chriswareham

Grottiest venue has got to be the now derelict Sir George Robey in Finsbury, closely followed by the also long gone Camden Falcon. At the "ropey Robey" the drains had backed up and flooded the dressing room. A previous band had even abandoned one of their cabs that had been overrun by the tide of filth. The Falcon was just neglected, but the sound woman (who was in a dub reggae band) worked wonders with the crappy PA to get a truely great bass heavy sound.

Smallest venue I've played was a place in Brighton. It's the upstairs room of a pub, and looks like it used to be the landlords living room. Proper PA and a great gig the first time we played there. Went back a few months later with a Belgian band we were touring with. Turned out the landlord was having a violent row with his wife, and we were told in no uncertain terms that we should bugger off. The Belgians disappeared briefly, then told us to get out of town quick when they reappeared as they'd slashed the landlords car tyres. I was expecting a knock on the door from the boys in blue for weeks, since the hire van was in my name.

Doesn't the Boss space echo pedal have a "sound on sound" looping mode? I know it's supposed to be a digital recreation of the RE-201 or RE-301 tape echo, and the slightly more up market RE-501 that I owned certainly worked as a looper. Brilliant for layering a loop and then leaving it on playback while noodling over the top - instant John Martyn kind of sounds.

Name and shame : Camden Underworld - electrics so dodgy it blew up my amp, and an obnoxious sound man who refused to do sound checks (at a gig night we were promoting and had hired the venue for). Camden Purple Turtle - sound guy got so pissed the previous night he didn't notice someone had nicked the DI boxes, resulting in not enough for our gig. Name and fame : Nambucca in Holloway Road, the landlord (ex professional tour manager) is a lovely guy and his wife made the bands tea with an accompanying tray of biccies. Frank of Flag Promotions, lovely guy who tries to please everyone but often gets mucked about by bands with ideas above their station.

Used to have my bass so low that it took two straps buckled together to get it there. Being six foot four tall didn't help either. Nowadays the strap is a lot shorter, but I often slouch forward and have the bass only a few inches from the floor, so I still appear to be subliminally channelling the Peter Hook stance...

Sold my hypothetically similar shaped bass on eBay by listing it as a Buy it Now and including a closeup picture of the body without showing the horns. In the description I said to contact me for further pictures. The item title said exactly what it was. Sold within a couple of hours, and I didn't receive an abusive email from a certain Mr Hall, although others who have sold items in a similar manner claim to have done so as the Rickpolice had already reported the listing to him.

Not too convinced by the idea that Chinese manufacturers are doing well because of great customer service. In my experience they are successful thanks to the exchange rates that allow them to sell to countries such as the UK at very attractive prices. The quality is more often than not very, very variable with inconsistencies and high failure rates for items even from the same batch. In my case I'm talking about electronic components and high volume injection moulded parts, where it would have been better in hindsight to deal with the higher prices and slower turnaround of a European manufacturer.

[quote name='Cosmo Valdemar' timestamp='1380463142' post='2225598'] Funny that, the guy in The Gallery snorted with derision when I told him I used Rotosound... [/quote] That sounds highly unlikely. They showed considerable enthusiasm about my crappy old Hondo bass when I took it to them, despite it probably being worth many times less than any of the basses they have for sale.

It looks very similar to the right handed Peavey I had as my second bass. Very good neck, but nothing spectacular in the tone department. Well worth £50 though.

noelk27 - thanks for the detailed info. Now I've got to resist the urge to track down one of those Arias!

Hi Roger! I think you bought my Rockinbetter from eBay - certainly think so from your username and post. I guess your preference for a real Rick just goes to show how subjective bass guitars can be - I found the real thing to have a really awful neck and much preferred the width of the one on the copy. The Rockinbetter's also much bigger and heavier than a real Rick, but I'm six foot four tall so that may explain my preference for something little more substantial. I did have to take the bridge pickup cover off as it got in the way of where I typically play with a pick. Chris

How on earth do people actually play those six and seven string monsters? I've got big hands (and you know what they say about men with big hands[1]), but no way could I see myself playing that width of neck in comfort or with a decent technique. [1] they take a large size in gloves

Didn't he play a copy of one of the instruments made THEY WHO SHALL JOT BE MENTIONED? Personally, I always associated him with those Matsumoko made neck through body basses (Aria branded I think).

Just sold my Rockinbetter on eBay to maintain my three bass rule, and the guy that bought it 'fessed up to owning 136 guitars!!! I suspect he's a forum member, seemed well clued up on the Rickenfaker legal shenanigans with RIC.

I think the string tree thingies are original, as I'm pretty sure the one I used had them. The headstock actually looks well proportioned when you see one of these "in the flesh", particularly since the body is a hefty slab of wood. They also have some weird kind of stereo output which I seem to recall splits the pick up output so you could have something like chorus on just the top two strings.

Had one of these in white as a loaner back when I was at college. Chunky neck and great sound from what I remember.

No way I could part with my Eko semi-acoustic. Bought for me by my parents as a 21st birthday present, and played regularly ever since. The body developed a nasty split a couple of years back but the guys at the Gallery did a great job restoring it. I think it was an early example of the Brandoni built Eko guitars, sold in Macaris on Charing Cross Road while I ewas a student at nearby London University.

That was the trouble with FM synthesis - it was so much a science rather than an artistically appealing way of programming sounds. As a result most people used the same handful of presets, and the sample based synths of the late 80s only made it worse (the likes of the Korg M1 for instance). At least nowadays there's plenty of patch libraries out there so even though most DAW users never program a patch, they can at least choose from a wider selection of sounds

The Korg MS-20 was 1970s vintage, and coincidently I swapped a Roland MC-202 for my first bass guitar. By the late 1980s horrible FM synthesis bass sounds were the staple of pop records, but on the plus side analogue synth fans like me could pick up great instruments dirt cheap (Yamaha CS-40m, Korg Mono/Poly and the 202 in my case).

[quote name='bobbass4k' timestamp='1378754964' post='2204341'] It's become quite popular to complain about later.., but it's still the only show I know of on mainstream TV where you can watch a woman with 4 synths and a third eye painted on her head sing dream pop over programmed drum loops, and then watch a bluesgrass orchestra play a traditional American folk song. There's still loads of small slightly off-kilter acts on, they just don't advertise them in the press releases because, well, why would they? They had a poet on last series for christ sakes, how much more unusual do you want for a music show? Maybe he'll have a mime on this series. [/quote]Hey, you're talking about the time they had Grimes on there! I'm not a big fan of her stuff, but it says something about how smug and bland Later... is that she's the most exciting thing I've seen on there. Funnily enough, the Grauniad ran a piece on The Tube the other day. It as fronted by Jools Holland amongst others, and was simply the best music TV show I've ever seen. Anarchic and chaotic, with a long enough show each week to feature some long established acts as well as a huge amount of small or even unsigned ones. A personal favourite was seeing Play Dead on there, as well as Killing Joke, Lords of the New Church (including a full frontal nude shot of Stiv Bators - live TV at its best) and The Damned doing a jaw dropping rendition of Eloise.

Westones were everywhere in the late 1980s, the nice ones with the brass hardware and earlier logo seemed to have fallen out of favour with the more well heeled players and could be picked up relatively cheap. There were also the cheaper Westone Thunders and Thunderjets with the later logo as well. Sounded great, and had nice necks but often got badly treated and ended up being binned. Much better than the catalogue Marlin Precision copies that most of my schoolfriend bass players had, or the chipboard body Aria that I started out with.

That's just insanely overpriced. A decent clone could be knocked up by any half competent soldering iron wielder in an afternoon.

Don't think it's a Rockinbetter, as the headstock doesn't look quite right and I don't think they did them in anything other than red, black and natural. Looks like one of the Chinese copies from the trading websites in the far East, although it probably shares a number of components with other copies.

Played one that belonged to a session player from Sweden. It felt well made and had a moderately slim neck that was very nice to play, despite being strung with the heaviest four strings from a 5 string Power Slinky set (it was tuned to drop C).

I've had my SVT fail twice at gigs. First time was OK, since there was a DI between my bass and the amp, and I put it down to the notoriously lousy power at a certain venue in Camden. Second time was in Stoke on Trent, ridiculously hot stage, and the Ampeg overheated. No DI so the sound guy had to frantically set one up. The amp was fine the next night, apart from a "ticking" sound that the repair guy I took it to couldn't sort out ...