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jcadmus

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Everything posted by jcadmus

  1. Regarding which bass to take, I would ask the instructor what they recommend. If they have no preference, I would take the one I was most comfortable with.
  2. In the summer of 1975 when I first started playing bass, I bought two records: "Toys In The Attic" by Aerosmith and "Fandango" by ZZ Top. I pretty much wore that vinyl out trying to figure out what Tom Hamilton and Dusty Hill were doing. Those albums were my musical Rosetta Stone. So I was stunned at the news of Dusty's passing last week. Rarely name-checked as one of the great bass players, but truly one of the greats. Adios, amigo. Vaya con Dios.
  3. Other Little Thick Strings.
  4. I actually tried one of these at my favorite local music store recently. Played it acoustic and plugged into a small combo amp. To be perfectly honest, it didn't really do anything for me. But I tend to be a bit of a purist on this stuff -- I didn't even get into the recent "short scale" fad. I mean, it did what it was supposed to do the way it was supposed to do it. It just wasn't for me.
  5. Sell any of your old gear ... that's adorable. I had two LB75s with the stacked humbucker H50N pickups. They were super quiet and sounded good.
  6. Hmm, I have a birthday coming up ... *checks Reverb*
  7. Yeah, I added a Peavey 210TXF cab, and good golly Miss Molly. And I was mostly using that rig for church. I eventually traded the Combo 115 for a TMax head and a 115 BW cab -- that with the 2x10 was my setup for quite awhile. Then I heard a friend's Eden rig and I was ruined for life.
  8. The guy at the music store tried really hard to get me to buy a T40, but I had my heart set on the '76 Jazz Bass (which I still have). I liked the T40, but good golly what a boat anchor. A friend of mine eventually got one, and it was a great bass. Speaking of boat anchors, probably my favorite Peavey amp was my Combo 115. Black Widow speaker, 200-watt amp (300, with an extension cab), graphic eq and an onboard compressor that was actually usable. But boy, at 90+ pounds it was a pig to move around -- and it only came one with strap handle, on the top. Who did they think was gonna tote this thing around -- Kareem Abdul Jabbar? I put side handles on it and built a dolly for it.
  9. Clearly. On my last Peavey rig, I removed the logos from the grills on the cabs -- I just thought it looked cleaner. People would compliment me on my sound and ask what I was using. When I told them I was running a Peavey amp and cabs, they were stunned.
  10. I'm a bit of a gear snob -- I admit it. That being said, I've never looked down my nose at the Peavey stuff. I used their amps and cabs for years, and the few basses I played were well made, played well and sounded good.
  11. That's a juicy barn find.
  12. If only he'd said that. I would have said, "Dude, I'll call your mother. Give me the number."
  13. Well, that's not a dark interpretation at all. Where I saw blithe insouciance, you saw doom, dysfunction and despair.
  14. I'm not usually one to give unsolicited advice to strangers, but on Saturday I just couldn't help myself. I had dropped in to my favorite local music store and was chatting with the owner when a couple of dudes came in. One was looking for a new guitar amp, and we were all just kind of shooting the breeze when the other casually mentioned that he was thinking about buying a bass so the two of them could jam. Then he mentioned that he used to play bass in high school and college, but that was over 15 year ago and -- here's the jaw-dropping part -- he didn't even know where his bass is now. So I said, hang on -- what do you MEAN you don't know where it is? Where was it the last time you saw it? And he said, well, it was probably tucked away somewhere at his parents house. *Buhm buhm* I said, wouldn't it be a good idea to ASK them if they still have it and know where it is? The money you're planning to spend on a bass could go toward a better amp. And he said, uh yeah, I should probably do that. My parting words as I left: Dude! Call. Your. Mother!
  15. Isn't "Jumbo Junior" kind of an oxymoron? Like "diet tacos" or "trustworthy politician"? I've never really gotten the whole "acoustic bass" thing. The bodies are just too darn small to produce an appropriate level of volume. There's a reason bass fiddles are so big -- it's just physics. And the comeback is "Well, you just plug it in." At which point, I'm like, well then why do I need an "acoustic" bass? If other people dig it, that's cool. Just not my thing.
  16. Oh, I also have a vintage MXR Phase 100 on long-term loan from a west-coast buddy of mine. But I only use that for playing "Stranglehold."
  17. I'm not much of a pedal guy either, but it can be fun to experiment. Right now I have an Ibanez Soundtank Superchorus that I use very sparingly. And I have a Maxon CP9 Pro+ compressor that allegedly uses the same compression circuit as my DBX 160XT rack unit. I have the DBX in the rack with my Eden WT-550 so I use the Maxon with the Eden TN-501. I've been toying with the idea of getting one of the EBS Billy Sheehan distortion pedals, just because I love the way it sounds. But I don't honestly know what I would do with it, and they're kind of spendy.
  18. My first five-string bass was one of these:
  19. More live playing, once open-air festival season starts. I was fortunate to do about seven or eight such gigs last fall, and I'm hoping the band will resume it's schedule once the weather gets nicer here.
  20. I've never done it, but I know people who have. One way to find out -- give it a whirl. If it doesn't work, see if someone will loan you a direct box for awhile.
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