I have to admit it. I'm a gear guy. I love getting new gear. I know, (says in mocking voice) "my tone is in my fingers." Blah blah blah, I don't care, I still like to get new shiney things.

Except....

All of the sudden, for the first time in memory, I'm so satisfied with everything I have, that I don't even think about other stuff anymore. No more surfing the internet hour after hour drooling over basses or speaker cabinets.

It's been like this for a year now, so I know it's not just a temporary lull. Could it be that I'm cured? Where will it go from here?

Rob

Nope, you're not cured! It just means there ain't nothin' out there that peaks your interest at the moment. I'm going through the same thing. I just divert to other things like stereo componants, portable audio players (minidisc), Flash Drives, External HD, etc.

Well, I did buy a Tivo.

Well.... Rob, if you ARE cured, Then let me know whatcher drinkin bud- I always have a gear lust, but no bucks to support the habit, so it's more like the admire from afar attitute. Although, I did see a Fender (american)5 string jazz bass that played really well, just need a thou or so to pick that up....hmmm..I could sell my old truck...and they had a used mesa boogie stack, too.
Ah, the things a junkie will do.
Maybe if this bass playing actually earned any money on it's own, then I could see spending a few more clams on it...I have the same bass I got about 4 years ago, still like it; although I have considered getting it customized a bit, converting it from 6 to 5, I just don't have that much use for the top string with what we play most of the time. That would be radical surgery, so I think I may just find another 5 used somewhere. Can't do without my low B though.

Let us know if you fall off the wagon..........
Here's a temptation- go on ebay and search for basses. All kinds of stuff on there, even rubber stringed basses- if you survive that, you may be cured. :p
Tony

ohhhh.....saw a killer deal on a Toby 5.......ohhhhhhh
drool
drool

(wanders off with a starry eyed look on his face, dreaming....)

Don't do it! Those are not 'real' Tobias basses. It's a Gibson fabrication. Try a G&L Tribute L2500, MTD Kingston Hier or a Lakland Skyline 55-01 or 55-02. I have my sights on a Fender Roscoe Beck 5. Just gonna save up for it.

As for basses I'm set for a while. I've got no love for anything but my 'ray 5 right now. Well, that's not entirely true. There is one bass I would get if I had the resources. David knows what I'm talking about.

I did just find out yesterday that BBE makes a compressor with a sonic maximizer in it. Does that count?

Rob

hey gang....
Treated myself to a couple of christmas presents in the gear category, thought I'd see what you guys know about these, and if any of you gave yourselves a treat too......

1) An Ebow.
Yeah, I know, it's designed for regular guitar, but M Manring uses it a lot on bass, and I thought I'd give it a shot- my mom-in-law always gives us some money to buy what we want, then we wrap it up and open it in front of her (yeah, it's odd, but she can't get out to shop anymore, so we go along with it...) Anyway, I picked the Ebow because it's a different twist on the way you can play a bass.
I obviously haven't "mastered" it yet, but it is pretty cool, you can get almost infinite sustain, and when it's in the harmonics setting, you get a sound very much like amp feedback, but it's very controllable. You can also get some very bow-like tones, it can sound like a cello or upright bass being played with a bow, and you can even do the arrpeggios and spicatto techniques like violin players do. All in all, it looks like it will be a bit of a challenge to use on a bass (due mostly to string spacing, it has two "saddles" that rest on the adjacent strings) but if nothing else, it will open up a new creative outlet for me to try.
I've already tried it to the lead guitar part on the Allman Bros In Memory of Elizabeth Reed, a simple but beautiful lick...sounds awesome on my six string bass at an octave lower than recorded.
Here's the website with samples and such, pretty impressive list of users. Go to the soundclips and listen to Elanor Rigby, or just click on the demoline, it's a couple of minutes worth of samples....
ebow homepage

2) Another cool fortunate circumstance....we had rented a little house in the country while we were building this one about 5 years ago, and in all the chaos of moving, we never noticed that didn't get our security deposit back. Well, the guy we were renting from is a very honest character, discovered we hadn't been refunded, and sent me a check; since it was money we didn't know that we had coming, my better half was gracious enough to let me spend most of it on a new guitar. But, since it wasn't all THAT much, I still had to keep the costs low, so here's what I bought after playing a few at the local superstore.....
A Warwick Corvette Rockbass 5-stringer. Rockbass is Warwick's "entry" level bass, made in China, but it has the same electronics as the regular Warwicks, and looks pretty good too...not as fancy of woods (although this one is alder, which is the same as my Yamaha, a great wood for basses) and different hardware....but lower labor costs mostly. The finish on the one I ordered is black, so it wouldn't much matter about having a flame maple top or whatever....it's like a honda version of a bmw I guess.
Now to be honest, I haven't actually received it yet...after playing the one at the local guitar superstore, I hunted around online and found a deal at music123 on it. It should arrive this week. Fortunately, they have a 45 day money back guarantee, so if I get it and it just doesn't suit me then I can return it. I doubt that's going to happen though, it played really sweet in the store, a great slapper, plucker or picker, very comfortable to use with great action. Plus the price I ordered it for (with a hardshell case, and shipping) was still 50 bucks less than what they wanted for the demo unit.
Bass player mag gave it an Editor's Choice Award in 2002, so I felt relatively safe in getting it.
Anybody have any long term experience with these?
warwick rockbass

oh well, back to work while I dream of being a bass playing star somewhere and dropping the day job....
TonyY

I just picked up a Yamaha BB3000MA bass. It has a nice tone that fits nicely into the sound I'm cultivating. It allows me to be heard clearly and I don't have to struggle to get sounds out of it. I saw Preston Crump using one so I had to have it.

Premier Drums
22' bass
14' snare
12' tom
14' tom
16' floor tom
14' sock
20' ride (sabian)
20' rivetted ride

Vic Firth 8DN sticks
Regal tip brushes
Pro-Mark Hot Rods
Pro-Mark stick cup

Just bought a Lakland 55-01 in Sunburst with maple fretboard.

Nice 5 string. What kind of pickups are those?

Congratulations to all of you guys! I'd love to buy SOMETHING, but I can't think of anything that I want!

Here's a decent synopsis of my setup as it stands:

http://bstring.net/subdomains/runavrilrun/gallery/album28/NYE2004_074

hey DW- nice bass! I tried to find one of those used, but didn't have much luck at the time- hope you get enough gigs to pay for it and enjoy playing it. Good for you dude.

MS, you should be happy with that bass too- Yamaha makes a great instrument.

CM, nice drum set!

Hey Rob, since you get to play a variety of styles, maybe you'd want to try one of these Ebows- It's a lot of fun to toy with, but I can tell it'll take some practice to get used to. It seems to be a bit slow in activating a string, but they have some techniques outlined in the pamphlet that comes with it on how to use it as a pick of sorts too- once it gets the string vibrating, it sounds great. Of course using different tone pot settings will make it sound more like a celloo or violin, or even a harmonica or flute....it's like a hand held synth in a way. I found mine at the Guitar Center here, and I'm sure you can find a place that'll let you try it out. Heck, for 70 bucks, it's a deal for me, if it only sparks some new basslines.
Let me know if you get a chance to check it out- the real challenge is that it isn't designed for a bass, but we can figure out how to make it work...
gotta go
TY

Bartolini. Pre-amp is also Bartolini.

Thanks! This thing plays sweet! 35" scale neck gives me a nice tight B string. It slaps like a mofo!! I'm a huge fan of maple fretboards too!

I heard of guys using a steal(?) nut, to get a certain sound.

Bartolini. Nice! Ambush should be proud!!!

Thanks. I think so. It took me 13 years to get a new drumset, when I got it, about 3 years ago. It's done me good!

I've tuned them so that I can easily convert them to a Richie Morales sound, (using tape and a studio ring) and a Joel Rosenblatt sound, (with a lot of my equip. ringing). I have developed a system where I can do this in a matter of seconds, for when I jam along to SG songs.

Most nuts are made of brass, plastic, graphite, bone and other types of composites but I've never heard of a steel nut. Not to say they don't exist but I've never come across one. By the way, do you have anything recorded of your playing? I'm interested in hearing what ya got skillz wise.

Brass. That's it! Thank you. I didn't know exactly what they were. Hence, the (?).

Well it finally came yesterday, and I've spent a few hours hammering away on it. I'm not as cool as DW, can't post a pic of my own axe, but here's the web pic: Rockbass pic
Just imagine it in translucent black and as a five string.

Straight out of the box, it played great, just needed a tuning at first. I've polished it up, (It was a "B" stock, had a small scratch near the plug, it polished out) and played and played...it's one of the easiest 5's I've ever picked up...much lighter than my Yamy, and obviously has a different tonal quality to it too. I love the active electronics here, very clean and well defined, and lots of punch when you tweak it either way. Only dislike there is the volume knob, it's either wide open or almost nothing, doesn't seem to have much cut range, very sudden drop off. and the fact that it's two tone knobs, high and low boost/cut, my Yamy has a mids too which is nice, but these sound better overall, more balanced and, well, more Precision Bass passive-like.
Today I went to get a new matching strap and a chromatic tuner, so I could set the intonation, which was a bit off, not surprisingly....the case came today, it's a Gator case, very nicely done!! I may have to switch that out for my other guitar's case, this new one is a big honker, lots of room inside for accesories.

For those of you who are slappers, the spacing on this one is looser than my yamy but still a bit tighter than some fives I've seen; but it's just enough to make all the difference in the world to me, I can slap-pop with ease now...part of it also is the clearance between the end of the fretboard and the neck pickup, my long fingers fit just right. I'm happy, well estatic, considering what I paid for this guy. This is a very easy to play bass, great action (fastest I've been able to play yet) and has cool looks, IMO.
Looking forward to running through our main system to see how it pumps....
Long live bass! I loves the subs....

Later
TonyY

Congratulations!

See? New gear is the best.

I dig. I tried out one of those in a 4 string model and I liked it. I'm showing off again with another shot of the bass.



Tony, if you have a digital camera, just take your pics, download them onto your computer, got to
Imageshack and upload the pic. A url will be provided to you to copy and paste into your post here. Try it! I'd like to see your bass!

Hey, I'll do that....thanks for the tip!

OK, DW, here's goes nutin....
Warwick shot 1

uhhhh....looks like I have to figure out how to reduce the size a bit, my bad....

OK, THAT WAS FUN!!!!
Here's my Yammy

Cool! Nice basses!! Yeah, I have to reduce the size of mine as well. A good size is about 30k-50k.

Here's a few shots of me and some of my basses.

The Brice Douglas 5

The Ibanez SR505

The new Lakland 55-01

The Tobias Toby Deluxe 5

What resolution do you run? Straight out of my camera was about twice my screen size, like 4200 x 2000 something. I ran it through Paint Shop, and reduced it to 1024 x 768. Maybe I need to go down to 800x600......

Anyway, thanks- I took more pictures, but those were so big I felt bad posting them...don't want to be a show off.
It's hard to tell, but the Warwick has a wee bit of grain visible thru the black- I think it looks really cool, but you about have to be outside to see it. The flame on the Yammy shows up much more clearly, that's a great bass and I'll never part with it.
Later
TY

Hey Tony, I edited my post to say a good file size is 30k-50k. Resolution should be about 300x400 or 400x500. No bigger. That's what the sizes are on the pics I just posted. Pretty small but for internet purposes, images don't need to be big at all.

hey DW, thanks for the help...
BTW, that cat walkin behind you could have escaped from my house, it looks just like my daughter's cat!
Ours only has a few more days to enjoy her nails, we're getting those yanked out to save our new furniture, she's one of the reasons our old furniture is needing to be replaced. No way am I buying a new couch to be her scratching post...

This image server thing is gonna open up a whole new can of worms for me..... Thanks to you, Dave...

Back to basses, that Brice Douglas one looks interesting, what's the deal on it? Have you had any gigs since you bought the Lakland? Just wondering how it's fitting in to the scene.
It also looks like you're strapped up a bit high on the Lakland, is that for slapping?

I haven't been standing to play in about a year now....I've gotten used to having to sit down after my blood clot in my leg, they got me a nice padded stool that's tall, so it's more like I'm leaning on it rather than sitting; My Yammy is so heavy, it was killin my back anyway (It's about 16 pounds).
This Warwick is lighter, maybe just over 10 lbs, haven't weighed it yet- I may start standing again with it. I don't do a lot of dancing around anyway, so not a big deal for me.

Which makes me wonder- what's the most common way for you other bassists to play? Standing or sitting? Do you like your axe strapped up high or low? What about basic hand positions?

For the record, I'm normally sitting/leaning on a stool, the weight of the bass on my right leg...the strap is more for security than positioning that way. My hand is generally right over the neck pickup or just at the end of the fretboard, using the edge of the neck as a locator for my thumb for most fingering positions. I also use the side of the pickup sometimes, and as I climb up the strings (notewise) I rest my thumb on the next string up from the one I'm playing, mostly for muting reasons.
We're all different, huh?

Later

I actually hadn't adjusted the strap for the Lakland. I just strapped her up for the picture. I do wear my basses high though. Plus that sweater kinda added to the highness! LOL I haven't gigged the Lakland yet but I do have one this evening. The Brice Douglas is a very inexpensive bass from a company called Rondo Music . I don't think they make any more but they sell pretty decent basses for very little. I gigged it all of last summer without any problems. My usual gigging bass is the Tobias so I will be bringing both this evening.

Now hurry with more pictures!!