Muzz

I've mentioned this before but my (now ex) singist/geetard BL was doing care home gigs to fill in his earnings a good few years ago. When I asked him how he managed with all those songs from yesteryear, he said 'Nope, it's all Beatles and Stones these days...' Even though I'm looking for a new band/gig/deps, I'm steering away from the Classic/Dad Rock stuff, as the market for it is dwindling...which is as it should be; the pubs (and clubs, to an extent, tho I'm meaning social clubs rather than night clubs, obv) aren't full of sixty-somethings, and even though they're not exactly full of teenagers and twenty-somethings, it's a new audience. My 17-year old, though he doesn't mind some older stuff (he has a very, ummm, eclectic playlist) has no interest in going away and doing a history lesson on 40+ year old bands and music unless he's very interested in it. The nature of the music biz these days means kids have so much more music to pick from (and easily, too), that the phrase 'I like them, I've got all their albums' is pretty much redundant...

Soooo, I have a set of Elixirs on one of my basses, and they're the oldest set I have (at least three or four years old, and they've done dozens and dozens of gigs); they've mellowed past that 'fresh zing' thing, but as they are they suit the bass they're on really well. All well and good, but maaaaan, they honk - has anyone ever cleaned Elixirs? I don't want to wreck the coating, but then again having to wash my hands after playing a bass is a bit of a bind... 😕

I'd agree sometimes the shipping, erm, professionals can break anything, no matter how well constructed; I received a brand new 215 Schroeder cab which had been shipped from Sweden years ago, it had been dropped so hard one of the feet was driven through the bottom of the (very substantial) cab, and there was a big thumpy rattle when I moved it. One of the magnets had sheared off the back of the speaker inside.

I've got a Shuker JJB Signature P on the way with a verrrry slim Jazz-width neck (based on my favourite Shuker neck)...heresy possibly, but hey, I'm paying the piper... 😀

Another +1 for the Helix here - I'm no compression expert, but all my patches have a compressor in the chain, and it Just Works(tm)

Fixed it for you...

One of the reasons I've always been big of using a HPF (I've had a couple of amps with HPFs built-in, but these days with my Walkabout I use the lowest of the EQ settings to cut low bass) to remove the very bottom end, as in small venues it causes more problems than benefits...it's all about the mids for me...

That looks terrific, definitely worth the wait...perhaps he'll finish mine now... 🙂 The neck looks really nice... 👍

I rather like that...although having seen the state of Gene's syrup these days, I rather think 'The Gene Simmons Darkly Unconvincing Top' might be more apt... 😀

I'm not sure what this 'grain' is that means wood can't be finished smoothly? Is it a special wood grain that only Gibsons have? Can't be bothered/organised finishing a £2.5k bass properly? Ohhhh, we'll call it the grain...as I say, I'd never get away with that when painting the skirting boards in our house... It's not just the headstock, either: unless that's a particularly thin nitro (which I'm sure they'd have mentioned), that flat finish just isn't flat...and the end of the fretboard isn't great, either. A grained finish is great with a natural satin, or even black (I've a Dingwall which makes a feature of this), but that's supposed to be a gloss black finish. And in case it sounds picky (tho I do get picky at £2.5k), it's the Van Halen M&Ms thing - it's indicative of QC and finishing...

Grain or not, given that it's painted over (especially in black), you'd think they might've sanded it properly first...again, we're talking a £2.5k instrument here...I wouldn't get away with that finish on the skirting boards in our house, with a tin of Dulux and a 1/2" brush... 😕

Sounds better on that PMT video, but look at the state of that finish on the head: On a £2.5k bass? Honestly, I'd send it back for that. Oh and 'It's got Gene's logo on it; a skull and crossed basses'...ummmm, since when was that any identifier of Gene Simmons? You know, the bloke with the most identifiable face paint on the planet? Pffffft again...

Went to see TS at the Ashton Metro (much like the Electric Banana, don't look for it, it's not there any more, but it was a small venue) in 81, we went round to the stage door to see if we could meet the band...as I was turning the corner, Dee Snider came round the other way and we bundled into each other...he still had his stage gear on, he was about 7ft tall. He apologised for bumping into me... 🙂

On the upside, I like the binding (tho how much cooler would that have been following the curve of the raised centrepiece/thinner wings?) and the bound fretboard and markers...they've missed a trick (given the whole mirror thing) not using chrome hardware (inc pickups covers and rings) for a proper black-and-silver look, tho. Oh, and Gene's syrup gets more and more bum-clenching every time I see it; it's about as convincing as a Cristiano Ronaldo penalty claim...

I bow to no man in my appreciation of the Thunderbird; it's a gloriously impractical bass, designed by a 50s car designer, and I love them (3-point bridges aside, obv), but this isn't great. In addition to the fact that it's a slab of a thing (again, part of the Thunderbird charm for me is the thinner wings - the slabby ones remind me of cheap copies (tho even the Epi ones have the thinner wings)), it's wrong on all the levels already mentioned; the paucity of real GS provenance, etc, but the telling detail is that scratchplate logo: I note Gene doesn't have the confidence to put his mug/makeup on there as a logo, just some generic skull and crossed guitar/bass...pffft. Oh, and I'm not buying the 'more to come' line, either; if you're starting some kind of artist-based dynastic line of products, why start with such a poorly un-iconic one? Bah, and definitely humbug; I'm pooh-poohing the whole enterprise... Edit: Just watched that review video, and I agree about the wobbly finish; for £2.5k, you'd think they could've painted it better...oh, and I can make any bass, including my £30-delivered Harley Benton, sound like that. Double-pffffttt...

On the HB tuners thing, I've got one HB bass (one of the 55P things), and it's OK as a bass (tho remarkable for the price I paid for it: Next To Nowt inc.shipping) and I played a few gigs with it (including one posh gig at Manchester Cricket Ground where the cost of a ticket was at least five times the price of the bass), but one day (luckily not on a gig) one of the tuners just let go, by which I mean just sheared off while turning it. Never had that happen to a bass before, and it's clearly one of the places where costs were cut. I've not replaced the tuners yet, so I don't trust it enough to gig with any more. One day I might pimp it and use it again.

Now here's a coincidence; SWMBO reminded yesterday that we had tickets to go see a couple of bands at Rebellion in Manchester last night, and both bands (the Picture Books and the support, whose name sadly eludes me right now) were two piece bands (guitar and drums) without a bassist. The support band used a good deal of octave on the guitar (kinda like Royal Blood, but the other way round) to add bass into the mix, but the Picture Books didn't, and for their stuff really didn't need to. They do have a very unusual drummer, tho, with lots of biiiig booming toms, very little snare and no cymbals at all (no hihat, even). Both bands were very different in terms of music than the norm (but still firmly in the Rock camp), but both were very good, and well worth seeing... So in terms of the original OP question...no, not all the time... Actually, thinking on, one of my favourite gigs of the last few years was the Cadillac Three at the Ritz in Manchester, and they don't have a bass player per se - they have a drummer, guitarist/singer and a sit-down lap steel bloke who takes care of the bottom end (and other duties) - he was using two 810 Orange rigs, and sounded glorious...

The Marquee, in any of its incarnations...

Well, you'd think/hope, but hearing from a couple of people who went to other nights (rubbish in Sheffield, better in Nottingham, that kind of thing), it might have been not getting the hang of the new non-backline/in-ears hoohah. I went all over the Stalls, hoping it was just where I was standing, but nope, rubbish everywhere. Even standing just behind the engineer at the desk... As I say, an extreme example (given JJB's distinctive sound), but very much the trend these days. Maybe it's the mismanagement of the new line array-style PAs? I dunno...

I'm in a similar position (I think we last rehearsed around the same time...it was certainly before lockdown), and the drummer and I get an email with a list of new songs (the BL/geetard/singist sends it; we're definitely not an anarcho-syndicalist commune with a bi-monthly ratification officer...more like North Korea, to be honest 🙂) with Youtube links to a particular version, sometimes with key changes mentioned* (last one was 21 new songs to 'freshen the set up'...with about ten days notice), we turn up and play em. It's not as drastic as it sounds, as we're a trio, so most songs get filtered through how we sound anyway, we have a superb (reading) drummer, and we've been playing together for more than 10 years, so we all know each others game inside out. Plus the BL/singist/geetard does a lot of solo stuff, so at least he's done most of them before on his tod. EDIT: I should mention that we're not exactly playing prog here; there's a limit to the complexity of what we do... No-one's ever noticed, and it's really good fun launching into a brand new song for the first time with the other two; it definitely keeps you on your toes (see 'Whaddya mean, it's in G?' below...😀) I'm not sure it'd work quite as well with more people, but it's made me a bit allergic to rehearsals - I've left side projects when, after four rehearsals, people were still bimbling about and agonizing and fretting (SWIDT?) and we were nowhere near a gig... * Sometimes not...which is fun on the night; first time playing a song live, and Whoops, you're transposing already...eeeekkkk... 😕🙂

It's been a while since I've heard a really distinctive (aka non-vaguely scoopy mushy) bass sound at a gig of the size of the Apollo (1500?) and up - even longer for an arena...possibly Rush about six years ago. For some reason, lately the trend is for PA Chimps to EQ the kick to sound like a cannon, and the bass to be a subsonic rumble, regardless of the band. I've walked out of the last half-dozen arena-sized gigs (including the Foos at the Cricket Ground (not a music venue, the worst sound I've encountered), Alterbridge et al at the MEN (just painfully, pointlessly loud) and that Johnny Depp ego trip band at the MEN), mostly because the sound was so poor. I went to see The Stranglers at the Apollo last month, and had it not been a rare evening out with SWMBO, I'd have buggered off from there, too - the PA Chimp managed to make even JJB's sound scooped and vaguely subsonic*. I've heard it was better on other dates on the tour, but if you can make JJB sound like a scoopy mess, you're going some... All very grumpy, I know, but the point being the bassist in each case may as well have been miming; in fact, if they'd had a well-produced backing track it would have been preferable sonically to the PAC's efforts on the night... Smaller gigs are a different matter; I've still encountered that cannon/mush mix, but less frequently, and places like the Ritz are generally better than most; I've seldom heard a bad mix in there. Best sound in a long long time was at Night & Day Cafe (150), when Elbow did a charity gig late last year; they were the quietest band I've seen in a good while (quieter than most pub bands), but sounded superb, bass and all. * The whole band had dropped the backline and moved to in-ears; it might have sounded fine to him, but out front it was sooo disappointing...

More than 4 strings. More than 9 1/2 lbs More than 40mm nut. Jazzes, including the plethora of Jazz copies. Most other things fall into preferences (like maple boards; I have a couple of non-maple boards), and things I can live with/change, along the lines of covers (I can always take them off and bin them), bridges, pickups and EQ... Other than that, I'm dead easy to please... 😀

I've no real skin in the game, never having owned an Ashdown cab (other than a VS212 briefly, which was underwhelming to say the least), but the OP judging 6x10 stack against a single 210 is a bit of a mismatch.... I'd say that moving to any FRFR cab (tho the BF 210 isn't one of those) would be the same as Lozz says above, tho: it's a bit of a different playing field than more voiced cabs, and needs some adjustment.

The last time I had a matching amp and cab from a manufacturer's POV was an SVT and 810, back when I could be bothered to shift them. Having said that, I also had a Peavey Mk.VI head for when the SVT (inevitably, and fairly frequently) went bang, and I liked that, too. For the last twenty-plus years I've mixed and matched, driven by various factors like what sounded good, and, increasingly, what I can be bothered to shift around.

I believe for a small uplift you can request the nibbling to be done by free-range gerbils, if that's the issue...