EliasMooseblaster

[quote name='Thump' timestamp='1426842573' post='2722469'] If its a colour thing , there is always this option and its £400 cheaper too [url="http://www.guitarguitar.co.uk/bass_guitars_detail.asp?stock=12050409483749"]http://www.guitargui...=12050409483749[/url] [/quote] Better still, it appears to be running with some kind of "buy 4 strings, get 1 free" deal... [/coat]

Many thanks for all the input, folks. Points duly taken about a lot of time and money being ploughed into a DIY project (and having assembled a Frankenbass recently I know how this can happen!), but in my trawling of BC Marketplace, Google and eBay, the only "cheap" options seem to be SS 1x10 combos - and I already have one of those! I was thinking of buying a pre-built enclosure and simply mounting the speaker in that, then maybe modding it as necessary to replace the jack plate with a speaker cable input. I'm not expecting to end up with anything that will compete with a Mi-10 in terms of tone, as it would really just be for home use. On the other hand, I wouldn't feel any compunction about modding it to buggery if I felt it needed porting or whatever...

[quote name='happynoj' timestamp='1426531553' post='2719005'] If only his bloody signature wasn't scrawled all over the headstock! Why can't they put them on the back? I love the way this bass looks but I couldn't play it out in case people thought I liked U2. EDIT: And if I was going to have an Adam Clayton sig model, it would this one... [/quote] Gordon Bennett, how many signature basses does this man have to his name?!

[quote name='Mr Thumb' timestamp='1426773972' post='2721794'] I like Wonky2's suggestion's. How about "Councillor Fudge" that always make me laugh, or just pick a name from Roger Mellies Profanisaurus.... "Dutchblindfold", "Darth Vaders Hat Stand", the list is endless. [/quote] Now you mention it, [i]Kojak's Roll-Neck [/i]could be a good name for a band...

Long story short: I'm taking a furtive look into acquiring the parts for a 1x10 cab and cobbling it together myself. After upgrading to a much more powerful head (thanks again, Merton!), my Ashdown Little Bastard 30 is gathering dust. The original plan was to flog it, but I'm starting to think it would be awfully nice to have a valve amp to practice through at home. Only trouble is, the cheapest small cabs I can find are about £200 RRP. Inspired by Bottle's thread on DIY guitar heads (http://basschat.co.uk/topic/257258-diy-valve-amp-kits/page__hl__diy), I did some googling and found a TB thread on DIY cabs: http://www.talkbass.com/threads/low-cost-diy-practice-coffeehouse-tweeterless-110-long.736360/ and began to wonder if I could take a cheaper (and more fun) DIY route. Trouble is, the above is all in American money. I've worked out that I can probably get a Celestion for £40-60, and an enclosure for somewhere in the region of £30. Add an appropriate jack, plate and wire and I might even be able to do it for less than a hundred...unless anybody with any knowledge or experience can warn me that this is a really bad idea!

[quote name='Jonnyboy Rotten' timestamp='1426693137' post='2720894'] Surely that would be a prince albert? [/quote] No, you're thinking of Hole-Punch Willy!

I've been using it for years, but I appreciate that it's not for everyone. In my case - I have relatively dry skin - I like a relatively bright tone - I move around the neck a lot so I've found it good for reducing the friction under my fingertips, and for keeping my rounds sounding a bit brighter for a bit longer. I should add that I've even taken to using on my fretless, which is strung with flats, again for keeping the friction down. Yes, you do have to wipe away the excess, not to mention a lot of fluff, but I find it's a pretty convenient way to quickly spruce up the strings before a gig. That, and most of my basses have a rosewood board (or similar), and I'm in the camp that believes it helps to rub some oil into the wood - my guitar tech friend agrees with me, but warns me that the jury is still out on the matter!

[quote name='Beer of the Bass' timestamp='1426598634' post='2719660'] I'm not sure that I see the problem with Kanye headlining Glastonbury. It's a popular music festival, he's a popular music performer, and surely any festivalgoer looking for something less mainstream won't be at the main stage for much of the festival anyway. [b] Yet I keep seeing petitions urging the Glasto organisers to cancel his slot, as though it was some sort of betrayal of Glastonbury principles. Am I missing something?[/b] [/quote] Jesus, really? I know that some of these online petitions are a good thing, giving a voice to people in difficult situations and all that, but I feel like some people are just taking the p*** now (see the competing "fire/don't fire Jeremy Clarkson" petitions for further evidence of this). Does it really matter that much who plays the headline slot at Glastonbury? I think Beer of the Bass is quite correct - if Kanye's not your thing, there's plenty of other stages to try (and if you can't find anything else you like, why the hell are you at Glastonbury in the first place?)

[quote name='Jenny_Innie' timestamp='1426545726' post='2719282'] He's headlining Glastonbury this year, so he must be very good. [/quote] I'm a little surprised that he didn't storm the organisers' meeting and demand that the slot be given to Beyonce...

It's never *just* a look in the window, is it? Gorgeous bit of kit, that!

Depends what you're looking for, I suppose, when there's so much variety available these days. For less than £750, I still think the Schecter Model T is a fantastic bass (the Diamond series are quite well-regarded in general, I believe). Less than £200 is a bit of a trickier one - though I have tried a couple of Squier CVs and VMs in guitar shops and generally been quite impressed.

[quote name='lowdown' timestamp='1426164565' post='2715088'] I do quite well out of it through an incredibly well run and established company in the States called 'Audiosparx'. They chase up cue sheets, register everything with ASCAP, so it's easy for PRS to collect. [/quote] Aha, now this is interesting, because this is the same company I've been in contact with! After reading some very negative forum comments I was a bit put off, but if you reckon they're still worth their salt then perhaps I should reconsider. One thing that does strike me as a potential snag is that they don't let you remove material from their library once it's been accepted - if I were uploading incidental music or jingles I can see this being fairly trivial, but I'm looking to licence regular rock/pop songs with them. Just wondering whether this could present a stumbling block a few years down the line...any thoughts?

Some footage from last Friday (6th March), when we played the [b]Hope & Anchor (Islington).[/b] [url="https://youtu.be/BjX3D8X-kFc"]http://youtu.be/BjX3D8X-kFc[/url] Apparently, the Stranglers had played a secret gig here earlier that afternoon...does this mean I can technically claim to have shared a stage with them?

(Wasn't sure if this was more suited to GD or Recordings; mods, please feel free to move if you see fit!) I'm sure a few of you have found a way to earn a few bob by sharing your music on one or more online music libraries: are there any that you'd recommend for licensing a rock song? It's something I've been keeping one eye out for recently, as a half-decent song placement seems like a good way to secure a little bit of regular revenue, which my band could really do with at the moment! See, I got quite excited yesterday when I got some tentative interest from a US-based library who, initially, seemed to be offering what I was looking for. Unfortunately, while reading their Ts and Cs this morning, a few alarm bells were triggered - I did some further research, and a forum on GigSlutz gave the impression that they used to be quite good but have since gone massively downhill. Being a little disappointed, I know I can usually rely on the good folk of BC to pick me up and point me in the right direction...over to you.

[quote name='tauzero' timestamp='1425912153' post='2712088'] And it's back! [url="http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/OFFERS-THROW-NUMBERS-AT-THIS-TENNESSEE-15-STRING-EXTENDED-RANGE-BASS-/291402250210?ssPageName=ADME:SS:SS:GB:3160"]http://www.ebay.co.u...E:SS:SS:GB:3160[/url] [/quote] At least, we assume he doesn't have more than one of these monstrosities to sell...

[quote name='mike257' timestamp='1425651216' post='2709401'] You might find some music to listen to on there but in terms of its use as a tool to reach an audience, it's dead. Used it heavily for my band back in its "glory" days c.2005/6 and it enabled us to build pockets of support all over the country and tour moderately successfully under our own steam but it peaked then really died out (much like the band at the time, haha!) [/quote] It was such a shame to see it go, in that respect - when it was at its peak there was massive potential to reach a fanbase. Has anything really stepped up to fill that role in the meantime? Reverbnation, BandInTown, and all the others just don't seem to be as ubiquitous...or maybe I'm just not using them properly!

[quote name='Meddle' timestamp='1425250443' post='2705629'] I just don't understand it. Ampeg come out with massively unreliable Class D amps and people defend them to the hilt. Ashdown come out with new technology and everybody uses this as a chance to get the boot in. If British bassists defended British manufacturers the same way American bassists defended theirs then this forum would be a slightly more positive place perhaps. Not sure we need pages of Ashdown bashing, and I'm glad to see a rep coming on here and kicking some backsides. [/quote] People mocked the horseless carriage and said it would never catch on. As other people have pointed out, Ashdown aren't the first company to produce something in this vein, but they are dabbling in a [i]relatively[/i] new concept, which will unfortunately attract a lot of people whose instinct will be to say, "what's the point of that?", "it'll never catch on", or, occasionally, "yes, but is it any good for metal?"

We're on second, so we should be hitting the stage about 9.30. (And I'll be wearing your old T-bird, now I think about it...)

One last bump as this is tomorrow night. Anybody looking for something the night before LBGS, you'll be able to catch me giving Merton's old Ashdown through its paces in its maiden voyage with Cherry White, with two other great bands on the bill as well - all for just five English pounds!

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1425430123' post='2707387'] [i]I superstes erit![/i] [/quote] [i]Amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant.[/i] There, I've said it.

Funny how we're always the ones who have to think about EQing, isn't it? The above points about "big" guitar sounds may be the key to it: see how high your guitarists have their bass controls set, and see whether you can roll some of that off. Guitarists (as a heavily generalised rule-of-thumb) seem to be particularly bad at not realising that what sounds good in their bedroom doesn't necessarily sound good in a band setting!

I shall ignore the instinct to rubbish the original article, and try to contribute something more conversational: surely one key question is, [i]can the human ear actually detect the difference[/i]? Obviously we now have digital tuners (or even programs on our smartphones) which tell us how close our 'A' is to 440 Hz, but a large swathe of popular music will not have been recorded with the luxury of such accurate tuning. Bear in mind that the next semitone down on this scale is somewhere in the region of [s]422 Hz[/s]*, so tuning to A432 is roughly equivalent to tuning a quarter-tone flat. "Back in the day," if you had a keyboard player on the session, most bands would have had to tune to the piano. The piano would (hopefully) have been tuned by a professional piano tuner, who would either have used tuning forks or relied on the gift of "perfect pitch." But how good a guide are those, when you're then relying on either your ear's comparison between the fork and the piano strings, or the piano strings and your own mental reference point? In one of the stranger recording sessions I was ever hired for, I was asked to recreate the basslines on samples of some old '70s soul records. For each sample the guy wanted me to play over, we had to re-tune my bass up or down by about a quarter-tone because Isaac Hayes' band was tuned slightly flat or sharp back on that day in 1974 or whatever. Some of them certainly would have been closer to an A432 tuning than A440, some were probably closer to A443. I can't say that any of them felt more or less "natural" depending on the tuning, so I remain sceptical. *Edit: sorry, ignore my sloppy maths; I believe it should be closer to 415 Hz!

Good lord. Part of me thinks it's hideous...but then another part of me thinks it wouldn't look that out of place on a stand next to my Thunderbird.

...and on the off chance that anyone's in town and at a loose end the night before the show, there's going to be a great gig at the Hope & Anchor (Islington) on Friday 6th, featuring V-Device, The Cortège and *cough* Cherry White *cough* ...only a fiver...