thodrik

Loved them in my youth. Liked most of their output up to By The Way which I really tried to like but never did and still don't. Finally saw them live in 2007 (I think) and it was one of the most dull, boring, phoned in gigs I had ever seen. I think it was towards the end of the Stadium Arcadium tour and I think the band had mentally checked out. Not really listened to them since, not out of anger/disappointment of the gig, but just the fact that I generally listen to heavier, more aggressive music and/or singer/songwriter acoustic stuff these days.

For rock and metal, a used Peavey 6505 combo is actually pretty good. Lots of gain, proper all valve and generally available for about £350 used. It isn't however very versatile and the clean/crunch channel is okay at best. The drive/lead channel is utterly brilliant though. I used to have one but sold it to fund a Mesa Rectoverb 50 combo, which in itself is a great amp if you can find one for a decent price (£600-£700). Marshall combo JCM 2000/JVM combo will also do a great job and can be purchased used at decent sub £500 prices, though you will need a boost pedal to get really high gain sounds. Laney Ironheart combos cover rock/metal though I am less familiar with them. The Lionheart amps though are great. There is an Orange TH30 1x12 combo. I tried one and liked it but I didn't like the clean channel (too clean) and I didn't like the 'shape' EQ on the dirty channel (I prefer separate 3 band EQs). There is Blackstar too but I preferred the Peavey to the HT Stage series when I looking at amps 10 years ago.

As an owner of BB750 I concur that it is an absolute beast.

From my view, I think that the Luna 'Pro' paid model gets you a bunch of extra plugins, including an API 'virtual console' plugin, which enables you to use the same preamp on every track, like an old school mixing console. I think that is very much where Universal Audio aim in terms of the market for their plugins, i.e. people who are familiar with vintage gear and are willing to pay for (admittedly excellent) plugins which emulate vintage gear like Neve/SSL preamps, Fairchild limiters, 1176 compressors and the like.. With the move to 'native' plugins, Universal Audio are moving away from their Apollo DSP interfaces. From my experience non-Universal Audio plugins work fine within Luna. With that said, my main channel strip is a Softube British Class A channel strip that I bought in a bundle for about £45 which I prefer to most of the Universal Audio plugins. In terms of MIDI and virtual instruments it really is quite far behind some of the competition, so if you predominantly use MIDI I think there are better options. For basic audio editing and tracking and mixing recorded instruments it is really good and intuitive and I actually prefer it to Logic. If I was using MIDI though I would be using Logic on Mac or something like Studio One on PC (which I was using previously).

I really enjoy using Luna on my Macbook pro. The layout is very familiar to me in that is laid out like an old school mixing console when you go to the mixer window. Very limited virtual instruments compared to Logic though, however for tracking live drums/bands etc it is really good. However, to really get the full use out of Luna you need to buy a UAD Apollo and a bunch of expensive plugins so I can't really consider it 'good value' compared to something like Reaper.

There has! Also, EBS Fafner and Mesa Walkabout. Or anything that works and doesn't go on fire.

I just picked up the Softubes Essentials Collection for about £43 or so ($49).It includes their British Class A (Neve) channel strip, and the Softube 1176 compressor and tape emulation. The deal is running on the Softube website until 16 May or so Given that I have a Universal Audio Interface with a couple of Neve Preamps (not full channel strips) and about 3-4 UAD 1176 compressor plug-ins, I thought initially that the Softube offering was superfluous. However after trialling them I frankly prefer the Softube plugins to the Unison Neve 1073 plugin and 1176 plugins on my UAD Apollo. I have not explored however the cumulative effect on my laptop’s CPU of running about 10-12 tracks of the same channel strip when tracking drums.

The guy in Mudvayne generally plays a five string Warwick. Some of the basslines are technically exceptional however you have to listen to Mudvayne songs in order to hear them. The current bassist in Baroness uses a five string, though I'm not sure I would call them 'metal' at this point as much as I like them.

I love me some Skynyrd. I went off them for a while in about 2008-2015 when I watched UFC as nearly every other fighter seemed to enter the Octagon to Simple Man (I kinda stopped watching the sport so assume that many still do this) I do like really like Tuesday's Gone as well, even the Metallica version.

Add a Trace Elliot Bright Box and you have a ‘portable full-range gigging solution’. i have read too many old Trace Elliot manuals…

Of course the opposite is when I am told that there is 'world class' backline which ends up being a mid 1990s Laney Richter 50 watt 1x12 combo!

I played a punch of gigs at Drummonds from 2008-2011. We generally parked at the rear of the building located off Denburn Road. At my first time playing I then had lug my Trace Elliot 1x15 combo up three flights of stairs only to find that the house bass amp was a...4x10 Trace Elliot combo with the same amp! I think that we had to shift the van after loading. It was fine but this was 2008 so that traffic issues wouldn't have been as bad as they are now.

During my time in Glasgow, I once had an initial audition with the guitarist who was so high that he brought an old Boss 8 track recorder as his 'pedal board' and proceeded to try and run the 8 track recorder through a Marshall AVT head and cab so he could access the onboard effects on the recorder. He assured us that he knew what he was doing and that these effects were 'the bees knees man'. He gave up after 20 minutes then just plugged in his guitar in to the amp only to notice that it only had four strings, which was unfortunate as 'those two strings were the ones I really needed.' Another session involved a guitarist who hailed from Yemen, who was actually technically pretty competent. However we really couldn't play in a band with him out of the awkwardness of him insisting to check that none of the other band members were Jewish before we started playing, although in his defence he did also state 'I have no issues with Protestants or Catholics, so I am still more tolerant than many Glaswegians', which admittedly did get a laugh. I mean, when you try to start a stoner rock band, it comes with the territory that sometimes people will turn up entirely stoned or slightly unhinged. It is only now, about 15 years later that I realise just how weird some of those sessions were.

I have had a Vigier Excess for twenty years. I always knew it was a great bass, but coming from a passive Fender Precision (which I have owned for 25 years), I struggled with just how 'active' and powerful the pickups were on the Vigier as they generally overpowered the inputs of most amps I had. I also wasn't convinced that the action wasn't as nice as it should be for a bass of that price (it was about £1,200 back in 2004...). I used it on and off for gigs and tours etc but it was replaced as my main gigging bass in 2009 when I got my first Sadowsky Metro and didn't really get used after that. I then took it to a tech in 2015 who noticed that the neck was slightly misaligned. The tech thought that the neck was either not put on correctly in the factory, had been taken off and then not put back on properly or had maybe received a knock in transit. Anyway the tech sorted it out and it played like an entirely different bass. I then 'discovered' in Covid lockdown that most of the best tones involved cutting rather than boosting the active EQs in order to tame the pickups. Now instead of starting with the EQ in the 'centre' (no cut/boost) position, I treat the EQ as a boost only EQ from 'fully cut'. It makes the bass so much more useable. I actually hate myself for not noticing this trick about 15 years earlier! It became my main bass again in 2022...

I have had NYXLs on my Sadowsky NYC 5 string for about 8 months. Owing to home renovations/studio construction I haven't really been playing as much, but the strings have actually held up pretty well. I think that I will stick with Elixirs however as they last as long as 18 months with semi-regular playing.

I have a five string NYC and a four string Metro (Japan). Both are standard sixties style JJ basses, so not the modern designs which I think are probably better suited to more expansive playing styles. In terms of upper fret access, outside of the 24 fret models I would say that the upper fret access is no better and no worse than the equivalent Fender. Essentially, it is fine 90% of the time. The string spacing on the Sadowsky five strings are generally 19mm so there is loads of space for slapping. The neck on my five string (and all other Metro five strings I have tried) is pretty wide at the nut. As much as I love the bass for tone and general playability, it is a fairly substantial neck to navigate if you are playing more progressive legato stuff. It is still absolutely possible, but it requires a bit of effort and I find left hand 'fretboard gymnastics' easier to play on the four string, or my five string Vigier Arpege which has a much narrower neck and slightly narrower string spacing. Though I do play with fairly high tension strings with a 'medium' action so I'm not really going for a super low action/play with a really light approach to begin with. In terms of space to use slap and double thumb techniques etc, I much prefer the Sadowsky to the Vigier owing to extra string spacing near the pickups and bridge. In terms of comparing the Sadowsky 4 to 5, I can switch from four to five very easily owing to the string spacing being essentially the same.

In terms of prices the absolute top of the line Mesa bass head is now just under £1600. The M-Pulse lines were considerably more expensive than the current Mesa amps about 10-15 years ago. In terms of D-350 being expensive at £800, in about 2009 the 300 watt Walkabout was about £1300 for the head and about £1600 for the 1x15combo. The M3 Carbine 300 watt amps from a decade ago were also more expensive than the D-350. Essentially Mesa bass amps are more affordable than they used to be. Granted the designs are entirely different and class D amps are generally more cost effective to make (and ship) than the older amps. However I don’t really have an issue with the pricing mainly because this is not a new development. Mesa have always been more expensive to buy in the UK. This isn’t a new development or some master plan by Gibson. The products really are high quality though and are generally built to last. I bought a new Walkabout 1x15 combo in 2009 and it still works perfectly after hundreds of gigs and sessions.

Saw them live in 2006 in the then Carling Academy in Glasgow. It was in the middle of the FIFA World Cup and Justin was the English celebrity columnist on the FIFA website. Eva Longoria was the Mexican correspondent and Gorbachev was the Russian correspondent. It was a wild time. Maynard did the whole gig in an orange cowboy hat. No support, no massive video screen, just a gig with some basic lighting. I loved it. Danny Carrey missed a couple of beats in a two hour set and a couple of Glaswegian drummers in the crowd yelled ‘F**k me he is actually human!’ Good gig.

I have seen 'Excellent' condition OR120s from the 1970s go for £1700-£2000, with more worn ones going for slightly less than that and some 'aspirational' Ebay/Reverb asking prices upwards of £2,000 which I think are over the odds unless it is in amazing condition. Reissues from the 1990s go for less. Not tried one myself, but it will be heavy, loud and will win you lots of respect with vintage gear fans/nerds at any venue you play.

Warwick Thumb 6. I know it would be heavy. I know it would be unbalanced. I know I know I don't need six strings. I know I probably wouldn't get on with the neck. Still want.

I've had a original Japanese Metro since 2009 and an NYC 5 since 2016. Great basses. If you like the preamp and provided that the previous QC issues have been sorted out, then the SMX bass should offer great value for money. Andy Irvine (former Warwick demonstrator) has bought/acquired loads of SMX basses which he has upgraded and modded and now uses as his main basses. There is a cool Facebook group for that called 'Sadowsky Metro Bass Owners' where he regularly posts about upgrades he has done.

Good instruments, definitely worth trying a Metro or NYC model if you are in the market for a modern active J type bass. I own an NYC and Metro (Japan), both from about 2009. The NYC is chambered, has five strings and has prettier woods. However both are fairly identical in terms of quality of fit and finish. I have not tried a made in Germany (by Warwick) or made in China Metro Express and I am unlikely to do so given I already own two Sadowskys. The made in Germany Warwicks really should be exceptional instruments. I won’t be selling mine, though equally I am not sure I would be willing to pay the current prices for the Masterbuilt instruments while Roger Sadowsky is still building instruments.

D’addario have a 120-50 set (50-67-90-120) which I have used for D standard/drop C. Personally I prefer them to any of the drop tuning sets I have tried from DR or ‘heavy core’ strings I tried from Newtone. 50-110 would probably be fine though, I just prefer a fairly high tension/tight low string.