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for fucks sake posted:This is something you often see six-string players doing, as it's one of the only ways to cover enough of the strings. Never seen someone do it on a four string though! It's not THAT uncommon. I exclusively play 4-string and I've been floating pretty much since I picked up a bass 15 or so years ago.
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Jan 25, 2016 19:06
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Fierce Brosnan posted:I love my flats. I bought them for the un-twangy sound, but it turns out that the biggest benefit is actually the lack of finger noise. Plus they feel amazing. I recently put some flats on my Warwick 5 string, I love them so far. I didn't realise they were higher tension than roundwounds though, so I spent half the night loving about with the truss rod trying to get the strings to not be 2 inches off the fretboard 
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Jan 26, 2016 17:10
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I just finished watching the Jaco documentary by Robert Trujillo. It's seriously good and I definitely recommend everyone watch it. Also I've been fighting the urge to get a fretless because I'm poo poo and I wouldn't be able to play it but drat if I don't want one even more now.
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Feb 7, 2016 03:30
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Yeah, it's a very good documentary; although it's a sad part of Jaco's life, I had to laugh where he drunkenly made fun of Chuck Mangione in an interview "...AND HE WEARS A HAT!" Also Joe Zawinul, though very talented, was a total dick. It wouldn't have done him any harm to say something nice about Jaco's Word Of Mouth album. Here's a pic of Jaco getting Ray Brown to play one of his basses:  I have two fretless basses - the newer one, I decided to use a "tenor bass" tuning - I took the first four strings off of a six-string set and so now it's tuned A D G C. It's kind of interesting! Finally, "Teen Town" seems to be the go-to line of Jaco's to play, but I just got Weather Report's "Mr Gone" and "Punk Jazz" has some amazing runs in it.
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Feb 7, 2016 03:50
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The story Steve Bailey at the end told had me laughing. Jaco playing the drum yelling LETS PLAY TEEN TOWN! ...I don't know Teen Town. You don't know Teen Town?? Oh god...I'm about to get my rear end whipped cause I don't know Teen Town 
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Feb 7, 2016 04:33
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So after 10+ years of playing guitar with bass as an always #2 side thing I think I've realized that bass is my natural instrument. Not my best or most comfortable at the moment, but the instrument that I can grab and always find music with. It's a weird feeling but it's definitely hitting me. Anyone had that happen? How did you all find your way to being primarily a bass player?
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Feb 7, 2016 08:40
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Kilometers Davis posted:So after 10+ years of playing guitar with bass as an always #2 side thing I think I've realized that bass is my natural instrument. Not my best or most comfortable at the moment, but the instrument that I can grab and always find music with. It's a weird feeling but it's definitely hitting me. Anyone had that happen? How did you all find your way to being primarily a bass player? I suppose I started out with guitar, but also got a bass pretty early in the game because a friend thought we could start a band together that way. Eventually, though, I went for electric guitar and started playing lead in a band; but, I'd always get frustrated with the bassist for not being able to keep time or for messing up notes or his tone or what have you. I also always felt like I was a crap guitarist because I was greener than everyone else and couldn't show off those drat metal licks. Eventually, I got in a fight with the bassist and quit the band. The next band I played in, they ended up asking if I still played bass because they didn't really need my guitar and it just wasn't fitting anyway. So, I lied and said yes and eventually pieced together a rig. Everything just went a lot smoother that way. I had gotten a good bass for free off a cousin, made up a show-worthy rig out of Craigslist garbage for cheap and when I learned how to play and sing we were sort of an underground sensation. When that thing lost steam, the band I had quit came back to me and asked if I would like to play bass for them. Since then, I've been playing and singing with them and two other bands. I've actually been giving a lot of consideration to going out on my own one day and playing my own material, but I feel like I should stay on bass.
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Feb 7, 2016 11:56
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Kilometers Davis posted:So after 10+ years of playing guitar with bass as an always #2 side thing I think I've realized that bass is my natural instrument. Not my best or most comfortable at the moment, but the instrument that I can grab and always find music with. It's a weird feeling but it's definitely hitting me. Anyone had that happen? How did you all find your way to being primarily a bass player? I've been playing guitar for 12ish years, and bass for about as long, but always playing guitar in bands. I went on tour doing merch for a band for about a month, and about 2 months later they were going out and needed a guitar player to fill in. So of course I went, I had heard their songs for a month, so playing them was easy. Go on the road for a month, come back, they kick their bass player out and need a bass player, "Hey man, I can play bass too!". Sell motorcycle, buy bass cab, bass, amp, go on the road again. And again, and again, and again. I've played 250+ shows doing bass, and to be honest, its fun as poo poo. I love playing loud as gently caress, so having a massive speaker cabinet and amp is great. The hardest part is changing your mindset from melody/ornamentation to foundation. I still play guitar, and love that, but there is something about shaking the roof off a place that is just magic. Proof, last week the plaster was falling off the ceiling all over the merch table. Not all damage pictured. 
Pokey Araya fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Feb 13, 2016 |
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Feb 13, 2016 11:46
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Kilometers Davis posted:So after 10+ years of playing guitar with bass as an always #2 side thing I think I've realized that bass is my natural instrument. Not my best or most comfortable at the moment, but the instrument that I can grab and always find music with. It's a weird feeling but it's definitely hitting me. Anyone had that happen? How did you all find your way to being primarily a bass player? Messed around on guitar for a few years without getting anywhere, then switched to bass when a friend's band had an opening. It seems to be a pretty common story. I played a really weird rig at a jam tonight: some 250 watt Hartke head through a Sunn 4x12. Surprisingly, it sounded pretty nice, and the graphic EQ was useful. I guess I'll have to eat any Hartke hate I may have uttered in the past. I'm also really pleased with the Fairfield Barbershop. It seems to work well with just about any rig.
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Feb 14, 2016 09:56
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nothing wrong with hartkes, really. solid workhorse amps.
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Feb 14, 2016 13:55
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I took my bass in to get strings put on, switching from rounds to flats. The store recommended setting up the bass again since I'm changing string type. Is it a bad idea to postpone the setup for a few weeks and see how it plays? Am I harming the bass by cheaping out for a bit and seeing how necessary a setup would be?
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Feb 14, 2016 20:13
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Nope. not gonna harm it at all. Unless there's a giant tension difference. Like, I mean, a giant one that's ridiculously huge
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Feb 14, 2016 20:15
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Dyna Soar posted:nothing wrong with hartkes, really. solid workhorse amps. Yeah I have a hartke Ha3500, it's a nice budget head, gets real loud and the EQ is nice and responsive
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Feb 15, 2016 17:35
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So my uncle was clearing his instruments out (He has like 10+ guitars, 5+ basses) and calls me, asked me if I ever wanted to play bass. As a guitarist I said sure, it's an instrument I've always wanted to play and breaking away from always using a pick might be fun. "Whats your address again?" "123 fake street, why?" "I have this epiphone thunderbird bass, still unopened in the box. Well, I did, but the courier just took off with it." I'll be joining the ranks of the low end soon, *freebassing joke*.
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Feb 15, 2016 19:30
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Thunderbirds are pretty cool, enjoy.
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Feb 15, 2016 23:59
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What's everyone's preferred setup for live performance ITT? I'm going to be playing more bass starting soon, and I've always just recorded direct, and since the band owns its own PA with plenty of headroom I don't see any reason to change that in a live environment personally. Right now I'm looking at maybe a pedal-profile preamp/driver. What do your rigs look like?
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Feb 16, 2016 00:30
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Unless you've got a decent monitoring solution sorted out that's going to suck a lot. Giant amps 4 lyfe 
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Feb 16, 2016 00:36
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Octatonic posted:What's everyone's preferred setup for live performance ITT? I'm going to be playing more bass starting soon, and I've always just recorded direct, and since the band owns its own PA with plenty of headroom I don't see any reason to change that in a live environment personally. Right now I'm looking at maybe a pedal-profile preamp/driver. What do your rigs look like? For one band, I plug direct with a ukulele bass. It's really nice because I'm not throwing in hundreds of pounds of crap into my car. It's actually getting to the point where I'm considering taking a bus or a train or something for those shows, save the wear and tear. I also have one of those Cube RX's from Roland, which has a nice flat EQ output and is fun to bring around to busk before or after shows. Never needed the output from it on stage, though; my singer actually prefers me going direct. For the other, which is more rock n' roll inclined, I play a Warwick Corvette through an SWR into a Low Down Sound custom halfstack. I had upgraded from an old Carvin 2x15 which I had from my surf rock playing days, which has saved a load on my back. The weight is about the same, but the caster wheels are a lifesaver. A band that I open for/follow frequently has a very accomplished and well-off bassist who has an Ampeg 8x10 and a sizable pedalboard, which I covet greatly. However, he also has the transportation for such things, and my band is still very much a straightforward meat-and-potatoes rock band, while this band is more mod ska and dub reggae influenced. Every so often I think about incorporating my VT Bass pedal or The Clone Theory or a Space Echo into the mix but it seems like more hassle than it's worth. Speaking of which, whenever I think about the VT bass, I wonder if I should be using it over/with the SWR's tube preamp to really up the gain stage volume. My cabinet is rated for well over 1k, but my head is a 350, and I wonder if I can get more apparent volume that way without relying on the breakup of a single 12AX7.
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Feb 16, 2016 02:24
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 4x10 2x15, Traynor Mono Block B. With a Battering Ram pedal all the way up into a bass big muff. Loud as all hell. Floating bass not included.
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Feb 16, 2016 03:57
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Pokey Araya posted:...Battering Ram pedal... How good is this pedal. For reference, my setup above is from my previous stoner/grunge band. A battering ram and some other crap I barely used going into an Acoustic 370 plus 4x15 cab. Very loving loud. I never found the large cab to be too much trouble, at least compared the 4x10 I was using before that. Being able to tilt and roll made it pretty easy to move about except where large amounts of stairs were involved.
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Feb 16, 2016 04:18
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I like it alot, the only problem is the octave up on the fuzz side seems to weaken pretty quick (2 weeks of shows) on batteries, which I use in all my pedals. That Electric cab is a bitch on stairs, I think weighs 165 pounds.
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Feb 16, 2016 08:25
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I got a little baby bedroom combo to go with my little baby short scale! Taking my first baby bass steps over here and I'm real excited 
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Feb 16, 2016 09:09
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I've recently started jamming with people again and I'm using my Bass Cube 100. That thing is so loud for it's size and with the right settings makes my Jazz bass sound like a wolverine. Not too shabby with a 5 string either.
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Feb 16, 2016 09:58
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Octatonic posted:What's everyone's preferred setup for live performance ITT? I'm going to be playing more bass starting soon, and I've always just recorded direct, and since the band owns its own PA with plenty of headroom I don't see any reason to change that in a live environment personally. Right now I'm looking at maybe a pedal-profile preamp/driver. What do your rigs look like? For the last 10 years I've been playing with a 410+115 along with an old ampeg B2R shoved in a road case with a rack tuner... For most bar shows I'll only bring the 410 though. And I find myself more and more wanting a micro head. There really is no point in lugging around heavy equipment anymore. Technology has advanced so much that, unless you have a road crew to carry and set up everything for you, you really don't need huge amps to get great tone. Get yourself a Tech 21 VT Bass. I don't even use the preamp section of my B2R anymore, I just plug that thing right into the power stage and I get amazing tone.
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Feb 16, 2016 23:15
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Scarf posted:For the last 10 years I've been playing with a 410+115 along with an old ampeg B2R shoved in a road case with a rack tuner... For most bar shows I'll only bring the 410 though. And I find myself more and more wanting a micro head. This is the sad truth although i will fight this tooth and nail until my last breath by carrying a 40+ year old, 60 lbs tube amp and an 8x10 cab to gigs whenever possible.
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Feb 17, 2016 17:41
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I have very little experience with amps and none with PA systems. I mostly play through an interface into amp sims, but I do have a small Line 6 "studio" amp that I sometimes use. I broadly understand how an amp/cab setup works because I've hosed around wiht friends' guitar stuff. If I wanted to start playing in public, how would I go about using something like that Tech 21 VT bass DI thing in place of an amp? Like, what other stuff do I / the venue / whoever need to make it work? What if I wanted some kind of portable yet loud setup that used the VT as a basis, what else would I need to get, and how would I set it up?
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Feb 18, 2016 00:38
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You generally would go Bass -> Effects -> Head/PowerAmp -> Cabinet. For example, my setup goes from my bass to a Line6 rackmount which serves as "effects" and is a signal shaper (this is what the VT would do as well), from there going to a Carvin PowerAmp, which then plugs into the cabinet. The Poweramp has no EQ or sound shaping ability at all; all it does is supply volume to the signal and power to the cabinet. Most people would instead use a head, which serves the same purpose but also has tone shaping abilities, EQ, some drive/gain, etc. It's all personal choice depending on tone.
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Feb 18, 2016 01:27
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So, if I understand, I could do something like Bass > Interface/laptop > Power amp > Cabinet or Bass > DI > Power Amp > Cabinet? Does the power amp need to be specifically for bass? What about the cabinet? If I'm going to be using a laptop with amp sim, does the power amp need to have the (much higher than for a guitar?) wattage of a bass amp? I'm aware that these are probably stupid questions.
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Feb 18, 2016 02:11
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Yes those will both work. The interface/laptop action will probably have some latency though. It may or may not be too much. For best results the cabinet needs to be specifically for bass, the power amp does not. A general rule I have heard is that a bass amp should be 10 times as powerful (in watts) as your guitarists amp. That's kinda bullshit though as there are a lot of factors which contribute to volume outside of just straight wattage. It does, however, illustrate that you need a lot more power to push bass frequencies to high volume than guitar.
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Feb 18, 2016 02:19
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Bill Posters posted:A general rule I have heard is that a bass amp should be 10 times as powerful (in watts) as your guitarists amp. That's kinda bullshit though as there are a lot of factors which contribute to volume outside of just straight wattage. yeah that's straight up crazy talk.
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Feb 18, 2016 02:21
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Yeah I'm pretty sure those rules were made up in the days before decent PAs. Same reason guitarists don't really need 100 watt full-stacks anymore, you can just get a nice sounding smaller amp and mic it into the PA.
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Feb 18, 2016 02:25
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:yeah that's straight up crazy talk. Nowadays, yeah, absolutely. Watts as a power measurement are more confusing than helpful these days anyway. It varies so much between the different styles of amp and what you're plugging it in to. 300-500W should be more than enough for any application.
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Feb 18, 2016 02:57
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The power amp is basically the 'make loud' bit. Whether you're using a preamp, or a pedal, or some laptop amp sims, those are just colouring the signal - they might have slightly different output levels, but they're nowhere near enough to drive whatever big speakers you're using. More like a pair of earbuds If you're using an amp on stage, you'll need to run it into the power stage at some point to drive the cab. If you're using the house PA, you can go direct after you've added whatever tonez you're going for. That's the basics of it anyway 
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Feb 18, 2016 03:04
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Thank you everyone. I had most of that stuff right, but since I don't really know this stuff it's good to hear it from other people. baka kaba posted:If you're using an amp on stage, you'll need to run it into the power stage at some point to drive the cab. If you're using the house PA, you can go direct after you've added whatever tonez you're going for. That's the basics of it anyway I'm not even sure if I'm asking the right question here, but... Let's assume I have a computer and I'm making the sounds I want - ie, the bass sounds good through my monitors and headphones, but I want it to be much much louder than that. Is there any problem with plugging that computer into, for instance, the kind of amp/speakers that a mobile DJ setup would be using? I'd guess that if you already had the computer and software (like I do), that doing it that would be cheaper than an amp+cab, but I'm sure there's something that makes it a bad idea, or wouldn't more people do it? When you say "go direct", you're talking about a similar setup, but using the venue's PA rather than your own stuff, right?
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Feb 18, 2016 05:09
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AlphaDog posted:Thank you everyone. I had most of that stuff right, but since I don't really know this stuff it's good to hear it from other people. I find dialing in tone through a computer to be kind of a pain in the rear end. If you are already familiar with your computer rig, I guess running the computer straight into the PA, and making sure they have monitors facing towards you, should work alright. From experience, though, there's basically two bass sounds a rock band might want - the deep, throaty P-Bass sound, or the springy, boingy J-Bass sound. Spend $500-$1000 on your bass of choice, and another $200-$400 on your 100+watt, 15'' speaker equpped, line-out-enabled, used amp of your choice, and you're good to go until you're playing in front of more than 200 people. At that point, specify with instruments or tube heads/huge stacks as needed. Mucking with software seems like more trouble than it's worth.
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Feb 18, 2016 07:19
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AlphaDog posted:I'm not even sure if I'm asking the right question here, but... Well as a rule, a bass amp will colour the sound, give it different dynamics and feel etc, and cabinet will be voiced for the instrument. So it doesn't just make it loud, it affects the tone too - that's what amp sims try to replicate, the sound and response of amps and cabinets, like you're recording the results through a mic. Same goes for some pedals. So in those cases, you have your 'sound' before it gets to the actual 'make this loud' stage, and you can pipe it into something that isn't designed to colour the sound, like a PA system, the mixing desk, whatever. So yeah, your own PA system is always an option - they'll probably affect the sound somehow though, so you'd have to try some out and see how they sound I think the reason most people don't go that way, is they either want the simplicity and consistency of having an amp on stage that makes the sound they like, or (for bassists at least) they can just run direct into the house PA system. Use whatever gear to get a good tone - people like VT Bass pedals for this - then let the sound guy mix and amplify that. If you have your own PA, you can do the same. But it's less 'natural' than plugging into an amp and cranking its speakers, and straining your back hauling a 1000W combo up some stairs. Even if the modelling is good and reliable, plugging into a Macbook isn't as rock and roll. Your call!
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Feb 18, 2016 20:00
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The problem you're going to run into going into the PA is most the time monitors sucks, and the person running them has no idea what they're doing. No being able to hear yourself play is a bitch and a half. Thats why most us metal heads have big amps, so you don't have to worry about hearing yourself.
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Feb 18, 2016 20:25
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Bassist not being able to hear themself (including me when I've been on bass duties) has occurred at probably 50% of gigs I've played and has caused issues every time its happened. It's incredibly frustrating and if you can avoid it, do so. Most bands I've been involved in have only played small venues (basically pubs/bars) and the house PA in those places is generally a token gesture so the crowd can hear the vocals, and even then half the time you can't. My favorite local venue (The Underground, Plymouth) has a monster of a soundsystem in there and can sound amazing, but if the guy behind the desk is pissed or whatever it can be like listening to muddy fog. The PA in one of the local rehearsal spaces has been irrevocably hosed by someone caning it with a power amp, there's now signs up telling people not to plug anything in besides a mic. NonzeroCircle fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 21:19
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My singer often brings his own stage monitor so he can reliably hear himself. He refuses to use in-ears because they don't sound natural, and he probably didn't like wearing them. I've got one of his cheaper units, and I'm considering putting it in use if I can properly field test it to see if I could hear myself.
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Feb 18, 2016 23:16
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If you're thinking of buying your own portable PA set up then I can't imagine it's going to be much cheaper than a 100W 1x15 solid state bass combo, if at all. There's also a lot to be said for the simple reliability of a regular bass amp. There's a hell of a lot more that can go wrong with a laptop/interface/software setup than a bass plugged into a combo. No-one wants to be the guy holding everyone up because their software suddenly refuses to recognise their interface or whatever.
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Feb 18, 2016 23:38
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