Muzz

NYE was a small local(ish) bar; minimal gear (we used the venue's speakers as tops, brought our sub, drummer used a kick trigger, I used my Rumble 100 as a monitor, guitarist pedal/DI, one small monitor), we weren't too loud, and it was a revelation (again). Punters had a great night, and I was tapped up for another busy band as a part-time/dep. All good. LFTs before and after, all clear.

I'm a simple creature; after years of faffing about, I've found Elixirs make all my basses sound better...

I've got a couple of BBs (and I've had a few more, too) and a Dingwall ABZ, and I've played a D-Roc (the Far East version), and I'd agree with what's been said above about the more modern sounds from the D-Roc. I put a Dingwall Split-P pickup into the neck position of my ABZ (and it has an East Preamp) for that very reason - now it can do the modern sounds and the more traditional ones, too. The build quality and 'sing' of the Dingwall is better than pretty much any of the BBs I've had (with the possible exception of a 2024 I played at Bass Direct a good while ago), then again it's better than pretty much any bass I've owned, and that includes Alembics, Statii, Seis, Overwaters, etc, etc... It is a Canadian Dingwall, tho, and they're that bit better than the Far East ones... It's just a shame it doesn't get played much any more... My BB of choice these days is a mildly customised BB414 (yeah, the cheap one), which is as good a P/J bass as an awful lot I've had/played for three, four, five times the price.

Being a fan of slimmer necks, I made several bitsas with P bodies and J-width necks, then when I stepped up to the luthier domain, I found I could ask for anything I wanted, and get it made (by Jon Shuker, as it happens, but other luthiers, as they say, are available) for much less than the Fender CS would charge me for reaching across to the other shelf for a different neck and bolting that on... I've even got a Shuker JJB in the offing with a slimmer-than-Jazz-width* neck... * I have all my Shuker basses (including the neck for my Shukerbird) made to the same profile as my favourite neck (which also happens to be a Shuker, but I bought that one secondhand, so it was kind of a happy accident), and that's Geddy Jazz-slim...

Our Boxing Day gig has been cancelled...by us; the singer's got The Lurgy...he's fine, just pinging positive... 😕

I've got basses running from the luthier-made £2k+ range (and I've owned S/H ones that were originally more expensive than that) to a £32-delivered Harley Benton, and I sound generally like me on all of them*. The three defining factors are the ease with which I can get 'my sound', how the instruments themselves look (I'm on record as being as shallow as a puddle in this regard), and how I feel when I play them. Similar with amps, but the biggies on that front are the practicalities of fitness for purpose, in terms of volume and portability. Since going partly Digital (Stomp)/IEM, the tones themselves are taken care of in the small black floor box... * It helps I'm a simple animal; P-Bass with rounds and a pick...

My tinnitus started (finally - I'd been mostly oblivious over the years, equating loud with good) a good while back with a dep guitard and a 112 combo, which he'd perched on a bar stool just behind me (at a ludicrously cramped O'Neills pub in Leeds), pointing away from him, so he cranked his pedals/preamp up and up. In the break I pointed it at his head, and surprise, surprise, he turned down. The damage, however, was finally done. ACS moulds and in-ear monitors from then in, but that gate has been closed to the sound of disappearing hooves (and hissing). I went to see Elbow in a very small venue in Manchester the other week, and they were the quietest band I've ever heard in that (or indeed most) venues. OK, they're not exactly Motorhead, but they've played some big stadia...the clarity was terrific, the sound just...permeated the place. No trouble hearing every instrument. Fantastic. I didn't have to use my ACS plugs, and not a hint of hissing afterwards. I've also seen Burt Bacharach at the Bridgewater, and that was the same; a comfortable volume, everything easily heard. The Bridgewater, though, was built for that sort of stuff, but it can still be done in any venue.

Then again, the Fender Close Enough For Most People would've needed either an unreadable font or a bigger headstock...

It's all in the anagram: Fender Precision = Reinforced Penis.

Played at our regular place in Manchester town centre Friday, the Oirish bar; given the weather hoohah I'd imagined a quiet night, but there was a queue outside all night of never less than a dozen people, it was one out, one in all night... And they were all up for it, too...a cracking night...during one of the set breaks (we do 3x45) I was chatting outside to a bloke from Guatemala who'd come over for 5 days; his first day in Manchester and he couldn't believe how lively it was...'Eeees crayzee, crayzee...' 🙂 On inspiration from the gig I went to during the week (Elbow at the Night&Day Cafe*), we didn't turn it up too loud, and the sound was soooo much better for it... *Incidentally, there's an online petition to try and defend against them losing their license after a Noise Abatement complaint (yet another ar*ehole who buys a flat next to a music venue that's been central to Manchester's music scene for 30 years and then suddenly decides to get it shut down because they play live music till half ten), if you can find it, please sign it...

An extreme example of this 'what are things actually worth?' is De Beers' manipulation of the diamond market over the last century...the diamond being probably the most common gem on the planet...

If it'll bring things into more perspective, have a glance at the Alembic Price List...but make sure you're sitting down first... 😀

Can I just say that even out of context (especially out of context) that's the best one-line post I've seen on here in a while? 😁 Anyhoo, to the subject; yep, there's some great cheap basses - I played the biggest gig I've done in a while recently with a £150 BB414, and I even gigged a £32 (delivered from Thomann!) HB 50s Precision thing at a function event where the ticket price was five times that - but as has been said, although there are diminishing returns (ever more diminishing and more down to personal preference the higher up the price range they go) on more expensive basses, they're still at a high level of value/low level of cost for what you get compared to other Veblens like cars and the orchestral instruments mentioned above. What are seen as the eye-watering top of the scale basses are handbuilt by experts with the very highest quality components, and that clearly has a cost. My luthier-built instruments (Shukers, just in case anyone hadn't heard 😀) are unique, and are a thing I couldn't get for £400, or even £3k from anything factory-built. I know what I like and what I want, it's very specific, and only a luthier can deliver that. I've had (and moved on) basses from Alembic, Sei, Overwater, Status, MM (three Stingrays), Rickenbacker and the like; all £3k+ basses these days, but they were moved on not because they weren't value for money, or even poor basses (apart from the Rick), but because they didn't suit me, and for that money they need to suit me very very well. I gigged them all, to be sure, and I'd gig anything I bought; my 'justification' for that is 'I own it, I want to gig it.' I can also comment on the Dingwall thing, too; I have an ABZ, I've had two ABIIs, and I've played several Combustions, and there is a definite, substantial difference between the Combustions and the Canadian-built ones, in terms of quality, which translates into the bass feeling 'alive'. Edit: And I got all the way through that without mentioning tonewood once...ooops... 😃

Yeah, that description is kinda tonally vague and establishes the quality of the woods and construction without getting into anything specific, which is fair enough, and about as far as I'd like to see tonewoods described... 😀

There it is... 🙂

I've played a wedding there, a very special venue (not so much on the sound front, but hey, I doubt the Tudors were thinking about amplified bands when they built it 🙂 ), IIRC, the power situatation was...interesting, too... I posted a picture of my basses, right where yours is, on a FB thing I had going a while back entitled 'I've Played Some Sh*tholes In My Time, But...' 😁 Oh, and on the return journey to Manchester, the van broke down about 600 yards into the trip, at about 1:30am...we got home about lunchtime on the Sunday... 😕

Now there's a bass sound... 😃

Yep, much better for us OCD types...hang on a sec...what's that bottom cab?

It's interesting that a premium brand like Music Man who, while not quite in the luthier stratosphere like Sadowsky, have also built their brand on pros and huge exposure over decades, don't mention body wood at all (other than 'select body woods') in the sales pitch for their £2,800 Stingray Special H. They sell it on the small design improvements, the pickups and the preamp, plus the build....oh, and weight... Maybe they don't think the wood is much of an influence on the sound of the bass? More likely is their product is built around a different marketing model than Sadowskys (and a different production method), and this trumps any wood-based hoohah...

I agree with both of the above, (and only Roger S's sales records would show the ratio of buyers who are professionals to those who are podgy middle aged blokes (just like McLaren's or Ferrari's or whoever)), but I still contend that in the real world, for Pros and PMABs alike, there are much more important factors to a bass's sound (unless anyone's getting unamplified gigs) than the wood - pickups, pickup placement, EQ, construction, etc - but that doesn't seem to get the same emphasis that tonewood flim-flam does...perhaps because pickups and EQ can be placed in various positions in more or less any bass to get 90% of the sound, and that's not Sadowsky's gig, making, as he does, copies (albeit far better built and therefore expensive) of tried and tested designs. I've never discounted that different woods can make a different sound, only that it's marginal, and almost impossible to nail down scientifically, given the variances in wood of even the same type. There was a thorough list of variables given above, and that illustrates the murky waters we're operating in here; all sorts of claims can be made, but because they can't be empirically proven, they can't be disproven, either. There's no sense of that in the original info from Roger S, and he knows it, which is I guess what irks me... I had a maple-bodied, wenge-necked Warwick once (probably the furthest from a 'standard' set of woods that I've had), and it did make a very slightly different sound to the alder/ash-bodied, maple-necked ones I had, but amplified it was all about the pickups, EQ and placement. I've also had basses that in terms of wood content should have sounded the same, but didn't. I should add for full disclosure that I'm a Shuker fanboi, and yeah, when I've ordered basses I've specified particular woods, but that's been purely on a weight and/or looks basis. Jon and I stay diplomatically away from tonewood discussions... 🙂 There's a great Terry Pratchett line (referring to a bloke selling hot food of possibly dubious provenance) which goes 'To sell the sausage, you've got to sell the sizzle'

Not as esoteric on the bass front, but back in the late 80s I ordered a Yamaha BB3000A new via our geetard who worked in a big music shop in Manchester. There was a delay in delivery, because Yamaha UK didn't have any, and Yamaha EU only had two left, a black one and a white one. I wasn't massively bothered about the colour, but the delay was a customer had ordered one before me, and hadn't decided which colour he wanted, so they were holding both till he made up his mind. I was told it was AC (hence the preferential treatment), but kinda took it with a pinch of salt. Eventually it was resolved, and I got the white one. When it turned up the shipping case had 'Clayton U2' written on it...

Overhang...just enough to trigger my OCD, but then,as has been established previously, I'm as shallow as a puddle... 😕🙂 Bet it sounds glorious, tho...Too Much is never enough... 🙂

'Marketing flim flam'...it might be no worse, but it's certainly no better. Ceramic brakes, of course, actually do work better than their cheaper alternatives at high temperatures, that there's a scientific fact. Expensive custom paint jobs...look nice, if you like that sort of thing. And as for expensive perfume...I was bought some of that Johnny Depp's Sausage aftershave last Christmas, and I'm still waiting for my Mustang convertible... 😕 I doubt if Roger S said 'Look, it doesn't matter much what wood it's made from, but we make them really, really well, and they look lovely' his sales would go up...I'd still stand by the fact that yes, he has an expensive product to sell, but making extravagant claims which have no scientific basis* is chicanery and I'm calling it... 🙂 * I'm always willing to reconsider this should something actually be proven but, like James Randi's million dollars, I'm staying put till this happens.

Gail Ann Dorsey...there's more to being Bowie's bassist than just playing the notes...anyone who could make DB smile like he does at 2:31 is doing something very special indeed...

Hoicked up that high, it does look like one of the most uncomfortable basses I've ever seen...a full gig with your left hand stretched out at head height? Ouch... Still a fantastic bass tho...but I know I'd hardly ever gig it...