NancyJohnson

Why not just speak to Spencer? He's very accommodating.

There's this assumption that drop-C# is all about the lowest string in the set (be it dropping from E or tuning up from a B); assuming that you're in standard tunings (C#/F#/B/E), you're going to have all sorts of tension issues either way. My input here would be (as it's only an audition) buy a cheap five string set and stick the low strings on, tune to BEAD and play off the second fret; if nothing this will give you a bit of an extended range, much like a drop-D tuner on a regular bass tuned EADG or the following: Assuming you get the gig, it might be useful to investigate custom string gauges to suit. Assuming you're playing using a fairly lightish stock set of strings (so a 5-string set may be 40/60/80/100/120), it's safe to assume that tuning up or down five steps accounts for c.0.02" in string diameter - if you're looking at a tuning roughly halfway between a low B and an E, you might be able to get away with a balanced set of 50-110. As mentioned here DR Strings DDTs or even a cheapie set of D'Addarios of the same gauge (£18) would do and you will probably get away without having to tweak truss rods or anything else.. It's all trial and error, as with regular strings you might need to try a few options until you hit paydirt.

Go back to the main Basschat page, scroll down and there's a Marketplace area. Basses, amps and so on.

Matt black.

Much to my delight, the LUDO back catalogue has dropped into Spotify. If you do one thing today, have a listen the Skeletons On Parade and listen to how the song winds through Broadway musical, jazz, pop, pop punk and double bass drum metal brilliance in five very odd minutes. Otherwise, this:

Been lurking on this thread for the last couple of days, just taking things up a bit, I picked up a DI-2112 earlier in the year. If you know me, you'll know that @Tech21NYCkit has been a huge part of my pre-amp set up for more than ten years (I even owned a Landmark head for a while). I owned the GED rack pre-amp, which worked fine until it didn't (it went back to the UK distributor whose opinion was 'well, it's making some noise, so it must be working OK' but had little concept of what the correct noise should have been) and then I just bought the dUg Pinnick unit ('It's like the YYZ but in steroids!'), then pulled the trigger on the DI-2112 which, once I got the 18v PSU, has become my main shaping tool. I know I have bemoaned elsewhere that the dry signal from any bass is more or less the same (cough, subjective), the DI-2112 just brings anything I've got to life. I'm really looking forward to trying it with an EUB in a couple of months.

I love a mystery. Anything else? There's some stuff in the case - a 'thanks for your purchase thing, plus what looks like a card receipt. Anything on the back of the headstock or reverse of the bass? Headstock shape is distinctly Michael Kelly.

It's in the sales...best keep this to PMs.

Buy my Darkglass.

On the subject of the OP, a bit of both. I circulate in a fairly tight pool of musicians, maybe a dozen or so; we're all a certain standard - if one band folds, another one starts up, nobody is quiet for very long. I do find it difficult trying to work with other musicians, especially where you're going in as a bass-player to an existing band. Too much history. Pre-C19, I jammed with a three 'bands' and just found them all somewhat underwhelming - it was almost as if they were desperate be playing music, but they'd learnt everything from a book and that this what made the magic happen. No swing, very blinkered and unable to move outside of the confines of what they were doing. I was told by one guitarist that bass players should just stick to the root as there was no way you could play an E over a G or something. Too much baggage. If I had the go in me, I'd just try and start something new. Plenty of musician sites., I'd love to just get in a room with three or four like-minded strangers and just make some noise.

Ooh, I stand corrected:

By a curious quirk in the space time continuum, 'A Day In the Life' just came up on a Spotify playlist. Considering this was what, five or six years into Ringo's time with the band and this (as a track) is several country miles ahead of Love Me Do, the drums are just awful and yes, I know this is only one song. To the casual listener (and perhaps non-muso), The Beatles are about melodies and words rather than the instrumentation. The drums on Let It Be really aren't that dissimilar to A Day In The Life; I know it's a ballad, but there's no attack or flair, it's peppered with those awful (lazy) tom fills, the loose hi-hats. Thing is, I don't have an answer as to an alternative and besides, it's never going to happen...the calibre of most modern rock drummers would leave Ringo Starr in their dust. Could you imagine Dave Grohl, Matt Cameron or Stewart Copeland playing on either of these? I could envisage Keith Moon, Clem Burke or maybe Roger Taylor doing it justice.

I'm not really that much of a Beatles fan, but Ringo Starr is more a case of right place, right time. A mate of mine (and a Beatles fan) once said that his playing was 'clueless and uninspiring' and the the ability gap at the end was akin to having Meg White replace Mike Portnoy in Dream Theater. Chuckle.

Here's a test I did a couple years ago. I owned a pair I'd Aguilar 1x12s for a short time and a tested these against a pair of a mate's Barefaced 1x12s and my Big One. Hands down the both Barefaced set-ups won that shootout on all counts; they had more if the tonal characteristics I was chasing and were just more exciting compared to the Aguilar units. That said, there was little between the two Barefaced 1x12s and the Big One and not enough to for me to consider shelling out for a pair, so I sold the Aguilars and stuck with the Big One until last December. The Darkglass (IMO) suits me better than Big One, but there's not much in it.

I've run dozens of different cabinet combinations over the years, from ridiculous tri-amp enclosures to quite simple 1x12 setups. Personally, downsizing is the way to go; like you I'm running a Darkglass 112, which I figure I'll double to a 2 x 1x12 set up at some point (despite the fact that it's unlikely to be used in anger any time soon). There's probably a ton of arguments for and against running a pair of 12s or a 2x12, but I find the Darkglass kit seems to do what I want, the high-frequency horn is wonderful, the cabinet is lightweight/portable, capable, pleasing on the eye and a pair would give me a degree of flexibility over a 2x12 (ie if I ever need to run a dual channel set-up); these points alone mean more to me than whether the frequency range of other cabinets extend a few Hz lower or higher. We're just at the stage where bass doesn't necessarily require 15s or 18s to allow it to rumble. I've got a Barefaced Big One as well if I needed it.

I have one of these.

Darkglass AO 900. Cough.

Other way round: Last night guitarist took an Epiphone Les Paul Junior to rehearsal. Bass player says: 'Why didn't you buy the Gibson?' 😂

Just back on topic, I've used 2" wide Levy's extra-long polypropylene straps for longer than I can remember. 100% vegan. (Before anyone goes off on one, yes I know the bulk of Levy's business is leather based.)

Home recording aside, I've no musical ventures going on, haven't stepped into a pub or restaurant since mid-March 2020 and have little desire to do so. Good friend of mine (double-vaxxed), tested positive at the weekend; weirdly he was photographed with a bunch of people at a pub on Saturday, had a 'nasty fall' at the end of the night (not sure of the circumstances), ended up in hospital where he tested positive. All the more reason to stay home.

There has to be a syndrome (I don't have a word for it, but let's refer to it as Bargainicious Bumm-a-kissious Syndrome), that a psychiatrist would point to as the owner's unstoppable belief that a less expensive of anything is better than the full priced equivalent thereof. I'm sure you all love your Epiphones and Squiers and are firmly of the belief that they're a country mile better than those Gibsons and Fenders you could have splashed a bit more on, but I've seen enough photographs of these instruments with Gibson truss-rod covers and Fender decals (cough, put on by the previous owner(s), cough) to know that there's a degree of vexation with the current owners. (See also hundreds of photos of single cut (Epiphone) Les Paul Juniors, conveniently cropped below the headstock.) Not wishing to unload too much, but maybe I've been unlucky and just perhaps I was unfortunate in my formulative years to have chosen a dozen or so copies that were just so simply rubbish that they should have gone on a bonfire. I'll admit to still owning one Epiphone that I bought new and blind for home recording - a Phantomatic guitar - that was just so awful that it underwent transplants of new machines, bridge and pickups; it's better (*subjective), but for the initial outlay plus the extras, I could probably have picked up a Gibson SG or a Les Paul CM. I had an Epiphone Dot Studio (335 style thing) that was equally as bad and went through the same transplants - the worst thing being that even after throwing a long throw bridge on it, it still wouldn't intonate beyond the 7th fret as the bridge was in the wrong place. In truth, things only got better when I started to splash decent money on instruments; while everything I've ever bought - cheap or old - has needed tweaking of some sort to get it to play like I want it, but from the perspective of individual factors (quality, build, playability, hardware etc.), I'd take the real thing over a facsimile seven days a week.

This ^^^ x1000. Christ, they need to write this in every manual going. I've had my live tone positively commented on many, many times. I was never happy just plugging in, too much 'ponk'. [Edit/addition: I favour a bit of a Geddy/dUg tone, controlled dirt/clank.] About 25 years ago I had a lay-off from playing, sold everything except from an old Precision bass. At a mate's insistence (he's a drummer), we took a visit to Andertons and he said to try plugging a Bass POD into the effects return on an Ashdown Mag combo; I thought he was nuts, but it was an aah-there-it-is moment of clarity (cue angels singing) - through the front input jack the POD was just mush, overloading a pre-amp by plugging another pre-amp into it. From then on, irrespective of the amp, it's always been into the FX return or into a poweramp.

I prefer a Sansamp into the effects return or a poweramp. Just prefer the Sansamp doing the work/shaping rather than it being coloured by going in the front of an amp.

I can see the point of offering pre-sale tickets to people who've made the effort to join a fan club/mailing list (or similar), although I'm not a fan of the whole VIP cash-cow (although I'll admit I'm considering it for Pearl Jam in 2022). I really wanted to see Public Service Broadcasting at the Albert Hall; there was a big mailing about pre-sales, but these were limited to maybe 100 tickets, which sold out in minutes. In answer to your question, it appears that for biggish artistes gone are the days where you could just buy decent/close to the stage tickets without having to pay a huge premium or be a member of something. I do miss being able to just swing by the Hammersmith Odeon ticket office, see what was on the board and just see what they had.