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Showing content with the highest reputation on 17/05/23 in all areas
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This arrived from Bass Bros just over a week ago. I was actually away on a residential course from delivery day onwards, so I had to confess to Mrs Rocks about buying it and ask her very nicely if she would stay at home and take delivery of it. She duly did, and even unpacked it and sent me pictures. Anyway, the bass! It’s a 1987 Made In Japan Fender PB-62 Reissue. These were apparently made by Fujigen Gakki for Fender at the time. The build quality is amazing, easily as good as anything I’ve seen from Fender. Acoustically it rings like a grand piano, very reminiscent of the 2016 AVRI P bass I had until recently. One of the most remarkable things about the bass is the condition, it looks more or less new, which is surprising for a 36 year old instrument. There are a handful, maybe four or five tiny marks on the body, that’s it, no buckle rash and no fret wear. It weighs 4.1kg, or 9lbs 1oz. It even came in it’s original shipping carton with matching serial number. The neck is lovely, very very close to my ‘73 P bass, 41mm nut, but just ever so slightly slimmer from front to back. I bought this bass primarily as a bass I need to worry less about than my vintage 70’s Fender basses. Also as a bass I can try things out on, looms, pickups, bridges etc, something I don’t need to be too precious about keeping original. So it’s going to get gigged, and changes will be made, in fact I’ve already made a couple. The first pics are as I received it, totally stock, with the white guard. I’ve been playing it like this since I got home, even with the rounds on it. Today, I received a new loom for it from John (thanks @KiOgon), so I was ready to make a few changes. Now it’s sporting a tortoise guard (thanks @dodgnofski) with full vintage style shielding plate underneath, Fender Custom Shop 62 pickup, new kiOgon loom, and new knobs. And it’s got a new set of TI flats on it. The action is low, it plays wonderfully, and it sounds great. The original guard and wiring with knobs, and the pickup are all stashed away safely if ever I want to put it back to stock. I’m going to take it out on Friday night to the local jazz jam and hopefully play a couple of tunes on it. Thanks for listening! Cheers, Rob12 points
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Stunning eye catching looks, great playability, fat soapbar pickups, in excellent condition, strung with a new set of D'addario strings, set up and ready to rock. Can post for an additional £22 Ibanez ARTB100 Features: 3 piece SR4 ARTB Mahogany/Maple set-in neck Mahogany Solid Body Medium frets 30.3" scale Gibraltar III bass bridge (19mm string spacing) Quik Change III bass tailpiece ACHB-2 neck pickup ACHB-2 Custom bridge pickup11 points
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9 points
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Bruce Thomas gets an awful lot of love, quite rightly, here and is always associated with the P bass. However, I just found this image, whilst searching for info on another player. Good on yer, Bruce.9 points
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7 points
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For sale only is my Musician Stingray 5-String Natural Lined Fretless. The Bass dates from 1992 and has been well used over the years but has been looked after with only appropriate ware and tear. Buyer pays shipping to UK mainland only and will arrive in a basic hard case. No trades thanks, I am retiring so I'm thinking the herd. Thanks for looking Alan7 points
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After a tidy, if the thread can't stay on topic without personal attacks and goading, it will be closed. Cheers Si7 points
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For sale is my 1983/84 Squier SQ Precision Bass Made in Japan. The bass is in very good condition and was acquired last year from a fellow BCer. I records very nicely and it's fair to say that it has not been a case queen! The SQ series were built alongside the JV models and were the MIJ equivalent of US basses of that era rather than vintage reissues. Japanese build quality, nice and light with excellent necks. Usual specs of Alder body, Maple neck and a particularly lovely dark Rosewood fretboard. This one is all original apart from the strap buttons, control knobs and pickup. This has a Fender Original pickup that sounds great paired to a Kiogon loom. I’m afraid that the original electrics are long gone. The neck has been gently sanded by a previous owner to create a less glossy finish and as a result is brilliant to move around on. The neck blemishes have been drop filled and can barely be felt under the hand. It’s a lovely instrument and weighs 4.0kgs by my scales. There are some minor cosmetic dings and marks but nothing structural. It’s a gigging workhorse and great as a main bass or backup. The bass will come with a Gator case and is currently strung with Thomastik-Infeld Jazz Flatwound JF344 strings. Any questions please let me know. Collection or meet up preferred, but postage will be considered (at extra cost obvs.). Here are some pics. What can I say, it's a black bass so tricky to photograph.6 points
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Hi folks, I have for sale here a fantastic condition Alpher Mako Fretless. It sounds great, I'm just not a great Fretless player, and really can't justify having this beautiful instrument. I am motivated to sell, so I can do you a deal on this for £1250! 1 piece Sapelle body - sunburst callida (burnt) finish 1 piece Ash neck Macassar Ebony fingerboard Nordstrand Dual Coil pick up (with hidden 3 way switch) All Hipshot hardware Lumilay side dot markers Alpher branded hiscox case, or Mono bass sleeve. (Your choice) Postage available, or happy to hand deliver to a lot of the UK.6 points
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It's no secret that I had to sell up everything a handful of years ago, all the basses, all the gear, everything, just to pay the bills. It's only been in the last year or so that I've been able to start assembling a modest group of instruments. It's a very depressing place to be, when one of the things that makes your life better has to go to pay the rent, and actually, at the end of it all, it made no difference really, selling anything, it just delayed the inevitable. I should have at least kept a couple of the basses.... I really miss my Stingrays..... All I can say, is that from personal experience, selling you prized possessions to pay bills isn't worth it. Unless you have a collection of Foderas to sell, that will really make a financial difference, don't do it... it's not worth it. That said.... I'll be at the front of the line to help, if I can, any brother, or sister, who needs the help.6 points
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After picking up a bass for the first time ever (never played any other instrument either) that I borrowed I went and bought a brand new Fender Precision then a week later a really nice GK amp. I figured buying some nice gear would make me want to practise and it worked, I love my P-bass and I get excited every time I pick it up (although I suck playing it) and the nice powerful amp sounds awesome turned up. Makes me excited to just play one note! In every hobby there’s people that spend a lot of money on their first set of gear, some stick with it, some don’t. One important consideration is that different hobbies or skills have different costs and to be honest I think playing the bass is relatively cheap so you may get more people getting nice gear to start off with. It’s all relative. I have ridden MTB bikes for pretty much 30 years and I sold half of a bike to buy my Precision. I would have not hesitated to spend £2k on a mountain bike so £700 on my first bass didn’t seem so bad and I figured if I looked after it I’d get a lot of my money back if I got a Fender (and that’s what I wanted after demoing them - wow that can be a bit embarrassing when you can’t play anything!). I’ve been looking at a bigger amp and found a nice GK setup on eBay which is £650 - I’ve spent that in the past on a set of forks for my bike! I don’t need it but wow I’m tempted! (Need to pay gas bill first though 😂😂) I reckon most people don’t mind people who have all the gear and have no idea as long as they are honest with it. Every bass player I have met has been more than nice to me and helped me along. It’s the people who have all the gear and think they have an idea, or think that expensive kit someone makes them more important.6 points
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5 points
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My first Jazz bass, liking the difference to my PBass In the new Candy Apple red colour4 points
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Overwhelmed with this set up , the tone from the Handbox is unreal and that cab makes it sound like an earthquake ! All set to be making some people deaf this weekend...4 points
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I keep an old candle on my work bench and just pull the screw thread through it.4 points
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Another if you’re interested post… Back in ‘99 the band I was in had somehow managed to blag a session at Studio 1 at AIR. Not bad for three boys from Hereford. Halfway through the day the other two had gone in search of a drink and I was left in the control room with the producer, when David Arnold walked in. After some introductions he said ‘We’ve just finished the new Bond theme, do you want to be the first to hear it?’ and promptly produces a CD for us. So we got to hear The World Is Not Enough before anyone else. Red letter day.4 points
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Another entitled musician that thinks the world owes them a living. If you live in a property away from others where practice doesn't impact others at all, great. If you dont and you can modify your room, or instrument (e.g. use your bass unamped), great. If you can come to an agreement with your neighbours about when noise is made, again, great. If you don't live in a property where you can make adaptions or can't come to an agreement with your neighbours, go and find somewhere else to practice. If it's your job as you say, you can even claim that back on your already comical tax return. It's absolutely not up to your neighbours to live in misery because of your antisocial behaviour. I'm all for supporting music but I'm also in the game of thinking that p1ssing off people (especially knowingly) is not acceptable either. I’d like to live in a mansion away from people so I can make as much noise as I want at any hour - but I can’t as I can’t afford to. The world isn’t perfect so suck it up and put yourself out to make it work the best you can. Why does everybody think that their convenience should be at the expense of others? If she can’t make this work, her job as a musician isn’t viable.4 points
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3 points
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3 points
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To be fia To be fair, he has got quite a light touch with that chainsaw....3 points
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3 points
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I was expecting you to shield the whole lower half of the pickguard! The minimum you'd get away with would be to add the areas marked in red below. The whole area above the control cavity needs to be shielded and continuity established with the pickup cavity.3 points
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3 points
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You do what you do for all "mission-critical" equipment - carry a spare. It doesn't have to be another pair of expensive custom moulds, a set of ZS10s (£45 from Amazon - even cheaper if you want to take a chance with AliExpress) will get you to the end of the gig. Cheaper than a spare amp or wedge and more than small enough to live permanently in your bag of gig essentials and unlikely to be left out because your couldn't be bothered to load them in or didn't have room in the band transport for a particular gig.3 points
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3 points
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Having lived through the whole period this is spot on. It was done that way because the other options weren't feasible at the time. Once people have a system up and running they are going to be reluctant to change to something which might be difficult for them, expensive and until they try it a potential problem. For me what has made it feasible for your 'average' band is the advent of affordable digital mixers. A couple of years ago I paid just £330 for an 18 channel mixer and sold my old Yamaha analogue for £200 (If I'd bought it that week it was still made for £400 so going digital was cheaper). I lost the snake and the new mixer is only the size of the old stage box. With the old mixer I'd have needed a separate monitor mixer to offer individualised monitor mixes and a host of outboard fx ideally for front of house. Just physically carrying all the kit to do on-stage monitoring was a bind. Even the Yamaha stayed at home a lot of the time because it physically wouldn't fit in the venue space. On stage I had to referee more than one volume war with each band member turning up to get 'more me' so they could hear themselves over the rest of the band. So now I have six monitor outs for four band members. They don't need buy any kit to do their own monitor mixes as they can do this on their phones. Once the singer and I were using in-ears the drummer said "I'll try it" then wouldn't give my spare buds back, the guitarist realised he was missing out and ordered in ears from the rehearsal room. They can have as much 'me' as they want now and having control has upped the confidence. The final thing which hasn't been fully explored is the damage to your ears of traditional back-line. Average sound levels on stage with a drummer and matching guitar and bass are going to be over 100db for most of us and you need that to reach the back of any medium sized venue. The permitted exposure to 100db is 10min and anything above this is known to permanently damage your hearing. It's too late for my generation almost all 60 year old musicians are deaf to some extent and it isn't due to age, it's due to noise exposure. It's due in some respect to 'more me' and the desire to feel 'your trousers flapping' I'm not telling anyone they are wrong, the old school generation of musicians have invested so much time, money and love in getting to where they are with music and sound to be proud of. If you are out entertaining people you want to concentrate on the music and what works is hard and seems risky to give up. I'm never going to knock people for doing what works for them but my goodness you don't know what you are missing until you try it.3 points
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Minimum of 500 watts into a 4 ohm load and a cab/cabs that equate to the 4 ohms. You can always turn it down but having to thrash it for volume isn't a good plan. This will cover pretty much anything you need in most pubs. Buy used off the classifieds here. There are usually some bargains to be had on older bigger/heavier amps. Maybe find an Ashdown ABM500 or an old Peavey if you can? There's some cheap Trace Elliott and Mark Bass stuff around now and quite a bit of choice in the classifieds What's the budget?3 points
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Good point. He doesn't know where to stop with his nut filing, does he? It's nice to know that there's at least one person even more incompetent at handiwork than me.3 points
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Been taking advantage of the decent weather to make a start on putting the Wudtone finish on the body and neck. I'm working outside on a garden table with an old towel on top to protect both the table and the bass. The finish has been very easy to apply (using an old sheet cut up into smaller pieces. Whole sheet in one go would be a bit much...). Done a coat each evening from Sunday - so third this evening. Wil now leave it all until at least the weekend, maybe give it a light sanding (is that sensible??), a couple more coats of the base coat and then a couple of coats of top coat for the satin finish. Still waiting on hardware to arrive. Have decided to use Nectite inserts and screws for the neck, the control cavity screws and the pickups. Some shielding paint also on the way even though it's at least going to start life with an EMG pickup. I'm thoroughly enjoying the process and the fact you can't rush it and working with such a lovely piece of wood is so tactile and downright relaxing. Time to quit my job and become a luthier... if only.3 points
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There are two separate issues at play here: Firstly the importance or not of having amps and speakers for the individual instruments on stage. IME if everything is going through the PA then at best your amplification rig is a personal monitor and at worst a stage prop that could be messing up the on-stage sound. As soon as you have multiple single instrument sources on stage trying to arrange them on a typical stage, so that all the musicians are able to hear what is coming out of them is nigh on impossible anything but the smallest of venues, and if you look at the typical band setup most don't even bother. If they did, the amps would be placed at the sides of the stage pointing across, but when was the last time you saw that? Once you start having to put anything with its own amp into the foldback, you might as well dispense with on-stage instrument amps and give each musician their own wedge monitor and their own personal monitor mix. Instrument amps only contribute to the sound of the instruments due to a historical accident, because amplified music became popular while the cheapest way of producing amps was using valves. Let's face it electrical engineers would never have purposely designed an amp to distort no matter how musically "pleasing" that sound may be. Their original intent was always to make the instrument sound louder without adding any additional colouration. This has also lead to the problem that both the amp and cabs become part of the instrument's sound which is a particular issue for bass players because the PA rarely mic's up the bass cabs and even if they do, they will also take a DI and you have no way of knowing which source is actually being used for the FoH sound. If you want the sort of colouration that ancient amplification operating outside of its intended parameter produces, then it makes far more sense to dispense with the on-stage amps and speakers and use signal processing instead to replicate the sound. These days IME in a band mix it is indistinguishable from the "real" thing. And. if you play in a band where having a large and impressive looking backline is still part of the image then get some light-weight, low-profile empty ones to use as stage props that take up less floor space on stage and can be folded away to save space for transport. As you can probably tell, I've dispensed with a dedicated bass rig. I found that I was playing two types of venue - small ones where I was being asked to turn down so much so as not to overpower the FoH sound that I could barely hear myself from my rig compared with the bass sound coming out of the guitarist's wedge on the other side of the stage; or the large ones where even my big and impressive-looking rig couldn't even begin to cover the whole stage and once again I was mostly reliant on the foldback to be able to hear myself. I was asking myself what was the point of taking this rig to gigs (3 items that were all ideally a two-person carry) when most of it made no contribution to what myself or my audience were hearing? I now use a Helix for my sound and an FRFR cab for rehearsals and the very occasional gig where the PA is strictly vocals only. I've done only a handful of these types of gig with any of my originals bands in the last 25 years, and the FRFR has been a massive improvement in terms of dispersion (and consequently on-stage balance) compared with my much more expensive traditional bass rig. I've gone from having to be so loud on stage that I could barely hear the other instruments in order for the bass guitar to project into the audience, to being just slightly louder than I would normally choose. So really the only bass players who need a traditional amplification rig are those who only play small-ish gigs with vocal-only PA systems, or those who play in bands where the majority of the other instruments don't require amplification (like big bands). It seems ironic then that much of the advertising for amplification relies on "big-name" endorsees for whom the equipment they are promoting has little real-world benefit. The other issue is that of IEMs: Neither of the two bands I currently play in have made the switch to IEMs even though I think both would benefit from it. One of the bands is definitely more open to the idea than the other, and I suspect that finances allowing, this one will be be using IEMs within the next 12 months. The biggest problem I see with IEMs is that the band really need to be doing their own foldback mix to get the best out of them. Quite a few of the bands that I have shared the bill with over the last few years use IEMs and all of them take much longer to soundcheck and suffer form numerous problems integrating their system with the house PA at the venue. This becomes even more complicated if you are also using the IEMs for things such as click tracks which are not wanted in the FoH. When I make the change it will be because the band will have also added the equipment required to do our own on-stage monitor mix that can be kept completely separate from the FoH and include things like click tracks, count ins and other band-only cues. TL:DR pretty much everyone who isn't playing in a small pub covers band with a vocal only PA would benefit from ditching the traditional backline and using IEMs. Ultimately it's going to produce a better sound on stage and FoH and overall there will be less equipment to carry and set up. It's early days yet but I suspect in 10 years time we'll be wondering why it was even necessary to discuss this.3 points
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3 points
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I was considering IEMs but if they make you that belligerent I think I'll give them a miss.3 points
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Hi BC’ers, I was lucky to pick up a s/h Super Vintage in mint condition yesterday and had a little play around with it today. Seems like a great pedal and built like a tank too. I just wondered what your thoughts were and if you have an tips/settings, pedal chain placement, etc you’d recommend to get the best out of it. Thanks in advance.2 points
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+1 for the RCF. We had an issue with WiFi dropouts but I got round that by using a tethered usb connection to a cheap android tablet. Since then, rock solid and way more features than we need - but nice to know we have the option. Guitarist Helix gone down? Plug into a hi-z on the RCF. Lost an fox pedal? Put it in the signal chain on the RCF. Need six individual mixes? Record to USB? All covered by the RCF. It really is a fantastic bit of kit…. If I was buying again, it would be a toss up between that and the Zoom Livetrak2 points
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If it brings you pleasure then don’t worry what people think. As you say playing an instrument is a pretty cheap hobby. If you play that thing for 70 hours then get bored let’s face it in this day and age how much is there available to do in terms of leisure activities for £10 an hour? Pub, cinema, coffees out? Even if you gave it away it’s better than frittering your cash away on the above.2 points
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You don’t need to get too carried away with power. It matters but is only part of the story. What you need to do is to be able to match the sound levels of the loudest instrument in your band. Probably the drums. A drummer will typically produce an average sound level of around 100db @1m so for a 40db range you need to be able to produce around 120db. Bass speakers vary in their efficiency/loudness but 97db/W is fairly typical so for 120db you need a gain of 23db which is 200W. For many years people used Trace and Peavey amps of just that power and we seem to have forgotten that. There’s no harm in going bigger than that but ‘need’ is a bit strong if everything else is right about your choice. Make sure it gives that power into the speakers you choose. Having said that the bog standard for amps nowadays seems to be 300w into 8ohms and 500 into 4ohms so you’ll have a lot of choice of those. Choose based upon sound. btw that 180w Ashdown is close enough to count as a 200W amp paired with something like a 2x122 points
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2 points
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Thinking about this, given that I`m trying to offload a full Ashdown ABM rig I should be hating on everyone going ampless 🤣2 points
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it says it needs (and comes with a terrible) 12v 2A adapter, it actually uses 320ma flat out. I have mine on a 12v 500mA output2 points
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2 points
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You've got a few things to consider. What type of music are you playing, and how loud? What size venues and how much room to set up? How many in the band since it quickly eats up available space. Big enough car to shift it around? Once you've worked that out I'd say you want 500W class D or 300W on an older type transistor like an Ashdown or a Trace.2 points
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I was never a fan of madness but I did like the occasional specials track, anyone remember this2 points
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i asked to Mauro, che "chief" of J&F the CODA and SISMA have the both the same power amp section. but CODA change in the preamplifier, which is a straight, balanced or unbalanced hi fi preamplifier input, the gain control can also slightly saturate. it's like a gallien krueger but without equalizer, but with transformer equipped DI. a simple, straight bass head, as if it were a simple power amp. i hope to have explained in a good way... sorry for my english 😁2 points
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Yes. I have the Capo too.. fixed in my pedal board.. very useful, you can practically do anything with it. Both as a real preamp and as an effect to saturate and color the sound in a different way very interesting demonstration videos will soon be released on the Jad&Freer youtube page www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0h2qQsNhBo2 points
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unfortunately I've never been interested in the Coda 😅 ... but if you need I can find out, what did you want to know??2 points
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2 points
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I wasn't being entirely serious, in case you hadn't realised. Didn't the fact that I moaned about the birds singing give you a clue? However, expecting or worse, demanding, absolute silence is not realistic or reasonable, unless one lives on a remote island. Sure, playing loud music late at night or at the crack of dawn is selfish and unreasonable, but most people are aware of that. Absolutely, although I did it once to get back at a downstairs neighbour. She insisted on playing loud music at 6 am every day whilst she did her aerobics. I asked her to wear earbuds to listen to it and she told me to eff orf. So I invited the lads round (having warned the other neighbours, who were also fed up with her) for a "rehearsal" one evening. We had a couple of Fender Twins, full kit and my old Trace rig giving it large in my large lounge. Didn't half make the windows rattle. She was banging on the door and screaming. Hilarious. She agreed to be more reasonable after that.2 points
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I had some Rotosounds bought online, they sounded terrible, felt horrible and lost what top end they had after one gig, definitely genuine 😜2 points
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2 points
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“only difference here from a standard jazzbass wiring is that this has a single tone common to both” (pickups). erm… both my jazzbasses must be non-standard then. Crikey.2 points