Happy Holidays from No Treble

As we look back at 2011, there are a lot of great memories and favorite moments here on No Treble.

At the top of the list is the connections we’ve made with bassists around the world – more than 50,000 of them on our Facebook page, and many more who have visited this site over the year. No Treble has been visited more than 1.4 million times this year. Wow. A big thanks to all of you who read, and a huge thanks to those of you who comment, email and share. We appreciate you more than you can know.

Fifty-two times a year, we get to feature a player from our community in our weekly Player Spotlight feature. If you haven’t filled out the interview questionnaire yet, we hope you will soon. We’re discovering so many talented bassists through our connections with players we’re meeting through here. That, plus our daily videos not only allow us to showcase the great talent out there, we see that readers share our enthusiasm.

Rounding out our community features is our recently introduced New School series, focusing on bassists who are pushing the envelope and doing their thing to redefine our great and versatile instrument, as well as the other end of the spectrum: Old School, where we feature GAS-inducing vintage instruments owned by NT readers who want to share them with the world.

That doesn’t mean we don’t focus on the well-known players. We love them too! We interviewed plenty in 2011, including Stu Hamm, Victor Wooten, Doug Johns, Bryan Beller, Gerald Veasley, Anthony Wellington, Rhonda Smith, Adam Nitti, Peter Dominguez, Les Claypool, the duo interview with Tony Levin and Julie Slick, Alex Webster, Jeroen Paul Thesseling and Christian McBride.

This year, welcomed three new columnists. Ryan Madora’s Blues Bass column posts every other Friday, with her unique look at playing blues bass and looking back at the great players and tunes in blues bass history. Rob Doane kicked off his new Mod Shop column, featured once a month here, where Rob describes various bass mods in detail for all the DIY’ers out there. Rounding out the list is guest columnist Dr. Randall Kertz and his popular 6-part series, Health & Fitness for The Working Bassist.

We also had another great year of columns by Donovan Stokes and his Lowdown With Dr. D column every other Monday, and Damian Erskine’s Q&A column every Wednesday. We even kicked the tires on a new column format designed to start a conversation too. Our first one did just that. The ongoing Custom Shop column and Top Ten lists are big hits. Look for those to continue in 2012 and beyond.

And a big thanks to our sponsors in 2011, who helped make No Treble great: Ansir Music, TC Electronic, Concord Music Group, DR Strings, Marcus Miller, Corea Clarke White and Source Audio.

We’re gearing up for an even bigger and better 2012, with some exciting new features planned. The No Treble crew will be at winter NAMM next month, and we’re bringing Rob DeHaven, our unofficial videographer (and one of the masterminds behind our first “No Treble Original” video, How to Fix a Guitar). Be on the lookout for the best bass-focused NAMM coverage right here in just a few weeks.

Happy holidays to you, the greatest people in the world who play the greatest instrument in the world.

– Corey, Kevin, Karla, Kayla and the rest of the No Treble crew

P.S. We’re putting together a lot of “Best of 2011” features for the coming week. Be sure to check back and see what was most popular here on No Treble in 2011.