Leaderboard

Cool.

The kid is at uni, she may be starving but that's her problem!

12 bar blues - man, do I hate that stuff.

I turned up for a gig a few years ago to find we had been cancelled because there was a boxing match on Sky in the pub. Might have been nice to tell us in advance. Funny thing in the end was that our guitarist was MD of company and that week went to some business convention where he happened to meet the MD of Greene King, owners of said establishment. He mentioned it in passing and the guy said he'd sort it - which he did. We were paid our fee and offered more gigs by a very sheepish landlord.

Dear Prudence by Siouxsie & The Banshees was a great cover, far better than The Beatles version imo.

Urm, Bartolini tone is just the exact opposite of cold, dull and sterile. I don't know which bass you tried with these pickups nor preamp, but it must have had some serious problems. You are right, it's not about string length, but construction and mastering it.

Years ago, we were playing very regularly. My fingers started breaking out with dermatitis. In between my fingers became inflamed and sore and eventually, the skin would burst and I would bleed. I've actually played with blood running down my hands! I had to find out what was causing it. I tried at work to get tests done, but that never came to anything. Eventually, I worked out for myself that it was the nickel strings that I was allergic to. I changed to stainless steel strings and have had no problems ever since.

For me the Stomp has been quite the revelation, and like others I've been offloading most of my individual pedals. The stand-out points IMO are: sound quality; most of the amps / cabs / FX sound 'real' and 'musical'. My separate bass wah and fuzz do sound a bit 'better', but seeing as I hardly use these pedals I'm fine getting rid of them and using the Stomp / Helix equivalents. No more schlepping around a pedal board and some pedals that take up space and weight and only get used once in a blue moon. experimenting with different blocks, especially 'bread and butter' items like compressors and EQ, is very easy; there is no cable swapping to try different FX orders or combinations a lot of the FX offer 'blend' capability, so even without using a parallel processing path (which is possible too, of course), it's easy to retain bottom end or some of the natural characteristics of the instrument (which especially with compressors is very handy) lower maintenance risk / concerns; if you have 5-6 pedals you are talking about 5-6 chances for a footswitch to fail and need replacing, or 10-12 chances for an audio socket to become slightly dodgy, or a number of chances for inter-pedal connections to have issues and need diagnosing the stomp can be used alone (making it easy to throw into a gig bag), or it can be expanded to varying degrees at varying levels of expense (going from simple single momentary switch -> dual momentary switch -> switch / expression combo -> simple MIDI controller -> complex MIDI controller); if cash is tight it allows you to 'get going', and then enhance your gig as money and circumstances allow 'bonus' functionality; I used the Stomp with an iPad and headphones for 'away from home' practice, and have tested simultaneous four-track recording (using the aux-ins as well as the standard inputs) - works well huge amount of community support, with advice, recommendations, patches etc all available for free; and Line 6 seem committed to updating the firmware for extra amps / FX / etc. There are also a number of sources of 3rd party IRs. Many of the above points apply for other multi-FX units, but the Stomp IMO has hit a real sweet spot. I used to build FX commercially, and one reason I stopped is that I realised with Helix (and other manufacturer's solutions) it's kind of silly to be selling individual pedals any more when the DSP ones sound as good (in many cases) or almost as good, and are - effectively - far cheaper and more convenient. It really is a golden age for modelling and the convenience it brings, even to 'serious hobby' bass players like myself. And no more building pedal boards for a particular type of band, and then selling them off again after getting shafted and kicked out; now one can just delete all the patches and efficiently move on. 😉

Age old trick before playing - Superglue on the finger pads. You have to spread it with the thumb, mind, and if you take too long doing that, it sets, and you might become known as "OK Stew" for a while. 👌

As per a few recent posts I've made regarding my 40th birthday and that my wife wanted to get me a really nice Bass for a present, this here forum got me turned on to the idea of a Custom build! After looking at Shuker, GB, ACG and Sei I found I was drawn to Shuker guitars more and after a few interactions with Jon and heading up to his workshop in the Peak District to try a few recent builds I found I really liked the neck profile and build quality of his instruments! So I'm in on a Shuker bass build. After initially flirting heavily with the Horn body shape I've settled on the Custom J with a slightly extended top horn and Shuker designed headstock. I mocked up a template based on some examples from the Shuker website as to what I'm expecting it to look like. Jon's sent me a load of options for top woods so I just need to pick one and finalise my decision on bridge / tuners. I hope to get the order in this week.

I could drum one of them up. 😁

Steamy Windows covered by Tina Turner. Original Tony Joe White. Rainy Night In Georgia covered by so many but original again T.J.White Was ManWho Sold the World single a hit for Bowie or did Lulu have the bigger hit with it. Hush by Deep Purple originally written by American composer and musician Joe South

I think the first song I learnt to play completely was Liar by The Sex Pistols.

Quite a few classic country hits in the 60s and 70s featured a 6 string bass lead. Apart from that, lead bass is something of a crime against nature (ducks and runs for cover 😁)

Yes, this has been playing on my mind and I did some hard thinking over the last week or so. What I really wanted from my next bass was to sell on my 5 string J and replace it with a 4. So with my first custom, and with it being a present, I've decided to play safe / conservative and opt for something I know I'm going to love and grow old with rather than taking too many risks. Therefore rather than going for the Shuker Horn I've settled on a slightly modified Custom J model which should look something like this template I knocked up (I hope). I love the Aguilar pickup's on my 5 string and I'm playing safe with an alder body, maple neck, rosewood fingerboard etc. I only decision I have to make is on the top wood veneer, and I think I' probably driving Jon a bit nuts as he has so many options available I'm struggling to decide :/. I definitely need to open a build thread.

A few questions - are you running any ambient mics? And more importantly, are you running in stereo? A stereo ambient mic should alleviate all your problems. Can you tell us more about your setup? Running with one inear in and one out isn’t ideal - especially from an ear safety point of view. You tend to over compensate on volume and end up blasting your IEM loaded at dangerous levels. If it’s the sensation of wanting to “feel” big air from an amp... give us a bit, me and super @intime-nick are working on that as we speak. The potential production candidate board is looking awesome. Should have the board design going off to be CNCed any time now. Then it will be a case of making sure they are fine and dandy!

The way you fit the strings can give you a better definition. Before you cut the length bend the string and then cut the string after the bend. Especially with round core strings as the core will slip inside the outside wind or become less tensionised (no that's not a word). Just a tip that I use.

There is, it's called 'money'. To realize a given output at a given frequency it requires a given cone displacement. Cone displacement is area multiplied by excursion. You can get the same displacement with one average fifteen or with eight average fives. The fifteen will cost a lot less. The disadvantage to the fifteen lies in the narrow midrange dispersion. The cure for that is to use a fifteen only as high as its dispersion allows, typically to where the 30 degrees off-axis response is no more than 6dB down from the axial response, crossing over to a midrange driver to handle the frequencies above that. This isn't news to the hi-fi and PA industry, they've been doing this since the 1950s.

Funnily enough, money is the only bad song on dark side for me. But for time signature changes where they are needed, rather than for the sake of it, it has to be Schism by tool

Added one 😃

I might be wrong but I think they might have misjudged their market. the V7s are popular because they punch well above their weight at the bottom of the midrange price band. I'm not sure people see the Sire brand as £1000+ instruments.

I use two or three. Two is fine for smaller venues. Sometimes the drummer even asks me to turn down 😁. Three is mighty. One is fine for rehearsals at sensible levels. The beauty of them is that each weighs less than 30lb, which is a lot for such small boxes (each is about a one ft cube), but they are very solidly made. Having reached pensionable age, I would rather carry several small loads separately from/to the car than one large one. The thing I have noticed, when listening to others playing through my rig, is how well they project into the room, even when they don't sound that loud on stage. Tonally, I find them excellent. I don't like tweeters in bass cabs - find them too clicky/clanky. The PJBs give sufficient brightness and clarity without sounding harsh. I'm pretty happy with them. Haven't felt the urge to change for several years.

I don’t see VK or PJB going out of business anytime soon, so people are buying the excellent products they make. So many variables in this and not just cones, drivers, voicing, enclosures etc. It may be that you need the VK hammering out all 1200w juice from an amp to drive your sound without PA support. It may be that the tone from 5” drivers with less wattage mic’d through a PA gives the tone you want. As discussed here the draconian 1 size fits all is not right, within the ‘industry standard’ size you quite, there are dogs and golden eggs. I’d take a top quality 5 or 8 above a rank 10 or 12

Are we willy waving spec sheets again? What does it actually matter? if he said it was 100 5” speakers in the same frequency range as you listed but 1 lbs or 1 kg heavier or lighter, what does it prove? Mr PJB and Mr VK are clever blokes that have given us products we can use to our taste. You both probably sound good with your respective gear

He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother, covered by lots of people (most notably The Hollies), but first recorded by Kelly Gordon. Strictly speaking this was arguably a cover too since he didn't write the song himself, but he was the first to record it so please yourselves I guess... As a sort of 'did you know?' addendum, That's Life (made famous by ol' Blue Eyes hisself) was actually written by the self same Kelly Gordon (actually co-written with Dean Kay if we're being picky, but all the same...). In a curious piece of irony, Kelly's recorded version of the song turns out to have been on the 'B' side of his version of 'He Ain't Heavy...'

One of the many reasons I love my shuker. The neck is just sublime. Looking forward to seeing some pics soonish.

Speaking of big band jazz flavouring, here is a selection of ToP charts arranged for big band. http://www.mindformusic.com/big-band/80-artists/345-tower-of-power

The bass/pickups/strings are only part of the picture. If you want a clear fundamental with a low B, you are pretty close to the lower limit of what most drivers and cabs are capable of reproducing, certainly at any volume. Low B is around 31 hz. Have a look at the spec sheets. Most cab designers get round it with clever porting and rely on harmonics and overtones that fool us into thinking we hear low B, but there are limits to this. You need power and enough drive unit surface area, too. You won't get a clean, powerful low B from a 200w combo. It's the laws of physics, Jim.

Well, still the most ridiculous was working in 1997 for a company using sun workstations. We bought the Y2K packs from sun for 4 workstations. They came couriered from America and each was in a box that was just a bit bigger than an A4 piece of paper and about 15cm high. The reason for this is that on opening, each box contained an A4 piece of paper with an FTP address where we could download the pack and a licence number. I assume the fact they were about £700 each meant they feel they needed to make the effort!

First gig with my new 'blues power trio' Tore Down at a small blues-friendly venue - The Grand Old Duke Of York' in Ipswich. We've only had 3 rehearsals and I think it showed with tops and tails but the guitarist totally captivated the small but appreciative audience. Bodes well for the future. I also proved to myself that I can happily revert back to 4 string basses after spending the last 2 years playing just 5 strings. Dusted down my remaining JV Precision and it sounded lush with TI flats through my old Trace Elliot head.

I'm a little surprised that Bill is so categoric that Alex Claber of Barefaced doesn't understand bracing and that 2/3 of his bracing designs are adding unnecessary 'dead weight' to his cabs. Perhaps he is just grumpy because someone rejected building one of hi Simplexx cabs earlier in the thread. Actually bracing is moderately complex and to date there is no single mathematical model of what goes on inside a speaker cab. Most designs are a combination of the experience of the builder, trial and error, a bit of testing and only rarely extensive measurements of the cabs, and that tends to be in hi-fi speakers rarely musical instrument speakers. Even then practical considerations dominate, there isn't a lot of space in a cab and there are almost more places you can't fit a brace than ones where you can. Cross bracing which Bill clearly prefers is a perfectly good way of bracing cabs, I assume he gets his 24mm figure by simply adding the thickness of his two 12mm panels. I wonder how he derives his 30mm figure? The big advantage of cross bracing is that it is easy to do and it uses very little material so adds little to the weight. The disadvantage is that it stiffens the panel at one point crating an antinode but allowing the panel to vibrate elsewhere. The worst places to fix your braces are centrally, effectively the same as trying to kill a bass string by touching it above the 12th fret, you create harmonics an octave above the original problem frequency. A couple of Bill's braces are central but he does add more. I'm not really criticising, if you have a 2x10 then you have nowhere else to put your brace other than the line between the two speakers and I'd go for that spot myself probably. Spline braces are a perfectly valid way of bracing a cab. they effectively create a 'T' beam along the line where they are fixed. They also spread the damping effect over a greater area of panel. They take a little more effort to fix but as they are only around the edges of the cab there is more freedom to place them where you want. Most splines are made of the same material as the cab itself so they are effectively made from scrap left over from cutting the panels. Weight for weight you'll get more rigidity from cross bracing but Barefaced have designed their cabs from very thin material where simple cross bracing wouldn't work well. If you look at the rotating model you can see two of the braces are annular, running right round the cab, another accepted technique. This effectively couples all the panels to the two adjacent panels, as they will resonate at different frequencies they will damp each others resonances, the central brace has two members that run from front to back so an element of cross bracing is also included. There's nothing really new in this, you could probably see this sort of bracing in theatre speaker designs from the 1920's and 30's but it's a lovely neat solution for lightweight bass speakers. I don't honestly believe 2/3 of the material is wasted. Have a look at Stevie's 12" design, it's probably as far as you can go for a home builder. His technique was to build the cab then test it by passing low frequency tones from a signal generator (You can get apps on your phone or access these online) That enabled him to identify the points where his panels vibrated most. He then braced those points. Finally don't discount mass, the movement of the panels under pressure will be proportional to the mass. One way of reducing the sound coming from the cab is to use thicker or more dense panels.

Chris at Overwater had me play different basses unplugged to hear the difference in tones from them. I'm a big believer in this now.

Nowt wrong just playing at home. I did it for many years when i first started and it helped me become a better bass player. I did it again when the old work thing took over my existence but when i turned 50 i decided it was time to do something more and i've never really stopped since. Of course i've been thru more bands in the past 8 yrs than i ever did in my early years of gigging but its been great fun and i'm lucky to have ended up in a great band doing Glam Rock covers. If i had to go back to not being in bands i would still have basses at home that i just won't sell on. My Jazz, Warwick Thumb NT and my Overwater Custom 6 fretless. Anything else i would sell if need be. I thoroughly enjoy playing along with albums at home especially Prog that i love. There are all levels of playing bass from sitting at home to playing arena's and everything in between. Nothing is more important than what you personally want from it. Dave

Glad to receive a Status update! ... I’ll get me coat

Tone cavities probably means that it consists of several layers of wood, with the middle layer routed out to hollow it.

Never thought i would be feeling the same, but things change for better or worse and you have a whole new perspective on life. I have just packed in playing my main Big band after many years, due to musical direction and not enough time to rehearse properly. playing what individuals wanted and not what public want to hear. Bought a CS precision this time last year for a 60's band that never materialised, Its been to one jam. So that will probably have to go. This will probably be the last year our function band gigs, due to effort to do it properly and the expense - Website , insurance Pat testing and advertising. I feel a cull coming on, But its nice in the Garden, mustn't grumble.

Yes, DT always come across as trying too hard to me; technicality doesn’t always equal musicality...

any Bob Dylan song sounds better when covered than the original, I'm can never see what good songs they are when I hear his versions. Bit of a link, Hendrix's covers were always better than the originals

Loving the shoes, haven’t sold any yet. Not sure how that happened. Go daddy will be getting a call

To my mind, the issues of who got offended over what and which bathroom they use are entirely irrelevant (and it's a bit sad that in the 21st century we, or some at least, still think someone's gender identity is fair game for ridicule). For me, the only issue here is the mind-boggling unprofessionalism of the engineer. Offended or not, upset or not, just not turning up without a word to anyone is inexcusable. If I did that at work, I'd be in a world of poo.

I’ve been forced to muzzle my dog, because although it identifies as a cat it keeps bloody barking.

So the strings, strap locks and pickup cover came this morning. All fitted and stringed up and set up. Played it and realised I haven’t removed the lacquer from the frets yet. So I’ll have to do that before this is fully complete. I’ve only given it a quick play to make sure everything feels right and works as it should. Initial impressions is that it’s good., although playing with a pickup cover is difficult. So next step is fret polishing. After that I’ll put up a recording of how it sounds. So pickup cover on and get used to it? Or remove?

This is the approach I'm taking. I met Jon on Friday and he let me try out a couple of his basses, I like the design of the Horn so will go with that, perhaps a slight tweak to the cutaways to make them a little more conservative. Bodywood I'm going to play safe and go with Alder. That's the same as my Sandberg and Mayones basses so I've got an idea on weight / tonal properties. Pickup's, Aguilar single coil Soapbars. I have aguilar single coil pickups on my Mayones and think they sound great so again I feel fairly safe on that choice, no changes to placement. The thing that sold me on a Shuker build was the neck profile. I'm quite fussy on neck but I found his shape very comfortable. He had a few sizes in the work shop so I was able to find the most comfy for me.

I’ve definitely had guitars where the cavities looks rough like this. Harder to sand and polish those interior bits after finishing I guess! I’ve always thought MDF was heavier than wood and also absorbs finish poorly - but I’m definitely not a carpenter!

Last night's gig was at a fairly small pub on the outskirts of Maidenhead. It was one of those venues that isn't really ideal for live music, as the bar is in the centre and the pub wraps around it, so half of your audience is always out of sight. At the interval our singer/guitarist was grumbling a bit that owing to the fairly shy crowd he was struggling to really get into it. I countered that it's when the crowd is quiet that you need to double down and give it even more beans to try and wake them up. In the second half something magical happened and we sounded better and tighter than we ever have before, and it became one of those intensely rewarding gigs. The audience reception also warmed up a bit, and I think we probably got the best out of them that we could have. I think this was probably helped by one particularly drunk guy, who we befriended. Not to the point of inviting him up on-stage to sing, but when he showed up during the second set and asked for something by A Flock Of Seagulls, we obliged by playing I Ran despite the fact that we'd already played it once halfway through our first set. We've only recently added it to our set and it sounds awesome, so we didn't take much arm-twisting. As I mentioned in this thread after my first gig with this band back in September, I've been mostly playing in originals bands all my life and have become accustomed to having PA support, so have always EQ'd my amp for clarity on-stage and not had to worry about pushing much low-end out into the room. Now I'm in a pub covers band with vocals-only PA, I've been finding myself having to EQ for the room, resulting in a fairly bassy and indistinct sound standing right next to my rig on-stage. A few weeks back I bought a little foldable camping table for £10 with the intention of raising my cab by about 30cm. I was sceptical that this could have any significant effect but I used it last night and was wowed by the difference. On the drive home I was listening to Gameshow by Two Door Cinema Club and loving it so much that I missed my turning. S.P.