Happy Jack

Obvious questions ... Where's the gig? Are you playing a winebar or a church hall? Will you be on a raised wooden stage or a concrete floor? What style of music will you be playing? What's the band line-up?

Keep an eye out for a pre-owned Mike Lull. Weights vary but - in general - Mike Lull basses are amongst the lightest bits of boutique kit out there.

Why thank'ee kindly, Young Master. The neck feels just great, an absolute delight to play. The only thing I'm having to fiddle with is the action. As you know I usually have a much higher action on my basses, and I haven't quite got my head around having it as slick as this. 😂 It's fine at the start of each set but, as I get more & more carried away, I dig in more and start to choke the strings. They tell me, it's all in the fingers ...

I bet you're missing that fretless Mike Lull neck by now ...

My drummer always starts at the right speed and all is good until he starts doing BVs ... as soon as he starts singing (which he does well BTW) his drumming accelerates.

I honestly wouldn't have believed it possible to make a 14-minute video on how to count in a song. Now that I've watched (the first two minutes of) it, it's pretty clear that I would have been right.

I have two of these, one with a back-rest and one without. Having the back-rest makes it far more comfortable and supportive BUT it also makes it a right PITA to load in/out at gigs.

Not familiar with those, Dave. Right now I'm waiting for some of them there Jargars to arrive (£115 a set!) and filling in the time by experimenting with the original fitment Daddario Helicore Hybrids from Silvie's Eminence. She didn't get on with them at all so they've only had a few days' worth of playing-in time before she replaced them with Innovation Silver Slaps. Next gig with the Kolstein is on Friday ...

Well scratch my scrotum, @Silvia Bluejay and I were at that gig! In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if that video was a piece of her early work.

😂😂😂 No.

Trust me to be holding the parcel when the music stopped! 🙄

In truth, Kolstein only ever made a single example of this bass and it's been circulating around Basschat for the last 15 years ...

The vast majority of use for this bass will always be rock'n'roll & rockabilly, but the vast majority of my 'slapping' is in fact fake. I do lots of single-slap with exaggerated hand movements to make it look like I'm doing something special, but what the audience is hearing (for percussion) is of course the drumkit. No real bass player is ever going to be fooled by my playing for a second. Additionally, the Schaller pickup takes the sound of my Kolstein well over into Precision territory so no rockabilly purist will ever compliment me on my tone. All of which said, I play a LOT of gigs these days and I like strings that help me to get through two (or even three) 3-set gigs on a weekend. I'm after strings that are kind to my plucking/slapping hand and work with the style of music ... which is primitive, but in a good way. And I'm genuinely impressed at how cheap the Jargars are!

DAT'S da fella! First thing I looked at was the new, upgraded version of the Heritage strings but they're apparently not going to be available until late April.

Do you install & tune 'solo' strings in the same way as any others?

Outstanding, sir! Many thanks.

Looking to replce the strings on the bass I bought last year from @bassace ... they're a bit dead even for my tastes. 😂 The bass has a mag pickup on the end of the fingerboard, and I'm looking at https://www.thestringzone.co.uk/evah-pirazzi-slap-double-bass-strings-set I appreciate that the option to buy gut D & G is not available to me, but would the chrome-wound set be OK with the pickup?

I've never played through one but I'll bet you a grand that comment is utter bollocks. That amp has 4 x EL84 power valves ... I guarantee you that you'll never get the master Volume past 12 o'clock. Put that amp through a 1x8 speaker (like the Crazy Eight I use for low-volume DB gigs) and fair enough, the volume will be limited. But that's because of the speaker, not the amp. Put that amp through a 310 and just hear it take a deep breath, stretch out and fill the room.

And that is EXACTLY how I started playing bass. Seriously. 😎

So by amp you mean just the head, not a combo? 100W of valve amp will be WAY WAY WAY too much for any pub gig. Seriously. I don't want to re-light the whole valve watts -v- solid state watts conflagration, but there's no point at all in trying to translate between the two. My Genz Benz Shuttle is rated for 900 (S/S) watts and it's a fabulous amp, but it can be easily blown out of the water by my Matamp GT100 which is rated for 100 (valve) watts. The difference is that the Shuttle sounds great at sensible volumes, whereas the Matamp needs to be pushed to the break-up point to get the classic valve sound, and at those volumes I could clear the venue in minutes. If you're going through an Ashdown 310 then you may be surprised at just how loud a small head will go, especially in a confined place like a pub. Have a look on eBay for vintage heads by people like WEM, sometimes 'cut down' from what used to be combos. The head from a 1970s WEM Dominator, for instance, will be rated 17W. You will not believe how much that thing will turn out, plus it's a truly great valve-overdrive sound.

If my experience (with my own daughter) is anything to go by, the most important factor is how enthusiastic she is about actually picking up the bass and playing it. Ideally you need a bass that SHE thinks looks cool and sounds great, and that SHE feels comfortable playing. And seeing as there's at least a 50/50 chance that she'll lose interest after a while, you need a bass that won't lose too much value over a few months, so deffo buy pre-owned. 🙄

Autre temps, autres mores. The past is a foreign country; trhey do things differently there.

Dare I ask what happened to the EMG Jazz pickups? They must have been pretty bloody special ...

You know, the money they can't possibly afford to pass on to musicians. Thanks to a FB post by @Wolverinebass I am now aware that they are the new sponsors for Barcelona FC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/60759525 But don't worry, musos, it's a bargain. Spotify are paying LESS than £250,000,000 for the privilege ...