@Vurbal - that sounds pretty awesome. And your wife reminds of my own lady a little. Sounds like a keeper.

-40hz (July 29, 2016, 08:22 PM)

She certainly is! And I'm not saying that because she just bought me a set of Sadowsky Black Label flatwounds for my birthday... well not just that.  :D

Unfortunately, that band doesn't look like it's ever going to completely come together, but, as it happens, I've got opportunities coming out of the woodwork now. A couple weeks ago, a guitarist I've played with quite a bit got me an invite to a private get together with a local drummer who's looking to put together a 60s and early 70s R&B/Soul group. It was a great afternoon, and I apparently impressed everybody there by blowing through a bunch of songs I didn't know (all but like 2 songs we played) by just picking up on the groove and running with it.

The R&B project doesn't have a timeline yet, since the drummer is recuperating from a health scare he had a couple months back, but he would like to be playing out by the end of September. But another drummer who was there invited me to possibly do some recording with him on an originals project he's doing with a guitarist. They call it prog, which it really isn't. Mostly, it just has slightly oddball time signatures, like 9/8. However, it's interesting enough for me to spend a couple hours every weekend working on bass lines, and recording is another mountain I was looking to conquer eventually anyway.

The most exciting one for me, though, is this. Since my wife and I started going to the Sunday night jam, I've gotten a lot more stage time, since very few bass players show up. By the end of the night, the host band's bassist and I usually end up taking 3-4 songs at a time. After a lot of playing time together, a very good guitarist who's been sitting in with them, mostly just to fill up his musical calendar, wants me to work with him on an originals project - sort of a late 60s style power trio. He's apparently been looking for a bassist for months, but couldn't find anybody who played melodically enough. He also invited me to come sit in with him at an open mic night he hosts about 15 minutes away from my house.

Of course, the downside, as any musician (or music lover period) who has sat through enough open jams can tell you, is listening to the same handful of standards being butchered almost weekly. There are only so many times you can hear They Call It Stormy Monday played without feeling before you snap. Don't get me started on Cissy Strut or Shakey Ground. Let's just say that some people should not be allowed to play funk in public.

Not that I'm claiming to be perfect. A friend of mine showed up one night and wanted to sing Me and Bobby McGee, which she does very well, even when both the guitar and bass are off key, as it turns out. Since the guitarist and I had both played it in the past, we just looked up the chords as a refresher before hand. Unfortunately, we didn't look closely enough to remember the key change after the first verse. :o We spent most of the rest of the song giving each other funny looks, since neither one of us could figure out exactly what was wrong. Fortunately, the singer is a real pro, so we only made ourselves look stupid.

So I've been playing my re-engineered bass for almost a week and it's like a whole new instrument. I ended up turning the preamp gain almost all the way up - to about 5db. Initially that was just to compensate for output level differences when switching from mid focused (bass/treble cut technically) to mid cut tones. As it turns out, it also makes fine tuning the amount of dirt I'm getting from the overdrive pedal.

The difference with the buffer is so significant that my wife, who does not at all have the ear of a musician, immediately noticed it sounded clearer - before I actually got a good tone dialed in BTW. At rehearsal last week, it cut through the mix at a significantly lower volume. Just as importantly, the volume and tone from one string/note to the next is relatively balanced for the first time ever.

On the good side, struggling to tame those problems for nearly a year has done wonders for my technique. Even better, the guys I've been regularly playing with for the last few months, are actually sounding like a real band. If that doesn't work out, now I've got everything I need to look elsewhere.