lowhand_mike

[quote name='bnt' post='228710' date='Jun 28 2008, 08:33 PM']You got lucky - that sounds like a mineral oil fog fluid, which is harmless to electronic gear, and some types of oil are even used for cleaning PCBs. Some PC overclockers submerge their motherboards in the stuff to keep the chips cool. If it had been a water-based fluid... ouch.[/quote] yeah i totally agree, i got very very lucky. i thought it was a water based fluid till i touched it. and that would have been one head to throw away. fortunately its not.

although carpet does attract cats (if you have them) brought my cab home to service it and my cat appeared out of nowhere and started using it a a scratching post, it had never seen it before.

[quote name='thinman' post='228658' date='Jun 28 2008, 06:14 PM']I'm really just guessing here - someone who understands the physics of springs etc may be able to give an authoritative view - but is there some law that means the further a string is initially pulled the faster the initial energy will be lost? I'm just thinking that the harder a string is initially plucked the more it is stretched/tensioned so the faster it will want to retract thus dampening the extra movement, i.e. some sort of law of diminishing returns dictating the amplitude of movement? Probably a load of baloney but just a thought.[/quote] er thats what i ment

[quote name='budget bassist' post='228651' date='Jun 28 2008, 05:59 PM']haha good stuff! glad it's working, i've heard ashdown customer service is excellent![/quote] it certainly is, and there is no bull. martin said it didn't matter if the amp was 10 days old or 10 years old they want to keep their gear working (or something to that effect) and the reply's by email were same day.

erm how long you got 2x10 extension cab stingray zon modulus warwick omni10 klystron etc etc etc

i dont have a lakeland but my ibanez does have mk1 electrics and pickups. can't say i have ever heard the note sounding choked but then i don't play a very hard finger style. it may just be the hard plucking is causing the string to cancel its own vibration (not sure how to explain it) so the sound doesnt 'ring' as long. also i have found playing too hard actually slows you down as you get too much of the string, play over the string not into it. let the amp do the work not your fingers, they'll thank you for it in the long run.

gave it another really good clean out (it had been sitting in the rehearsal place all week to dry out) took all the boards off and cleaned as much of the oil of the backs as i could (not easy with all those little spikey bits) and got rid of the bulk of the crap. took the plunge and turned it on, which it did, then plugged my bass in. and it worked, hurrah!!. sound seemed a bit quiet though but that may just be me. at least its still working. i'll give it a full test on monday night. one good point is that the fan is super quiet now with all that oil in it :ph34r:

general tip for painting wood to get a real smooth gloss finish, use a very fine grade paper in between coats, especially the primer coats and the first couple of gloss coats as they will tend to make the wood grain stand up and give a rough finish.

[quote name='ben_eat_pie' post='224856' date='Jun 23 2008, 11:26 AM']this is good guys thanks for the o[pinion. my ashdown combo is carpet, and i put it in the back of my mums car once, forgetting she'd had some fecking hay in there/.... and it's still there.... the hoover won't even get rid of it... has anyone invented a spray you can apply to vynil to minimize damage? something like a seethrough resin? ben[/quote] yeah thats the only real problem with carpet, mine has wood splinters underneath it from the wooden frame we have to put it through to store it under the stage.

[quote name='Mr Fudge' post='226700' date='Jun 25 2008, 02:06 PM']I played in a marque on Saturday night and the rig sounded amazing, low ceilings, lots of material and bodies to soak the sound up. I dialled all the pots up on the marcus and then some on the mag and really got that deep and warm slightly driven tone. If I had of done this in a big hard surfaced pub or club the sound would have bounced around all over the place and this is when I think that "wool" can appear. Im looking at some markbass stuff because I need that alround tightness of tone that sometimes the mag looses.[/quote] +1 we played an outdoor gig (on a curtain side trailer) and the mag sounded superb. alot of good comments about the sound but then i suppose tis the same as your point in that there was nothing for the sound to bounce around in so it stayed clean. not complaining about my normal sound though.

[quote name='BigRedX' post='225348' date='Jun 23 2008, 08:35 PM']Don't tell the guitarists until your band's name is on the publicity for the gig. Then it'll be more embarrassing for them to back out of playing then it will to make a couple of mistakes on the night. IMO you're ready to do a support slot at the average pub gig when your band can get through a whole 30-45 minute set at rehearsal without anyone saying "how does this one go?" before starting a song! Go for it! And a full report in the gig review thread afterwards.[/quote] our guitarist can be over nervous but tend to play really well live getting up there and doing it is the whole point of doing the practice, and like has already been said gives you a goal to work to rather than just faffing about. (not saying you are just doing that) as for asking "how does this one go?" we've been going for about 2 years now and occasionally we do that, well at least the guitarists do, so there you go, they're all the same just tell to do it or you'll get someone who can be arsed, that should give em the kick that they need, if they decide to leave then they weren't up to it anyway.

bought my first one in about 90/91, can't remember the make but it was like a jazz special, slim neck P and J pickups and i think 2 volume and 1 tone or something like that. black body and matching headstock maple (ish) neck and rosewood fret board. as far as i remember it played ok. but i sold it to make up for a bit of the money i spent on a 2 band natural stingray which i also dont have.

this looks like the same thing? [url="http://www.basscentre.com/product.asp?pID=566&cID=59"]http://www.basscentre.com/product.asp?pID=566&cID=59[/url]

this really isn't helping my onslaught of GAS at the moment. truly nice basses. going to go cry now.

go watch teh videos, yeah i looks a mess but sounds awesome, i was expecting utter rubbish which it certainly isn't, and add to that he sings whilst playing it.

[quote name='yorks5stringer' post='225772' date='Jun 24 2008, 11:50 AM']Bands/songs to avoid once fixed: Foghat and Fog on the Tyne....[/quote] lol and smoke on the water

just to add on the side of ashdowns support. when i phoned i spoke to Guy, and to reiterate he was very helpful and patient explaining exactly what i needed to do and the places in the amp i needed to concentrate on. also received an email this morning from martin just to follow up from my conversation with guy. all doesn't sound like much but i have NEVER delt with a company that does anything like this for their customers just got to get down to the rehearsal room to get the amp and take it home for a good clean.

ok just phoned ashdown very helpful as usual basically they said it should be ok but to get as much off as possible and give it a really good spray down with switch cleaner which should get the bulk of the oily crap off. main thing to work on is the power boards. have to see how this goes

[quote name='MB1' post='224853' date='Jun 23 2008, 11:23 AM']MB1. Dont Switch it on! A call to Martin at Ashdown might be an idea First!(as this will invalidate your guarantee) Gather youre talking about the Ashdown C210 combo?If so youre gonna have to take the amp out of the combo(four screws recessed under plastic plugs)disconnect the speaker lead and slide out.Thorough careful inspection /clean and dry out.[/quote] yeah my guitarist said stupidly, you wanna switch it on and see if it works? you can imagine my subtle answer i'll drop martin a line

ok after saturdays gig when we were unpacking yesterday i discovered that some numpty had put the fog machine on its side on top of my amp which face down in the back of the car, basically the entire contents of the fog fluid bottle was inside my amp head. this tuff seems pretty oily but there was nothing on the bottle to help solve what it was and what it would do to my head. cleaned up the bulk of the fluid but what should i do next, is the head screwed? what is the fluid made of? really can't afford to replace this already.

well played the outdoor gig on saturday night, getting there was a bit of a nightmare due to family commitments during the day making arriving a little late. arrived to find a half size curtain side trailer parked round the back of the pub. setting up went way too slow and also involved some really school boy mistakes, leads being plugged in the wrong way etc. also a little bit dodgy as we had to power everything from 2 sockets in the garage next to the stage. :ph34r: sound check took ages as we were using the big desk for the first time live so all the drums were mic'ed, i was DI'ed, extra pair of PA speakers too. though once we got the balance of the PA right the sound seemed pretty good. ran out of time for a proper full band sound check so our first song was our sound check, very risky. so first song all our eyes were on a mate of the guitarist who has been to al our gigs to see if he made a bee line for the stage. good news was he didn't move all night except to bring more beer to the stage and commented at the interval that it was our best sound ever. nice! only a couple of mistakes in the first set, biggest one being me messing up a song i never get wrong with it being one of my favourite ones to play, oh well. i had what seemed like a pretty good sound so i was fairly happy. lots of complements from the 20 or so people who actually turned up, weird as it was a free gig and free BBQ. but it did piss it down for about an hour. second set started off badly and really didn't get much better, we did absolutely nail about a third of the second set but the most part was god awful. well from my point of view at least. but everyone was really happy with the second set but for the life of us we couldn't understand why, they must have been really drunk! we had to pack up straight after the gig (with being outside an all) and some twat who helped pack the car decided that it would be a good idea to put the smoke machine on its side on top of my amp, which wouldn't have been so bad if my amp hadn't being lying face down, so the fog fluid all ended up inside my combo head!!!!!!! which i didn't discover until we unloaded last night at the practice hall so it had had about 18 hours to work its way inside my amp. (any tips to deal with it would be welcome) they want us to go back up there and do another gig but think we'll leave it a while. it's a long way to go to play to 20 people.

[quote name='Musky' post='223115' date='Jun 20 2008, 05:40 PM']Thanks for that everyone - a simpler answer than I thought! It does beg another question though. With the amount of boutique, high end, expensive amps out there, why aren't at least some manufacturers making amps with power supplies that would be capable of delivering the kind of power needed to make the most of the amp? Expense and/or weight? Or am I answering my own question again? [/quote] it would probably require more than twice the volts for 8ohms to get twice the wattage in 4ohms, which would mean heavier and more expensive, and probably the transformer would have to be able to step up in power too er Bill?

i've always known my max on my amp @ 4ohms is 307watts (what ever that actually means) and that @ 8ohms its less but not too bad. that was enough for me. but at least that above makes sense off the bat.

[quote name='jakesbass' post='223064' date='Jun 20 2008, 04:28 PM']It took me 10 years to feel I was getting somewhere with Major Harmony.[/quote] i'ts alot easier to get in with the privates

[quote name='queenofthedepths' post='222967' date='Jun 20 2008, 02:44 PM']Minus one point for an out of context quote..! If that wasn't your point, what were you actually getting at?[/quote] me or andy?