, other than mentioning that the original founder had passed away. Good to know that he was still around to enjoy some of his success, if only for a short while as you say.

[quote name='SpondonBassed' timestamp='1484772691' post='3218382'] You'll know The Brunswick then. Nuff said. [url="http://www.brunswickderby.co.uk/"]http://www.brunswickderby.co.uk/[/url] [/quote] I do indeed; was very impressed with that one, and the Alexandra round the corner.

[quote name='fleabag' timestamp='1484753959' post='3218119'] On the other hand, is a pint of Wychwood's Dogs Bollocks, a brewery i used to live opposite and actually work for before they became huge-ish [/quote] I've not had that stuff in years. See also Fiddler's Elbow and Black Wych; they are sorely missed. Never been sure whether it was Wychwood themselves that dropped a lot of those old recipes, or whether it due to pressure from Marston to devote more capacity to making more Hobgoblin...did you get much info from the inside?

[quote name='Billy Apple' timestamp='1484747011' post='3218019'] No, no.. Not at all. Come back, come back and tell us more! [/quote] Oh, well if you're sure... [quote name='LayDownThaFunk' timestamp='1484746101' post='3218000'] Real ale, craft ale? Same thing isn't it? Real ale is ale drank in old man pubs. Craft ale is ale drank in 'new world' bars/pubs. [/quote] ...one key difference that the lay drinker will appreciate is the taste. I tried a new one just the other day in a pub local to me - a guest beer, brewed in the area, available in a pub that otherwise mostly served Young's beers. Quite simply, it wasn't ready. It basically tasted of raw hops, and I found that very disappointing, because if they'd just left it to mature for two or three more weeks before shipping, it probably would have become something quite pleasant. The difference is that the head brewers at Young's (or Wells & Young's, as it is now) would never have let a beer out in that condition. There is even a one-man operation brewing in the remains of the original site of Young's (surely it doesn't get more "craft" than that?) who I would trust not to let a beer out in that condition. I'd even expect most ale drinkers to take it back to the bar. But if you served it in the right sort of bar in Hackney, the sort of demographic that invests heavily in craft moustache wax would stroke their designer stubble at it and mutter things like, "Ooh yes, very hoppy...challenging flavour, very bold...is this flavour in some way ironic?" as opposed to admitting that nobody in their right mind would finish it. That refusal to admit that perhaps this little micro-brewery needs to get some advice on [i]actually making beer[/i] is, for my ha'porth, what separates "traditional" from "craft." (And again, I say this with the caveat that a lot of these "craft" breweries do make great beer...in fact most of the ones in Derby are excellent. Perhaps it's a London thing...)

[quote name='Cato' timestamp='1484674727' post='3217408'] -Thread derail- Well to be fair it is a bit "Emperor's new clothes". First we had Real Ale snobs , when Real Ale become commonplace they moved on to micro breweries and now micro breweries aren't exclusive enough it's all about craft beer, which as far as I can tell is all about putting something suspiciously cloudy in a tiny can then charging punters more than the price of a pint of draught for it. If I still drank I'd be starting the 'Campaign for Cheap Sh*te Lager'. -Thread derail- [/quote] As a card-carrying Real Ale Snob (I often worry that the Viz "Real Ale T**ts" sketch is based on my friends and me...), I take particular exception the "craft" movement because they hijacked a clear, well-defined concept and turned it into the trendy, style-over-substance ballache that it is today. Real ale was simple: if the beer was still fermenting in the cask or bottle when it was sold to you, i.e., it contained live yeast, it was real ale. "Craft," I'm told, can be any beer which is "produced on a smaller scale, ideally handmade, with fresh ingredients and passion." Which could mean absolutely f@*#ing anything, quite frankly. A lot of it is, as you say, Emperor's New Clothes through and through. I don't want people to stop experimenting with new recipes, but there's clearly a very different ethos between the small, new real ale breweries (e.g., Sambrook's of Battersea) and some of the short-lived startups in the railway arches around Bermondsey. Obviously the danger with being "traditional" is that you never do anything new or exciting; I would counter that by saying that you've got to learn to walk before you can run. There are some promising breweries making some excellent beer in some of those arches, but sadly there are plenty of others who never took the time to learn how to make a decent pint of bitter, and just assumed that if they copied everything Brew Dog did, they'd be seen as cool and groundbreaking. Sorry, I'm turning into the pub bore here, aren't I? Just turn me around and point me back towards my table in the corner, I've got a pint of mild to finish...

*cries* First they flooded all the band nights on the toilet circuit, insisting that even though they sounded exactly the three bands on the bill before them, their music was different because they'd applied the "post-" prefix to whatever genre they were failing to bastardise, and that it was own fault that I didn't "get" why it was so different. Then they came for my real ale, except they called it "craft beer" and acted like they'd invented it overnight as they all desperately tried to copy Brew Dog. Now they come for my music venues. When does it stop?

[quote name='chrismuzz' timestamp='1484267778' post='3214296'] John Entwistle played an Explorer bass for bloody ages didn't he? I don't recall anyone criticising him for playing something seemingly inappropriate [/quote] Yep, not only an Explorer but also T-birds and converted 'Fenderbirds,' a wide variety of pointy-looking Alembics, as well as a couple of rarely-seen axe-shaped and spider-shaped basses. And that's before he co-designed the Buzzard...

[quote name='Tee' timestamp='1483973629' post='3211556'] I really don't like the look of the 2017 EB. I wish Gibson would issue some new basses with one pickup only, placed in the sweet spot, rather than two pickups either side of it. [/quote] It does look more like something you'd expect Aria or Yamaha to produce. Not that this is a bad thing, but I think it's putting people off slightly as it's not what they expect from Gibson! However, a flick through Rob van den Broek's Gibson Bass Book makes me think it might be an attempt to revive the Gibson Continental, which apparently was exhibited but never put into production...

Yep, another vote for "either" here, and like several others I'm equally happy to be referred to as a "bass guitarist." Similarly, anybody wishing to refer to our drummer and me collectively is welcome to use "the rhythm section" just as much as I'd be happy for them to refer to our guitarist and me as "the guitarists." I might object to the use of "complete arse," but I don't know if I'd have a strong case against it...

[quote name='Yank' timestamp='1483004644' post='3203987'] Where do you stand on using tablets onstage for words/chord changes? I'm in a new band where vocalists and guitarists use them. I'm old school and prefer to memorize my parts. [/quote] I suspect this thread is going to go the same way as the infamous debate on music stands! For my own ha'porth, at a jazz jam a couple of years ago, I found a tablet with an electronic copy of the Real Book was a lot easier than frantically trying to flip through an original Real Book and rebalance the thing on the stand. But that's a situation where you might reasonably expect some people to be using a music stand anyway. On the other hand, most rock bands live or die by their ability to engage with their audience. In those situations, staring at a tablet for your chords is a bit like putting the privacy screen down in a taxi and then wondering why your conversation with the driver is cut short!

[quote name='alembic1989' timestamp='1482858699' post='3203100'] : SEEKING SEX-SYMBOL TYPE BASSIST!! [/quote] [b] [size=4]oxymoron[/size][/b] [ok-si-mawr-on, -mohr-] pl.oxymorons. Rhetoric. 1.a figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous, seemingly self-contradictory effect, as in “cruel kindness” or “to make haste slowly.”.

Got my copy on christmas day and I've hardly been able to put it down since - there are some fascinating and beautiful specimens in there! Great job, sir!

[quote name='Low End Bee' timestamp='1482507986' post='3201177'] One lipstick pup per string so technically 4. [/quote] ...and yet only one volume control! It's an eccentric example, no two ways about it, though Bootsy's five-pickup curio is still in the lead on this one!

[quote name='Tweedledum' timestamp='1482476814' post='3200828'] True. OK, back to three pickups. The Fender Rascal comes to mind: [/quote] That's the badger! When I first posted this thread I could have sworn I'd seen something that essentially resembled a Strat bass - thought I'd imagined it, or it had been a dubious conversion job. [quote name='Dazed' timestamp='1482494179' post='3201010'] A few exotic manufacturers spring to mind: Basslab [/quote] Now that second bass (red one) chimes with what I was thinking of...basically I was wondering if you could set one up to blend 1 & 3 to get an EB-3 type tone, 1+2 to get a faintly Rick-esque sound, and 2+3 for a Jazz-type tone. Probably wishful thinking, as all three of those examples have completely different pickup impedances. But I don't doubt it would be fun to play around with!

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1482361779' post='3199992'] Every bass is costed down to the last screw so more pickups equals more expense. Do you actually get a better sound with three pickups? Actually you don't need more pickups to get a better sound. A better or active EQ will do that. Plus if enough people show an interest it will be done. Until the interest is in the hundreds it won't get done. [/quote] This is probably where I got my thinking a bit back-to-front - I was thinking about the tonal variations afforded by a Strat, and how many bassists like to "sculpt" their tone, but then of course a decent active EQ could achieve the same breadth of results and a lot more in-between! (Can you tell I only own passive basses?)

Just a thought that occurred to me: why did three-pickup basses not catch on more widely? Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the simplicity of a Precision as much as the next man, but after looking at the pickup configurations on my two P/J basses, I looked at the gap between the front pickup and the neck and thought, "you could squeeze another one in there..." The Burns Marquee and Fender VI are suitable evidence that the idea was tried in the instrument's relative infancy, and Stu Hamm's Edge basses are an example of it in a more 'boutique' setting. And of course, your guitarist will probably have a Strat or similar in his/her collection. I just wonder why more manufacturers haven't tried it.