Frank Blank

Not really, after all I’m off my tree on magnetic gas plums.

I am having exactly the same problem, listening back to several bass lines that I recorded over lockdown and can’t play one of them, not a one. Mind you, I am smashed out of my gourd on elastic spasm cakes so who knows?

Did you enjoy that after just one read?

This isn’t a derail, it’s in keeping embellishment, like some folk with taste put a turd on a doily.

I volunteered as an unsuitable forum poster at the village fete but was refused by the Vicar as I’d honked up in the tombola.

I learnt the whole of Topographic Oceans without listening once, granted I was off my mash on Rendlesham Sparklers and woke up in a ditch but nonetheless, nailed it.

Until you fell off and face planted a tree, only took one accident though.

I had it away with a large, grey pachyderm in my heels this morning. Made a change not blow my own trumpet.

I learnt that one, it took 327 listens but 320 of those were out of contrary spite, 5 I didn’t really hear because I was having an epileptic episode. I could have played it after 2 listens but I don’t like to brag.

It’s an algorithm or a meme, just ignore it.

Come on you lot, I was able to play the entire bass solo output of Oscar Pistorius after one listen. Granted I was off my mash on Cricklewood bazookas at the time but there we are.

...which is why throughout my post I wrote, several times, in my opinion and what FRFR meant to me.

Eugene Wright and Joe Morello, impossibly cool...

In my humble opinion, FRFR to me meant finding amplification that made my basses louder but didn’t colour the tone in any way whatsoever, or at least as close to that as possible. For me, until I found that fundamental basic tone of a bass it was pointless manipulating that tone when you weren’t ‘at zero’ so to speak. I finally felt I’d found that fundamental tone once I began using the QSC K12.2. From that point on I began to manipulate the tone with a HX Stomp, even though these manipulations were tiny, in my opinion this made the signal no longer FRFR. Playing the bass through an active uncoloured speaker with nothing else in the signal chain is what FRFR means to me but the minute you manipulate the tone in any way or listen to the tone via IEMs, a PA, headphones, whatever, then part of your tone is the bass, part of it is the other things the signal is travelling through. So, for me, FRFR was about finding as uncoloured tonal basis from which I could start. All the other benefits, the small size of the rig, the happy faces of FOH engineers when they can DI straight out of the back of the speaker and finally hearing how my basses really actually sound and being able to work with that tone from as close to flat as I could get.

I use one monitor, but am considering IEMs in the future.

Another vote for the AER, as someone who plays in an acoustic band it was a great amp, but, I sold mine to get an FRFR speaker which, IMHO, is the perfect solution to most amplification scenarios but particularly the acoustic band one.

90 Degree Jack..? Isn’t he still in the Scrubs doing a five stretch for larceny?

☝@A.G.E.N.T.E. If you can stretch to this you’ll be laughing ☝

I’m in.

A long lost H. P. Lovecraft novel?

I have a Line 6 HX Stomp tip, albeit a basic one. Don’t sell it then regret it almost instantly to the point that you are cussin’ yourself driving away from the recipient’s gaff. That is all.

Absolutely. I give them the benefit of the doubt for having made my personal number one album of all time, Metal Box and another favourite, Flowers of Romance. I agree, from Album onwards their output was iffy but they’d get a pass for Death Disco on its own.

That whole album (Bête Noire) is full of great bass lines. I’m mostly into punk/post-punk stuff but it’s a cracking album. I do love a bit of Roxy and some Ferry too.