project_c

A pitch shifter or octaver will do what you’re after, something like the TC Helicon maybe, but pretty much anything that goes up an octave will do it.

2011/12 dlx J’s also have slightly downscaled bodies, I have one, I can’t really tell the difference between that and my regular J though, they feel the same when I play them.

I'm gonna say Mo Foster, because he's a legend and he deserves way more recognition. That PJ tone is so nice. Here's something obscure by him - I used to sample drum breaks before playing bass, so I had a crackly copy of this record before I even know who he was, but check out the bassline and tone on this one.. And here he is playing a fretless in '83 with Gil Evans in front of a Keith Haring painting.. ..And here he is playing 3 Views of a Secret, because Jaco.

Hi Joe, I’ve learnt a ton of stuff from your books, they continue to help me a lot so thank you. I have a question - it’s about practice routines, motivation, energy levels and a busy work schedule. I have a full time job as well as a freelance career (not music), so my practice time is often very limited. Do you have any advice for maintaining a meaningful practice routine even when work is crazy and energy levels are low?

The smallest Genz Shuttle combo is (was?) a 1x8, I would be surprised if the Trace was better, but if it is I’m also interested. There are almost no tiny giggable combos around, would be nice to have some more choice, they’re life savers for gigs that involve having to get on public transport. The latest Genzler stuff looks amazing but still too bulky for rush hour London hell.

I have their Motown DI, it’s great. It’s not the definitive Motown tone people search for, but it’s a step towards it. Way too expensive though. For what it’s worth I don’t think Motown bass tone is that difficult to work out. Booze, P-bass, rosewood board, dead flats, high action, tone down a bit, pluck in front of the pickup, straight in to a D.I., then a bit of tape saturation, or if you want it to be a bit more legit, actually record to old tape, then you’ll get all the dusty artefacts too. There’s not much more to it than that. The breakup you hear is the signal clipping, it goes way past the threshold on the lower notes in some places. The transformers, tubes etc that people obsess over when trying to recreate that sound have far less to do with the fundamental character of that tone than we think, and they will only really make a difference to engineers listening on super high end monitors. They’re just the cherry on top. You can get to 99% of the Motown tone even with a fairly basic setup. Don’t forget the booze though.

If you have a relatively decent machine and enough RAM, latency is not really an issue any more. I use a Focusrite Clarett 2 Pre thunderbolt interface into a 2012 iMac, old as hell version of Logic, and prior to that I used a 2008 MacBook Pro with a tiny MOTU Microbook USB interface, I've had zero issues with latency with either. I still use the Microbook sometimes, it's fine. You adjust latency settings in your DAW, as well as standalone amp plugins. Playing through a mountain of plugins may cause issues in some cases, but realistically an amp sim and a couple of other bits won't harm anything. But it does depend on what music you want to play - if you like complex signals with 20 pedals in a row going into 3 different amps, and want to recreate that in a DAW, it may give you latency issues. But if you want to record some bass in real time to a drum loop and some other instruments, latency is not going to be a problem.

How about a fretless Mustang? The current US PJ would make a nice fretless.

Although to be fair on second listen I'm fairly sure there's an amp sim helping the tone on that one, maybe something like MarkStudio, or a cab sim plugin. The Joni tune on the other hand is just a very tasty dry signal (through a Neve preamp).

True, but check the tone on the other video, i think it’s a Squier vm and it sounds legit!

No idea but the other video on his channel is amazing too, he does the Jaco thing flawlessly.

Randomly popped up, don't know who he is. Super good:

I'm not sure if 100% british is possible at all any more, but if you're a luthier or pedal maker, or in any way involved in the production of music gear, it would be really good to get an idea from you of what it would cost if everything in your product - literally everything down to the last screw - was produced in England. I'm guessing British steel is prohibitively expensive, we're making insignificant amounts of it compared to most of the world. The biggest manufacturers of steel are China, followed by the EU, followed by India, so after the russian trollbots get our country back, components which previously came from the EU are likely to come from places like China and India, and quality will be a thing of the past unless you're willing to pay custom shop prices for everything. Whilst wages will drop, chinese products are likely to go up in price, but not in quality (we all know QC does not exist in China). I think within a few years we'll look back at today's Fender Custom Shop prices as a relative bargain.

I’m sure others will disagree but I’m going to say that you don’t need an amp. Nice headphones make a big difference, so choose ones you find comfortable and good to listen to music on. A direct signal through a good interface will give you a much nicer tone than a tiny amp, especially when playing with drum loops / backing tracks etc, plus you’ll eliminate external noise and not worry about annoying others in your house. An amp on the other hand means you’ll be listening to the room acoustics as well as the amp itself, and you’ll be tweaking it for weeks trying to fight with the resonant peaks of your victorian floorboards (or whatever), and you’ll wonder if a bigger / better amp will give you better results (which it never will), inevitably leading to wanting to buy more equipment. So from personal experience my advice is to keep it simple and focus on a nice direct signal, reliable daw, good headphones and a comfortable chair. If you have a huge detached house with nice acoustics, and you like to get punched in the chest by bass noises, that’s a whole other matter - then you really do need an amp. But for general home recording and practice, I don’t think you do. I have 2 amps at home, I play through one of them at minimum volume maybe once every couple of months, the rest of the time I’m on headphones unless I’m at a gig or rehearsal.

Ok thanks. Very tempting, perfect size and shape for me, and the prices look ok too. How’s the action? Can you get it down fairly low?

Very nice, I like the downscaled body and neck a lot. What’s the nut width on this?

Hope you don't mind, I took a little photo of you while you were typing that.

That's exactly what old men of each era said about the Beatles, Jazz, Rock & Roll, Punk, Metal, Grunge, House Music, Hip Hop, Techno etc. All fads that won't stand the test of time. People said jazz was primitive 'jungle music' for degenerates. (Pretty sure that was a German Nazi party line actually). People said the blues was the devil's music, and a guitar was the "devil's plaything". It's just us getting old. Enjoy the music that you're lucky enough to have lived through, and enjoy the fact that 12 year olds have invented their own way to be musically creative. If they were copying whatever music your generation listens to, you'd probably be more annoyed by that.

Not true, grime is huge these days, it’s very popular in the USA. Drake is putting music out on Skepta’s label, Stomzy is hanging out with Jay-z, Dizzee is doing stuff with US rappers - not saying any of it is any good (most of it is terrible) but US rappers have definitely embraced UK grime. And look at Trap, arguably the most popular genre in the US for the past few years - it’s pretty much grime / dubstep beats adapted to a slightly more mainstream audience. Then look at all the soundcloud rappers, all that mumble rap stuff, it’s connected to both UK grime and US rap. It’s far from a UK only thing - that was true maybe 10 years ago, but these days it’s way beyond that. I think there’s an element of ‘showing our age’ in threads like this - we are essentially a bunch of middle aged men talking about a genre of music which is created by 23 year olds to appeal to people between 12-25. It’s kids music, it’s not really meant for us. Plus if I was a 25 year old rapper, I definitely wouldn’t want a bunch of 45yr old men listening to my music.

It’s like literally any other musical genre, 98% is trash. Whatever genre you’re into, I guarantee that almost all of it is unlistenable garbage. 80s funk? Almost all terrible. Jazz? Most of it is just a bunch of weird men showing off. Metal? Tragic fat men with small penîses and poodle hair. Etc etc. Doesn’t mean any of those genres are terrible, it just means you need to dig a little deeper to find the treasure, and be a bit less judgemental. In any genre, it’s the remaining few gems that are the genre-defining works of art. Although I must admit you’ve got me on happy hardcore, that has no redeeming features at all. (However early 90s pre-jungle, original hardcore kicks butt, I won’t have a word said against it). Here’s a good current grime tune, check this:

Let’s bring the zombie thread back. I have a precision with a maple fretless 78 neck that the previous owner started to refret but gave up after cutting a couple of fret slots. I’d been wanting a fretless maple P for ages but I wanted lines, so I thought it would be perfect for that. I bought the neck from him and had the grooves re-filled, and then had the whole thing lined by the Gallery (who did a brilliant job btw). I also drew side dots on there with a marker in the same place as on a fretted (sacrilege) and I also bought some dot stickers and stuck them on the board (even bigger sacrilege). So now it basically looks exactly like a fretted P, except it’s a fretless. The point is that I never understood why fretless basses had to have different rules to normal basses, and I don’t have the necessary practice time to re-align my brain, I just want to play the thing without getting lost or confused, especially as the music I play on it is complicated enough without having to add a whole other layer of complexity. I play it 99% without looking at it, but there are points in almost every tune on our set list where I need to glance down and check my position, and it makes all the difference having markers during those moments. Blank fretless necks definitely do look way better, but I don’t care, the band I play with definitely don’t care, and the audiences we play to care even less. But if I’m out of tune everybody cares and it’s embarrassing..

a) barely anyone likes or cares about reverse P’s, it’s niche at best. b) maybe 1 masochistic person out of a thousand wants this. c) every fender clone maker already does the humbucker pj, it’s been done to death. Fender did p/p in the 80s, didn’t sell well and didn’t sound that useful, it was a novelty. If you want lots of small interesting changes, look at the Mustangs, Fender are doing exactly that with this range. The result is that half of the people who like Fenders love it, the other half thinks it’s an abomination. They also have a custom shop btw. The prices are a joke but they will make you whatever you want. Honestly, the main thing everyone moaned about with Fender pre-2012 was that they varied in quality and the general feedback from their customers was that they should focus on their classics and make them as good as they can. Given that even a sub£200 Squier is giggable these days, they’ve done ok. People are p!ssed about the prices - not much you can do about that, as the main customer base (boomers) dies off, USA stuff is going to keep decreasing in demand and increasing in price. Plus the value of the pound is going to keep falling endlessly as long as we have idiot voters putting idiots in charge, but that’s another conversation.

I like them. Especially the 70s J. Fenders have been cloned to sh!t, so their remaining unique selling point is that their instruments are design classics, and they have musical heritage. They don’t need to reinvent anything, they’re playing with their most successful designs, because that’s what people who buy Fenders like. If you want technical innovation, you can always buy a Dingwall or an Ibanez or whatever. Or if you want gaudy Fender clones in ugly colours, filled to the brim with humbuckers, knobs and preamps you can just buy a Sadowsky or a Marusczyk etc. I don’t see the problem.

These guys are 2 of my favourites and they have a new band called Venture. Check out Felix Pastorius on a Paul Jackson-ish vibe (kind of) on this tune. About 3 minutes there's a solo too, it's Felix Pastorius doing his thing. It's really hard to find on Spotify, but the whole album is on there, and there's more about them here.