Dave Vader

I wear mirrored sunglasses sometimes, so i can ogle the girls without them noticing.... Does that count?

it looks like a Dave to me.....

[quote name='MiltyG565' timestamp='1366708884' post='2056147'] Wow, what a load of crap! [/quote] Well, apparently you taught him everything he knows, so that's your fault that is....

[quote name='bobbass4k' timestamp='1366660748' post='2055722'] 5 actually, but yea, they got Sergio Vega in and he's recorded the last 2 albums, although his creative contribution to the first one was apparently minimal, so that may actually explain Stephs switch to 8 strings, if they were jamming and writing without bass he might have wanted to round out the sound, although actually I saw a gear walkthrough where he said his switch to 7 strings was mainly for comfort, his hands are too big for 6's, so maybe not. [/quote] Oh, I know a man who can help him if his hands are too big for normal 6 string guitars..... [url="http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Superstrat-Wide-neck-48mm-nut-custom-for-big-hands-by-G4M-PCG-/190816488209?pt=UK_Musical_Instruments_Guitars_CV&hash=item2c6d8c8b11"]http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Superstrat-Wide-neck-48mm-nut-custom-for-big-hands-by-G4M-PCG-/190816488209?pt=UK_Musical_Instruments_Guitars_CV&hash=item2c6d8c8b11[/url] He is welcome.

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1366487756' post='2053221'] I [i]always [/i]take my own gear. Why spend God knows how much time and money getting the kit you want and then not use it? Rehearsal gear takes a right old battering in any case and is generally pants. [size=4]If you're happy to use a shonky rig at rehearsal, why did you buy decent gear?[/size] [/quote] I didn't, my rig is cheap and battered, but good enough because... [quote name='uncle psychosis' timestamp='1366552942' post='2053877'] once the guitarist and drummer get going one bass amp sounds much the same as another bass amp. Carting my own amp in would be a waste of time. [/quote] Being a lazy sod has served me well. Me and a guitar player I was working with at the weekend both agreed heartily that if you get the call for a gig and they say there's already an amp there you can use, it makes everything better. No lugging cabs and heads up stairs, walk in with a guitar on your back with the cables in the bag, and walk out the same. One trip, you can do it on a bus if you like. Get home, no dragging everything from the car into the living room, then from the living room round the back to the studio, just walk through drop the bass off. I live in the middle of nowhere BTW, there are no rehearsals or gigs that are less than a 45 minute drive from my house. Time saving is good. If it makes a thumpy low noise I will use it. I've seen many an evening shortened by an over-precious drummer/guitar player turning up a bit late with their own gear and wasting half an hour setting it up. Would have taken less time to plug in to the piece of crap amp there, say "ooh, that's a bit pony, shame" shrug and get on with playing the bloody songs. YMMV

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1366645794' post='2055385'] He's behind you! [/quote] no he isn't (please be aware of the missing oh)

[quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1366643259' post='2055344'] No it isn't [/quote] yes it is

I like the arguing, and the bickering and the fighting. it's why i come here. Possibly the only place on the net where after the dust has settled everyone shakes hands and readies themselves for round 2...

My dear chap, if playing songs is better than sex, then you are with the wrong woman. I would like to say my wife made me write that, cos it would be a very funny joke. However, she didn't (but she would have if I'd told her the question).

[quote name='peteb' timestamp='1366377076' post='2051763'] No, seriously - you would be a far better teacher than some others on this thread... [/quote] Heh. I have the patience of an elderly rottweiler being poked with a stick. Tried to teach my stepson guitar once, and it turns out if they don't get it first time, i can't understand why, and am at a loss to tell them how to get it right. I have no idea "how" you play, never had an instrumental lesson in my life, barring a month of piano when I was ickle. I just hit the things, applying the musical theory I vaguely remember from a month of piano lessons when I was 6, and GCSE music lessons, and noise comes out. People regularly give me money to do this, so I must have got something right.

[quote name='wateroftyne' timestamp='1366377274' post='2051770'] Yip - especially if someone is painfully out of tune. [/quote] Never done the mid-song tweak like Mr hendrix then? It really dos depend on the situation and the scale of the cock up. Twigman's band are playing their original material to devoted fans who know the songs inside out, so yeah, if you get it spectacularly wrong, they will not like it. They will also probably appreciate the chance to get to hear more of it if you play it again. Much the same as most of the gigs I see WOT getting. Those of us playing new stuff to people who have never heard it before, it is less of an issue, the punters would probably rather you get through the tune with the minimum of dicking about, in order to not look like fussy primadonnas. Same goes for the pub cover band/function band, punters are not bothered about a little cock up here and there. Mostly they are too pissed to notice. If you are stopping the song cos of a couple of bum notes, or a slight loss of rhythm that can be resolved within a bar or two, you're doing it wrong. Some people can rewire a buggered pedal board in 2 bars and come straight back in (same with dropped sticks and snapped strings) some can't. If you can then all well and good, and if you can't, then it's the sort of problem that audience's will let you stop for a bit for. I've done gigs where we haven't stopped after my amp started smoking and went pop (yanked the lead out, stuck it in the desk and carried on playing) and others where the singist has forgotten a verse and made everyone stop. Also, very painfully did a gig a few years ago where the guitar player came in in completely the wrong key, and stuck at it for a whole verse and chorus while trying to blame it on me. Nobody tried to stop it, I wish I had (by battering him with my bass). Horses f&%k horses...

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' timestamp='1366376121' post='2051746'] Actually they still contribute something, since there is a component of string motion travelling along the length of the string, the component frequencies are damped, reflected or allowed to pass through the nut, and the properties of the nut determine which. Think its a tensile wave or similar. If you are convinced that fretting eliminates this as an effect, you'll be able to fret a note and cut the string between your finger and nut and not perceive a change in tone. [url="http://www.edgeguitarservices.co.uk/rout_serv/nut_geom.htm"]http://www.edgeguita...rv/nut_geom.htm[/url] [/quote] That explains why that brass nut guitar I had sounded so marvellous. Cheers Oli.

Oh bugger, I was supposed to be building the web site, thanks for the reminder.....

[quote name='Roland Rock' timestamp='1366366265' post='2051458'] At last night's rehearsal, the guitarist said to the singer not to be afraid to 'rewind' if things go wrong at a gig, ie stop the song, and do it again properly. I was surprised, as I'm from the 'keep on going, don't draw attention to it'' school. What do you think the punters would prefer? [/quote] If you make a pigs bollock of the 1st 10 seconds, by all means, call a halt and start again, make a joke of it, but once you're in and going then keep going to the end, I've switched guitars mid verse after a string break and nobody noticed, except the bass player, who looked over and wondered how my strat turned into an SG. Drawing attention to your mistakes draws attention to them, people won't notice if you don't tell them.

[quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1366361618' post='2051385'] A good example, but that's a totally different construction, not just a marginal change in the qualities of the wood. Pop the same pup (quite like that!) on an upright and it will be different again as it has a great big booming box to affect the way the strings vibrate and create natural harmonics. Pop it onto a MM bass with an ash body, then one with an alder body and, well, with all else the same I'd be very surprised if I could hear any difference in sound due to the different wood. Use chipboard for your speaker cabinet, then the same conditions with solid oak or something, I'm sure I'll be more likely to hear a difference but this is rarely talked about. I may also be wrong about that as BF use the lightest of woods for their cabs which sound great! [/quote] Yep, pretty much agreeing, I was just pointing out that there is much more to it than strings and pickups, albeit with a ludicrous example. Ash and alder are just names, bits of wood are bits of wood and all are different, I've swapped necks and bodies that are essentially identical and yet sound completely different after the change.

[quote name='MiltyG565' timestamp='1366316256' post='2051084'] No. You've told us about the fretboard. There's no way the nut could be the same on every one. The setup was also bound to vary a little. And that's assuming you used the exact same strings over the life of the guitar, and amp, and lead. This isn't about the acoustic sound, it's about the amplified sound. [/quote] Almost Milty, except that the nut I made out of a bit of bone many years ago has never really died, and I swapped it straight over for about 3 of those necks. IME nuts have even less bearing on the sound (particularly amplified) than the wood, since as soon as you fret a note, it is completely out of the equation. And it was the amplified sound that changed, I've been using roto 10-52 for as long as I can remember, have mostly used the same cable I nicked off a stage in barnstaple 20 odd years ago, and before I got rid of it last year, the very same red knob fender twin of a similar age. And if you read what I said, I pointed out that it sounded different through bucketloads of distortion and fuzz. If it hadn't I wouldn't have had to change my amp and pedal settings to get my usual sound out of it. Not ganging up on you milty, just want you to clarify your position, as you seem to have accepted that different woods sound different, but then claim this has no bearing on the amplified sound of the instrument. Which is a first for this very long thread, even VGS before he went away never said that. To clarify, I am claiming that you cannot predict what a lump of wood will sound like by name alone, and that every bit of wood sounds different and affects even the amplified tone of an instrument. Which seems pretty reasonable. Pop a single coil pickup in a solid bodied electric and record the output from the pickup alone, everything on full, then do it again with the pickup in a hollow bodied guitar and do the same. They are different, very different, thus the wood is affecting the amplified sound. reasonable?

[quote name='peteb' timestamp='1366315333' post='2051066'] You really should give lessons - obviously you were born to be a top bass teacher...! [/quote] ha ha! And now you know why I don't teach...

[quote name='yann' timestamp='1366311329' post='2050984'] +1 db... [/quote] Genius Also, my old strat is now on it's 5th neck, every time I have swapped necks the sound has changed completely, it started out with an old hofner neck, that was seriously old and hard. Also had a tele shaped headstock, and sounded super jangly and harsh, like a tele. Then it had a softer neck with a rosewood fretboard, and sounded mellower, fatter and altogether bassier. After that it got a maple neck with a seperate maple board on it, and was somewhere between the two. Next up came another ancient thing from a teisco, which was back like that old hofner neck, though not the same. Finally it now sports a 90s japanese Squire one piece maple neck, which sounds different from all these again. I'm not saying the wood type made any difference at all, but all those different bits of wood were attached to the same body and pickups and sounded utterly different, even through a bucketload of distortion and fuzz. Scientific enough?

[quote name='seashell' timestamp='1366309813' post='2050952'] I too would love to learn Freebird! I know it's a bit of a cliche for some of our friends on here who are sick to death of playing it in coverd bands. But it is such a classic I would love to do it some day. I have been playing for 2 years now, so maybe I'm halfway there! I have looked at the sheet music, but it's so bloody long I (temporarily) gave up. This thread has inspired me to get it out and have another bash at it! 2015, here I come! [/quote] G F# E, F C D for ages, then just F C D for ages do that a couple of times then G Bb C for even longer. Try and throw some runs in when you get bored, and you will. You're welcome.

[quote name='MiltyG565' timestamp='1366299664' post='2050758'] I've never come across an electric instrument tthatt sounds good acoustically though. They quite often sound good plugged in though. [/quote] You need to play my mates old Fender P bass. By golly it sounds lovely unplugged. Actually most of my electrics sound nice unplugged as well, which is probably why they're the ones i've kept. Teriffyingly my Sue Ryder Telecaster (all of 60 quid brand new) sounds beautiful unplugged, and I am still hunting down the right price appropriate pickups to amplify it properly.

[quote name='MiltyG565' timestamp='1366294890' post='2050662'] That is why the only parts that matter in the sound you hear are the strings and electronics. I might not have your experience, Yann, but I do know what I hear. [/quote] And the construction, bridge and nut design, etc. etc. Otherwise the 4 different guitars I have put my favourite set of old Dimarzio pickups in would all have sounded the same. Which they didn't. I am agreeing with you on the whole Milty, just you seem to have gone too far the other way. Oli is right (he very often is)

Oh if I ever take my solo project out live again i might need this.....

Interestingly I like rather cheap boxy sounds, which helps. Hence my fondness for my 1956 Hofner Congress (not a lovely guitar, just old) I also have a hankering for an old Fender Villager or Kingman, just to see if they sound as horrid as they should.

it's the hum cancelling that narks me off, if you remove the hum, you notice it's there, if it stays, you can tune it out. Plus I tried the wire reversing, it doesn't work, the pickup loses nearly all output. I may have spent a lot of money on my bulldogs, but for me they were worth every penny. Strat sounds like I always wanted it to. yay custom winders

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' timestamp='1366251227' post='2050186'] There are a lot of very good sounding cheap pickups. The main thing I look out for is being potted so they aren't microphonic. That gives the baseline, means instead of an £8 its about a £12 pickup, mostly in guitars because I'm happy with my basses and do much more guitar work. The cheap pickup makers, like GFS, Tonerider and Warman all have nice stuff for not much money. [/quote] Yeah, but they won't let me have an in phase middle pickup for my strats, so i had to go expensive custom bulldogs (which are lovely btw) can't be doing with that pansy out of phase middle pickup mush. ironically i sold some lovely old hohner standards that were in phase and sounded great because I thought they were cheap crap. I was young, and stupid.