ivansc

OK To amplify that, once you tune to A it is exactly like playing a guitar, but the open E chord is an A. You already know your way across the strings on a guitar so the rest is easy. E becomes A, A becomes D, D becomes G, etc. And all those OTHER chords just seem to fall under your hand. Once I figured all this out at home, I did a full gig with just the baritone and found it dead easy apart from the streeeetch! You are going to have a lot of fun with this. Best bet is to start with cowboy chords and go from there.

I have taught a lot of bass players but never had a lesson. Just scraped in under the wire with Music O level GCE and only ever needed top be a reader for one gig. And the keyboard player taught me to read after I admitted I had faked it at the audition. Still got the job though!" Unless you have years and years of experience playing lots of different styles/genres being a reader and knowing your theory is always going to be worth having though. I count myself lucky to have a really good ear and a good sense of harmonic structure, otherwise I would have been forced to learn to read properly and all that goes along with it very early in my "career" as a player. Happily by the time I got into the sort of gigs where you need the technical side, I could get away with my ear and my experiencve. Very few people get away with it for long enough to be able to do this. Do the work, guys.

Funny you should say that! I was given a Combo 300 back in 1983 by Peavey in Nashville. Within a few weeks the dust cap fell off the speaker and rather than go to peavey weith it, I had carlo cases stick a jbl one on in its place - same size. That and changing the transformer for a european one when I returned to europe is the only work ever done on that amp. Used it in a working pro band in the USA for 9 years, then 4 years in a band that did mostly outdoor gigs in the mountains of corsica, then back to the UK and trundling round the UK country circuit. Finally sold it to a bass pupil who needed an amp and had very little money in the late nineties. Much to my amazement, I spoke with him recently and it is still soldiering happily on in his metal band! PEAVEY - one thing they can do right is build strong bass amps.

Next time smile!

Best bang for the buck phone and internet out there. Love 'em. Been a fan since they were Onetel.

Tune it to A like I do - becomes a whole different instrument.

Apparently I am "easily recognised from afar," which I suspect means I play to hard and too loud.....

JoeEvans: WORD!

Just realised nobody name checked Bert Weedons book.

Leo`s magic formula, apparently. Same applies to the 6 string guitars as well.

[quote name='LewisK1975' timestamp='1475162421' post='3143626'] the only 10 people left in the pub are all filling the doorway, love that one. Having to say, excuse me / watch your backs please, every time you go back and fore. [/quote] You should buy my book "101 Creative ways to accidentally injure punters with a speaker cabinet"

Given an acoustic guitar and a book called "Curly Claytons 1001 chords for jazz guitar" for my 10th birthday. Spent about ten minutes with the book, which taught me to tune my guitar and not much else. Same year I got offered a gig playing banjo in a North London dixieland jazz band. Moved to Cambridge and couldn't find a gig playing Banjo. Bought an electric guitar and amp & started a band. Moved to bass when we recruited a better player than me and fell in love instantly. But I have been hovering between the two ever since. HOW did I learn to play? Listening to tunes and copying them. I got my first bass guitar in 1962/3 and there weren't that many bass guitars out there at the time. And certainly nobody to teach me in darkest Cambridge!

or just buy a warmoth tele baritone neck and bridge and use it as a short scale?

Two, actually. 1971 4001 stereo in 1971, £400 brand new. Great bass, but ended up swapping it for a Travis Bean because it ripped all the skin off my right forearm when I played it. The TB I swapped for a Fender Rhodes piano in Nashville some years later. Wish I still had both of them but not as much as I wish I had never sold my 1962 P bass.

Why are most of you gazing lovingly at the fretboard? The right side cant be ALL of you`s "good" side, surely?

(cue fireworks and popping champagne cork smiley) Yes folks, arrived this morning. Tested on my 5 string banjo and it works. So I suppose it really IS worth £2......

Just starting second year in Grammar school. Playing banjo in a trad jazz band. 1955. And we had more gigs that year than I have done in 2016! *sigh*

....and of course the (pretty high) likelihood that the band will in fact empty the place. Sadly there are an awful* lot of bands out there these days. * As in " a lot of them are awful" which does a great deal of harm to all the OTHER non-awful band's chances of getting a gig after them. There should be some sort of league system to give the landlords and punters alike a better idea of what to expect....

Looks like I win by an embarrassingly wide margin.... Jewish wedding reception in Edgware in late 1954. Mind you I don't have another gig now for about a month.

I bought an ASAT guitar from 1991 way back. Gigged it in preference to a telecaster on the UK country circuit for years. PLAYERS looked at it like it was some sort of mutant "copy" but it is still the best ever un-telecaster I have ever played. I think G&L shot themsleves in the foot by introducing the Tribute stuff before they had a really good established market and word-of-mouth on the USA instruments. Great build, all the thingas you didnt like about Fender fixed... whats not to like? Apart from the depreciation.I bought mine used off a guy in New York for $300! Immaculate, with the case.

[quote name='lowdown' timestamp='1474399867' post='3137762'] Both have a very big place in history. Reggae was pretty strong in clubs in this country before Bob Marley came along. Trojan records were trotting out Records in a big way, although it was all very commercial. Was it real hardcore ? Not really. But it certainly introduced folks to Reggae. [/quote] But there again all the musical styles coming out of Jamaica that developed into Reggae (ska blubeat highlife etc) were around all over in the UK long before Marley. Even whitey was doing the do. Check out The Migil 5 version of Mockingbird Hill... Mike Felix the drummer was a lovely guy & toured on his own playing piano and singing after their small bump of chart success. And STILL doing Mockingbird Hill! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHkVCn1RzBE

[quote name='TheButler' timestamp='1474587902' post='3139114'] That sounds great. I have seen tonnes of good stuff on the web about these. I can't sew, nor can anyone I know. However, I won't let that stop me from pursuing these avenues. [/quote] That is why they invented staplers and girlfriends... (MCP alert!!!) As far as damp is concerned, I have been chasing damp out of a house in France for about 10 years ioff and on. Built in 1601 on the down side of a hill which is 99% slate! chances are that at one time or another someone has replaced the original chalk-based pointing and plaster with cement-based equivalent, which doesnt let the walls breathe, which means the damp gets trapped in the walls, also sucked up from the ground. Sadly your suspended floor is unlikely to stop the damp. FWIW our french place is now pretty much damp free even in the worst of Breton winter storms! You might also want to check the state of the roof - we discovered a LOT of our damp problems on the ground floor were caused by a leak in the roof! Those old stone walls were generally TWO stone walls with an infill of either earth or mixeD rubble, so once any water gets inside the top of the wall it just sinks through the layers of infill to the bottom.

Cheapest and easiest way is to put Superchunk traps in all four corners. I made mine from packs of rockwool RW3 insulation. Bought a Value electric carving knife from Tesco for about a fiver and cut each piece of RW3 into triangles all the same size, about 2 ft across the long edge. Bought two pairs of cheap sheets and got my wife to sew up four triangular bags the right size. Stuffed them witrh RW3 triangles. Then using plywood triangular formers at the top I screwed cup hooks into the ceiling plasterboard and D-connectors to the plyewood. Bags hung with no real damage to the walls or ceiling and the difference is surprising. Cost me a total of about £50 including the sheets and the carving knife!

Does free count? My prototype Epiphone Explorer bass came FOC from Massman Drive waaay back when. Forgot to say I still have it & it gets gigged regularly when I am not playing my 62 reissue P bass in my rock and roll band. Here it is, recorded in 1988... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhrcSNYLTjw

Anyone been paying attention to Rob H's side projects? Interesting....