Doctor J

Deliciously funky but the first few seconds of that video are like a Crimewatch recreation effort. How times have changed.

Bob Babbitt on line two for you...

Can the speakers can handle the energy being sent to them? The greenbacks are, what, 25W 8 ohm? It takes a lot of energy to amplify low frequencies, a lot of speaker travel too. I would be very careful what kind of head I would connect to a speaker like that. Where guitar amps tend like running low wattage at high ohms, bass amps tend to be the opposite.

You just haven’t found your sweet spot with the Flea. Give it time. Live with it a while and get to know it. Having different sounding basses is a benefit, not a burden.

I find a happy place on a 4 string with a P (reversed) and J combo, 38mm nut, 24 frets, 2 band active preamp (ideally with optional passive circuit and passive tone), good forearm contour on a slightly downsized body and some form of de-tuner on the E string. Woods and colour are irrelevant. That being said, I love a spicy curry but that doesn’t mean I’d want to eat one every day. I love the variety too and being able to play variations of bass design is one of the great joys in life.

Add Adblock plus to your browser. Ads are usually set to blast out of the speakers at a much higher volume than standard content in order to grab your attention. It works, that’s why they do it 🙂

I didn’t say it would sound like a Precision, I’m just highlighting what many overlook about the effect of pairing up coils. Parallel will hide mids somewhat, giving you a sound full of lows and highs which can sound fine in certain areas of the fretboard but you vanish in others. Lots of people suck the mids out on their amp EQ too, which magnifies the effect. It’s a generalisation, of course, but understanding the effect will make it easier to figure out what is required to remedy the situation in terms of what is coming out of the speaker. A Stingray pickup run in series doesn’t sound like a Precision either, after all but it is a very different beast to one running parallel.

I know people who get jokes 😉

I was way off and way off even further

A P bass is two single coils run in serial, which cuts the lows and highs, leaving plenty of lovely mids your amp can project and your ears are great at hearing. The average guitar humbucker is wired this way too, it's a great way of being heard. Think of the EQ being like the lips in a sad face :( A J bass with both pickups on is two single coils run in parallel which works differently to serial, in that it cuts the mids, leaving lots of low lows and high highs. It's a great sound for some applications but, generally, you've got to get the mids back in there to be heard. If you want to cut through with a J bass, only run one pickup and don't run a disco smile EQ on your amp.

My last gig was the Bloodstock festival in 2016. I knew it would be my last gig for the foreseeable future, at the time, due to impending domestic and work changes which I didn't want to bring into a band situation but, since then, I've had little interest in getting back into it.There are times I feel the itch but then I remember lugging gear around, sometimes lugging drunk bandmates around, countless hours on the motorway and the itch gets scratched. I still go to a lot of gigs, but purely as a civilian.

My two old SRs didn't cost that much together... with truss rod covers 😄

Bold, because that's the way they always operate. The turgid regurgitation we have become accustomed to has never been the philosophy of most Japanese manufacturers, thankfully. Go through the catalogues of the likes of Ibanez, Yamaha or ESP over the years and you'll see they continually refine their offerings. They build a spec for a few years, at most, and move on. This year's SRs are very different to the ones of 10 years ago which, in turn, were very different to 10 years before that. Some companies embrace change, some just used to. I love that a manufacturer as big as Ibanez are always prepared to move on and offer customers something genuinely different for the brand. The other side to that, of course, is that if you liked something they made in the past, chances are your only chance is to trawl through the second-hand market. The Affirma is the first bass I can think of them re-issuing but, even so, the time might still not be right for that design.

Super Furry Animals - Guerilla It's got everything in there and somehow makes it all work.

Do you have a line out from one of the rigs? Just run that into the second rig.

I have never measured action in my life, I go with what feels right for that neck and fret combination. I like it high enough that the note is clear and true when I play soft to medium, but low enough that I can summon up some grit should I want it by digging hard. I think, by most standards, I err on the lower side of action, based on the setup of instruments I have bought, however, the first thing I do with any bass I purchase is level and dress the frets and, most importantly, dress the nut slots so the action isn't ridiculous at the first fret. Choking notes with stupidly low action is silly, but having the action higher than it needs to be to get clear and true notes seems odd to me. I don't want to have to fight notes out of the bass, we're in the same gang.

Unless the postie magics up in the next hour or so, I won't know if it's the best or worst but it's definitely the last of the year, an old Aria Pro II IGB-600. I started playing in the late 80's and I have a real soft spot for basses from that era. I'm really looking forward to checking it out.

When His Supreme Holiness St. Leo of Fender designed fingers, he got them right first time. Them he got them left, which were also right. First time.

It puts the “no” in ergonomics.

I hear things.

-10db 🙂

It’s hard, but it’s done and nothing can change that. If that’s how little they value you, well, you’re better off finding out as soon as possible and having these people out of your life. Let the negative rage go and move on. Believe in yourself. Use that energy to get something else going. F**k ‘em.

Nice. Make sure you have pad ready on your amp, it’s about to be violated in a most glorious way.

Garry Tallent from the E-Street band has been a Spector player for a long, long time.