Muzz

Went into PMT Manchester on Satdy with high hopes of giving one of these a run out... "Sorry, we haven't got one. No firm date yet, but we'll drop you and email when one turns up..." 😕

1) Nope, not at all: only a tiny, tiny percentage of bass lines are recognisable by the 'audience', and an awful lot of songs could be played with root notes and no-one would notice 2) In pub rock bands, possibly, but in music in general? Nope. 3) Again, that completely depends on genre, gig and audience. I've seen a gig where the bass player had a total rig failure, the guitard cranked up the bottom end from his rig and they got away with it. I went to see Cadillac Three recently, and presumed because on their vids there's just drums, lap steel and guitar/vocals they'd have a bassist live. Nope. They were epic.

I managed a minute, nowt happened, gave up...it's a seven minute vid, I'm guessing he has time to hit everything twice each...

Like 99.9% of bass solos...

Doesn't take much on that place... 😕🙂 I think the definitive definition (eh?) is the patent application from Clarence L Fender from 1953 that says 'Guitar'...

Not really negative (OK, the example I gave was an extreme one, but to be fair, he was a d*ck (and a hammered d*ck at that)), if you gave me the choice I'd rather people complimented the band rather than me, because I know I'm an integral part of the band (we could blather on about degrees of this till the end of time) and its sound, so a compliment on that is also a compliment to me.

Noel Fraser's band(s). We were down there a couple of weeks ago for the jam hosted by The Lottery Winners* - Noel lives round the corner. I was in a band with Graham decades ago when he was mainly a drummer. * And man, what a talented bunch they are...

I like people to compliment the band, I like to see people enjoying themselves and having a dance. If I get buttonholed by someone talking bass, it makes me squirm a bit, although the last time it happened, it was a p*ssed punter complaining that I had the wrong neck on my Shukerbird. He came up to me three times: "That's neck's all wrong." "I like it." "But who would do that?" "John Entwistle. Leon Wilkeson*" "Who?" "Yep." "What?" * OK, OK, technically the same bass, but hey...

They want to hear a good band. If you're doing your job right, they will. That's all they want from a bass player, tho you'll very very rarely hear it expressed as such. If you want to be noticed individually, buy a Bootsy star bass, but brace for everyone calling it a guitar...

Wouldn't have been the Half Moon with Graham, would it? We were supposed to be doing that one, but singist/guitard had a late work commitment...it's good down there, tho we got bounced from a double-booking the other Sunday, so keep the landlord/lady, erm, focussed 😕🙂. We're back there on the 21st...

That's great news, thanks very much; well, given that I'm making do with the slightly warbly Zoom at the moment, I'm sure it'll be an improvement - it's only for one or two songs with the function band, but I've a side project with a band that's been reanimated after 29 years for one final gig next year, and the singist is struggling with the vocals, so we might have to drop the whole thing a tone to do it. Nothing Dave Coverdale doesn't do on a regular basis, obviously, but a good pitch shifter would make things much simpler 😀 Thanks again ...now to find a secondhand one... 😀

Fantastic, thanks

You can add quite a few Dingwalls to the 'stealth' category - Sheldon makes a 'P-Tone' pickup that's exactly that, a split-coil in a soapbar - see below. Oh, and my Shukerbird has a Dingwall P-Tone underneath the chrome pickup cover..kinda double-stealth 😁

My main Shuker has a pair of the 35P4s in it. Sounds fantastic.

Cheers for that - you couldn't give the pitch shift a quick spin, could you? Just to drop D, and see if it's warbly at all? That's be great - I'm actually looking at the Helix HX now, as it's kinda ballpark cost...

I'm glad people feel comfortable enough to admit it, though...very brave... 🙂

Soooo, I'm in need of a good pitch shifter to allow for some flexibility playing some songs in a drop key (probably only a tone or so), and the Zoom B3 I have, while pretty good at lots of things, is shall we say...wobbly at the old pitch shifting. I'm looking at a Line 6 HD500 or 500x (sadly I can't afford a Helix), and I wondered if anyone had experience of the Line 6 stuff when it comes to pitch shifting? If it's pretty good, it'll swing the move from the B3 to the HD500 for me.

That's almost exactly our setup (including the tent/yurt on several occasions this summer), except we only have one sub and one mic...and a smaller kit 😀

A self-heckle from our singist/guitard after a particularly inept go at the solo from Smells Like Teen Spirit: "Cheers. The more observant of you might have noticed I ran out of talent half way through the solo, there..." 🙂 And a slightly inadvertent inter-band one: We do a version of Volare, just for a laugh, and singist/guitard can't be arsed learning the lyrics for the first verse, which he plays on his own, so he just does the Fast Show 'Shminky pinky Boutros Boutros Ghali' thing where he makes up slightly-Italian-sounding gibberish. The first time he did it I leant across and said "Are you having a stroke?", which the mic picked up verrrry clearly... 😕😀

£208 new? Blimey Charlie, that's 'bung it in the bag Standby amp' money... 🙂

Oh my word...Dat Growl...and a good example of EQ-ing for the band sound: I love Billy's tone in the band, but solo'd it's very harsh.