Russ

It's been an interesting year. Productive in terms of songwriting and recording. Got four new tracks down and ready to release (we've put two out already). Looking into making a video for one of them. We haven't gigged this year though, although we have one lined up in January. There's been various health issues in the band (drummer injured himself more than once, guitarist diagnosed with (benign) tumour in his intestine and has been receiving treatment) so that's meant having to take a few months of the year off. Hopefully 2026 will be a bit more productive, both in terms of gigging and getting some new material out there. In terms of personal music goals, I'm taking some time to learn how to do some fully-fledged composition and scoring stuff, kinda inspired by the fact that Hans Zimmer is a self-taught composer who has risen to the top of his profession. Early days, but it's fun. I've also been working a bit on my acoustic guitar playing and songwriting, although I've just got rid of two of my acoustic instruments - my employment with a well-known acoustic guitar manufacturer recently came to an end as a result of the f**king tariffs and them having to downsize significantly, and I'm a bit bitter about it - ended up removing any trace of them from my house, including the two instruments I got at employee prices, and even down to T-shirts and picks. So I've gone back to my nice old Lag and Ovation acoustics. My hopes for 2026 are relatively high, but I'm cautious.

Honestly, this sort of tuning only really works through a direct-to-PA solution like running it through a QC or other modeller, as it's the only sort of system that can come close to doing justice to notes that low, and that's only if the PA is running multiple 15s/18s with loads and loads of power. Most regular bass amps, no matter how much power they have and the size of the speakers, tend to roll off below 40HZ (E1) anyway. If you go down to E0 (20Hz) there's no bass amp out there that will come close, unless you're using servo speakers or other such tech. Properly EQ'd, a regular low E will sound fuller and clearer than using a string tuned an octave lower. The exception to this would be if you played the string up around the 12th fret, which gives you the regular E1, but with that thick tubbiness you only get when you play in that position.

Nah. I'd love a Z3, but I'd like a plain black one, or maybe a natural (they do the Z7 in natural, but not the Z3). I find sparkle finishes to be a bit garish. But, y'know, horses for courses. They're always out of stock on their website, so I guess they're selling as many of them as they can make! I'm actually looking out for a MM-style bass that's black 'n' maple, as I think I need to go back to basics a bit (my daily drivers are a pair of 6-strings, fretted and fretless, and I'm feeling the need to take a step back!) Right now, the Sadowsky MetroExpress Vintage M is the leading contender. It's more than twice the price of the Z3 though, and the Z3 sounds more like an actual MM.

Didn't I sell it to you back in 2005? It's a stunningly good bass, and I should never have let it go, really. I think I was the third or fourth owner of it at that point, at least it's found somewhere stable to live!

Yep, that's an Original. A proper old one too, since it has the brass nameplate in front of the bridge. Thinking probably 1994-1995 or so? Seis age spectacularly well - mine is 22 years old and plays better than it ever has. What electronics are in it? I'm guessing the Schack circuit he used to put into almost everything? As for getting the top fixed - get it over to Martin. He'll sort it right out. I had him "rejuvenate" mine about a year and a half ago - got him to do a full setup, clean and polish, replace a few screws that had gone rusty, stick some Hipshot Ultralites on it, fix an annoying issue with the battery compartment where the wood cover had become detached from the metal plate underneath, and so on.

I've thought about getting one, mostly to tune E-C and defret, to go with my one remaining US Bongo (I had four at one point!). Fretless US Bongos are as rare as rocking horse s**t. And I had one and let it go! Might just keep an eye out for a US one at this point, I think. The ultra-hot neodymium pickups and the 4-band EQ ARE the Bongo sound and there's nothing available aftermarket (that I know of) that mimics that. Q-Tuner do MM-sized neo pickups, but I've no idea if they're based on the Bongo design or sound anything like them. And Trickfish and Noll will do you a 4-band preamp, but they won't have the frequencies of the Bongo's EQ.

He's got nerve damage in his right hand, but he's developed an interesting plucking technique to compensate using his index finger and his thumb. The guy can still play his unmentionables off.

Literally just saw this. Gutted. Probably the most quietly influential British bass player of the last 40 years. There is no bass player in the UK of a certain age who didn't implicitly know the bass parts to Fool's Gold, She Bangs The Drums or Waterfall, or that bass break from I Am The Resurrection.

The last generation of Eden cabs were light, but not featherweight. I think they were lightweight wood, but with regular speakers, not neodymium ones. I'd be expecting these ones to be similar. The original Nemesis range were proper featherweights, I'd have liked to see them go back in that direction, but as long as these ones aren't backbreakers, I'm sure they'll be fine. Just get the cabs with the fewest number of speakers (the 1x15", or the 2x12" or 2x10").

I was running it into a Barefaced Big Twin 2, mostly using my pair of Maruszczyk Frog 6-strings. I’ve been using an Ashdown RM-800 as my primary head for some time, so that was my benchmark in terms of tone, volume, etc. Agedhorse made some suggestions earlier in this thread about how to use the EQ (which works additively, effectively as volume controls for certain frequencies), but, even with that, I couldn’t get the gain up past about 10 o’clock without the whole thing fuzzing up. I like some hair on my tone, but I also like to be able to not have it. And using the EQ controls in the manner they were intended to be used did make things louder, but not sufficiently so for me. I owned a Bass 400+ back in the day too, and I don’t recall ever having issues with getting a clean tone with that, with it only getting furry when you hit it hard, and in a pleasant, “creamy” sort of way. If you cranked the input gain it would fuzz out, but only towards the extreme end of the gain knob. I’m not giving up on Mesa though. Probably going to revisit the WD-800 at some point - I had one for a while and liked it a lot, but couldn’t justify holding onto two heads at the time.

I returned mine in the end. Just couldn’t get it to sound the way I wanted it to. Even with minimal gain, minimal EQ, etc, the sound was a little too “hairy” for my taste. It was hard to get something that sounded reasonably clean, at volume - I wanted loud, with just a hint of hairiness, and I struggled to get it. But, of course, that’s an entirely subjective perspective - you may be looking for precisely that sort of sound.

I've actually been playing my RBJ-67 a fair bit lately. Those pickups with the beefy, MM-like polepieces combined with the East J-Retro I put in it generates a tone with some serious ⚽️🔒🔒. I think it actually sounds better than some of the so-called super-Js I've owned in the past - it's bigger-sounding and easier to play than the Sadowsky I owned about 15 years back! All that's really wrong with it is that it weighs a f**king ton and my quinquagenarian back does not approve.

Love it. They look like Nordstrand BigBladeMan pickups. Those things rip - got a set in my Spector.

In terms of “official” endorsers, yep, there aren’t many. But you do see quite a lot of them out there being played by some reasonably well-known players - another couple who sprang to mind were James LoMenzo (currently with Megadeth) and Tony Kanal (No Doubt). The only endorsed Yamaha player I can think of who moved onto another brand was John Myung - the rest of them have stuck with the brand forever. You’re right about the guitar side of things though - there really aren’t many. But again, the YouTube generation are filling the gaps, people like Matteo Mancuso. The Pacifica was always the single best inexpensive Strat-a-like available, but there’s a lot more competition now. Yamaha make a LOT of instruments and I guess they have to focus on where they do best - for them, that means brass instruments, keyboards and pianos (they obviously have their own range, and they own Bösendorfer - probably the most prestigious and expensive pianos in the world!). Let’s not forget they are also the current owners of Ampeg and Line 6.

Yep, Richlite is basically layered paper infused with resin. So is ebonol. They're very stable though, and do sound suitably "woody".