Happy Jack

[quote name='booboo' timestamp='1403556371' post='2483944'] I'm waiting for one of you to post an ultra-positive review before I unleash the Barclaycard [/quote] I've gigged every bass I've ever owned (it's a sort of OCD thing, I just have to do it to justify buying the bass in the first place ). At £90-odd I think this may well have been the cheapest bass I've ever played but, in its own way, it was just as satisfying as the £2000 DB at the back of the tent, or the £1500 Mike Lull I played the previous night. Ultra-positive? Nah! It's a £90 uke-bass for God's sake! But value for money? Oh [b]YES[/b].

Was there a connection between the hog roast and the projectile vomiting?

Hah! Me, I was born in cross-fire hurricane. Well, Poole actually.

[URL=http://s1128.photobucket.com/user/h4ppyjack/media/Performance/Sundry/KingRalphKew35_zps595f714f.jpg.html][IMG]http://i1128.photobucket.com/albums/m496/h4ppyjack/Performance/Sundry/KingRalphKew35_zps595f714f.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

The whole rosewood/maple thing has never really impressed me much. A vibrating bass string does its vibrating between a fret and a bridge saddle. If the string comes into contact with the fretboard material then it makes a horrible buzzing noise. End of. Now if we're talking fretless basses, then it's a whole other thing of course. I've played fretted basses with fretboards made of maple, rosewood, ebony, graphite, ebanol, you name it. None of them sounded sufficiently different from each other to attract the slightest attention on a Saturday night at the Dog & Duck. I like that wild blue Hofner stuff because it's wild and it's blue. I doubt it will sound any different.

You were born in a cellar at Cambridge Circus?

http://www.hofner-guitars.com/news/news/view/label/Non-wood%20Fingerboards/

If I was Eric Clapton, I wouldn't live in Leeds.

http://www.thomann.de/gb/the_tracks_vm100_voltage_meter.htm As soon as you plug into the socket, this will tell you just how much risk you are running. If only the red LEDs light up, you're gonna struggle. I've used something similar to this for years, and it's saved me a fair amount of grief in some pubs.

[quote name='Monckyman' timestamp='1403307741' post='2481826'] Nice pics and nice waistcoat there Jack ; ) [/quote] Why thank'ee Dave, thank'ee kindly. I'm liking that look so much that I've now got another weskit on the way.

Seems to have been carefully de-badged (always a worry) and those photos are piss-poor. If it's a Lowden-era joint venture bass, then it's a bloody good-looking one and it may well play very nicely. Doubt I'd part with £800 for it, mind, especially with a "001" serial number which appears to have been written on in Biro ...

I'm now thinking Daleks carrying basses going: "[i][b]Expedite!!! Expedite!!![/b][/i]"

[quote name='codhead' timestamp='1402581133' post='2474999'] What I have figured out though is that it's because of that independence shizzle, [/quote] For me, Clive, this is still the nub of the problem. Getting the settings right on the independence shizzle is a real art form.

[quote name='Lozz196' timestamp='1403035856' post='2479151'] Well although this started out as a Precision Test, the real deal on this is the Precision pickup isn`t it. So I`m quite happy for non-Precision looking basses, so long as they`ve a Precision pickup that can be soloed/played passive. [/quote] Noooooooo!!! Tonewood alert! Tonewood alert!

But do check your weights very carefully first. The last thing you need is several dozen man-hours of work producing a bass with so much neck-dive as to be unplayable.

I'd suggest that you also check out the Gallien-Krueger MB500.

Most genre descriptions I can at least begin to get a handle on. I may struggle (mightily) to spot the difference between a hundred flavours of Heavy Metal, but I have some clue what Heavy Metal is, what Indie is, what Acid House is, and so on. But what the blankety-blank is "Alternative Rock"?

The smiley was silent ...

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Double-Bass-/181439858636?&_trksid=p2056016.l4276

Depressingly po-faced ... I was hoping for something much more tongue-in-cheek. There were some nice barbs: "... learn to play a secondary instrument like keyboards or guitar ..." But I suspect that was down to the author's illiteracy, and she meant "second" rather than "secondary".

How heavy do/did they tend to be?

I really wouldn't go that route. The OTB is a one-trick pony ... it's great at what it does, but if that's not what you want then you could throw a lot of money at "the problem" and not really get anywhere. For me, it's not a problem at all, I love mine and (even since buying a Matamp GT100) I still gig with it quite frequently. I can't imagine putting a Sansamp in front of my OTB500, or a Catalinbread SFT, or even a Radial Bassbone. As for controlling boominess, you may well find the money better spent on an Auralex Gramma Pad (or cheaper copy of one).

[i][color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]To the curious: don't let your curiosity fool you into thinking it was a lot more juicy than it was in reality. [/font][/color][/i] Methinks he doth protest too much ...

October 2012 found us playing to a dog. Not even one man and a dog. The man stayed outside to have a fag. Luckily enough, this was one of our earliest gigs with a photographer (Bluejay) so we even have evidence: [URL=http://s1128.photobucket.com/user/h4ppyjack/media/Performance/121012%20The%20Old%20Ford/JDTheOldFord34.jpg.html][IMG]http://i1128.photobucket.com/albums/m496/h4ppyjack/Performance/121012%20The%20Old%20Ford/JDTheOldFord34.jpg[/IMG][/URL] In the interests of fairness, I should point out that dog was almost as entertaining as we were. It picked up a beer mat from a low table, tossed it in the air, caught it, threw it away, chased it, worried it, destroyed it, then started all over ...

Something very odd about the arrangement of those tuners ...