Doctor J

If you survive 3 you become immortal, no?

Surely the Levis ad songs qualify here? Stiltskin and Babylon Zoo IIRC?

Well, we don't stand under Dad, for a start.

I genuinely don't care. I have a mix of active or passive and don't feel biased in either direction. I don't see it as one vs the other. Either the bass works for me and fills a role no other bass I have does, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, it gets eased on out the door. Regarding tone sculpting, the one rule I have is that the bass sounds good with any onboard and/or amp EQ bypassed. It needs to sound good in its raw state, essentially. I enjoy having onboard EQ but my view on it is that it's there for fine tweaking an already good tone, it's not for trying to salvage something usable out of a sow's ear.

It's not just wacky theories, there has also been a lot of subtle manipulation which has worked on large swathes of the population. I've yet to be convinced that B****t was anything other than a Russian-financed effort to destabilise Europe. I firmly believe the EU was stronger with Britain and Britain was stronger with the EU, but I appreciate this is verboten so I'll jog on. Carole Cadwalladr had quite a few articles linking many of the protagonists to Russian money at the time, though, and it's becoming clear now just how deep Russian money has infiltrated the government. They also latched onto the Trump presidency effort very quickly and few could argue the USA hasn't been massively destabilised since. They were setting up social media groups to subtly disenfranchise and demotivate black voters while selling Trump as traditional white America's messiah. Gentle sewing of discontent. The right wing resurgence in central Europe is no coincidence either. The west has been under attack since the advent of the smartphone and social media provided an individualised manipulation portal from any interested party into the eyes of almost anyone. A quick read up on Russia's Internet Research Agency and Sam Harris' conversations with Tristan Harris are strongly recommended.

On a more serious note, filtering based on location, e.g. UK, EU, Rest of World, could be useful given the tax implications now beset upon us.

The line should be after the Mojo levels sub-sections, graded from one to five: one for some mojo and five reserved for those being anointed with sacred lemon oil on the day of the Feast of the Sacred Tonewood by the ghost of St. Leo.

It's an easy trap to fall into. The wife of a friend of my missus spent a fair bit of time devolving into a conspiracy theory believer after she spent more and more time on the internet while on maternity leave. She has recently started spouting the official Russian line on Ukraine which, while that isn't good, at least indicates where much of the misinformation originates which she is snared in. How you pull someone back from the state they've been manipulated into, I don't know, however. Some people just get caught up in these things unwittingly. It's easy to laugh at them, but much of this stuff is a state-sponsored attack on our societies via social media which has been going on for quite some time. It's dangerous and intentionally so.

If it means more Quicksand then I heartily support this development.

Think of the intro to Enter Sandman, hear it in your head, that's in E, tune the E string to that and use 5th and 7th fret harmonics for the rest.

Humour definitely belongs in music, just like love, life, sorrow and death. I appreciate that reads a bit like one of those tacky living-room wall slogans which are all the rage these days. A bit of light-hearted wit does not mean the music is not taken seriously. More humour, please, the world will be better for it.

I make sure the serial number is visible and clear in pics, when I put up an ad, and I usually put up at least 15 big and clear pics of every cm2 of the instrument. Let the pics say everything there is to say about it and then you don't get questions. Other than "Would you trade your nice bass for three not no nice ones and a red lawnmower handle" or "Can I pay you much, much less since you don't live on my street" types which, sadly, seem to be unavoidable

Soundcloud, I suppose?

It's still not working for me. It doesn't really do anything or say anything, just... inoffensive again. I mean, it's fine, there's just nothing in it which would make me want to put it on ahead of anything pre-By The Way.

It was more of an outdated and cringeworthy comment than anything else, I thought, even when the context was provided later, but there's definitely still an undercurrent of that attitude haunting the place, at times. It's seldom a thread about a female bassist escapes without some comments on their appearance, for example. Yeah, just a bit 70's.

Another here who got really unpleasant anxiety before gigs which didn't go away until the gig ended. No matter how well prepared I was, the anxiety was the same, to the extent that I would sometimes struggle to hold a conversation with someone before the gig. I got a bit of a handle on it after casually reading on symptoms of Aspergers a few years ago, much of which made a lot of sense to me and, after that, I was able to recognise the anxiety when it started, if that makes sense, and see it as a separate entity from what was going on. It was still there but I was aware of it from the outside and so it wasn't all-consuming as it had been before.

These days I'm just recording. Gigging with the band, we would go from A to dropped G only and retune on the fly. One string is fine, but a full retune would require two instruments, definitely. In a previous band, I was using floating trems with locking nuts so I always brought two guitars, one for each tuning. We always made a point of practising swapping guitars/retuning during rehearsals in both bands. 15 seconds is more than enough time to do either. Any more than that and you're wasting set time. We also arranged the setlist in blocks, so at least two songs were played in the same tuning before any switcheroos. We made sure we could change quickly and discreetly while the singer was introducing the next song. The audience come to see your band play and listen to your music, not faff about.

Yep, here. However, I seldom used the high string so I've set up a 4 string instead and flit between GDGC, ADGC, AEAD and BEAD as required. In my last band I was playing guitar instaed of bass and we tuned down to A with some songs in dropped G. On the bass, I've got a D'Addario .147 for the G/A/B string. It's serious business.

Why not turn the Hohner down, then, to a comparable output and bump up your input gain on the amp to compensate? Can you bypass the preamp on the Hohner, too, and compare the respective pickup outputs without the gain boost?

What is missing from the sound when you bypass the EQ? That is basically what you're trying to get the EQ to compensate for. If the pickup isn't even getting you close, then I'd start with the pickup before going anywhere near the preamp, personally. My own rule-of-thumb is that if I can't get a tone I like with the EQ flat, including on the amp, it gets moved on quickly. It's too easy to spend money chasing a tone you like without ever getting there.

The Geddy Jazz seems to have been a decent seller. If the instrument offers something you can't ordinarily get in a standard model, I don't see the harm. The Joe Dart basses have been something quite different for EBMM. A P bass with a slightly different colour of paint is a bit much but where the instrument deviates enough from standard that you can't replicate it by swapping a couple of parts, then it's all good. The Wimbish Spector, for example, like the Geddy, has a neck you can't get, otherwise, which legitimatises them, in my opinion. Endorsements do work because, even if a signature model doesn't take your fancy, having the popular musicians of the day seen with your instruments in your hand creates an indelible link between the music you love and that brand, whether you realise it or not. Sadowsky might make sublime J basses but there'll never be pictures of Jaco playing one. Hendrix could've stayed in tune if he played an Ibanez RG but he and his music will always be associated with Fender Strats. I'm generally not one for signature instruments but, as a young man, I had the opportunity to buy a Tony Iommi signature model, during his brief stint with Patrick Eggle, for half price and it would haunt me to this day if I hadn't made it mine. Aside from being a very, very nice guitar, they only ever made 48 of them, of which this is #23. And, to answer the OP's question, the correct answer has been mentioned a few times. Mark King, take a bow 🙂

No, it's not. You are correct. Those tuners are usually found on cheap budget instruments. The truss rod access route seems to have a black plastic collar, again, something you don't find on US Fenders, ever, and the sunburst looks quite rubbish. Two extra screws on the cheap bridge are another couple pf alarms. Fender now offer the facility to check serial numbers on their site. It'll tell you exactly the model and colour of the instrument associated with the serial. Walk away and don't look back.

Soundgarden have a rich seam of cool bass

A few others, nothing technical or outrageous but just nice grooves which support the song perfectly.

All fun. Soundgarden, from Screaming Life through to Superunknown, have a wealth of fantastic basslines to play. Yamamoto and Shepherd were both superbly creative players.