Osiris

Yeah, those triplets in the middle section still keep me awake at night, I just can't seem to count in 3's

How about having a go at this classic I've only ever seen 2 pub bands pull it off (admittedly I was in one of them ) and it's a good bass work out as well as a favourite with the crowd who don't usually expect to hear it.

Hadn't heard about this until just now. Fastway were the first proper band I saw when they supported AC/DC on the Fly on the Wall tour, back in '86 (I think?).

How about a multi-fx unit? You could set up a patch for each bass, even if it's just a flat eq and/or some compression, and balance the volume for each patch so when you change basses you just stomp the appropriate footswitch and you're done. Obviously you don't need to use all the other bells and whistles but they are there should you ever get the urge! The highly regarded Zoom B3 would be the obvious choice and used ones are currently changing hands for well under £100.

I'm not quite sharp enough to resize it, but I like this one;

I had a GP12 SMX back in the day (which I grew to utterly despise but that's a whole separate topic ) which had the 'traffic light' input indicator lights on the input gain. The manual (which I may even have buried away somewhere) suggested that you turn the input gain until the red light clips then just back it off a touch until the amber light is on on for most of the time while you play with the red light just flashing occasionally. Probably something to do with signal to noise ratio or something, no doubt someone who understands these things far more than I do can explain? Anyway, looking at the pics, yours doesn't have the traffic lights but it does make me think that Trace wanted you to run the input gain as high as you can. At least on some of their other models. Does that help?

I personally think gold hardware makes an instrument look tacky. But then again I think gold jewellery looks tacky too . I've seen some cracking natural wood finished basses over the years that have gold hardware fitted and it just cheapens the appearance, IMO. For my tastes black hardware is the best choice for natural wood finishes.

The TC Electronics MojoMojo at lower gain does a great vintage mid rich drive sound that will give you a similar vintage driven bass tone (without the wobble) and can also be picked up for less than £50 new. Might be worth a look if you don't fancy lugging about a monster all valve amp. I hadn't thought of a Leslie speaker, but now it's been mentioned it's so obvious

I think the subtle wobbling effect on Heartbreaker is a Tremolo effect, but whether it was a pedal, studio effect or one built into the amp (some vintage guitar amps had them built in) I don't know. The warmth of the tone is obviously a valve amp (were there any non valve amps available at this time?). Unfortunately I don't have any recommendations of tremolo pedals as I don't use them but that is what it sounds like to me. Unless you're after a drive pedal, in which case you're entering a minefield blindfolded

I'm surrounded by pyramidiots.

That definitely sounds like it's duff to me, mine has plenty of low gain drive sounds available with the drive from fully counter clockwise through to noon, or slightly higher if you play with a lighter touch. Mine doesn't fuzz out until the drive gets past 3 o'clock.

Tut Tut. Very poor.

It might not be wise to say this on a bass forum but the musical sound that aggravates me more than anything is the octave pull used by slappers. Slapped notes I can cope with but octave pulls, particularly when used excessively (i.e. once more then every 10 minutes ) are just aurally awful IMO.

Did you try it without the compressor in front? Did that make any difference? I've only played a couple of Thunderbirds over the years but I seem to recall them having hot pickups (correct me if I'm wrong), have you tried it with a bass with a lower output signal? Likewise your experience is very much at odds with my own. Could it be that maybe you have a duff pedal? If you bought it new recently, maybe try getting it exchanged? Or at least try getting your hands on another one to try. If you still have no joy it might be that the Mojo just isn't for you.

I can do you a good deal on a vintage Fender, owned and extensively gigged by Ramesses the great and also signed by Nefertari. Great condition for its age, the usual cigarette burns on the headstock and camel saliva marks. All original too, apparently.

I know what you're thinking but just because it has a brown grille cloth it's not one of those kind of Ashdown stools you find in most rehearsal rooms that have been thrashed to within an inch of their lives, and sometimes beyond, by some scrawny emo kids. I like the idea of it and for the asking price it's tempting, Your collective thoughts, folks? https://reverb.com/item/7642286-ashdown-studio-stool-speaker-seat

Let me know how you get on.

Interesting you say that, as @Al Krow says my experience is very much the opposite. I think it does the low gain warmth/touch of hair/grit thing brilliantly and is especially good for more vintage style tones - I can get an almost early Geezer Butler style tone from mine - which is exactly what I was aiming for What works for me is the gain below noon, the bass boost on but with the bass eq backed off a touch (around 11 o'clock ish) and the treble up to about 2 o'clock. That's using a passive P/J with fairly dead roundwounds. The inherent mid rich tone also helps stop things from getting muddy or tinny and adds that retro vibe to the sound. But the abundant mids also pretty much polarise it from the more familiar Tech 21 and Darkglass style drive sounds. No better or worse, just different. If that's what you're after then you'll need to look elsewhere as the Mojo won't give you that scooped sound. My experience isn't that it doesn't do distortion (at least what I'd call distortion) that well but it does a great fuzz tone if you rag the gain. Just a thought, try it without the SpectraComp in front of it as that may possibly be boosting your signal going into the Mojo and giving you a higher gain sound. My bass has a pretty high output for a passive but I can still get almost clean sounds and control the amount of drive through right hand dynamics. And for the record, I'm a massive SpectraComp fan boy, it's my secret weapon when gigging

Any old Trace Elliot gear. Weight issues aside, I bought a new 1215 SMX combo and 1153 extension cab back in the day and in the 15 years or so of owning it I just couldn't get a sound out of it that I thought was great, it was gutless and underpowered. On a good day it was mediocre at best. Plenty of folks still love them, but for me I can categorically say NEVER EVER AGAIN. The new Elf looks interesting though.

Martin just dropped by to collect a cab from me. The sale itself was totally painless and couldn't have been any easier. He paid cash and we had a good natter about all things bass. Enjoy the cab, Martin!

I've had great results with several of the SpectraComp tone prints; Captain East is good for subtle compression with some of the dry signal blended back in (parallel compression), Fed Comp is an ultra transparent subtle tone print, Butterknife is my current favourite for a warm, retro tone. My favourite over the past few months has been Muscle Comp which has a massive punch that slices through the mix brilliantly. Muscle Comp adds some additional high end that I personally prefer to eq back out. I've used all these playing finger style with both active and passive basses. I'm now using my own custom patch that is based on Muscle Comp but with the top end boost cut back down, a slight boost to the mids and the dry signal blended in at about 20% (I think). I'm not sure that I know enough about compression to build a tone print from scratch but if you find a tone print you like you can fine tune it to your own taste as I've done.

I'm happy to share some compression settings from the B3 patches that I use but I'm not sure if it's going to help much as probably more than any other effect compression settings will be more susceptibale to different output strenghts from your basses, attack strength, the amount of squash you want to apply etc. That being the case what works for me may not work for you. My favourite on the B3 is the M Comp model - no idea what this is modelled on though. The settings I am currently using are; THRSH: 22, Ratio: 4, Level: 62, ATTCK: 4. But I do like to have a good fiddle and am constantly changing things and trying different sounds. This is for a moderately hot output passive bass into a 30 watt Marshall 1x10 combo in the house. @Al KrowThe SpectraComp is in my pedal board and serves for gig duties.

I've no idea what it's doing below 20 Hz - if anything! Likewise, I don't know if it technically counts as a true HPF although I guess it's largely academic anyway as it is cutting the lowest of the lows from the signal. My amp already has a great HPF built in but I have found that when using my little Mesa 8 ohm 1x12 cab, the whole rig just seems to 'breathe' a little easier using the settings below. There isn't any obvious effect on the sound other than a subtle tightening up of the lower bass frequencies. The settings I use are as follows; Page 1; Freq1; 20Hz, Q1; 16, Gain1; -20 Page 2; Freq2; 32Hz, Q2; 8 or 16 (still trying to decide which is better for my needs), Gain2; -20 Page 3; Level 150. Give it go and let me know what you think, or if you find some different settings that work better for you.