fretmeister

I wasn't aware of the extent of the incoming regulation.

Thread on thefretboard - https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/276080/have-forums-reached-the-end-of-the-road/p1

Digitalscream is the owner of thefretboard.co.uk and he's done a deep dive into what the rules would mean - and that basically means the end of forums like this:

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The long answer: it's almost impossible to tell exactly what the problems are going to be. The Online Safety Act, and its enforcement, depends entirely on documents that have not yet been published. Ofcom says that it will publish its definition of "Illegal Harms" in December 2024...and it still hasn't emerged, with a week to go before everybody buggers off on their Christmas break. It also relies on "secondary legislation" which still hasn't been published, and probably won't get through Parliament before the Act comes into force.

As for what it means for this site...there will have to be some significant changes. Off the top of my head...

1 - Private messages will no longer be private; as the owner of the site, I'll have a duty to (at the very least) scan all of them for harassment/hate speech/etc.

2 - Politics & Economics will have to go, and probably all of the off-topic areas too, given the number of times people have claimed racism/sexism/etc - it only takes one of those to be reported to Ofcom by a disgruntled member, and I'm bankrupt for the rest of my life. Of course, includes Friends in Need, which is core to the sense of community here and has been of enormous help to so many people.

3 - I'll have to find some way to automate the scanning of every single word posted on here for potential violations, which means some form of AI. And,
somehow, I'll have to do that at almost zero cost.

Basically, the site will no longer be a community. The effect of this legislation will be to push all communities towards Facebook or Discord, which is hardly an improvement.

Ironically, the fact that the inept Conservative government that thought this up has been kicked out of office means that there's no point in me contacting my MP about it - this is a staunchly Conservative area, so she's basically powerless to do anything with Labour in power (if she even bothered responding to my emails, which she hasn't).

The net result of all this is that, unless something drastically changes in the legislation and Ofcom's approach to enforcement, this website will go read-only the day that the legislation comes into force, and that will only change if the law changes. I love this site, but ultimately I'm not willing to destroy the rest of my life to keep it going. 

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It's an extremely poorly-drafted law, but only from the perspective of the individual. From the government's perspective, it's f***ing wonderful - there's a great write-up here:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17577632.2024.2361524#d1e388

Basically, Ofcom are expecting service providers to bypass the law entirely by over-moderating - proactively preventing the posting of any content which looks like it even might be illegal under the Online Safety Act.

On top of all that, there's the age-verification requirement, which means there would have to be integration with some sort of identity verification service for every single user, thus entirely removing any anonymity on the Internet for users of UK services.

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This place, and thefretboard is very important to me. I'd hate for them to go.

Does BC have a plan?

What an amazing colour!

I shall be needing another one soon as well. Usual P bass.

Might go for a 0.1uF cap this time - so it can get really dark. Mainly as this build will have stainless steel rounds on it. Got to at least try to get from Freddie Washington slap all the way down to Duck Dunn!

The neck for my parts build precision should arrive later today and I need to get some tuners. The neck is a genuine Fender Player series Jazz neck.

I had planned on Hipshot Ultralite 1/2 inch Y keys as they are the lightest 1/2 inch option at 49g each.

What else is there that is an easy / direct fit that won't need the tuner holes made larger or the use of a load of plumbers tape on narrower tuners to make them stable?

I'm only looking at really lightweight options. I did see that the Gotoh Resolites are only 40g but I don't think they have suitable bushing sizes for a Fender bass.

Of course - I used to use a pair of Boss LS-2 for my set up and make sure they were next to each other on my board so I could hit them both at the same time if needed.

It's a great idea to get some paper and draw out your signal chain - makes the wiring up process a lot easier.

If it's under the clear then I think you'd have to remove a little of that first, then get a close enough colour match with a sharpie or something and then do a superglue repair to fill the hole. Then polish it.

I really hope it's good. As you say - some very talented people.

Fingers crossed and all that!

The endless ones on ebay might be good, or they might be a good way to waste a lot of money if they are crap.

I might just take advantage of the seasonal Warmoth sale and get one that is already in stock. At the moment it won't work out any more expensive than a real Fender replacement neck.

1 hour ago, Bilbo said:

It's definitely the bass in the video.

No doubt. But it's still not one I've ever had and my name isn't Nick!

54 minutes ago, SteveK said:

It's great that someone's made a twisted neck bass, to solve the problem of... er... er... mmm... 🤔

Carpel tunnel syndrome and other hand injuries.

It has really helped people with that sort of problem keep playing. It’s a brilliant invention.

Wasn’t me!

I had a custom, not a straight.

USA or licensed?

I just bought Christian's P bass body. It arrived in quick time as described.

Looking forward to assembling something suitably awesome with it.

Thanks again.

They are very nice strings and I've never got less than 5 years out of a set, and even then that was my fault as I managed to kink a string and ruined it.

La Bella make medium scale flats for 4 strings, but not for 5 unfortunately - even though they do short scale 5 string sets. 

We need a petition!  

What bass is it?

If it has large string posts then long scale flats will usually be fine as the post is big enough for the fat bit of the string to wrap ok. If they have small posts like on an Ibanez then you definitely need medium scale.

I have a medium scale Ibby and the Dunlops were the only flats I found for it.

3 hours ago, oakforest5961 said:

Not a Rickenbacker, but the Yamaha Attitude is exactly the same idea, though it has the convenience of a jack socket for each pickup so normal cables can be used. Billy Sheehan always plays with two amps live; he talks of his amp set-up towards the end of this video:

If you can afford a Ric, then you can afford the splitter box and stereo cable. Basically you have to at least try a dual amp set-up, even just at home, or you will always be wondering what it would be like…

That's his very old rig from 13 years ago.

He now uses a Helix for the drives / fx. The Helix will take to entirely different signals and can process them separately.

Billy even lent his favourite Pearse Preamp to Line6 so they could model it and include it in the Helix for the rest of us too.

He runs the helix into amp heads - often those Hartke ones, but sometimes whatever the local backline company has available, and into a bunch of Hartke 1x15 Hydrive cabs.

Of course the cabs are really for onstage monitoring. The Helix can supply straight to Front of House at the same time as feeding the amps. It can even send different versions of the signal. So no cab sim to the amps and real cabs, but add cab sims on the feeds to FOH.

The parts for my P with a J neck project are slowly arriving.

The last thing I need to get is a neck. There are loads of 20 fret Fender Jazz type necks about that will fit a standard Fender pocket but I would really like 21 frets if I can, just so I can have that high E. It's quite useful.

Can anyone recommend a suitable neck? Already fretted and with a nut. I'd prefer not to spend Warmoth money if I don't have to.

ta

I've done this with a Yamaha Attitude that has 2 outputs automatically and with a Status that I heavily modified to have 2 separate pickup systems.

Different outputs on the bass going to different amps.

My original rig for this was a Hartke HA3500 head with a Marshall VBC412 cab for the highs / FX, and an Ashdown MAG400H and another Marshall VBC412 cab for the lows. The highs had a wah, drive, phaser, filter, compressor. The lows had an octave and a compressor.

With the Yamaha I used the neck pickup woofer to the the lows and the P to the highs. The status was JPJ and the P went to the lows and the J pair to the highs. The lows were EQ'd to be much like a neck pickup sound on an EB0, thick and plummy. The highs had boosted mids and a lot of low end cut so there was less competition for sonic space with the low amp.

I later changed the rig to a rack set up. I had an Ampeg SVP-BSP preamp for the highs / drive that was also able to mix clean and dirty, and then a Line 6 Bass Pod XT for the lows, but that could also do a clean sound with whatever else. So effectively I had 4 different tones, blended in pairs.

That lot went into a Yamaha P5000S power amp and into a pair of Hartke 2x12 cabs.

I loved both versions of it. Being able to control the mix from the bass was brilliant. 

These days I tend to use just one rig with pedals that have clean blends but they really are not the same thing as getting a multiamp rig set up right.

The secret is note decay. All the blended sounds must have the same note decay otherwise it sounds like different sounds rather than 1 complex one. Compression is the key - making the cleans decay as slow as the driven sounds. That needs a lot of fiddling to get right.

It was completely awesome. If I had roadies I'd be all over it again.

2 hours ago, Lozz196 said:

Worth looking at an Ashdown RM500, you can pick them up used for around £300 and they`ll def do what you`re after. Same with Markbass, I`ve found that their amps pair very nicely with Barefaced cabs.

This. I have both an Ashdown (RM800Evo2) and a Mark Bass and used them with Barefaced cabs for ages until I fancied a cab change.

They both work very well and can sound thick and old school with sensible top end that isn't brittle / annoying.

12 hours ago, itu said:

I think the biggest thing here is to make people doubt, and that easily leads to nonsense, and conspiracy theories = theories created by the uneducated people.

 

Here uneducated means someone who does not know the area s/he tries to explain.

There are plenty of examples of people educated in the area who nevertheless reject it.

42 minutes ago, knirirr said:

 

Ah, then you missed the bit where he says something along the lines of "everything I've said up until now in this video is complete bull****", then proceeds to explain why, for the rest of the video.

The worst kind of click bait then.

Never heard of that for bass. Only for the expected.

1 hour ago, Woodwind said:

 

I wouldn't be able to get my instrument down to 432 without physical modification.

 

I was regularly commissioned to make crooks for bassoonists returning from positions in European orchestras so they could tune to 440 better (for example 442/443 is the norm in Germany).

 

 

Until not that long ago the UK used two pitches 440 and 452(or something close). high Pitch stayed on in brass bands after it had died out in orchestras.

 

If you're enjoying the lower tuning why not go baroque and tune to 415? (Which is basically half a step/semitone down)

 

 

I don’t think an oboe could do it either.

That might be the only valid argument for 432 I’ve ever seen. 
 

Horrible sounding things! 

There’s a huge amount of horseshit about 440 being “evil” and 432 being the natural harmonic of the universe.

its bollocks.

Tune to whatever reference pitch you like. Just don’t expect pianists, wind guys and just about any other traditional instrument player to invite you to play! 

18 minutes ago, Jean-Luc Pickguard said:

I wonder whether behringer will ever release the mu-tron III clone they announced quite a while ago.

That would be good.

They do seem to be on a release spree at the moment with the Klon and the Tone Bender over the last few weeks. Fingers crossed!