Musicians check in here. If you play, tell us about it!

[bassnut]

Gawd...another bass player....
Why so many of us here?
Looks like you've got one of the fanned fret models.
I know Sheldon from way back when he first started. A very innovative, courageous and all-round naturally nice guy. Makes his own pickups.
I tried one once at a NAMM convention. I was surprised at how natural it was to play but I wasn't comfortable with it visually looking down at the fretboard. Gave me a feeling of vertigo.
I draw too much of my inspiration from the old school which means, for me, vintage or vintage type instruments regardless of their limitations.

For me a 5-string bass is just a four-string with a thumb rest. I'm hopeless....

 

[DaveP]

Del Boy Said: What do you play through Dave ? I have the Fender 12 with my gt6 in front. I also have two H&H amps. An IC100, and a Performer. Those two are unplayable at home though. On volume one they shake the house.
I still live the dream for half hour maybe an hour every night. Swapped the stage for a spare room and i'm having a gas.

I play through a Peavey Vypyr Tube 60. It's a microprocessor front end with a 12AX7/dual 6L6 power amp with a 12" speaker. The little box with the dual antennas is a Nady UHF wireless system. It's sitting on a Musicians Friend stand that they sell for $19.95 (China made, but sturdy)

 

[DaveP]

Bass player here. My main bass is a Dingwall Super-J P/J active/passive 4 string. My back up is a homemade p-bass I made out of prices parts. For what it is, I'm surprised how well it plays and how good it sounds.

My bass face...

Sent via cellular communication device...

One of the nice things about Fenders is that you can actually replace the bolt-on neck pretty easily. It's a major job with a glued neck. The bolt-on neck makes Fender a user customizable guitar and a natural for a do it yourself build. I played my Strat for a couple of decades before changing over to the Les Paul as my main guitar. Mine has the micro tilt neck adjustment that everyone seems to hate. To me, as long as you tighten the 3 neck screws and lock it down, you can gyrate it all you want and no shift occurs. The little micro tilt adjustment moves a wedge in and out and allows perfect angle adjustment.

 

[Del Boy]

Hey fazed..that is coool. Lol at the bass face...every bassist has one. Your bass face isn't too bad. One band i was in our bass players "Face" was akin to a cod that had just had some very bad news...lol. He was very good though.

I have a theory about the bass "face". Bassists have to listen sooo hard to hear their sound in the mix. If they don't have a monitor then they sort of slip into a world of their own concentrating hard to hear themselves in the "mix".

 

[Fazed]

Del,

With that band, we used aviom in ear monitors. I could control my mix from the stage. Hearing myself was never a problem. The "face" I think just happens because when I play, I'm in my happy place. Better than any drug!


Sent via cellular communication device...

 

[Del Boy]

Dave - thats cool. Plenty of scope for making some fine sounds there.

Are you gigging ?
What sort of music do you like to play ?.
I think my "12" is solid state first stage. I forget what tubes are in it. But i know the 6v6 and 12ax7's that are in yours are well recognised as top tubes.
Good price for that amp stand. They are very handy for projecting the sound. Better than having it on the floor.

 

[Del Boy]

Fazed - ear monitors must be sooo handy. If you were to get feedback though......ouch.

BTW what sort of stuff you playing ?

 

[DaveP]

Dave - thats cool. Plenty of scope for making some fine sounds there.

Are you gigging ?
What sort of music do you like to play ?.
I think my "12" is solid state first stage. I forget what tubes are in it. But i know the 6v6 and 12ax7's that are in yours are well recognised as top tubes.
Good price for that amp stand. They are very handy for projecting the sound. Better than having it on the floor.

I gigged steadily from the mid 60s to the mid 80s. I hung it up for 5 years and went back to finish college at night while working days. Sometime in the early 90s a few of the guys in church and I put together a band to do an occasional feature thing on Sunday morning. About 5 years ago, My wife and I changed to a larger church and the bass player (from the old group) and I found some like minds who wanted to form a praise band. We do the 9:00 contemporary service on Sunday Mornings and play an outside private gig here and there. Most of the music we do is based on classic rock and 90's rock with Christian lyrics. It's lots of fun and no late night lugging gear around. We just walk in, tune up, run over the music, and take a break until 9:00am. We play 4 to 6 songs in a typical service.

My favorite is classic rock. I like modern blues based rock. I listen to Pink Floyd, Govt Mule, Allman Brothers, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and most of what you hear on classic rock radio. During warmup while we are waiting for the others to get there, we often jam a few classic free form rock riffs to limber up. It's amazing how many the people get there early to hear us jam before a service! A couple of guys told me we need to more of that type stuff in our actual performance. It must have gotten to the music director because he told us he'd like for us to do that during the meet and greet phase at the beginning of the service. It kind of freaked me out, but that's what we did last Sunday. We jammed a 12 bar blues in the spirit of Stevie Ray. Last Monday night at rehearsal he told us to make that a regular thing. Ok, I'm good with that!

The amp stand is a good addition. It puts the sound up where you can sense the tone (the backs of my knees can't hear). It also helps to balance the volume since you don't crank to hear yourself. You'd think it would be cheap for $19.99 but it is made of sturdy square tube metal with quick-lock adjustments. I've been using the one in the picture for 5 years and it's still like new. I had to cut some square tube extensions to slip over the back supports and lengthen them for my open back amp.

 

[DaveP]

Del,

With that band, we used aviom in ear monitors. I could control my mix from the stage. Hearing myself was never a problem. The "face" I think just happens because when I play, I'm in my happy place. Better than any drug!


Sent via cellular communication device...

We hope to get Avioms one day. I understand its about $400 per user to start off, plus the main controller. The key to success with those is that you get your own 4 track mixer to adjust your own sound and can pick the mix of tracks you get in your individual control board through the sends you ask for. You tell the sound guy what you want in your mix and he sends you the tracks you want to hear, is that right? From there, you can adjust the drive on each track to mix them to your liking?

 

[Del Boy]

Good for you Dave,
sounds like you're having a great time there.

I do miss the jamming and rocking out with other players. Something spiritual about it.

Whilst i quit playing in bands at about the right time. I do occasionally miss it. On them occasions i miss it a lot.

 

[DaveP]

Good for you Dave,
sounds like you're having a great time there.

I do miss the jamming and rocking out with other players. Something spiritual about it.

Whilst i quit playing in bands at about the right time. I do occasionally miss it. On them occasions i miss it a lot.

In most towns there's a group of musicians who used to play and still get together on Sunday afternoons for a jam. If you ask around at the music stores, someone will know where that happens. It's worth a try and might be a chance to keep your chops up.

 

[bassnut]

If we ever get an ECF band together I would very much like to play with DaveP.
Let me support bass-wise.
Stand back, y'all.....
(figure of speech)

 

[Safira]

Oh if you ever get an ECF jam session together I wanna at least come and listen.

 

[DaveP]

If there was a way one of use could make a multitrack recording and pass it from person to person through email, adding tracks as it moves, that would be great. We'd need a click track to keep us all on beat. That could be muted to play back.

This looks promising. It's a forum post about just what I mentioned, except they provide all the software and you log in and play your part (or sing) ...
Free online multitrack recorder - Gear Gab Forum - Home Recording Studio Help

Direct link to the site is here: Digital Musician

EDIT: After looking at the site, you get a 128kps connection for free and people are saying that it sounds good while you are recording and tinny and terrible once you play back. You can get a fast connection with the PRO membership. I didn't pursue how much that costs. Lots of the post in their forums are in a Scandinavian language. If the site is in northern Europe, latency might be a real issue.

 

[bassthumper]

Of all of the places on this planet, for guitar players, Nashville might just as well be Mecca....
Has been, is now and forever shall be...God willing and the river don't rise much past the last time it flooded.
A bass player in Nashville has no good reason to not be busy unless perhaps he doesn't know his own business to begin with.

Learn to support. Learn to support. Learn to support......
Support whoever is being featured in a song be it guitar player, singer, drummer, brass, keys...whatever.
Do whatever you can do to help them sound good. They also represent you as band members.
I suggest learning to support and work up from there.
...or maybe you're the next Bass God that the world has been waiting for.
You might just be right. Please don't let me stand in your way with my old-school philosophy.

I guess you're right. I don't know anything. I don't know my own business, and it's not like I don't LIVE IN NASHVILLE.

I didn't say I was the next bass god!
What with bassists trying to one up eachother all of the time?

Don't get too cocky- I've jammed with MANY old timers and I'm willing to bet I could slap circles around ya!

How about it- an ECF bass showdown?

Now for MY words of advice- You'll know you're getting somewhere whenever you know exactly how much you SUCK at your instrument. I know I have things to work on. Do you?
Here lemme stand back

 

[bassnut]

Sorry, bassthumper.
I didn't mean to come off that way. My bad.
It's how I express myself and without the actual face-to-face, it doesn't always work.
I would have to assume a certain amount of trust on your part that I haven't earned yet.
I extend this apology all around to anybody I might have offended. I enjoy, respect and appreciate all who post here with almost no exceptions. (no exceptions in this thread)
Please accept my apology.

 

[bassthumper]

I've always played a heavy guitar. I played my 79 Ash Strat for a couple of decades before I changed to the Les Paul. The Strat and the LP are fairly close in weight. I like sustain! For a couple of years in the 70s, I played a Gibson thinline SG. It was about an inch thick and had less sustain than some acoustics. The body just had no mass and that kills sustain.

Bassthumper, it's a shame that we couldn't have a virtual online jam. Wouldn't that be interesting ... ? Lag and latency would absolutely kill the tightness of the tempo.

I would LOVE to do that! Who knows- maybe that would be some cool software- something for a music forum- some sort of download so that everyone could be "tied into the same room/groove and could play off of one another!"
latency would be an issue that's for sure...
would be neat tho! Maybe I could learn a few things from you and bassnut! ha ha

 

[bassthumper]

Sorry, bassthumper.
I didn't mean to come off that way. My bad.
It's how I express myself and without the actual face-to-face, it doesn't always work.
I extend this apology all around to anybody I might have offended. I enjoy, respect and appreciate all who post here with almost no exceptions.
Please accept my apology.

its okay I'm sorry too. we're bass brothers. let's keep it that way!
its hard sometimes when talking about your passion with strangers online!

 

[bassnut]

its okay I'm sorry too. we're bass brothers. let's keep it that way!
its hard sometimes when talking about your passion with strangers online!

Yes. That and the realization that I'm an old guy who feels a need to pass on something, however simple, to the youngers.
It's the classic "I used to walk ten miles through the snow barefoot and hungry to get to school only to find out that the teacher called in sick...." routine.

 

[DaveP]

its okay I'm sorry too. we're bass brothers. let's keep it that way!
its hard sometimes when talking about your passion with strangers online!

BassThumper, Bassnut is one of the good guys. I think he was just offering some advice from his experience with little knowledge of your skills or experience. I agree that the best of posts can sometimes be interpreted differently from the intended tone. Get to know Bassnut and you'll see what I mean. He likes to trade punches sometimes, but it's all in a friendly sort of way.