Cato

The simple answer is that you can play any kind of music on any kind of bass so the best bet is go to a decent sized guitar shop or two and try out as many different basses as you can to find the one that suits you best.

I suspect what he means is that have having the guitar volume on full drives the amp harder which produces more drive/distortion. On some guitar amps you can switch from a distorted to an almost clean sound just by turning the volume on the guitar down a bit. I'm not sure it would work as well with most bass amps, which tend to be designed to distort as little as possible and I'm not sure it would be a particularly useful feature for most bass players if it did. I'd generally keep the volume on the bass on full and turn up at the amp if I felt it necessary.

With me it tends to be stuff that gets overplayed on Radio 1 when I'm driving to and from work. there's a song by Miley Cyrus called 'Malibu' which for no particular reason I can put my finger on grates on me like nothing else.

Sounds particularly good in the higher register.

I went with Nevermind. I'm probably a bit unusual for a bass playing Chilies fan in that, although it grew on on me, I wasn't particularly keen on Blood Sugar Sex Magik at first. I preferred their earlier stuff. I've always thought they peaked with 'Mother's Milk'.

I'm quite liking Sam Fender at the moment. It's nothing groundbreaking, in fact it's quite 'old fashioned' in some respects, but it's done very well.

Are we 100% sure those are the actual pickup covers that come with finished bass and not just some crass over -branding for the website? I just can't see how anyone would think that's a good idea or that anyone would want them on their bass.

That made me smile remembering my HX Stomp arriving from Andertons. The shoebox sized manufacturer's packaging was delivered inside another box that must have been at least a cubic meter in size.

I saw a documentary about The Who a few years back. The way Townshend talked about Daltrey, Moon and Entwistle it's fairly astonishing the band has lasted as long as it has. It came across like he didn't value or actually even like a lot of their musical contributions and if it was up to him The Who of the classic era would almost have been a completely different sounding band.

Sometimes you just know that an instrument is 'wrong' for you. You may not be able work out exactly why that may be, but if it feels wrong it is wrong. Someone else will probably love it though.

With things like fives,sixes and fretless I reckon it's always worth a go just to see how you get on. I'm pretty sure I'll get a six at some point even though I realise it's going to require quite a big step up in the correct technique stakes. I've already got most of the basic skills needed to play these instruments to a reasonably proficient level, theoretically at least the rest is just familiarisation and practice, so why wouldn't I give them a go?

Revelation did a sub £300 bass vi, but after a quick Google it looks like they might have been discontinued. You might find a second hand one somewhere. I was going to also suggest the Fender Pawn Shop Bass VI from a few years back, but it looks like they're selling for more now than they were new.

I've never really tried it on a shortscale bass but the string spacing on a standard 4 string bass guitar can make playing some chords a stretch too far. If you don't want to play chords and you've got the right strings then I can't think of a technical reason why a bass tuned DGBE wouldn't work as a Bass VI substitute, as long as you never needed the E or A.

If I wasn't currently waiting for a fairly large builders invoice to hit the front door mat I'd be all over that 6T. Quite possibly the D400 amp as well.

I bought myself a Squier VM70s bass a few years ago because I fancied a go at modding. It's a great feeling instrument, I changed out the loom, bridge and pickups because that's what I got it for, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with the bass just as stock before that. I've got a couple of more expensive basses but I've never noticed myself thinking that the Squier is in any way inferior to them when I decide to pick it up.

Is it a graphite neck? If so it might be worth emailing an enquiry to Status. They probably know as much about carbon fibre/graphite necks as anyone in the UK. I don't know if they'd be willing to work on a different manufacturer's product, but it can't hurt to ask.

Depends on the bass for me. I'm a big fan of a 70s style natural finish on a Jazz, I also think it suits a Stingray very well. For some reason I find Precisions look better in solid colours with with white + black pickguard leading the pack.

My Sire has lines and the side dots in the position they would be on a fretted. I'm 99% sure that the dots are where they are because Sire probably uses the same basic necks on both their fretted and fretless instruments.

Sometimes I walk into the room where I keep the basses and guitars and just grin.

The clip at the top of the thread is now changing every time I refresh the page. I'm seeing every music related youtube clip ever, apart from Telstar. Edit: I can't stop refreshing the page, it's like a music clip fruit machine. Damn my addictive personality.

I'm confused. The clip in my feed is Davey504 doing his Top 10 easiest basslines. Are we all seeing different things or am I just not getting the joke?

My brother -in-law's got a Harley Benton acoustic bass, I think it's the most basic model. It's a lot of fun, I've been tempted to get one myself for those times when I just spontaneously get the urge to pick up a bass and play. Not too keen on the tone but I'm almost certain that's a phosphor bronze string thing rather than a Harley Benton thing.

There's always the PJ compromise. It's where I've ended up with my Precision Deluxe. Push the pan control all the way on to the P pickup for some classic thump, start blending in the J for more modern/jazz bass tones. I can't quite get a Stingray tone out of it, even with the active preamp but that's mainly because it has the wrong type of pickups in the wrong positions, but it'll cover most other ground pretty well.

I'm fairly sure I read somewhere that Leo Fender originally put them on P basses as a purely aesthetic thing because he thought the pickup looked ugly. I've seen claims that the covers on Rickenbacker basses are supposed to somehow enhance the pickups performance, but most people seem fairly sceptical about the science behind that and there's an alternative theory that it's a hang over from the very early Rick designs back when the 'covers' were actually an integral part of the magnetic pickup system they used on their 'frying pan' guitars.