Realizations for 2009

Hope you all had a Happy Holiday Season, and a very Happy New Year!

So for 2009, I have made a resolution not to make any new year resolutions, for fear of breaking them in the near future out of laziness or forgetfulness…

Sometime late last year, or early this year, I read a blog entry from Bay Area bassist Jeff Schmidt on his Myspace page called: Not sucking Donkey Balls Isn’t enough for success. It includes a video of Malcolm Gladwell interviewed by Charlie Rose. Basically the gist of it is that in order to master something you need to do it for about 10,000 hours under the right circumstances… Watch the video and you’ll understand…

Also, last year, I was pondering selling my bass rig in order to get something smaller and less cumbersome to move around, and to get some cash back… Well that sort of happened, but not really… I ended up selling most of my pedals that I don’t use… So I’m left with the following:

Barber Electronics Launch Pad Boost Pedal (my preamp)
QSC PLX 1804 (power amp)
Dr. Bass 1580 (speaker cabinet)

Let me preface this by saying that my band Har Ik Zehr played a show on December 26th for some sort of Paki Cultural/Political Event in Long Island City, Queens… We had to bring all of our equipment, etc… We were promised a 30 minute set, but were cut off after not even the end of our 2nd song… Anyways, we as a band decided that this show never existed… But I came to the realization, that my amplification set-up is fine, it sounds good, it’s a little bigger than I’d like, but it sounds great, and is loud enough for most venues…

Also, to go off on another tangent, I had dinner with Yves Carbonne and his wife last night in NYC… It was so nice to actually meet him in person, and to see how passionate he is about music…

So anyways, more about Yves later… But I’ve come to realize that more gear, even better gear doesn’t make you a better player or musician… More life, more practice, and finding yourself and your own musical voice/style make you a better musician… So, to make a long story short, I better get on with those 10,000 hours of practice…

For Sale: Dr. Bass 1580... (w/Beyma upgrade)

Just wanted to let you all know that I am selling my Dr. Bass 1580 speaker cabinet... It's got an upgraded Beyma G40 15" speaker, along with casters. It's in excellent condition and I have extra cabinet corners and casters that I will send with it... I'm not playing out much with my own set-up, and my back seems to be getting worse... Please msg/email me if you are interested.

Thanks.

Tim

Preamps and Amplification…

Here’s another installment of Bass Geekdom…

My main bass started out with an active preamp… I have since taken it out and am left with 3 empty holes on my bass, but no matter… My bass is for playing, and not for just looking pretty…

I am rather anti-EQ, and currently play my bass through the following rig at home:

Bass => QSC PLX1804 => Dr. Bass 1580…

I figure that if the bass doesn’t sound good on it’s own, it’s not going to sound better with more junk in the signal…

I am not against the right preamp though… I just don’t think that on-board preamps are all they are cracked up to be. For me, it’s one more think to worry about/fail… Is your battery fully charged? Besides, if you get a good out-board preamp that you like, you can use it with all your passive basses, right?

Anyways, my favorite preamp of all time is the A-Designs REDDI… It’s just great sounding and great looking. It’s sort of a fire engine red brick with 1 gain knob, and a very bright blue light… If it weren’t for the weird form factor, I’d still have it…

I tried out the Tech 21 RPM, but wasn’t too happy with it as it got in the way of my bass signal. There was a magic that was lost when I turned on the pre… The sound sort of became less open…

I just ordered the Barber Electronics Launch Pad Boost Pedal… It’s got up to 20db of gain, and 2 outputs, one of them is balanced… I have high hopes for this one. I just need a boost before the power amp… I’ll keep you posted…