Al Krow

Hey - welcome back! 9.75 lbs is not heavy - anything under around 10lbs is manageable in my books and I'm no Iron Man and no youth. This, on the other, hand is heavy at 12 lbs...

Hey @JRBass - I've spent a fair bit of time on that particular journey, myself, and have had two VK (both 210s) and two BF cabs over the past 3 or so years. You won't be disappointed with either brand IMO. The VKs are a little more coloured / sweeter sounding than the BF. I've ended up (a little to my surprise tbh) with a BF BB2 as my intended goto gigging cab, which I got hold of just before lockdown so have not had chance to try out in anger with full rock band yet. But I really like the combination of sound quality / articulation, frequency response, power handling & output and fantastic portability; as a 112 it's pretty hard to beat across all those categories taken together but it doesn't come cheap - I was fortunate to get one used in vgc. What set up and band will you be using it for - I see from your avatar that you're mainly an upright double bass player?

Dave that's very fair, however bass is part of the rhythm section as well as being a melody instrument. For me, slap is essentially a development of the percussive element of bass as a rhythm instrument. In fact Larry Graham, who is credited with inventing the style when they didn't have a drummer in the band, said that he developed "thumpin'" to make up for the absent kick drum and "pluckin'" to take the place of the missing snare (see clip starting at around 1.17). Leaving space for the rest of the band to breathe has been mentioned as key to a great slap groove. Absolutely.

Nope, I think ubit got it exactly right. Slagging off slap is a bit like slagging off punk or jazz or heavy metal or classical or whatever, just 'cos it's not your particular cup of tea. Fair enough, it's not your cup of tea. Move on.

What can I say?

Good question. My action is relatively low and my first thought was exactly as you suggested to raise the string height and that certainly helped, but I wouldn't want it too much higher. Interestingly I found that Marc was also getting some fret buzz on his Ibby SR (which happens to be the bass I am using), which was at least reassuring! Are you also a double thumb user / fan?

Hey - welcome to Basschat! What a really good groove you've got - your drumming roots clearly give you an unfair advantage on that score! Love that track by the Weekend btw: must admit I was for a long time fooled into thinking it was about the female love of his life and not his mate charlie.

If you, or anyone else, genuinely wants to master tasteful / usable slap bass technique then I'd very much recommend two simple steps: 1. Set your bass & rig up to accommodate slap bass. Essentially a fresh set of rounds and appropriate EQ: treble boost, a little mid cut and a perhaps a little bass boost 2. Enrol on Mark from Talking Bass' excellent course: https://www.talkingbass.net/product/simple-steps-slap-bass/ . If he's managed to get someone as clueless about slap bass as me, to significantly improve I'm sure that will also be true for many others. It's been the best £60 I've spent during lock-down on bass related stuff by some margin. Most importantly - have some fun learning and playing!

Interesting point I picked up (well to me anyway!) today on Mark's TB slap bass course. For slap bass the thumb-through technique (Victor Wooten style) gives a fuller deeper sound including the fundamental, more akin to using a pick. In contrast with the more common thumb-bounce (& percussive Mark King style) which results in a more zingy sound emphasising the harmonics akin to finger tapping. Particularly noticeable on the higher notes - and it really is noticeable now it's been pointed out! For the above reasons, Mark actually uses the thumb-through as his default. But if we're going to try and match the speed of the traditional bounce with the thumb-through this will needs double thumbing. The one key downside I've noticed is the additional fret buzz (certainly at the lower frets) caused by the direction of the downward strike and resultant string vibration direction

Really useful tips relating to this provided by Mastadon2 and Cetera in the Spector thread:

I'm sure @FinnDave will be along shortly to sell you his newly acquired by trade one. After all he's had that bass for 5 mins already, which is a pretty good show for him. BB414, BB424 or if you feel like splashing out a bit more a BB434. Job done. Either of the first two won't set you back too much at all.

Tell us a bit more about what you're after bass wise eg 4/5 string, purely passive or active / passive, whether you want to buy new or used and a rough idea of budget and I'm sure we will be able to furnish you with some suggestions!

You sure it wasn't a legacy of ingrained Ibby numbering habits i.e. SR1200, SR1205 and SR1206 😁

Actually four seems to be the "right" number of knobs - the pic that Andy posted has the same number (and shape) as the BB 735A i.e. 5 which is appropriate with both P & J pups, but this new model is purely a reverse P.

An active 3 band EQ solo P bass with a reverse P set up and 21 frets. Interesting!

Fixed re. the model number and welcome to the Yammy club. About time. It's a mighty fine axe you have there in your hands Mr Finn Dave! It's the penultimate top of the range for the 'Series 2' Yammys which were superseded by the Series 3 in 2017 (which prompted the start of this thread!). I have the 5 string version and it's just an excellent bass - IMO there isn't another passive 5 string PJ to touch it for anything close to its price range - other than its successor the BB435!

That was a very helpful A/B indeed - thanks Steve! Just one final Q relating to whether the difference in quality of the speakers would be more noticeable using a more high end amp. Don't know if you have a hi-fi in the house and, if so, whether you could do the same A/B with the hi-fi amp? It would be really interesting and useful to understand if (a) you can hear a big difference in sound quality between the hi fi amp and the PC with the same speakers and (b) whether using the better hi fi amp made the difference in quality between the speakers more stark?

Yeah - that's very true and perhaps a bit weird that the 5 string Yammy BBs have such playable necks, compared to some of their chunkier necked 4 string brethren.

You say that, but that sounds like another beguiling true life story. Feel free to share more if you would like to - did you get to meet and spend time with your old man in the end? It really is, isn't it! I found myself needing to get to the end to find out what happened and the bass player angle just added to it!

A true life story... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-44242626

No different to the "punk rock" is crap mentality... Or the "rock music in all its forms" is crap mentality. Or the ... Rock n roll is no longer about rebellion or energy or excitement. It's about doing everything in moderation. Don't hit me with your rhythm stick, please just let me use it to walk with.

'Fess up: which of us weren't impressed by our fellow BC'er playing AND singing on this video a couple of months back? In fact that YT clip is one of the most liked posts on BC we've had in ages and was only marginally beaten by the picture of a bass lying in its case...

I think you have successfully defined middle aged rock n roll. 😁

De-railing a de-rail - is that a bit like a do-run-run? 😁 Loving it - still on Mark from TB's Slap Basics course and trying to do a little bit each day. As well as the slap, hammer-on, slides, ghost note and pop techniques, one of the most important bits from the course I'm benefiting from is the precision on timing, which kinda ties in to our pick discussion - except we're obviously not using a pick for slap bass! A riff as simple as the one below, as an example, with the various off-beats can take me several practice sessions to master and then Mark is playing at a speed that is literally double what I can manage initially so there's then a second area of challenge (oh, don't worry, he starts the thing slow and breaks it all down to begin with). There may be 5 such recap exercises in a single lesson going over the most recently introduced ideas and techniques, and a single lesson can therefore take a couple of weeks to get through, although other lessons can be done much more quickly. Instead of a metronome, I'm using the drum machine on my Zoom B1X-4 and frankly it's almost worth the price of the pedal just for this; it's really useful for working on precision timing and being able to start slow and speed things up. I reckon this course alone will get me to the end of lock-down at current rates of progress and then I've got his Walking Bass and Chords for Bass Guitar courses to follow, so I'm definitely being kept out of mischief by Mark

I only really started playing with pick about 18 months back and it was definitely a different technique to finger style and took a little getting used to. What did surprise me was that, amongst the bass players in the various bands that my covers bandmates play in (we're mostly all in at least a couple of bands), pick playing seemed to be a minority sport! I particularly like the precision of timing / crispness of notes you can get with a pick compared to fingers and it can work really well when combined with muted palm on some tracks e.g. MJ's "the way you make me feel".