chris_b

Best sounding bass? Reggie McBride with Keb Mo. Anything Nathan East has recorded. Anything Duck Dunn recorded.

More false news. Everyone knows Reggae was started down the road from here, just off the Portsmouth Road, near the Bentall Centre.

Several reasons why you will remain disappointed. There is no such thing as "proper", just preferences. Amp manufacturers will only make what they can sell. D class plainly outsells SS and valve so that is what they will make. You won't find valves in PA systems or recording studios, so while some remember the good old days, the majority of the bass world is moving on. All early adopters have to make compromises, but the development in D class design means that these are the amp of choice for most players these days. Both SS and D class are not trying to be anything other than what they are. I remember when you had to take your pick with valve amps. Some were good but many were terrible. I don't go glassy eyed for valves, I listen to the amp. There are good and bad in all categories. You don't have to be disappointed. Valve and SS amps are still being made. Buy one of those and be happy.

Mesa are a class act. They do not cut corners or make exaggerated claims for their gear, so if they say they have produced the next generation Walkabout I'd expect them to have come up with a great sounding amp.

I've been on stages where that would have fallen straight through!

This is pointless nonsense. There are as many styles of Reggae as there are people playing it. Music is fixed when it is recorded. When it is played live it changes. Musical forms, styles and genres don't stop progressing and evolving just because a bunch of politicians want to make a statement.

Their 42lb 210 beats the 100lb Road Ready 210 EV I used 20 years ago!!

We were given our own table when we played at a charity function at the RAC Club down in Epsom. We got the same 5 star food as the paying guests. Forget kebabs I want a Michelin star chief on all our gigs now.

. . . . Michael Manson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfL5n7RPm9Q

I saw a Stanley Clark gig at Hammersmith Odeon with a regular bassist in his band. The 2 bass player band that stands out for me is Dumpaphunk. Tony Hall and Nick Daniels, both ex-Neville Brothers bassists. They have 3 basses on stage when Ivan Neville picks one up.

I played with a terrible Working Men's Club band in the 70's. They really were the lowest of the low. Our best number was Spanish Eyes! I'm shuddering even recalling this! I got paid a lot and the Guinness was very cheap. I was happy that no one I knew would see me. . . until we did a cricket club and an old school friend, who I hadn't seen for years, came over while I was setting up and said Hi. I've not seen him since but the whole night was a nightmare of embarrassment and shame!!!

Most switching problems come from players not being familiar enough with the note positions. Many of us, me included, predominantly use patterns when we play. If we use the E string as a base point, putting the B string in confuses a lot of people. Some blame the instrument or make silly comments like, "Jaco only needed 4" and some work though it. If we know the notes rather than just the shapes we might get through the 5 sting learning process with more ease. The "starting on the wrong string" thing caught me out a lot in the beginning. My solution was to switch to 5's exclusively.

Nice. Not my thing at all, but I'm always appreciative of talented players and love listening to good playing, for its own sake.

Hey Blue, I understand your pain. I also didn't want anyone to see me when I played one of those basses!

I've seen a chart for this song and they indicate 1-2-2 for the fingering. That gets over the octave jump, but even that shouldn't be a problem with enough practice.

In the late 80's, when he was with Terence Trent D'Arby, I stood for an hour pretending to look at basses and listening to Cass Lewis trying out TE gear. What a great player.

My tutor plays this with 2 fingers. So does Paul Turner, on the live videos. Play it any way you can make it work for you, but don't start with the intention to cut corners. The pro's, the guys you are trying to emulate, will start slowly and build up. And it's not just about one riff. Once you have trained yourself to play difficult passages at these speeds, and with proper fingering, you'll discover an extra benefit which you weren't expecting. . . . being able to play fast improves how you play all the slower stuff. Wikipedia has Derrick McIntyre playing bass on this. He's a new name to me. With "additional bass" by Randy Hope-Taylor. I guess they dropped him in on some overdubs?

I was walking/staggering home after a gig and the case opened. My P bass fell out and bounced down the road. I just picked it up and put it back in the case. Next day I saw some very large gouges out of the top of the body. It was a shame but what is done is done. The impacts became part of the life of that bass. I did buy another case.

I wouldn't start screwing anything into my cabs. When I wanted to stack my Bergs on their sides I just bought some rubber feet and placed them in between the cabs. Kept them in my accessories bag. I got mine from Maplins but Blue Aran do them too.

When you start hearing things you don't like about your gear, it's time to move on. Time to upgrade and buy one you like the sound of right out of the box.

The guy giving me lessons has shown me different ways to play stuff I've been playing for years. . . and opened my eyes. On some of it I've gone home worked at the lines and come up with "better" and more comfortable ways of playing his lines, ie playing on different parts of the fretboard, starting on a different string, etc. He is happy that I have adapted his method and made it my own.

This isn't classical music. There is no such thing as cheating. All the top players will have good technique, but they all have their own style and method of playing as well. If it sounds good then do it. If you can make something easier to play, and get the same results, then work on that. Do everything in stages.

As long as you are following "orders"? Nothing. Stuff may not be what it seems, but context is everything. As long as you sound good or look the part and the guy who is paying you is happy then it is all good. I've never been replaced by a session player on a gig or record, but I've been in bands who have initially done that with a drummer and brass section. The guys were cool. They got paid, got the glory and did the rest of the work once they were up to speed. I have mimed to tracks on TV and on a live show, where we only did 2 numbers, because they didn't have the facilities for a live sound or the engineers to mix what we were playing. I'd rather be miming to a well played record than sounding terrible at the hands of a guy who doesn't know about how the band should sound. Stuff happens. Learn from the bad, remember the good and variety is always fun.

Practice is the only thing that will get your ability and technique up to speed. Use a metronome and set it to a count where you can just about play that line. It'll get very boring, but you keep playing it until you feel comfortable and it is easy to play. Then you speed up the Metronome a little. Go around that loop until you can play along comfortably with the record.

OK. Seems like you've covered all my suggestions. I don't know what to suggest next. For me the ER15's then the PRO17's filtered to the right level across all the bands I play in, from quieter to louder. Our sound must be very different. I have never "lost" the bass wearing my plugs.