chris_b

Pilot stadium tests for selected sports from 1st Aug. If OK 1st October for roll out. Social distancing still applies. No mention of theatres or gigs.

It's all changed. . . . . . . . for the better. The average cabs are OK, but the good cabs are light years better. Today you can buy a 112 that is louder, has more punch, tone and projection than any 412 from back in the day and there are 212's that can take on 810's. It's a whole new world from when I started in the 60's. I'm just glad I'm still gigging and able to use modern bass gear. IMO I sound better now that at any other time. Buy 2 112's then you can decide how many cabs will fit the gig.

If an operator has to keep moving the fretting parts you might as well employ a bass player.

Scary Pockets might be just covers but they are overflowing with interesting arrangement ideas and very cool playing. A great lesson of how less is more right there.

John East pre amps are fantastic. I've only heard 2 in the flesh, both with Bartolini pickups, and the sound was the best. Good move.

If a company is making basses and selling them internationally you can be sure that they are fulfilling all the criteria laid down by the CITES agreements. Therefore these basses are using sustainable woods.

My school band opened the first set with Last Night and the second set with Soul Finger. Stax is imprinted on my soul.

The Mar-keys were a bunch of school kids, including Duck Dunn and Steve Cropper. They made a record, Last Night, which we did in my school band. I thought the Bar-Kays were Otis Redding's touring band.

As I say, if you can carry it off fine. James Jamerson was busier than most and what he played was spot on. Less is more always comes with the caveat that it doesn't apply to great playing.

Good call. I forgot JJ and Norbert. The Hodges brothers were the session guys for Willie Mitchell's Hi Studios. They were on Al Green, Ann Peebles, Syl Johnson etc etc records.

If you can carry off a busy bass playing style then good for you. There are players who can do that and styles where busy can fit, but most busy players seems to be of the "look at me and my clever playing" school. "Less is more" is a way of dropping a gentle hint that someone's "incredible" playing is really a pile of shite, the bass equivalent of verbal diarrhoea, and that their busy and inappropriate lines aren't making it.

Have a listen to the other bass players working in the various studios in the southern states; Tommy Cogbill at Fame, Mike Leech at American, David Hood at Muscle Shoals and Vernie Robbins and George Allen at Malaco, and all the other guys. They were fantastic exponents of the "less is more" school of bass playing.

When I was at school I could get the bus to right outside Macari's shop in Wembley. The brothers probably split their time between there and the other shops, but I remember the same one being there most times I went to visit. I don't recall them having anything particularly interesting on the wall, mostly middle and low cost starter basses, but at the time any bass looked good to me.

There are always limits to everything. My solution when using 1 SC and finding it running out of steam is to always run 2 SC's. More volume, more tone and the same carry weight.

If you strip away the various levels of my bass playing that have been laid down over the last 50 years or so, you'll find Duck Dunn at the bottom, the foundation to everything I play. Sadly I never got to see him live.

He seems to have taken every feature I didn't like from the cheap beginner basses that were around in the 60's and put them all into one bass. I know this is not a beginner bass but I can't look at it without that dislike kicking in.

For the last couple of years I've been using D'Addario NYXL's on my active Jazz. I know they are nickel, but I like them a lot. Before that, for 15 years or more, I used DR Lo-Riders and Hi-Beams. Great long lasting strings but a tad more expensive than the NYXL's.

The amount of air moved by a driver is dependant on the size of the driver and the excursion distance of the cone. A 10" driver that moves 6mm will be moving more air than a 12" driver only moving 3mm.

Maybe the analogy has a few chinks in it, but I agree 100% with the thrust of what the guy is saying. . . . . until he starts rambling right after the soup analogy. Just don't sound bad and your gear has done it's job. The remaining 90% of being a good bassist is how and what you play.

Build one of each.

I agree, but I thought he should have stopped at the soup analogy. After that he starts to ramble and loses the impact of the message.

I was in a club in Brussels and they played this non stop for 30 mins. No one left the dance floor.

You need the cash. . . . don't love the bass. . . . it's a pretty easy solution. Make a rule that you will only keep basses you like. Sell it.

I found that the sympathetic vibrations are usually much quieter. But, yes, two handed muting is the best solution to aim for. If a 5er doesn't meet your requirements then, of course, go back to a 4. I'd have given the change over from 6 months to a year so your muscle memory can really settle in. I was particularly bad at hitting the wrong string when I switched!

Nice