Why Did I Buy It?

I needed a bass guitar for occasional use with a band but didn’t want to spend too much money on it. I really liked the humbucker pickup of a musicman but couldn’t afford one at the time. This bass was only intended as a stop-gap for a few years. I tried every bass in the shop of about the same price range and this one felt the nicest (with the additional plus of the pickup). I liked the natural wood finish and the contour of the body. I bought the guitar in 1999 so I think it was a slightly older model than in this picture as it didn’t have the pickup selector switches.

How Does It Sound?

My principle with basses is to focus more on the feel than the sound as a good amp seems to make more of a difference than the actual guitar to my ears. I played this one through either an Ampeg valve head plus 8×10 cab, my Marshall (reviewed below), or my Trace (also reviewed below). I got a good tight bass sound that worked well getting in the pocket with the drummer. I seldom played slap.

Keep or Sell?

I sold this after a few years as I was playing bass a lot less and had also bought a Musicman Fretless to use as my main bass. It was initially bought as a stop-gap until I could afford either a musicman fretted or Fender P or Jazz bass. When I started playing less I got rid of this figuring I would buy a more favoured bass when I needed to. Not that this was a bad instrument, it’s just that there is a difference between a sub £500 bass and a £1000+ bass.

Key To The Highway
Going Down Slow
Hoochie Coochie Man
Old Love
I Shot The Sheriff
Driftin’
Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out
Still Got The Blues (Gary Moore)
Same Old Blues (JJ Cale)
When Somebody Thinks You’re Wonderful
Layla
Badge
Wonderful Tonight
Tearing Us Apart
Little Queen Of Spades
Cocaine
Crossroads

Highlights for me was the electric version of “Old Love”, “I shot the Sheriff” and also the acoustic “Still got the Blues” tribute to Gary Moore. Eric has the fun habit of starting songs with slightly unrelated noodling before kicking off with the more recognisable riffs which I thought was quite fun. When he was going full steam his playing really has to be seen to be believed, youtube clips do not really do him justice. It’s amazing that he still has so much energy and feeling in his playing after doing it for so long! The only time he did show his age was towards the end of the show when the keyboard solos started getting distinctly longer. Unfortunately he opted for a Drums, Bass and two keyboardists – Hammond & Piano – with no second guitarist. I would have liked to have heard someone like Doyle Bramhall trade licks rather than so much piano/organ. Also he’s a bit grumpy when it comes to encores, however I suppose when you are as good and well known as he is you don’t care too much about being nice to the crowd!

As far as I could see he was playing an aqua blue strat (which was the theme colour of the stage/lighting set-up) with a wireless transmitter going into his Fender ’57 Tweed reissue amp with a cry-baby wah (although someone told me it was a Vox however I didn’t see any silver on the stage) and a full-sized leslie that was controlled through what looked like a custom footswitch. He controlled all his tone including levels of drive using the knobs on the guitar (although his custom strat model does have an active mid-boost). I think he was playing his custom Martin for the acoustic part of the set. Below are some pictures I screen-grabbed from Flickr from the show:

In it’s older incarnation as “M&M music” in St. Marys the staff at this store had terrible attitudes – but something seems to have changed in the couple years since they have moved to much bigger premises in a much nicer part of town (although making their shop look like an amplifier is a bit… er… special). I went in about a month ago after a high end Gibson and found them extremely helpful – letting me play loads of valuable guitars for as long (and as loud) as I liked! I’m suspicious that now that I do not look like a scruffy student their attitudes may have changed because they think I’ve got money – or perhaps they really have learned to be friendly to customers…

As for stock this place is amazing. More great Fenders and Gibsons than I know what to do with, and so many high end pedals that I cannot help coming away with something every time I visit. It’s so nice to find a place with good musical stuff rather than the “made for school boy market” that dominates so many guitar stores. This place even beats the ever contracting Denmark street in both general quality of stock and time/space to have a look without getting pushed over/deafened by the aforementioned scruffy students and school boys!

There’s an (expensive) car park out the front or its within sight of Southampton Central train station for easy access, and there’s a great Thai restaurant around the corner – so well worth an afternoon out if, like me, you think reviews on youtube are just missing that something extra!

So now I face the dilemma – spend some money on getting things fixed or just go out and buy a new reverb pedal? I always struggle with this decision as I imagine the fixes are probably quite easy, however for the low cost of new pedals it probably isn’t a lot more to be ultra-consumerist and just buy something – a bit like owning a dell computer, you expect to buy a new one at an equally low price a few years later… But then again I’m not exactly gigging anymore and nappies are so expensive – is reverb worth it?

I was playing a fair amount of bass and became dissatisfied with my old marshall amp and especially it’s enormous cab that I couldn’t fit into cars. A couple of my friends had Trace amps which I really liked, so when this one came up on ebay I grabbed it for £400 in around 2004.

How does it sound?

Compared to my friends valve Ampeg SVT this doesn’t compete for sound. However for a middle-of-the-road amp it works and sounds fine. The 11 band EQ allows a lot of control over your sound (almost too much), the noise reduction is effective, the input gain is very helpful with lights to help you judge the optimum input gain and the output volume is enough to compete with a drummer easily. It also has a very cool UV light and a footswitch to control the EQ (although I have never used a footswitch with mine). The 2103x cab is very punchy, and importantly quite small. Although the head doesn’t quite balance effectively on the cab I wouldn’t want to get a bigger cab because of my back. It has a useful XLR output with a pre/post EQ switch (although personally I preferred to use a separate DI box).

Keep or sell?

Unfortunately I have had a few problems with this amp occasionally freaking out and emitting all sorts of crackles and pops. I’ve had a couple techies look at it but they’ve never got to the bottom of the problem. As a result I no longer trust it for gigs, however it works well in my room as a practice amp as I also play my Roland electric drums through it without fear of the bass kick sound destroying anything (for this the input gain control is very useful). As I don’t trust it I don’t think I could sell it in good conscience so it is a keep, but only as a practice amp. Since I don’t actually use it for gigs I have started putting together a pedal board to make my sound as independent of any specific amp as possible (as I never quite know what amp I will end up gigging with). Since I started doing this I have tended to keep the EQ flat in favour of colouring my sound with a Hartke bass attack pre-amp pedal.

A few years back I was playing bass a lot but on a circuit with a couple other really amazing bass players. As they could generally outplay me I decided to specialise in fretless as this was something slightly unique. I went to the bass cellar on Denmark Street and they had one of these at a massively reduced price because of a ding on the body and a broken pickup (the picture is not mine but it’s the same model/colour/year). I got the active pick-up fixed and it has worked well ever since.

How does it sound?

I find basses are far more dependent on the amplifier than guitars are – I have had a crap bass sound amazing through a Ampeg stack and great basses sound crap through small amps. In general I choose basses due to their feel rather than sound, however I do quite like the musicman humbuckers especially when you pick closer to the bridge and also the active pick-ups (the EQs seem to actually DO something in the active circuit whereas a number of passive basses i’ve tried seem unaffected by the onboard EQ’s). Without frets slap doesn’t work on this bass but everything else feels great. I was worried at first I might have trouble finding notes (and even played through a tuner set on chromatic mode to check myself) however it’s not actually too hard so long as you can hear yourself quite well. Instead of flat-wound strings I like normal bass strings as they sound punchier but do mark the fret board a bit and probably would cause problems over a number of years, however for the amount that I play it the marks are not a major problem. The neck does seems to bend a little bit (or maybe as a guitarist I’m just not used to such long necks) however the beauty with a fretless is that intonation does not really matter!

Keep or sell?

I’ve had this five or six years and am very happy with it. Of course fretless might not suit everyones style, however for the mainly jazz / classic rock stuff that I play this works as well as a fretted bass. It’s also quite nice to come to a practice, get it out of the case and have everyone say “ooo a fretless” as there seems to be a strange belief that fretless basses are harder to play – they are not! I now feel far more at home on a fretless bass than I do on a fretted one, and love all the glissandos that you can pull off – definitely a keep.

Why did I buy it?

I came to university with just an electric guitar and a bass after having spent the previous year playing bass full time in a band with an amazing electric player. I had become quite depressed about my own abilities so decided to swap my strat for a good acoustic guitar that I could play in my room. Originally I wanted a Takamine however the model I was after was out of my price range. I went into the local shop and started playing all their acoustics and this one, the DG41SCE, really stood out in both feel and sound. I fell in love and bought it immediately.

How does it sound?

This model was later discontinued by Fender, and I haven’t seen many other positive reviews (edit: however it seems this is because it is quite rare. I’ve now seen a couple reviews where other people have been as equally impressed with it as I am). I don’t know if I was lucky and managed to find a single instrument that really stands out as remarkable, or if they were all this good (and if they were why on earth did Fender quit making them?). Everyone who’s ever played it has commented on how it both feels and sounds like a guitar twice it’s price. I have used it for (probably hundreds) of gigs and recorded with it many times. It has an excellent Fishman pickup built in and sounds well balanced both acoustically and through a PA (although annoyingly the battery can only be reached through the sound-hole). A cool feature of the built-in pre-amp is a phase switch that can magically makes the guitar sound better on the rare occasions that it does not sound great straight away through the PA. I really cannot fault the sound of this guitar in anyway – it easily competes with all the Martins and Taylors I have ever played or jammed with.

Keep or sell?

Keep keep keep – if I had to choose only one guitar to keep this would be it. I have owned it for twelve years and been through so much with it that it is now part of the family – or even an extra limb!

Why did I buy it?

As a kid my best mate had a squire strat that I used to borrow all the time. I was also a great fan of Clapton and so all through my teenage years aspired to get a US strat. I finally bought a US cherry-red one with a rosewood fretboard when I was 18, played it for a few years but then traded it in for an acoustic guitar when I started university. This was a real mistake that I made after playing bass in a band with an amazing lead guitarist and becoming depressed that I would never be that good. A couple years later I bought a Mexican “Sambora” strat which was great except for the Floyd-Rose tremolo that I really didn’t get on with. After a brief dally with a Telecaster I finally went to ebay and got this second hand maple-necked guitar at about the same time I bought the Fender blues-junior amp. I wanted to “cut back to the roots” with nothing but a good guitar and amp.

How does it sound?

I love the five pickup selections. The neck pickup gives a great bluesy lead, the neck+middle is a variation on this and also good for jazz, the middle is cool for clean, I don’t really use the middle+bridge, whilst the bridge on its own is really trebly and precisely what is needed to cut through a mix, especially with lots of overdrive. On my first couple strats I kept the stock pickups however on my current version I changed all three for Texas specials which have a much higher output and thus drive my tubes much better. After having a Telecaster for a few years it was a real relief to come back to a strat which is far more flexible, and quite good for mixing up your sounds a bit especially when engaged in shoe-gazing noodling!

The only problem I have had is playing in a couple places (churches) with a hearing aid loop that gets picked up by the single coils. After a coupl bad experiences I made sure I always carried a guitar with humbuckers whenever I took the strat out!

Keep or sell?

Although I have tried out other guitars I always keep coming back to strats. I know some people do the same with Les Pauls etc. however there is just something about the sound and feel of a strat that does it for me. I think I will always keep this one, and maybe one day add a HSS version to my collection when I have a bigger house. As blues rock is my favourite genre, a strat is about as good as you can get.

bossac2

At the time I was playing electric in a band that also often featured an acoustic guitar, however the acoustic player also sang and sometimes had trouble managing some fiddly acoustic bits whilst singing. As these bits were few and far between I got this pedal as a mimic for an acoustic sound so that I didn’t have the hassle of an extra guitar (and signal path). I set it to the “Jumbo” setting with the body control at 12 and the top control at 1.

How does it sound?

I wouldn’t use this on a fully acoustic song or without a band, however for a little intro or bridge section the sound is passable and definately more like an acoustic than a clean electric sound. A bit of chorus helps even more with sounding like an acoustic.

Keep or sell?

Well I bought this for a purpose and it served it well. However since then it has been sitting in the bottom of a drawer. I did once get it out when we were recording some acoustic guitar and used it WITH an acoustic as it gives a bit of sparkle to the sound, however this was because we were double tracking a guitar part and I wanted the second track to be a bit different from the first. To be honest this pedal is more of a gimic than a replacement for a proper acoustic.