thodrik

Clutch were a disappointing the last time I saw them in 2015. I thought it was maybe the venue (the Academy in Glasgow) but the support band Planet of Zeus sounded bloody great. When I first saw them in about 2004 the bassist was using a Gibson EB3 through an Ampeg rig and it sounded great.

Rickenbackers are used by many in the classic rock, hard rock, stoner rock and doom fraternity, particularly bands inspired by classic rock. So have a listen to anything by Sleep, Kyuss, Graveyard, etc you get an idea of what they are used for, though in actual fact when you listen to them you are more likely listening to a 4001, but the 4003 will get you into that kind of territory. Of course you don't need them to play any type of music, but I have always thought that they have a very distinct sound. I like them and would buy one, but probably won't. First Tool album (Undertow) is a Rickenbacker as well.

I own a Metro and an NYC. Metro is four string and NYC is five. I don’t feel that the Metro is an inferior bass, it just lacks the bells and whistles of the fancy quilted top, Birdseye maple figuring on the neck and the body chambering that the NYC does which make the NYC basses look really special. In terms of fit and finish the Metros are great, they just don’t look like a special ‘dream bass’ because of the generally plain finish. I would never sell mine though. Lots of top end super jazzes about though and plenty of them are not made in the USA.

Non bass related: Gibson Les Paul: boughta second hand 2008 Standard Faded last year and my guitar playing has come on leaps and bounds in that time. Previously I had a Fender Toronado, nice guitar but next to the Les Paul it seems like a toy. Granted there is the usual Les Paul design flaws and tuning issues resulting from that and the fact the company has been run into the ground under its current leadership. However the sound is great. Bass related: the Mesa 6x10 cab I bought this year, or really any quality 4x10/6x10 cab: I had a full Peavey era Trace Elliot stack for 8 years as my 'big rig'. The Mesa is in a different class, in terms of sound, build quality and (unfortunately) weight.

I dunno, I prefer just playing the original album and just hitting stop after Lateralus, unless I'm really feeling in the mood to listen to the rest. With the alternate track listing I would just be skipping through lots of tracks, after Lateralus I would skip to The Grudge, then to The Patient. Faaip de Oiad, Triad, Eon Blue Apocalypse, Reflection and Disposition are all skip-worthy for me, no matter where they sit in the track listing. I do like Tool, but have never been into the whole 'hidden meanings', Fibonacci sequences, rewording lyrics to find hidden messages etc. The band have a wicked sense of humour (being friends with Bill Hicks probably helped) and might be planting those ideas purely to see if people will waste their time and look for something that isn't actually there.

ABM every time for me. The MAG stuff is fine but the ABM amps are generally a cut off, the valve drive feature is a cool feature. For me the best sound is achieved by not using the EQ pre-sets as the five band EQ is more than enough for tone shaping.

Some seriously large and impressive collections here. I'm currently at 6 bass guitars and one double bass. Would love a Musicman and a Rickenbacker as well, maybe a Spector, definitely a Mike Lull, perhaps a Dingwall too for variety...

The Vigiers never move. The Sadowskys need an adjustment now and then, which is easy given the truss rod wheel. The Fender Precision rarely needs set up, once a year at the most. The Gibson EB3 is impossible to set up at the best of times, so heat and humidity rarely make any noticeable difference to how badly it is set up.

I have probably done more gigs with a Behringer external passive DI on pre EQ setting than I have with the inbuilt Di on my head . My bass generally has an inbuilt EQ and I generally have some kind of light overdrive from a pedal, so a pre EQ DI never really a pre EQ DI. If I have a choice I would prefer a mic on my cab and/or a DI from the head. I don't expect it and frankly I rarely even tell the sound engineer my preference, so if the sound engineer has the time or is willing go to that level of effort it is really appreciated. I usually just go with what the sound engineer prefers, even if the guidance is 'PA is crap for anything other than vocals, just be loud'.

Lance Lopez and Anders Osborne are two that come to mind to me. Actually for new ‘old’ blues, Sweet Tea by Buddy Guy is pretty damn good. Robert Randolph and the Family Band hit on funk and gospel as much as blues, but Robert Randolph is an awesome slide guitarist.

I don't think that there is much brand snobbery when it comes to their higher end stuff. The Lionheart range and the new Black Country Customs line are very highly regarded. The AOR and Klipp series were/are very cool as well. I just don't think the Nexus line have really had much impact on the market compared to their guitar stuff. If there was a bass equivalent of the Lionheart series (say a 100 watt valve head) that would interest me more.

I would love to try one, but the angle of the frets past the 12th fret concerned me with respect of chords played high up the neck. In terms of quality and general fit and finish, they generally look stunning.

Sounds awesome, I would definitely try one. The lack of headroom on the Walkabout is actually one of the things I love about the amp. I will admit though it isn't the most articulate of amps in terms of mids, more of a 'old school thump' kind of sound.

Just my opinion, but the Mesa Walkabout behaves in a very similar manner to an all valve amp to the point that I think that my Walkabout sounds more like a traditional all valve amp than my Trace Elliot V6 which is an all valve amp. Not saying you won't find something that you prefer, but I would definitely not sell the Walkabout too hastily. The V6 is allegedly 400 watts though, so to get 'traditional valve amp break up' I have to run it at completely unusable volume levels. If you are going to go the all valve route, 100 watts would be plenty. In terms of traditional mainstream companies, Fender, Ashdown and Ampeg do 100 watt tube amps. There is smaller Mesa valve amp as detailed above, but the cost will be astronomical. They will all deliver varying levels of heft.

I'm Scottish and even I think the Three Lions is a great football song. My choice for the 'least optimistic and most realistic' football song ever: Del Amitri: Don't Come Home Too Soon. Its 1998, Scotland have qualified for the World Cup and they are in the opening ceremony against the defending champions Brazil. Hopes are high after Scotland qualified in impressive fashion, finishing ahead of Sweden (who finished 3rd in 1994) in their group. Hopes are high to the point that some people think that Scotland might have a hope in hell of winning a game and maybe even getting out of the group (Norway and Morocco were the other teams in the group). The unofficial song, 500 miles by The Proclaimers whips the nation into a frenzy. Finally the SFA team up with Del Amitri to release the 'official' anthem, a complete dirge of song written from the perspective of 'usually we are rubbish but maybe this time we won't be really rubbish, but we probably will be'. Including class lyrics like: 'And I don't care what people say, We can laugh it all away, But if I have a dream at all For once you won't be on that stupid plane' Add that to the music video. featuring Colin Hendry doing some keepie-uppies in Prestwick Airport. That famous Nike advert with the Brazil team, this was not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T68AXsUAEI

That would explain the difference. I'm a big fan of proggy non-traditional song structure so the proggy vibes of the Crack the Skye were right up my street. That said, one of my favourite Mastodon songs is Tread Lightly, the one that opens Once More Round The Sun. I just detest The Motherload (I don't like Brann's singing) and High Road (I'm Scottish so whenever I hear lyrics including 'You take the high road' it makes me think of The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond, so I will automatically hate the song).

Okay, on the Mastodon front, I really don't mind Emperor of Sand. I really tried to enjoy The Hunter and Once More Around the Sun, but they seemed pretty bland to me after (in my opinion) a run of classics of Remission, Leviathan, Blood Mountain and Crack the Skye. The albums since Crack the Skye have just sounded a bit generic to me. Perfectly decent modern rock/metal affairs, but nothing that left me going 'wow'. Also, I don't like Brann Dailors clean singing on The Hunter and Once More Round the Sun. However in his defence I think his singing on Emperor of Sand is a lot stronger. His singing live was also a lot better when I saw them live last year when I saw them touring The Hunter.

Okay, just a few for now: Radiohead: Hail to the Thief - I can listen to each track individually and think 'this is pretty great', but when I listen to the whole album, after about three songs my brain goes 'this is depressing boring stuff'. Black Sabbath: Heaven and Hell - I like Dio, I love all Sabbath albums prior to Never Say Die, but I just don't like this album. Nirvana: Nevermind - I know it is an absolute classic, but it is one of those albums where the songs were so ingrained in my head at a young age, that by the time I actually listened to the album, the whole album was too familiar to me to really enjoy it. Not the album's fault. Biffy Clyro: Vertigo of Bliss - an ex girlfriend gave me a copy when it came out. I tried to like it, but I just never could never listen to the whole album in full. The album starts starts with Bodies in Flight, which has an intro which is initially very similar to Tip your Bartender by Glassjaw from 'Worship and Tribute'. I loved that Glassjaw album, so the Biffy album was getting unfair comparisons from the start. Metallica - St Anger - I listen to this every year just to check whether I am missing something and it is actually an under appreciated classic. I still think it is terrible, but I will keep listening to it just in case. To date it is on of my most listened to albums and I still think it is mostly terrible.

All of this. I was sure that with Rick Rubin at the helm that Death Magnetic would have been great sounding, given it was produced not long after he worked on Christ Illusion by Slayer which in terms of mixing and mastering is pretty damn great. Death Magnetic is an uncomfortable listening experience at high volume as the snare drum is clipping the whole time The guy who mastered it tried to say that it wasn't his fault on the basis that the mix was pretty much unusable by the time it got to him. There is cool article on Blabbermouth about how bad the finished product is (http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/metallica-s-lars-ulrich-breaks-silence-on-death-magnetic-sound-quality-controversy/). It can really be summed up in two quotes: Ted Jansen, the guy who mastered the album: "In this case the mixes were already brick-walled before they arrived at my place. Suffice to say I would never be pushed to overdrive things as far as they are here. Believe me, I'm not proud to be associated with this one, and we can only hope that some good will come from this in some form of backlash against volume above all else." Lars Ulrich: "It's 2008, and that's how we make records. Rick Rubin's whole thing is to try and get it to sound lively, to get it to sound loud, to get it to sound exciting, to get it to jump out of the speakers. Of course, I've heard that there are a few people complaining. But I've been listening to it the last couple of days in my car, and it sounds flipin' smokin'." Arrgh.

If the tech in the shop is muttering about damaging the neck by simply changing to a slightly heavier gauge of strings then he really shouldn't be a tech in a shop. You might have to do a slight set up adjustment, that should be it.

I always get my strings but the service has been much slower in the last year or so compared to previously.

I have been using mine for nearly ten years now. Brilliant amp and it has got more than enough power to cope with louder gigs if you pair it with a good 4x10 or larger cabinet.

No.

My Trace Elliot V6 has ‘deep’ and ‘high’ pre shapes and push/pull mid frequency alteration setting, all of which serve to detract from the sound from the amp.

I see this as positive news. Yamaha have a track record for delivering quality products. This isn’t a Gibson buying Trace Elliot situation (or Gibson buying anything frankly). My prediction is that the US Heritage line is kept as is and the construction of the non US SVT line is vastly improved.