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So she arrived 🥰🥰. Lovely bass, slightly deeper neck than i expected but will soon get used to that coming from a 50’s P bass. Ordered some GHS pressurewounds for her and think I will go down the gold hardware route (bridge and tuners). Going to have an amplified tinker later with the tonepump through the SVT but for now im in love! My Spector cherry is popped

I've been gassing for a 4 string Forty Eight for a while now, for me they are a total modern classic and the black with creme stripes and the matching headstock is just what I wanted to fill the "rock bass" slot. It's not just down to the looks, I was after some good playability and quality and I liked the sound of the sound of these. I saw a couple on here but without the matching headstock, then this one came up at Classic and Cool Guitars and as a bonus it has an ebony board and block inlays. I had to trade my Stingray 5HH (stealth black, also a looker) for it, but somehow I never gelled with the 'ray so that wasn't too tough a decision. The only thing I wasn't 100% sure abour was the white pickguard, so I've ordered a black one with creme stripe. First impressions are good. Very very good. Looks amazing to me, I wouldn't have had one of the "hard core aged" ones but this is just right. It plays really nicely too, lovely neck, sits nicely on the strap and it's nice and light. I like the pickup covers as well, I play floating thumb when I do fingerstyle so they are good for something to rest on when I'm on the E string. After a brief blast through a few different amp models the tone is just spot on, it sounds great on everything I try it on. I always seemed to be struggling to get the 'ray to sound how I wanted, and this just does straight out of the box. It's not over bright either, even with new strings on, I won't get into trying to describe it but it's right where I wanted it anyway. Mark at Classic and Cool was super easy to deal with, and I'm a very happy customer.

My first thought is you might be blowing up your hearing with excess volume.

We thought some of you might be interested in the thought process we've just been through. @Silvia Bluejay and I get all the gigs for the bands I play in, and the early feedback from contacting (the surviving) landlords is that carefully-organised outdoor gigs are still the most likely things to be on offer after 12th April and running through until 21st June. If pubs and punters like those gigs enough, many pubs may well continue doing them while the weather stays warm, so until - say - late September. The problem is of course that this is England. If we agree to play on a Saturday afternoon in the beer garden or car park, and on Friday afternoon the weather forecast is '40% chance of rain' or something, what do we do? Cancel because even a brief shower will wreck our equipment? So we've punted £104 on a waterproof gazebo. The thinking is NOT that we will put it up for all outdoor gigs, more that possession of that gazebo means that we can commit to play in anything short of heavy rain, and if there's heavy rain then the pub will cancel the gig anyway. I have a couple of acres of woodland in the Chilterns with a lock-up hut and a petrol generator, so Silvie and I went up there this afternoon to test out the idea. This is the first in an occasional series of informative and entertaining short films entitled Educate Your Band ...

Wooden it be nice - Beech Boys (sorry...I couldn't resist)

Thank you Woodwind. 3-4 hours use of public transport per day, in Tehran! loud and frightening traffic on the way to office. excessive use of horn and wild bikers everywhere. savage people who are unable to do a small task without making lots of unnecessary noise. I'm also HSP (highly sensitive) so you can imagine. time to get my ears checked i think 😣

I went for separate 112's because they represent the lightest lift. I also chose cloth grill fronts to shave off another couple of pounds. I would still have to carry a 212 up stairs, over gravel paths and muddy puddles which is why I never considered one. I have a bad back but my legs are strong so I don't care how many trips it takes to the car as long as each trip is a light as I can make it. BF cabs are efficient and very loud for their size. I can now do gigs with 1 cab, which is even better.

I recorded this direct through a TC Electronic Spectradrive (set flat). 1. fingerstyle 2. fingerstyle with the tone control at 0 3. pick 4. pick with palm mute The one with the tone rolled off sounds ridiculous 😁 mahogany-mudbucker.mp3

This is (or rather, was...) our hypnotically mesmerising band, playing at a local mini-festival a few years ago now. You'll understand from the insane antics of all of us the magnetic attraction we emanate, which explains why we get called upon so often. The choreography is meticulously rehearsed, perhaps even more so than the research for the best sound, and pays off handsomely (although it's hard on the knees, and the stunts are dangerous for the untrained. Do not try this at home...). I'll let those that get to the end judge the (modest...) popularity of our 'performance'. So, with no further ado, I'll leave the stage and welcome... The Daubs..! (sporadic applause...)

I do like it when the postie delivers parcels containing stuff like this: I'm going to leave it in the house for a month or so before I do anything with it but I have a plan.....

I just recently bought this Sterling Ray4 as a backup which, I have to say, are not at all bad for the money. I like the mint green but I knew I just had to change the plain white pickguard for a white pearl guard. (It's my thing!). That said, I also didn't mind the look of the bass without any guard (guess I could go for a clear see-through job at some point). But, for me, the white pearl just sets it off nicely. So I thought, let's see what the BC collective think. The original white? The white pearl? Or no guard? (Pics below and poll attached).

This build is my first and was 12 years in the making. I started on carving the body blank with my dad, and after he died I lost the nerve to complete it. It has been knocking about my garage ever since. Lockdown inspired me to finish it. Pleased with how it turned out. Only the wiring and a setup to do and it's finally done, all these years later.

Finalised the design now front and back. Will be hand drawing the side view to decide on thicknesses as I've about had enough of Inkscape now. Pickup and top horn placement moved (thanks @Hellzero and @SpondonBassed for the suggestions and the helpful spreadsheet) and control cavity planned. Also, the bridge, tuners and side dot sticks arrived through the post today - made me happy!

Here's a little & large shot of my new acquisition. I'm getting used to the much smaller neck, if not the polish - I think that's going to have to go! Plays nice after a good setup though!

You may try this ? https://thegenerationofmusic.wordpress.com/2019/09/21/how-to-stop-the-rattling-tuners-of-a-yamaha-bb-series-bass-guitar/ [just doubled checked, and the new BB tuners are not the same - I'm leaving the comment though, as that might help sort out some old ones]

All these people who wouldn't have dreamt of coming to one of my bashes are all clamouring to join in now I've passed the baton on. Which reminds me, @jebroad, I've got the box of lanyard cards i had printed for the mids bash if you want them. PM me the address of your cardboard box and I'll send them.

Wasn't planning to. Was planning to bring 'The New One' *cue the 'wonder / rapture music*

I'll give you a bit of background on the Swissonic router. I took one apart - It's basically a router that can be found on Aliexpress for $30 that has been rehoused in a nice rack unit. That's not to say that the router doesn't do the job, if it works reliably, then it works reliably... and as stated, it's a nice format in that you can keep it racked up and ready to go. The reason that there isn't much out there in terms of rack mount WAPs (wireless access points) is that from a physics point of view, WAPs should be mounted away from metal as metal interferes with RF. When mounting WAPs/wireless units in racks (e.g. including microphones/IEMS), the antennae are usually external to the rack to avoid this issue. In larger scale gigging situations, the WAP is usually mounted with external antenna with hidden SSID(s). This not only reduces the risk of interference - but makes for a more reliable connection (assuming you have line of sight) You've probably noticed that a lot of home routers are very plastically and avoid metal construction - there is a reason for that - they are self contained and its often not practical to get the antennae away from the base unit. So from a purist's point of view, the Swissonic is a terrible implementation as you are putting your WAP in an area that typically dense in metal structures - and additionally, combined with a load of electronics that produce EM that can also negatively impact the performance of RF. In @DaytonaRik's deployment above, things aren't quite as bad as they could be - as the antenna, although close to a lot of metal and electronics (including radio transmitters AND radio receivers - more on that in a minute) at least stand proud of most of the rack. As for the placement of mic receivers and IEM transmitters, this is as about as worse practice you can get and it will be greatly reducing the amount of intermodulation free (e.g. interference free) channels that you will be able to access. Given that there's only two channels in play here, and they are on different channel bands (one on free to use, the other on shared mic license), it's likely, I'm guessing, you are getting away with it Rik! If you upped your channel count with this style of deployment, you would have a right ball trying to get your radio working! Having said all of that, if the resulting performance is good enough to be reliable for your needs and you can justify the price, than for the neat integration into the rack, the router may be a good call. At the end of the day, if it works and meets your expectations, then jobs a goodun! I only included this post as anybody working with wireless should go into this with their eyes open. @BCH - I would be wary of your stageclix system being placed right next to a 5G router - hopefully the device is clever enough to find a clean channel on 5G (there's a lot more of them compared to the 3 intermod free channels on 2.4 for starters) but you may have to set your router to fix on a channel that plays nicely with the stageclix. In short, always be prepared to ditch the Stageclix and ditch the wireless because a venues wifi may take yours out. A lot of conference centres are great at doing this. Always cater for a wired connection to your desk too... because not being able to control your mixing desk is a bit err... stressful. (Been there, done that, without the cat5 cable...) Hope this is insightful - this hasn't been written to run anybody's setup down - quite the opposite. I've tried to be helpful to avoid any mishaps down the road!

Traffic, Nick Drake and this:

Taking more family shots 😅

The main reason that Reaper gets so much love is that it has a very low entry cost (essentially free and only £60 if you really want to pay for it) compared with other DAWs. However for that price you don't get very much other than the actual program, and to reach the same level of plug-in functionality as Logic you would probably have to spend quite a bit of extra money and almost certainly more than the £199 that Logic costs. However if all your plug-ins that you are currently using with ProTools are in AU format then you should be able to continue using them with Reaper. The other big disadvantage with Reaper is that it's MIDI editing/manipulation facilities are much less comprehensive than those in DAWs that started out life as sequencing applications like Logic, Cubase and Performer. Again though if ProTools' MIDI capabilities have been sufficient, then Reaper's should be too. ProTools for all it's historic dominance is on it's way out. Since affordable computers now have the kind of processing power that mostly renders the ProTools hardware unnecessary, it's USP has become less and less relevant. Added to it's problems are the reliance on the less than robust iLok copy protection system (as Beedster has already discovered) and the fact that the parent company Avid has been on the brink of financial disaster for years now, IMO ProTools days are numbered and it is only historical inertia rather than actual functionality that keeps its user base sticking with it. Also bear in mind that the parent company Avid are first and foremost into video editing and their audio offerings are very much second-class products compared with their main business. A cynical person might also be unsurprised that ProTools isn't playing nicely with Adobe products when the company produces competing applications - Premier, After Effects and Audition (BTW if you are an Adobe CC Subscriber you should definitely have a look at Audition as you already have it for free).

I think one of mine might be a factory preset in the guitar version, I need to check.

Scary Pockets are just an average cover band really, some good musicians but are they doing anything original?

Mine has shipped. May arrive tomorrow.

Indeed there are - but few get all the elements right - the video production, the players, the choice of song, the production on the audio, the branding. Not saying Scary Pockets hit the mark every time for me music wise - but their quality control is exceptional.

As it's St Patrick's Day

This happens to quite a few people with the current line; both my BBs had this issue. Put a drop of thin superglue between the tuner head and the post. The thin stuff is best so it wicks into the gaps.

Good luck @taha_never

I agree with Cat about mixing it up every so often, I change plates on all my basses that have them depending on mood. A white pick-up cover would look good as well?

I don't think any of the looks are wrong and as you correctly point out, we can have a lot of fun mixing up pickguards for different looks. I do it on both my Fenders and I am surprised more players don't do this. It creates a new bass vibe at a fraction of the cost.

So Big singles on their way tommorrow. €140 all in incl shipping and import charges. Hopefully be in my SR600 by end of March🥳

I should add, the RM Head goes easily in a laptop bag with cables. Put that over your shoulder and you can carry an RM cab in each hand. Just make sure you go sideways though doors.

Great info & insight on Reaper, PT & Logic there @BigRedX, thank you, I used to use Audition a lot in a previous job and it's a cracking bit of software, I highly recommend it. FWIW Grams Ops in the TV world would do all their editing and manipulation of effects, music, VOs, etc in Audition and then load them into the playout software.

I would run away - you are quite scary

This sort of thing was what I was led to believe rock and roll was all about when I signed up as a spotty youth...in more than 40 years it never happened, I'm furious and I have no-one I can sue over it...

I'd love to get @bagsieblue 's one but need to sell something 1st. These look great & I've never played a bad Sandberg. Congratulations on your NBD 😁

I’d go parchment, it’s an off white.

This made me smile today. And check out 4.20 in this next vid. Have you ever heard anything like it?

I’m not sure why people are arguing about this – it’s pretty clear cut. if you are playing classical or the more cerebral types of jazz then it doesn’t really matter if you dance or not. Of course, a bit of showmanship doesn’t hurt, as everyone from Mozart to Paganini to Louis Armstrong to Jaco have shown. But generally speaking, if you are not expecting the audience to dance then it doesn’t matter if you do. However, if you are playing rock / pop / funk or whatever then you had better have some sort of stage presence going on. I suppose you can get by without if you are playing the lower level of function / wedding band work, where the audience are not there to see the band but for the occasion / free bar. But if you want to people to come and see your band then you need to put on a show of some sort. This doesn’t necessarily mean running around like Angus Young, just looking comfortable onstage and acknowledging the audience will do for a start. But if you can’t engage an audience then no one will make an effort to come and see your rock / pop band.

Congrats on getting your patch in the video @Quatschmacher! Suddenly feel like an idiot for buying a C4 last year 🤦

Could always go the X32 Rack route? I use an SD16 digital stage box upstage and an SD8 downstage - both have 8 XLR returns and either 8 or 16 inputs and connects via a single CAT5 cable making setup/strike a doddle as you can use short cable runs to a conveniently placed stage box. The SD16 takes care of the kit and backline mics/DI plus drummer's wedge and the SD8 for vocal mics, downstage wedges and FoH.

I dunno, you go to any jazz or funk gig at any city in the world and you'll see musicians of an equal standard to the Scary bunch, doing funk/soul covers of popular songs in exactly the same manner.