dontregartha

Thanks guys. @marc - there were only two sources for a bass back in the day... one was the catalogue and one the Junk shop whilst most of my mates were hot wiring their guitars into a record player for amplification, I got my amp from an old scrap Jukebox (saturday job was emptying the cash boxes in the pubs round town) Today you can get great instruments for a month's pocket money. Do we have better bands?...mmm @theGreek - my Ohm was a great combo - nice and powerful and had a DI out which was rare in a budget amp in the 80s - sold it for about what i paid for it 15 years later - it's still going strong I believe. The 70s funk/disco stuff was something I tried to get going with a band when at Art school, but never could find a decent drummer - we had one great guy, but he was a jazzer and much too loose for a bass player to lock to. I have to thank Bandmix for putting me in touch with some local guys who were into the same stuff. Still got problems tying down a drummer. (We're on Drummer no 7) Although I knew a lot of the repertoire - I've been learning it properly using Capo on the mac (slows down the tempo but stays in pitch) and winding it back up to tempo. In this band format the bass player is pretty much the star of the show - so you've got to put the hours in to get it right.... ... I'm trying to sing at the same time....

I'm Don, I'm based in Milton Keynes and have been playing bass since I was 14 back in 1970. I started out as the piano player in a school band and taught one of the guys where the notes were on the his bass. His folks moved away and he left the band. I reckoned the bass was a more important instrument than the piano in a band and so borrowed his bass for a couple of years until I could buy my own. It was a Hagstrom Futurama bass - bright blue... not that nice to play. I then got myself a Hofner 182 solid body bass which had been spray painted to a metallic green (it was originally the classic red colour) - I still have that and am striating to try and restore it when I have time. My rig was a home built 15" speaker cab with a Wurlitzer Jukebox amp (no cover) perched on top. Over the years I moved to an Ohm bass combo and a Westone Thunder II Then a Yamaha RBX and an Ashdown 180w Combo I eventually treated myself to my baby... a Rickenbacker 2003 in Midnight Blue which is an awesome guitar to play. Ad finally I got myself a MIM Fender Precision for the Old Skool Funk band project I'm involved in. I work in Design/Marketing for the day job, but the music has always been a key part of life. i've done hundreds of gigs in originals and covers bands in Rock, Gospel, Country, Prog, Pop, Soul and Funk. My style is a hybrid of finger style with quite a bit of slap and hammer on with both left and right hand. I like be up in the mix and am always rucking with the engineers who want to blend it in to the background. My all time bass heroes - Chris Squire (of course), Bernard Edwards, Verdine White and Larry Graham. That's me. Look forward to some bass chat