Greg Edwards69

I picked up a few tips from various youtube videos. But the most important ones that I felt were truly fundamental in getting this right are: Get the neck perfectly straight. A notched straightedge and feeler gauges will help here. The notches take the fret heights out of the equation so you can properly set the neck straight. These are useful for doing setups as well as fret levelling so worth buying IMO. A fret rocker is also a useful tool to have, and take with you if you're buying or testing a new/used bass (I believe stewmac have a new model with in integrated fret file for quickly dealing with single high spots) Do not underestimate the power of the humble sharpie. Paint the top of every fret before filing. After your first filing pass you'll immediately see which frets, and spots on frets have or haven't been touched. Paint the frets again before crowning and file until there's barely a hairline left down the centre of the fretwire. Tape over pickups and bare fretboard with low tack masking tape. It'll save a lot of clearing up and protect the fretboard. A spirit level makes a great filing block. Stick a strip of masking tape along the flat edge, then stick your sanding /wet and dry paper to the masking tape with double sided sticky tape. Viola, instant filing beam. When the paper wears out simply peel it all of and reapply. A little goes a long way. Let the filing beam to the work. Don't push down and check the frets after every, single pass of the file. Add a ski ramp! Once you've levelled all the frets, create fall off up the dusty end by sticking 3 or 4 strips of electrical tape over the 12th fret (or higher if you prefer) and then redo the levelling process (including the sharpie) on the higher frets (I used a shorter spirit level) ensuring the filing beam is always in contact with the taped fret. The strips of tape raises the fret height slightly to create a shallow angle down to the top fret. FWIW, I got a few of the tips from the inimitable Billy Sheehan. His videos might be worth a watch to you as well.

It's as if they didn't realise these things have volume controls. A Ferrari can drive just as slowly as a 2CV if you need it to.

I'm willing to bet that most pubs have been where they are than most residents living near by. There's on pub we used to play at that I believe has been there since 1912. We played there once very humid summer's evening and the aircon wasn't working (thank goodness for baby powder). The landlord told us he couldn't open the windows because of complaints. He later told us there's one particular neighbour (bearing in mind this pub is on a busy highstreet, even at night with the other bars and restaurants) who recently moved into the area. Even when bands aren't playing they complain to the pub and the council about the noise (they even complained about the flowers in the hanging baskets outside the pub setting off their hay fever). The landlord got so fed up with the constant complaints that he moved on to a mother pub and the subsequent landlords haven't booked bands in since. If you don't like noise, don't move to within spitting distance of a well established pub.

You could use this to your advantage. Even though it’s inconvenient for everyone to book a day off of work to do this soundcheck, you could alway tell that it will take 4 hours to setup, play though a range of song styles and pack up again, and thus get a free rehearsal out of it.

I haven't had a chance to listen to the sample yet, but that reminds me of the sub harmonic generator effect in the Ashdown Evo amp range. I wonder if it's a similar thing.

Wasn't that the case over the entire Warwick line? My 2000 Thumb had a monster neck - even bigger than my Yamaha Attitude LTD2 (my 2001 Corvette was relatively chunky too). Comments regarding neck dive with Thumb basses are quite common over the years, and I seem to recall someone mentioning that the older models had smaller necks and balanced a lot better but the necks over the entire line up were reprofiled to be bigger c2000, and back to a slimmer profile c2010 (IIRC).

I recently picked up a Nux Mighty Plug MP2. I haven't have the chance to play with it in depth, but the sound quality is definitely good enough and varied enough for practice and it will certainly do the job as an easy to use, quiet practice device. It's great that I can use it with or without my iPad or iPhone, and stream music through it wirelessly. My other solution, that I was using before hand, was an IK Multimedia iRig HD2 device, with either Amplitube or BiasFX. This solution has a superior quality of amp/fx simulation, but it's not as convenient. It's feasible to even use this as a live rig direct into PA / FRFR speaker if I needed to instead of my Helix, however, it can be a little noisy depending on which bass I use (single coil hum) Headphones, I either use my inexpensive KZ ZS10 IEMs, that I also use live, or my Jabra Move on ear headphones (wired), not amazing or expensive headphones, but very neutral sounding which suits me fine. EDIT: I wonder how good the NUX would be as a live backup rig straight into my FRFR?

It strikes me that the Dolphin is a redesigned Thumb in some ways, that fixes all the ergonomic issues that the Thumb has, but retains the classic tone it's known for.

I had a bolt on Thumb. It had a very refined and focussed growl, lots of mids but tricky to mix in a typical rock and pop function/pub band line up. It has a tone of its own. A one trick pony perhaps, but a damn good trick if you like that sound. A stingray has a less refined growl IMHO but is a more versatile tone that fits better and easier into mixes without much effort. Wal. I have no idea FWIW, depending on one’s definition of growl, my Yamaha Attitude LTD2 is the growliest, gnarliest bass I’ve ever played. But P bass growl is quite a different thing to what you’re looking at.

Feature wise, the closest current boss unit appears to be the GT1b. However, I have no idea how close it sounds. I’ve had a quick skim through pdfs for the other units and none of them offer much in the way of bass amp modelling. It would be great if Boss added some bass specific algorithms to the GT1000 series and even the Pocket GT.

But you don't know if everybody else in the pub has done the same. I've had covid, my wife had it quite bad. We've been jabbed but it doesn't stop us catching it again if somebody else hasn't taken the correct precautions.

Yes. I'm double jabbed and will be testing everyday before and after the gig. Got booster on Monday. Playing live music is important to me as well, and I don't want to let anyone down. However, we can't trust that other people will be following the official advice and do the right thing, no matter how vague or clear it is. Trouble is, the wife and I are supposed to be going to stay at my sister-in-laws for a week over Christmas. I'm now getting grief from her about doing this gig. All I can do is keep testing and isolate between the gig and when we go away. The two singers are of the mind that they want to do it and they'll wear a mask in-between performances. I'm not sure if the realise the mask is to protect other people - it's not a suit of armour!

That's what I'm afraid of. It's a sweeping generalisation, but the people that are likely to be there are likely the sort the people who don't give a toss about covid. aka superspreaders.

I'm half hoping this weekends (18th Dec) gig will be cancelled. But it's a pub and doesn't fall under the same rules as larger venues, so the bar manager (friend of one of our singers) says it's still going ahead. I hate cancelling gigs, even if we have a valid reason - like one of us has fallen ill. But there really ought to be clearer guidance for this sort of thing from the government, such as pubs can stay open, but no entertainment, or table service only again. As it is, once more, the advice is vague and puts the onus on the public to do what they think best. If you get sick, it's your fault and the government can't be blamed. We've had a discussion and it looks like we are going to do this gig, but in what appears to be an act of self sabotage, we are actively not promoting it. We've also said we'll take whatever precautions we can to keep ourselves safe and out of harms way. After this weekend, we don't have anything until February. Oh, and keep testing!

Even QSC themselves recommend the smaller K10.2 for bass in live bands. Although this is with PA support. You might be better served with two of them or the K12.2 without PA support. https://www.qsc.com/resource-files/productresources/spk/k.2/q_spk_k.2_appguide_livebands.pdf PS, I'm seriously considering downsizing from my headrush frfr-112 to the K10.2. It would also replace the smaller headrush frfr-108 I sometimes use for rehearsals.

I used one of those too, with my old 121H cab. It made a huge difference in being able to hear the details in the bass tone. Sitting it on a Gramma Pad seemed to help a little as well, especially on hollow risers. These days I use an frfr speaker that can sit vertically or as as a wedge. I don't use the gramma pad anymore either as my Helix has an hpf. I really ought to stick that thing on ebay!

I remember many, many years ago in my first band, we acquired a couple of Wem 4x10 column cabs for our PA. I wish I'd kept them. They were a bugger to move around, but I bet they would have made an epic bass rig.

LIkewise. Rocked up versions of disco era songs seem to work well for us too. Mama Mia, September, Le Freak, Disco Inferno, Love Train etc. All guitar driven covers that guarantee people on the dancefloor. It's picking the right ones that is the challenge. I can remember clearing the dancefloor with Boogie Oogie Oogie, Let's Groove and Everybody Dance.

Both! Female and male lead singers. He and I can both do pretty decent falsetto.

Tragedy! Or pretty much any funky Bee Gees song. Cheesy as hell, but absolute bangers. Oh, and... "December 63" - Frankie Vallie "My Girl" - Temptations "Parklife" - Blur "Common People" - mash up of Pulp's original and William Shatners epic cover.

We play these two with one or two guitarists without issue. For Enter Sandman I have a little grit in my tone, play hard with a pick and play the bassline as normal (aside from a little wah sweep to simulate the guitar on the intro). The guitarists plays more of the rhythm part on the intro. On Alive, I use judicious drive and chorus to really fatten the bass up. I also improve a little on the outro underneath the solos around simple pentatonic shapes. The bassline on this song is busier than you might think. Make use of those glissandos, harmonics and vibrato.

All of the above advice is great. Get your tone in order first. Plenty of mids and maybe a little overdrive to accentuate the harmonics - really bring the bass to life. The drummer can help too. It's amazing how a ride cymbal can replace a rhythm guitarists On the odd occasion my band goes out with a single guitarists this covers pretty much everything. But I do have a specially dialled in Helix patch for a couple of songs that really need a little extra help. I based it on this guy's preset. Does a similar thing to the Fishman Fission mentioned above, but sound more convincing.

It is a bit of a risky buy for me tbh. I usually prefer chunky necks, and I really don’t get on that well with thin necks at all. But from my research, I understand the jb2 has a fairly chunky neck for a jazz, which should work for me okay. The biggest challenge will be the narrower nut. I’ve been spoiled by wider P style necks for years. My hand used to cramp up on my old 5 string Warwick thumb that had similar nut end string spacing, but I think a lot of that was the poor ergonomics that meant the nut was about a mile away from my body!

I ordered a G&L Tribute JB-2 (Sunburst and maple) from Anderton's last night when their black friday sale went live. I've had my eye on this bass for a couple of months now since my back started playing up. I didn't expect to see one in their sale, but low and behold, there it was. £299 down from £399. Should arrive Monday. FWIW. My back went twice this year, the last time I was crawling around on my hands and knees for a few days. I think it was a fitness issue at it's core, but triggered by the first gig in about a year, playing my significantly weighty Yamaha Attitude LTD2, and carrying a load of gear (inc PA and helping move drums) up and down a fire escape - my back was on fire after that gig, and a week later I was on the floor. I vowed then to lighten my gear as much as possible. The Attitude now has Hipshot ultralites (makes a big difference to the balance), I sold my very heavy Warwick Corvette. I've been considering getting a jazz bass for a while as in nearly 30 years I've never had one (not a true "classic" one anyway) but I realise they tend to be on the weighty side compared to the average P bass. Bassdirect had a list of lightweight basses and the inexpensive JB-2 caught my attention at only 8.5lbs. I'm not a sunburst guy normally, but I am a sucker for a maple fretboard and this particular model really appealed. I know it's not a "classic Jazz" style, but it's closer to one than anything I've had before, and lighter. I just hope it lives up to it's reputation.

A rug with the same design popped up on my FB feed a few days ago. I nearly convinced the wife it would look great in the living room.