peted

I've always had the one main amp head, plus a good DI as a backup, and a little practice combo at home. My main amp for quite a few years now has been an Eich T-900. I stil have my old Hartke HA3500 somewhere collecting dust in the loft.

I've used the Grolsch bottle-top trick for years. Would be more than happy to replace these with some Basschat branding for that bargain price.

I've used index, middle, and ring finger for plucking for many years now. I added the ring finger later after I first learnt to play with just index and middle. I think my original reason for adding it was that I thought it would allow me to play some faster lines that I struggled with before. Now I don't really think about what finger(s) I'm using but they all get used. The thing that I found when I first started to add my ring finger though was to keep all the plucking dynamics even and not get tempated to play everything with triplets

We use two passive EV 12" tops fed from a stereo class-D power amp, and a single active EV 18" sub that just runs from the extra left channel output from the desk. The sub has a low pass filter and the amp for the tops has a high pass filter that we use to give them a bit of separation.

This is brilliant, thanks

This is an awesome story and totally what I'm looking to acheive. Can you let me know what resources you used to pick up the knowledge for constructing walking basslines? Any pointers?

The fretboard on the bass is open-grain Wenge and, having just turned it fretless, I didn't want to start chewing up the fretboard with roundwound strings. Was also interested in what people were saying about flatwounds making a bass naturally sound a bit more like an upright in tonality, which is what I was after with this one. The roundwounds sounded just fine, but wanted to experiment. Happy to say I've had a set of D'Addario Chromes on there now for a week and they sound perfect. Another benefit I've noticed is a complete loss of string noise when sliding notes. Everything is just so buttery smooth I'm one happy bassist with how this instrument has now changed and turned out. Inspired to practice my fretless a lot more.

Social clubs are generally a funny game. They'll staunchly refuse to dance for the first set and you'll need to play quiet enough for the members to have whisper conversations with each other. Then they'll all be up for the second set and asking for more at the end.

Sometimes I can listen to old recordings and marvel at some of the ideas I was coming up with at the time and that I'd struggle to play the same now, and other times I'll find lines that show that I have actually improved with my playing. It's a weird mixed bag.

Disclosure: this bass wasn't fretless when I bought it from new in 2003. Has been masterfully converted to fretless by the magicians at The Bass Gallery in Camden. It's still sporting roundwound strings for now, but will be getting a set of flatwounds in due course and then I'll be working on my fretless technique.

Have another pic of my Shuker Singlecut fanned fret 6, because it's kept me from wanting a new bass for about 10 years now.

My two, Shuker Singlecut fanned fret 6 and Warwick Thumb Bolt-on fretless 4.

I like it when there's a big crowd and they're all up and dancing, but i'm not as put out as the rest of my band when we play a gig and we're just providing background music for the event. Happy to be paid to play background music. All goes towards new and exciting music equipment