chriswareham

1. Hondo Precision copy 2. Greco Rickenfaker 3. Jolana Rickenfaker

"How does your bass make you feel?" Moist.

I sold my favourite bass in a moment of madness. I was going through a divorce and not thinking straight I guess. It eventually found its way to Paul S, and he reunited it with me about a month ago as he mentions in his post above. It even acquired a nice case in its travels! So what is it? A Jolana D Bass, which is a mid 1980s Rick 4001 shaped four string with P/J pickups.

Wow, "Marlin" and "Professional" on the same piece of equipment. Talk about an oxymoron!

The bass player from Mega City 4 was well known for disliking stage divers and other pointers who'd scramble onto the stage at their gigs. His solution was a large booted foot on the offender's arse and then shoving them into the wings.

I have gigged my Hondo Precision (the one with Fender style headstock rather than the later Fame series). Quite heavy, but it has the original DiMarzio pickup and sounds great. Cost me £85 including shipping.

I use their strings for a bass in drop Bb. They provide the tension of normal strings in conventional EADG tuning. No more slack tension or strings slipping of the sides of the fretboard!

I recently bought Chris's Yamaha BB1200 from him. Beautiful bass, exactly as described, and Chris was excellent to deal with.

I have one of the Chinese made Hofner Violin basses and I love it. Even used it to play a cover of Velvet Revolver's "Slither" in drop D. The cheap Chinese ones don't have a block of wood down the inside of the body, which makes them sound more like the original ones than the current "contemporary" models that are made in Germany.

I picked up an old analogue synthesiser from a guy in South West London earlier today. When he found out I was a bass player, he pulled out a heavy duty flight case and said "you might like this". Turned out to be a stunning Alembic that he's also got listed on eBay: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Alembic-Excel-5-bass-guitar-/122106882184 Not my kind of thing thankfully (although I'd love a 4 string Spoiler in black with ebony fretboard, but can only afford one in my dreams) but I know there's a lot of love for Alembic basses on here.

A while ago there was a thread about ideal cars for bass players. I mentioned that the Ford Ka seemed to have been designed on the basis of being able to get an Ampeg fridge in it. A few people expressed surprise that it was possible to get an Ampeg 8x10, two Acoustic amps, a guitar amp, a couple of basses and assorted other kit in such a small car. So here's the proof!

[quote name='Gottastopbuyinggear' timestamp='1472492770' post='3121559'] I may be wrong but I think the issue with MP3 encoders being bundled with software is that there's a licence fee to be paid for the encoder. If you're buying software then the provider is paying a small amount on to whoever holds the rights for the MP3 technology. If you're going for free or open source then, assuming the provider wants to stay on the right side of the law, they can't bundle the encoder. [/quote] There are dubious patent issues with MP3 encoding. This doesn't apply in all countries, but a lot of software makes you download an encoder separately to cover themselves. On Linux, the installation is normally a single click, with the onus for getting a license technically down to the user. Since software patents arguably shouldn't be valid in the first place, the patent holders aren't able to do anything about it when no individual users get a license.

Was his tech a guy with a Belfast accent? My friend Dave has regularly been his tech in the past.

May be too far for you, but Resident Studios in Willesden have a grand piano in their largest room. Apart from that, it may be worth checking out John Henry's although I can't imagine they're very cheap.

What an utter legend! And I love the fact that no matter how long the marriage he still has the same issues those of us with considerably shorter relationships face :-D

The Cramps recorded and performed without a bassist quite often.

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1470399772' post='3105746'] I'venever been a fan of single oscillator and envelope generator synths. They are simply not versatile enough. When I bought my first mono synth I compromised on playability and interface options by getting an EDP Wasp simply because the sonic possibilities were far superior over ever other synth in the same price range. [/quote] My Jupiter 4 is capable of an extraordinary range of sounds despite being only a single oscillator synth. The Wasp had a great filter, but based on the one I tinkered with it was almost unplayable thanks to the "keyboard" and the oscillators were really under featured waveform wise.

I'm not too good on emoticons, so I took it as meaning to laugh at my "ignorance". As to the spelling, my auto-correct seems to think I'm more likely to talk about murderous athletes than a bass player ...

It's a weird one. Yesterday I described why I didn't like a particular Jaco Pistorius bass part, and was called "ignorant". I didn't comment on the man, or the rest of his work, but apparently having an opinion makes me ignorant. Oh well.

[quote name='Daz39' timestamp='1470606571' post='3107115'] You're still liking the Head then?! [/quote] Absolutely :-) Although it's so loud I can barely get the output level past "1" while practising at home with it!

[quote name='julesb' timestamp='1470679859' post='3107620'] I guess one of the undisputed giants of bass accompanying one of the greatest poets that ever picked up a guitar is not for everyone... [/quote] The rest of the track I like, it's just the bass I don't get. I usually like a collision of styles, but it really doesn't sound like the bass part is even accompanying the same song ...

On that Joni Mitchell track the bass sounds like they accidentally mixed in someone noodling over another track. Sounds like someone making comedy fart noises with their armpit in places as well. I really don't get it ...

Probably just a decent mix, since there's nothing remarkable about the keyboard sounds themselves - they're just bog standard polysynth string sounds. What I find helps though, is if the synth has a high pass filter. The presets on a lot of gear tend to be very "full" sounding so they sound good in the shop. For recording I tend to drop a lot of the lower frequencies out to make pad sounds cut through without overwhelming everything else. In the absence of a high pass filter, try upping the octave on any oscillators that are lower than the highest one in a patch, or turn off the sub-oscillator if there is one. This is all assuming you can you can edit the sounds, and that it's based on subtractive synthesis. If it's a fully preset keyboard, then it's a graphic equaliser to drop out some of the bottom end or boost the higher frequencies.

I bought a Trace Elliot GP12 SMX AH300 from Daz in May 2016. Excellent communication, the amp arrived well packaged and had clearly been well cared for. Cheers, Chris