project_c

Can you post a recording of your dry signal and your effected signal pls? Probably something simple but difficult to suggest anything useful unless we can hear what’s happening.

NYXL on my MIJ jazz, HiBeams on the active jazz dlx (which I mainly play passive), HiBeams on my fretless PJ with Quarter Pounders, DAddario tapes on both my Tony Franklin fretted and my 83 P. I love the sound of DAddario tapes more than any other strings, especially when they’re new, but I’m going through a bit of a roundwound / tone-almost-off phase recently.

If you’re getting cash you should be fine, it’s usually only paypal payments you need to worry about. I speak Hungarian (family from there) so if you need any help with that let me know.

I always thought ‘all in the fingers’ was nonsense. I get the thinking behind it but people who say that are confusing chops / playing style with choice of equipment. A really good example is Jaco playing Jerry Jemmott’s bass on the Electric Bass video. Jaco is playing in the way he plays, and it’s great, but it sounds completely different to the rest of the video where he plays the Fender. They’re Jaco’s chops, but with a different tone.

No even I wouldn’t sink that low. Nose grease is my absolute limit. I wonder if you could use earwax to bring a dry rosewood fretboard back to life though? 🤢 🤮

It’s not so much the smoothness of the strings that’s the issue, I think it’s more to do with pre-performance nerves, it’s the finger equivalent of a dry throat. But it does happen mostly with rounds. I don’t mind too much about the string life, I prefer them to be a bit on the dead side anyway.

This is slightly gross but I now realise why I see so many players rub their noses or lick their fingers before taking solos or playing challenging parts. One of my favourites, Jeff Andrews used to do this a lot. Had a gig last night after a really long and stressful work day, rush to the gig, turn up late so I have to plug in and play as soon as I’m through the door, no time to wash or warm up, venue is sweaty and my bass has brand new roundwound strings on it, and as soon as I hit the first note they feel like they’re made of sandpaper and they want to glue themselves to my fingers. I normally play with tapewounds which don’t have this problem, I was quite surprised by how weird it felt. So out of desperation I went for the nose grease, and lo and behold, everything fell into place beautifully, and my playing returned to normal. Anyone else do this? Or have any less disgusting ways to combat dry sticky strings? Also, just a thought - if this is as common practice as I think it might be, ALWAYS change strings when you buy second hand. 🤮

Nope, I hate ‘rock tone’ more than you can imagine. I was rehearsing with a jazz band, I just wanted a nice useable j bass tone, bridge pickup / tone off territory. I normally play gigs through a Genz Shuttle, and pretty much have it flat with a bit of occasional high cut, and it does a great job. The TE sounded like a rusty bucket, but I think I should have been a bit more patient with the eq, I just gave up after an hour of fiddling between songs. The whole band commented on how terrible it sounded so it wasn’t just my imagination. My dusty old TE Commando combo sounds great with both my j basses btw.

In all fairness everything she says applies to 99% of young players who are trying to learn to play. The advice she gives is for kids getting into rock bands, not 56 year old Level 42 fans who have been playing furious slap bass since the early 80s. It’s all about context. If your teenage kid was trying to get into a band with his mates for the first time, you’d probably give them similar advice: Keep it simple, focus on the root, don’t try to show off until you’ve nailed the basics. It’s pretty good advice actually. I say this as someone who plays jazz and spends most of his time avoiding root notes whilst noodling as far above the 12th fret as I can get. Her advice is not for me, or for experienced bass geek types in general, but it’s still good advice.

The switches were the right way round I think, I tried the preset curve out of desperation and was in instant 80s scoop hair metal land, but even that was still buried under the boomy boxy overall tone. The graphic eq seemed like it was working but nothing seemed to dial out the badness. I’ll try the frown next time, I must admit I didn’t try to scoop the mids too much because it seemed like they were the only thing worth keeping, but maybe that was the wrong approach.

Played through an old Trace Elliot head / cab today and I could not get a decent tone out of that thing no matter what I did. I'm not sure of the exact model, looked like a similar era to the AH300, red gain knob, green volume knob, 'baked-in tone' on/off switch, going into a Trace 1048H 410 cab, and it just sounded terrible whatever I tried. It was boomy, honky and undefined, and the EQ was there, but not really helping. The gain either sounded like it wasn't being pushed, or it would suddenly sound like it was being pushed too hard and straight to fart city. Basically pretty much everything you don't want from a bass amp. I could also not dial out the horrible nu-metal tone that was lurking under all the woolly boxy terribleness. I was playing a Fender Jazz through it, no pedals, so nothing unusual there, but it was a struggle for sure. I'm not hating on TE, I have a knackered Commando combo which I love and use regularly, but I'm thinking I might be missing something with these old heads and cabs, anyone have any suggestions for how I can get something useful out of them next time?

Best curry in London is at Tayyabs in Whitechapel, it’s a popular place so book in advance. Best Chinese / Cantonese is Silk Road in Camberwell, also book ahead. Both specialise in home-style cooking, and don’t look like anything special from the outside, but both are always packed full of people. Best posh Chinese is Phoenix Palace in Baker Street. Best Turkish places are on Kingsland Road near Dalston. Mangal is probably the most famous because Gilbert and George (the artists) go there every single day. There is good fish & chips all over London, just find a place that sells responsibly farmed fish. Best burgers are probably at Byron, and Bodeans in Soho, who also do ribs and other good stuff. For english food just look for gastro-pubs close to where you’re staying, they’re all going to be pretty good. And as mentioned above, Borough Market is great for tasty food, especially at weekends. Gets very busy so go early. There are farmers markets all over London on certain days, and they usually have the best street food, again just search for the nearest. Brixton market also has an amazing collection of restaurants.

Just my take on it - I think there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with streaming music replacing previous formats, but the money aspect has to change. The current model that’s in place has worked well as an alternative to torrenting, but it has completely fkd up how much financial value the world places on music. If the current system continues, music culture will completely disappear, and we will be left with a nice library of 20th century music and very little else of any genuine cultural value. Musicians, like anyone else, have to be able to make a living from what they do in order to dedicate time to creating meaningful things. Without that, it’s always going to be a part-time occupation for those who don’t want to follow the clickbait model. Currently we have nothing but clickbait garbage driving the ‘industry’ forward, and that’s not good. So for me streaming is good, but the Spotify model is shïte. And btw I have a paid subscription to Spotify because it has most of the great jazz records within easy reach, but I would never use it to find new music, soundcloud and bandcamp are better platforms for that.

They’ll retain the snap forever, but they’ll lose that ‘slightly roundwound’ textured tone and sustain over time, and become darker sounding and also more slippery and shiny. But they do retain most of their personality for years, you might never need to change them. It’s weird going back to rounds once you get used to them, they sound clunky and rattley in comparison. I still like rounds though, but it takes a minute to readjust to the finger noise and clunk.

That looks like a stack knob to me, I quite like the idea of that. Vol / tone, passive. I don’t think it’s a short scale but that’s a great idea, why have EB not made one of those yet? I would love a short scale Sterling or Stingray with a slightly downsized body.

I’ve got one from back when I was a DJ during the rave days in the early 90s, this is really embarrassing. I used to play at illegal parties in disused warehouses and squats, rickety old buildings, dirt and broken glass everywhere etc. One night, just before my DJ set, I’m up on the rooftop of a particularly dirty burnt out building, chatting up some girls and trying really hard to look cool, going on about my DJing skills and impressing them with some very boring ‘rave’ stories. I look at my watch and tell them “it’s time for me to hit the decks, ladies”, and with a wink and a smile, I turn the wrong way, trip and fall off the roof. I fall about 25 feet and land on my àrse with a loud crescendo. It’s chucking it down with rain, and I land on a pile of wet cardboard boxes filled with garbage. One of the girls is screaming, the other one is pointing at me and pìssing herself laughing. Somehow I am unharmed and there’s not a scratch on me. It takes me a good 20 minutes to find a way to climb back into the building, and I then spend the rest of the night drenched, with a huge brown muddy wet patch on the àrse of my bright yellow ‘rave’ trousers, stinking of garbage and hiding from the hot girls on the roof.

If you like the drums and bass on that, you'll love this (if you don't already know it):

I’m in. Jazz is all I play. My favourite tune, never gets old:

My feeble attempt since joining in 2008: 1. Yamaha something or other (cheap) 2. Warwick Corvette 3. Warwick $$ 4. Warwick Corvette 5 5. Warwick Corvette bubinga 6. Squier cvJ 7. Zoot Performer 8. Zoot something else 9. Sadowsky Metro pj Those are all gone. I miss the Zoots and the Sadowsky sometimes. The ones that stayed and will prob stay for good: 83 Fender P Tony Franklin P Fender Jazz Dlx ‘11 MIJ Walnut Fender J 90s Fender P, ‘78 fretless neck, quarter pounder PJ’s. Not much compared to everyone else’s but still a lot more than I thought.

Fenders have also continuously gone up in price, I don’t think the issue is the collapse of the pound, although it probably doesn’t help. As far as I can see the real issue is that guitar / bass sale numbers are in decline globally, and that’s coupled with the influx of cheap chinese instruments eating up a big share of an already diminishing market, so the big manufacturers are changing their business models to ensure they can maintain their usual levels of income despite dwindling sales. So we end up with a smaller number of ‘exclusive ‘, nicer, but way more expensive instruments. It’s likely to carry on like this unless the companies eventually downsize, which I think is also inevitable.

iReal Pro does this, very straightforward. Don’t think it does tabs though, it’s midi / score export iirc. But as mentioned above it’s not a great way to study walking, it’s an algorithm rather than a human making creative decisions. Transcribing actual lines from recordings is a lot better for you.

I love dead rounds, I’ve been playing tapes for a while but recently rediscovered rounds again. If they’re worn in and sound woolly, and the bass is set up so the strings are close to the pickups, the overall tone is still really punchy, but it sits as well in a mix as flats or tapes. I normally leave HiBeams on for ages but I have some D’Addario NYXL’s on my jazz which are about 8 months old and they’re sounding good.

I’d say go for DR HiBeams, might be just over your budget but will last a lot longer than either of those, and they are very nice on a jazz for the tone you’re after.

- go to the dentist - stop smoking - don’t get involved with that girl, she’ll end up working as a ropey stripper at Spearmint Rhino - definitely don’t sleep with her - definitely don’t lend her money - learn to read music - don’t be a d!ck - go to bed