EliasMooseblaster

[quote name='Meddle' timestamp='1480199179' post='3182527'] It is possible that only the bass amp in his bi-amp rig was committed to tape for whatever reason. [/quote] This has been mentioned a couple of times now, and has got me wondering...was he actually bi-amping this early? I am fully prepared to stand corrected, but I thought he only started splitting the signal when he moved over to Sunn amps and more exotic basses.

From the fact you've mentioned 'squealing' very specifically, I wonder if it might be dirt in one of the pots on the front. Very different beast, but I have a knackered old solid-state amp that crackles and squeals when I play with the parametric EQ control - could be something similar in this case, that you could very easily test. Though as Sean says, best get it to a tech!

[quote name='crez5150' timestamp='1479724330' post='3178671'] I'd say this is pretty normal..... I'm booking theatre gigs for next year where I have to pay a % up front for the hire of the theatre/staff/tech crew. We'll sell tickets and make good money on merch..... same thing. [/quote] I guess the big difference in your case is that once you've hired the theatre and associated crew, the night, and its success, are very much in your control. You know how much effort you have to put into publicising each show to be confident of selling enough tickets to break even, and you can probably predict approximate merch sales based on previous shows in that area. In the OP's case, they're always going to be the support band on this tour, so they'd effectively be investing a hefty sum of money only to relinquish total control of the operation. If the headline act can't turn a profit on the shows then I wouldn't expect the fallout to be any better for the supporting band(s). Maybe this is just my inner control freak coming out...obviously if the headline act have got fans champing at the bit to buy tickets everywhere then things could work out just fine, but I'd want to be confident of that before committing six grand to it!

[quote name='christhammer666' timestamp='1479725766' post='3178694'] @lozz they did a headline tour abroad last year and lost a fortune [/quote] So their plan is to go and do a support tour abroad this year, and lose a fortune upfront? I take all the points made above that this seemed to be normal practice in days gone by, but I can't see any way round the simple logic that if you're stumping out six grand to get on the tour then you have to be reasonably certain that you can make six grand back. The fact that they lost a fortune on their last tour doesn't fill me with confidence - I would be asking very serious questions about what they plan to do differently this time. Make sure they've got a credible idea of what their expected return is, and don't take "great exposure" for an answer!

I usually just tune them all a semitone sharp when they first go on, then put them back to concert pitch after an hour or two. Usually does the trick for bass strings - thin, slinky guitar strings are another matter, but they usually go out over the course of a gig anyway, regardless of when they went on.

One last outing for the year: [b]Cherry White[/b] are returning to a familiar old stomping ground, The Spice of Life on the first Friday in December. For those that don't know the venue, it's a decent boozer just off Charing Cross Road (behind the theatre that's kind-of-opposite Macari's) Also featuring: The Alibi: A rock n roll band from Dartford. With heavy riffs and piercing vocals yet melodic and a great live performance Dirt Royal: A three piece Rock and Roll band from Brighton. Performing together since 2013, finding them selves in 2014 releasing their debut Album 'This is Now' with Time For Action Records. Embarking on several Tours around the U.K and Germany, receiving great results Elen C Sh#rp: Born in a small town, in Northern Greece, near Turkey and Bulgaria, called Didimoticho. Her songs are inspired by the themes of life and love, and the polarity between light and darkness within the human psyche. More info at [url="http://substancegigs.com/showdetails.php?sid=620&vid&pa=1"]http://substancegigs...id=620&vid&pa=1[/url] Doors open at 6pm, and it's £6 entry. We sound a bit like this: [url="http://soundcloud.com/cherrywhitemusic"]http://soundcloud.com/cherrywhitemusic[/url]

Depends what you mean by "aggressive" - if that means plenty of "clank" then Rotosound RS66 nickels will give you plenty of that - but slightly less than the SS ones. Better still, I think they're available in short-scale as well. I thought the Dunlops did a fair job, though I've only used them once.

[quote name='TimR' timestamp='1479129703' post='3174120'] Someone with more theory will help me out but: Say you're playing in C major. The only other major chords available to you are Fmaj and GMaj. The IV and V. You could play minor chords but that really affects the mood of the song. All the 'other' chords you bolt into a song after those 3 are really just inversions with added notes or passing chords leading to one of the three. . [/quote] A lot of songs from various different genres also use the VIm (so Am, in this case) without dramatically altering the mood, but yes, strictly speaking you're out of other major chords once you've used the I, IV and V - it depends how loyally you want to stick to the scale. Not sure I follow your point about the 'other' chords though. Granted there are plenty of common notes between the IIIm and the I, for example - there's only a 'C' between Em and Cmaj7, but there's nothing to stop you sticking in an Em in your progression. Unless I've misunderstood your post?

[quote name='lefrash' timestamp='1478883918' post='3172457'] I seem to remember reading somewhere that on a pj bass the p pickup is positioned differently in order to get a better mix with the j pick Up, so it's not a direct replacement to a good old fashioned p bass. Ive got a p/j jazz and I think I might be right, I don't think it quite has the same tonal qualities as an actual p bass when the j pickup is rolled off. Although ive never owned a good p bass so can't totally compare. [/quote] I've just measured the placement on my Precision copy and my Schecter (P/J). Based on this very narrow sample size alone, you may be right: the P pickup is a little over a centimetre further back on the Schecter. Of course, neither of these are Fender basses and are therefore unlikely to be representative of the original design!

I will suggest this with the full disclaimer that I'm not a big fan of Country generally, and so am not professing any expertise, but... Stu Cook? I know Creedence Clearwater Revival are a bit of a stretch away from Country, but there's a lot of Country-sounding stuff on their later albums, and he was always very good at serving the song while also throwing in a bit of interesting but subtle variation. Might be worth poring over a few of his basslines from [i]Willy and the Poorboys [/i]or[i] Pendulum.[/i]

I can heartily recommend the Blackstar HT-1R for home practice. Even with just one watt, it goes louder than I could probably get away with at home, but not so loud that I can't run it reasonably hard and get a good spectrum of tones from clean to overdriven. The only thing that may put you off is the "baked-in" tone - a lot of people on here aren't fond of it, and it's controlled by a single tone/shape knob. Basically it gives you a mid-scoop at one end and a mid-hump at the other. (Personally I like the tone, so I'm happy with the limited EQ options.) It does also have jack outputs on the back for external speaker, headphone and line out (will have to check the latter), so you could always make it louder with a larger speaker cab and maybe an external power amp.

Nipping at the heels of last week's gig, we've had another London booking in at rather short notice - we're returning to the rather eclectic Bar FM, in Shepherd's Bush, supporting Alex and the Tourists, who are launching their new album, and Melyssa Amorim, who's opening the night with an acoustic set. Bar FM: 184 Uxbridge Road - just off Shep's Bush Green Friday 4th November - doors open 7pm Entry £5 Facebook doodah: https://www.facebook.com/events/328668620827647/

Looking back, it's quite evident how my backline has correlated with the amount of disposable I had to hand! I started out plugging my very first bass into a Squier SP-10 - a little 10W guitar practice amp that definitely couldn't cope with the low frequencies I was putting into it. Fortunately the music shop I bought my old Squier Bronco from had promised to keep an eye out for any cheap bass amps that came their way, and it was only a few weeks before they put me in touch with a chap who was trying to shift a Laney Session 40 Bassman. This began a long dalliance with Laney, mainly due to the fact that their amps were relatively cheap - in fact, I still have the Bassman. A couple of years later, I started rehearsing regularly with a rock band and realised that a 40W solid state combo, with a single 12" speaker, was not going to cut the mustard against two guitars and an exuberant drummer. Looking through mail order listings in a guitar magazine, it became apparent that very few brands of amplifier were within my budget - Laney were one of them, and having had a good experience with the Bassman, I invested in an HCM-120B. That amp must have served me well for a good seven or eight years before it started to fail - I even got the chance to push those 120W to their limits, when we played the Covent Garden Arts Theatre. (I have no idea whether anyone could hear me at the back.) As often seems to be the case with these things, it started to give up the ghost shortly before a gig, but fortuitously I stumbled across a very good deal on another Laney - an RB8 - as I frantically took to Fleabay. By this stage, however, I'd had the luxury of playing through a few valve bass amps. In particular, when we recorded our first album we discovered that the studio had an old Fender Bassman. I'd also become aware of a growth in the market for low-wattage valve guitar amps. Fender Blues Juniors seemed to be increasingly popular among the guitarists I knew, and I started sniffing around for a valve amp I might be able to afford, which ideally would also not be an absolute back-breaker to move around. I was a little disappointed to discover that Laney's only valve series was the Nexus, a bulky 400W beast that was difficult to track down and far beyond my budget. After some research, it became apparent that Ashdown offered a better answer to my search. In the first instance, I bought a CTM-15, and connected this to the single 15" speaker in my old HCM-120B. After one rehearsal I took it back to Guitar Guitar and took them up on their kind offer to trade it in for a Little Bastard 30. I know all too well that it's not a suitable amp for big gigs, but it fared surprisingly well against our guitarist's Blues Junior. I still kept the RB8 around for outdoor gigs, though. Trouble was, he got his hands on a Blackstar Artisan. Same wattage as the Fender, but a much bigger sound. Suddenly my warm valve tone was being drowned out, and when I saw a CTM-100 for sale on here, I pounced. Once again, we were more evenly matched. So confident was I in this setup that I decided to sell the Laney RB8. There's always something though, isn't there? At a gig in Bracknell last year, with no PA support, I found the sound wasn't carrying all that well. I began to suspect the speaker might be the problem - just the one 15" cone, which had come with a fairly inexpensive amp. I asked the collective oracle of Basschat, and an excellent offer on a Bergantino 2 x 12 fell into my lap. Problem solved, it seems. The modular nature of it is quite nice as well - at one of the smaller gigs over the summer, I found the LB30 was ample to drive the new cab, whilst at bigger gigs I can bring the bigger head and put it through its paces a bit more.

[quote name='Andyjr1515' timestamp='1477826540' post='3164620'] Would've been even more of a pain in the proverbial without 6feet7's kind gift of that very nicely made extender bar! [/quote] On that note, can I ask a stupid question? Are these extenders for solving string tensions issues, or intonation/scale length? I can see how it would help to add extra length to the string's total run, but then I always thought the fine-tuning of the scale length was determined by the position of the bridge saddle. (And just to add to everyone else's comments: I've been following this thread in earnest anticipation of any photo updates - this truly is a thing of beauty!)

Gosh, I've not been very good at updating this thread, have I? Well, last Tuesday we played our (approximately) 200th show, which was at the 100 Club: [attachment=230917:CW 100 club-36.jpg] [attachment=230916:CW 100 club-37.jpg] [attachment=230915:CW 100 club-38.jpg] [attachment=230914:CW 100 club-40.jpg] Photos courtesy of Dyana Bittar

I couldn't help but notice that one reasonably popular mod for a Jazz bass is to install a series/parallel switch in the circuit to give an even wider range of tones (and, depending on who you ask, make it sound more like a Precision). I was wondering what the possibilities might be for performing a similar mod on my trust old Epi EB-3. I don't know whether Epiphone have released variations on the model I've got, but just to clarify, it's the same arrangement as you'd expect on an SG or Les Paul guitar - two pickups, separate tone and volume, and a pickup selector switch for neck, both-in-parallel, and bridge. (The only difference is that it's a chicken-head rather than the toggle switches they put on the guitars.) 1. I expect the simplest solution is to simply replace the pickup selector with a s/p switch and just control pickup volumes with the knobs. I assume that's not likely to cause problems if I want to solo one of the pickups...? 2. Bonus points for anybody who knows a component or method I could use to add a fourth position to the existing selector (so, neck, bridge, both-parallel, both-series) - some other websites I've looked at suggest a certain amount of drilling and routing might be required, but I'm prepared to consider something if it's not too complicated. (3. Super Extra Smile Funtime Happy Bonus Round for anyone who knows a way of completing either option along with an easy way of switching an extra cap into the circuit to give it that "shelf" that a Ric tends to have on the back pickup. But that's probably getting a little too adventurous, and I should focus on the s/p switching before I start guffing around with these little extras.)

One last bump before tomorrow - PM me for tickets if you fancy it! [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a2eD8AP4_0[/media]

You might stand a better chance if you go in and try out the bass first. I bought my Epiphone EB-3 from Macari's and made them a very specific offer (logic: I'd seen it cheaper in Guildford, so that price + approximate cost of the train ticket to Guildford) which they seemed very happy to accept. £35 quid off might not seem like the world's greatest haggling, but I've just worked out that actually, that was 14% of the asking price so I think I did quite well!

Less than a week away now! If anybody fancies coming along, PM me and I'll hold some tickets back for you - it's cheaper to buy in advance than on the door!

One thing that we do seem to have overlooked here is the precursory question of how many pickups your bass has. I can hardly blame Precision players for popping the volume on full and tweaking the tone control to find a spot where the tone sits well in the mix - that's exactly what I do with mine. But if you play a Jazz, or a Thunderbird, the volume controls also serve as your "blend" control. T-birds, in particular, have a particular sweet spot when the neck's on full and the bridge is on about '8'. In short, where I'd set the onboard volume may depend on how many onboard volume controls I have!

[quote name='TimR' timestamp='1476830237' post='3157714'] Modern equipment is as loud at midrange and high fequencies as it ever was, but where it excels is in the low frequencies as you need huge amounts of power to get the bass frequencies to double in volume. An increase of volume in the bass range is a lot less noticeable to the human ear. [/quote] This is pretty much the crux of it. One of the loudest bass players around in the early '70s was probably John Entwistle, but his sound on those live recordings (I'm thinking [i]Leeds[/i] and [i]IoW 1970[/i], chiefly) is overdriven to buggery, and whilst it's rich in mids, it's a bit lacking in 'true' bass. If that's the kind of sound you're after (I am) then running a 100W valve amp into a modest-sized cab going to serve you very well for smaller gigs - heck, I've even managed to gig a 30W valve amp in some venues. This will not be true if you want clean, tight and funky, however. You'll need something that can produce clean tones with deeper bass frequencies, and that will require a lot more power to achieve comparable perceived volume - hence the 500 or 1000W SS heads that are so commonly seen nowadays. Granted, my 100W valve amp might be able to honk all over a 100W solid state amp, but the tone will be very different.

[quote name='Funky Dunky' timestamp='1476754381' post='3156981'] This has got me thinking - I always thought that, if you use it correctly and tastefully, the volume manipulation technique known as violining (on guitar, a la Yngwie Malmsteen) can be quite cool. I wonder if there's a way to make it sound good on bass? Kinda doubt it, but it's got to be worth experimenting with. [/quote] I have an example right here: http://cherrywhite.bandcamp.com/track/frozen-heart (Skip forward to about 1:00 to hear me attempting to mimic a cello via the volume knob and a Bass Tubescreamer.)

Looks absolutely gorgeous - I look forward to hearing the demos!

Just two weeks away now!

[quote name='NancyJohnson' timestamp='1475584158' post='3147079'] The Line 6 comment was a bit harsh! I've got a Spider IV 75w...while I honestly couldn't care less about the bulk of the presets (which I guess is what it's sold for), it is pretty simple to dial up a decent tone. OK yeah, for sure I'll admit it's probably not the hardy amp you'd want to take out on a mahoosive tour, but for general use, recording and so forth, it's tiptop. I've used it on everything I've recorded in the last three or four years. New these are currently less than 200 notes, second-hand half that. What's to complain about? [/quote] The biggest problems I've found are the basic clean tone (not to my taste, not necessarily their fault of course!) and, more importantly, they seem to be really unresponsive to dynamics.