FinnDave

Evenmore of a squeeze in my small music room. Never felt the urge to try a double bass, so can't say I miss it.

My first bass was a short scale - it would feel lie a real step back to the past to play one again.

Most of us share the same issues!

Not sure whether you're talking about me or yourself there! Either way, I suspect you're right. I'll enjoy this period of tranquility, undisturbed by the thought that I need a new bass for as long as it lasts, though.

After years of randomly buying basses because they appealed to me or selling them because they'd fallen out of favour, I have realised that all this shifting around of the pieces has finally revealed a pattern I can live with. I have no idea what goes on in my head when I'm asleep (and not much idea what's going on when I'm awake, to be honest) but I woke up this morning and the master plan revealed itself. I currently have six basses (seven if you count the 6 string that's up for sale) and they fall neatly into three pairs, one of each pair strung with flat wound strings and the other with rounds. I didn't work towards this consciously, it has just happened. So I now have: Fender Precision (flats) paired with Epiphone JCB (rounds) - both single pick-up, wide neck basses Fender Classic 60s Jazz sunburst (flats) paired with Fender Classic 60s Jazz white (rounds) - both Jazz basses, obviously Fender Jazz deluxe (flats) paired with Sandberg Panther (rounds) - both two pick-up active basses I think I may achieved bass nirvana, and now I can see the pattern clearly, if I feel the need for a new bass, it will have to fit in and replace one of the above (or I'd have to buy two new ones and extend it - but storage space then becomes a problem). Right, you lot, pick holes in my perfect array of basses - but for now, I have reached the transcendental state of bass bliss! GAS free!!!

Another Dave…but welcome anyway! My wife is sitting opposite me on the phone to her cousin in Wallasey right now. We would have been up there this weekend if this virus crap hadn't happened.

I'm playing more than ever at the moment. I try to play along with a recording of a complete gig every day. I've just finished today's - played the first Grateful Dudes gig I was part of, Hebden Bridge April 1st 2018. A good way to spend 2 hours and 40 minutes on a Saturday morning (assuming this is Saturday, I've lost track!). When we can finally get back together to rehearse and gig again, I want to as ready as I possibly can be, not rusty and with fingers that have lost their memories!

45 minutes? Well, this is close at just over 46 https://relisten.net/grateful-dead/1974/05/21/playin-in-the-band?source=90397 (and yes, we do play this but not quite as long as this version!)

If you can get a tune from a harmonica, then you're doing better than most of the harmonica players I know!

I've no idea who 90% of them are. The one I do know about, Phil Lesh, had a very unrepresentative track as his example. Ripple is a great song (we played it a week or so after the writer died and there was hardly a dry eye in in the house, and certainly not on stage) but as an example of Lesh's bass playing, it is a very good choice.

I very rarely, if ever, just listen to music. I play CDs and computer files of music all the time, but I always have to reach for the nearest bass and try to play along. So I enjoyed a few minutes of playing along to Caravan, I can't think how many decades have passed since I last did that!

I really think some people should spend more time playing their basses! I have never, ever, considered whether the silk bindings on the strings line up. There are 5 or 6 basses upstairs and I couldn't even tell you what strings are on them, never mind the colour of the silk or whether they align. The bass is just a tool for making music. Like a screwdriver or a hammer, just more expensive!

So it does! I'm not really interested in recording my practice sessions, but you are right.

IOS cable? Mine had a mini jack to mini jack cable, nothing else. I plug the headphone out from the phone into the Yamaha's input, works fine.

I'm very glad I finally got my Session Cake (is there a prize for the stupidest name for a bit of kit?) as this afternoon I am sitting in the sun with a Jazz bass plugged into it, my phone plugged in and playing along the Grateful Dead on this day in 1971. Bloody great, and my neighbours are in their garden and can't hear a thing!!

Collected from the people it was accidentally (or carelessly) delivered to and it's great. Spent an hour or more this evening playing along to some live Dead in the lounge without disturbing my wife - just what I wanted. The session cake is a decent piece of kit well put together and easy to use.

Follow the Bear and you can't go wrong!

Our April & May gigs have been cancelled but we still have a couple in the book for early June, but I have serious doubts that they'll happen. Next after that is late July, and I'm hopeful that that'll happen.

That's an approach I haven't considered. Coming from a background of always playing finger style for 40 years until an accident buggered up my right hand, I am relatively new to using a pick,, and started off with .75 mm guitar picks, 'progressed" through sticking 2 or 3 of them together to eliminate flex and have been happy fr the last 2 or 3 years with 3mm picks. I felt that any flexibility should be in my fingers rather than the pick, and with the 3mm ones, any flex is down to how tight I hold the pick. No need for any defence, I am genuinely trying to find my way through this enforced pick playing and am open to anything that might be an improvement on my current heavy inflexible approach. Most people shudder with horror if I offer them one of my picks, but I don't understand what this works for me when it seems I am very much in the minority, to the extent that it can be difficult to find 'my' picks in the shops.

I'm curious about that - I find I have more feel using a very stiff (3mm) pick, if the pick is flexing, I find that reduces the feel. I'm not trying to start an argument about which is best (whatever works for the player in question is obviously best for them), I am interested in how differently we define 'feel'.

The story should end on Monday when I collect it. The letter came with a magazine my wife subscribes to which had also been delivered to their address (this by the Royal Mail…the Kenny's package was FedEx). Thankfully, they are decent people who tried their hardest to re-connect me with my lost headphone amp! Restores (or confirms) one's faith in human nature.

Here's a result - just had a letter come with the post from someone I've never met but who lives about 8 miles away on a road with a similar name to ours and at the same street number as we do - and they have my FedEx package! Spoke to them on the phone and I'll pop over and collect it on Monday. Trying to reach Kenny's to let them know it's safe, but no answer there today.

Well, that's a relief!! Though of, course, although I bought the headphone amp, I haven't received it. I've given up on the six strings, both were up for sale but one has now gone - unfortunately as a swap (for a classic 60s Jazz) rather than cash, so it hasn't created any more space in my music & other junk room. Stop press news - just had a letter come with the post from someone I've never met but who lives about 8 miles away on a road with a similar name to ours and at the same street number as we do - and they have my FedEx package! Spoke to them on the phone and I'll pop over and collect it on Monday.