Chris2112

Further to my earlier post, I had wanted to write futher but ran out of time! I think a lot of modern day DT's problems can be traced back to the very reason that Portnoy was forced out - DT is now industrialised and they can't stop the production process! Part of the reasoning given to Portnoy by the band was that, if he were to take even a year out for his own projects, the DT show would stop and that would mean all their staff would be without pay. They are undoubtedly a huge band and probably have a huge road crew who depend on them for work, along with all the other auxiliary staff for media, marketing etc etc. The flipside of that is that, it seems clear to me, DT have locked themselves into a pattern that they feel unable to break - album/tour/album/tour ad infinitum. I don't doubt that even most fans would not deny that the quality of their releases had tailed off years ago (even before Portnoy left). That is the inevitable result of a band that feels compelled to keep releasing albums to a schedule rather than when their creative whims take them. They have consistently released albums every two or three years for 30 years now, with the massive tours that go with that. Portnoy and Petrucci managed to cram in a couple of side projects and tours here and there too! It is telling to me that John Petrucci's new solo album is the best thing he has played on in years and he sounds really fresh and revitalised there. Maybe part of it is playing with Portnoy again, having a world-class bassist like Dave LaRue to play alongside or just being set free from the standardised DT format, but the resulting album speaks for itself, it is pretty damn good!

You're echoing much of the criticism I've read of DT in the last decade (or longer). Myung is an excellent player when it comes to just doubling passages with Petrucci or thumping on the root. I sadly feel as though the last times his lines were really creative were on 'Awake', though even there he could have flexed a bit more and taken an equal share of the sonic space. Portnoy is an amazing drummer and although the circumstances of him leaving DT are a shame, he has certainly made the most of his time away and has played in a load of settings that he never would have done if he'd stayed on the DT train. Sheehan and Portnoy are an amazing team, and Billy can be relied up to produce absolutely incredible tone and great basslines. There is a cover of 'La Villa Strangiato' that he did with Portnoy on Spotify, it is amazing. Mangini is a good drummer but lacks something that Portnoy has. Rudess has been an absolute curse for the band as far as I'm concerned. His technical facility is not in question but he brought keys right to the fore in a really awkward way. I hate his tones and his need to constantly overplay. Sherinian and Moore both did a better job with far less prominence, IMO. LaBrie is just so far over the hill it's not funny. His voice has never been great but it really tailed off after the turn of the millenium. Some critics suggest her lost his touch even earlier, following him getting food poisoning in 1994. Modern day DT is just painful to watch mainly because of LaBrie, who frequently seems to stagger round the stage like a drunk. His vocals are awful; he just shouts and pushes where previously the notes came easily to him and his timing is off, as if he is struggling to hear the band or find his cue. It must be hard to be a vocalist in a band that is all about technical musicianship because your gift will fade faster than those of the instrumentalists, but he should have stepped aside IMO.

Who is she? Forgive me if I'm being rude, reverse searching the image on Google doesn't bring up a match.

Yes, when Gibson brought them back they re-released them with really cool looking green backlit LEDs. They looked really good but the quality issues quickly made themselves known and the whole thing was a flop. I used to have a Trace Elliot 4x10" with a GP7SM head. It had a great tone and was incredibly loud. It weighed an absolute tonne. However, I put tone before weight and I'm still sceptical of these mini amps.

Best is definitely 1990 Manne Custom 6. Worst is some Elite Stadium strings - they were really tinny and bright sounding with no mids or bottom, and felt cheap! A shame as I had previously used them years ago and found them to be pretty good, but I won't bother with them again. Here is the Manne anyway, with my Pedulla Pentabuzz. I have really fallen in love with fretless again this year. I was nearly stupid enough to sell my Pedulla last Christmas, what was I thinking?

Whilst I don't want to be drawn into speculation over a matter such as the negotiations that may take place over this if the bass is located, given the exceptional circumstances I would be inclined to believe that the poor bloke's widow won't be looking to scalp the current owner. Furthermore, Alan may be minded to provide a gentle discount in this case that may soften the cost of the new bass. With all that being said, the discussions that may yet take place will be a private matter. Personally, I wouldn't feel bad about turning down a lowball offer but I may well sell for what I had paid, given the circumstances. If I could break even and bring a little comfort to a grieving family at this time, I would.

It's probably a stock issue. I guess they looked at the order and realised they'd still be in profit even with the costs of shipping the second package, so decided not to cancel the order.

I find the BBC as a whole to be a national disgrace, though I am an ardent R4 listener and have been for years, even though I disagree with a lot of the stuff they broadcast there, I find it to be like reading the newspaper you least agree with - good for perspective! They're always in trouble over the licence fee and questions around value for money, which is particularly pertinent given the absolutely ludicrous salaries paid to idiots like Lineker. The argument for the licence fee to be abolished is stronger than ever but if they did turn to commercial funding the sparse quantity of decent programming that they do would nosedive. One only has to look at the utter garbage on ITV and Channel 4 to see that the pursuit of advertising and commercial interest is damaging to broadcasting. The BBC are already utterly riddled with left-leaning political bias, imagine heaping commercial bias on top of that mess! On the subject of this particularly story, it is indeed a shabby affair but one must consider that this behaviour has taken place inside a small corner of the BBC. As mentioned previously, different shows are put together by different teams with their own individual budget and in that budget, they look to squeeze and scrimp where they can. The tactic of stiffing musicians is an obvious one to go with as they're so easily replaced. If the band complains about being asked to play for free, they can just be replaced with some piped-in stock music! Even the essential staff get squeezed, and I've heard it all before from a friend of mine who was a freelance cameraman for the BBC and ITV in the 80's and 90's. He eventually left the join the police, probably because the working environment was more pleasant! Whilst we would undoubtedly consider tactics like asking the band to play for free (or asking them to sell tickets to a certain point to release their fee) are sleazy, the musicians are partly to blame for this. Not all musicians work to the same standard. I used to work in the conference and banqueting section of a hotel and some of the bands we had in were utterly dreadful and hardly deserving of payment. For every decent band of highly skilled musicians who warm up with jazz fusion standards, there will be another twenty or thirty bad wedding bands and pub-bangers who have songs like 'Mustang Sally' and rubbish by the likes of Bruno Mars on their setlist. When the person footing the bill has to pay out for a bad performance, they are less inclined to do so again in future. Were the musicians asking for payment all uniformly excellent, they would be in a much stronger position. On that note, has anyone here ever been asked to sell tickets for their own gig to ensure that they could meet what the venue-owner would consider to be an acceptable take?

Well, the post indicates that the bloke's widow intends to buy it back, or at least make an offer. If the offer is not to your liking, you could always decline to sell it. If I were the owner and the offer was fair, I would take the cash and maybe get on the phone to ACG to commission a replacement.

They do have cool lights on the front.

I will say that after listening to some 'Talking Bass' today, I think Mark Smith gets a good tone out of his, though I preferred the sound of his Ibanez SR with the P/J pickups. He is a fantastic player, his videos are great.

And on that note, they aren't true carbon fibre necks either, they're actually mahogany with layers of carbon fibre 'skin' vacuum formed on with phenolic drawn through under pressure to bond the layers together. I think they look amazing and I'd love to try one out as I'm a real enthusiast for all things graphite, though I do wonder if they would be different with a fully carbon fibre neck fitted. I'd be interested in hearing from the guys at SIMS if they had considered going fully CF or not.

I haven't watched this yet but I will check it out at some point. I do feel like now though, everyone and his dog has been on the bandwagon for making their own bass discussion show for youtube. I don't know if I can fit another one into my schedule!

Yep, those strings are awesome too. Must have been a good batch of wood, and certainly a high point for them.

They are really nice looking basses (though I don't like the new control knob design they have just come out with). What I would say is, as fabulous as they might look, I would avoid using that as the sole reason to make a purchase of that magnitude. I think Marcus Bell is still running their social media channel and I know that they usually have a few stock models to use as demonstrators, so maybe you could get a go on one of those once the lockdown is finished? Another thing, they make quite a big deal of their proprietary Super Quad pickups, which do feature a clever switching system to allow a multitude of different coil and output options.This is well worth reading up on because they'll form a large part of the character of the finished bass. What I would say is that I think they're a really smart idea but the tones I've heard from them haven't blown me away like I had expected, albeit I've never had a chance to play one myself.

Sandberg have always had quite a bright, modern sound, even their P and J shaped models. The pickup voicings, preamp settings and tone pots all scream bright and modern to me. I like them, in general they're excellent instruments. I suspect that ultimately, you may be chasing a sound that just isn't in your bass as it stands. You can try a number of things like playing closer to the neck, using string mutes, rolling off the treble etc etc but unless that characteristic low-mid honk is there, it won't even really nail the tradtional P sound or the softer, woodier P sounds you seem to want.

Although in this case, I think we can safely assume it the sound is neither undeniably ash or alder, or the question would not be asked! To further muddy those waters, I've played ash basses that sounded quite muted and 'soft' and alder basses that were very bright and lively. If there were a Venn diagram showing the tonal characteristics the area of overlap would be quite large.

These things sound amazing. A fretted and fretless pair of Alain Caron models would be ideal for me.

'Polite' is one word I've heard used to describe the Overwater tone. That tends to be disparaging, with 'pure' or 'uncorrupted' being the more positive alternative!

That headstock is practically in bits. I would be dubious as to whether or not that could be repaired and I'm sure if it could, the price or effort involved would be well beyond what the bass is worth. I'm surprised the vendor hasn't just written that one off.

@Hellzero Let us know when the new bass comes. I'd be interested to know what you're getting. Stefano did say that he had had messages off another couple of guys in Europe interested in the Manne. Being an unlined fretless six, I did immediately wonder if you were one of those who had been looking at it.

Cheers Ped, you're a top dude!

Wishing I could remove the black background from the text, but it seems to be something that has copied over from Talkbass where I made the original post for the sake of convenience, since it's so much easier to post images on basschat! Regarding Di Piazza, yes I know, inuut thought he would be a notable name recognised by our forum users. As for the basses, I am looking forward to really putting them through their paces soon. Having both a Pedulla and the Manne is a dream, I just don't think one fretless is enough!

Evening all, I had just wanted to write a quick piece on a new acquisition of mine, something that may be of interest to some of you because there isn't really a great deal about Manne basses on the internet, especially these older models. There is so little, in fact, that I don't even know what this model was called when it was first made, though I will probably write to the company to find out more about it. In any event, Manne are still around today and probably doing a better trade now than they ever have done. They remain very popular in their native Italy and have a very strong following there. Notably, the virtuoso Dominic Di Piazza used to play one of these. They've been in production since the late 80's with the original luthier still in charge today. I spotted this one for sale on Reverb at about 3AM on a night shift a couple of weeks ago and made contact with the owner, a nice Italian guy who was selling the instrument after owning it for 30 years! Yes, I was dealing with the original owner who remarked that it had cost him a 'fortune' when new and it had obviously been well looked after. After a few days of exchanging messages to work out the logistics of a sale, a deal was made and the bass was promptly shipped from Italy, flying out from Milan and making it's way to me in Northumberland, England. I've liked the look of Manne basses for years but I've never seen one in person, never mind held one. However, I am fairly adaptable and must say it is very comfortable to play. The body and neck are maple, with some sort of burled wood veneer on the headstock. The fretboard is unlined ebony with dot markers in line with where the fret would be. It's a substantial instrument, I have not weighed it but it feels about on par with an old maple Yamaha TRB. The neck is very fast and quite thick front-to-back. In comparison to my Pedulla Pentabuzz, which has a very flat neck which is thin front-to-back, the Manne is considerably heftier but no less comfortable for it. The electronics have been replaced with an EMG setup with active/passing switching. So far, I just run it flat choosing active or passive as I fancy it. The output must be buffered because there is no drop off in output between the two, though the tone in noticeably altered. I haven't yet restrung it with new strings, but I can say that present it has an insane amount of grunt and 'mwah'. The sound is full of body, rich and with a very tactile attack. It really responds to plucking hand placement and technique. The setup gives such low, clean action that makes notes 'bloom' and sustain for ages, just the ticket for carefully considered glissando and sliding a few cents up or down into a note. One thing that tech-heads will note is the tuning system, which is one of the smartest I have seen. The headstock has string-posts that the end of of the string is wound through. The post is controlled by a very small, smoothly geared knob mounted on the back of the headstock. The strings are threaded through the post and locked in at the headstock and then tuned from the bridge. Again, the tuning action is so smooth and accurate. I find this unique system to be rerally smartly made and it works perfectly. It seems that this tuning system faded out in the early 90's, I will try and find out why that was. I expect it was pretty expensive to make compared to off the shelf parts. In any event, this bass is a real find for me. I must thank the original owner for keeping it in such good condition. I am now going to woodshed some UZEB and Alain Caron material...

The UK courier business seems to have fallen in the race to the bottom. A decade ago, they all seemed fairly competent and reliable, now they seem less than useless. That said, I have just had a bass flown in from Milan after initially being posted at Parma. Arrived quickly without delay or damage. MBE in Italy seem decent enough!