project_c

I wish i'd been told this: The amp you bought sounds fine, you don't need to sell it and keep buying others and spend thousands and thousands of pounds. It's the room you keep it in that makes it sound like a bucket full of turds. Took me a while to get my head around that.

Slap bass has not been anywhere near the mainstream for about 30 years. But don't let that put you off, the 'mainstream' has never been a good measure of quality. I'm not a slap fan, partly because i'm crap at it and party because the music I like to play doesn't call for it, but music consumption is so diverse these days that it doesn't matter whether something is mainstream or not, if you like a particular style it's not hard to find an audience for it.

Seymour Duncan Studio Bass comp does all of that, I'm fairly fussy about compression and I can't fault it. I practice, record and play gigs with it, it has character when you need it, it can be transparent when you need that, it does pretty much everything a compressor needs to do.

I have tapes on my PJ and i use the bridge J pickup quite a lot. It's a personal choice, it just depends on what works with your style of playing and what context you use them in. I play jazz so I like a dead tone, but I don't think tapes sound dead at all, theyre just more woody than flats or rounds. They're flexible so you can get fairly expressive with dynamics, and they react well to digging in. If you like treble, I wouldn't bother, but for things like jazz and funk and blues they've been perfect for me. Because the tone is more fundamental and direct, the quality of your pickups and how you amplify your tone matters a bit more than with rounds I think.

Mine is based on a list of priorities. Project A - making money from doing work I love. Project B - making sure my love life was ok. Project C is playing bass and making music. Coincidentally I also used to make electronic music using the name Project C*****e. (not a rude word, I just want to keep it a secret).

I have a P which weighs a crapload, I'm sure it's also around the 12lb mark, maybe more. I play it sitting down mostly. I bought it before I knew what I was doing, but to this day it's still the best sounding P I have so I don't want to take it apart.

I like the champagne / pearl jazz. I agree the blue / tort is weird and pervy. At least Fender are responding to requests for new colours on their basses, the new orange Mustang pj also looks great. That said, all my basses are black or natural Fenders with maple necks so I am massively boring, and have never felt the need for colours, but new options are always nice.

[quote name='fftc' timestamp='1505667514' post='3373455'] How about one of these? http://acmeaudio.net/motown-di/ [/quote] +1, I have one, love it and use it every day.

If anyone is interested in this kind of thing, but done properly, google Compressorhead, it's Nomeansno's new experiment. They've built actual robots who play punk gigs with guitars and drums, it's pretty strange stuff.

I never used to get the Smiths, but having heard them recently I see what the fuss was about a lot more now. I think you would only really connect with their music if you were a certain kind of person: awkward, sensitive, maybe slightly lonely and young in a dreary british town somewhere, into things like literature and poetry. That's a massive generalisation, but it's safe to say your average 80s yuppie twat blasting out Level 42 in their Escort XR3i as they sell another property and pick up some 'bird' in Bromley High Street is unlikely to find much of value in the music of the Smiths.

[quote name='TheGreek' timestamp='1505251843' post='3370588'] ...agreed, except for The Doors. Include U2 [/quote] Yes, f@#ing U2! Without a doubt the most obnoxious and overrated band of all time.

I recommend listening to a tune called Weird Part of the Night by Louis Cole, it combines everything that's great about Knower. There's jazz, funk, 80's / Prince, 90s techno and straight up pop music influences in there, all squished up and injected full of weirdness and humour. I'm on a phone so I can't post it but it's a tune.

If i remember correctly there was a petition a while back to save Denmark Street and it worked, the people in charge of redevelopment had to change their plans. So it's safe for now. Sometimes these things do work, the campaign to save the South Bank skate park also worked, they left it alone in the end instead of knocking it down. Although the best part of that area got boarded up way back in the 90s after Prince Charles called it an eyesore. (Which to be fair to him it was, but it was also the home of London skateboarding, even if it did smell of boozy p!ss and pollution most of the time).

This may be slightly off topic but I have blamed lower back pain on certain basses in the recent past, and then I found that the actual cause of the pain was work stress combined with a lack of sleep. I'm not suggesting this is the case here, but for me physical and mental health has a huge impact on how my body feels. If i'm stressed and overworked I get all sorts of weird aches and pains. The joys of being self employed..

My cat does the same thing, bass time means lap time.

Love them, Louis Cole is a genius. When they play together as a live band the level of musicality is ridiculously high, but they make funny / catchy music, and they make people dance their asses off, it's super good.

We have a regular bar gig in central london, I live in south east zone 4. I take a Genz Shuttle 8 combo on a small trolley and a bass on my back. It's a 20 min train ride and a walk. I would drive but London traffic is nasty. We had a gig in Southend last week, I had to drive there in rush hour traffic, took me nearly 3 hours. Never again.

[quote name='stingrayPete1977' timestamp='1503691949' post='3360410'] I haven't purchased an Apple product since the day they automatically gave me the U2 album [/quote] That was unforgivable. I can't say I've not bought their stuff since but I certainly haven't opened itunes since that day. Soiled forever.

thread needs more Sneaky Pete

I'm no Apple fanboy but does anyone remember how expensive Logic used to be before Apple bought it from Emagic? Costs peanuts now in comparison, and the amount of stuff you get is staggering. I paid hundreds for it back in the day, and had to buy things like the sampler separately. Wasn't there a Logic Gold? The 'deluxe' version. I'm sure it cost over a grand. Software gets updated from time to time and you have to pay for that sometimes, it's the way software works. It's not Apple, its software and the nature of technology. I'm still running Logic 9 btw, but i'll upgrade when i need to. It's not expensive. I would love to take people who complain about the cost of music software back to the 90s and show them how music was made back then. We used to spend 10s of thousands on clunky boxes that did very little. And then they became obsolete too.

[quote name='stingrayPete1977' timestamp='1503574080' post='3359275'] Is that why they cover them in piss and chewing gum to stop people pinching them? [/quote] Piss and chewing gum? Luxury. Round my way in SE London we cover them in vomit, used needles and tears.

Looks like Marcus Miller is getting a signature MB amp. [media]http://youtu.be/D3e9JfOrab0[/media]

Todd Johnsons video lessons are also excellent, and cheap.

Tony Franklin PJ - Seymour Duncan compressor - Genz Shuttle combo. For recording: same bass, same compressor, Motown DI, Focusrite Clarett, Mac