Muzz

Anyone who is even vaguely precious about note for note covers of songs might find it enlightening to search for live versions of You Can Call Me Al, to see the variations (and in a couple of cases I’m being generous with that word) of the bass break perpetrated by well-known professionals onstage with (and being paid by) Paul Simon. The total lack of the sky falling in for the audience (or in fact anybody, including Mr Simon) as a result is also noticeable 😁

Lawks, only just seen this...here you go...

With a firm grip and some serious mental fortitude, I'm down to four main gigging basses (two Shuker Horns, a Shukerbird and a Dingwall ABZ4), five 2nd Division basses (a BB1024x (going soon), an Aria ZZB (going soon), a Harley Benton P, a Michael Kelly acoustic and a bitsa P which is technically my sons), and two guitars (an Ovation acoustic and a 70s Arbiter Les Paul). That's this week, anyway... 😕😀

Completely OT, but our BL once went to Morecambe to pick up a set of lights from a George Formby Tribute who was retiring. All the way there he was rehearsing his opening line, and when the bloke answered the door he said "Morning. Turned out nice again." and did the Fozzy Face. Nothing. The bloke completely blanked him and said "You're here for the lights then?" 😕😀

I've found adding the cabs gives the DI/PA sound a bit more focus - they don't necessarily sound better in headphones or into a rig with its own cab(s), but they did through the PA

I’ve had Jon work on basses for me, and build one from scratch for me. We never got hung up on woods, other than for the aesthetics. I had a great half hour digging around with him in his wood store for the piece of wood for the new top on my bass, but that was it. He’s in the business of building basses, tho, which is all about individual customer happiness, so I’m sure if a customer was very keen on the subject of tonewoods, he’d be able to talk with them about it.

Oh, and it’s got a pull-passive, just in case it all gets too much 😁

The only thing I'll say about the cork-sniffing of a zillion types of wood is that luthiers make a premium product and it's hardly in their interest to say "We made this out of the most easily sourced and most easily worked wood we could find, tonally the wood isn't that important in the grand scheme of things.". Exotic woods look exotic and expensive, and we buy basses by sight as much as anything (more in my case). Active EQs need to be learnt, and once you've learnt what they do, then they can be set and forget, until you need adjustment. I had an ACG filter EQ once, and didn't like it because I never took the time to learn it. My fault entirely. Same with amps - some people like extensive EQs (GB Shuttle 12, anyone?), others are happy with a two-knob Bass and Treble. I like mids; mids are my friend, and the East U-Retro with sweepable mids even more so.

I have John East Retros in all four of my gigging basses, and I wouldn't go back to passives. In fact, I bought a very nice passive bass recently which is on its way out because I'm missing the control from the bass - the para mids specifically. I gig in a few different situations, some of which don't allow for easy EQ adjustments anywhere but the bass. I know how my basses sound, and how such a versatile and musical EQ as the Retros can make them sound, and it's much quicker and easier to shape the sound at that point in the chain, even with backline. I use a Helix, and even with carefully created presets, some venues and stages benefit from a little more (or even better, a little less) of something in the EQ, and I can do it all from the bass. I've used a lot of active EQs, and the East ones just work for me.

This - I've had them all, and it took me a while to stop being obsessed with the actual construction of the amp and focus on the sound. Oh, and the practicalities - I know for a fact I couldn't live with a 70lb box of bottles these days: I can't even live with 70lb of speaker cabs... 🙂

But what a festival lineup that would have made...

They look good, but this, on both counts...

I'm completely in the boutique world these days, and yeah, if a couple of grand(ish) is a lot of money to you (it certainly is to me), then buying new you need to know what you like, but you'll get something you won't get from anywhere else. If that's what you want. As has been pointed out, other folk don't worry about the money so much, so will have a punt. Don't forget people also simply change their minds - I've bought stuff that was exactly what I wanted, and a few months/weeks later I'd changed my mind... This isn't restricted to basses, or amps and cabs... I bought a new 4003 because I used to love my old 4001 years ago. I don't like them any more - they didn't change, I did*. Luckily, that one went back under GAK's purchasing policy, otherwise I'd have had to try and flog it without losing too much cash... * Although this wasn't helped by the bass in point being a dog...

At an audition (and I've done this), I'd just be saying (with a smile) "Well, that was...invigorating. Bit quick, though?" and the responses would tell me what I needed to know about the band. If the replies were along the lines of "Did you think so?" or "Well yeah, but we do that because..." then I'd be happy I could work with them, but if it was "No it wasn't" or "That's how we play it." then I'd know the lie of the land/band. And I've had both...you can guess which band I didn't follow up on... 🙂

Yup, that's worked for me before now...

It's very easy: that copy/paste thing is brilliant: take a copy of the preset 'X', add the Pitch Shifter, drop to required key, rename to 'X in D', repeat... 🙂

Given that the guitarist/singist has worked in the music industry his entire career, it was nice to be the one with the fastest solution...even better when we did the same thing back up to Eb, and it took me the same three seconds to select my Eb patch...the drummer, naturally, looked at me like I was a witch... 😁

Yeah, you just use add the Pitch Shifter into your effects chain, 100% effect, turned down/up to where you want. I've got all my presets duplicated in Eb, D and even C, just in case...

Mine came into its own yesterday, at a rehearsal of a band we've reformed after 30 years for a gig this year. Several of the songs proved, erm, challenging in the original key for the singist, and my set of pitch-shifted presets were a joy. How I grinned after someone said "Shall we give this a go in D?" and the guitarist and keyboard player started twiddling with controls while I just tapped my foot twice and said "In D? I'm good" 😀 Seriously, the tracking is seamless. 😍

Michael Anthony...(very) late of Van Halen (amongst others), lonnnngtime BB player...

I've tried enough amps to know that what it says on paper is only the vaguest guide to what the thing's like in the real world* - I've been surprisingly disappointed and surprisingly delighted in almost equal measure - so I'd have to actually own both (note, not 'try both' because that will invariably be in a music shop, and that's no use) to judge. They're certainly two of the very dearest Class D amps in the world today... * See 'the Walkabout is 'only' 300w...', etc...

This, all of it (apart from the EB Slinkys bit, which I'm not that keen on) 😁

It's a great idea, but the P is one of the most easily recognised, most distinctive bass sounds there is - what you need is something more anodyne, with less character, so that it really is the player which stands out. A P is like saying 'And we'll put everyone through an SVT, just on the point of breakup'...you'd never get past that. There were quite a few basses in that clip which sounded verrrry similar; one of them would be ideal...

It's all about how well the energy's been captured in the recording, overdubs or not: Blackfoot's Highway Song Live, for example, opens a storm...as does Maiden's Live After Death... There's a stonking YouTube vid of RATM from PinkPop in Holland about a million years ago (OK, 93) doing Killing In The Name, and for a mid-afternoon set in a field it's pretty extraordinary...

On listening to it again without watching it, yeah, the basses sound different, but not that different, and I'm still of the opinion they sound more like Scott than anything. And I'd challenge anyone to identify them in anything more than a very very rudimentary way without the visuals...in fact at least half of them could be the same bass with EQ, string and technique adjustments...