chris_b

You've got to go back to basics. It's all about knowing what the written notes are and where they are on the fretboard. You've got to put in the hours. Just try C and one other key until you get it into your head, then add another. It doesn't matter if it takes a month as long as you assimilate it. Write the keys down with their sharps and flats as reminders. There are patterns in all this. If you can suss those playing in different keys becomes easier. You already know the fret board so that's more than half the job done. When you started out you learned to play by taking things slowly. Now you've got to go back to slow and deliberate again. I'm the same with slap, modes and other bass playing stuff. I want to be playing at the speed I can play and not stumbling around as a beginner. Have some lessons. A good teacher can show you more effective ways of achieving the technical side of bass playing.

No, a bit of Skiffle but mostly Rock and Roll was their starting point. They were trying to be Little Richard, Elvis and Carl Perkins.

IMO the wrong reason would be because "you always fancied it." The right reasons would be because you have a need for the extra notes, need the flexibility of playing different positions in different keys and the great feeling of making the room shake when you hit a low D or C. I've seen people buying 5ers who think they'll sound great and when they don't, the penny drops and they realise that it's going to take some time and discomfort and then they loose interest. IMO a 5 string bass is a very flexible instrument. They give you more choices as to how you play the song. Sometimes I don't play the B string at all, but I'll still use the 5er for continuity. I don't want the faff of switching and adjusting and prefer to be on the same instrument no matter which number of strings I need for the song. Also I don't want to carry different basses to gigs. I'm not immune to these "problems" and I've got it wrong in the past. I bought a wonderful sounding Rob Allen fretless 4 string bass. . . . with my heart, not my head. When I realised I couldn't play it as easily as my other basses I lost interest. Instead of sticking with it and overcoming the differences I sold it. I should never have bought that bass in the first place. The bass was great but all the "fault" was mine.

My 4 string P bass went into its case when I bought my first 5er. That was over 20 years ago. It's still there. Have a good reason for buying a 5. Too many seem to to buy a 5er and then look around for something to play on it. Most problems with a 5er are the player not the bass. If you don't make the decision to switch for the right reasons you will never stay. In the beginning most players will feel comfortable on a 4 and uncomfortable on a 5. If they keep switching back and forth they will never make the jump to feeling comfortable on the 5. It's a natural thing to want to keep going back to what you know but by doing that the chances are you'll never get up to speed on the new instrument and will lose interest. IMO those guys shouldn't have bought a 5 in the first place. Also don't fall into the trap of thinking, that song was originally played on a 4 so I'll play it on a 4 as well. You can play any song on a 5. Lastly, there are a lot of 5's that are just not very well made. I had a Basschatter, who had unsuccessfully dabbled with 5's, play my Lull. He just said, "I've been playing the wrong 5 string basses!" Make sure you buy a good one.

Very, very sad news.

I played through Bergantino 112's for about 8 years. Fantastic sound. I sold them for 2 Super Compacts but as we're not mentioning those, the Berg 112's are some of the best cabs I've owned in the last 25 years.

I guess the people previously moving from heavy gear to lightweight gear weren't listening very closely to what they were buying if moving back the other way sounds so much better.

[quote name='Phil Starr' timestamp='1482480798' post='3200861'] Whilst technically true this isn't helpful advice stated so baldly. [b]You can blow a speaker using an amp rated at half the speaker rating, [/b]yes but only if you exceed the excursion limits of the drive unit. Most designers are aware of that and whilst a theoretical possibility it is less likely the lower the amplifier power. [/quote] Thank you Phil.

This was my point a few pages ago. Design your rig so that the amp and cab will work together safely at the volume levels you require and you won't have to listen out for anything other than the great sound your band is making.

Liked it. Will be forwarding to the Funk band for their enjoyment.

I hate it when depping and you ask the key and they tell you the name of the first chord. . . and it's not the key. Time for a train wreck.

[quote name='Ghost_Bass' timestamp='1482403626' post='3200198'] The drained batteries that get removed from my bass go in the Seiko tuner [/quote] +1 I used to run the amp on high volume and the Lakland on low volume. I changed the batteries in the bass every 12 months and they would either go into the tuner, or (when I had the battery powered ones) into my smoke detectors at home, where they would last forever (and yes they were regularly tested). I always carry 2 spare batteries. . . just in case. I've had active basses for the last 25 years and 4 years ago went passive on a P bass. I will always listen to the overall sound (just bought a bass with an active 18v preamp) but after buying 2 great sounding passive basses on the trot I'm not so much of an active fan any more. The passive option on both active basses is like a "get you home" tyre. They'll get you to the end of the number but in comparison they sound terrible.

My experience with batteries running low with 2 basses was a slow decline into ever increasing distortion and swishing noises. Maybe they fell off "the cliff "after that but they were unusable way before that point.

Very tight playing style. Always a favourite player.

[quote name='scrumpymike' timestamp='1482319350' post='3199475'] Just deciding on a new bass and not sure which way to go with the electronics. [/quote] What kind of bass and what kind of sound are you after and how flexible do you need to be? I run my Precision with flats and IMO it sounds best as a passive bass. My 2 pickup basses have round wounds and are are active. 2 of them have 3 band pre amps. I've just been checking out an active J type bass that has a 3 band pre amp with a switchable mid range centre and 4 trim pots. I'm not sure I have a need for that amount of flexibility but in the end it's all about how good the bass sounds.

Every bass is costed down to the last screw so more pickups equals more expense. Do you actually get a better sound with three pickups? Actually you don't need more pickups to get a better sound. A better or active EQ will do that. Plus if enough people show an interest it will be done. Until the interest is in the hundreds it won't get done.

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1482115908' post='3197779'] They're the best blues band to come out of London.IMO [/quote] Fleetwood Mac were just so good but the band that usually gets forgotten when talking about British blues bands is Cream. When they started and for the first 3 or 4 months about 80% of their set was blues that anyone in the Deep South would have recognised. They started to change into the prototype rock blues band pretty quickly but from when they started to just before they recorded the first album they were the best blues band in the UK.

[quote name='karlfer' timestamp='1482309156' post='3199316'] Genuine question. Why are big old speakers more efficient? [/quote] Mine never were!

How is Fender or the shop going to set up a bass? High or low action, lightweight rounds or heavy duty flats? Either way they'll be wrong for someone. I can tell if a bass is one I'd like to play even with a mile high or stupidly low action. Fender have given people too much ammunition over the years but set up is personal and easy to work through.

The Stones are a great rock band. They practically invented the stadium rock genre. Anything they do will sound like them and not their influences. The good bands and players will always do this. A band embarking on a world tour taking in dozens of countries over several years will usually put out an album. After 55 or so years it's unlikely that any band will be writing songs as great as they did in their hey-day, but it's "product" and many people around the world will want to buy so it's cool to make an album for them. Nit picking that they don't write songs like they used to is petty and pointless. The Stones are one of the more successful exports from the UK to the rest of the world. They have helped to change cultures (not many bands have achieved that) and today they still make a lot of people happy. Sadly, it says much about us, as Brits, that so many find it easier to focus on the negative, rather than enjoying the positive. IMO they sound as great as ever. It will be a very sad day when they stop touring.

I don't know why people who have a sound they love get the urge to throw it all away and replace it with gear that it totally unknown to them. A few years ago I saw a great sounding bass player using an LM3 with 2 102HF cabs. I've never been a fan of Markbass cabs but he lent me his back line on the gig and I liked it. . . a lot. If I already played Markbass I would be looking at this as the affordable, sensible and straight forward option. More of what you already love about your sound but better because there are 2 cabs. IMO 2 cabs really do sound better than 1. Having said that I think that Bergantino cabs are fantastic sounding cabs. IMO you can't go wrong with any amp through any of their cabs, especially the 212 cabs. I played these for years and love their sound. They are worth saving up for. OK, so this is way over budget, but I'm now playing Barefaced Super Compacts. If they were stolen, out of everything I'd played in the last 10 years, I'd go out and buy more SC's. Again I think they are worth saving up for. Try and get a 212 out of the BC Classifieds. A BF cab would breath a new lease of life into your current amp and if you postponed the new amp purchase your budget would stretch further?

It was a big box when I'd finished.

I just received a bass from abroad via UPS and everything was fine. I had everything crossed. . . must have worked! Interparcel refused the bass sized parcel I was trying to send because it was too big!

[quote name='Autobot22' timestamp='1482150178' post='3197987'] I'm selling a bass and may need to ship it to the buyer. I have no idea how to go about this (ie where to get a cardboard guitar box, packing materials etc) and how to ensure it gets to the buyer in one piece, how much to pay, etc etc. Any advice much appreciated. [/quote] Slacken off the strings about half a turn. Put in a bass case or gig bag. Pack any empty space around the bass so it can't move about inside the case. Put the case or bag into a cardboard box, If you can't get one from a guitar shop then you can get great cardboard boxes from bike shops. Pack the spaces so it can't move. Tape it up, a lot. You're done. Some couriers have size limits which exclude basses and many won't insure musical instruments.

When we had the cab and the amp shoot outs at the SE bass bash, same amp for each cab and all amps set at noon, with one player demoing the lot they all sounded more similar than different. There were amps and cabs that I wouldn't have looked at twice (going on reviews of others) that sounded pretty good to my ears. In a band setting the differences would have been even less noticeable. OK, everyone will EQ differently and have different sounding fingers, but the most important difference between all of us is [i]what[/i] we play and [i]how[/i] we play it. I've been told I make all of my gear sound like me. Even though I think each bass is different, to the others they're not. To anyone looking at a oil painting, it doesn't matter what paint or brushes the artist used.