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[Dante]

Not sure how I missed this thread but, NICE BASS! I love P-Basses, I had one that was way more valuable than I knew & I traded it for a mountain bike 

FFWD a few years later, I rebuilt a Squire with P-bass parts and refinished the body by hand. I have my P-Bass now. Thank God, because the bass I had before that was a BC Rich Warlock (haha)

[Harley Hexxe]

Hey Harley, ahh, I totally get where you are coming from now  .  Yes I was very influenced by Hendrix, particularly when I was first learning to play.  I used to play the star spangled banner thing and bash my guitar into wall and stuff to try to emulate his version (didn't have a whammy bar on that guitar).  Gary Thain (RIP) was one of my favourite ever bass players, I love Uriah Heap, particularly the Live album... Friday Night in Birmingham....  I didn't realise he played flat wounds but that makes sense now I think of his tone (a little bit flat for my taste but he made up for that with shear brilliance).  I've always wondered what Mick Box's guitar would have sounded like through an ADA MP-1 /2, I like his sound, but it could be better... as in I like my '73 Marshall 50 but the MP1/2 sound way better IMHO.
My mates amp is a Behriger but my problem with it all was it lost all those lovely piano style rings and harmonics you get from round wounds.  He wanted flat wounds for comfort and couldn't really hear the difference  and he can't play anything like Gary Thain.

Hey Richard,

                I'll bet that wasn't a name you expected to hear coming from a guitar player   Yes, Gary was a brilliant player, as well as a writer. His tone was more subdued in The Keef Hartley Band, but he would occasionally riff in his signature style, and you knew it was him. In Uriah Heep, he gave his bass a bit more overdrive with his amps and you could tell he felt a lot more free to express himself on his instrument. When he first accepted the offer to go with Heep, He and Mick sat down and wrote Spider Woman and Sweet Lorraine in the first day they got together. Gary was definitely an under rated bass player who left us at too early an age.

              Gary was very influenced by James Jamerson and Chuck Rainey, and you could hear that in his playing, but then he'd go off the beaten path with his weaving bass lines and wander out of the melody, only to noodle his way back to it and land in the pocket right on the click! That's what got my attention. It was more than straight 4/4 interaction with the guitar, and the combination, (to me) was very powerful.

              I don't play anything like Gary either, but I do try to use his style when I riff on a bass.

Harley

[Harley Hexxe]

Not sure how I missed this thread but, NICE BASS! I love P-Basses, I had one that was way more valuable than I knew & I traded it for a mountain bike 

FFWD a few years later, I rebuilt a Squire with P-bass parts and refinished the body by hand. I have my P-Bass now. Thank God, because the bass I had before that was a BC Rich Warlock (haha)

    Hey Dante,

                 As long as it gets you the P-Bass tone, that's what matters!  (I'm visualising you with a Warlock Bass. Hmm....Spinal TAP!)

[rnolan]

Hey Harley, when I bought the Alembic and started to get into bass playing Gary Thain was very much on my mind as to how I'd like to play.  He seems to have had lots of latitude in UH and I still enjoy listening to it, July Morning is probably my fav.  Interestingly, I sent Jur a copy of UH live thinking he'd also like the bass playing, when I asked him later what he thought he said he didn't like it  .  Very unfortunate that Gary fell foul of the US propensity to not use earth connections in the power, my understanding is he got zapped by a mic at sound check getting ready for a US show  .

[Harley Hexxe]

Hey Richard,

           I can understand Jurrie not liking UH. It's one of those things that you either love it or hate it, there's no middle ground.
           Realistically, their commercial success was a bit of a fluke. They were so much more popular as an underground band than a commercial one. I remember all the pirate radio stations in Greece played stuff like that all the time, ( Electronics hobbyists who build their own transmitters, and broadcast whatever they felt like ). I heard a lot of great music on those stations that I never heard on the commercial radio. But the truth is, they were really not a band that fans could connect with as far as their material. They were more about fantasy and wizardry, unlike their contemporaries, ( Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath ), who wrote about things that people could relate to in the real world. So listening to UH was kind of like a temporary vacation from reality.
           Plus, the most prominent sound in UH was the organ and synthesizers, and not the guitar. Jurrie probably found Mick Box to be a bit boring and uninspiring as a guitar player. He certainly didn't interact with the keyboards the way Blackmore did. If it weren't for songs like Easy Living, and Sweet Lorraine, I think UH would have remained under the commercial radar. Their follow-up album after The Magician's Birthday, Wonderworld, barely got any mention at all except as a footnote in the trade publications at the time.

          It's a popular misconception about Gary's electrocution. Yes, he did get a severe shock at a show they were going to do in Texas, and was taken away in an ambulance, but that didn't kill him. Gary was unable to perform after that happened, but whether it was because of physical or psychological reasons, was never explained. At least I never could find out anything specific about it. Gary died almost a year later from respiratory complications due to an overdose of heroin. That seems to be all that's available about it.

Harley

[rnolan]

Hey Harley, I thought he'd like the bass like I did.  Just amazing playing.  Another underrated bass player from that era was the guy in Slade (Jim Lea).  When I listen to Slade Alive (great live rock album) these days I appreciate the bass playing much more than I did at the time.

[Harley Hexxe]

Hey Richard,

              I didn't get into Slade very much. I vaguely remember hearing something from them in the 70's, but it never really did anything for me.
              From what I understand, either they couldn't sing and play at the same time, or they couldn't keep it together live. They lip-sync'd to recorded tracks for "live" shows. They got busted for that in the early 80's 

              The next bass player who got my attention was Peter "Mars" Cowling. There's a great example of a bass guitar working hard with a lead guitar.

Harley

[rnolan]

Hey Harley, the reason I got into playing guitar was Slade, a really early track "Take Me Back Home" came on the radio and I just had to turn it up, the rest is (my) history...  Slade Alive is a great album and they certainly played that.  They had some other songs I didn't like as much like Mama We're all Crazy Now.

[Harley Hexxe]

    Hey Richard,

               I'll have to go give that track a listen. It's been so long since I heard and music from Slade that I can't remember it even if I did hear it back then.

               I know what you mean about Mam We're All Crazy Now, I didn't much care for it even when Quiet Riot covered it

Harley

[rnolan]

Hey Harley, Take me Back Home was only ever a single which I found again more recently on a best off CD (I seem to have lost the single along the way  ).  Mama We're all crazy now was the next single in Australia, I still don't like it much.  When Take me back home came on the radio, it was so different to everything else they were playing, like "The Ball Bearing Bird" etc.  Slade Alive was one of the first 4 albums I bought (they were $5 each back then, big money for a 12-13 year old), the other 3 - DP Machine Head, Status Quo Piledriver, Black Sabbath Vol 4.

[Harley Hexxe]

Hey Richard,

           Ah hah! I gotcha now. The first records we buy always seems to make a much bigger impact on our psyche than we care to admit. I remember when I went shopping for records for the first time, I knew what I wanted. I wanted Jimi Hendrix, Atomic Rooster, and Steppenwolf. Hendrix was completely sold out, so I ended up getting Steppenwolf Monster, Atomic Rooster, Death Walks Behind You, Led Zeppelin II, Iron Butterfly, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, and Johnny Winter And, Live.
            I remember Johnny Winter's live versions of Jumpin' Jack Flash, and Johnny B Good, blew me away. In fact, Johnny Winter's version of Jumpin' Jack Flash was the first version I learned to play, and the Stones version seemed lethargic to me after that  I loved the energy, and since I was noticing a lot of improvement in my guitar playing at that point in time, I wanted to catch up to those guys.
            I didn't hear of Slade until a couple of years later.

Harley

[Peter H. Boer]

Hey Peter,

        You got me thinking now....

         Do you have a bass with flatwounds on it? If so, is it active?  I'm wondering what an active bass would sound like with flat wound strings, or how that would change it's personality from round wound strings?

         Maybe you can shed a little light on that subject?

          Thanks,

Harley

Hey Harley,

All my bass guitars (all 9) have round wounds on them, I'm always going for the raspy grind thing.
All my basses have passive pups, only some have active electronics.
In the studio I only use passive.

My upright and my EUB have flatwounds and active electronics.

Bass on 

Peter

[Harley Hexxe]

Hey Peter,

       So you do lose all that mid-range growl with flat wound strings then, bummer.

       Okay, so I'll build the Jazz Bass with passive pups, but I'll try some experimentation with different pups, and tone stacks.
       
       From the conversations posted here with Richard, you can see one of the bass tones I'm looking for. It's nice to have that flexibility.
       I can almost get it with the Precision, but not quite. I'll experiment more with the EQ and blend controls.

       Thanks for the advice, it helps a lot. I haven't really focused on the bass tone as much as I should have before now, but this bass guitar is changing all that.

Harley

[Peter H. Boer]

Hey Peter,

       So you do lose all that mid-range growl with flat wound strings then, bummer.

       

Some of it, but Steve Harris has plenty of clatter (though that's mostly highs) and he plays flatwounds exclusively (has done always)