Cato

'Real' Les Paul basses seem to have a bit of a mixed reputation. There's a decent chance that your Chinese one might be a better player than some runs of the actual Gibsons.

Is he tiny or is that bass massive?

I try. Sometimes it's just a reflex carried over from playing guitar. I've even found myself doing bends on fretless, where it's truly a pointless exercise. I can manage a semitone bend on the bass without thinking about it. I can do the full tone or more if I concentrate and significantly increase my left hand grip on the neck, but then it tends to bugger up the next section because generally I play with a light touch and the change in fretting pressure upsets the flow. I'm always quite impressed when I see a bass player casusally push the G almost all the way across the fretboard, even with maximum effort I can't get the string much further than halfway across the board without it pinging back from under my fingers.

I had massive gas for one of these a while back. There's something about the full body/headless aesthetic on a guitar that just really works for me.

It's quite striking reading this thread that people seem fine with yet another iteration of Mac whereas in another thread the latest version of Yes was referred to as a tribute band. Personally I know nothing about either band, The only Mac stuff I've ever really liked is the Peter Green era stuff, which, as far as I know, was about 20 line up changes ago.

I saw an Anderton's 'all about the bass' video recently where the pick up cover/surround on a Ric was described as the 'talent stopper'. I think the same term could be applied to the pup cover on a p bass or jazz. There's a good reason pretty much everyone used to take them off and Fender eventually stopped putting them on most models.

Have a word with @skankdelvar. He's been known to frequent the odd abandoned warehouse, mainly for luring purposes...

OK, maybe the trend is not that modern...

Nothing subtle about this one from 1935.

On a more serious note there is a trend in modern music where an upcoming swear word is telegraphed by the rhyming structure of the lyrics but the word itself is partially obscured, so for example you only hear the initial 'f'. If you listen to Radio 1 for any amount of time you'll hear a few of them. I always wonder what the point is. Much like writing s**t. People just automatically fill in the blanks for themselves. Hence the unfortunate misunderstanding at my f**k music night. I'll never forget the disapointment on their faces as I launched into 'This Land is Your Land'.

'Inappropriate profanity'? Sounds like an oxymoron to me. ☺

I wouldn't worry about it. The hair splitting definitions of the various subgenres of metal has become truly ludicrous in recent years. No one agrees on which bands fall in to which categories anyway.

I don't really know anything about Macs but there's a free version of Ableton live lite that apparently works if you've got the right OS https://www.ableton.com/en/products/live-lite/ As to interfaces, again I'm not sure what works with Macs but I'm currently using a cheap Behringer interface, the Guitar Link UC6102 which is as basic as it gets, it's really just for guitars, if you want to mic up other instruments or record vocals I'm not sure it's up to the job. It's also no longer supported by the manufacturer so doesn't receive software updates although that hasn't caused me any problems so far I'm looking to upgrade to a focusrite 2i2 or 2i4 in the next couple of weeks which looks like a significant step up.

This is the single most important bit of advice when it comes to batteries in basses. As long as you follow it a new battery should be good for several months. I've heard people on here say that they change batteries once a year whether the bass needs it or not but I suspect that those people are using more than one bass over the 12 month period, if you're using the same bass all the time I'm not sure that you'll get that much.

That spliced together 'rap' is astonishing. How much footage did the guy watch in order to put that together?

When I record i put the bass through a a Zoom B1on multi effects pedal then put the signal from that in to the PC. That gives me a range of basic sounds and effects,for any further tweaking of the sound I adjust the tone controls on the passive basses or EQ on the active basses. It's basically the most ludite/technophobe approach to modern recording that i coud come up with.

There was a point in the early 90s when I joined a band with a keys player who had a proper top end synth. When I first heard the bass patches I found myself wondering if the bass guitar had a future when it seemed like the synth could do it all. It turned out that whilst the keyboard player could make authentic sounding bass guitar noises he couldn't make the instrument sound like it was an actual bass guitar. He couldn't replicate basic techniques like hammer ons or slides and he couldn't imitate the fundamental dynamics of fingers interacting with strings. Mind you, that was nearly 25 years ago, I imagine the technology has moved on quite a bit by now.

Don't get wrong i'm not criticising the intinstrument or the player. it just seems daft and somewhat misleading to call the instrument a 'bass' when playing basslines seems to be a very small part of what people actually use them for.

I don't really think of these extended range instruments as basses, some of them have the same tonal range as a piano. Obviously you can play basslines on them, but you can play basslines on a keyboard too.

You want it to compliment your gold chaps?

After 25 odd years of using these https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jim-Dunlop-Tortex-Guitar-Plectrums/dp/B001DZTNS6 on guitar and ,when required, on bass, a couple of months ago I bought a pack of these. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Plectrum-Dava-Grip-Tip-Pack/dp/B00154OJOI/ref=sr_1_1?s=musical-instruments&ie=UTF8&qid=1521634438&sr=1-1&keywords=dava+guitar+picks+purple I used to think Dunlop tortex were pretty much the last word in grippyness without resorting to the ultra thick picks with thumb indents, but the Davas are in a different league.

Raised a chuckle.

I presume you'll be posting links to these clips?

'Chemical Weapons, fine. Nukes, great. But even in the face of utter destruction we will never stoop to deploying weapons such as these against our enemies'.

I don't like any kind of burst finishes on basses but I really like an aged two or three tone sunburst on some guitars. I am aware this makes no logical sense.