josie

Welcome - beautiful bass!

Welcome!

Someone I met at a blues festival (not in Manchester) once remembered seeing me play in a blues jam in Manchester. It must have helped that he's also a bass player, and I remembered seeing him (at different venue), too. We've stayed in touch, and my band is opening for his band tonight (and I'll be using his Trace Elliot rig) 🙂

Thanks, but it's about expectations - if I saw another bassist playing something like my Ibby I'd expect them to be a better bass player than I am. You don't need to understand bass guitars to spot this one as bling (which is *not* why I love her!) The better and more confident you are, the better you can do with "less great" gear. If the naff Encore P I keep at work had been my first bass, I would have given up within months. My GMR 5 wouldn't let me give up. She isn't "fancy", but you won't find better build or tone quality for 5 times what I paid for her. She's my inspiration much more than any particular famous bass player.

I didn't get on with my first 6 (Warwick Thumb) purely because it's too heavy for me. Should really make more of an effort to sell it. My second (Ibanez Premium BTB 1406) is a delight, absurdly light and easy to play. I'm not as confident with it yet as I am with my first bass (GMR 5), so for now I'm still taking that out for proper gigs, and the Ibby to casual jams and OMs where there's less pressure. Also I would feel pretentious turning up in front of an audience with a conspicuously unusual and high-quality instrument - the GMR is just as good, but you'd have to understand bass guitars to know. I'll just have to get over that 🙂

Encumbered forever by desire and ambition, there's a hunger still unsatisfied (Pink Floyd, "High Hopes") This is in my funeral instructions as my epitaph.

I live in a tiny flat which is more or less all music room. I make a point of playing all my basses (4 electric, 2 acoustic, all out on floor stands) often enough that they don't need too much dusting, and change strings as often as I fancy trying a new type of strings, which is fairly often. I've resisted getting too geeky about details though - I don't know much about bass guitars but I know what I like 🙂

Back to our favourite venue, the Old Abbey Tap in south Mcr. They've been good to us and the numbers are always small (it's tiny) but vibe is always good. I'd set up the gig as a double bill with the Gus Glynn Band who were coming up from Nantwich and happy to play for pizza and beer rather than their usual £. Got there well early with bass and rig (MarkBass 400 combo) for the barman to say "Nobody told me there was live music tonight - but you're here so you might as well play!" He then went on to say "I'm the sound engineer, I'll help you set up and soundcheck." Star. It was on their FB page with a fair number of peeps "interested", but there was more or less nobody there, apart from one local whose appreciation became more annoying as the night went on. Still it was a fun night, the pizza was excellent, and it was a good warmup for our first professional gig on Sunday. I was worried GGB might have been unhappy, but they seemed to enjoy it too and were the first to say "Lets do this again!" My GMR 5 and the MarkBass sounded good together 🙂 Even my higher-pitched lines with lots of sustain and slide held up well in the mix. On a couple of songs in C or D I play octave switches between rooting on the A and low B string and the contrast was dramatic. Happy cat 🙂

Welcome!

Welcome!

Welcome!

Welcome!

Welcome!

Welcome!

Welcome!

Welcome! Far too much gear is not enough... a lot of us here feel the same! 🙂

I'd add 5 - needs to have exceptional sound and build quality. GMR meets 1 2 4 and 5, but not 3. My three (all 2nd hand, 2 from BC Marketplace) all cost about 1/3 of anything comparable from a better known name, and that's all I could sell them for (which is one of the reasons why I'd never sell them). Treasures of my future (if all goes well) but musically, not financially. And if a 5-string fretless ever walks past me it's stopping here 🙂

Welcome! You're younger than my son... whose son much prefers my basses to his guitars 🙂

Welcome!

Welcome!

Welcome!

Welcome!

I've just replaced the phosphor bronze strings on my Michael Kelly fretted with black tapewounds, and I'm finding the sound carries better (and sounds better - a rich almost double-bassy sound rather than the metallic clank of the bronze).