gpw5150

Yup, though there is some interest

11 hours ago, ahpook said:

Mrs. Pook reckons no...she said I grumbled about him too much.

Any thoughts ?

Turn up with a banjo and a sliver of buckwheat between your teeth...

21 hours ago, ahpook said:

Hey ho, on with the search

Good luck dude

My ‘1’ bass is called ‘bass’...I am not terribly sentimental.

Though, i did name all of our chickens after porn stars.  The kids and wife did not realise, my wife only found out after a fox got to them and I exclaimed that I would have to remove cicciolinas head from a large tool, which rather amused me.....I do hate it when people question why you think something is funny and then get all moral..

Though in bass world naming i don’t think that ‘Thunderfunk’ will ever be beaten, unless Dave Funk teams up with Ernie Ball....

BallFunk?

FunkMan?

22 hours ago, ribbetingfrog said:

My basses are Handbag and Mr. Sparkle.

 

No prizes for guessing which this is

Handbag?

If you are on here, good job on the bass sir!

Wonder if Guy Pratt will auction off some of his basses..?

Might pop in and see the collection in London.  As above, massively undervalued - I expect there will be 'silicon valley' buyers for all that stuff.

I had some trouble with my HH Stingray action.  It was tricky to lower without buzziness and I didn't want to shim the neck like crazy, for a £1.5k bass I figured it should be built to a much higher tolerance. The neck relief measure up fine, the saddles are low, but I simply don't wanna go down the route of shimming.  I have a compromise where it is about 2.5mm from the 12th fret, but still not my ideal.  My old OLP is way lower with a shimmed neck and does not buzz at all.  

Any thoughts on lowering the action any further?

I guess I could use smaller string guages - i use 45/100

Looks like something for the teens, passive, short scale?

I want to see a Stingray Electric Octobass - with 1 control, for more bass only......!

@Hobbayne

14 hours ago, gpw5150 said:

So, i got the rejection letter.  He rejected the singer and drummer too!

apparently, he agonized over keeping me, but felt my sound and general look did not fit with his vision.  well, at least i have all my own hair....!

Must admit that it has taken the weight off me telling him where to go.

on the lighter side, great practice tonight with the usual band!

So, basically, he has no one......as we all got rejected.

So, i got the rejection letter.  He rejected the singer and drummer too!

apparently, he agonized over keeping me, but felt my sound and general look did not fit with his vision.  well, at least i have all my own hair....!

Must admit that it has taken the weight off me telling him where to go.

on the lighter side, great practice tonight with the usual band!

Nearest I got to dance was this old chestnut;

you can kinda hear it at this outdoor gig we did at a VW festival someone else’s badg edited montage video.  Bass was a Fender Jazz Modern Player V with an east preamp, Markbass F500 head DI to PA and SWR golight 112 cabs onstage;

1 minute ago, Marc S said:

so I said "So if Bill Wyman or Paul McCartney turned up.... you'd tell them to F*** off, would you?"

I probably would tell Paul McCartney.....

**I might not....

I think Hipshot make an Xtender for that.......

2 minutes ago, petebassist said:

I think you can count yourself lucky that you weren't the one not quite up to scratch here.

I've done a couple of auditions that still make me cringe when I think of them - Bowie said once that when you feel you're just out of your depth, that's the best place to be, but in my case it wasn't, I was drowning... in full public view. 

 It'd be interesting to hear whether they get any gigs - afterall, money talks, b&llshit walks... 

Almost impossible to play disco on the bass at 45 BPM!  

I suspect no one will come up to the standard, of which 'the leader' was not capable himself......and it will go nowhere.

Great stuff - love it!

The synth seems to swamp the vocals and bass a bit, but that could be laptop speakers!

5 hours ago, Wolverinebass said:

Nobody tells me what to play. I'll take suggestions. The reason is simple. I would never dream of insulting anyone by telling them what to play. Therefore, I'm not putting up with it myself.

I like choice and if someone tries to take that away, then I'll probably make a choice to leave.

Oooh, I will admit to being a bit fastidious....!

For example; Gun 'n Roses 'Sweet Child 'o Mine' simply has to be played as the record as does the solo on 'Livin' on a prayer'.  I am all for it being fun, mistakes and willingness to learn and educate, but when you can hear something that is being played plain wrong when it is a key component of the song, I gotta say something as it is so blindingly obvious.  As an ex guitar player, it is tough not to show people how to do it and there is a way of phrasing your eagerness to get that bit right 'can I help you rehearse that? can I show you a trick to make that bit easier?, Shall we slow it down just there and get your fingers in the zone? etc etc' and TBH, in my current band the guitar player and I regularly swap when he wants to try something on bass or I can do the guitar line more fluidly.  He sings as well and some guitar lines are beyond him when he is singing.  Hells Bells by AC/DC, as an example, is an instrument swap song for us.

39 minutes ago, yorks5stringer said:

Aldi or Lidl have one this week or next

You rock!

So, I think I will keep the Epifani UL212.  It is ~20kg, but I cannot be arsed with the carrying any longer.....

Any small folding sack truck recommendations?  Preferably one that won't fall to bits on rough car park ground!

1 hour ago, uk_lefty said:

I work with lots of "ex lawyers" doing far less glamorous and less well paid jobs. They love to tell you that they're an ex lawyer and try to butt in on anything legal and say things like "this is day 1 law school..." Before saying something obvious you've already covered. If they were a good lawyer, they'd still be a lawyer*

 

 

 

 

*Unless they hated being a lawyer at all. But then they probably wouldn't go round telling everyone that.

My wife is an ex lawyer....now a painter and actress,

I.e. I pay for everything....

How light do you play?

Until a few years ago I was always a heavy handed player and consequently had a high action.  However, as they years have gone on, my touch has become much more light across the strings and my action has lowered significantly - to the point of most people not being able to play my bass due to fret buzz!

Anyone else playing light and going low?  Is it an age thing?

Can you setup a bass to be played hard with a low action?

On Joinmyband.

TBH, I play stuff with a couple of guys weekly and it's okay, needs polish, but we are not intending to gig for a while, but they are good fun and well spirited guys.  However, An ask came up on JMB for a bass player for a 'Chic' cover band.  Well, I remember most of the basslines, but there are a few versions of the songs about so, I am not too familiar with all the changes.

I speak to the guy on the phone who tells me he is an ex sound engineer and toured extensively, he is looking for high quality musicians an people who can simply pick stuff up and run with it.  He is quite firm that this is his project.  He has a drummer and a vocalist on email and adds me to the group.

Some emails are exchanged, some in a random order with some song references, but no fixed list or versions, just some songs across 3 emails with 'keys' that are not really keys - they are chords played for the songs - so, I do a few bits of Chic (as this is the primary focus) as time dictates and leave it at that.  We are asked to meet at a rehearsal space at a time and date.

I turn up at the allotted time to find a vocalist who is about 200 years old, a bloke with arthritis on the drums and the guy who has organised this is possibly one of the worst guitar players I have ever encountered - literally no pazazz or feel at all.  The vocalist does not have lyrics for all songs, I only rehearsed the chic ones that I skim read and the drummer only has 1/2 options in his capabilities and 120BPM was well out of his comfort zone, mixed with a god awful soulless drone from the guitar and an inability to play with any dexterity - Even the SRV solo on David Bowie's 'Lets Dance' was beyond him - Almost swiped the guitar from his hand and played it for him......

I was told by 'our leader' that my bass sound was wrong (and reminded of his vast sound engineering career) and I was missing out various bits of the songs - unsurprisingly he could not point to an individual bit missing and instead stated that the bassline is busier - I agreed and just pulled my hat down tighter on my head!  As for sound, well, I usually practice through headphones on my amp at home and then have to make adjustments hen I have the cab linked up at rehearsals and was not really given an opportunity to adjust, in fact, I was given no time at all to warm up on a freezing cold night.

Suffice to say, I won't be going back and I doubt I will hear from him anyway - It was truly awful.  I almost packed up and walked on the 'sound' and 'busier' basslines bit....

Anyone else had to deal with this....?

I don’t have a specific warm up, but I do use the synth line from ‘I feel love’ by Giorgio Morodor as my exercise of choice on bass.