mcnach

Interesting night. The UB40 tribute band got hired to play at a nice midsize venue, but it wasn't your usual gig: it was a birthday party for the owner of the place. There was another band before us playing for an hour, and then us. Our keyboard player had to rush back to Ireland due to family matters... so we were a little nervous: that keyboard plays a lot of very 'signature' riffs and sounds, plus he shares vocals with our guitarist. Still, we've done it before, and we manage alright with the horns helping cover a lot of the space the keys leave. Well, it turns out the band before us had a keyboard player who is a UB40 fan. So we invited him to play and he did wonderfully. Yeah, it was different and didn't have all the right sounds, but it sounded pretty good. He seemed to enjoy the additional pressure, and the additional praise from the audience We had to force him to take our money in the end (he was on stage the whole time, nearly 2 hours, and he made us sound better than without keys, so it's ony fair), which he refused initially... and now we may have a keyboard dep, which we had tried for a while unsuccessfully. Result!

at some point it's wise to stop digging and move along... edit: I mean it in the nicest way I can

Very very surprised to hear that. I thoroughly enjoy my terrible gutless amp

Ha! Spot on: first bass I had that issue with was a Stingray. I ended replacing the battery box for an identical one... and it's started to misbehave again after a few years. I bend the terminals so that they make better contact and it's good for several months, but once it starts misbehaving it'll continue. I'm going to install one with a clip-on type connector next.

And it generally sounds better, so what's not to like? Even using the Zoom H2 recorded 'trick'. Quieter in your ears, better clarity, and adjust volume/balance all you want without fuss.

I did many gigs with a LM3 class D (2013/14) and then I bought another that happened to be class AB (from 2009)... If there are differences they weren't obvious in a gig environment (to me!). This included quite a few gigs without PA support, with a 7 piece band. I wasn't quiet.

My two favourite ones did very poorly, not sure what says about my taste (Czech Republic and Norway)

Check the battery compartment and ensure the terminals make good contact. I've had something like what you describe with some battery boxes when the contact was not good.

I think we found our drummer in a skip.

was it ever?

Fishtail style. The slot is 2mm wide, while the bit of string that needs to go through it is around 2.6mm. It would be fine for the elephant ear type tuners, which they tend to be 3mm or so (just measured a couple). These are the stock tuners. I can find many similar ones by different makers, but I can never find the slot dimensions :shrug: edit: by the way, thank you for your kind offer! I'm happy to buy a spare tuner, I just need to know the slot will be a bit bigger than the one I've got

aaah farts! The tuners have too narrow a slot to allow a TI Jazz Flat B string on... so the JP is now parked until I find a tuner that works. Anybody knows a similar tuner with a wider slot?

Brilliant! When will you get to try it live? Cable management is important if you're not going wireless... there are a looot of cables. When I tried this approach I considered getting a couple of those 'snakes' to have a few cables bundled together, but I thought it might get a bit bulky.

Sorry, I seem to have missed this earlier! What do you think of those ZS10? They've been in my shopping cart a few times but never went ahead thinking "they're relatively cheap, they can't be all that good" but they seem to be getting great reviews. Getting the right tip for you is key, 'though. Oh, you're really at the very centre of the city! It can get a bit busy with tourists, but it's a great area. When I arrived in Edinburgh I used to go for walks around there in the evening, when the streets are a lot quieter. Very fairytale-esque, in some ways. It's easy to get used to it. When I have family/friends visiting from Spain they all go "wow" and it takes me a minute to recognise that, yes, actually, this is pretty cool, it's just normal to me now I remember the very first time I set foot in this city. I came by train, for a job interview, from Oxford. I had already lived a few years in the South: London, Norwich, Cambridge, Reading and Oxford... and as the taxi drove me to my destination I was looking around thinking "I must come here some day and explore, it seems like an interesting city". I didn't think I was going to get the job... but I did, back in November 1999. Now I don't want to leave. Hey, being a Leither is slowly becoming a badge of honour!

He is! He made me 3 for the MB-5 (I could not decide which colour... black, orange or purple pearloid... I only use the black one )

I never played like him!

Please report back I'm considering one of those because the way they look, but I'd be interested to hear how it compares to other Precision pickups.

There's a seller on eBay, based in Glasgow, who would copy your pickguard in a different colour/material. He doesn't yet, but I will be sending him mine so he will have a template soon (5 string). I'll post here when it happens.

I haven't used the Neuro app with the C4 yet, but it was pretty easy with the Aftershock. I still prefer a PC, I like the large screen, but to tweak presets beyond what the physical knobs do it comes quite handy and it is intuitive.

I thought the same for a minute but then... you can store 6 presets on the unit that you can recall without any additional equipment. Once a given preset is stored, and teh control knobs assigned to whatever relevant functions you want for that specific preset, you won't need a computer. I see the process like this (I hope I'm not wrong! - sit with a nice cup of coffe or six in front of the computer, bass on my lap, C4 plugged in. - spend however much time I can be bother with checking various presets online, and deciding which ones I want to store - store chosen presets, tweak to taste, ensure the control knobs are assigned to useful functions for each preset go away and play the thing: you can still tweak certain parameters at the pedal itself just like with any other pedal. From time to time I'd get rid off presets I don't use/need and save different ones... I don't plan on using any additional controlers or anything, the synth FX would only be used here and there and not very heavily used so I don't need to be able to switch between 4 presets in a single song or anything like that. It's what I do with my Aftershock. I stored 6 presets and I've never gone back to edit anything: I choose the preset I want to use and I tweak gain or whatever at the pedal itself. I use two different overdrive pedals for different sounds, and the Aftershock to provide whatever else I can't get from the others... sometimes it's a heavy fuzz, sometimes a gritty overdrive... I would prefer if the C4 had 27 physical knobs and 12 switches but it would be the size of Pluto. I used a EXH Microsynth a lot over the years. I loved its simplicity. It was just a shame it could not store presets. The C4 does a million more things, but the controls are hidden. We need these two to have a baby!

You know what? I think I have some! I definitely bought some a while ago and never got around to use it... now, where could it be? Hmmmm...

The JJ's B string sounds fine to me, I tilted the neck pickup slightly away from it and it helped even out the sound but the stock strings are quite flexible and the B string feels a bit 'floppy'. I like the strings on the MB-5 but not so much here so we'll see how new strings behave (planning on DR Sunbeams with a 130 B-string). Quite curious to hear it with the U-Retro preamp. The JP's B string was a bit more off-balance and adjusting the pickup didn't quite even out things, but I haven't spent much time with it. I've got a set of TI Jazz flats for it and once I put them on I'll try to adjust things well and see how it goes. edit: I decided to play with the pickup height, in particular the split for the B and E strings... and yeah, it needed brought down a bit. It's amazing how big an effect adjusting pickup heights can have. So yeah, it's pretty even now. I still find it a bit floppy, especially with the stock strings which are really flexible (I can't stop myself from bending strings as it's so easy! ) but that's more a property of teh string itself. I can't say these are the best 5 string basses ever, that would be silly, but they're a lot more than just adequate. Best B string I tried was on a Lakland 5502, not sure how much of that was teh 35" scale or just that the pickups were better designed for the B.

The ability to download presets is what reassures me that I will use this pedal. I think it will be a lot easier to find presets that are close enough to what I want and then just do some relatively minor editing. Full editing from scratch won't be for me, I suspect.

I got one too last week and you got me at "Is editing a pain sure," Mine is used too, so after trying the presets the previous user had I reset it to factory settings... and I haven't used it since! I thought I would get a couple of sounds I wanted in the original presets, but nope. I really need to sit down, plug it into my PC and explore it properly. I used the Neuro app with a SA Aftershock and I much prefer a full screen to deal with all these menus and options.

They are 18mm. I thought it was 18.5 at first but I have measured it more carefully now.