EMG456

Hi Tomas - nothing I know about - it was a long time ago and even the 4 track cassette portastudios had not yet been invented! On a quick dig around the web though, I have his name wrong - he is John Manby. I had heard he had moved to London but he now lives in Australia and apparently is still playing. The band I remember him from were called Croppa and he and the singer from that band, Tommy Jackson seem to be facebook buddies. Isn't t'internet an amazing thing?! When were you in Glasgow?

Honestly, you look away for 5 minutes and then... Rare enough in the standard black / 4 string variety but a white fiver? And a bargain to boot- well done Paul S - that'll be a cracker!

85/86 I was writing songs with a guy who was an amazing singer but had difficulties with various addictions which had more or less brick-walled a promising career for him. We were taken under the wing of record producer who was well known up here in Scotland at the time and he bankrolled a proper full scale studio demo. He then hawked the tapes around various record companies and Polydor was the keenest. So he and I went down to London to meet with the record company. In the office, the A&R guy was going crazy about the songs - "This stuff is perfect for the States", "Fantastic Songs", "Great Singing and playing" etc. etc. As we left the meeting with hugely positive vibes, we held it together until the lift arrived and as soon as the doors closed, my producer friend was punching the air with delight. He had a lot of experience in the business and reckoned that a lucrative deal was virtually in the bag. Two days later, Polydor call him up. "It's XXX XXXXXX singing, isn't it?" was the question. Unfortunately, my singer's reputation for drug use and related unreliability cast a large shadow and the idea was dropped instantaneously. Fast forward about a year and I'm earning a crust playing for various cabaret acts. One is a Drifters tribute act and the promoter/ manager has the habit of bringing to the UK former stars of Motown or whatever who's careers have slid somewhat from the heady days of the 60s. One of these is Ben E King. As we're a Drifters band, we are chosen to back Ben E. for a tour. It all kicks off inauspiciously in the usual way for those things at that time with a smashed windscreen in the tour van in the middle of the night driving down from Scotland to the Isle of Wight- the first date of the tour is the end of season party for the staff at some holiday camp. That wild weekend was a story in itself but the tour went on at equally salubrious venues for a while till one day Ben got a call during the soundcheck. No mobiles - he was called away to the telephone. When he reappears, he says that apparently, due to the recent release of the Rob Reiner movie Stand by Me, his song of the same name which we open the set with every night has just gone to No 1 in the Uk charts! Suddenly, we're part of a 60s revival tour and are playing to packed houses in big venues that you've seen on tour schedules by the big bands - Liverpool Empire, Colston Halls, Bristol, Edinburgh Playhouse etc. Talk about 15 minutes of fame? Then Ben went back to the States and that was that. These two episodes in their own ways are my nearest misses but what the heck - I've now been playing the bass and gigging regularly since 1973 and I'm still going, still learning and still enjoying it!

in fairness, I haven't really done any real mixing gigs for years and my skills and habits in that department were honed long before the birth of the internet and even a modest proliferation of "Music Technology" college courses but, yeah... 2.

Haha - you and me too then... the MC pickups to me are just what the doctor ordered - super defined, full range, clean clear and punchy and the perfect tone source for Alan's top flight preamp. he will tell you though, that they're not for everyone.

Double post - ignore!

Haha- very good but my Steinberger L2 has already proven its prowess in that dept!

Not everyone. I would be decidedly unhappy to be turning up to any situation with only a Fender P bass.

Let me think back... 30th Wal 5 40th Alembic 6 50th Chapman Stick 60th (coming up) ACG

Just bought a Phil Jones Bass Double 4 combo from Dan. Very easy to deal with. As described, well packaged and promptly delivered - you can't ask for more! Thanks Dan.

Yeah, I didn't really exaggerate (much)

I have an ACG EQ02 (only 1 low pass filter shared between both pickups) in my Status bass and If you like filter pre's then you'll like the EQ01. As you surmise, it does all the Wal/ Alembic stuff but with much greater flexibility. Both low pass filters have such a range that they can even be used a treble boosts as well as going down to virtually sub bass depths. If you're anything like me, you will need to spend some time with it if you're going to be switching loads of tones around in a live setting but it doesn't take long. For recording, it's excellent - you can dial in just about any sort of sound you imagine. In one of the bands I play with, we do house rehearsals and I play through a wee "busker" combo which is the most horrible, boxy sounding amp I've used for decades. The EQ02 equipped Status is the only bass I have which can completely cancel out all the bad aspects of that amp and provide a beautiful, full, rich and crisp bass sound with no help from external eq's etc.

OK- I'll bite. Back in the late 70s when I was young and foolish, I had joined a band run by a Keyboard player. It was generally a soft rock band, playing Steely Dan, early Toto... that kind of stuff. It was all a bit airy-fairy and I don't think we even made it to a gig so I decided to move on. Couple of years later, I get a call from said keyboard player to say they had a last minute gig on the Saturday night and their bass player couldn't make it - was I available? Well yes, as it happened I was and could they pick me up in the van? So on Saturday afternoon, they turn up and we load my gear in and set off. Keyboard guy, guitarist who is driving in the front and me and the drummer in the back. This drummer was a good player and a nice guy but he always insisted on wearing an ancient afghan coat which stank to the high heavens. The gig is apparently in Dunfermline which in those days was probably about an hour and a half's drive away. I made it without asphyxiating and we arrive outside the venue which turns out to be the Kinema ballroom - a big cavern of a hall which big name acts have been known to play in. I start to get that sinking feeling. As I wheel my Acoustic 301 along the corridor leading to backstage, I am passing posters advertising past and coming attractions - it seems there's something on every Saturday night- The Skids, Elvis Costello and the Attractions, The Rezillos etc. We set up on the massive stage - I can't remember what the PA was - something that came just after WEM columns no doubt - but whatever it was, it was totally inadequate to fill the space. We are trying to perform this sort of American tinged easy listening rock to a crowd who seem to have turned up to pogo, throw beer and spit at one another. It was never going to happen. We got paid off by the manager at half time and scurried out with our tails between our legs! I didn't ever play with those guys again.

This is a strange thread... DrT, you are correct in what you say about the general reach of Graham Central Station versus EWF or indeed the Brothers Johnson with their Quincy Jones connections. Up here in Glasgow, the talk was really all about Louis Johnson. There was a great player called (I think) John Mambie who gigged with a funk/soul outfit up here who was very influential with the local players simply because none of us had ever actually *seen* that type of playing being performed before. the impact was similar to going to see Weather Report at the time and watching Jaco casually strolling out to the front of the stage to play the opening bars of Birdland in false harmonics on the bass - everybody had assumed it was played by Zavinul on an ARP synth! "What?! That's a bass??" Mambie's main man was Louis Johnson so that's who we investigated. Also, here at that time, most of us who were playing came to it through rock music, not funk or soul. There were many more would be rock/pop bands than funk/soul. Bass players of the day who were interested in taking the bass out of it's traditional comfort zone had already been influenced by guys like Chris Squire, John Entwhistle etc. and had dumped the flatwound strings and extended the high frequencies to cut through the mix better. Stanley Clark, Alphonso Johnson, Jaco Pastorius were all heavy influencers as well and using similar clear, bright sounds So the funk crept in through the Jazz/Rock/Fusion stuff and from the rock side through the likes of Steely Dan with the Chuck Rainey/ Bernard Purdie/ Steve Gadd rhythm section and the likes of Little Feat etc. It's a big melting pot!

Well yes, I’ve actually got four of them and my original L2, which I’ve owned from new for over 33 years is still my “go to” bass for any situation where I need a bass that will easily fit into any musical setting. The Steinberger got the reputation as an 80s fashion icon just because it looked so distinctive but for me it was always about function over form and for utter functionality, the Steinberger has never been beaten. The reason no one makes them is that Ned Steinberger sold the rights to the design to Gibson, who unfortunately shut up shop on Steinberger in around 1998. Also, although the design addressed many of the drawbacks of traditional instruments, it was never optimised for mass production, so the manufacture cost of each instrument was high and production could not be scaled up to reduce costs. These were always going to be expensive instruments. I don’t think Ned and his partners realised that the appearance of a guitar was of such importance to the guitarists and bassists who would be buying them- “One day all guitars will be made like this” was one of their ad slogans- but it turned out that the market was so enfatuated with vintage designs, no amount of improved functionality would ultimately outweigh the lack of a headstock or traditional body for the mass market. So we are where we are. There will never be any new Steinbergers built again but they are durable and long lasting so if you want one, there are usually a few available for sale at any given time as long as you aren’t looking for a rare configuration. One thing is certain- nothing that came before or since sounds or feels like a Steinberger- they are truly unique.

This may or may not be stating the obvious but I’ll go ahead anyway. if you would like to have the sound created by “digging in” but from a lighter touch, you’ll need to set up your bass a bit differently, perhaps with a lower action and also maybe with lighter strings. Then you can get all the clank and rattle you want with less physical effort but of course if you like to vary your tone by playing lighter sometimes, you’ll need to modulate that down as well.

This is so well executed and very musical - thanks for posting.

Second that about Synergy. Local engineer got in touch directly with PJB in the states to try to sort out issue with my 10year old Briefcase and more or less hit a brick wall. I contacted Alan Greensall at Synergy. Sent the amp down to them and was sorted within 3 days. Superb service. Again, I only paid shipping one way.

Just looked at that FretTrax video with Victor Wooten - very impressive. A lot of ideas taken from the Industrial Radio system like using a different notes to send patch changes and left hand only triggering. The big innovation here is that it doesn't need split frets - there must be some sort of analysis going on to determine which string was fretted for each note, including multiples. Also noted from their website that it does not do open strings - only fretted. It's a long time since I hooked my Wal up to the midi interface but I'm pretty sure it does open strings as well as fretted.

That’s correct- there’s no latency in a pickup. The latency arises when you try to use the signal from that pickup, analyse it for volume and frequency and then send an appropriate midi note message for it. A GK pickup/ Vbass setup does no midi conversion so no latency but also no actual midi. The Industrial Radio/ Peavey/ Wal setup uses frets split for each string with resistor chains all the way up the fingerboard for note sensing. So again, no audio analysis is performed for pitch sensing- just for note volume information so very low latency and consistent across the entire fingerboard but does actually send midi.

Bought a Zoom effects unit from Loz. Great to deal with and super rapid delivery. Highly recommended!