Muzz

I like basses, they are my main hobby, passion, and I earn money with them. I like lots of different basses for diferrent reasons, so I have a few. Apart from the main 4 string, I have an eight and an acoustic, both of which I use live, and I play in two different bands, the vibes of which dictate the bass I use, although these days the Dingwall gets by far the most use.

The Schaller's my favourite bridge, the rollers are a great idea and the lateral movement allows you to make sure the strings are aligned properly with the pole pieces. It's also very comfortable under hand if you play with the heel of your hand on the bridge, as I do.

Weight's important to me, my Dingwall's been a 7lb 8oz eye-opener, anything much over 8lb these days has me looking askance at it, and as has been said above the weight variance in nominally identical basses can be plenty. Lots of manufacturers either give ballpark figures or sometimes no weight figures at all. Nut widths, although much more commonly stated, can also vary, it's just nice to check.

Yep, it's a personal taste thing, I hate relicing as it always looks so fake, but when I actually played a RW Precision I was very very impressed. With my eyes closed. Chas/Dave's* 40+ year old Precision has done a zillion gigs, and has some very distinctive wear (because of his/their right hand technique) but none of that belt sander hoohah EBay is full of. Was there a period in the 60s when sandpaper suits were de rigeur? * The prog showed them both using it over the years, which I thought was very cool...

Just sold an amp to Rick: ideal transaction, great comms and a seamless pickup - deal with him in confidence, he's one of the good guys! Cheers, Muzz

I counted 17 of 'em at one gig...

It's great song, but lots of production in there - there's a second bass track where he plays the melodic bits, and IIRC it's all fretless. Even the bass fill near the end is studio-produced: the second half is the recording of the first half played backwards. There's an interesting story about it online somewhere. EDIT, there you go, beaten to it... The bassist is Bakithi Kumalo, he's an extraordinary and quite unique-sounding player. Check him out on YouTube, etc. When we do it live, the keyboards do the melodic bass parts, and I play an approximation of the bass fill that sounds OK. If you've checked out live versions, you'll know there are some, erm, interesting interpretations of it out there...

[quote name='TRBboy' timestamp='1355571121' post='1900015'] ...They basically completely ignored us! The guys were just hanging out chatting at the bar down the far end of the pub, whilst we were in effect playing to an empty room! There was no applause, no dancing, nothing. By the time we finished the first set, we were feeling pretty down, but the landlord said we were great, and the guy who booked us said we were awesome and that all the guys were really enjoying it, despite them not showing it! He said "we don't really do dancing or anything." [/quote] Had pretty much an identical (lack of) crowd reaction combined with delighted club secretary/landlord in Scunthorpe last Friday. Very odd.

Walk On By by Dionne Warwick. Class.

[quote name='dmccombe7' timestamp='1356085266' post='1906535'] ...or something distracts you (tall leggy blonde in a mini skirt usually does it for me - female that is) and you just draw a blank ... Dave [/quote] Played a gig the other week, and the band leader uses a Mac laptop to run keyboard samples, etc. This particular venue I ended up jammed into the corner with the Mac more or less in front of me. Spent more time looking at the pretty pictures on the desktop (cycling wallpapers - 'Oooo look, penguins!') than anything else - no wonder I had a 'vague' gig...

Went to see them on their last tour, and they were a very, very good live band. Only Gary Rossington left of the original lineup (possibly Ricky Medlocke, too, depending on your definition of 'original'), but a great band still. EDIT: Just checked, and they have 25 ex-members of the band, and they're on their seventh bassist...

Or the smock? Or the beard-plait?

In an interview I saw recently, Geddy Lee was saying when he started playing he wanted the pick sound people like Chris Squire were getting, but he didn't/couldn't get on with a pick, so he developed his aggressive fingerstyle to emulate the pick sound. He plays near the neck and fair bounces the strings off the frets, too, so there's something in that.

The Little Mark and the Schroeder stuff is a great matchup, so, as Lozz says, is the Markbass 410 - had both liked both a lot.

That £249 from the States is likely to increase considerably with import duty and Vat, plus you'll need to check it's got a UK-friendly power supply. They're different beasts tone-wise - a LM III for £300 is a lot of amp for the money, but I found to get anywhere near an Ampeg tone it needed a Sansamp in front of it. You can do this cheap with a Behringer BDI21 instead. If money's tight, a LH500 might do the job, although they're bigger. The other hybrid small tubey-contenders like the Streamliner or RH450 or LM Tube you'll be very lucky to find for the money you've got. Worth a look, though...

Yep, a ZZB. I had the half-black half-white Custom version back in the day. Loved it at the time. 32" scale IIRC.

Just thought I'd post up here in praise of Dingwall's customer service - I bought a replacement Dingwall P-Tone pickup for my ABZ which I couldn't adjust low enough to fit properly, so I posted a query on the Dingwall forum to that effect. Sheldon Dingwall replied straight away, and the pickup turned out to be too high in the shell for the ABZ. After a couple of measurements to confirm, he immediately shipped a replacement pickup to me from the workshop in Canada, which I've now got in, fitted and working a treat. Customer service like that shouldn't go unannounced. Top job Dingwall! Cheers, Muzz

Dunlop .88 Nylons for about 30 years now. They last forever, got them stashed everywhere.

I think Rays fluctuate a fair bit, no idea why - I picked up a lovely black and maple one from EBay BIN £550 a couple of years ago, which was a good deal but not a million miles away from what they were going for generally, then the s/h prices rose sharply, and they're settling back again, despite the RRPs going up and up. Warwicks, however, have been in the doldrums for years secondhand, with no sign of prices picking up (other than possibly Thumbs) and their RRPs are just mad now. Like them or not (and they are a marmite bass) the quality of instrument for the secondhand price is unbeatable.