Leaderboard

Hi all, well the drugs are working and I'm feeling a lot better. In my case it was caused by a PE and deep vein thrombosis and I got the chest infection thing at the same time. I survived and my lungs are healing but it wasn't nice. Back at the gym now and digging the garden and starting to sing again so all is good. Anyway yesterday I ordered a couple of Fane 8-225's so I can build the prototype and I'll try and dig out my draft plans and get them off to @Bassybert for drawing once I've made a few sketches. We are back on track

Is it all in the tone wood? I bet it's all in the tone wood

What is your playback device for the backing and clicks? Unless you are planning to have sections of the songs with no live drums that need to be synchronised to the backing, the normal practice is just for the drummer to have the click and the rest of the band plays to the drummer. Also IME bands using backing have a tendency to put far too much on there, just because they can which in turn gives an over-complicated and messy live sound. Being in charge of the backing playback for both bands I play in, I now have a policy of turning down anything I think is unnecessary by 1dB every time we rehearse. If I get the fader down to "0" without anyone saying anything I remove the track from the backing permanently. The thing to remember is that the recorded and live versions of songs are two different things. Just because it's on the recording don't automatically mean you need to reproduce it on stage. Also IME stereo FoH isn't always a particularly good idea as only a select few members of the audience stood in the sweet spot in the middle get the full benefit. Unless you have some very obvious panning effects, I'd consider reducing everything down to mono, but if you must have stereo backing reduce the width FoH to no more than 9 o'clock to 3 o'clock pan, and during your technical rehearsals check what it sounds like with only the left and only the right channel audible to ensure that you don't have stereo effects that sound wrong with a channel missing.

Thank you Tiny Tone! https://tinytone.co.uk

Having wanted a fretless since borrowing a mate's acoustic for a couple of months, and being 5-curious as well I thought I'd dive right in and get both in one. Popped a bid on this and it came good, decent price I think, with a case thrown in. Got it a couple of days ago. So far, so impressed. It's mint, hard to believe it's been played before. Not as heavy as I expected, although the neck does dive a bit. It's really lovely to play, tweaked the set up and got the action very low. I've found it takes a bit of a mental shift, both in terms of starting to think about the options the B string provides, as well as the confidence to play without eyeballing my left hand. I'm hoping that it will help me train my ears a bit. The preamp and knob config is more complicated than I'm used to so still got some experimenting to do. But it seems to chuck out a great range of tones and overall the best thing about it is the sound. I've spent ages just widdling and making wonderful noises. Anyway, very happy with this, lovely bit of kit. Edit: I realise I should have taken the pic from a different angle given how these headstocks seem to be unpopular!

Ah, yes the Blues!

Made this short just to test the fun size bass in action, so far enjoying the little thing!

OK, the box is closed, so time to crack on with the neck. First up is working out the neck angle. I stick one of he sleeves of my spindle sander onto the guitar top at the position where the bridge will be. A straight edge and a digital level* gives the required neck angle as being 5.1 degrees. The sleeve is a bit higher than I need, so a quick bit of maths gives me a final neck angle of 4.2 degrees. Ne Next I glue up the heel block, with my usual excess of veneers.... Talking of veneers the other thing I've got to do is get a white and black line under the fretboard, so that they meet up with the lines underneath the headplate, like this: The fretboard is already radiused so it's not easy to clamp, so I need to use a vacuum bag. I use one of these skateboard vacuum bag things with a wine pump. I've used it a lot over the years and it is a brilliant bit of kit, perfect for guitars. And compared to a proper veneer pump and bag it's a bargain. Here's the fretboard in the bag, glued with epoxy. Next I need to cut the neck angle on to the end of the neck heel. This is a right old faff. Getting the Radial Arm Saw set up takes ages. I always do a test cut on a similar sized piece of scrap wood because you pretty much only get one chance. As you can see in the picture I ended up using a neck angle of 4.6 degrees, slightly different from my initial guess of 4.2. That's why I always do a test cut... Once that's cut, I've then got to fit the neck to the body. I'm happy that he angle is right, but I've also got to refine the left/right alignment. In other words the neck has got to be pointing exactly at the bridge. It doesn't. I stick the neck in the clamp, and rest the neck on the body. I put a thin strip of scrap wood into the trussrod channel so that it points down to where the bridge will be. I can see from that how I need to sand the base of the heel to get alignment. The sanding I do with a triangular strip of sandpaper, so it progressively sands one half of the heel. Hard to explain, but a picture may help: Rinse and repeat until the stick points straight down the middle of the guitar: (I know the top looks a mess. I put on a couple of layers of shellac just round the edge before binding. This helps pulling the binding tape off without getting tearout on the spruce top. It'll clean up nicely. I hope....)

Thanks @Richie_b .. I ended up ordering the one @Dazm66 tipped me off about,. £597 from Peach Guitars, it seems crazy they are selling them for that price, free next day delivery and is scheduled to arrive tomorrow before lunch :). PS. @Dood - I hope your health starts to improve!

I've been using this for the last few months and loving it. It's a 500w 2x8 4ohm GR Bass cab (wooden one not carbon) paired with my GK MB Fusion 500 (I've taken the sticker off, don't worry!😉) It's punchy, light and loud enough on it's own and sounds like a bass cab should. We always take out our 'small pa' now, which has 12" subs and tops and so depending on the venue I can blend a bit in as required and keep backline down. I have also started using my VT Bass DI by velcroing it to the top of the amp and taking a parallel (clean) feed to the amp - so I can EQ FOH and set my PA /IEM sound separately to the amp. This seems to work well and I've already been able to mitigate a 'bass trap' corner on the amp whilst maintaining bottom end through the PA. Typically I do a quick soundcheck with the backline muted, get a good sound FOH then unmute and blend in the backline volume - works well.

Clarence de Lune. Debussy

I'd want a tribute band to dress exactly like the original band, and sound exactly like the original band, and have period correct looking instruments and road crew too. Maybe also comfortable seating and a roast dinner, perhaps with profiteroles or tiramisu for dessert.

I’ve been using a single One 10 paired with a Harley Benton Block-800B for over a year now and I’m very chuffed with it. I use this rig for practice at home, rehearsals and gigs. It may seem an odd combination, a top quality cab with a budget head but it works for me. A west end girl with an east end boy, if you like. I have a Zoom B3 in front for gigs and an MS-60B for rehearsals and practice. AC Bs Pre with h.p.f is always on. I d.i. from the B3 to the p.a. so I’ve got uncoloured sound from the p.a. and coloured sound from the One 10. My dream rig - but I am easily pleased !

Some great looking new basses from HB! https://harleybenton.com/bass-families/#mv-4jb I especially like the straight-up P's (not PJ) in some more interesting colours. Might get a shell pink one to match my HB jazz ... They also brought back the PJ mustangs, including a pick up selector this time. They seem to have ditched the Roswell pickups for some own brand thing, not sure how much of a difference these would make really.

I use DR DDT 105-45 on a Rick for C# standard tuning. They're great. String tension is same as E flat. At least to my feel.

If you're playing festival shows, and venues with halfway decent sound engineers, having a few channels of playback and a click to deal with should be no problem. It's extremely common these days. For a playback rig, you've got two routes - standalone hardware or laptop(s) with appropriate software and an audio interface with enough outputs for the amount of channels you want to send. Hardware is great for the simplicity and stability - it's built to do one job and generally does it well. The cons are in the faff of making changes to tracks, or rejigging setlist order etc, which involves connecting to a computer for control software, data transfer etc. Cymatic was my go-to brand, their products were rock solid and I toured them heavily, but they're no longer manufacturing and I'm not super impressed with the alternatives that are around at the moment. Software is the way most productions are going these days. You have the flexibility to edit, reorder, tweak whatever you need to, but the cons are that it's a computer so there's plenty to go wrong 🤣 If you're in Ableton world, there's a lot of good Max plugins made for smooth control of live playback (Fullfat.co do some great stuff for this) and there's plenty of ways to set up dedicated external hardware or generic midi pad controllers for live use so you're not fiddling with the mouse and space bar! One mistake I've seen made is to run your playback from a full DAW session with all the plugins, processing etc active. This is asking for trouble. You want to bounce out audio files for each playback channel and not run any processing/plugins on them in a live environment for stability purposes. Ableton is the most commonly used software for this. qLab (Mac only) is great too and very stable. They'd be my first choices for running multitrack live audio. Other things I'd suggest for preparing your stems - on the Click channel, add the name of the song spoken to the top of each track, so everyone gets an audible cue of what's been fired. That way, the day that someone screws up and plays the wrong one, or you misread your setlist, you don't start playing the wrong thing! Other cues can be useful too, and I'll often have this as a separate line from the playback rig, but sometimes see it mixed in the click channel. If you've got sections where instrumentation is sparse, I'll also add simple piano/synth chords in the cues track as a pitching reference for singers if there's not much else happening for them to go off. One thing I wish all bands would also do is a line check track - have a "song" that you can run in line checks that just speaks the name of each channel. As a monitor engineer at a festival who might not be familiar with what your tracks sound like, if I can just solo each line in my IEMs and hear a voice saying "click, cues, BV Left, BV Right" etc, I've got absolute certainty that the patch is correct and I have all of your lines in the right place. As far as an audio interface goes, anything with the right amount of outputs will do the job, but if you have something that outputs at balanced line level, you won't need DI boxes on the end of it. I'd always have your own loom (clearly labelled) with XLR ends so it can be patched straight in too. Nothing worse than someone rocking up with a 12 channel playback rig with no DI boxes and no cables and expecting you to make it happen in a 30 min changeover! The best shout for an interface would be the iConnectivity PlayAudio series. You can actually connect two synchronised laptops to it running a main and backup and it'll detect if one stops playing and automatically switch audio over to the spare, pretty much seamlessly. This is what I see in most touring rigs these days and is probably the most cost effective route to a robust, tour-ready setup. Total stream-of-conciousness brain dump there but hope it helps!

18's can be woolly and indistinct. I'd test the 118 on it's own and see if it sounds good or not. You may have been given a large door stop. I would stick with the 2 x 112's.

You'd end up with a total load of around 5.3 Ohms, which is probably within the operating limits of your amp (4 ohms is the usual lowest load for most amps) but you'd have to check the tech specs of the amp to see it resistance range. https://audiouniversityonline.com/series-vs-parallel-speaker-impedance-with-multiple-speakers/ You'd be using the amp more efficiently as it's less resistance than the 8 Ohm cab, which means your rig will run a little louder, and you will have to keep an eye on the overall output into both the 100w and 200w speaker as the TH500 is 500w output running into a lower resistance.

Just arrived today - had a snafu and missed the postie yesterday. Got a band rehearsal tonight so I will report back later on.

Currently playing in our shop...

Just by way of note. I had got used to the roundwound strings on my Dano, and I must admit, i quite liked the sound they produced, along with their fairly low tension. I wanted to try some flats on it, and I spotted a set of La Bella low tension flats on this forum (thanks @Schlippy) They arrived the other day, and I fitted them straight away.... They're higher tension than the rounds originally on the bass, and higher tension than my usual TI flats. I took the bass along to a living room jam last night, and was quite pleased with the tone, through my small practice amp. It definitely had more "thump" and less top end. So quite different from before the string change. I'm taking it to rehearsal with my 5 piece rock covers band tonight, and will be playing through a bigger amp - so I'll be able to make a better assessment of the difference in sound. So far though, so good... but I'm now thinking, this could still be the one bass I may end up preferring with round wounds lol 😆 EDIT: or am I just looking for an excuse to have two Danos... one with rounds, and one with flats?😉

I'm using IEM from a P16M (see @Boodang above) fed from the Ultranet out of an X32. The feed is set to pre-fade so that I can create my own monitor mix independent of the main or monitor mixes from the desk. I assume the XR18 has the same ability to feed pre-fade signals into Ultranet. The P16M has connections to allow you to daisy-chain several of them from the one Ultranet feed, each unit retaining its ability to make a personal mix for monitoring.

At least a couple of those exist, its a custom shop option

So the little guy has arrived, and I am enjoying it a lot. I guess it's not for everyone, but as a mainly shortscale guy, this is MY shortscale. The build quality is not terrible for £220. The wood is fine, the pieces are joined up nice, it's a pleasure to look at. It DOES sound prec-ish somehow. The fretwork is where the "made in China" shows, they don't even show on photos that much, but the fitting is quite disgusting around a few frets. As you can see, the fretboard was dried out to the point where the wood starts to become grey-ish, so gave it some lemon oil, and it turned nice dark brown. However at this point my nut fell off. After a brief panic, I used some very weak wood glue to stop it from moving sideways and I let the strings hold it in place. It's working and should be fine. Unfortunately the E string is pretty much dead, compared to the other 3 strings which sounds fine. But I don't mind as I never care about the factory strings anyway. Might try the weird postie rubber strings just for kicks, but I in the long run I just plan to put some proper strings on it. I might also try cutting up my older coated strings, try to put them on and see what happens. After re-stringing, it takes ages before the strings stretch to wherever they should be. Intonation is... what it is. For any bass ukes, usually this is the pain point. The G is spot on, but the D is almost a quarter tone off at 12th, and there are smaller differences for A and E as well. Just play the low frets, or get a real uke 😜 The electronics are pretty nice, colourful accurate tuner, and a pretty wide TONE knob. I guess it's active, having a battery, but's surprisingly loud even compared to the "hot" pot setting on my Sterling Stingray. I was genuinely surprised how crappy and dull the Sterling sounds after playing the uke (but I got 1yo bummed out cobalt flat strings on the Sterling, so that's somewhat expected, I was just surprised at how big the difference was in clarity). My biggest pain point is, there's no blue coloured uke bass. They made a blue uke... but not a bass uke. So now I got an instrument that's not blue Mildly Sansamped sound in action below. Please excuse the crappy playing, this is just a test short, I shall use this instrument properly in the near future

Lucky number. Lene lovich

Had the pleasure of being on a three band blues tour with Eliana, the guitarist as SKOW. Great singer and guitarist, and lovely person. So pleased she is having success with this, but another example of original music not paying the bills! Mind you, she has an amazing work ethic, with at least two other active bands!

Problem traced to a duff (but “new” ) battery thanks all

I believe it was due to Johnny Marr mostly playing with a capo on second fret or tuning up to F#, and as Andy's basslines were quite busy it allowed him to get around easier while still being able to use the E string open. Obviously he could've also used a capo, but as any bassist who's tried that likely knows they don't tend to work too well on bass and often end up muting one of the open strings.

This is my old friend and vocalist Paul Henderson who was in the first rock band I played in during the 1980’s. Paul was always a massive Bowie fan and always sounded very similar vocally, Paul now goes out as Aladdinsane with a full band as a Bowie tribute act, he gigs all over world. This video is from the Black Star album launch party in Germany, he was specially invited over to perform solo, I presume this was the house band they provided, they have definitely gone big time on the visuals.

This, 100%. There are a million bands out there who play all the standards; I really enjoy not being in any of them.

I've not posted on here in years, maybe 10? My pedalboard is looking the smartest it's been in ages after a thorough clean and rebuild, and I'm chuffed with my new Cioks power supply, so here we go. I can definitely go down a size of pedaltrain with a few flat cables and properly mounting the power supply underneath, but then again, maybe I can make use of this space... 🤔

It replaces my large pedalboard (HX Stomp, homebrew MIDI controller, expression pedal, power supply, wireless) so it's the same footprint. I'll still be wireless but using Lekato bugs so no need for a board-mounted receiver.

I'm very happy with it! It plays and sounds great as it is, and a cleanup, wax polish and oiled fretboard did wonders for the looks:

It's the curse of pub/covers bands: you play like a bunch of individuals who've never met before and there's punters who loved it, the other side of the coin is a great gig without a note dropped, you're all nodding at each other at the end like the Muppets used to do coming off stage, and no-one in the audience blinks an eye...

I've got the Helix Floor which is slightly bigger than the LT. I don't think the size is a problem as it's essentially a self-contained pedal board, plus I have made the decision that if it can't be done with the Helix then live I don't need to do it.

Isn't that a song about gardening, covered by Monty Don, from his album, 'Live at Chelsea'?