Leaderboard

I recently sold my bass rig in favour of an FRFR cab and great it is too, however it did leave me in a dilemma as I only owned one amp head (a trusty LMII) and now have nothing to power my little EA cab which I use for home practice which I can leave set up in the front room. I had my eye on a Trace Elf or the little GK amp (MB200 or something?) but they are a bit overkill for plugging in around the house. I did think about a cheap combo but I want the sound quality of the EA cab which is lovely and crystal clear. So what to do? Enter this total POS, a local collection won on eBay for the princely sum of 99p (yes, 99 English pence, excuse my cluttered workbench). It's a cheapo Kinsman 10w kiddie's practice amp, same thing you see rebranded under 100 different names but it's essentially a BB10. As you can see it's had a hard life, it's completely crushed and it sounds terrible. Originally I was going to rehouse it but the little 4" speaker is shot to pieces (or more likely just wasn't any good in the first place) which leaves the amp. No prizes for guessing what happens next! So out comes the screwdriver and we can see what's inside! Here's the details: As we can see the amp was born on the 23rd of July 2011 and is called Jim. Now Jim and I have become firm friends I can see about liberating him from his awful particleboard prison and making him a new home. Time to snip some wires and get the dremel and soldering iron out. Luckily there's already a couple of holes here so both will be widened so I can fit an IEC socket and a Speakon combi jack, the Speakon I already had (bought a pack of two when I fixed an old cab) and the IEC socket was £1.30 on eBay. Originally I was going to fit a 1/4" jack for pure convenience but that would mean actually buying one and not being able to use my short speaker cable so that idea went out the window. I did have some pics of the widened holes but my old phone died, the combi jack hole was incredibly neat and the IEC hole much less so. Any untidy edges were covered with a layer of black vinyl (99p - eBay again) on the outside anyway so my cack-handed metalwork is well hidden. I decided on semi transparent acrylic for the case which was £3.49 for an A4 sheet including delivery, wood would be easier for me to work with (I hate cutting plastic) but I thought the acrylic would look smart and I already had a bag of M2 hex screws to hold it together, unfortunately I misjudged the sizes due to the amp frame being slightly uneven and bulging slightly (probably happened when it got damaged originally) but meh, it will do for now. I used the original feet and screws from the original combo where possible so I didn't have to buy anything else. So here's Jim in his new clothes! So seeing as I had some screws and a Speakon socket lying around to begin with all in all this cost me: Amp - 99p Acrylic - £3.49 IEC socket - £1.30 Black vinyl - 99p Total - £6.77 As you can see there's a few rough edges there along with some poorly cut acrylic, I didn't sand anything down as at some point I'm going to redo the acrylic sleeve entirely - I seemed to have got the hang of cutting it with a jigsaw on the very last cut I had to make and know where I went wrong the first time. It will do for now though, besides another £3.49 sheet of acrylic would push the cost of the build right up and I'm not made of money. So I bet you all think it sounds terrible and has no volume when paired with my EA cab right? Well it actually sounds surprisingly good, more than loud enough for home practice and isn't at all deficient in the tone department either. Sure it looks like a child's lunch box but it makes for a solution a problem with the absolute minimal spend which is ideal for me. Now I can buy another expensive preamp pedal and not feel guilty about it.

A good gig id imagine for a singer / actress trying to pay a mortgage

Kind of. Made me laugh anyway

I don't know how she does it.... It's a mystery

Money money money...

Charlie Harper from The UK Subs is a big inspiration for me now. I was never really into the band, liked them, but not a major fan or anything. But having been on the same bill as them a good few times, seeing how much he is into the music at - 73 now I think - and how much time he has for audience members wanting to chat/have autographs/pics taken with him, after doing it for 40 years, well it shows me the way a real musician conducts themselves. His love for it is evident, and apparently he still tries to write a new song every day. That to me is someone who is doing it for the right reasons. Whenever he is at gigs he literally isn`t left alone the whole time through people wanting those pics/chats/autographs yet never has a bad word to say about anyone, always has a smile on his face.

Have any of you seen Toyah on her recent acoustic tour? She is 3 weeks of being 60, she looks amazing and sounds fabulous. All the hits plus some rarities done with 2 acoustic 6 strings and a bass (fretless and double). Musically outstanding which is remarkable because one of the regular guitarists was rushed to hospital earlier in the week to have his appendix removed so a dep was used. Not that you would have known if we hd not been told!! Toyah is doing some gigs with a full electric band in November and on the strength of last night I have booked my tickets. I recommend you do the same. N PS I have no connection to Toyah or members of the band.

It varies almost daily, although I have my 'idols' that I blame for helping to mould me as a musician. For example I felt musically nourished today after listening to the new Lydian Collective album. Some really tasty tunes on there. Sophie Alloway's drumming is superb and the grooves are just stellar. Tomorrow, who knows. David Maxim Micic? Meshuggah? Jean-Michel Jarre? I bloody love music x

Fixed

Brilliant cheers. I never thought I'd end today gassing for two thirds of a Stratocaster.

Maybe he misspelt granite?

It has an Eminence Deltalite II 2512 driver (120 quid at Blue Aran), which is what most makers use in their price point neo loaded cabs, so yes, the price is insane, even in the US, where the street price is $799.

Yeah, it is. I wonder how the Aguilar stuff compares?

It even comes with a handy little attachment that could be used to give your coat a quick going over before you leave Hooverkill???

I think Aguilar are soon going to be in danger of having priced themselves out of the market.

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We got it cheaper at least! Hope we're not far behind in the queue though.

Having thought about this pedal - and given the fact that I love the sound on the clips - I reckon it will do a job for me pretty well. As many bass cabs are voiced to be, well, bassy, it kind of makes a bit of sense to me that what comes out of the 1/4" has more highs, as this will compensate for the added lows of the cab being used. Initially I was a tad unsure when I heard about the possible difference between XLR and 1/4", now I reckon it will work fine - and my thinking is maybe Dug himself had it designed this way for this reason. Only a guess but it - now - seems a pretty good idea.

and from the more glam part of the 80s music scene

Good man! If we had a Recycler of the Week Award you would get my nomination.

Interesting thoughts on this, couple I especially like is use of the job title engineer. I have the same angst against the term ‘consultant’ for me, it should be reserved for the hospital doc. I get the room thing too, it must be difficult, but I have been to gigs where I have seen multiple acts from the same spot on the same night with varying quality of mixes, and the number of people in the venue did not change appreciably. That surely is poor craft

Not leaping to the defense of sound engineers here: some are certainly better than others. But here’s a fun little test you can try at home... Play a song you know well over your hi-fi, if you have one. And what the heck, play it loud. Now walk around the room, pause and listen to how the sound changes: boomy bass in some places; weak bass in others. Now imagine trying to control that on a grand scale, in a room where no investment has been made on acoustic treatment. It’s just not possible; and there will always be parts of the room/venue where the sound will suck. And it’s always sucked. We just hear the ‘suck’ more as we get older, because we’re less drunk/ more experienced/ discerning/ fussy/ whatever. I remember seeing Motörhead when I was 18 years old. It was an indiscernable wall of noise and I loved it; but I wouldn’t tolerate more than 10 minutes of it now. Yes, some live enginneers need a good talking to. But there’s only so much you can do with bad acoustics. And even purpose-built music venues often have major flaws in their design. If you want great acoustics, go take a seat at a grand old theatre or opera house and give your ears a treat. If you want to swing your pants, be prepared to compromise on the sound... most of the time. Thus it has always been,

The DB bash blog is finally here! https://wp.me/p2ZbyY-Er As always, please let me know of any errors and omissions.

Just finished making the final templates for this so won't be too long before I get building. There are quite a few templates for this build - I haven't included the pickup cut out as that will be done later when the pickup choice is finalised (or I build more than one with different pickups....). So here's the template set for this build all made from mdf

I concur. It’s a really good little amp but it ain’t my ABM on full tilt

I've seen this before. She's clearly wasted on Robert Fripp and needs to be comforting me to achieve her full potential.

Actually I always thought of myself as a bit of a hack and that i was barely coping

Are Aguilar not aware that there are other companies which build cabs?? By "overpricing" their equipment they basically restrict their market to Pros, those with too much money or those trying to emulate their heroes but who probably never will. Can I suggest to their marketing dept that they look at similar items currently available on the market.

Mine doesn't sound as good as either my Matamp GT100 (100W all-valve, worth £1000) or my Genz-Benz Shuttle 9.2 (900W Class D with full bells & whistles, worth maybe £700). Funny that. On t'other hand, it's actually more than adequate for many of the gigs I play, and it's so tiny that taking it as a spare is a no-brainer. It was cheap, too. If this amp didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent it.

Thanks a million Silvia, these are fantastic photos. Looking forward to seeing you all at the next bass bash 😁

One day I'm going to get a cheap Strat & take a bandsaw to it!

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Mind-boggling number! At last count we have over 120 distributors in 101 countries, that's a lot of orders to fill. Glad you like them.

Crikey. You can get a TKS S112 for about half that, I think..?

Actually while the tone of the post is meant to be light-hearted the question is 'serious' . I'm sure there are proper techniques for playing maraccas and the tamborine etc, which you'd hear in latin genres. Unfortunately i think untuned percussion instruments like these have been demeaned in Western pop music where they are handed willy nilly to people like Bez from Happy Mondays who don't play any tuned instrument or sing. In some Motown tunes you can hear tambourine playing where the rhythm is not straightforward at all

Some Zydeco bands make liberal use of a triangle. Other than that, mostly symphonic percussionists. You think it's easy counting 156 measures of rest and then coming in on exactly the proper quarter note written by some dead guy? Those guys deserve a medal.

Hey mate, I went from 34" to 36" to 34" during the first 14 years or so of playing to 33" for about 10 years and now I only play 31.5" basses. I wouldn't worry too much about muscle memory, with a bit of practice it'll become second nature. You might find that you'd rather replace your other basses with shorter scales too, as that's what happened to me If you are having issues with reach due to arthritis, I would go as short as you can. I'm not the biggest bloke and going shorter and then shorter again was an absolute revelation for me, and when the bass is built by someone who knows what they're doing, Alan at ACG would be my recommendation, there's really no loss in tone, only a fatter sound to the upper strings and register, which isn't exactly a negative side effect. Where are you based? If you can get to South Croydon, you're more than welcome to come try my basses out. Cheers, Eude

I'd have to say Donald Fagan and Walter Becker. Hardly ever get to play any of their stuff apart from at home, but when I do I just love it.

This^^^^ The recent Feeder gig I mentioned was a perfect example of this. The support act (sweet little machine - superb by the way) were clear as anything. This makes it even more puzzling to me as you would expect them to have had about two minutes of the ‘engineers’ time, whereas the main band get every knob twiddled to their liking. The bass player may as well not have turned up, I did not hear a single clear note in the whole set. Very frustrating.

If it sounds terrible everywhere but the desk - still blame the engineer for not leaving the desk to check the rest of the venue. Every good engineer I know will check that the mix at the desk is representative, or get a trusted assistant to check for them if required.

There is little chance of that. With my reserves there is sufficient head of pressure. It'd take Red Adair to put one of mine out.

Risky if you got a blowback. You'd have nothing to talk out of

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.

Plenty of people on this forum are using PA gear as their stage monitor though, that's my point: https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/315455-interesting-frfr-story/ These people are using setups like this precisely because they are using digital modellers or Sansamps, and want to be able to monitor as accurately as possible what they are sending to the desk via their own rigs. Of course you are at the mercy of the tech, but it's ultimately another variable they have to think about when it would have been nice to have it switchable so that the main out is just like the XLR. I bet the pedal will work just fine for me, but I can see why others would prefer it to work differently. Constructive criticism and ideas for improvements for future revisions should be taken on board rather than just trying to shoot every argument down.

Not sure they realistically make more than £150-odd on Ebay - the last 2 I watched went for £111 & £121 respectively. Still, £70 is a bit of a steal for this - never mind the scuffs, it still has all its original knobs & no broken toggles - amazing! If I didn't have a house full of projects I'd probably be all over this.

Liking that Hofner Club!

Just talk to Newtone Strings and let them know what you're trying to achieve. String tension isn't about gauge, it's about core size. So you could probably opt for a BEAD set, but quite a light gauge, but have a thicker core. Mean's you'd have minimal work to get the nut to play ball, and wouldn't have a massive B string flapping around where a 125 might do the job! Si