Doctor J

[quote name='Doctor J' timestamp='1448308870' post='2914383'] An old Ibanez SR800LE with Lo-Z pickups. There's a beauty on ebay but it's priced just a bit too high and the lad won't play ball. [/quote]Well, today is, hopefully, the day the postie arrives with something special for me

[quote name='Delberthot' timestamp='1450393929' post='2932466'] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECqW4pt6-JQ[/media] [/quote] I have to get me some 80's suits. Amazing.

[quote name='karlfer' timestamp='1450358985' post='2931997'] Hmm, slap bass. If I wanted to slap things about, I'd have learned to drum. I just can't listen to slap. Mr King has a phenominal reputation, but from his early days, simply not for me. I'm that bad, whenever I watch any kind of video, as soon as the slap starts, it gets closed. [/quote]I, too, wish to subscribe to your newsletter. I don't mind slap in small doses when done well and when it adds something to the music - the likes of King, Graham, Flea etc have many examples showing it's possible. What turns me off the sound of it is overuse and when it gets shoehorned in just so the bassist can stroke his ego a bit, rather than it suiting the song. I see a parallel between it and drummers who really, really love Neal Peart. Peart himself plays with a fair bit of restraint and definitely plays for the song, even if it doesn't appear that way initially. His acolytes, however, commit grave atrocities in his name, using every opportunity to overplay and show off. There's nothing wrong with a bit of taste and decorum, I find. A part of me dies inside when a youtube video turns into a slapw*** as, sadly, most of them do. So it's thumbs down from me.

I went to see Megadeth as an impressionable youth in 1988. They used to do a cover of These Boots Are Made For Walking and, live, played it with an extended bass intro. I had never really considered playing an instrument up to that point, but right then I knew I was going to be a bass player. A few years after that I taught myself guitar and drums too, they're handy to be able to play, but bass was first and still is the instrument I identify with.

You just can't argue with the sound of the first Boston album. Sublime. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTFD5DZwK7g[/media]

Haters on the internet? Sounds like they need lessons in... etiquette.

I don't even store instruments against external walls. I would never store them in an attic, no chance.

Tip o' the cap to Vulfpeck for this funky effort https://vulfpeck.bandcamp.com/track/christmas-in-l-a

The quality of many songs can be overlooked due to overfamiliarity and the relentless annual onslaught for a month but, even so, Fairytale of New York still stands head and shoulders above them all for me. [url="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0188438"]http://www.bbc.co.uk...rammes/b0188438[/url] Worst? The sterile contemporary production line xmas goo means a host of x-factor winners and Glee cast members can take a collective bow here.

Cheers. Yeah it's a Bacchus Standard 5. It has seen better days though, showing a fair bit of wear now. It's actually black but the oil finish is worn through a fair bit.

Yeah, but even Hetfield stopped that nonsense about 25 years ago when he learned how much fun it is to get paid

Sweet. Epics are lovely instruments.

Great basses but their pricing and marketing has been nothing short of baffling recently. They're starting to make Gibson look like a temple of logic.

Thanks Once you start with coloured strings it can be a slippery slope. Where do you stop?

Ah, bedroom tone strikes again. It can be hard to get guys to listen to the entire band if they've spent a long time playing in isolation and trying to fill the low frequencies themselves. Just ask him to listen to the tone in the context of the band sound, not his tone on it's own. Maybe see if he'll stand across the room from his amp next time you rehearse and listen to everybody, not just himself. Try to stress, as politely as possible, that he's got to have the interest of the sound of the whole band at heart, not just his tone in isolation. You'll probably get more success if the other guitarist works with you on this. You could ask him to sit down and listen while you, the drummer and the other guitarist play through a song. Then get the other guitarist to play through this dude's rig. You'll probably go from something quite pleasant to mush. Hopefully he'll be able to hear the difference. If not... well, there are always other bands. My current gig is on guitar and, being a bass player, I generally take a little low out and boost the mids a smidge on my guitar amp so our bassist has a bit of room. I don't use a lot of gain either and we're a doomy metal band tuned down to A. It's amazing the amount of guitarists who compliment the tone.

[quote name='Mattpt85' timestamp='1450256142' post='2930900'] What's the orange one? [/quote] It's a home made jobbie. It's a mightymite neck with a one-piece ash body. EMG pickups and preamp - vol, blend, bass, treble. I ran the neck and middle pickups into a mini three-way switch and from that into the blend pot with the bridge pickup on the other side of the blend. It was pretty cheap to make but turned out better than I thought it would.

I really like that Blade.

When it comes to Lizzy, I always preferred the Waiting For An Alibi intro [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux9405qQzao[/media] The very reason I play bass was the extended bass intro to their cover of These Boots Are Made For Walkin' when Megadeth played it live. When I saw them do this just a few weeks after this footage was shot, that was the moment of clarity for me [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUAAbO1-jjU[/media]

Just bear in mind that Paul Jackson wasn't playing a vintage bass when he recorded Headhunters. It was relatively new at the time. If you believe that a bass will change, tonally, over time then getting one from his era won't get you the sound you're looking for.either.

Bacchus 24 Bacchus 02 Standard 5

There are some amazing deals out there for late 80's/early 90's superstrats. I used to have a RG550 but found the wizard neck just too thin. Coming from a chunky bass neck to something like the wizard shape and back again just didn't work for my hands. There are other shred style necks which are much easier to adjust to - MIJ Charvel/Jackson in particular are very nice. MIA Hamers from that era can be had cheaply too. Amazing guitars. As for Floyds, they get a lot of bad press but that's usually user problems. They're very simple to set up and use but, if you don't take the time to understand them and set them up properly, you will find grief. I love them. Once you set it up well you'll find it hard to put out of tune. Change strings one at a time and it's a ten minute job. Easy peasy. If you do pick up an old one, try to get one with a genuine or Schaller made Floyd, they're beautifully engineered. Count on buying a new pair of stud posts - they're cheap and cure most tuning woes on older guitars.

I'm not a huge fan of singlecuts but that is stunning. Congratulations.

The last song on the album... actually, it's not even credited and hidden after a couple of minutes of silence... Ether Song by Turin Brakes stops me in my tracks every time and the way those first fragile chords sneak in genuinely do make the hairs stand on the back of my neck [media]http://youtu.be/qeyjeyzU1ak[/media]

That NS is stunning. Congrats.