NancyJohnson

Last night (after we'd finished recording), our guitarist said I needed to watch some live footage of a bass solo by Rancid's Matt Freeman. It was frenetic; fast, not a bad note and (to my ears, at least), a bit formulaic and frankly, a bit dull. I decided to pull out my trump card, the delicious isolated John Myung live footage that's been kicking around on YT for a few years. My guitarist was agog, almost like he couldn't quite compute how someone could play bass like that. Thing is, these players are both great at what they do, but just different at what they do. You need to add proficiency and adeptness to the equation to make technicality work. Both these guys have these qualities, but one of them just has a bit more of each.

Thanks for the input. The material is quite a departure from the old school punky material I've done in the past, my wife doesn't like it one bit and describes it as being gnarly and gritty. I'd concur (to a degree!) that the vocals are borderline unintelligible; these are being added after the music is recorded and there's two people singing (regular vocalist and the guitarist). We will roll it out live at some point, at which juncture I'm sure things will sound a bit different, but given the samples and loops, we'll likely be having to utilise backing tracks and clicks. On the point about risk-taking, mark my words, there's a lot of very interesting stuff going on on the more recently recorded material. On the upside, my work here is now done; I finally finished tracking basses about two hours ago and I'm happy me and the other guys are still speaking to be honest. Vocals should be done in the next week or two.

I've been working on this studio project for the last two or three months, just trying to break the fastball monotony of formulaic punkish stuff and just throwing loops, samples, different time signatures and oddities into the overall mix. I'd like some honest responses to this please. I'm really enjoying the workflow, the process and the end results, but it has been a hard slog at times. Overall, I've never worked harder at trying to do more while sounding like I'm doing less. I'm not a fan of the idea of this being an album as such, the work we've done is more this body of work and when the whole thing is mixed it's planned that the songs should just crossfade into each other forming 40-45 minutes of continual listening. These are the first two tracks, Countdown Sequence and Governing, Regulating, Managing. It's not an easy listen. Please fasten you seatbelts and assume the crash position.

Thing is, a 'photos only' thread simply won't stay on track; it'll just end up as a vanity thing because members won't be able to resist show-boating their other gear as well (look elsewhere). A good percentage of the threads on this site rarely stick to the content of the original post. If it was simply builds and builds only, then fine, I'm on board, but I'd give it less than a week before it all starts going wrong!

Updated Gear For Sale List: 01. Mesa Boogie Big Block 750 Amp, Footswitch & Rack Case, £550 o.n.o. - Silverfoxnik 02. Schecter Diamond P5, 5 String Bass & Gig Bag, £350 o.n.o. - Silverfoxnik 03. Behringer 5 Band parametric 19" Rack Unit, £25 - Silverfoxnik 04. Fender Nate Mendel Precision, £575 - obbm 05. USA built 4 string in a 'glo' finish, £1300 - ezbass 06. EBS Compressor, Chorus & Octave, Dr Green Bass reverb & Joyo D-Seed echo and a small Pedaltrain board & bag (Mini I think), £TBA - WalMan 07. Mesa MPulse 600 (flight-cased) and a Mesa Powerhouse 1x15 cab (+ authentic Mesa cover) - £750 the pair - TheGreek 08. 3 Pin (female) DI plugs - The Greek 09. New Chinese Rosewood/Maple Jazz neck, £35 - obbm 10. Slightly used jack, XLR and other connectors - 50p each - obbm 11. Fender Jazz (Mex), in a very fetching blue, strung with flats - £450 12. Harley Benton Progressive 5 Fretless - £100 13. G&L USA SB2 £850 14. (Possibly) Mark Bass Little Mark 3 (will be tight for space so will only bring if anyone messages me beforehand) - £300 15. Mark Bass New York 121, 8ohm (will be tight for space so will only bring if anyone messages me beforehand) - £320 16. Mark Bass Traveller 151, 8 ohm (will be tight for space so will only bring if anyone messages me beforehand) - £350 17. Mark Bass Standard 102, 8 ohm (will be tight for space so will only bring if anyone messages me beforehand) - £400 18. Ampeg 4x10 B410HLF (will be tight for space so will only bring if anyone messages me beforehand) - £175 19. Takemine Jumbo Electro Acoustic bass EG512C, 34" scale, spruce top, mahogany back and sides, rosewood board, gloss natural finish - (will be tight for space so will only bring if anyone messages me beforehand) - £350 20. Boss BR600 Multitrack (boxed) - £95 (NancyJohnson/Paul) - Paypal is fine. 21. Fender/Squier Badtz Maru Hybrid - £210 ( (NancyJohnson/Paul) - Paypal is fine.)

Does it djent?

It works for me on several levels. While I don't mind signature models, or distressed models, as such, the Flea did buck that; Fender could have just put out a nice, pristine shell pink homage to an early 60s Jazz, but clearly felt the Flea was the better option. Anyhow, neck problems or otherwise, this has turned out really well. Reckon it actually looks better than the original.

The guy who's producing us uses TSE BOD, which is essentially a virtual Sansamp BDDI. It's decent enough although I find recording clean a bit restrictive. If you're using the full version of Amplitube (I'm assuming this includes SVX), I can't see why you'd need anything else to be honest!

Ack, nope, I haven't played one and to be honest, much like driving a Lada Riva, I have very little desire to do so. That said, this has never been about whether they're good or bad basses, as I'm sure after a few personalised tweaks they'll play wonderfully, everyone will be very happy and within a few months this very site will be peppered with adverts from members wishing to sell them on. Decals and truss-rod covers aside, the unqualified prosaic assertions of betterment and how close they are to the 60s models that have been made time and again (here and elsewhere) does itch like a rash. You could see from the original prototypes that the body shape/geometry was well off and well off by some margin; I didn't need to do that in Photoshop. Good luck with the pinky.

Here's how faithful your reproduction is. Cosmo's white Epiphone against a cardinal red 1960s Gibson. I've lined this up against the neck dots. Yep, pretty faithful reproduction.

I'd be interested in whether these people who say things are better than the original have just read this somewhere or even been in the same room as one.

This doublespeak logic astounds me. So it's better than the real thing (conjecture; a two part bridge and some chrome hardware does not make it better, or worse, than the real thing), but irrespective, let's put a Gibson truss rod cover on it so it purports to be the real thing, even though it isn't. If these Epiphones are so great, then surely your logic would be that all Gibson owners need to start putting Epiphone truss rod covers on their Thunderbirds, right? Also, just because Epiphone company is part of the Gibson Group, this does not justify changing the truss-rod cover to a Gibson one either.

Sigh. This saddens me and it's just one step removed from people who put Fender decals on Limelights. You all love and want the look of a Thunderbird, but you want to excise the actual manufacturer. Man alive, just step up and buy a Gibson.

Current offers for the shootout below. I think we're up to a good number but would say I'm prepared to bump a couple off, not because they're irrelevant or anything, but just for clarity sake. The shootout idea was always based around bassists being unable to identify an instrument in a blind test; while I've yet to have a standard Fender Jazz thrown into the mix (yet), there's a couple on here where there's no discernable point of reference (my Lull and Aria, Jez's JM4 and maybe Trevor's Aria), but I'll leave them in unless we get a commitment. If you want to have your gear included, please just quote this message and and I'll do a final listing on the 28th. Maybe next year we can extend this to a 12 bass Fender Jazz shootout BASS SHOOTOUT These are the basses lined up to test against your ears: 01) Rickenbacker 4003 (Chis/ezbass) 02) Wal Mk1 (Trev/TrevorR) 03) Aria SB700 (Trev/TrevorR) 04) JR Bass JM4 (Jabba_the_gut/Jez) 05) Spector NS2 (Cetera/Gary) 06) Epiphone Thunderbird - one of the new ones I think (Cetera/Gary) 07) Gibson Thunderbird (SilverfoxNik/Nik) 08) Fender Precision (GraemeR) 09) Fender Jazz Deluxe (GraemeR) 10) Sire Marcus Miller V7 (GraemeR) 11) Mike Lull JAXT4 (mine!) 12) Warwick Streamer DoubleBuck (rodfunnell) 13) 1978 MusicMan Stingray (rodfunnell) 14) MARUSZCZYK Elwood 15) Aria Pro II Primary Bass (P-Bass) (mine!)

He pretty much lost me at, 'I'm a You-Tuber'.

Yes. Next question!

I've snipped your original post, but you know the fast food analogy works better than trying to actually quantifying it from a musical perspective. I shall be retaining this nugget in a dark recess of my brain and will pull it out and use it at some point. Bravo!

The covers band enigma. I've never understood why people go nuts for bands playing other people's songs. It's difficult to quantify without sounding too blunt. I've always felt that by and large the typical covers gig audience aren't the type of people who feel the need to invest time (or money) in bands; they know the hits, they're top 20 savvy, but while they might know Stacey's Mom, they wouldn't know, or even bother, to investigate Karpet King. A combination of drink, mob mentality, people just wanting to hear some songs they know and to have a good night out means Summer of '69 is probably a win-win every time.