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I just wanted to say a big thank you to Adam and all at D'addario. I did a gig last Thursday and my D string broke during the second song. Thankfully I brought a spare bass (first time ever for both). So a few days ago a conversation on here to place about broken strings. So I thought I'd mention it to D'addario, who were part of that conversation just as some customer feedback. Adam came straight back to me and offered to send a new set as a goodwill gesture. Brand new set of strings arrived less than 48 hours later. Top bloke, top company! Everyone is quick to moan about bad service, how about we also name the good guys here too. Your turn:

Look, enough of this bickering. Yes, I know I'm a Tech21 slut, but that unit sounded the dogs from the very first time I heard it. Just tweak your settings kids...I'm sure that once you get your mitts on this, you'll forget about all these worries about what it will and won't do. Much as I loved my GT2 and other stuff and I still love my BDDI and GED, this baby is going to blow those out of the water. I'm excited as a fat kid waiting for his birthday cake.

That's a biggie for me - I like to understand the singer, not just hear them. I always want our vocals loud & proud, if there can only be one loud & proud thing in the PA then it has to be the lead vocals, not the darn bass drum.

Maybe they've got a veneerial disease...

You sure you weren't at a Baldrick poetry recital?

Pah! Call that a crowd? We've got the World Cup coming up, which means that our pub gigs starts to look like this:

Satellites would have have been a good album from anyone who's previous effort hadn't been so exceptional, as it was I felt incredibly disappointed the first time I heard it. I tried to let it grow on me, but despite a couple of brilliant moments it never did. I will check out Wonderland on your recommendation though.

Nooo. Recovering the Satellites is amazing and has me in tears half the time. Agree that the next few albums are a mixed bag but the last album (so far), Somewhere under Wonderland is brilliant. August is utterly captivating though, who doesn’t love it?

I’ve had Counting Crows’ ‘August and Everything After’ on in the car today; one of those albums that I always go back to, and have done for well over twenty years. I’m a song guy first and foremost, but listening today it struck me how good the rhythm section is on this album. On the song ‘Omaha’ particularly the bass and drums are locked...

800,000 per day? :-o I've just restrung my P with some of your nice rounds, like what I always do where rounds are concerned. They're lovely.

No it is not! I found a 2nd hand one and mistook the price for a new one.

I experienced the opposite to the 'band inside, audience out in the sun' problem when playing at an autumn festival at a pub on the Thames. The bands were outside, on decking over a bit of the river, and when we went on at 9 pm, it was getting chilly. By the time we'd finished the first set, only the most hardy were outside to listen (and the most nicotine-addicted). We played the second set in hats & gloves and huddled around the fire eaters laid on by the pub as a means of keeping warm. We were basically playing to large empty field, with full PA, lights, etc. but no one watching us. Inside the pub, people were having a good time, enjoying the music (so they said) and keeping warm. I just wanted to set fire to something, preferably the pub, simply to warm up again.

Sounds like you don't quite get the issue some people have with the way it's set up. It's set up just right for my rig, as I know my amp and cab is darker than your average PA as I have no tweeters in my cabs. If the signals were matched, I would end up pushing the treble too much and sending an overly bright signal to the PA. Having the XLR put out a darker signal works in this case. But when you have a rig that is full range and flat response just like the PA, it doesn't work so well. You set the EQ to where your personal amp used for stage monitoring has the right amount of treble content, but the signal going to the desk ends up darker than that. Of course they can bump up the treble at the desk, but then you've got to try and communicate that to the sound engineer. Or you could compensate on the pedal and just put up with an overly bright stage sound knowing that the audience will hear something different.

Awww shucks. Thanks for all the positive feedback. Seriously though, we make over 800,000 strings per day and faults are very few and far between, but it is important we put it right if it does go wrong. Thanks for the love guys, and having us as part of this great community! Adam.

I must get a pair of those RFB pickups and permanently wire them in series. Currently, the only means I have of scorching a bran muffin is by bending over in front of one and lighting a match near my anus. Just for clarity: "AC RFB Humbucker: This wide aperture humbucking pickup provides a more aggressive, darker tone, with a lot punch and a smoother high end when compared to the more modern hifi tone of our FB pickup. A great choice for a powerful rock or extremely punchy funk tone, anything where you really want to be noticed. The pickup can be wound in series mode for a serious amount of low mid punch or parallel for pronounced mid range clarity. It can also be combined with a 3 way switch to allow access to series, parallel and single coil mode making for an incredibly versatile setup, a great choice for a single pickup bass, or in combination with any other pickup for a veritable Swiss Army knife of an instrument. RFB Pickups are available in 40mm or 50mm casings, however we recommend 50mm casings to get the best from the design."

Something about black / maple with a black plate on...

Pretty much any Motown from the 60's / 70's - made me want to play bass before I even knew I did.

........recently left Pentangle tribute band - didn't fit in.............................

If only life was that simple. You're talking about one guy/girl in a venue who has probably never met the band before v 3-6 mates who can't even address volume issues with themselves, let alone listen to a total stranger. You will get comments like "all sound engineers are @resholes" but you have to be quite strong, direct and thick skinned to do it, otherwise soundchecks turn into chaos while guitarists widdle for 2 hours and lead vocalists chat up the barmaid. - and you might still have another 3 bands to check. I have lost count of the times I have pleaded with guitarists to turn down, to think of the gig, but they start staring into space and continue ragging their rig because it is their sound. I'm only glad I never had to do FOH for Jimi Hendrix! I used to have few tricks up my sleeve too, like making monitors feedback, turning monitors off etc, but only in extreme cases of someone being an @rsehole themselves. Ultimately, stupid games like that only affect the gig, and the man with the mic has the ultimate power of being able to slag you off mid gig, whether you deserve it or not. What we all have to remember is sound is subjective. What sounds better to me might be totally worse to others. This is why bigger bands tend to find engineers they agree with and stick with them/take them on tour. Not a luxury most of us get.

In my opinion Morrissey is a fifth wheel, and not just in The Smiths...

A classic from the mighty Grace Jones featuring some more fabulous Sly & Robbie groovin...

That's what I do too. I find the long cutters far too dangerous and my router has limited plunge so I use a 1" long top bearing cutter, then flip the body over and use a bottom bearing cutter to take the rest of it off. Also, because I use a personal rule of never cutting more than 2mm depth at a time, I either bandsaw VERY close to the template line on the blank, or use progressively small guide rings initially to reduce the blank to within 2mm of the template. I'm a bit paranoid about routers...

That is the way I do it but once you’ve gone down to the maximum depth from the top using the template with a top bearing cutter I then turn the body over and swap to a bottom bearing cutter so the bearing runs on the bit you all ready cut then that eliminates the problem with Allen key collar......

I don't need to worry about world cup gigs. Never gonna happen here. Maybe this tho

Another classic... this too...

Not exactly as per the OP but - if someone offered to buy you, or go halves on, any bass you wanted - my son went for halves on a new white MIA Fender P. Which cost me more than the whole of my 2nd hand black Jazz Aerodyne. I wouldn't swap them for any money and nor would he. We're playing different types of music and both respect that. We're both happy :-)

A preamp or acoustic pedal that has a notch filter worked an absolute treat for my mate's Verithin bass. Stopped the feedback dead.

The ones made in Yorkshire are branded Ibagum.

Just had a first proper play with and am ‘chuffed to bits’ as some would say. It still needs a tiny bit of adjustment but only to perfect string height relative to each other and no more than 0.8mm anywhere. It sounds fantastic. I love the T bird sound so that’s no surprise but you only know for sure once you play it. I am playing a short set at the weekend but next proper gig is the 18th and will take it for that for sure. Weight wise it’s not as bad as I first thought, very similar to the genuine Gibson.

That may well be true, but he would easily run circles around Davey Jones in a game of 'let's see who can burn through this big bag of crack the quickest'. And he would wash it down with 17 plastic bottles of White Lightning, the drink of champions.

Easy. Musima, made behind the Iron Curtain in the old DDR: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-and-Rare-1980s-MUSIMA-Action-Bass-P-bass-DDR-Japan-/253386997413 NEXT!

Dr Robert Moog, Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire, Ralf Hutter and the crew at Roland. Why? Cos at age 6 or so I got turned onto bleeps and whirrs etc from listening to the Dr Who theme , Magic Fly by Space and Autobahn. And I've been annoying the crr@p out of wives, mates etc ever since with my own sounds and extensive collection of electronica

Ian Anderson, of Tull fame. Soundtrack to my life since 1968. He has written songs in so many genres I sometimes found it difficult to keep up. Before that, the Beatles. Again for the diversity and quality of their material. No one pushed the boundaries of popular music so far in such a short space of time. Not great musicians but more importantly, super creative musicians. Taught me that creativity trumps chops every time.

Melted Wispa on dark muscovado? Mmmmm

But is it PedAnt or PedEnt?

Probably frequented some very similarly dodgy venues though... To be fair, though the 80's was known for it's flamboyance and excess, there was a strong undercurrent in music, away from the mainstream. There certainly appeared to be a lot of experimentation with styles, and certainly, the clarion call was lead by John Peel's radio show.

I've always thought of 'August' as one of those rare perfect albums. There's not a weak song on it. It was impossible to follow up of course and in my opinion none of Counting Crow's subsequent recordings came close.

It's a 2012 , full scale. Really fun to play, very thin neck. Blue

Welcome to Basschat Jack. You will enjoy the Basschat Build Diaries no doubt.

Quiet boys, I've got a bite! It was a joke, hence the smiley. I'm a big fan of Yamaha, my number two bass is my Bex4, absolutely amazing bass for very little money, and if I sold all my basses and had to choose one bass for life it would be a 2024x in vintage white.

I agree. A highly musical band was required to complement Morrisey's musical limitations. This highlighted the lyrics all the more. Johnny Marr's work with The The suggests that Marr was more adaptable than Mozzer. Johnny Marr Morrisey

Not one particular musician, many! Ranging from Ralph Vaughan Williams, Aaron Copland through to Dave Grusin & Richard Bona. They all have the melodic, emotional, composing styles that really appeal to my ears.

They're not exactly rare. Or unobtainable. Or expensive. You famously can't buy Wal pickups, but Herrick do this spiffy 8-coil number. Not cheap, but can you imagine what the bass would sound like..? https://www.herrickpickups.com/products/split-8-coil-mm-humbucker/ I think just one of them, wired and switched for various configurations and with a top-range pre-amp, would be fairly orgasmic.Full-on active electronics versatility but with a vintage look and feel. Does it get any better..?

Holy Necrothread, Batman! Finally found a P I want to keep - battered, obscure 70s Japanese replica, black, black, maple, DiMarzios. Ruck as fock, it is:

Clive bought my TB1000. Graat bloke to deal with. Swift payment, good comms. What more could you ask for? Thanks again Clive. Cheers Dunc