Happy Jack

I'm 61, Bub. 43 years ago I'd left home, moved to London (with my record collection), and started going to gigs in the Big City. Does that make me an expert? Nope. Does that make me smarter than you? Nope. But I have my own ears, and I hears what I hears ...

Your experiences are yours, mine are mine. Unlike you, I recognise the difference. And I've been listening to music for a lot longer than you.

Hmmmm ... nice shoes at 3:50.

... but clearly not as much as this guy:

Yup, that was the trigger. Silvie had never mentioned previously that she had huge GAS for an Eminence ...

In truth, the production on that last track makes it virtually unlistenable. It feels like my ears are in a vice ...

Has anyone told Brother Malvis or Aud?

And before anyone asks, yes I paid full Duty & VAT as we passed through LHR. First time I've ever walked through the Red Channel.

Ah yes, that's the J.R. Hartley signature model, isn't it?

I have both. The M80 is a good, traditional gigbag which works well at gigs and studios where you have room to lay the bag down flat and open it. The Vertigo is designed for confined spaces where you want to be able to move your bass in and out of a case leaning (upright) against a wall or tucked into a corner. The level of protection is pretty much identical, the Vertigo has a 'boot' of reinforced plastic/rubber which means that your bass can be standing in a puddle of beer with no ill effects, the M80 has better pockets for carrying stuff if that's your thing. I play loads of gigs in small pubs and greatly prefer the Vertigo. Unfortunately, my go-to bass is a Mike Lull T5 and it's too damned big to fit into either the Vertigo or the M80! So I use a Gator gigbag instead ...

The end-pin housing should have been better reinforced than is the case. That aluminium plate at the bottom of the bass is all there is - there's no wooden support block inside the bass to keep it rigid. When the end-pin is fully retracted, as it so often is in rockabilly music, there is no issue. But the more the end-pin is extended, the greater the leverage effect, and it would be possible to buckle the aluminium plate. My solution, as usual, is to compromise. I don't want to play with the bass resting on the floor, and I can't have it at the height I'd normally use, so I now have the pin about 50% out.

I got the bass back from Laurence Dixon (The Bass Place, Herne Hill) today. He installed a Realist pickup (at my request, and in addition to the existing one), replaced the bridge with an adjustable (again at my request), shaved & profiled the fingerboard to match the new bridge, sorted out the twin soundposts so that they are correctly positioned and work properly, and did some corrective work on the end-pin structure. His work was every bit as good as Clarky told me it would be, and the bass is instantly far more playable and more comfortable to play. It also sounds noticeably better. I wanted the Realist since the existing pickup arrangement did a great job of picking up the sounds of the strings and of the slapping, but disguised (almost completely) the sound of the oil-drum. The Realist picks up far more of its sound from the resonating body and that means that you can actually hear the aluminium. All I need now is to run the two outputs through a blender and I will be able to control how much oil-drum the audience hears. The adjustable bridge allows me to switch between a rockabilly setup and a blues/jazz setup at will. The rest of the work was, frankly, remedial. As I mentioned before, Dave Gartland is not a professional DB luthier and he doesn't claim to be one. The bass as delivered had a few flaws which were easily fixed (well, "easily" by someone like Laurence), plus one which it is stuck with. As far as I'm concerned, it is now fully giggable and I'm looking forward to doing exactly that. I'm also expecting a fair bit of trepidation from any sound engineers who have to deal with it ...

Pics on arrival, please.

Now links to a sold no-name unpainted Precision. That was quick! Incidentally, I played one of the Orange-branded basses at NAMM in January. It was really very good indeed. I asked the price, expecting to be told something in four figures, and it was something like $350. I bloody near bought one on the spot!

Nah ... that thing is rubbish. I never did get on with Jazz basses.

Douglas, Fir all I know it was washed up on a beech. It should be turned to ash.

One ... two ... One two three four

Eeeugh! Tone Tolex ... yuk!

Ah but that's tone paint, that is ...

Yes, but they're not valve watts, are they?

Is her horse Trojan?

Agreed, but the thing is that we bass players are the sensible ones in the band. That means that we don't ignore weight, don't ignore practicality, and never own kit that will be used solely in studios and absolutely never gigged!

Not sure why this hasn't been mentioned already, but for bass players the hybrid valve preamp + Class D power stage are usually a better (and much lighter) solution than any all-valve head. I have an all-valve Matamp GT100 and a GB Shuttle 9.2. The Matamp is way "classier" as a thing to stick on a cabinet, more visible, cooler to look at, look-at-me-I'm-old-skool sort of thing. It also sounds better than the Shuttle (IMHO). What do I actually take to gigs? The Shuttle of course. It weighs less than one-fifteenth of the Matamp, it doesn't generate more heat than an oil-filled radiator, and it's way more flexible in terms of EQ should the room need it. Now if I was routinely playing through a 410 stacked on top of a 115 then perhaps I'd need to take the Matamp simply to complete "the look", but these days I routinely have a Crazy 88 for my backline and the real volume comes from FoH. Yes, even in a pub.

In fact, it was so heavy that I glued stones all over it. I like meeting people when they let me out of The Room, and my psychiatrist says I'm much better now. No, really I am.

I am sure that there is no aspect of this video that any of us will recognise.