Here is another place I am an odd ball. Only vintage gear that I have is some of the tubes in my amps.
Proper strings and set up are a bigger deal than most believe they are for articulation. Tension and gauge need to be adjusted for tuning and scale length, and then an intonation set up needs to be properly done. I think a lot of people in the doom genre just grab the heaviest 5 string set they can find, toss the G, and put it on their bass with little attention to any of the set up. It all effects the way the bass plays, and more importantly sounds.
Isn't the CL400 vintage at this point?
C standard on a 4 string? Maybe with a longer scale bass I would like it. But I play Fenders for this particular band and I don't think I would like to have all the strings be floppy. And yeah, I have heavier strings, proper setup etc.
But i came from an extreme metal background and this was a total switch for me...different scale length, fewer frets, different tuning, heavier strings that felt like spaghetti at first lol.
Definitely a learning experience.
I play B standard on a bass with 33.25" scale. The other two I use for BEAD tuning are both 34". I use pretty beefy strings, though.
I don't really try to match guitarists in tuning. While Catapult's main guitarists are both tuned to B standard now (albeit, different versions, as one uses a 6 string and the other uses a 7 string... and the keyboard player tunes to E standard when he plays guitar), one used to be tuned to drop G# (the one who plays a B standard tuned 6 now). I still played in B standard. In Dustern, the guitarist is actually tuned to D standard, but since I can't be bothered to find intermediate size strings between what's appropriate for E standard and for B standard, I just use my B standard tuned basses in that band, too.
re: Doom.
I gave up trying to categorize music sometime in the '90s, its too confusing and everywhere there's a new name for something as people try to define their particular likes into their field.
When I want "doom" I want Electric Wizard, and it seems like most bands that get called "doom" aren't that kind of heavy. Frankly, alot of the stuff I see tossed around as "doom metal" is nothing more than bog-standard heavy metal, just 2017's version.
I mean, the "stoner" stuff usually is pretty obvious, if it's about dragons and pot it's probably "stoner metal." It also tends to be kinda 70's sleazy, which is fine by me. "Psychadelic" just blends into the stoner thing, they just go off in a different tangent, and I'm happy to lump it under the "stoner/doom" umbrella... and then you get guys like Khemmis who I know people 'round here are really into, but... nope.. It's not "doom" to me and it just sounds like classic metal, updated.
It's all very confusing.
In other news, I now have one Dimarzio Model P in a bass's bridge with a stock MIM split P in the neck.. The pickup load imbalance is real and if the MIM's not at about 80% or more it's literally buried under the DiMarzio completely.
Kinda doesn't seem worth it, really.
On the other hand, this is what you get when youc an only afford half of the pickups you require.
I think it's partly about an approach to sound, and the scene a band came up in.
While Khemmis is an odd fit for the doom scene, that seems to be the scene they came out of. I'd liken them most closely to Pallbearer, who have their roots in 90s doom bands like Candlemass and Cathedral.
A lot of you are from back east, and while it's not 100% clean, there seems to be somewhat a split between the west coast and east coast doom scenes to some degree. There's more crust and black metal influence on the western doom bands, with some exceptions.
Hence a band like Chrch is a pretty good encapsulation of the west coast doom scene.
There are exceptions, of course, since Sleep is one of the most 70s of bands, and they're from the west, while Sea of Bones is from the east coast and sounds like an Oakland doom band.
Still, as one reviewer noted, the Graves at Sea/Sourvein split is a good summary of the US doom metal scene as it stands today.
As for my own bands, people have called Catapult "post black metal" and all sorts of other things, and referred to Dustern as a "gloom" band. In my mind, both bands are doom metal... as they're metal bands that tune low, play slow, and at really high volume.
Thinking about picking up a new amp: orange ad200 or a mesa 400+. I had an orange and loved it, but the mesa I'm really curious about mostly bc of the fx loop and being all tube of course. And the orange doesn't have an fx loop. Anyone have any exp with a 400+? I'll ask later in the main board, but I'll really be using this for my doomy hardcoah grindcoah whatevah band.
I would take the 400+ over the Orange, personally. I know Mesa amps get a lot of hate in this thread, but I love my D-180 (except for the Fender tone stack... grrr...), but the Orange also has a Fender tone stack, and doesn't have a graphic EQ to get around it. The 400+ is also about 100 watts more powerful than the Orange.
Why those two in particular?
