Painy

[quote name='Rubbersoul' timestamp='1471462778' post='3113276'] Let's go the other way : Evil Blizzard have 4 (that's FOUR) bassists. Epic. [/quote] Just checked them out on YouTube. Shows you really can form a band with 4 bass players. On the other hand (IMHO) it also gives a very good argument for why maybe you shouldn't.

Couldn't find a thread for this on here already so thought I'd put one up. I bought my Aguilar rig from the BC market place at the start of the year and it's an absolute fantastic sounding little set up but I think it looks stunning too. Here's my AG500 dual channel head and a pair of DB112 cabs both with horn - all in 'Chocolate Thunder. Let's see your lovely Aggy rigs.

[quote name='Dave Vader' timestamp='1471595926' post='3114227'] Another corrosive sweater here (still break guitar strings constantly) I used to break a lot of Bottom Es, with my fingers. I stopped using rounds, got flats, moved my hand a bit further from the bridge, and haven't broken one in years now. [/quote] Glad it's not just me with the corrosive sweat thing. If it makes you feel any better though I remember reading an interview with Jason Newsted when he was still with Metallica. Apparently his sweat is so bad it actually corrodes the electronics in his basses - so much so that all his Sadowsky basses are fully salt water proofed. He even claimed in the interview that before Roger Sadowsky sends a bass to him, the loaded body gets dumped in a bath of salt water for 24 hours and if it works once it's dried out then Jason will accept it!

I think there must be something wrong with me.... I'd say on average over the years I've probably broken a string about 4 to 5 times a year - normally the A although I even managed to break a 130 low B once. More back when I was playing with a pick and doing 100 to 150 gigs a year. These days playing fingers and maybe 25 to 30 gigs a year it's been about 9 months at a guess since I last broke one so getting better. My basses are well set up and bridge saddles in good condition but apparently I have particularly corrosive sweat. New Rotosounds would even start to deaden towards the end of the second set on their first gig! Unfortunately for me I prefer the that bright new rounds tone but since I changed to Prosteels it's been a lot better.

[quote name='dannybuoy' timestamp='1471429695' post='3112963'] If the compressor is always on, you might not need for the buffer, since it effectively is one. The only reason you would need the buffer is to prevent signal losses if you were running a long chain of FX and the compressor was near the end instead of near the beginning of the chain. [/quote] Pretty much what I was thinking. If your setting the make up gain level correctly on the comp and it is always on then I can't really see the need for a buffer. I had an active Morley volume pedal which I ran into my compressor and they didn't play too nicely together at first. Fortunately my compressor has a pad button which sorted the issue but buffering the signal up only to pad it back down again seems a bit counter productive.

I'd never play a gig without a backup bass. I don't need a backup amp as our PA is more than man enough to DI the bass into. My precision and my jazz are my main gigging basses but, both being five strings, they have the same neck profile so it's easy enough to switch between the two. As for how high profile the gig is, I've always taken the approach of applying the same level of professionalism to a gig playing to just the barman on a rainy Wednesday night in a secluded country pub to playing a 50000 strong crowd at a festival - you just put on the very best show you can every time.

[quote name='machinehead' timestamp='1471519302' post='3113591'] My wife used to really enjoy my bass and 6 string guitar collection. But recently something has changed. She seems to be no longer interested in my guitars or my bands and coming to gigs. She has started going out for nights without me. I've asked her who she's with and she just says "It's just some friends from work". When she comes home late at night she gets out of a taxi around the corner and walks the last 25 metres to our door. The other day her phone rang and I went to hand it to her. She flipped at this and told me never to touch her phone! Sometimes the landline rings and when I answer it, the caller stays silent and hangs up. What's that about? She just seems so distant all the time now. I'm at my wits end now and don't know what to do? There's a lovely Fender custom shop Precision for sale on the forum just now. Should I buy it, even though my wife seems to have lost interest in my bass collection? Frank. [/quote] Yes. Always yes!

My wife isn't too fussed by my basses being in the house as they're pretty well out of the way in the corner of her work room rather than spread about the house. She has said she misses my old Warwick Streamer Stage 1 but out of my current basses, my sunburst precision is apparently her favorite (although she may be a bit biased as she bought it for me).

[quote name='Thunderpaws' timestamp='1471009551' post='3109979'] I found this. Dunno if you judge it as a poor video or not! https://youtu.be/pnlUKhEH0EU [/quote] Well he could have put some clean trousers on - scruffy looking get! There's a bit at 2:08 where he looks like he needs a poo but apart from that it's not great

I'd agree that raising the action would help. It may not need to be a big change either. I recently found that just raising the saddles on one of my basses by just a quarter turn of the screws really helped my tone with only a minimal effect on the feel of the action. You also mentioned the Aguilar amp and cabs. I run an AG500 head through a pair of DB112 cabs and while it's easy to get a really full bottom end, the amp is really very strong in the mids so if you did go to the extent of changing your amp/cabs then I'd say you're probably looking in the right kind of direction with the AG/DB combination.

[quote name='EBS_freak' timestamp='1471250381' post='3111457'] I love 5s. In fact, I would never choose to play a 4 now. It's not all about the lower notes either - which seems to be the thing that people concentrate on. For me, it's about the economy of motion - you can cover more notes without moving as much as you would on a 4... and additionally, transposing and not having to bother dropping string tunings is also where it's at. Making the transition to a 5 was quite difficult for me - I always wanted to head back to the comfort of a 4... but the key is to force yourself to play it and accept that you may brain fart from time to time and think that you are on a 4... but once you get past that, I don't see why anybody would want to go back to a 4. But again, I know we are all different. [/quote] Pretty much sums it up for me too.

For quite a while after getting my Aguilar rig (ag500 head and 2 db112 cabs for those on mobile who can't see my sig) I was getting a great sound but just not quite the sound I was specifically after. It was a bit frustrating because I could hear it was in there somewhere, I just couldn't quite seem to get it to come out. Every rig I've run in the past has had one cab with a horn and one without which had always worked for me. Both these cabs have a tweeter though so the logical thing seemed to be to turn one of them off as I didn't want my tone to sound too brittle in the highs. I'd been getting a really good fat, punchy tone with my precision but I just felt it was lacking a bit in aggression. So last night I thought I'd just give both horns together a try and happy happy days! Why on Earth I didn't try it in the first place I don't know. Thinking logically it's pretty obvious that because it's based on a crossover, turning the horn down obviously doesn't move the highs over into the driver, it just cuts them out completely and that's what was missing from my sound. I know not everyone likes horns but I guess if that's the case then the thing is to just buy a tweeterless cab not one with a tweeter and turn it down.

Earlier this year my very lovely wife bought me my Squier VM P5 and I instantly fell in love with the way it played. Despite the humble price tag the neck straight away felt more comfortable in my hand than any other bass I've owned - which includes some pretty high end stuff. Since then I've made a couple of slight modifications and now for me this is pretty much the perfect bass. If Fender ever start doing signature model basses for just anybody (like Adam Clayton for example ) then this would be the one for me. Firstly, yes there's a Fender logo on the headstock but not looking to get into that one here other than to say I've anyways loved the 70s style logo with the curved "precision bass" text so that's what I've used. Secondly, as much as I've really wanted to go from active to passive basses I've come to the conclusion that active just works for me better so when an old, slightly knackered Dan Armstrong Yellow Humper active circuit surfaced - and once KiOgon had worked his magic repairing and modding it for me - I installed that in the bass. Very simple controls on this. An on/off toggle switch which allows the bass to work in passive if the battery dies and then another 3 way toggle which gives either bass boost, bass and treble boost or a flat boost which just adds punch and presence to the sound. The last thing I wanted to add was chrome bridge and pickup covers - just because I love the look on a sunburst precision. This was the trickiest part to sort out as chrome covers (other than the Marcus Miller jazz pup cover) don't seem to exist for a 5 string. After a pretty extensive internet search I found an eBay seller in China but they wouldn't ship to the UK. Fortunately a Basschatter came to the rescue so special thanks to OddBass65. I was able to get them shipped from China to his sister in Florida who then - as I understand it - gave them to him in New York when he met her there on holiday. He then bought them back home with him to the Republic of Ireland and posted them to me. Now the pickup cover is actually for a jazz so doesn't completely cover the pup and the bridge cover sits slightly further back than it really should but overall I'm more than happy with the end result. And here it is:

Wrap the whole thing in tin foil and shove it down your trousers. Then, when the metal detectors go off at the airport, just tell them it's a prosthetic cucumber.

[quote name='Yoda' timestamp='1470672135' post='3107529'] I've just bought a second hand MIA Fender P bass from a seller on this forum...it's a red one, but hey, I'll have to live with that! I'm hoping that this'll scratch that itch. After some thought, I realised that if i went for a MIM Fender or the Squier CV I'd spend all the time I had it wondering what the MIA would be like. So thought it would be best to just dive in...it's not [i]that[/i] much over my initial budget...really. Thanks to all that contributed to the thread. [/quote] Well you can anyways colour it in black with a sharpie...

Also, if you are interested in a five string, my Squier VM P5 is genuinely excellent to play. While it also sounded pretty good from stock I have played around with the electronics a bit to get it to sound to my personal liking but you'd have enough left in your budget for some very decent upgrades if you did feel you needed it.

[quote name='Lozz196' timestamp='1470686958' post='3107705'] Seeing as it`s new only, I`d add in the Matt Freeman Sig - I`ve never played one, but have heard a lot of people use them and they sound great in the mix. [/quote] You beat me to it while I was checking if they came in on budget ! They seem to be about £421 online currently but probably worth saving the extra couple of quid for.

Interesting to see this thread resurface after seeing the recent advert for the paralympics. Can't help wondering what the chap playing guitar with his feet would think about tone being all in the fingers though Always nice when these old threads come back up with a positive outcome though. Good stuff!

I think musical hits the nail on the head. Youtube these days is full of players with spring loaded thumbs and fingers like a threshing machine. Fair play to them, they've got the chops but it's his musicality that gets him the gig with the likes of Sister Sledge while they continue to record YouTube videos in their bedroom.

[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1470566373' post='3106717'] When I saw him recently he was using an SL410 and th500. I joked that I could have let him have a Aguilar DB rig and he said that would have saved him the carry. So I think that sort of thing is a factor. [/quote] On facebook the other day he was talking about this rig as his "one person lift" rig.

[quote name='ricksterphil' timestamp='1470353035' post='3105502'] Jean Jacques Brunel (tone) [/quote] I hear his brother Isambard Kingdom is a bitchin' lead player too.... or am I thinking of someone else?

[quote name='uk_lefty' timestamp='1470557212' post='3106635'] White precisions look the absolute nuts!! Jazz basses with as much chrome on them as possible likewise. [/quote] I have a white jazz and will soon be receiving some chrome bridge and pickup covers for my precision. Told you my taste in basses was questionable

My amp and cabs apparently used to belong to him a couple of owners before it came to me. I now sound exactly like him! Oh alright, maybe not. Still a lovely sounding rig though and I definitely sound better through it than any other I've owned (which has been a good few). Great player though and he certainly has an excellent touch and feel for a groove.

Looks are very important to me. I have made some kind of cosmetic changes to most of my basses over the years. It's certainly easier for me to improve the looks of an instrument than the sound as I'm personally more artistic than technical. It's important too in the same way as attraction is important in relationships between people. It's what often sparks our initial interest. I personally love the look of my Sunburst/Tort/Maple Precision so I guess my taste in basses is a bit questionable . Fortunately I think this picture of my lovely wife shows my better tastes lie elsewhere !

"Engineered" is right! That thing needs a chain lift to move it off the shelf is on but you can really feel the quality, even in the feel of the buttons and the way it opens. My wife has an early 2000s CD player with twin cassette deck in her work room and by comparison it feels like something that came out of a Christmas cracker!