Jakester

Well, I thought it was interesting… 🤣

Like many others on here, I've been tinkering with various multi fx and controlling them via external pedals. I had a Zoom MS50B a while ago which I was controlling using a Gen2 DMC Micro, but I found I wasn't really using all of the effects on it, and those that I was sounded slightly lacklustre (IMVHO). So I recently found myself with a Source Audio C4, which I love. The editing options are way beyond whatever I can think of, and it covers all of my effects bases, which is squidgy filters, the odd octaver, chorus and some nasty synth bass occasionally. I predominantly got the C4 to use as a filter with additional options (yes, I know the Spectrum is a better 'standalone' filter but I wanted the occasion synth option). However, I've rapidly found myself using it a lot more which meant I was needing to use more than the 6 switchable presets (I mean, I wasn't using them all at once but I wanted to be able to change presets more easily on the fly). Which meant going back to something like the DMC Micro I had with the Zoom. The downside of using the Micro with the C4 was, unlike on the Zoom, there was no display, so the Micro only showed preset number. OR SO I THOUGHT! Looking at the latest version of the DMC Micro, the Pro, it has a new OLED display screen which means it can show present names as well as numbers! Perfect, so I decided to buy one from Andertons. First downside - Andertons don't sell the gHOST USB adaptor. I've bought one from Disaster Area direct in the past, but for a cheap cable dongle it came to about £25 once shipping was included. Plus, that was pre-B-word so I have no idea how that might have affected things. I reasoned that Disaster Area probably wouldn't have manufactured their own USB Host cables, so took a punt on this for the princely sum of £2.95: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00DM6EMQ2/ Along with a generic USB-B to USB-mini cable. The last of these arrived this morning, so had a punt at wiring it all up and DISASTER - it wouldn't communicate with the C4! Dangit, thought I - should have splashed out on the DA one instead. Start going back through the manual and I'd overlooked "make sure the MIDI channel on your device is set to 1". Delve into the C4 setup screen, and voila! They're talking. Problem 2 - despite loading in the presets on the C4, the Micro was only showing numbers. More delving in suggests irritatingly the present names don't carry over, so you have to manually edit the names on the Micro to correspond with the names on the C4. Someone suggested online editing on the pedal itself - which frankly sounded like a nightmare to me. Thankfully Disaster Area have a webpage editor, but even that is a little fiddly - you have reconfigure the Micro to USB MIDI to communicate with your computer, and you have a character limit of 8 letters/numbers. However, once it's done, it's done, so (leaving aside the fact I clearly forgot to do present no16) I can now have all the present names displayed on the Micro and cycle through the C4 presets easily. Hurrah! Only downside so far is cycling through switches the preset on - I'm sure there's a setting somewhere so more digging needed. So far it's seeming like a great solution.

Was going to ask a question about a pedal, but then went for a good deal on something else instead!

Recently did a gig where someone else was using my amp (combo and ext cab). Horrible farting noise coming from the combo, ‘crap, it’s blown the speaker’ we think, unplug that and just use the ext, ‘oh no, awful farting sound still, head is knackered, what can we do?’ Turns out the guy just hadn’t properly pushed his jack into his bass. Second set after someone else had used it, first chap back again - ‘oh no, no sound, head is fecked, check all the connections, it’s borked’ - he hadn’t pushed the amp end of the jack properly into the amp. 🙄

Just bought and absolute minter of Lakland 55-02 off Les/Dusty. He was hugely helpful in arranging handover and is a lovely chap to boot. The bass was/is mintier than an extra strong polo. Highly recommended!

Could you not get someone to rewire the pots on the Sire onto a custom control plate? So replace the single pots with stacked pots and put those into a new custom control plate, such as you can get here: https://www.dragonfireguitars.com/Custom-Designed-Jazz-Bass-Control-Plate-Build-Your-Own-Plate-10408.htm Or are they all fixed onto the preamp board?

One of the 90's/early 00's Yamaha 5-strings would be my suggestion, like the BBN5. There's always a couple buzzing around on FB or in the classifieds here.

I would be massively surprised if the pickups had 'gone'. Having had a few Yamaha basses in my time, I do know some of them use pickups which are of an unusual impedance and therefore don't play nicely with aftermarket preamps without a buffer to bring the impedance to the level the preamp is expecting. See this thread on Talkbass for example: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/help-obp-3-in-a-yamaha-bb5na.179659/ I don't know whether or not that is the same with your daughter's RBX 760a; I haven't been able to find a spec for the pups, but from photos I've seen it looks like they could be the same as other Yamaha pups which might suggest that could be the problem. Can you put the original pre-amp back in with the new jack socket and see if that works? If so, that could be the issue.

Our local rehearsal room studio outfitted their rooms with the HH stuff (mixers and speakers). Three months later it was all replaced as it had all failed. Possibly cheap but for a good reason?

I recently picked up an SE Electronics X1D and it's great for low frequency stuff where a kick drum mic EQ might be too 'preshaped'. Properly cheap as chips too. I also have some SE1As and their sound belies their price tag, though probably not a large diaphragm you need for some of the uses you mentioned. Good for acoustic guitar though.

Pedantic, and your interpretation is wrong in my view. I think it would probably be fair to consider each of the members of a band either in a partnership, or if genuinely hired by a band leader they would be self-employed contractors. In such circumstances where they are supplying their own equipment the onus would not be on the 'band leader' but each respective contractor. I think this takes it too far. If you consider a building site where there are many trades coming in as self-employed contractors; if you placed an onus on the main contractor to ensure safety of all of its subbies' own equipment, nothing would get done. Where equipment is provided then absolutely, but if a sub-contractor is providing his own equipment then it is that subbie's responsibility.

Speaking as someone who used to advise insurers on claims, if a venue required you (as the insured party) to supply evidence that equipment had been PAT tested and you bought stickers pretending they had been, and then one of your untested electrical items caught fire, I'd be looking at the least to decline your claim on the basis you failed to take reasonable steps to prevent loss or damage; or potentially on grounds of fraud or moral hazard (i.e. you procured the engagement on the basis of false representations to the venue). At best, your insurers may potentially pay the third party claim and come after you; at worst, they could look to avoid your policy and leave you to deal with the claim. Similarly, if you weren't insured and represented to the venue that your equipment had been tested when it hadn't, I would fully expect the venue's insurers to come after you to try and recoup some of the cost of any damage caused. If you had had your gear tested, and it passed, at the least you could say you acted reasonably and were not therefore negligent. Putting PAT stickers on untested equipment is the worst of both worlds - it shows you are aware of a potential need to have your equipment tested, but have deliberately chosen not to. If you haven't had it done or don't want to, don't fake it as it could make things much, much worse. And as noted above, the only legal requirement as regards PAT testing is on employers to supply equipment which is 'safe' to employees; one way of demonstrating it is safe is to have it PAT tested. If you are not an employer you have no legal obligation to have your equipment PAT tested. However, a venue may make it a requirement for access that you have your gear PAT tested. It's worth noting that there's no specific qualification required to carry out PAT testing; you just need to be a 'competent person'. I'm considering going on a PAT testing course and buying a tester so I can do my own gear, but not sure whether economically that makes sense, as I have someone that does it for £40 for up to 40 items; it looks like a basic tester is around £200, plus the cost of the course. If you had more items, or perhaps ran a studio it might be more cost-effective.

Pfft, I just dived straight in, no experience at all. My view is the only way I'll learn is by doing. Get stuck in! What's the worst that could happen? So you play a few bum notes? I did my first DB gig the weekend before last; a mix of popular tunes in which I stood and was amplified, and orchestral stuff in which I sat with another DB player. It's fair to say the latter showed I have a lot to work on - I reckon I probably got 1 of every 3 notes right (😉, at one point the endpin started slipping on the floor so I was chasing the bass, and I'm pretty sure I played one piece with all F naturals instead of Fsharp, but you know what? Everyone (even the other DB player) complimented me on my playing. To quote a well-known cobbler, 'just do it!"

Wow, had to look twice to even notice it - I thought the first pic was a 'before' it looks so 'factory'. I think I'm still on the 'bit of foam' stage but do think it'd be a nice thing to have.

Thanks. I daresay the problem could well be the limited 'under the hood' editing functionality in iMovie. I only used that as it's supposed to be quick and simple!

Thanks, will do!

No, but there's lots of stops, stabs and crashes which make it fairly easy to line up, so ultimately I had to just drop in a couple of very short snips in the audio to help it resync. Only that I haven't quite yet figured out how to use the video editing features! In more seriousness, I couldn't get it to properly import the native video from the iPhone, but will have another crack.

Thanks. Hmm, don't think so - output render settings was 44.1Khz in Reaper, and that's also the same as the unedited source video file. Interestingly the rendered video file is coming out at 48Khz, so for some reason iMovie is upsampling the bit rate, but obviously that's after I've had (and worked around) the sync problems. I got round it by just splitting and jumping the audio along a frame every now and then, but it's far from ideal! I may try a different programme to see if it's an issue with iMovie or the audio.

So recently I was asked to do a quick audition tape for a gig playing drums. They wanted me to play along with their backing track which was to a click at 120bpm. I thought I'd be better off recording the audio using a DAW and syncing it with phone camera video so it would have better sound. I've done this before on gig videos so I know how to do it fairly well. I was using my phone for video at 1080p, and the drums were mic'd into my XR18 into Reaper. The mics were o/hs and kick and snare. The camera was about 1.5m away from the kit. So I recorded both, did the 'clap' (ahem) to ensure there'd be a defined point to sync the video and audio. I did a bit of EQing of the drums in Reaper and then bounced it down into a stereo audio file. I then went in and sync'd the new audio track against the phone audio track, and then deleted the latter. So far, so, good. However, for some reason I cannot possibly fathom, the video and audio start to go out of sync after about 30 measures. It's only slight, but it continues until about half-way through the track they're both fully a beat out. Now, I can't understand how this has happened. They were both recorded at exactly the same time. The room isn't big enough to get any kind of delay on the sound compared to the video, and in any event the mics were closer than the phone so if anything, the phone audio would be out (but it wasn't). The audio is consistent at 120bpm all the way through, and the processed track still syncs with the Reaper internal metronome. I have a tape saturation plugin on the master so wondered if that could be the issue, but I've re-exported the track without and it's the same issue. Not using any time delay plugins, just EQ, gates and compression. Unless there's a small space-time vortex in my studio which is causing the light to be delayed in reaching the camera I can't see how this could have possibly happened. I've done this sort of thing loads of times and never had any problems. Anyone have any ideas?

Edit: read the SECOND page of the thread before commenting, doofus!

Thanks - drop me a line if you do and I'll happily take it off your hands!