chris_b

I'm happy that you've found a good sound with this gear. Finding a room with decent gear certainly makes a change from the old, cheap and nasty rubbish in some of the rooms I've rehearsed in over the years. In one West End studio we blew up 4 Peavey bass cabs in an afternoon. So far I haven't played a rehearsal room that has had better gear than I've owned, then again, the sound in a rehearsal room doesn't bother me. All I'm there to do is to knock songs and arrangements into shape with the rest of the band.

Hey, Scott. . . . . please do a piece on Reggie McBride, Willie Weeks, Freddy Washington and Nathan East.

Usually this is a one-way upgrade. It's all about resonance and the ability of the bridge to transfer frequencies to the body, and then back again. BBOT bridges do the job but high mass bridges usually do a better job because they transfer more frequencies, more effeciently. Which is what you need for a better sound. Of course, this depends whether you need better or can recognise it when you've got it! If you are upgrading Hipshot bridges a very good and the ones used on many boutique basses.

IMO we should always be trying to learn and improve. If I can just learn 1 small thing from another player then the effort will have been worthwhile. I've seen a couple of SD suggestions on his Youtube videos that got me thinking and helped my bass playing along. IMO he is providing a great resource for bass players. Nothing is perfect so ignore the annoying stuff, it's not important. Do yourself a favour, filter out the good stuff and focus on that! Edit to make sense!

Except. . . . GP's sound is going through FOH, DI'ed into a rather sophisticated desk, manned by good people and probably post processed at Dave Gilmore's studio down on the Thames at Hampton!!

So 8 ohms might generate less heat but if an amp is designed to give its maximum power at 4 ohms then I would expect 4 ohms to be easily doable. If the heat generated by 4 ohms is with in the design spec then why should there be a problem with running an amp within its stated range?

I like my 310 stack. It's a 210 + 110 and runs to 700 watts. 2 cabs, 3 rigs, very flexible.

If a lesson with Gary Willis is £70 then $147 for 10 lessons is a bargain. Personally I don't see what you can learn from Gary Willis that can't be learnt from a dozen other bassists.

I expect Gary Willis charges SBL a lot for his services.

I know Jamerson was the star at Motown but the fantastic playing that Bob Babbitt brought to his sessions just makes me smile. IMO his tone on Gladys Knight's record Midnight Train To Georgia is one of the best bass sounds on record. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdfZnWsps34 These Stevie Wonder recordings just swing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADpoSeWAK8Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvRwR-hZDVY

At the time there were a lot of guys like RG around thrashing the blues. I saw RG at the Rainbow once. Sorry to all who love this band, but they weren't for me.

I play on the top of the strings and have no idea what high or low tension means in this context. I used GHS flats for about 4 years and they were very good. I only took them off when a set of TI flats came up at a great price. For me there was no difference in feel between TI and GHS strings.

IMO GHS Precision flatwound strings would be a good place to start looking.

This is right. 99% of the music recorded in the last 60 years will contain influences from a very select few writers including Lennon and McCartney. I think it was Lamont Dozier who said that when he went home in the evening he didn't listen to Motown, he listened to the Beatles, and they inspired him to be a better song writer. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys said he was in a "creativity battle" with the Beatles, which he though he had won with Pet Sounds, but admitted he'd lost when he heard Sgt Pepper. Simon and Garfunkel though their writing and records were in direct competition with the Beatles. It was a "creativity" battle and the top songwriters of the day were listening to each other and being driven to be better. At that time the only guy who was influencing everyone and probably wasn't being influenced himself, was Bob Dylan. A switch flipped around 1966 which energised rhythm sections to be more independently creative. McCartney and Ringo were at the forefront of that. If your preference is playing music created in the West, ie Europe and US, your playing has a direct line of influence going back to a few players in the mid 60's.

This. . . . You've just got to let go of the past.

IME the MU doesn't have much interest in semi pro pub gigs. Don't be coy. . . name and shame. Go into the details, leave comments on their Facebook page and review sites. Start a campaign that they can't ignore.

That tone? Nothing. A different, great bass tone. . . . lots of stuff. With the gear you list, if you have a bad back your only solution is to hire roadies. Other than that there are no PRO's for keeping heavy gear. My solution to a permanent lower back injury (because I delayed selling very heavy bass gear, that sounded too good to sell) has been to move to 6lb amps, several 23lb cabs and an 8 1/2 lb bass. It doesn't matter what your current gear sounds like. Find good sounding gear that you can carry and learn to love that sound.

I've bought 2 basses on Ebay. First was a standard win-the-bid type sale and on the second the buyer suggested I try it out and sent me his address. I gave him the cash so I guess that's what Ebay doesn't like. Making us complete the sale, then reversing it if something isn't right, gives us all of the hassle and them none!! All that cash is sitting in their bank account gathering interest! I don't use Ebay any more.

I'm always looking around to see where I can improve my sound. My AG700, TH500 and Thunderfunk are excellent amps but both the Forte HP and Mesa WD800 do look very interesting. I'm not really interested in the technical specs. A list of the features and enough positive owners reviews will be enough for me to buy one. My experience with it will be what makes me keep it. Anyway, my current thinking on gear is, what I own is good enough. If I become a better player, then maybe I could justify another upgrade.

They were, and one was a 15" cab and the other was a 12" cab. So different sized drivers will work together if they are designed to.

I have a lot of live albums. I guys I listen to were all great in the studio but as soon as the gig started there was another level of adrenaline which always made for a great recording.

I think there are companies that I wouldn't trust (the ones with marketing departments) and companies that I would trust. I've watched Alex from the early BC days, before he made the Big One, and to my knowledge he hasn't made an "inflated" claim, ever!! In the early days BF was a magnet for, "How can this be true" and "I don't believe it" comments. We don't see many of those anymore!

You don't have to believe my experience, although you have referred to it elsewhere, but if you have done your homework, ie read the information on the Barefaced website, you'll know that Alex recommends that the SC and SM compliment each other when used together. As usual he is correct.

+1 All headphones will give a better reproduction of music than any internal computer speakers can. Just buy the first ones you see. I'm using some Sony headphones (down at the cheaper end of the market) and they give a good coverage of all frequencies, including 5 string bass lines and bass drums.

This thread has morphed into a pretty pointless discussion. All these comments are based on very little information and a lot of pie-in-the-sky guesswork. Why aren't BMW's the same price as Fords? They're not. If you want one you'll have to pay the price that BMW have set. If you don't want to. . . then you're not in the demographic, so move on and buy something in your price range.