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An unexpected NBD. So when I got up this morning I wasn’t expecting to head to Stoke on Trent to do a deal in a tree shrouded shady lay-by. I’ve been getting along famously with my stingray and modulus FU lately, the sound I’ve finally dialled in is the tone that’s been living in my head for many years so all my attention has been on that. But there’s the problem, my Spector LE 77 is a 24 fret and the stingray 21 while the modulus is 22. I found swapping from the stingray to the modulus not any issue but when I popped out the Spector for more of a precision tone It felt like the 12th fret was suddenly far far away. Trying to just pick it up and play a riff I was on the wrong fret due to muscle memory reacting naturally to where I know I should be. (Well it Was on my stingray) So enter the market place for a quick peek (just research you understand) And I saw this…. 😯 Oooer missus!! But it’s passive? It’s beautiful, but it’s passive? Musicman quality, but it’s passive? 21 frets, but it’s passive… Suddenly GAS which I’m sure started in my bowels and then spread out to encompass my body kicked in and I was sending a PM to @ribbetingfrogto see if he was interested in a Noel Edmonds type Saturday morning swap for my Spector. After a bit of nail biting and googling the stinky poo out of ‘Musicman cutlass bass’ he agreed the Spector was something he did indeed like the look of. What can I say, shes a beauty, after getting her home and extracting her from the case she feels like a vintage bass, I can’t explain it, comfortable, familiar but worn in. Punchy, juicy but also not a tone I’m used to coming from my bag ends, it is however a sound I’ve known from so many tracks over the years. With its split humbucking pickup, tone wide open it’s a rock machine, tone shut down completely ‘look at meeee, I’m James Jamerson’ What a cracking bass and through the full tube Mesa or my Ampeg SVT it’s straight out of the golden age. This IS a reason to have more than one bass. Completely polar opposite to anything I own tone wise, but being a Musicman completely familiar in feel and playability. If you’ve not tried one and are a diehard fender man then your missing out. If your a staunch fender man and will use nothing else then avoid this bass, it will spoil your boyhood dreams The build quality is i feel better than any modern fender precision, custom shop I’m not including but they cost ridiculous amounts. The neck heel is a sculpted masterpiece and the neck like most musicman basses plays like a dream. All in all what a great day to check the market place and thank you to @ribbetingfrog for the deal.

Good gig last night at a well known biker clubhouse with the 70's punk band. No pics allowed. Was weird playing for an almost totally male audience. Great feedback at the end of the night and some guys had travelled up from Leeds to see the band. They came over after the first set and congratulated us on a well played set. They were heading back home at that point. All good and several rather large bikers even offered to help load the gear at end of the night. Have to say it was a good night and not as much of a worry as i thought it might be. The guy that booked us said we played a 1st class gig. That was good as it was my 1st full gig with the band. Few mistakes but nothing i couldn't cover. Other comments at end "bass player is the best in the band" put a smile on my face along with a very loud cheer and applause when singer announced i was the new guy in the band. Also put a smile on my face. Dave

Nah! My daughter's trussrod worked fine right from the start ...

Last night - charity fundraiser gig for armed forces veterans. Unpaid, but it was just so good to get out there again after 20 months!

From @bassfan 😆...

I won't use amazon I agree the next day delivery must be awesome but it comes at a cost that is just too much to ignore the treatment of staff the effects on the environment and the contribution of killing off all other competition You wait and see when everything else has gone and all that's left is amazon you watch the prices rise and people and planet suffer more

Well gigged the beat last night & bloody hell what an awesome amp,absolutely love it. Gimme "heft" baby.

Slash and Burn - Manic St Preachers

Drums was my first instrument. It's always the first aspect of any band I jump on. Bad drummer, bad band.

I've worked for Amazon for just over 4 years, and I can honestly say that I have NEVER seen any of this. 1) Hourly rates have always been well above MW 2) Temporary workers are on temporary contracts -minimum of 40 hours p/w 3) P*ssing in bottles to meet targets? You've got us confused with truck drivers - it's called 'driver tizer' for a reason. I agree that they do need to get their house in order as regards paying taxes, but that's our governments allowing them to get away with it, they're just exploiting an already crooked system.

The trick is to remove all the troublesome stuff that causes problems without taking away anything that makes the bass sound good. Easier said than done of course but there's a balance to be struck and it's usually something around 30-40Hz as the -3db point and 24db/octave filtering which is sharper than the natural roll off of most amps. There are multiple reasons for doing this and the optimum will vary. Mixing live I've filtered out everything below 50Hz and no-one has noticed once the bass is in te mix. Anyway here is the problem. This is the excursion of a typical speaker at 200W in a ported cab. As you can see the cone moves further as the frequency falls. The port takes over at 40Hz and below that the cone is flapping about madly. For this speaker the most it can move is about 4mm and then it leaves the safety of the magnetic gap. Below 100Hz it's pretty much into distortion at 200W and that is going to distort everything, not just the bass. Below the port tuning it's crazy, the cone can't physically move 25mm in both directions and you'll end up with a damaged speaker. All this to make frequencies you can't hear. Below is the excursion with a Thumpinator

First used them around 1996, ordered on line, posted US$ bank draft to Seattle to pay invoice. Stopped using them 18 months ago. Can't support carbon headed global warming cardboard box tax evaders.

Life is too short to play with bad drummers regularly.

I've been pondering one of these for a while. They don't come up very often, so I just went for it. Bought from fellow BC'er Bunion, this strange little Wingbass is rather nice. I've been noodling a bit with it today, and I think it's going to take a while to get used to. But effectively, it's like playing a "normal" bass guitar - but only above the 12th fret. I got it for taking as a backup, and to take to pub jams with my local folk club pals. We often end up in tight, cramped spaces, and I usually end up almost hitting someone with the end of my bass. This is really nice construction quality & finish, and I like the sound from the pickup. The neck, such that it is, is a rather strange shape, as I'm used to being able to get my thumb over the top of it.... But I'm sure I just need to play it quite a bit to get the hang of it. I got myself an Electroharmonix Octave pedal, and I've been enjoying playing about with that too. I once had an ashbory, and a ukebass, but didn't like the feel or tension of the strings on either of those. This uses standard bass strings cut down - so feels better to me.

Only if he does 500 more I think

500mile round trip of a walk, doubt he’s finished quite yet.

Debating whether two (differently flavoured) octavers is overkill. Got the MXR recently as wasn’t always 100% happy with the Okto side of the Emma Electronics pedal, but now it’s been on the board for a few weeks I’m missing the Nøjs side of the Emma… Hmm.

I agree that the mix is a strange one - that was one reason I assumed we were a "for-fun" band, and hence, if the others were having fun playing with me (which was the only feedback I got), no reason to doubt my spot. Main lesson learned was definitely "don't assume you're in". Unless there's a contract in blood, assume it's up in the air, and invest accordingly. And always be ready for the boot, however subtle / kind it might be. 🙂

Rig updated with the new Epifani cabinet I picked up from @silverfoxnik earlier today. Sounds fantastic.

Nice Marc. I don't know much about these. Do you just add boiling water?

Just thought I'd post this as A. it was good value for money B. it was excellent service & C. I couldn't believe the options they offered. I bought a second hand Bright Onion loop switcher (from a BC'er), was so useful I thought I'd buy a second one new. They have some great pedals but also they'll customise the paint job and led colours for very little extra. So... The boring one; The pimped one;

There's a few topics over on TB about him, his gear and setup etc, but there doesn't seem to be much over here. I was just wondering if anyone has played any slide bass or setup a 2 string bass? Here's some Morphine for your listening holes

Rocco!

I had one of these back in the day and really enjoyed playing it. Foolishly though, I decided it wasn't particularly practical so moved it on. Fast-forward at least a decade and a bit, when this one came up for sale. It's a 2003 model (which I think is the first production year) in a lovely Lava Pearl, the same colour of the one I had before. It's a lot more orange in the flesh which I really like. It is virtually spotless and even the ubiquitous tip chip being less than 1mm long. It weighs in at sub-9lbs and I love it. Not sure if it's a forever bass but I'm planning on having it around for a while yet. I appreciate they're very marmite but I'm getting increasingly old and grumpy now, I don't really care. I intend to play it and enjoy it as part of my ever-dwindling bass collection that has somehow gone from three basses up to six...oops

Getting there - I couldn't resist screwing everything together to get a look at it, but it's far from finished. It's finished in oil and wax, the finish is not great, so I might give it a rub down with wire wool and apply another coat of wax or two, and see where I'm at then. Still to do: Wiring - mostly solderless thanks to EMG, but I'll need to solder the jack and the switch. Nut - I have a piece of lignum vitae so I'm going to use that as an experiment. If it's useless it's not a massive job to replace it with something else Control plates - there's one for the switch and one for everything else - they're made from the same wood as the top and attach with magnets. They're shaped but still need to be sanded and finished, so I'll show them in the next update. Overall I'm very happy - the colour really helps the "super-modern take on the earliest telecasters" vibe

I'm with @paul_5 and @Maude I think there's a lot of Social Media and paper talk about about how bad working conditions are, a few disgruntled employees spreading malicious gossip maybe, I don't blame any company for paying as little tax as possible, who pays more tax than they need too? it's our inept politicians fault for not being able to stop it

Isn’t that a song

Thanks for that. I think it represents a step up from HX Stomp in a number of areas: the most critical IMO is its DSP, which can make quite a difference at the margin in terms of the quality of the fx sims or as their sales pitch puts it: "delivering a more detailed, organic sound with richer tonal dimensions" 😊 My understanding (tbc) is that the Ampero II tri-core chip may provide double the DSP of the chip in the Helix units (which were originally made available in June 2015 i.e. over 6 years back, when Helix Floor was launched). HX Effects and HX Stomp have one of the HX chips. Helix Floor and Helix Lite, two. In other words, if I've got that right, we're being offered something with the processing power of Helix Lite in a HX Stomp sized box. the colour display is both larger and has a touch screen, which are both welcome improvements on the HX Stomp and the HX Effects (and indeed over the GT1000 Core); I've seen clips indicating we will be able to "draw" desired EQ curves which is a very neat feature (again tbc); Obviously the software / fx sims available is going to be absolutely key to a great multifx and Helix have got several years quality fx patch development under their bonnet and have ironed out most of the glitches in the software. But Hotone have been building up their library and credentials in this area, too, over several years now. So I think Hotone may well be offering quite a significant upgrade over the HX Stomp at the same price point. Definitely got my interest!

One of the things that Jack, Silvia and I talked about in the pub was the large retro-installed side dots, which are to be removed, and whether taking all of the width off the bass side only might take enough off to take out the drill holes too. Unfortunately I think the answer is almost certainly 'no' - the black epoxy is fairly easy to get out, but the drill holes are pretty deep: The good news, though is that they have been drilled with a brad-point drill so it should be relatively easy to clean them up - maybe even slightly bigger to take out the original small dot too. If I can find a plug cutter the right size, the plan would be to cut some maple plugs. It won't be even close to invisible but, with the luminlays also in the same positions, it shouldn't be quite as much 'in yer face' as the present black ones. The other thing we talked about is me swopping the truss rod nut to an allen key one - so a Fender Standard American truss rod nut from Allparts is on its way...should fit So next step before actually reshaping the neck, is to string it back up and make sure that it holds the set relief under full string tension. And that's what I'll do tomorrow

Totally agree about "boring" parts - that's great! Let's make it our own and do something with it. Our drummer recently called Paranoid "boring", but it's the song we consistently have the most fun playing. Turns out, if you can't play boring songs perfectly as a band, forget about the complicated stuff!

It's also a logistical nightmare being 250 miles away. Mrtcat says he gigs all over and could deliver but I bet he doesn't get this far down. I'm going out for a walk to ponder the situation.

Another vote for OnSong. It’s just bang on.

Richard lll. Supergrass

I am familiar and can get around bad guitarists, but it is next to impossible getting round playing with a bad drummer.

Straight in with Marcia Griffiths this morning

I mean , I go through a phase where I listen to all sorts, but there are songs that I could not even give a try. I will suggest it today

Might be worth just contacting the guy and putting your cards on the table. Tell him that the song is not really your style and ask if he would consider swapping it for something else. Nothing to lose at the end of the day.

Cheap Sunglasses ～ ZZ Top

I think my current settings are: settings -> auto lock -> 5 milli-seconds before I'm about to start using the PC again 😃

Very late to this thread but another thumbs up for TI's. I recently came within an hour of buying a new 4003S but decided to go for the Bongo at the last minute. I was that close to buying one, I even ordered a black replacement Truss Rod cover that arrived today. That'll teach me for being efficient...and fickle.