Beer of the Bass

The other thing I'd note with the YC, the control set is geared around the Hammond emulation and all the others are a bit of an afterthought. The classic transistor combo organs have fewer differently pitched stops available than a Hammond, but usually a couple of differently filtered options at each pitch, so there's a bright, thin 8' or mellow, flute-like 8'. The YC doesn't reproduce this behaviour at all, it's just the same set of Hammond drawbars with a brighter core tone. If you were specifically seeking to replace an older combo organ with it, that could be limiting.

I have the YC, it's fun to play, I could see it being great to pull out for the occasional organ part, overdubs etc, though I'm sure it would be frustrating to a real Hammond player. I quite enjoy turning off the Leslie sim on mine and running it through a Marshall-esque guitar amp, that's an instantly recognisable British rock organ sound that can range from Caravan to Deep Purple. The other thing I'd say is that you absolutely need an expression pedal attached to get full enjoyment out of it. The distortion effect in the YC sounds quite harsh and unpleasant when it's just constant on every note, but when you swell in an out of it as "real" organists do, it's much more satisfying.

Guitarists are a fickle lot (bassists too, but not in the same ways) - it seems like new guitar amp names who start in the high-end boutique world and then expand into the mass market can do quite well. Getting a new valve amp range accepted by the market without that sort of buzz attached to the name seems to be more of a tall order.

Presto are usually quite good value too, I don't think they're lesser quality than Thomastik et al, but Gdansk is presumably a more cost effective place to run a manufacturing business than Vienna.

I use picks on guitar, mandolin and related instruments, but I've found I like them quite thin on bass, usually .88mm. I only use a pick on selected songs, I think it's three or four out of my band's repertoire, so when I use one it's specifically because I want that clicky attack. It's an electric instrument, I have to remind myself of that, not like playing acoustically where a stiff pick can help with projection and volume, and a tone that would be objectionably clicky unplugged is toned down a lot by magnetic pickups. Discovering large triangles was a big help too, my grip is more relaxed with those. I don't really lose them, I'll have one or two tucked under the control plate on my bass, and a few more in the gigbag pocket just in case.

I've played a couple of different guitar amps into my bass cabs, it's not bad as such, but for clean to lightly driven tones it seems a little polite. It could be good for a warm, clean straight-ahead jazz tone (and indeed some of the Henricksen jazz amps use the same driver as my bass cabs), and I've seen people make it work for unconventional heavily EQ'ed drive sounds. But for more "normal" guitar sounds it might be lacklustre.

Not sure about Noel, but Liam was a fairly loud and unashamed homophobe back in the day and has yet to show any real indication of personal growth or reflection on any past views, so I can't quite picture it. One of the reasons so many people so emphatically reject any nostalgia for the whole 90s lad culture business...

I had one of these on rental from a shop in the early 2000s before I owned a bass of my own. It wasn't wonderful, even a bit boxy and thin sounding compared to other plywood basses, but it did get me out and playing. They were literally the least expensive new bass in the UK at the time, I'd price a used one with that in mind. Have you checked that the soundpost is present and in the right spot on yours? (It should be just downwards of the G side bridge foot). The fingerboard surface is a tricky one - most advice on maintaining fingerboards is intended for ebony or other dense hardwood boards, rather than a painted board like this one. I'd string it up first (if the soundpost in in place, and reading up on bridge positioning), and then see how it looks - the amount of relief along its length and whether there are any bumps or dips, before deciding if it needs any reshaping or just a light tidying of the surface finish.

I try and not get into slagging off bands, because I know they mean something to people whether I like them or not. Plus life's too short, I'd rather talk about what I do like. But then, Oasis fans might not make the most convincing case for taking that approach, when the brothers Gallagher will loudly have a go at any music that's not boringly dressed white men with guitars. They get hate because they give it.

I was getting sponsored posts for Leatherwood on social media for a while, I don't think I've ever heard of other rosin brands advertising like that. I don't doubt the rosin is decent stuff, but the advertising budget and the "artisanal" packaging must account for a chunk of the cost.

Agreed, but then most bassists would do fine with Spirocores, one of the classic steel orchestral sets, or simple guts. Getting higher into the hundreds with things like Oliv sets or boutique guts is probably a game of diminishing returns a lot of the time.

When I moved through to Glasgow I picked up a Hofner Shorty bass thinking it would enable me to cycle to rehearsals. But it's so different to my usual bass that it's not very useful to rehearse with, and a bandmate (who lives nearby) often appreciates the lift if I take the car, so the Hofner has not been used as I anticipated.

Reminds me of some of the overly serious theremin enthusiast crowd that I've run into online when researching instruments. Did they disdain any pop music and sci-fi soundtrack use of the theremin, and use it to play classical and operatic excerpts, badly? I suspect they wouldn't like the Stylophone theremin as it has only a single antenna and the "real" instrument has one for volume too.

I'm on rounds nowadays and I don't have a big stable of basses to keep a variety of strings on. But I think I've never got past four or five years on a set of flatwounds before something about them doesn’t sound the best to me. I'm the same with Thomastik Spirocores on my double bass, which many bassists insist go for a decade or more.

Fender-y electrics and Gibson-y acoustics for me. When I was playing electric guitar with a band last, I had a dalliance with a 335 copy for a while just for a change, but the snap and clang of something Fenderish works better for me, and a bitsa Jazzmaster was the longest running choice.

I encountered my first instance of a boomy room/stage where a variable HPF greatly improved things this week. I have a Schalltechnik Vong HPF + LPF on my pedalboard, my main purpose of which is to make my fuzz sound palatable with the LPF when using a DI. But at this gig we were in a village hall, hollow portable stage, vocal PA only and using my Ampeg PF50T with two 1x12" cabs. I was struggling with boomy low notes while we were setting up, and raising the HPF on the pedal cleaned it up with less thinning of the rest of the sound than with the bass control on the amp. It's literally the first time I've had this issue in several years of using this setup, but I was glad to have the HPF there.

I'm gigging with a PF50T and one or two homebuilt 1x12" cabs with Eminence Beta drivers. It's definitely in the recognisably Ampeg area, but I don't know if it really nails one in particular of the classic models. I like what the preamp does with the mids boosted, the inductor based active mid circuit does something interesting when pushed which is something you wouldn't get from a B15 but might from a V4B or SVT rig. But I'm not worried about accurately recreating another amp's sound, and this one works for me.

Some of them in the UK came with the hum reduction already done, presumably by Polar, the distributor at the time. Mine came from when Kenny's in Scotland was blowing them out at clearance prices, and the mod was already done.

I grew to hate it, to be honest. I did several summers a few years ago. Getting around the crowds with a double bass, the insufferable bragging hustle culture of the other buskers, the variable weather, the difficult punters, the drawn out quibbling over heaps of coins...

I can't imagine what I would do with 8 bass guitars. I have one 5 string that I actively use, one fretless that gets very occasional outings (and is unsellable as an old quirky home-build) and a Hofner Shorty that I should probably get rid of as it gets no playing time.

I'm wondering if there's a little nod to John Fahey in the choice of title.

I've never had a Realist, but I hear people using them locally and they do seem to be dark sounding. There's a free improv night I go to where there are several bassists through the course of the evening, and hearing different bassists in the same room on the same night I really notice that. They're nice in a very lightly amplified jazz setting where the amp is reinforcement rather than the bulk of the sound, and also about the only simple piezo pickup where the arco sound is tolerable without a lot of EQ, so they have their uses.

The puzzler for me has been a repeated, disappointed "no dates in X town?", from someone who puts on gigs in said town regularly and has yet to approach us about one.

And Emmett only needed one. Though the River Bottom Nightmare Band trounced them fair and square at the talent contest, so make of that what you will.

Even though I like my fiver, I can see plenty of reasons someone might keep to four. Some enjoy specific vintage or retro bass models that don't translate well to five strings, some just don't have a need for the extra range for their particular musical goals, and some have right hand techniques where adding another string underneath affects how they play on the E string. And I get it, I have no urge to look into five string double bass!