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Brony Car posted:Which Sansamp do you have? My Bass Driver DI is pretty old, but it's always been quiet. Does it help if you turn on that -40dB pad? http://www.tech21nyc.com/products/sansamp/bassdriverdi.html This one, fairly new. I'm pretty sure it's the amp itself that's pretty noisy - I don't exactly have scads of bass amps kicking around to be 100% sure the pedal isn't contributing though - and nothing really helps. I've had it plugged in at multiple venues, practice spaces, and even this guy's personal studio. DEUCE SLUICE posted:Probably should stay away from the Class-D Ampeg stuff. Horrible reliability across the board. I do want a P-Bass and that blue looks nice. I've even got a QP sitting in a knockoff I could put it in. Are there any good aftermarket replacement bass humbuckers with a chrome cover? A more reasonable purchase for me would be upgrading some electronics in my Pawn Shop Mustang. I could cut a new pickguard but I like the unmolested look of it. http://tvjones.com/pickups-2/bass-pickups/thunder-tron/ Huh these look cool at least. Revvik fucked around with this message at 11:19 on Jun 5, 2014 |
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Jun 5, 2014 10:57
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Brony Car posted:Did you try getting new pots? That could be a cheap solution to the lack of taper in your volume knobs. I haven't felt the need to, I'm really happy with the sounds I get out of it (bridge especially), but some folks at TalkBass reported they're 500K pots and switching to 250K makes everything nice and responsive without really changing the sound. I guess I'll keep checking Craigslist for bass amps, luckily there's a ton of stuff in my area. I'm wary of buying a gigging amp without being able to crank it a bit, though. I assume people don't want potential buyers coming into their house and pissing off their neighbors all day.
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Jun 5, 2014 16:42
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I'm listening to the new Black Keys album and every song so far has some kind of interesting bass part. Some of them even sound like they were written on bass. Pretty cool.
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Jun 5, 2014 17:21
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TriggerHappy posted:I haven't felt the need to, I'm really happy with the sounds I get out of it (bridge especially), but some folks at TalkBass reported they're 500K pots and switching to 250K makes everything nice and responsive without really changing the sound. Never hurts to ask  any reasonable musician would understand completely why you'd want to crank it.
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Jun 6, 2014 00:51
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ask to crank it for 30 seconds sometimes people can hide partially burnt voice coils by playing at bedroom levels
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Jun 6, 2014 02:50
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If I was selling an amp and someone didn't ask to hear it at higher volume I would offer. It's one of those things that needs to be tested.
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Jun 6, 2014 18:42
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MORE MUSIC! I recorded another heavy metal song to try and get a more interesting bassline than my previous one (which was effectively A-phrygian over a low A pedal-note), and I managed to come up with something EVEN MORE PLAIN. I would really appreciate help here! Here's the song in (more or less) a single take, warts and all: https://soundcloud.com/bhiku/helen-draft-1 The verse is a simple E-minor blues riff, the chorus is A, E, F, Bb and the bridge is A, Ab or E, Eb depending (since I'm using diads on the guitar and roots on the bass). I was able to get a few fifths in there, but the fast changing power chords meant the bassline really was stuck mirroring those rapidfire movements. Is this the box a metal bassist would live in? Can anyone suggest specific changes?
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Jun 6, 2014 23:06
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You don't need to mirror the chord changes. Mirror them for more powerful sections, and make your own melodies for other parts. I do this by listening to the guitar, and imagining what solos/melody lines I hear over them- I then make that become the bass line.
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Jun 7, 2014 05:55
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I understand what you're saying, but I'm not sure how i would apply that to either of the two songs I've posted - I know it's a big ask, but could you give me an example? While working on something simple or more rock oriented it's easy (like Bootsy says: keep it on the one), but I'm just not clear here. Reviewing some of the songs I know from this genre they all seem to match the same formula: root note mirror, turnarounds, "bass solo"
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Jun 7, 2014 13:46
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Is the string spacing on Fender VIs conducive to playing without a pick?
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Jun 7, 2014 15:28
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Southern Heel posted:I understand what you're saying, but I'm not sure how i would apply that to either of the two songs I've posted - I know it's a big ask, but could you give me an example? While working on something simple or more rock oriented it's easy (like Bootsy says: keep it on the one), but I'm just not clear here. Reviewing some of the songs I know from this genre they all seem to match the same formula: root note mirror, turnarounds, "bass solo" Doubling the guitar part in the verse makes sense to me, since the riff forms the basic rhythm for the part. For the chorus and bridge, though, there's plenty of room for the bass to be playing walking riffs or even counterpoint lines underneath the chord changes, rather than just chugging on the roots. I'm not very good at explaining this stuff, but I might be able to record an example if you can post a track without bass.
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Jun 7, 2014 21:11
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My first fretless bass. This is going to be a lot of fun to play:
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Jun 8, 2014 00:09
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juche mane posted:Is the string spacing on Fender VIs conducive to playing without a pick? If you can play very tightly and without a lot of unnecessary movement, yes. Still feels way more like playing a guitar than a bass.
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Jun 8, 2014 04:29
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So you're saying my technique will IMPROVE? Sold.
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Jun 8, 2014 19:12
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juche mane posted:So you're saying my technique will IMPROVE? Sold. This is all based on me spending about 15 minutes with one in a store but yes you will become a bass god and fingerfuck your way to fame in no time. No refunds. They're fun instruments. I almost walked out with it but it had some flaws that I didn't want to deal with even if they cut me a discount. Usual music store failing to keep their guitars in nice shape nonsense, nothing about the guitar as is.
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Jun 9, 2014 05:33
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There's a place by me that's trying to get rid of theirs. $260 IIRC
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Jun 9, 2014 06:09
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juche mane posted:Is the string spacing on Fender VIs conducive to playing without a pick? Fingering the VI is more like tickling rather than plucking. The neck width is the same as a plain old 4 string, so the space between strings is miniscule; your fingers have to press on the string rather than pull at them. Dynamic range is poo poo. I prefer fingers to pick anyhow and you'll get used to it. But there are other things about the VI that will gently caress you off, so give it a spin and see if you like it.
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Jun 10, 2014 04:14
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If you've ever played a guitar without a pick then it's a similar experience and you'll be fine but you'll also know that the technique is definitely different
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Jun 10, 2014 15:30
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This is where we post cool deals we got, right? Traynor YGA-1 Signature Model for 350 Canuck Bux. Now I can be part of the Cool Tubes Club. Edit: It's actually a YGA-1 Signature Model and not a YGA-1A since a YGA-1A is a combo amp, from what I am reading. Sorry, gear nerds. EvilChameleon fucked around with this message at 06:24 on Jun 12, 2014 |
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Jun 11, 2014 19:04
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js86 posted:My first fretless bass. This is going to be a lot of fun to play: Just picked up my first fretless as well! My intonation is surprisingly good, but the fret markers on the top of the neck are confusing as hell - weird placement. 
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Jun 12, 2014 23:06
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Fret markers on a fret less are positioned where the fret would be not in between like on a fretted bass.
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Jun 13, 2014 00:47
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Thumposaurus posted:Fret markers on a fret less are positioned where the fret would be not in between like on a fretted bass. That's what's throwing me. My Warwick has no dots on the fretboard, but the dots are between the frets on the top of the neck. I've only had it a day, so I'm sure I'll adjust. Having fun playing some vintage Pino Palladino lines.
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Jun 13, 2014 00:51
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So if anyone other than me cares, Rondo seems to keep getting new bass ukulele prototypes that are disappearing within a day or so, including electrics. Maybe this is better for the terrible instruments thread, but look at this thing! (Pic is a link)
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Jun 13, 2014 01:26
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Count Freebasie posted:That's what's throwing me. My Warwick has no dots on the fretboard, but the dots are between the frets on the top of the neck. You could sell me your Warwick and solve your problem.
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Jun 13, 2014 01:32
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EvilChameleon posted:You could sell me your Warwick and solve your problem. It's a great bass with an unbelievable sound (it's from 2000, back when their quality was top-notch), but I don't play it much since it's pretty unwieldy being a 6-string and all. I love the range, especially melodies on the C-string, but that bitch weighs a ton and slapping on it is pretty difficult for me since the strings are fairly close together and I end up hitting multiple strings at once. And really, most of what I play now doesn't require six strings. That was back when I was playing more jazz and it came in useful. My main axe is a 1994 4-string Stingray with a maple neck that's getting a setup done on it at the moment. By far, my favorite of the basses I own. And no, you can't have my Warwick. Count Freebasie fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Jun 13, 2014 |
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Jun 13, 2014 04:39
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I am now the proud owner of a brand new Ibanez GSR200B. I would post a picture, but I don't have a good camera, and everyone in this thread knows what a gsr200 looks like. It's my first bass, and so far all I'm doing is tooling around in rocksmith with it, but I love it. Obviously it's a massive improvement over "emulated bass" on my guitar for rocksmith. I've been looking at studybass website and will probably grab a copy of bass fitness because of this thread's recommendations.
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Jun 13, 2014 04:51
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EvilChameleon posted:This is where we post cool deals we got, right? The guitarist in my old band had a traynor of the same vintage. Such a good sounding amp when you pushed it a little, with both electric bass or guitar. $350 is a good pride. All you need now is more speaker, much more speaker.
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Jun 13, 2014 13:07
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Doomy posted:The guitarist in my old band had a traynor of the same vintage. Such a good sounding amp when you pushed it a little, with both electric bass or guitar. $350 is a good pride. All you need now is more speaker, much more speaker. Well, just waiting for another good deal to come around and/or have money for such a thing. No one told me this poo poo costs money.
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Jun 13, 2014 18:08
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Doomy posted:The guitarist in my old band had a traynor of the same vintage. Such a good sounding amp when you pushed it a little, with both electric bass or guitar. $350 is a good pride. All you need now is more speaker, much more speaker. dude gets it
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Jun 13, 2014 18:34
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Ugh, I miss my bass. Found a 57 AVRI P to replace my 62. I like the neck way better, but it needed some minor work on the higher frets so I played it for 3 days and now it's been at my repair guys' place for 4 weeks  . They do good work but it always takes so long. I think it's because they're all also custom builders, so if they ever get ahead of their estimated lead time (which is usually 4-5 weeks) they work on their own stuff rather than keeping up on the repairs. At least I'm comfortable with electronics work and setups not involving files.
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Jun 13, 2014 19:01
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EvilChameleon posted:Well, just waiting for another good deal to come around and/or have money for such a thing. No one told me this poo poo costs money. The waiting game is a long one but in the end rewarding (also deafening)
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Jun 13, 2014 21:08
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Snak posted:I am now the proud owner of a brand new Ibanez GSR200B. I would post a picture, but I don't have a good camera, and everyone in this thread knows what a gsr200 looks like. It's my first bass, and so far all I'm doing is tooling around in rocksmith with it, but I love it. Obviously it's a massive improvement over "emulated bass" on my guitar for rocksmith. I've been looking at studybass website and will probably grab a copy of bass fitness because of this thread's recommendations. Don't know if you're still looking, but I can't recommend this highly enough. While it has great fingering exercises, it's teaching you scales and chord structure without it feeling like "studying" scales and chords. It's 52 "lessons" - one per week that increase in difficulty. By the end, you'll end up with Jaco finger-style chops and Marcus Miller slapping if you practice the exercises regularly and properly. I've been playing bass for 20 years and I still break this out every once in a while when I'm shedding. Comes with a CD, as well, to play along to. Worth the investment. http://www.amazon.com/Bass-Aerobics-Jon-Liebman-ebook/dp/B00E3BGCCC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1402752645&sr=8-1&keywords=bass+aerobics Count Freebasie fucked around with this message at 14:37 on Jun 14, 2014 |
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Jun 14, 2014 14:35
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RetardedRobots posted:Emphasis is mine. It isn't. Declan MacManus posted:If you've ever played a guitar without a pick then it's a similar experience and you'll be fine but you'll also know that the technique is definitely different I enjoy screwing around on them for sure, but if I can't play it like a real bass and I have to dramatically alter my technique then it's probably not a good option. Thanks!
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Jun 14, 2014 15:05
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Count Freebasie posted:Don't know if you're still looking, but I can't recommend this highly enough. While it has great fingering exercises, it's teaching you scales and chord structure without it feeling like "studying" scales and chords. It's 52 "lessons" - one per week that increase in difficulty. By the end, you'll end up with Jaco finger-style chops and Marcus Miller slapping if you practice the exercises regularly and properly. I've been playing bass for 20 years and I still break this out every once in a while when I'm shedding. Snak was talking about Bass Fitness not Bass Aerobics, but I agree with you Aerobics is a very very good chop builder. Nowadays I'll take some ideas from Bass Fitness and warm up with them, but Bass Aerobics I could use and learn from it everyday. It gives you many examples for different styles, gives musicality to your scale studying and puts it all right under your fingertips without any delay. Basically what I love about it is that I can open this book and (after warming up) get straight to challenging my abilities - no process required, play what you decipher = progress. If you are tired when you come home from work (or just lazy) and still want to play and improve in a short amount of time before life gets in the way again, that's the book for you. I'm not sure if Bass Fitness is worth the money on the other hand. I took away that it was essentially a sequence that you repeat indefinitely in some form or another, at a different tempo and using different strings. If you learn that sequence and figure out how to create exercises with it for "advanced fitness", you might just save 20$ and some shelf space. Here's the sequence by the way. These are your four fretting fingers playing OFPF, you're supposed to play the sequence on each string down and up (EADG then GDAE) at 80 bpm as eighth notes and increase bpm by about 5 when you manage to play it cleanly. 1234 2341 3412 4123 1432 2143 3214 4321 1423 2314 3241 4132 Notice how it simply changes direction or skips fingers, and how it always starts with finger 1, then 2... it's easy to remember so why even open the book. The challenge comes from speeding up the tempo or playing on different strings. Originally you're supposed to play the whole sequence on the E string, then A, etc. The other chapters develop this by having you play the first note on E and the other 3 notes on A, then the first note on E and the other 3 notes on D, and same for G. Etc. The concept is further developped using other string alterations but I wonder if the exercices descriptions are worth the paper they're printed on. The book gives you a chart and tablature for each bit of change, when you only need to learn the sequence and apply a new stretch with it, like, "second and third notes stay on the first string, first and fourth notes are going up and down the neck as usual - apply with all the sequence" I've been using it more as an endurance tool myself. I'm playing the whole sequence in one go over and over again, only stopping to raise the tempo by 5 from 80 to about 150 when I'm done playing 4132. That's a solid 10 minutes of constant finger work and a great warm up. I guess there are health recommendations for beginners, like start slowly and stop/stretch if it hurts. I know my overuse of this book and my bad wrist position pretty much gave me CTS for a while.
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Jun 15, 2014 09:40
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Thanks for the recommendations. I ordered Bass Fitness, and Bass Aerobics looks really good too, so I'll keep it in mind for my next purchase.
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Jun 15, 2014 18:04
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I've got a question. I've been playing for a few months now, and I'm having fun and making steady improvement, but one thing that continues to bother me is how tired my fretting hand gets, especially when playing up around the C scale. It's okay when I'm just practicing because I can stop in between scales or w/e and rest a few seconds before moving on, but when playing songs it definitely becomes a problem. I've checked and rechecked my form and I swear I'm doing it "right", and I cannot possible get my wrist any straighter. I figure it's probably just a matter of lack of fitness, but I'm kind of paranoid about pushing it because everyone talks about how easy it is to get injuries. Do I need to stop being such a little baby and man up?
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Jun 15, 2014 20:39
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Sarrisan posted:I've got a question. I've been playing for a few months now, and I'm having fun and making steady improvement, but one thing that continues to bother me is how tired my fretting hand gets, especially when playing up around the C scale. It's okay when I'm just practicing because I can stop in between scales or w/e and rest a few seconds before moving on, but when playing songs it definitely becomes a problem. I've checked and rechecked my form and I swear I'm doing it "right", and I cannot possible get my wrist any straighter. I figure it's probably just a matter of lack of fitness, but I'm kind of paranoid about pushing it because everyone talks about how easy it is to get injuries. Do I need to stop being such a little baby and man up? If you're getting a ton of hand fatigue in your fretting hand, your action may be too high.
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Jun 15, 2014 20:49
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Scarf posted:If you're getting a ton of hand fatigue in your fretting hand, your action may be too high. It is a really lovely pawnshop guitar. The dude at the music store said he had to get creative to get most of the buzz out of it. I don't have money for a new bass right now
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Jun 15, 2014 21:11
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Sarrisan posted:It is a really lovely pawnshop guitar. The dude at the music store said he had to get creative to get most of the buzz out of it. Take it to someone who can do a setup on it and get it so the action isn't too high if that's the problem. A "setup" is basically a tune-up. Any decent music store will have a guy who does setups either in-house or who they refer out to. It's cheaper than a new bass and will at least get it playable for you. Also, if you're new, getting fingers used to OFPF is tough and can make your hand sore. Do warmups, and if it starts hurting, take a break.
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Jun 16, 2014 00:25
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Count Freebasie posted:Take it to someone who can do a setup on it and get it so the action isn't too high if that's the problem. A "setup" is basically a tune-up. Any decent music store will have a guy who does setups either in-house or who they refer out to. It's cheaper than a new bass and will at least get it playable for you. I gave the local music shop 50 bucks to do a tune-up already, which got it to this state. We have a custom guitar shop nearby whose process seems a lot more intensive (they hold it for a week as opposed to the music shop which did in the time I browsed around) for only 60 dollars. I live in Nevada, though, so I'm kind of leery about dropping a lot of money into a guitar which may be hosed due to the dryness in the air. My teacher said it had good tone, though, for a Squier.
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Jun 16, 2014 01:51
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