Frank Blank

Apologies for the lyrics up the side, I dislike that.

Just saw the Go Go Cult at a local pub, great bass sound from a little Fender combo on a chair and a little Fender bass with a skull hanging off the headstock. I was well disposed to their garage/rockabilly but when the singer ended their set with the words, “See you laters, desecrators...” excellent. It was nice to get some dB down me lug ‘oles.

This does affect the A string it appears.

Amen.

I’m sometimes to be found recovering from a fully Victorian conniption being pushed around the grounds in a bath chair, legs wrapped up in a tartan blanket, coughing gently into a neatly folded hanky, upon which, on closer inspection, one can find tiny specks of blood. I’ll be in the library until dinner. Words are great. I was feeling a bit under weather once, way back in my teenage years, just the first inklings of a cold, someone asked me if I was ok, to which I replied “Yes, fine, just a touch of ontological nausea” their comeback was a grumpy “In English mate...” My love of words was partly inspired by that incident and my mother’s (spits) habit of cracking me around the head if I asked her the meaning of a word and yelling “There’s a dictionary in the cabinet, go and use it.” I no longer drink, haven’t for many years, but I did occasionally drink gin but on those rare occasions I’d always find myself sitting in the dark at 4am listening to Dead Can Dance, gin eh?

Thanks dude, this sounds like the perfect remedy. Christ 17 Strings more than my problem, I’d have had a conniption!

Just home from doing two songs at a local acoustic club. I tuned every string apart from the E for some reason (first song was slow and sparse so able to rectify whilst playing) but that seemed to set the tone for the rest of our little spot. We’d rehearsed those two songs so assiduously as well and then boom, the wheels came off. Disheartened and dejected right now.

I was driving a band (who shall remain nameless) to the Tribal Gathering festival in 1997 and having settled the band at their tent I wandered into the backstage restaurant tent to be confronted by an entirely empty set of tables apart from one with Kraftwerk sitting around it. I went up to the counter, the chef was one I’d seen at a few festivals, “Kraftwerk over there, you don’t see that every day” he quipped. I was flabbergasted as I love (always have, always will) Kraftwerk, “I haven’t got a pen, or anything to get them to sign” I spluttered “Here’s a marker, get then to sign your T-shirt.” I marched back towards them clutching my marker pen but I bottled it and just stood there listening to them chatting and laughing.

His book, Kraftwerk: I Was A Robot is an excellent read.

I wasn’t that into The Lemon Twigs on first viewing but in light of the reaction on here I just watched them again and really enjoyed it.

Yer actual leg end, there.

Amen.

I seriously might take you up on that, I’ll PM you if so. Thanks for the offer.

That must have taken an age asking every one of them!

You have pre-empted my next question, I'm quite interested in the concept of FRFR thanks to your excellent Interesting FRFR Story post. So could I plug into the preamp, DI to the desk and have my sound onstage via my own FRFR monitor? Forgive me if this is explicitly answered in you thread. It is a trek I am very happy to do, I can get some train spotting in as well!

Just this ^ use is going to be my live situation for the foreseeable, the AER, although small is heavy so a decent preamp in my bag is, I think, going to be vital if I want to control tone live. Thanks @Jack.

^ This is, essentially, a kind of nightmare for me. I get a man in.

Yes to those things but also my ignorance of technical stuff often finds me sonically frustrated and then someone will say something like Where's your preamp? or You need a gankel damper on that son. So I find it easier to deal with that kind of embarrassment on here rather than f2f. Useful, and I think in the live situations I'm likely to to be in soon very useful by the sounds of it. You may, thank you, I shall investigate.

You just became my Piezo / Preamp wingman.

^ This. Jeez, I just spent ages posting something very similar to this only you've put it a lot better...

The thing is we are trying to isolate 'tone' or a 'sound' when the contributing factors are so myriad any variation to any of them makes a difference. It's like a Venn intersection of loads of factors, obviously at the coarse end of these are things like which bass, which amp, plectrum or fingers, fretted or fretless but then there are factors like the shape and acoustics of the room, age of the strings, then you get into real subjectivity land, your mood, are you on a ley line, etc. Obviously most people on here are experts, the best sort of experts imho, genuine enthusiasts, but I genuinely don't think there is an answer, which is fine, unless we are seeking some sort of definitive method of categorising 'tone', 'sound' or 'feel'. At the Bass Bash I stayed away from the amp test and the blind bass test because, frankly, I didn't think I would have had a clue but it didn't surprise me that most people couldn't tell the basses apart nor the amps, I think most of the variation is in us rather than the equipment. I buy basses purely on their sound and feel acoustically, even electric basses. I don't know if this is 'right' or 'correct' but they have to feel right to me. I was then always disappointed when I amplified them because nothing ever seemed to get near to a) the sound I liked acoustically or b) reflected the feel I wanted from an amplified bass. This is because (unknown consciously) I had a a priori bass sound/feel template in my head and nothing matched it so I spent years trying out basses, other instruments, amps, all sorts of stuff but because I was a gear/tech novice I followed other people's ideas and recommendations, which, ultimately, is fruitless. Had I just sat back for a minute and analysed certain things, my small hands, how much I dug Mick Karn perhaps I would have tried out a short scale acoustic fretless years ago but, slavishly, I ignored my own heart and bought great big fenders and played them through great big TC Electronic rigs and wondered why throwing money about made no difference. Rob Allen Fretless Mouse / AER Basic Performer, five years ago if you said that was going to be my dream setup I'd have laughed.

Cool, thanks @Bridgehouse, this is precisely the kind of info I'm after. I kind of thought this to be the case but had I written the above asking if it were correct someone would have said Don't be stupid, the Piezo is for washing the carpet and a preamp/DI is a disco move from the 70s. There is something about the Fishman Platinum Pro that is drawing me in though, caught in tractor beam!

Monitor spat over, cheers.

+1 for the Focusrite interfaces, I have a Scarlett 18i20 and it's excellent, I just plug basses directly into the interface.