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So, I acquired a lovely year 2000 US Fender Jazz recently. Took it to a gig with my Stingray and realised that whilst it was a beautiful instrument I am geared up for active basses and found it limp in comparison with my rock covers band. I put it up for sale initially but then did some research on onboard pre-amps and came to the conclusion that the new J-Tone by John East was the way to go. I have had John's kit before and it is beautifully designed and put together. It took minutes too install and has totally transformed the instrument. It is a straight drop in, no routing and no soldering. It has a push/pull pot which switches neatly between passive and active and the pot is also the passive tone control too, simple, clean and effective. The next pot is double stacked bass and treble in active mode and the remaining double stacked pot is volume and blend (this is also available with Vol/Vol too). It is still definitely a jazz and has all the right characteristics but it is now very much enhanced without losing any of the classic tones. This unit has made this instrument eminently usable for me and I will be gigging it tomorrow night with a big smile on my face!

Mine.. march 1991

When I read this about the old headless Hohners beeing kind of rare, I come to think of my own headless bass. It's a Cort Space B2 (I think it's called) With active/passive Electronics. I'm not shure how rare this is, but The Cort webpage states that these where manufactured alongside the Hohners in the Korean Cort factory in the 80's, and share much of the same hardware and Electronics. I do think that the active ones are a litte more difficult to find than the passive ones. Well herre are some pics.

All I want for christmas is the cancellation of brexit

The usual really. World peace. The end of poverty and inequality. For all humanity to be immune to every disease. Just kidding, I want a p bass with flats.

The Millennium Falcon, in the condition it was in when Lando had it. My tinnitus to go away To look like Helena Christensen People to shut up about the beatles.

Plays as good as it looks, first Ibby tried a few cheaper ones in past and they felt a bit lightweight and a bit like, for want of a better word toys, tried the natural coloured one in Gear4 in york and thought having this, but had to be the Mojito which looks a bit like a chocolate lime sweet. Been playing on it since i got home.

Hello people, Probably about time I made a post. I am a young player in my early 20's. Been playing Bass for a little while now, I picked it up on a whim as I needed to record a part and I found out that the low end is where I belong. Music is a big big part of my life, I grew up listening to my Dad's records. He unfortunately passed away just over a month ago. I intend to focus on my musical vision to honour him, it's what he would have wanted and I know it would make him proud. Music and Bass are my way to express and deal with emotions and difficult times, I'm glad I have them as a part of my life. I play prog-rock and metal mostly, but I don't try to emulate the big bands in those genres, I'm trying to create something unique and compelling. My two biggest influences from a song writing point of view are Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree primarily) and Mariusz Duda (Riverside and his solo stuff from Lunatic Soul), their approach to melody is something that I find very compelling. In terms of technique and general bass playing I'm more influenced by modern players, Amos Williams from Tesseract always inspires me to be creative and mix up my techniques and voicing and Jon Stockman from Karnivool inspires me to be creative when it comes to rhythm, counter-melody and using effects with Bass. John Frusciante is also a huge influence of mine, even though he is a guitar player, he is so expressive with his playing and you can really feel that his instrument is a true extension of himself. I've also played guitar since I was young as I dreamed of being on a stage and I wanted to 'play music' and that seemed like the only option at the time because guitar was where it was at at the time, but honestly as much as I love guitar, bass is just too fun that I never touch my guitars anymore. I would say my biggest musical skill is singing though, I have a huge range and good control but I prefer to sit back in the pocket and play bass. I'm looking to get more competent at singing and playing bass, I can sing pretty effortlessly but I play in a very complex genre that requires so much concentration to play in that it just seems impossible.

here to primarily sell and buy equipment. love a bit of banter also. thx

Some people will do anything to avoid playing in hull...

His gear has been found.

Thanks Charlie! This is very much the same process that we use when designing amplifiers, developing the combination of load profile, driving signal and thermal conditions, integrating these factors over time. This was even more the case when designing linear amps when we had to worry (a lot) more about SOA (safe operating area). Class D amps are more forgiving in this area than linear amps due to cut-off/saturation operation. While this is correct for voltage, it is NOT correct for power as you would be ignoring the squared factor in the power equation (P=V^^2/R) When RMS is used in describing power, all it means is that the voltage and current are based on RMS units, not that the power itself is in RMS units. It's a short-hand notation that's understood by most professionals in the industry and has been used for years.

Oh it is. And yes we do. I still remember when "All Day Breakfast" supported "All You Can Eat For £3.50". There was nearly a riot of hungry pensioners. That's a good band name actually - "Riot of Hungry Pensioners" 👍

There - fixed dum diddle um diddle um diddle um diddle um diddle um diddle um diddle um.

If I was to do a demo of an amp I would use a looper. Play a phrase and let that go round and round with the camera pointed at the controls of the amp. Fiddle with all the buttons and knobs. Then go around the amp and get up and close to the outputs and inputs etc. I don’t care for what the bass player is doing. I don’t need to see that. I need to see the amp. I’d mic it up and do a DI comparison etc but that’s a lot of work and a good enough reason not to make YouTube video demos.

Fun gig with the seven piece "little big band" yesterday at an elementary school. We played a few songs including some Christmas music and then got to sit in with the school band and play along with about twenty-five kids aged 13 and 14. The best part was watching the kindergarten kids(age 5) up on the stage as they sang through Rudolph, Jingle Bells and We Wish You A Merry Christmas complete with actions.Brought a tear to my eye as I recalled seeing my son and his classmates doing the same thing some thirty-five years ago, quite a magic moment and the little concert put me in a better mood for the Christmas season.

Interesting, I'd only just seen this thread. I'm a long time user and fan of Boss/Roland stuff - GT-10b, GR-55, VB-99, GT-6b, ME-8b, BE-5b, zillions of Boss compacts. I would have also highly recommended the GT-1b for your needs and budget. Its basically a stripped down GT-10b and I think it actually has a few advantages sound wise over its bigger brother. Where it does fall down is the menu/GUI navigation which can be a bit confusing. I get around this by using the Boss Tone Studio software, which makes editing easy. Its also a little awkward to jump up and down multiple patches on the fly. I get round this by grouping patches together or adding a default patch either side of any more radical ones. To comment on your summary above. 1/ It did take me some considerable tweaking to finally settle on a transparent default patch at something close to unity gain. The pre loaded patches all seemed very hot and so I started from scratch constantly bypassing the GT-1b to check. Once this was done I designed all my patches using the default patch as starting point and again bypassing and checking levels etc. repeatedly. 2/ The Chorus has a Low and High pass filter built in. If you set the The 'Lowcut' to anything above 125Hz you should retain all the low end as It'll be unprocessed. I actually find the Chorus in the GT-1b more extreme than either my CE-2b or CEB-3. I mostly use it for a subtle wash though rather than full on sea-sick wobbliness. I'd strongly advise to to spend some serious time getting to know the sound and capabilities of the unit before you dismiss it. Every multi effects I've ever used has its own idiosyncratic nature. There are usually some things that each multi does well its just a matter of learning how to use the unit and find the sweet spots. The GT-1b is a great multi and is a very powerful bit of kit, I've programmed (and use regularly) Everything form Face melting Fuzz patches, through gentle grind, some rudimentary synth patches, It has a brilliant OC-2 emulation, the T-wah is one of my faves (including boutique stuff and my Mu-Tron III), I've even managed Royal Blood type splits and crazy Hammond organ patches. Stick with it , I'm sure it'll be accompanying you on a gig soon.

Not sure if this counts but, I took the kids to see the musical Matilda (eldest daughter is called Matilda, unless you actually try and call her that. She only answers to Tilly) in Cardiff last night. I have to say, despite it not being my sort of thing I was impressed.

Well done, trooper, for not 'bottling' it. 'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger' and all that..?

The update. Just got back from the "mime" gig. I had previously said, "what could possibly go wrong?" Four days ago, I think I broke my left little finger. Still bloody painful. So, I took a back up normal fretless. Got to the sax player's house, to find he'd now taken the bass off of the tracks, suggesting that I can now "play along" with the numbers!! Great, a random 15 numbers from a list of 30 numbers I didn't know. Fabulous venue and food, corporate gig for 70 high-flyers. I get told that I can share the guitarist's real book charts. Fab, a busted finger, an upright bass I've had for 5 weeks and songs I don't know and now, have to take my eyes off the fingerboard😂 Lasted five numbers on the upright and changed to normal fretless. Less painful and at least I knew where the notes were. Got through it, but stressful, got paid and the unexpected key changes in a couple of numbers were a bit of a car crash. All experience though I guess.

on my list? for people to say, "lets call it quits, I won't get you a present and you don't get me one", it's the present buying/giving I don't like about Christmas, it's nearly as bad trying to think of things for people to buy me as trying to think of things to buy other people, bah Humbug.

Any retirement package that looks better than "Death in Service"...

Paid not to play:

Well that love affair was short lived

They sound fantastic.

Would think a good quality looper would be fine. Many pros use them on their demos. Guys like Fredrico Malaman use them to give a backing track to solo over. No idea what type he uses. Michael Manring too. When you hear the original riff against the looped riff it sounds pretty much same to me with headphones on. Dave

I reckon as long as you put the looper through the effects loop (assuming the amp has one) rather than in front of the input then it should reproduce the tone/colour of the amp more or less perfectly rather than adding any colour of it's own.

Yep i could see me going to that gig whoever the band might have been

I'd go with approx 10-15 mins. Should be long enough to get the demo across. Short bass run done as fingerstyle, pick, chords and slap with the main features of the amp being shown. For me personally i would be happy just to hear fingerstyle and pick as those styles are what majority of us use most of the time. Chords and slap are usually styles that we add to embelish the song and show off a little but most of us have a basic style of finger or pick There will always be the exception to the rule. Dave

That's very true! It's a real leap in the dark, even if you get to try one out, it feels even more alien than the first time you get any other stringed instrument strapped on. It's like an initiation... The feeling of ineptitude, but I think you've just got to possess the stubbornness you've described and persist with it. I've been going about 6 weeks now, and sometimes something resembling a tune comes out, and every so often I'll manage an "Oh! That was alright" moment where I'll take a chance and improvise or wind up getting a note way up at the Dusty End that actually fits. My style is beginning to develop a direction, too. I tend to play bass lines with chordal embellishments from the Melody strings. Or just go the whole Levin and play 2-handed bass lines! 😁

Actually, I've got that wrong. I'm seeing them on Sat night at Rock city. I keep thinking today is Friday as I have tomorrow booked off work😃

All Iron Maiden songs sound good. With the possible exception of the Blaze Bayley years.

Several manufacturers offer a splitcoil design in a J-bass casing. Adding a series/parallel-switch should get you pretty close! Technically none of the pickups below (with the exception of the Aero) were designed with P-bass tone in mind, and a J-pickup is much less hot than a P-bass splitcoil, but any of these that offers 4-conductor wiring has the option to be switched to series like a P-bass splitcoil is wired. There's the Seymour Duncan Apollo, Lindy Fralin Split Jazz, the Aero PJ, Curtis Novak Splits, the DiMarzio Model J, the Nordstrand NJ5SE and NJ5SV and I may forget some options. Edit: and of course, the other way round is possible too: having a splitcoil P-bass pickup switching to parallel, like Fender did with their S1 switch. It cleans it up a fair bit.

A Dulka Prague Away Kit.

Below, the OG of the Fender Roscoe Beck Model, if not mentioned beforehand. My STEVENS Slant 4, from Michael Stevens, https://www.stevensguitars.com/news/ One of America's best, an original builder for FCS. Michael built the model as a 6-string for Roscoe, later Fender made their variant which is highly regarded. Mine is light and powerful. Stevens winds the pups & pretty much builds by hand. It took close to 2 years to get; I was originally told 1 year, but brush fires around his compound in Texas delayed things a bit! One of my faves, for sure.

What I'd like for xmas is that tomorrow morning: all the religious and political extremists from whatever sect/cult/faction/wing they might be will wake up and say "You know what? this is a right mug's game. I've had enough of this violence and bigotry crap". Peace and tolerance break out all over the world. a scientist somewhere shouts "eureka!" as his/her latest attempt at a cure for dementia proves totally successful. my bank balance suddenly becomes unbelievably huge. health, happiness and prosperity is guaranteed for my friends and loved ones There's a whole load of other things I'd like, but many of them are too overtly political in nature to mention.

At the risk of stirring up another hornets nest I'd like another go at this. I don't think it's difficult to understand and it's a helpful concept. The first thing to say is that watts are real and that they do matter. An amp with more watts will ultimately be louder than one with fewer watts through any given speaker. If you want it louder then you can increase the watts, or improve the speaker or a bit of both. If you are buying an amp (a head rather than a combo) then the wattage is one of the things you should know. One of many, but one of the big ones. Watts can be measured (this is Wikipedia) 'The watt (symbol: W) is a unit of power. In the International System of Units (SI) it is defined as a derived unit of 1 joule per second,[1] and is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer.' So long as you all stick to the same system of measurement then it's a simple measurement and most secondary school students could do it. You can convert watts into any other measurement of power, so 745W is one horsepower. (That's brilliant, my Mark Bass Tube is 0.67hp, should all valve amps be rated in horsepower or British thermal units ) That's where the rms measurement comes from. if you have a direct current running a motor or a heater than measuring the power is simple if you know the current or the voltage and the resistance. When someone had the bright idea of using an amp to control a motor then you need a way of converting. The average voltage of an amps output is zero as it goes up and down with the waveform, but mathematically if you square the voltage then all the minus's become plus's and you can work out the average or mean. Then if you find the square root of the that average you can compare ac watts and dc watts. Its the root of the mean of the square... RMS. Of course if you just use the amp to heat an 8ohm resistor it will do the same thing, you can compare the energy being transferred, just less accurately. In the start of amp design that's how it was done. All controlled by engineers you see, honest, measurable, repeatable. then the ad men got involved. To be fair the engineering method could reasonably be said to be over-doing things for music. Music has loud bits and quiet bits, bits where the amp isn't making heat into 8ohms and the amp can cool down. That means you can make an amp with less cooling built in and use a smaller power supply saving weight and cost. It makes engineering sense to use an amp that can make it's power for a limited duty cycle, say 20% of the time. That's where the confusion comes in you have to have a standard that everyone agrees on or people cheat. Rms all the time, 20% of the time or just for 0.01 of a second at a time? In Europe the DIN 45-500 standard held sway for a long while it is basically an rms rating which the amp has to produce for 10 minutes with a pink noise signal filtered to contain a similar spectrum of energy to real music. EIA RS-426 and IEC 268 used outside Europe are broadly similar. It's a fair test for audio amps and it ought to be used. Behringer used to give rms ratings based on IEC/EIA measurements. It's a bit like cars and their fuel consumption figures. You probably won't get the consumption they advertise and some will be closer than others depending upon the detailed design of the car but it's a good start and cars with similar figures will give broadly similar performance. You know the test isn't perfect but that it is fair and good enough to be a big help when choosing what to buy. When somebody like Volkswagen cheat eventually they get caught and everyone knows they are cheats, people lose their jobs and fines and compensation come into play. The same with food standards. Why should consumer electronics be any different?

In most cases separating cabs is a bad idea. The shows why. It's specifically about PA subs, but the same issues apply to bass cabs. http://www.prosoundweb.com/article/in_search_of_the_power_alley/

The trouble with that setup is that many who offer both will likely prefer to be part of the guitar show, usually because they're seen as a guitar brand who offer bass products, not vice-versa. I'd like to see brand stands split over both shows/floors, allowing those who cover both to offer dedicated offerings for each show. Logistically not ideal for the exhibitor, but the best experience for the punter in my opinion. Discounted space would clearly make sense for those looking to split stands, and it would hopefully mean we'd see the return of some big names to the bass show as a result of their attendance at the guitar show. I can see manufacturers not wanting to do that though unfortunately. But I'm no events coordinator though so we'll see what they've come up with. I'm sure it will be nothing but the best for each show, but retaining the character of the bass show is a must for it to survive I think. Si

With industial servo amplifiers (to drive motrors) you tend to get a specification such as 6 amps continuous, 18 amps absolute peak for 2 seconds, 10 amps for 10 seconds etc. and generally get some sort of graph showing current again how long it it will deliver it for. However it is all very complicated, for example if you've just used 18 amps for 2 seconds, how long before you can do it again? If after the first 18 amps for 2 seconds it goes back to zero then you might be able to repeat it after 4 seconds (i.e. the average over 6 seconds is the continuous rating of 6 amps). If after the 18 amps for 2 seconds it drops back to 5 amps then you might have to wait 26 seconds before you could do it again. It all comes down to "Duty Cycle", but it's all very complicated. With servo drives you tend to work out what you think it needs, add a bit for luck, and see how it goes. This is why a lot of industial motors and drives are over specified - i.e. it's cheaper to over spec it than to underspec it and have to replace it.

Please ignore all my other posts above about not being in the market for one...after a bit of curiosity, ‘clever accounting’ and a trip to Andertons I came away with one The purist in me wanted a single H, but having had a HH 5’er before I was interested again, and after clicking with this HH I had to have it so got the old plastic out. I was honestly quite prepared to come away empty handed, and almost expected to because I already have a killer Ray, but they really are fine instruments and 8.6 is a nice weight. . The new colours are great, the charcoal and burnt apple really sparkle in the light nicely. The stealth black hardware was cool, though surprisingly it didn’t call out to me like I thought it would the more time I spent with it. The older Rays in the Shop didn’t sound good at all next to the Specials, however my 2015 Ray is an exceptionally good one and next to my new Special they kind of compliment each other. I wouldn’t say either was better, just different. The 2015 sounds like it has more growl, ring and roughness, whereas the Special sounds like a Ray that’s been smoothed off a little. It took a while to get used to the tone controls as they of course react differently to the old style, but the results are great and I like it.

He's dead right of course. When I first played my Martin a good bass player was in the audience and at the end he came up to me and said, that's the best bass sound I've ever heard.' I told him he'd made my day to which he replied 'well, you've certainly spoiled mine!'.