Hehe, Fender 3.0
I would probably agree. I like the more parallel string path of the P versus the tapered J. Always thought the J was a bit of a holdover from trying to be more like an acoustic double-bass?
But it’s a personal preference of course. My main bass is an Aria Pro2 SB1000, which is more like a P-bass configuration.
Let us know what you conclude. I haven’t been playing bass live for a year or two since I moved back to the UK from the US, but I need to get back in the saddle before I lose it and turn into a drooling has-been… 
I sold my old bass amp before I moved because it wasn’t compatible with the UK voltage.
That was a Peavy monster, which weighed about 110 pounds.
The Rumble 200 seems interesting, though at 35 pounds I have to wonder just how much low end it can really put out to hold its own with a full band?
Fender Rumbles have neodymium speakers. The magnet is quite light but very capable.
Now I’m kind of curious, since I also play Hammond organ, which at the low pedalboard “C” is a bit lower than a standard bass guitar. Not by much.
I ask because am thinking about a secondary setup for some things. What about some crazy, like, Crown 500W head, you know, for the headroom, pushed into a cabinet that “speaks” to one, whatever that is. Obviously not blowing drivers in the cabinet, but whatever suits one’s needs.
SECONDARY question: who else on here is into fingerpicking on a Tele? Not necessarily full Travis picking, but I’ve got to say, there is so much misinformation on youtube about things like James Burton’s parts on, like “Working Man Blues”…
Yes, I’m mostly a jazz guy, in my mind, but just curious. I’m not going to use a thumb pick or do the hybrid pick thing…just straight fingers, since I’m not doing it for six hours on stage six days a week.
My feeling is that if Mark Knopfler can do it without a pick, then I can too.
Plus, all those ridiculous fat chords that Wes plays make a lot more sense if one attacks each string with one finger each…yes, that isn’t the way he did it (he was really good at finger muting, it seems, to get his signature octaves sounds, as was Pat Martino), and his chord solos can only be done by strumming at his tempi.
There have probably been a lot of advances & speakers in amps since I was last in the market.
I had the old Peavey for many years and stuck with it since it just did the job… sure was a backbreaker hauling it in and out of gigs though…
If I may ask a moment of your time, I demand you all bow down before me, because I now own the greatest fuzz pedal to ever give its grace to an electron. Yes, I’ve only had it for a few hours, but it amazes me in every way. Plus, it glows in the dark, and the knobs light up when you turn it on.
It’s the most heavily modified Super-Fuzz circuit I’ve ever seen, and I lurve that circuit. I own an original orange/blue Super-Fuzz, and several variants on its circuit. I used to think that Idiotbox Effects’ Ol Switcheroo might really be my favorite variant besides my original (heh, when it is in good repair), but that’s not a question anymore. This thing might actually replace my original in my ear, if not my heart.
It can achieve unity gain without always maxing out the fuzz level, and the tone control is pretty amazing since it’s based on a pedal that came with a tone switch that amounted to “Do you love mids, or do you want to abolish them and never hear from them again?”. The high/low knobs were basically what you got when the same circuit became the old Boss Hyper-Fuzz, but having both of those and the mid scoop on a knob is very unusual with a Super-Fuzz/Shin-ei/Hyper-Fuzz circuit, and man he did a good job with voicing them.
If that isn’t enough (and dontcha think it oughta be), you can alter the voltage from 4-18v with a knob on the front panel. That makes it go from a choked, thin, sputtery, nasty fuzz and then through varying amounts of muddy kind of Muff-ish tones and then to Super-Fuzz-ish tones and then to a weird place where most fuzzes don’t go where the highs were crystal clear and the rest was fuzzed out and if I turned it up further the highs became piercing. Beyond that point, the whole thing seems to fold in upon itself into a weirdness that I can’t really describe. Smooshy and weird and folded back in on itself would be the best I could say, it was still kinda musical, but totally not what I would expect from giving a Super-Fuzz circuit too many volts.
He seems to be intending to do a regular production of them. If he does, I’ll buy a second one so I don’t just beat the hell out of the glow in the dark one. It’s probably too neato to let me abuse it like I do my other pedals.
I’ve returned from a cancerous hiatus, I live, though I have shed 60lbs. A robot removed cancer from my mouth and I had some radiation but I am now better than new in so many ways!
As for the guitar, I’m trying to overcome and compensate for the Reynaud’s Syndrome that has plagued the middle finger of my frettin’ hand for some time. It’s half again as big as it should be and it resembles a mini clubfoot now, but at least it doesn’t hurt anymore.
The worst part of it its it getting in the way and muting strings in open chords that I want to ring out because placing it too perpindicular to the string hurts/is really hard to accomplish.
So, I practice. The best I can manage is stuff like me running through chord changes like this:
I put this in the lost treasures thread also, but Paul MacCartney’s long lost original Höfner base (1 of 2) has been found. It was stolen in 1972.
The only demo of this pedal is the one they have on their website but from that it does sound beefy AF! It sounds like they are using an octave pedal with it as well?
Glad you are on the mend! And “the best you can manage” is still pretty dang good.
Hehehehe, nope, the Super-Fuzz circuit generates its own octaves. No other pedal needed. It creates upper and lower octaves. On bass, it can really be dangerous to speakers, to the point where I’ve thought about running a high pass filter after it sometimes. But it sounds too glorious and the 15" speakers in my current Ampeg cabinet appear to be able to handle one.
And today I learned:
- Fumio Mieda designed both the Korg MS-20 and the Super-Fuzz
- Someone has revived Shin-Ei! They make both FY-6 (the Super-Fuzz circuit) and the FREAKIN! PSYCHEDLEIC MACHINE!
So expensive, but I need so bad.
Yep, I gotta echo wguy123, you sound plenty fine. Glad you’re feeling better!
Help with a walk up. In the following video, a cover of Zep’s Hot Dog, around the 8 or 9 second mark, he does walk up starting around 7th fret or so. Is he playing 8ths? He gets a slurry chunk sound that I can’t replicate.
And no, I can’t play the rest of it either - I’m just trying to spice up my version of it.
Seems like just an octave on A and G strings. 7th, 8th, 9th on the A, 9th, 10th, 11th on the G. I definitely! hear the G string notes in that order. Just looking at his fingers it very much looks like that pattern on the A. Damn you for making me listen to (even a cover of) LZs worst radioplay song ever. 
*
* that guy is pretty great at it though.
Very cool. Do you know if a bass amp has a horn/tweeter, like a Fender Rumble, that you should be safe to have those higher octaves? I assume they have that high pass filter built-in and the big speakers should be safe.
Can’t help you there, but that guy is ripping it up!
Ooooh, yeah, I should have mentioned that. I’ve fried a couple of those tweeters with my different varieties of Super-Fuzz. If you can switch yours off or attenuate it, doing it is a must when you are using one and running the cab hard. Either my belly while moving it, or some sound guy who thought he was being helpful would sometimes turn the horn on one of my cabs at a show. That horn wouldn’t normally last a song pushing a Super-Fuzz through it at stage volume. But hey, it usually made it totally silent when it died, so that problem solved itself.
I expect the larger speakers (almost all 10") I’ve killed with it were dying from extrusion and simply overheating them with the sub frequencies it generates or other damage from that. It’s not usually going to kill the larger speakers quickly, even at stage volume. But be conservative with it. especially if your speakers have really good low end response. If you’re already pushing the amp hard, the Super-Fuzz circuit can make your speakers hate life. I think my current 2x15 may be doing so well because the head isn’t running hard (master on about max 3, I don’t want to be near it on 4), and the cab is rated for about 100W more than the head can put out. So, for once, no one is working really hard.
My favorite use of the circuit on bass is the riff from “Gratitude”. Yeah, if anyone tells you fuzz bass has no reason to exist, just cite this.That riff kills.
My favorite use of it on guitar might be The Cramps’ “Garbageman” Lots of The Cramps’ songs qualify, but this one has Super-Fuzz usage that’s almost as unhinged as the pedal itself. For the first 1:30, it’s the weird rhythm part coming from the left that I can play, but I couldn’t count for you. Then it blossoms into a wonderful crazed solo that comes up the center that just revels in the lunacy of its sound for about thirty seconds. Then it out-does itself in being chaotic and weird on its rhythm part for another thirty seconds, and takes over the minor third riff with its glorious sound to hold down the song while Poison Ivy’s solo takes off. The closing bars have it revisiting its crazed rhythm part, and the minor third riff. Just fuzzy pleasure.
But then again, those both have a bunch of studio sweetening taking the edge of the Super-Fuzz, the live stuff from Smell of Female really lets its harshness shine.
As to the lack of demos of the Monster Fuzz, I think the original run was limited to 35 pedals. They’re glow in the dark and are signed by the artist that did the graphics. I may do a demo of it. I haven’t done one of those in awhile, but I do have a long weekend this weekend. He (Matt who is Idiotbox) seems to plan regular production, though. I hope those glow in the dark, too, but even if they don’t I’ll probably get another so I can stick it on my board and lug it around without thinking I’m abusing a collector’s item. It really is my favorite mod of the Super-Fuzz circuit.
BTW, I’m not the biggest fan of Uli Behringer, but I do own more than a couple of items from his company. If you want to find out what a Super-Fuzz is like, I can’t think of a cheaper route to that than a SF300. They’re normally about $29, and last time I saw them on clearance for %50 off, I bought two. You never know, you could need an emergency Super-Fuzz copy. They’re plastic, there’s variance from unit to unit in the sound, but they’re all in that Shin-Ei fuzz/Boss FZ-2 ballpark.
Ok, that’s probably enough of my Shin-Ei fuzz evangelism for a month or so.
Thanks, well-wishers. I’ve burned through some gear here and there but I’m down to some bare essentials: an Alvarez and a Yamaha acoustic, a Am Pro II Tele, a 25 y/o MIM Strat and an assortment of smaller tube amps, all 20w or under.
I have dipped a toe into Strymon pedals, I have a Big Sky now and I don’t think I’ve used any amp reverb since. I also have a Deco and I am struggling to find reasons to use it over my DD-7, which stereos amps if I want.
I live in an apartment with my 18 and 22 y/o old sons, I don’t get to turn it up much ever, at all, so guess how often I stereo amps together. But I can if I ever wanted to!
/s
You might want to check out the new youngster on the block, Matteo Mancuso. No pick required.
Heh. Yeah, I know about him. And Pasquale.
See, the thing is, I’m going easier, not trying myself up against sick mofos like that!
Here’s a weird fingerpicking irritation I have, since we’re on the topic, it appears.
You know how most people play James Burton’s basic rhythm idea for “Workin Man Blues”? You know, either using a capo, or just using the index finger as a barre at the 5th fret (yes, I’ll pretend the tune is in A rather than Ab, like everyone does), how most if not everybody uses the A7-shaped pattern instead of what’s on the original recording?
What’s up with that? The A7-shaped figure is a nice, simple version that Burton did backing Elvis up on the old chestnut, “See See Rider.”
But the actual pattern is (with the capo put wherever, or nowhere) quite a bit different, and is based on an E-chord (cowboy chord shape) put up around the fifth fret.
I always thought that was funny that the “real way” to play that tune is the fake easy way, whereas nobody I’ve seen does it the James Burton way. Must be all that corn liquor gone to their heads or some such.
Those are really nice pedals. The guitarist in my old band had one, and I kinda lust after one. I have a SurfyBear compact, that I use when I want actual spring sounds, and a Big Sky would cover just about everything else nicely.
Similarly, I have a DD-3 that my wife bought when we were dating (and a raft of other delays). I love it, but since it doesn’t have both stereo ins and outs, and my RE-20 and now the RE-202 do, they are the delay/echo pedals I use most often.
I know you seem to be trying thin out the equipment herd, but if you really want to have stereo fun…
Have you thought about something like a mixing board? My music room is beneath a bedroom in an old split level house. So, I do a lot recording direct through a cab sim into a board. Heck, when we were in the old house my stuff was mostly in the living room, and at home I played almost exclusively into the board. My particular sim will do two different channels and two different simulated cabs at the same time. Pretty much any distortion pedal works as an amplifier to drive it, but right now I’m using both channels of my JC-40’s preamp.
It might seem like a daunting amount of stuff to get, but the most expensive part would be the cab sim. I believe the DigiTech CabDry VR that I use is discontinued, but you can pick one up used for about $70. A 4 channel analog board can be got for a song. My guitarist was just given a pretty nice Mackie one for free. If you want to record what you’re doing, then you can pay a few dollars for a used one that also serves as an audio interface and multi-track yourself like you’re Jimmy Page. Or PM me and I’ll send you my old Alesis MultiMix 4 USB. It’s noisy as hell, but it is a mixer and audio interface.
If your amps don’t have a direct out and you don’t have a couple of distortion pedals to use as amps, you can get a couple of usable used ones for $50 total, even less if you’re willing to shop around. So even if you don’t have pedals sitting around to do that duty, the whole thing is less than $200.
It’s not for everybody, but it’s rare for me to pull one of the amps out of the next room and stick a mic in front of it these days. Plugging into the cab sim and the board is just too convenient, and it’s always already set up to do stereo.
Right. I used to have a more elaborate setup, but when I moved back to the UK from the US a few years ago, I couldn’t really justify shipping a lot of amps.
Amp and cabinet sims have gotten pretty good these days.