Russ

In this case, I kinda understand it, since new Wals start at nearly £8,000 and have a six-year waiting list. There's no cheaper import versions, and used ones are rare and just as expensive. If someone is making a bass that gets you 95% of the way there in terms of tone and looks, then I think it's probably a good thing, if you want to get that Justin Chancellor / Mick Karn / Geddy Lee / Nick Beggs / Percy Jones look and tone. Paul Herman isn't hurting for business right now, hence the waiting list. The real Wal guys, who won't accept anything that doesn't have the logo and wasn't made in Weybridge or Cobham, will still spend the big money and wait years. The guy who makes the Octave basses is only doing 4-string Mk2 copies right now anyway. So anyone who wants more strings, or wants a Mk1 or Mk3 shape, are out of luck.

I think it's Turner multicoil pickups and the Underhill modular preamp. Lusithand have just put out a new version of their filter preamp that has the "pick attack" treble boost, so expect to see more of those around amongst those who are looking for that Wal-esque tone.

Blackstar have done pretty well too, and they're a UK company (mostly ex-Marshall people). Their bass stuff sadly doesn't seem to have taken off though. There's always been a high-end specialist guitar valve amp market - the likes of Soldano, Fortin, Diezel, etc, usually endorsed by some super-shredder. Not to mention the likes of the Dumble - rare as rocking horse s**t and often considered the best amps ever made. They change hands for stupid money since the guy who made them died. I think he only ever made around 300 of them. There's one on Reverb right now for US$50,000. 😮

There's supposedly some new bass cabs coming soon, according to Mark Gooday's Instagram, but no new amps yet. Apparently they're going to make a proper 2x12".

I’d be interested in trying out the U500 combo with the powered extension cabinet - that seems to be the sort of thing Blackstar actually had in mind, in terms of a “modular” rig. I’d personally prefer to have the head put out its full wattage into 4ohms though.

The guy must be worth squillions. But he sold his mansion and lives in a flat, travels on public transport (and, when he flies, usually flies economy), and spends his money on "nice", relatively simple things, like a Ducati motorbike or a Fender Custom Shop bass. He's also taken pay cuts on films so the crew can get paid more. He seems like one of the world's few genuinely nice people, who seems to use his considerable wealth for good.

EBMM are getting in on the super-cheapo market too, with the "intro series" Stingrays. They're going to be US$250. https://www.notreble.com/buzz/2024/08/20/sterling-by-music-man-launches-the-intro-series-stingray-bass/

I briefly owned a U700 head. I put my review of it in the reviews section. So, tl;dr version - it sounds great, it's versatile, but it's not a loud amp, and I worried about its durability and ease of use. The amp emulations sound fantastic - the "vintage" mode sounds full SVT, and the "modern" mode is very SWR/Eden. But the full 700W output is only available at 2ohms, and 350W of Class D power isn't a lot. There's also some odd design choices - the little toggle switches on the front for the effects, etc feel flimsy, and the actual controls for the built-in effects are on the back! I was impressed enough with the tone to buy a U120 combo though - it sounds really good for a practice amp. It doesn't have all the tone shaping, effects, etc of the head, but it sounds good, the amp emulations sound just like the ones on its big brother, and it's more than powerful enough for home use. My only beef with it is the cloth grille - my cats have taken to using it as a scratching post and have absolutely shredded it. I wish every amp manufacturer offered a metal grille option. 😒 I have no idea how successful the Unity Bass range has been for Blackstar, and if they plan to continue with it. I really hope they do. The tone is excellent and they're very versatile, they just need to address the overall power output and the control layout in a "2.0" version. And offer steel grilles! As I was saying above, they also need to get some "name" players involved. I bet there's still a lot of people out there who don't even know that Blackstar make bass gear.

I'm a big OHM fan too. I do enjoy a bit of Navarro, and loved what he brought to it. The man really knows how to make a wall of psychedelic sound with a guitar, a Marshall and a bunch of reverb and delay, and also knows how to write a killer simple riff. It's also Flea being more Flea than on any other album, in my opinion. There's the funky slap stuff, obviously (Aeroplane, Coffee Shop, etc), some great riffing (Warped, Shallow Be Thy Game), and loads of lovely melodic and counterpoint stuff all over the place (Deep Kick, Transcending, etc). The Alembic tone on the record is also pretty great. This was also, in my opinion, the last album where Kiedis actually sincerely emoted. Incidentally, Dave Navarro and Eric Avery from Jane's made a fantastic album after Jane's broke up the first time around called Deconstruction. It's an album all about life in Los Angeles in its many guises, and kinda set the tone for the approach Navarro would take during his time with RHCP, in terms of psychedelic/post-punk influences. If you've never heard it, take a listen. Not many people are aware of it, but everyone who listens to it ends up loving it. It's melancholy, melodic and quite beautiful, in a bleak sort of way.

They're a great band, and always deliver live, even now, in their 60s. They've got more live energy than bands half their age. And Flea remains one of the greats, and seems to be getting more and more musical as he gets older. But I think they've been coasting pretty much since By The Way. The subsequent albums are good, but nothing they haven't done before. I thought Josh brought a bit of a different sound to them - there was a bit more spacey, delay-heavy Navarro-style stuff which I quite liked (I loved One Hot Minute, but, then again, I'm also a massive Jane's fan), but the songs were all still much of a muchness.

Fantastic band. Had lots of good conversations with Karl and Owen over the years. Karl did the whole moving to America thing as well, and we compared notes. Makes me wonder what happened to a load of the other bands who were around at the time.

The whole Yorkshire “behs” schtick got painfully old after about 10 seconds. And I cringe at his YT shorts. But his proper videos have some decent bass content.

Incidentally, regarding the "old way" of recording and promoting music, kids starting out in music back in the day would have killed to have Youtube, TikTok, etc, not to mention powerful recording software that works on a home computer or iPad. I was there, in a band, recording bad-sounding demos on a Tascam Portastudio, then handing out tapes with awful, dot-matrix-printed cassette inlays to anyone who'd have them and hoping they wouldn't end up in the bin. Duplicating tapes was expensive. It was even more expensive when CD-Rs came out. It was sh*t. Getting to record in a proper recording studio was expensive and out of the reach of many young people - maybe one of your band members' dads was a stockbroker and had the money to pay for that sort of thing. The closest thing to social media was the "zine scene", which kinda relied on you knowing people who could write nice things about your band in what was basically a photocopied leaflet handed out at gigs, and which would almost certainly also end up in the bin. Everyone aspired to be signed, but conveniently forgot that meant that, all of a sudden, a whole bunch of non-musicians suddenly had a say over everything you did, and your viability as a "product" was suddenly completely out of your hands. You were completely at the whims of musical fashions and the opinions of the music press. This was also sh*t. I vastly prefer things the way they are now. Music has been democratised. Yes, the pool is far bigger than it once was, but it's also far, far deeper. There's something out there for everyone, and it's ridiculously easy for a musician to become a part of that.

It took Metallica five albums to break through back in the day. Most of their contemporaries never really broke through - Exodus, Anthrax, Megadeth, Over Kill and so on. They had the odd hit, but never really went fully mainstream. These bands still headline festivals worldwide. They're still around and doing OK. Many other, younger bands who have come up in this era of Spotify and Youtube are up there with them on these festival bills, and will also do OK. The model has changed. The music has evolved. The methods of making music are much, much better now. But good songs are still being written, people are listening to them, and people are still making a living from it. Which brings me to Charles Berthoud. The man is an excellent musician, educated at Berklee (which is why he relocated to the US), plays several instruments extremely well (he also plays piano and guitar to almost as high a standard as he plays bass), is an fantastic composer and arranger, and he's found an outlet to make a living from his skills. He knows the game has changed, and he's adapted to this new reality. There's also more than a whiff of gatekeeping bass snobbery here - if you look at guitarists who do the same thing (I'm thinking the likes of Bernth, Ola Englund, Eric Calderone, Sophie Burrell, Alexandr Misko, even well-established guitar legends like Jom Gomm, Andy McKee and Tommy Emmanuel) they don't get half as much grief as Charles, Davie, Danny Sapko and so on. Is it because they're bass players playing non-traditional bass parts and daring to push the boundaries a bit? I wish him all the luck in the world, and I hope to continue to be entertained by him for many more years.

I'd like to see a new Marshall bass head with a Class D power section, at least 800W of grunt, and the hybrid preamp section from the DBS heads (although maybe without the graphic, since they're "out" right now). In black and gold, with matching lightweight cabs with the Marshall logo prominently displayed. Do what Trace did with the TE-1200 - retain the classic tone, but modernise and simplify. They're iconic as a brand. I'd be more than happy to use one, assuming it sounded good and didn't break down like the MB amps used to. Chris Wolstenholme swore by DBS gear for years, and apparently bought up almost every used one he could find. I think he's switched to Markbass now, but those old Muse albums were all Marshall DBS.

They were stunningly good amps for the time. Their successors, the MB series, were pretty good too, but had some serious reliability issues. Plus, the didn't have the classic black 'n' gold livery... Now that Marshall are under new ownership, maybe they could start building bass gear again? After they bought out Eden, they said they didn't need to because they had a sub-brand for bass, but they've long since offloaded them now.

Holy crapulence. $24k for the sixer. 😮 And someone bought it too...

I wonder if any of his custom Spectors are going to be in the sale? I really liked that different body shape, and I've never seen one in person.

Nikko Whitworth, the former bass player from Unleash The Archers, uses fifths tuning. He's got a great, Matt Garrison-style thumb-and-fingers picking technique too.

I had a very short-lived endorsement with Warwick back in 2003, back when the band I was in at the time was doing OK, and Warwick had very few UK-based endorsers. I got them to make me a 5-string Streamer Jazzman for 20% below trade price. I got it, and the neck was... horrendous. Super-thick and hard to play. Sounded good, but it made my hand cramp up! I ended up basically saying to them, "thanks, but no thanks" and called things off, and I sold the Streamer for quite a lot more than I paid for it, so it all worked out in the end.

My sister-in-law is trans. I’ve heard some of the cr@p that she had to put up with. Some people just can’t live and let live - how does someone they don’t know dressing differently and using different pronouns affect them at all?

Lobster's back. Something seems different this time, maybe it's the studio?

I know he just toured with them for the first time in years. I think Josh Paul was playing with them before Rob came back. Hopefully they'll do some new material. Tye Trujillo, Rob's son, is also shaping up to be a very good bass player. He toured with Korn after Fieldy went on hiatus, played with Suicidal Tendencies after their bass player, Ra Diaz, went off to Korn to replace Fieldy on a more permanent basis, and has his own band. I think it's cool that they share a love and appreciation of Jaco despite coming from two different musical worlds - Marcus was talking about Jaco being his mentor and friend, and Rob made a documentary film about him and is the owner/custodian of the Bass Of Doom!

Great vid. Lots of fun to see Marcus rocking out with Trujillo during the jam at the end! Trujillo needs a new side project - I want to hear him doing his thing like he did in Infectious Grooves, Mass Mental and so on. Musically, he’s a bit wasted in Metallica, but I believe the salary is good.

I think Ampeg have a bit of a reputation problem right now, thanks to their previous generation Class D stuff. That’s why I’m not getting one (yet). Plus, I don’t think it’s a particularly attractive-looking thing. Big, sticky-out knobs, fiddly, fragile-looking little switches, and so on. I can overlook that if the sound is good and it’s going to be reliable, but, a) nobody seems to be able to tell me if they sound any good, and b) they haven’t really been out long enough to have a good measure of their reliability. Additionally, it’s a bit of a harder time to be an amp company. With the rise of modellers, IEMs, etc, less people are buying amps these days in general.