Recent content by JoshStevensBass

Maybe a weird one but the emergence of pau ferro fingerboards has killed my GAS just because it looks a strange shade in all the stock photos! (Absolutely nothing else wrong with it by the way)

thewildest has pretty much covered it all in one up there! I would definitely second anchoring your right thumb SOMEWHERE just to give yourself more stability - same principal as the thumb on your fretting hand. You also need to really nail muting the other side of the string (you might see...

My bass soul food is (maybe embarrassingly, I should stop swapping basses...) the bit of bass gear I've had for the longest amount of time. I use it for covers sets because it can nail a lot of tones and it even made me resist the urge to buy anything by darkglass when I was playing in metal...

I also didn't like my Rumble 100. The 200 with the 15" speaker, on the other hand, sounds REALLY good at small gigs! As EL60 says above, for the price you can't really complain too much - especially when you can lift it with one finger. Whether it's worth getting rid of the 100 for the 200 or...

I would go other - simply because I've never played through any of those amps. In the last year of gigging and using a different backline amp every week, I've only ever been given Fender Rumbles (all fine but not very inspiring), Ampeg fridges (make you feel like an absolute rockstar and sound...

Everything everyone has already said is really useful, accurate stuff! The one thing that's important to remember is that with all of any "ear training" type exercises is that they're best done within the context of a song e.g. what does going from an A to a C sound like over the chords of this...

You beat me to it! It's definitely all about managing expectations and just dealing with it like sensible people. I've been the snapper in a very similar situation - we were a cover band playing a well paying gig with minimal time to rehearse and the guitarist was playing a few songs "his own...

Others have already said similar but I think it's definitely worth repeating that it's probably not a gear problem (I know, boooooo). Although the pickups being too high could definitely be a factor. Things that will make your tone more focused: 1) Playing closer to the bridge to allow for a...

Hopefully there will be something for you in the second video onwards if that's your background! Yeah "having a good ear" tends to be thrown around an awful lot - and "just playing what sounds right" which is all very well and good if you can do it but it definitely put me off when I couldn't...

If that's your budget and you don't mind the look of them, I would definitely recommend a Sandberg!

Hmmm that's very odd - the videos are perfectly audible and comparible to other videos' volume whenever I've tested then via Youtube and I haven't heard of anyone else with this problem yet? It might be worth another try on another device. Thanks for taking the time to give it a shot though. I...

Hi everyone! I recently decided to make the jump and film a short series of videos covering ear training, improvisation and learning songs by ear, purely because I would have found them useful a few years ago and I don't feel like there are many step-by-step guides out there (although please...

Haha that seems like sound logic to me! Enjoy!

If you're used to playing Fenders then a Sire neck would probably feel more comfortable than an Ibanez. My only bass for years was an Ibanez 5 string and I sold it because I realised that I much prefered Fender style necks and string spacing (Ibanez tend to put their strings closer together at...

I think the one single thing that makes the largest impact on how you sound is where you play (bridge or neck) and how hard you hit the strings. Do different basses lend themselves to different playing styles and bring out good (or bad) qualities of your sound? I reckon so.