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If I can find just one person in the audience (and most of the time there's usually one, no matter how small the crowd) who's listening with some interest, I play for them. If no-one at all is listening, I play for myself: I concentrate and play the very best I can, which is an achievement in itself: getting through a couple of hours of live playing without dropping a single note or a single beat or a single nuance and staying right in the pocket with the drummer is an achievement, and that's a good thing. I work on things like playing without looking, too. Then somebody pays me for having done that. It's all good, sometimes you just have to look a little harder...

I’ve always been a fan of Aria, and in particular the original 90s Integra and IGB basses. My IGB 68 is currently my only 5 string, great bass, very underrated. However I picked this IGB SPT up recently for not a lot of money…. not entirely sure what it is…. 90/91 I believe, made in Korea… similar to the Billy Gould bass…. It was in a sorry state, but a full strip, clean, set-up and strings and it’s a fine thing indeed. Very light, really killer tone and lovely fretboard…. this things ace, but that’s all I know Any more info?

He's more likely to adapt you. You'll get a new neck, replacement truss, and swifts tattooed by your g-string.

Great, thanks for that, but "are you a fan?" wasn't actually the question.

I've been going to see Level 42 for nearly 40 years, every time they tour (every other year trhese days) Mrs S and I see at least one show. We are going to see them twice this time around. I've probably seen them perform more than any other band, and I'd say they are better now than ever apart from maybe the early jazz funk years. I'd admit MK and Lindup's voices aren't what they were but the band are amazing. Nathan's BVs help to bolster the falsetto these days. Pete Ray Biggin is a tour de force on the drums, simply astonishing, and the horns totally add value to the show. They generally have a great lighting set up, too. The days when MK stood at the front of the stage showboating slap are long gone but, in any case, it is his fingerstyle playing that I find far more impressive. I've been going to see live music for over 50 years during which time I've seen the great, the good, the bad and the ugly, and I reckon MK to be the most accomplished all round bassist I have ever seen. And that is without taking into account he is the main singer and composer. His complex bass lines weave through the songs in a thoughtful and musical way - it isn't just 'Love Games' thumping on the open E. My main thought, when I hear the MK detractors, is that they actually haven't actually taken the time to listen to the band but merely trot out the same old 'one trick pony' and 'bucket of nails falling down the stairs' cliche based on an interview they saw back in the noughties (or whatever). Their last new material, the EP Sirens, had fewer slap bass lines than finger style and even pick on one. It is entirely possible to recognise and appreciate talent even in the context of music you don't like but I guess that takes effort and an open mind - rare commodities these days.

You are once again correct - I'm withdrawing it - that pedal and a couple basses and I'm ready for gigs recording or anything tbh - and yes, cranking the distortion on the channel B can be so so good, too! Thank y'all for some sanity 😀 Ander.

Ska band's gig next Saturday is at a Conservative Club. Hmm, well a payday's a payday I suppose. Anyway... I've bought a special shirt for the occasion.

Really good video by Scott on 17 greatest fretless bassists. Shame a few really key bassists were missed like John Giblin, Paul Webb and Sting but still really good and that Ibanez sounded so sweet.

Honestly it feels like a waste of TIM sometimes.

I want Andy to adopt me...

The Capo is the one pedal I can imagine using in any context or genre. Very interested in the Coda although the Handbox WB100 really is sublime. My reason for Sisma over the Coda would be redundancy for not a lot extra. Going into the Sisma fx return should be virtually the same as going into the Coda.

Non-budget PA cabs do come with semi-decent specs. But 'non-budget' means two thousand quid and up. Even then the numbers don't always add up. For instance, maximum SPL claims are seldom measured. They take the 1w/1m sensitivity and calculate the max SPL from that. But that calc doesn't take into consideration real world issues, like thermal power compression and driver excursion limits. And if they're using peak power for the calculation it's bogus anyway. Experienced acoustical engineers are aware of these shenanigans, and knowing the full driver, enclosure and amp specs can make accurate performance predictions. The other 99.99% of users are at the mercy of the marketeers. 🤥

Here's the frequency response of a 2x12 +horn bass cab from a respected US manufacturer. The red line looks fairly good, almost FRFR in fact, but you'll only ever hear that if your head is right in front of the cab. Move to the side or above and what you hear is shown in the off-axis curves - huge suckouts in the upper midrange! This is the main reason players complain they can't hear their bass clearly when playing live. You can see the tweeter coming in at around 5kHz to provide the boom-tizz sound we know and love. 😀 It's hardly surprising so many players switch them off. The solution (in a two-way system), as @Bill Fitzmaurice has pointed out, is a proper compression driver crossing over at about 2kHz or lower. With a carefully designed crossover, you can get a nice, smooth frequency respose that slopes gently towards the higher frequencies as you move off axis and counteracts the bass driver's tendency to die above 1kHz. The result a much more natural sound. Bassists playing through PA cabs already know what I'm talking about. Unfortunately, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of dedicated bass guitar cabs using this approach.

Completely with Bill here, tweeters in bass cabs are for midrange mainly. The trouble is that few designs take a lot of care over this and certainly on mid-price cabs the tweeter isn't properly integrated into the design and is compromised by commercial decisions. You need rigid and fairly heavy cones to produce loud bass. Moving these back and forth quickly enough to make sound at high frequencies isn't really possible and above certain frequencies the outside of the cone lags behind the movement of the coil and the cone starts to flex and the sound starts to distort and you can see this in the frequency response also, most bass speakers show peaks and dips in response above 1khz. Speakers reduce in output from the side once the diameter of the speaker approaches half the wavelength. If you sit at right angles to the speaker the sound from the nearest part of the cone arrives at your ears before the sound from the far side and the delay causes cancellation. By the time the sound reaches you from the far side the cone has reversed direction. you can see all this in the driver manufacturers data. this is the Faital 12PR320 You can see the cone starting to flex at 1kHz in the blue line and also (red line) how much less output there is of axis due to cancellation. Between 2k and 7kHz its down between 12 and 24db so that's almost all the top end of the bass lost at 45 degrees to the side. The trouble is a decent horn/driver and crossover add considerably to the cost of a cab and may cost as much as the bass driver, adding roughly a third to the materials cost of the cab. Early designs were also developed with very little science behind them. Crossovers are often little more than a high pass filter often a single component to protect the tweeter so a lot of high end is added to the midrange peak that you already have and you can see on the graph. Since you have the tweeter and woofer operating at the same time there are also a whole set of new peaks and troughs and off axis issues. Lower crossover frequencies also mean more expensive drivers so they are 'crossed over ' too high and not sharply enough and what you end up with is that horrible tizz that everyone hates. Even worse is the piezo tweeter which can be wired with no crossover at all and almost inevitably sounds awful. Not a surprise, they are only £2.50 retail. So properly engineered tweeters should be concentrated on improving the mid-range and directionality of the speaker cab. they should give you cleaner smoother midrange and better intelligibility on stage. too many are just added because you 'need' one to appeal to a bigger market.

Marketing. They also use 'music power', 'peak music power', and my favorite, 'peak music power output'. It's all bovine excrement.

@Bill Fitzmaurice summed it up pretty well. Anything in the 2-8KHz region is best served by a tweeter, as beaming of 10-15" drivers mean the only people that hear the sound of the bass are straight in front of it. If that is the bassist's backside, it's all lost. A well-designed cab with a tweeter will not sound harsh, and cabs cannot hiss, only amps and pedals can hiss. Any bass will sound better through a properly designed cabinet. IMHO, cabinets should be substantially flat and if I want a particular sound I use EQ and/or pedals. This is true when using all types of basses, flats or round wounds.

Not to mention that many simple questions are asked because the person doesn't actually know the best way to ask for help. A 13 year old asking "What is the best pedal for rock" has an entirely different view of what rock is compared to a 60 year old who after playing double bass for 40 years has just got his first bass guitar and he caught a clip of Black Sabbath on youtube. There are countless threads on here where a simple question has been answered with another question for clarification - and that has allowed the person asking to better explain what they need. Gaining knowledge is a linear process.

In the old days you'd read one of 2 or 3 books that told you pretty much everything you knew. Then there were a few magazines. A lot less conflicting information. They were written by people who had been there and done it. Lots of Internet advice is second hand knowledge, half learned, a lot of it people have spent money on gear and are then emotionally invested in it 'being good' otherwise they have to admit they've spent unwisely. Then there's advertising - just because something appears a lot, it doesn't mean it is good, probably just means they have a good advertising budget, or effective media team. I think if a group is annoying you, I feel some posters here seem to get a biased view of how much other people post in off topic, and often that's probably because they have common interest in the same subjects as those posters. It's not common for everyone to post in every topic, but if you keep coming across the same posters posting in the same topic as you, it can feel like that a bit. But then ask yourself - if that's my view of them...? Maybe visiting groups regularly or having 'all' notifications on is a distraction and it's the other things in life that are actually winding you up, and this is just one more thing troubling an already irritated mind.

£200/wk? I assume that's all in because that's considerably more than I'm paying for a 3-bed house!

So what? Some people want human interaction rather than a search engine. For some people who live alone it might be the only non-work human contact they have that day. For those who work at home as well it might be the only human contact on that day of any kind. It might be extremely beneficial to their wellbeing to even engage with another human on something as boring as a power supply. Asking what you think is an inane question does you no harm at all. But not asking it might do them harm. You seem to be obsessing about this and that is not good for you. People are different. I really don't understand the love for football / baked beans / Jeff Beck / Jaco Pastorius / etc but they make other people happy so that's ok with me. Accept that people are different and let it go.

I'm the same, the extra money is definitely one of my main reasons for playing, although after the fun reasons. It's basically my fun money, funds for new gear, etc. as otherwise I'd be able to pay for necessities and not a lot else. This is why I'm the person in our band putting the effort in to find new gigs.

Faith healer - SAHB

Absolutely no problem,

Played here a couple of months ago and had a great night, so looking forward to a repeat performance! Brilliant old venue in Beverley, proper music pub.

Banned, On The Run ～ Wïngs

I remember the old days, back in the 60s. All we had was volume, bass and treble. Blue

I never slap and always use tweeters. However, mine are effective from 2kHz, so they operate nearly a full octave lower than average. The reason is that there's a lot of content in the 2kHz-4kHz range. While woofers for the most part have response in that region it's with very narrow dispersion. Tweeters have wide dispersion there, so I don't get the high frequency laser beam effect. Above 8kHz there's little I want, so I roll that off with my EQ. As to why commercial cabs have such a high crossover to tweeters, back when they were first introduced tweeters capable of going to 2kHz were both rare and expensive, so 3.5kHz to 4kHz capable tweeters were used. That practice should have ended back around the turn of the century, but it didn't.

Bridge and pickguard screws arrived... and I've lost the pickup screws! Pickguard modified to accept the Tbird pup, just gotta wait for new pickup screws now.

Perhaps the person has googled but in the 20 million results there were dozens of different answers and they don't have the personal knowledge to know which is the right choice. At some point we have all been that person. Far better to ask a group of people who have more personal experience than trusting a random search engine. Being welcoming to people in a community is part of being in that community. Discussion is part of being in a community. If someone has a problem with such questions perhaps that community is not for them. There is little more off putting to new people than the 'elders' mocking a person for not knowing something. That sort of thing actively discourages the next generation and ends up killing the thing we love. Either answer the question properly or scroll past and ignore it.

It is complicated, at least to the layman, but there are different ways of measuring power in speakers. At the basic level, the RMS voltage across a speaker multiplied by the RMS current through it will give you the AVERAGE power. Don't go on the HIFI forums, though, as many try to promote a different "average" power. The term RMS power is not really correct, but is better understood than average power. Of course, it is around 50 years since my college days. I have never seen a satisfactory explanation of PEAK, INSTANTANEOUS or any other bogus power rating. The AES Audio Engineering Society did create a standard that some driver manufacturers use, but I don't have enough knowledge of it to comment except to say it usually gives a higher figure than RMS. Bill has a good point though, take 6dB off any peak figure, and you may be close to the real SPL.

Another one from the same recording session - an absolute beast of a piano, the power of the low notes is incredible.

Cream - I Feel Fred Chic - Lost in Munic (I know! But so close) Sam & Dave - Soil Man Kate Bush - Wounds of Love Kate Bush - The Man With the Chile in his Eyes (so close again!) Queen - I'm in Love With My Cat RHCP - Scat Tissue!!! Amy Winehouse - Bears Dry On Their Own Stevie Wonder - I Wash Stevie Wonder - Isn't She Lonely? The Kinks - The Village Greek Preservation Society

After a play through the set for Fu Fighters for Saturdays gig, I can only say DO NOT SELL IT. I know how much you raved on about it, and for how long and you were correct. Even the dirt is good. Hmmm is this the extra juicy tone sauce ive been looking for? It's certainly better than the Ampeg SGT DI in my opinion. Well roll on Saturday and I will report back what its like in 'gig mode'. Interesting re the head too. Certainly looks the part and if it has heft I imagine it will easily fight its way into the marketplace and become the answer for a lot of folk too

Cyndi Lauper - True Colons XTC - Making Flans For Nigel Elvis Costello - Oliver's Arsy And then of course there is Blondie's classic hit - Denis

Or @Phil Starr

Ah, you mean the reason for other folk to grind their axe about the lack/cost of services. Every time someone asks about the local restaurants here, someone always posts using the word mortgage somewhere in the rant.

Fixed.

The Christians were good too, once the sound guy had tamed the overpowering kick drum. Shame it took him about 5 songs to get it under control though. I very much liked the fretless playing

Yep, my Lad's in Uni now, and his rent (£200 a week! Plus living expenses...) is what I'm playing to pay these days...

Mine arrived when I was on holiday so just opened it and first impressions after a quick noodle are very positive. Hopefully get some more time with it today.

I tend to agree, guess I'm just old school. I’ve been thumping 4 strings for so long I can pretty much tell if I can get my sound from an amp without getting the band involved 😉

I got my young 15 year old stepson to print me some dummy pickups as I think the look better than ramps. Both stuck with double sided tape so no screw holes and on the wal I dabbed silver paint to simulate the screw heads. Really pleased with them as I can now rest my thumb in the‘magic spot’ …..for me anyway. X

So, just to be clear. Does this mean that Facebook groups aren't good for metal?

Still got a fair bit of finishing off and tweaking to do, but the next step was confirming that the neck angle was right - and that meant fitting some strings This is where I'm at: And with big brother: ...with the label giving away the family lineage