HeavyJay

To get us back on topic. I drive a 2001 Ford Focus to transport my stuff around. Annoyingly narrow boot in that it doesn't fit a bass in a hard case in (the pinnacle of boot design of course) but with the back seats down it is cavernous. I keep toying with the idea of changing it but it is nice to drive, reliable, cheap to run and service and I'd probably have to spend a lot to match or improve on it. A new car would be a new toy, and I'd prefer a new toy to have some strings attached (hopefully four of them).

[quote name='thisnameistaken' post='476660' date='May 1 2009, 08:33 AM']Well, I think given a choice of Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik or Californication to take to a desert island, most people would pick the former. And the rest would be on a desert island with a really boring record.[/quote] I'd pick BSSM but I still think Californication is a good album. Since then they've been a bit nondescript.

[quote name='51m0n' post='475899' date='Apr 30 2009, 12:25 PM']Right you asked for it:- Reverb live:- Anytime you play live in a nice big room it has plenty of reverb unless its a thoroughly professionally treated room. Reverb has the effect of moving sources into the background. Thats what it is used for at mixdown, that and putting things 'in a sonic space'. Basically the higher the ratio of reverb to direct the further back you tend to drop that sound. The upshot is that to combat this the sound may then be made either extremely bright or extremely loud (out of all proportion to what is actually required) to bring it forward in the mix. Lead guitarists love to whack a load of reverb on their guitar, it gives an illusion of sustain when playing solo in the bedroom. Bring that sound into a band setting though and their guitar drops back in the mix, so they turn up even more and fill all the sonic space up with a wall of reverb crud. No one can hear anything at all for lead guitar reverb mud and ear splittingly treble orientated hi gain guitar. Awful! Delay live:- Caveat: I do understand that certain signature guitar sounds are very delay dependant, but those sounds all suffer to a certain extent from the same issues as the too much reverb situation. Reverb is effectively lots and lots and lots of delays all jumbled together after all. If your guitarist has so much delay on that you cant tell what he is playing now vs what is a repeat then he will tend to sit further and further back in the mix - his sound is now effectively more of a keyboard pad. Again he will tend to turn himself up (not being a keyboard player he wont think of his arpeggios plus delay as in fact just that a nice pad). Quite possibly until he fills all sonic space, and STILL complain that he cant hear himself - mainly cos all any of us can hear now is the god awful delay.... These modulation effects all tend to move things into the background, you can cause the same problems by overuse of chorus. I like Michael Manring's approach to chorus, he say he turns it up until he can _just_ hear it, then turns it down a smidge. When you turn it off you notice its gone, otherwise you'd be hard put to tell exactly whether or not something is there. I try and do the same thing with reverb whenever I get the chance. Acoustic space isnt something you really hear, but it affects you perception of what you are hearing, if you stray too far from that you can make life very difficult for yourself. In the studio go for your life, go nuts with fx, whatever floats your boat. Do it at mixdown though, not when tracking, But live you are fighting an alien and hostile acoustic environment 9 times out of 10, and if you want to hear yourselves, and be heard you need to cut the clutter right out. Both on stage and off. A hint of something in a band that sounds really well balanced is more often than not actually enough. Go over the top and the experience of the punters will be damaged due to the inevitable volume war that follows. You all may be very lucky and have guitarists who are trained sound engineers and understand this stuff, or just have incredible understanding of their gear and how fx can change thing, and therefore when to use how much of what. I am sooo pleased for you if you do. But I suspect it may not always be the case![/quote] Cheers for the info! Plenty for me to be armed with at our practices and gigs

A drum stool normally does the trick for me.

[quote name='51m0n' post='475859' date='Apr 30 2009, 11:56 AM']And dont get me started on over use of delay and reverb by guitarists in a live situation, what are they on???? .[/quote] Forgive me for getting you started on this but, please could you get started on this? The guitarist I play with is a big fan of digital delay.

A festival near us has got a Working Man's Club tent complete with bingo and comedians. We're doing the headline Saturday night slot. Should be a blast!

[quote name='PURPOLARIS' post='473753' date='Apr 27 2009, 09:53 PM']Mint Green might look ok[/quote] +1

[quote name='skankdelvar' post='471702' date='Apr 24 2009, 04:54 PM']Anything that's likely to prompt a flame war. Here's my list: 1. Orig 51 Precision 2. Joint - post 57 P, Jazz and Stingray (on grounds that civilians wouldn't be able to tell them apart) 3. Rick 4. EB0 / EB3 5. T-Bird Honourable mentions: Status, EB2, Hofner Violin, Shergold, Burns Tri-sonic, Dan Armstrong, Danelectro Longhorn[/quote] +1 Very well put.

[quote name='EBS_freak' post='471572' date='Apr 24 2009, 02:57 PM']Wal? Are you serious? How many people outside the bass community (or even in the bass community) would recognise a Wal...?[/quote] How many people outside the bass community know the difference between a Jazz and a P?

I ordered two LED par cans from them and they came quickly, were cheap and are great products. Would definitely use again.

[quote name='Dr.Dave' post='466796' date='Apr 19 2009, 04:19 PM']I find it easy. There's a reason for that. I practise and I've done it a lot. It never ceases to amaze me that we spend years learning how to play bass to a reasonable standard then turn round and say we can't sing or can't sing and play when we've tried it once or twice. If we don't practise other musical skills as well as we practise bass playing why would we expect them to come easily?[/quote] +1

[quote name='jmstone' post='467294' date='Apr 20 2009, 10:53 AM']Only would be worth it if it was a joke band like Spinal Tap - and only then if the bass player managed to not smash the bass up at all but only injure him/herself (note I am not volunteering for this job)!![/quote] On a Nirvana vid I once watched, they all trashed everything at the end of gigs and I remember at one point Krist Novoselic threw the body of Kurt's guitar into the air and tried to hit it with his bass (baseball style), missed and it smacked him on the head. How I laughed.

Saturday's gig was a 50th birthday function at a cricket club on the world's smallest stage. It looked pretty retro though and we're a 50s and 60s band so that was okay. The weird thing was that seven of my former teachers were there. It was like one of those nightmares where you haven't revised for a test or something. Kept the place dancing all night so that was okay. Sunday was even weirder. There was a couple of blokes spoiling for a fight with one another in the beer garden, a jewish chap and a biker gang member who was very anti-semetic apparently. It wasn't going to end well. We happily played our first set to an interested crowd but as we finished for the break the mood turned a bit as it transpired that one of these two chaps spoiling for a fight had planted a hammer in the back of the other's head. Cue four police cars, a police van and an ambulance. I saw the guy being taken out and he was moving but covered in blood. The assailant was long gone by then. Because the thing involved a biker gang member, retributions were expected and they closed the pub and cancelled our second set. Still got paid though.

[quote name='Balcro' post='464959' date='Apr 17 2009, 01:12 PM']Drummers and vocalists are often the worst parts of a band noise.[/quote] True dat. I think an addition to the Famous Quotes Thread is in order.

I'm after some gig organisation tips. I'm the one who books gigs in our little outfit and at the moment I just do it by keeping a diary about my person. If someone offers us a gig, I check the diary for anything then text the others to ask if they're free, then confirm or decline as appropriate. The trouble is, as we're getting more gigs it all gets a bit confusing. We've got potential wedding / function and corporate gigs up to 18 months in advance, repeat booking residency type gigs and the usual run of the mill pub and club stuff for new and established venues. What's your routine for keeping track of your band's calendar? I've just starting trying out Google Calendar, it's attached to the band's email account which we've all got access to. The idea is to get the others to put their unavailable dates in there to save me from having to text them everytime I get an enquiry. Thoughts? Tips? My other issue is that I always seem to forget to get some vital bit of info that I need to chase up later like starting time or a contact number or something. I've often wondered if I need a booking form that has: [list] [*]Contact name / number [*]venue address [*]start / finish time [*]price [*]etc [/list] on it so I can run through it when I get calls.

[quote name='HeavyJay' post='361930' date='Dec 23 2008, 02:11 PM']I'm awaiting delivery of an Eden Nemesis 2x10 combo and a 1x15 cab from them that I ordered from their website at the start of November. Website said it was in stock, they emailed after it had all gone through (money taken from C-Card etc) to say the next delivery they were getting from Eden was at the end of January. According to them, I would struggle to find the things elsewhere at the mo. Having said all that, they were very nice about it and offered me (without me asking) a refund if I so desired. I decided to hang on and wait until January. I'll update you then if I remember.[/quote] Well, the Bass Centre finally delivered my 2x10 combo today, I've had the 1x15 for a month or so. They had some communication issues when it came to keeping me informed about the progress of the order, not getting back to me when they said they would etc. They remained very polite though. I decided to hang in there with the order because I couldn't find it as cheap anywhere else and if I canceled and re-ordered I might have lost out with the pound dropping against the euro. I'll have a bit of a play tonight. I get the impression all the issues were out of their hands but that might have been subtle misdirection on their part! I'd probably order from them again but not without checking stock levels over the phone first.

[quote name='OldGit' post='455517' date='Apr 6 2009, 02:52 PM'].. but only every do that in rehearsal. If you loose the argument about a tune and it gets into the set list then play it as if you love it. Every time. There's always something in every tune that you can work on to help you improve yourself as a player. And once you've learned to fake sincerity you have it made as a covers artists .... [/quote] Nothing like a bit of fake sincerity It's better if you don't have to though, you feel less dirty inside Edited to add: That came out a bit wrong, what I meant to say was fake sincerity comes in very handy but it's better if you don't have to fake it. I'll shut up now

I'd agree with most of what's been said with the exception of playing songs that you personally loathe. In the band that I'm in if one of us doesn't like a song, we bin it, no exceptions. I think it's really important to be happy with what you're playing and there are plenty of good, catchy, popular songs about that you can replace the lost one with. Just seek out those you all agree on. It helps if you've all got similar tastes or tastes that overlap. If you hate a song, you won't give it your all, end up resenting playing it and audiences notice that. Good luck with it, I love it and have much more fun than in the originals band I used to be in.

So I went into this shop to have another bash with this bass with the money for it clutched in my hot little hand. I had a good play for 20 minutes, giving it a proper going over, checking for fret buzz, neck being straight and all that. After that I thought, "yep, I'll have this", but upon taking the lead out of the jack socket, the socket fell apart. A nut and washer fell on the floor and the socket disappeared inside the bass. Hmm, great build quality thought I. I left it with the chap to put back together and after 15 minutes or so he had no luck. Apparently their guitar tech would be in the day after to fix it and I should come back then. Still pondering whether to go for it when it's fixed, maybe need to replace the jack socket with something a bit better from switchcraft, or maybe this is a sign that I should leave it. Hmm.

[quote name='KevB' post='455171' date='Apr 6 2009, 09:47 AM']On a jazz or a precision it is usually in the top of the scratchplate. The scratchplate is too firmly attached in the ric so in that case ut's usually a back pocket. At one time I had one of these [url="http://tonedeafmusic.co.uk/mic-stand-plectrum-holder-p-145.html"]http://tonedeafmusic.co.uk/mic-stand-plect...lder-p-145.html[/url] which works very well but it went missing and I never got round to replacing it.[/quote] +1 These are great if you've got a mic stand.

[quote name='Linus27' post='453206' date='Apr 3 2009, 12:06 PM']Tomorrow afternoon I have my first ever audition. In the 20 years of playing I have never had one before. Always been in bands with friends. So as you can imagine, I am a little nervous especially as for the last year I have been learning to play with fingers and I really want to play with fingers in this audition. 20 years of pick player is a hard habit to change. All the songs are original and I feel fairly comfortable with what I have learnt so far despite some of the bass being hard to hear in the mix. Can anyone offer me some pointers, tips or advice for my audition. Thanks. [/quote] I've only ever been for two auditions and got neither gig so I won't give you any advice! Good luck with it though!

I've just noticed that this thing has a 32" scale. Could anyone be kind enough to shed some light on what that means? I understand that standard scale length is 34" and that the scale is from the bridge to the nut but other than that I'm clueless! If there is a thread or a wiki about this that I haven't been able to find, please could someone direct me to those?