thodrik

I thought that he was pretty good at voicing the part of Dougal in the The Magic Roundabout film.

I heard that Robbie WIlliams wrote Rudebox while playing bass...

I love it, but I love the Nickeback one even more.

All Right Now by Free, played in full, including counting out the bars in the verses out loud when there is no bass but then stopping before the bass solo on the basis that ‘I have played enough of that one.’ No One Knows by Queens of the Stone Age. Mostly because playing it accurately involves tuning the bass to C standard. Doing that, playing the riff and then saying ‘nah mate, this one ain’t for me’ would surely result in lots of annoyance.

I did say ‘for home practice and recording’. When I tried to use my old SMX for home practice it sent tremors through the whole tenement I was living in at the time!

The Little Stubbys are great amps! You can’t go wrong there. I would have that over a second hand Trace Elliot for home practice and recording.

I was meaning the later series of Trace Elliot amps that were released around 2006 once Peavey bought them from Gibson. You can find them second hand. However an old Peavey, SWR or Gallien Krueger amp might be more what you are looking for.

An Ashdown ABM has some similarities to a classic Trace but is capable of a good amount of dirt. However it is not a Trace The Peavey era 12 band series had a drive circuit that could get very dirty indeed. Is it a classic Trace Elliot amp? No, but they are nice amps. Myself, my main amp for the last ten years has actually been a Mesa Walkabout. It isn’t all valve but it sounds like it.

I had a GP7 SM300 combo for about 15 years. Never let me down. I also had a GP12 SMX 300 for about 6 years. It was a more flexible amp than the GP7 SM300, just for the extra EQ features alone. The dual compression was nice but I didn’t really use it as I felt it sucked out the low frequencies a bit. The valve feature on SMX added a tiny bit of warmth but there was no real drive or grit to speak of so I needed a pedal for that. Great amp though and was my main backup amp when I was touring. I got a V6 in 2013 though which I preferred to both the other Trace amps so the other Trace amps were sold. Nothing wrong with the amps but I had barely used them for years. The V6 does not deliver any of the classic hi-fi Trace Elliot clean tone and the EQ features are very limited but it is a fantastic amp for a deep valve warmth. So it is probably my favourite Trace amp as a result.

I have an NYC 5 which is chambered. It is very very light (about 8lbs) but perfectly balanced. I don’t think that the chambering on the 5 results in an inherently more scooped tone vs non-chambered. I say that as I also have a Metro 4 string and the basic tone of the instruments are very similar. The NYC just looks a lot more ‘bling’ in the flesh and as a result feels a bit more special in hand. Saying that the Metro has been my workhorse for ten years or so covering genres from jazz, indie rock and stoner/doom and has never let me down.

I love that book. So many amazing basses in those pages.

2008 Les Paul Standard Faded. Bought in 2016 after I preferred it to any of the current Traditional/Classic/Standard line. The Standard Faded line is essentially a Les Paul Standard in a satin finish which was seen as a cost saving measure. Costs were also saved in the fact that no effort was made in terms of applying the finish. I think that my finish is ‘tobacco burst’ but I think of it more as ‘half arsed burst’. The Standard Faded line are a bit sought after in that some folk (i.e Larry Corsa) think that the satin finish has more resonance than the usual gloss finish. It may or not be nonsense but even so I really like the satin finish on the neck and body. I also like the ‘is it pretty or is it pretty ugly?’ finish. It also sounds great and is pretty light thanks to the weight relief (about 8.5 lbs). I used to have a Fender American Deluxe Toronado but sold it to buy the Mesa Rectoverb last year.

I follow them on Facebook and I think that their output on there is pretty good and varied. They do frequently do historical posts but they also post up and coming artists, as well as their long term endorsers. I mean, their packaging on their strings leans on their history rather than on anything current, but I prefer that rather than a bunch of pseudo-scientific marketing bollocks with regard to the technical specifications of their strings. In any event I still tend to use D’addarios...

Welcome to the forum! I have a 1974 Gibson EB3, the tone knobs are essentially worthless and the volume pots effectively act as on/off switches. I haven’t tried too many other EB3s to comment on whether the circuits on the older or newer models have the same issue, but it sounds like they do. In my opinion you can’t really blend the volumes of the pick ups on an EB3 like you can with a Fender Jazz bass. The front pick up tends to dominate the mix when both pick ups are on. On each pick up selection point you basically get ‘that’ initial sound with little opportunity for fine tuning outside of additional EQ. You can try raising the height of the pick ups so that the ‘both pick ups on’ setting are more balanced, but this might negatively impact the sound and balance of the other pick up settings. I’m still trying to fine tune my EB3 to find the optimum set up for the pickups, bridge, action and intonation. I have owned the bass since 2001 and the best thing that I have done is replace the original bridge with a Babicz bridge which is a massive improvement on the old Gibson 3 point bridge which continually drove me mad over a fifteen year period. I have devalued the bass but the playability and sound has improved massively.

They made a 2x18?! I feel that I need one of them.

It looks cool and sounds pretty good but there are lighter, more powerful and more flexible amps out there. However it looks cool.

Been 'stuck' at 6 since 2016. Two Vigiers, two Sadowskys, s9 era (so anytime from late 1978 to 1980) Fender Precision and 1974 Gibson EB3. I feel that I 'need' a six string and I am torn between a Spector or a Warwick Thumb, with a ACG Recurve being an outside bet. Not buying for the foreseeable though between pandemics, babies, mortgages and cars though. In terms of lack of use, the EB3 should really go, but I am awaiting the exact moment in time that some new age hipster starts using them causing the value of my bass to skyrocket before I sell.

I have a chambered bodied NYC 5 with true single coils and solid body Metro with humcancelling pickups. Other than that they are ash body maple neck basses. The NYC to my ears is less ‘in your face’ and slightly more vintage voiced than the Metro. How much of that is the solid body and how much is the different pickups is up for debate. Both have good to great levels of sustain but not as much as graphite neck or neck through basses (the Vigiers I have out-sustain them). The main difference is the extra string and that the NYC is silly levels of lightweight and has a bit more of a ‘wow’ factor in appearance. The Metro certainly doesn’t sound inferior, just a little bit different. The Metro also has slightly chunkier frets, as my NYC has vintage type lower profile frets. Quality of the fretwork on the Metro is on par with the NYC though.

It’s the worst time too. Buy one of the last line of Japanese Metros, wait for the first line of Warwick made Metros or make the plunge for an NYC while Roger Sadowsky is still actively making instruments? Choices, choices, choices.

Okay, I'll bite. I think it looks cool apart from the pickup covers. The tuning machines don't bother me in the slightest. The look of the bass though makes me think that I would need to water it a couple of times a week to help it grow.

Absolutely.

As a Sadowsky owner already this partnership has had the effect of making me check out Warwick basses. Now I am semi-seriously thinking that owning a 6 string GPS Warwick Thumb in Nirvana Black would be the perfect way to ease myself into 6 string bass territory...

Me too.I think that the 802 looks really impressive. It is all about function, flexibility and ease of use. I always thought that the old TD 650 just looked a bit like a really high end mids 1990s Hi-Fi amplifier. I think that the 802 is pretty similar in this respect. I did love the 'rock' look of the Fafner mk I with the chicken head knobs which I ended up buying, but then the Fafner II didn't do anything for me in terms of looks.

When I joined BC I was a 23 year old bass player for an alt-rock band signed to a small label with worldwide distribution. We were just about ready to record album number 2. Progress in writing and recording the album was very slow. So slow that I joked to the drummer that I could qualify as a lawyer in less time than it took us to finish the album. I am now a 33 year old solicitor.

Yeah, they did (and might still do) 2x10 and 1x15 combos, much like TE did. Basic designs have not really changed. The original run of amps I think were 'only' 300 watts. Later amps were 500 watts. Being used I would be more concerned with the condition of the actual amp in question rather than the model.