Music Gear Discussion

After a few setbacks, I finally got £650 together to buy my first bass, and all the other jazz that goes with it. Can anyone recommend a good solid amp for me to start off with? I'm planning to spend at least £200 on one.

Ampeg, IMO, is still the best. Dude I know has one of those newish PF whatever they are, and it sounds damn good for what it is.

For the money those little solid state GK ones that look like a hard drive or something sound great. I saw a dude that had one sitting on top of an Orange 4x12 and he sounded fairly massive.

If you're a "get your tone by pedals" kind of bass player you could just get a power amp. Probably the best money to power ratio there.

I second the GK recommendation. They can be fantastic. I played through a 2x10 combo of theirs for years and loved it (i think it was a 400rb-III?)

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Originally Posted by PaCrappa

Cool! Some people like it for bass. I go less is more with bass fuzz so the Ape Blaster being such a high gain machine isn't really my flavor but if you like high gain fuzzes with bass it certainly gets the job done like a motherfucker. My second pedal will be a more tweakable fuzz. I was planning to market it as a bass fuzz but a friend (reverb pedal guy actually) says that's a bad idea. Most guitar players don't normally buy gear marketed as bass gear and bass players usually know what's up with which pedals sound good with bass no matter what they're originally intended for. That makes good sense to me so we'll see what happens here. Anyways, you play guitar a bunch now too don't you arjue?

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Higher gain fuzzes can really butcher a basses attack and low end if you don't know what you're doing, so generally i'm with you on using lower gain fuzzes. Also, as a general rule of thumb, the more intense the guitar distortion is, the less intense the bass fuzz should be. I appreciate distortion like wine snobs appreciate wine, and I've been working on my distorted tone for nearly a decade so i've got it down to a science. The stuff i've been working on has 2 basses and a guitar as opposed to the usual 2 guitars and 1 bass, so there is room for some ridiculous bass fuzz (shit gets SO HEAVY).

Lately, i've been playing a lot more guitar than bass, mainly because i'm writing guitar parts though. Its pretty crazy how differently you write music on different instruments.

I agree completely. Everything I write on guitar is strongly rooted in power pop/punk rock. Anything I write on bass sounds like the 2nd Helmet record.

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Originally Posted by arjue

I second the GK recommendation. They can be fantastic. I played through a 2x10 combo of theirs for years and loved it (i think it was a 400rb-III?)



Higher gain fuzzes can really butcher a basses attack and low end if you don't know what you're doing, so generally i'm with you on using lower gain fuzzes. Also, as a general rule of thumb, the more intense the guitar distortion is, the less intense the bass fuzz should be. I appreciate distortion like wine snobs appreciate wine, and I've been working on my distorted tone for nearly a decade so i've got it down to a science. The stuff i've been working on has 2 basses and a guitar as opposed to the usual 2 guitars and 1 bass, so there is room for some ridiculous bass fuzz (shit gets SO HEAVY).

Lately, i've been playing a lot more guitar than bass, mainly because i'm writing guitar parts though. Its pretty crazy how differently you write music on different instruments.

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Whats really fun sometimes is writing on one instrument, and transposing to another! (Though that's rarely an issue with the bass and guitar hah)

I've been picking up the bass again here and there in recent months. I haven't made up any keeper riffs on it but it's been sweet to mess around. I try to avoid getting too into it because I really don't even want to start my dumb brain thinking about assembling a bass rig. That'd be a catastrophe for my wallet! Right now the 45 watt old timer is enough for basement bass.

And I'm way into keeping that bass clean if the guitars are fuzzy and also backing off the guitar fuzz if it's time for the bass to get distorted. Sometimes you need all distorted everything but in my world that happens infrequently. Arjue, if you're a real pro distortion snob then you're going to love that Ape Blaster. That's not salesmanship, that's one fuzz maniac to another.

I get what you're saying, but clean bass can go jump in the lake.

I commissioned this about 7 months ago and I should have it next week. Headless 8 string w fanned frets made of bamboo and poplar. Super simple. 1 pickup, 1 knob.