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Arrived yesterday, ACG Micro Krell headless 30.5" scale. I wanted to share...I wanted lightweight, Alan recommended "Paulownia" (which is a weed) with this achieved 6.4lb! It looks and feels great...so consider if you want light!! FYI Suhr build a classic T with a paulownia body As an aside, the Krell is fitted with ACG hybrid BZ1 pu selected by 4 position knob...1. Ceramic single coil.....2. Ceramic single coil & Alnico single coil....3. as 2 but in series...4. Alnico single coil Will need to experiment over a few rehearsals & gigs ...lots of fun or confusion

Happy New Bass Day to me! OK, technically it was last week, but I'm pretty time poor at the moment. I am extremely lucky to have received my very own ACG Uber Finn 5 string. Specs as follows: Body Wood: Mahogany Top Wood: Katalox Veneer: Maple Neck Wood: 5 piece Flame Red Oak/Wenge Finger Board: 2 Tone Pau Ferro Scale: 31.5″ Finish: Satin Lacquer Pickups: ACG MC5 Hardware: ACG/Hipshot Bridge, Gotoh GB350 Resolite Tuners and Dunlop Straplocks Pre-amp: ACG DFM 5K/AP The bass is absolutely exquisite, perfectly balanced, not too heavy, not too light. The playability and sound, as with all ACGs are both incredible, but this one takes it up a notch with the MC Series pickups. These pickups are incredible, so articulate and precise, they really capture every nuance of your playing. Coupled with the DFM 5k, you have everything you need to sculpt your tone. I tend to run the neck pickup quite thick and bassy, and the bridge pickup a little more grindy/gnarly, which gives you a huge aggressive tone, which can easily be tamed by dialling back the passive tone control. There's a world of possibilities though. As with my other basses, it's a 31.5" scale, which is a scale length that kind of found me but feels so absolutely perfect. Special note for the TGI Gigbag that the bass shipped in, very simple, but well made and effective, I'm going to pickup a few more to replace some of my less padded bags. All in, I'm a very very lucky lad! Cheers, Eude

31st July 2021 first gig since Feb 2020. During lockdown we decided...due to age, bad backs etc to go digital & no backline or monitors. We are a 3 piece ( guitar, bass & drums with two vocals) mainly doing 60's & 70's. We use Roland V drums which is a godsend for our ears and setting up time, so decided to go for a silent stage. We are big fans of RCF so invested in RCF M20X mixer, TT FoH active cabs & bass bin. I have been able to get a great & powerful bass sound in rehearsals at lowish levels & at the gig last Sat outdoors ( and in a hall with no audience ) it was excellent, ...so the risk and investment paid off all of the band were happy & the feedback from the audience was good a couple of musicians commented on the clarity, separation & hi fi sound..so the backline is gone (for this band anyway) And YES the guitarist amp etc is history...load cheers from BC members But what about monitors? they have gone to. We have used IEM's but did not like the ground level noise, sound quality, latency and "faf" We invested in a DACS Clarity headlite 3+ with upgraded power channels (1U)...basically a studio headphone amp. This is individually fed from the desk and each band member has his own mix & volume control via desk, ipad or phone...stereo jack cable from headphone amp to belt clip with stereo socket...plug in you inears (at rehearsals, headphones) and no noise...clear real time hi fi mix. We did not need as much volume in our ears and we sang better (pitch and harmony blend)...it took a lot of practice but wwe are we are hooked and cannot go back We have a comms channel to band members only via momentary pedal ..and a shotgun mic to pickup the crowd when we stop making a racket! I am sharing this as we have never had such a great FoH sound, foldback & clarity of how we are playing together...it was quicker to set up and pack...horah and we were not tired & our ears did not ring on the way home....I hope it inspires you..to think different...it took a lot of incremental tests and different gear (desks, headphone amps, In ears, headphones, footswitches etc) Some pic's during testing...NOTE: the desk EQ is sooo good, I have got rid of the sansamp RBI Cant wait for the next gig 15th Aug

Surely the transition of power should be done via a democratic popular vote? I for one vote Mick Mason to run this site, Sansamps for everyone!!!

I'm not sure I can adjust the flood control, it may be at the server end, but you're right about the 'and/or' is I've just changed the default behaviour

Yay, it's here and all is good! I had to go out this evening so it was a quick unpackage to check over and that was it. But it's oh so sexy, really nice looking and at first glance appears to be in excellent condition. It's smaller than I expected, but I have been playing a Jack Casady and Ric 4005 mainly and they're both stupidly large. Tomorrow I'll give it a proper try out. But at the mo I'm a very happy chappy! 🙂

My collection

Don’t fully understand how the badges system works but when we last moved house I did find a box with some of my old badges from the late 70s and early 80s. Didn’t know I still had them. These badges made me feel old. But it’s okay, I am old 😂

I have been ‘promoted’ overnight. To ‘enthusiast’. ‘They’ could not be more wrong.

My stingrays Old Smoothie LTD EDITION Classic Starry Night PDN Neptune Blue PDN Burnt Apple Special HH

It's arrived safely with UPS from Poland without any customs issues. I had 2 minutes to spend with it and had to leave, hence no photos.

Well…450 has now gone. And the white 350f I didn’t actually think I’d win on eBay arrived…

Hehehe. Good Lord this is tempting

Covid victim

Maybe you should get a covid test.

Lucky you - I find that when we play, people start leaving gradually throughout the evening.......I'll get my coat.

There were certain intentions made when we did not initially produce a 5-string option of this bass. While we absolutely knew there would be a demand for a 5 string, it really didn't fit the retro vibe/aesthetic, tone specs, etc. It's a 4 string for a reason, the right tool for what's intended. As musicians and artists, I'm sure you understand. That being said we NEVER say Never here at Nordstrand. Stranger things have happened. I don't see it happening in the near future, as there are lots of ideas for new goodies lined up over here at the shop. Just. You. Wait.

Wad, something tells me you're not Proficient in anything, son.

Every cloud has a Hi Ho

New house, new music room. Finally enough space😁

New bass incoming. Risky wee bid on eBay but it turned out to be a good one. Much better than the similar age Squier I had and a bit better than the Mexican Fenders I've had in the past. For less than a couple of hundred quid, it does make me wonder why I have spent thousands on some basses! Ok, the finish is a bit naff but the hardware and pickup are spot on for the money and it plays very well.

When I went to engineer school tubes were still a current technology and I learned a lot about them. With the output tubes available in the UK between 100 and 300W were about as far as you could go. I designed with what were easily available. In the late Seventies, now living in Toronto, I put together a 150W tube amp (6xEL34) and it worked well but still left me with distortion at higher volumes. I designed a fully solid state amp with 200W per channel into 2Ω to replace it. It too worked well, I still have the power amp in my work room. It's heavy but gave me the clean bass that I was looking for. I find designing with tubes a lot of fun. When I bought my first pair of Acme B2 cabinets I needed yet more power to drive them. At that time there were stereo power amps available at such cheap prices that I bought one. My current set up is a 2KW Class D stereo amp and I designed a two channel mono pre amp using tubes to drive it. I like what it does very much.

Oops, yeah, sorry! 😞 I don’t remember having a Crass badge. I did work alongside their guitarist for a while in the 90s though. Lovely fella.

Expect lots of comments about the optical illusion that fretboard creates... Another Alan masterpiece.

Good work. I dream of such a setup but the band are all dinosaurs so no chance!

Beginnings of High NRG!

Awe inspiring really. If I ever had the cash for a custom, ACG would be the top of my list to throw money at. Congrats!

I love this, specially on an amazing sound system

John Frusciante - Inside of Emptiness

So “cliffhanger of the day” award goes to ?

I was 10 when Gimme All Your Lovin' was released. I probably saw the video on Top Of The Pops...and being young thought it was a great song. I subsequently got my Dad to order me a ZZ Top album from his latest Britannia Music catalogue. The cassette that arrived was The Best Of ZZ Top, which to a 10 year olds ears was a 1000 miles from what I'd heard on TOTP. However, that's what I got into. I really loved early ZZ Top. I ended up getting Rio Grande Mud a few months later. So while my peers were listening to mid 80s British pop, I was listening to early 70s Texas Blues/Boogie. Several years later I bought the CD version of Rio Grande Mud. Unfortunately I got the remastered one, that was made to sound like Eliminator, so loads of reverb. Gimme All Your Lovin' is a very ZZ Top song, it's just got a ton of reverb on it and synths

I think it depends on their rankness

I’ll nominate all of “The Bad Seeds” and PJ Harvey.

That's one of the reasons we use tube ports. It's a lot easier in the prototyping phase. Otherwise it's probably better to make the shelf undersized and add on rather than have to cut bits off. I prefer round ports anyway. The walls of any port are where there is resistance to air flow and where non-linear air flow starts to cut in. The way to have the least air in contact with the walls is to have a circular cross section. We also found that multiple small ports demonstrated earlier chuffing than a single large one. Not very scientific as it was a sample size of one but it was a very obvious effect. Having said that other considerations come in to play. I often use whatever port material I have to hand, either plastic plumbing pipes or cardboard tunes from carpet warehouses.. Some designers have used triangular ports in corners. They'll experience more turbulence but it's a really convenient place to put them and the triangular bracing of the panels will be significant. Stevie really doesn't like chuffing so uses large ports for preference. I don't mind high port velocities on the basis of the absence of much fundamental coming from the pickups. It's hard to say any particular design choice is the 'one' as all speaker design is a matter of weighing gains in one area against compromises elsewhere. We are really happy to go off topic, lots of people read the answers and learn stuff and it keeps us on our toes for the next design.

I don't think it's something a guy can do easily, it won't fit in the boot of most cars either without you putting some marks on it. Maybe I'm overstating it a bit, I'll take a short video of it for you at some point so you can see. Sound wise though I genuinely think this can compete with most cabs out there, even without using the control console for the horn (which is the extra bit), it's crazy.

I found a time machine and took a quick snap while I was back in the 70s I chose it more for the bass than for the pic of me - my dear old Framus Jazz bass, long since lost in the mists of time, but a cracking bass.

That's a young looking you in your avatar Dave 😀

Last year I was Gassing for (would you believe) a wireless microphone. After much forum discussions I settled for a Sennheiser EW100 G4-945-S. I love it. Having used SM-58s for years and years, then moving to Beta 58s for the last 10 years, I'm very taken with the 945 microphone capsule. I had a Brian May guitar too, last July. It's really nice to play and has a great sound, even when I don't want to sound like Brian, the core sound is really good

Robert Smith(Cure) is a great guitarist and is largely overlooked in that role. Kevin Shields (My Bloody Valentine), Keith Levine (PIL), Johnny Greenwood(Radiohead), John Lever (Chameleons) drummer, Sisters of Mercy (Doktor Avalanche) drummer. And some lesser spoken of bass players from the genre. No 1. is Steven Severin (SATB), David J (Bauhaus), Stan Stammers (Theatre of Hate, Spear of Destiny), Stuart Morrow (NMA). I could go on but time for my Ovaltine.