h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Dude,

It was great chatting last night - don't worry about the SPAM thing.

Once again, if you want to chat about anything Bass - I'm your man.

So Who's your fave player?

(I was about to use the phrase - Who's your fave Bassman - but I modestly know the answer to that already)



Bassman

It was indeed, and good to put a name to a face too!

I have to admit, I don't have a favourite bass player. My knowledge of bassish things is quite sadly lacking .. the only reason I have one is because I'm so regularly wandering around humming basslines to myself and I thought it'd be nice to have an instrument to actually play them on.

So umm who are your bass heros then? Though whoever you say I'll probably have not heard of them, and have to look them up on the 'net to figure out what you're on about

Uh, a face to a name even!

The reason I got into playing Bass was hearing the first Stranglers L.P. way back in 77 I think. Peaches was the first song I ever played along to (badly).

My all time fave is Phil Lynott from Thin Lizzy. The first Christmas I had my first Bass I learned the best part of Live and Dangerous - a double live album. One of the all time great recordings. I got to see the band on the last tour, I must admit I was rather disappointed at his technique, but I think it all paled into insignificance when they launched into The Boys Are Back In Town

Other greats I have enjoyed over the years....

Mark King - Level 42
Jean Jacques Burnel - The Stranglers
Cass Lewis - Skunk Anansie
John Deacon - Queen
Chris Squire - Yes
John Entwhistle - The Who

There are others....



Bassman

Aha, now I've heard of Entwhistle .. but only because he's dead. The other names aren't familiar to me but I would have heard their music, in collaboration with the rest of their band of course.

Just bought a BOSS GT6B - it's totally awesome. Makes some of the wackiest sounds going (and some totally sensible ones too). I'm looking forward to getting out and gigging with it, but it's going to take some time to programme the thing.

I've been working on a patch for the Peppers By The Way, which has loads of Bass, very little trebble or mid and gets nice and dirty for the loud bits, while staying clean for the quiet ones. I think I've got something close, but I'll have to try it through my rig. I found that things never sound the same through headphones.



Bassman

Cool, is that some sort of effects pedal thing? (I've never heard of it before so I 'cheated' and looked it up on the web - it's the red one right? ) How are you getting on with it? And I wonder .. what does it sound like if you play other instruments through it, or sing? Hmm!

Yeah, I find that with headphones too. It's nice to have a sound bounce around a room a bit first. And when I swap the left and right ears of the headphones the music often sounds really wierdly different, if I just turn around in a room with speakrs playing it hardly makes any difference at all. And headphone-played music occasionally really hurts the old eardrums! Not sure why, I guess it hasn't been dulled enough by the surroundings if it's going direct to the ears.

Naaaa.... Try turning the volume down a bit!!



Turn the volume DOWN.... what am I saying



The GT6B is pretty phenominal, it does loads of stuff that I probably won't get to use with this band, but at least I'll have that ability if I do ever play with someone else.

I set up one particular patch to emulate Flea, as best as I could. We've started doing "By The Way" which crosses from a nice clean sound to a monster thundering one which is a little overdriven. I could of course set my amp ut to do this, but it would overdrive on any song when I was playing loud, with the FX unit, it has a valve preamp simulator that you can apply to a patch if you want. I'm quite pleased with the result