thodrik

Drop D a half step down. Is that drop C# then. I would be wary of trying to tune a normal 60 gauge D string and trying to tune it up to F(d standard) or F#(drop C#. You could try the heavier gauge D'addario Balanced Tension 50-120 which I have found works well for detuning. You could also try the DR DDTs though these are fairly expensive in my opinion. I've found that when tuning down, especially with drop D-type fingerings, that string tension issues are highlighted are lot more than in standard tuning. Thus I'm not sure that the 'use the bottom four strings of a five string set' will always work, especially in the 'drop C# down to Drop B' area. Making a custom set of strings for your own needs is probably the best bet.

[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1370774449' post='2105282'] I think the main reason '70's basses are becoming collector-ish is because 60's are so hard to get. [/quote] I think so. I got my 1978/9 (not exactly dated it) Precision for less than £400 12-13 years ago. Now it would probably be worth around £1000, despite it being played and gigged regularly by me over the last 13 years. Its madness. To the OP, I wouldn't buy a bass just 'as an investment'. As soon as I start thinking 'investment', I start making allowances for the 'intricacies' of older Fenders which I would consider 'faults' on any other bass. Thats why after spending 6 years looking for a comparable Jazz bass for my Precision, I ended up buying a Sadowsky Metro.

I wouldn't try to tune a BEAD set of strings to anything higher than C standard due to the rise in string tension. Try the D'addario balanced tension 120-50 set for a fairly cheap solution for D standard/C# standard, or get a custom set made out of singles of strings you like.

[quote name='winterfire666' timestamp='1369841692' post='2093365'] yeah i have heard a lot about them, from what i have read i reckon a mk 1 is gonna do what i want perfectly, iv gotta try one out sooner or later :^) [/quote] Well, if you happen to be up in Glasgow you are welcome to try it. It is a very flexible amp, though in my view it is not one of those 'leave everything flat/in the 12 o'clock position'. I find that I have to use the EQ a bit to get a sound I like, as opposed to something like an Ampeg SVT where I generally would leave everything 'as is'. The mk II Fafner looks awesome though with the different options and switchable overdrive. A bit pricey and a bit too many knobs and options for me though

I have one (mk I). Its pretty great.

I prefer the look of the massive pole pieces in the L2000/2500 models. However the features on the M series look very impressive. I always prefer a pan to a toggle on a bass.

I'd probably go for: Warwick Thumb (the ones with the club necks) Fender American Vintage 75 Jazz (one that was terribly set up) Any 'vintage' Fender that has been poorly set up Musicman Stingray (never liked the neck shape) Wal Mark I (same)

[quote name='Myke' timestamp='1366637949' post='2055224'] I hope that's not true for everyone because I've just bought a set of these [/quote] I had a set. Worked well enough. Just tonally not for me so I went back to rounds.

I liked the bass sound. The way that Bill Ward was treated kind of soured me on this whole 'reunion'. Production is a bit polished for me as well. Great riff at about 7 mins in, but then the guitar doesn't really do anything interesting to match the bass. Average.

Okay, I've taken a few days to formulate an opinion: The looks don't do anything for me whatsoever. The bridge looks oversized, the pickup looks undersized and the pickguard looks like it serves no meaning purpose whatsoever. The video demo is okay, but that sound could be achieved with any number of Fender-designed basses with the help of eq and a bit of overdrive. The price is decent however. I would have got rid of the pickguard and put in an oversized humbucker/single coil pickup in the style of a G&L/Musicman or a completely unusable EB3-style mudbucker.

Currently I'm in a band that is in the Sabbath/early Baroness/Isis/Kyuss territory. I don't really consider it metal but rather heavy psychedelic rock. That is pretty much the kind of music I'd ideally have been playing over the years, although it seems that I've done pretty much every type of music apart from that! This is mainly because I have found it really hard to find people that were into the same stuff. I have no real interest in doing classic rock, NWOBHM, old school thrash or modern Trivium metal, which seemed to be all that I could find when looking for bands.

Tried out my Trace V6 yesterday and it confirmed my initial suspicion that a 400 watt all valve amp is entirely unnecessary, but also a lot of fun.

I generaly prefer post if it is a nice preamp. If the soundperson is good I am generally happy to do whatever they want to do, pre/post/DI box/mic or whatever. If the soundperson is entirely clueless (rare but it happens), then I am liable to just take a sansamp, set it to a vague approximation of the SVT setting, and just hope for the best.

The new D'addario balanced tension set at 120-50 works well for drop c.

I like the bass terror heads but I have never been impressed with the 'one speaker behind the other' Orange cab designs. It will probably do the job fine but I would be more inclined to use the head with a separate 2x10, 1x15 or 2x12. The head is so small you could probably fit it in a rucksack and just throw it the bag over your back when carrying the cab, which still makes it one trip to the car, albeit a slightly more cumbersome one!

I'd say that the Clover has enough 'Jazz' bass aesthetics to cover that territory. I went through the 'I want a Jazz' period for several years, as my Vigier Excess just wasn't 'Jazz' enough, despite being a great bass. In the end I've gone back to using my Precision, so really shouldn't have bothered buying any basses beyond the age of 14.

Musical beauty is completely subjective. So is technical skill, albeit to a lesser extent when one person's 'virtuoso' is another person's 'overrated'. There is also the potential inverted technical snobbery, whereby every bassist who doesn't play simple root notes is accused of overplaying. Still, I think that in terms musical compositions which interest me personally, technical skill on an instrument is often less important than knowing basic music theory. I am often more impressed by use of an interesting harmony or inverted chord than I am by double thumbing, slapping, tapping etc. To me though, there is a difference between 'choosing' to keep it simple and 'having' to keep it simple, which is why I still try out new ideas, even if I have no real intention of using them outside of practice. I can't say I've noticed a 'pro technical' v 'pro-muscality' divide on this forum though. I've only noticed a tendency to look down on anyone who chooses to cut mids and use a smiley face EQ!

Some of the Ashdown stuff. Orange stuff (though the 'made in UK' is very borderline). Matamp for sure. Trace Elliot is only 'designed in the UK' but is now built in the USA at the Peavey. Other than that I'm struggling a bit.

If its the same style as my SMX head, the valve doesn't really do overdrive, it just adds a bit of warmth and body to the tone. If you want anything beyond that then I would maybe suggest getting a pedal.

Since Stringbusters are pricing them at £16 quid a set, I decided to buy a couple of 120-50 sets. Its less than half price of the standard DR DDT 115-55 strings. If these strings are halfway decent then they will probably become my go-to strings for D standard/Drop C. I think for bassists who tune down, D'addario could be onto a winner here just in terms of gauge and price alone.

EBS amps generally have very good onboard compression, in my opinion better than the SMX-era dual band Trace Elliot compression which, while good, tended to suck away some of the low end. I can't speak for the TC Electronic stuff, I went for a Mesa Walkabout when going 'lightweight'.

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1363711451' post='2016385'] I always remember an interview with Jon Anderson of Yes done at the time of the release of his first solo album. Because he'd composed all the music himself but had no conventional musical training (or at least compared with his bandmates in Yes), he said that every note had to be individually considered from all the ones available. I was an impressionable teenager at the time I read this, so I have no idea if it was true or simply bollocks made up to give the album extra publicity. However I do think that his basic idea was sound. Whenever I find myself slipping into comfortable patterns or chord sequences, I'll start deliberately throwing in notes or chords that would normally be considered to be wrong. Of course most of the time the result isn't very musically pleasing, but it also throws up plenty of new ideas worth pursuing. [/quote] Interesting idea that. You should try twelve-tone serialism stuff. Devoid of patterns and often devoid of much melody, but really interesting all the same.

This debate has been done before. Connections and appearance can be everything in the music industry, or any industry, irrespective of whether you are male of female. She is a very good player and doesn't deserve some of the flak she gets. However I don't think she deserves the over-the-top extra praise she seems to get on the basis of her being an attractive female. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Personally I find her playing to be a too 'middle of the road' to warrant my attention, but that places her alongside many other very good players that do not interest me in the slightest.

I am generally aware of the notes, keys and intervals I'm playing. Since I did a fair bit of music theory when I was younger though, I would be pretty worried if I wasn't! However, if I'm playing in a tuning that is below E standard (say C/C sharp) I might say 'play an open A' to the guitarist, as if I say 'play an open F sharp' it generally confuses them. Sometimes though I prefer the 'grip it and rip it' approach than thinking carefully about every note I'm going to play in a given song. However even then its not as if I'm not generally aware of what I'm doing. I don't think that patterns are necessarily a bad thing either. They appear in all forms of music Being aware of lots of different chord or fingering patterns is a good thing and can help provide a skeletal framework that can be adapted when composing music or even improvising. I would say that being a slave to the same three fingering patterns, chord structures and time signatures is a sign of laziness, but to some people it equates to a 'signature sound'. That is why I generally don't think about it too much and just play bass.

[quote name='MiltyG565' timestamp='1363614896' post='2014744'] I find D'Addario tend to be a bit silly. A regular gauge set (45-105/107) they will call regular light, and long scale for 32" scale basses. they call 30" scale short scale. In the world of guitar, a set of 9's are called super light gauge, but where do you go from there? You can get 8's, so are they called super super light gauge? Fantastic strings, but their naming of sets based on the scale and gauge is mad i find. [/quote] Yes and then the 120-50 set is apparently a 'medium' but there isn't a heavy equivalent. I find the 'light/super light/medium' descriptions of strings to be essentially useless. Just tell me the gauge and let me decide on whether its light etc.