KingBollock

I was going to suggest the same as BassBunny, put a selector switch in the spare hole. Or... I have got a couple of basses that have the battery in the control cavity and it is indeed a pain in the bum. I am hoping, one day, to get around to replacing the covers with nice ones made of light steel with an ebony veneer. Then, instead of screws, I want to put little neodymium magnets where the screw holes are, which will hold the cover in place, which will be easy to remove to get at the battery. And they'll look nicer than cheap plastic.

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1475570487' post='3146915'] But what else was there in the late 70s/early 80s when these were new? The only place I saw Ampeg rigs was on stage with bands who had a record contract. My local music shop in the 70s was an Acoustic amps dealer but the only person I ever saw saw using one was the bass player who worked there. For the rest of us HH and Carlsbro were pretty much the only real choices, and based on personal experience I'd have picked a Carlsbro amp every time. It was certainly way better than the no-name generic 100W transistor head I was using back then. [/quote] I believe my Laney Klipp was a sixties/seventies amp, though I got mine in 1988. It blew up (because I had no clue about tube amps), which is why I ended up with a Carlsboro Stingray which, other than having to replace the bridge rectifier, worked fine. It was just a toneless box of nothing and I hated it.

Over the last few months I have started gassing for a blue Steve Harris signature. So, one of them.

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1475234057' post='3144229'] None of those really apply to my situation, or in a way bits of all of them do. Let me explain - this might be quite a long post... [/quote] I know what it's like to lack support for just about everything. I was lucky that I developed an interest that fitted an idea my dad had. He liked the idea of a musical family, which is why he bought instruments, he also liked the idea of a family that had books. He filled the house with books, but never read them, and I got the piss taken out of me for reading a lot... I was the first person in our family ever to go to college. Which he didn't like because I should have been going to work (though I had left school early and worked until the day I was officially supposed to leave school). He was far prouder of my brother who became quite an accomplished thief. My dad romanticised and was far too proud of his own nefarious background, including prison (well, he claimed to have gone to prison but I never knew whether to believe it or not), to ever have the kind of family he thought he wanted. People think I am cold or odd because I don't put much stock in family for family sake.

My parents listened to music, old 60s and 70s stuff and the top 40 on Sunday's. I used to spend hours listening to records with my mum. Somewhere around the early eighties, my dad, for some unknown reason, bought a nylon stringed guitar, that no one showed any interest in, other than me, and that only a little. He also bought himself quite an expensive harmonica, but never played it. Then, one day, when I was twelve, my dad decided that he wanted to manage a band and that his four sons would be that band. I desperately wanted a radio controlled monster truck (I still do...) but it was decided that I was to learn to play drums. I wasn't going to let him have it all his own way and, being a motorhead and Iron Maiden fan, I though bass would suit me better. My dad was actually quite pleased, because he hadn't thought of about bass. He paid for a few lessons, but he did a deal to get them as cheap as possible. So, once a week, for a few weeks, my brothers and I went to the teacher's house and I played walking bass lines, that I had learned at home from a book (he told me that my timing was natural and spot on. Which was nice), while he taught my brothers to play stuff over the top for half an hour. My brother Steven was a natural on guitar, but drugs and mental illness got the better of him and he didn't keep it up, which really was a shame. The other two were rubbish and soon gave it up. I actually own that nylon stringed guitar that my dad bought, and I still play it.

[quote name='bobbass4k' timestamp='1474738085' post='3140168'] Inside circle is boost/cut, outer circle is q factor/centre frequency. The inner knobs follow resistor colour bands (couldn't get any brown though so I had to settle for dark red for 1), though because I preferred the way it looked, the outer circle is reversed... The sweepable centre frequency meant marking the frequencies each band covered would have been super complicated, I've calibrated the bands to cover a fairly comprehensive range, so really it shouldn't matter, red is low, grey high, everything beyond that is down to the ears. [/quote] That is utterly genius!

That Columbus bass is a generic one. You can find loads of them, all identical but with different names on them. My one is a Westfield one. I have seen others labelled as Rogue and others that I can't remember off the top of my head. They went for £200 when new. Mine has Chromes flats on it, which probably doubles what it's worth now. They are a very good entry bass, though.

I got my chair from these people: http://chairsforoffices.com They're not cheap, but they're not hugely expensive either. I got mine from there because I am a rather large chap and they do a chair that suits me perfectly. It takes my weight effortlessly and has a huge amount of positional options. The arms on mine can be raised or lowered or taken off, which was another reason for choosing it. They also do spare parts. I get the feeling that my chair will outlast me. This is mine: http://chairsforoffices.com/tall-person-heavy-duty-office-chair-seat-slide-black-grey-seat-height-62cm.html?filter_name=140033gk

For me it is my BC Rich Warlock NT. I sold my first ever bass and regret it to this day, but my Warlock is the first since then to feel like "mine". Back when I was a kid working in a guitar shop, I was asked what my perfect bass would be and I described this Warlock. That was ten years or so before they even made this particular model (and they only made it for nine or ten years). I know I would regret selling it, so I won't.

I'd be chuffed to bits to own that. If I'd found it in a skip. Then I'd strip it, repaint it, clean or replace the rest, then flog it.

See if you can find a disco equipment shop with a dark room where you can see the stuff working. Those places tend to be quite reasonably priced, too. I am fortunate in that I don't know of any around here and I am scared to look. I have a bit of an obsession with pretty lights. I still have a bunch that I just couldn't part with when we packed up doing mobile discos (which I only put together so that I could play with the lights). An alternative is to build your own if you only want boxes.

[quote name='Lord Sausage' timestamp='1472920334' post='3125370'] http://youtu.be/NrHnerXEx5M [/quote] Is it bad that, while listening to that, I kept thinking that he'd get a more consistent sound if he used a pick?

[quote name='Number6' timestamp='1472847811' post='3124838'] Last time i saw them was on the Seventh Son of a Seventh Son Tour.....Donington 88' and twice at Hammersmith Odeon. I haven't bought much of their stuff since really. Every song they write now is a mini rock opera. [/quote] I got into them in 1987 and the last album of theirs that I love is Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. They then went on a two year break and thirteen year old me didn't have that long of an attention span, so there was only a very short time where I would have wanted to see them. I still listen to all the albums upto and including that one, but they lost me with everything since.

Steve Harris is the main reason I took up bass, though he doesn't really influence my actual playing. Would like to get one of his signature basses, too. The blue one, like the one used in the Live After Death video.

[quote name='Roger2611' timestamp='1472672471' post='3123198'] Either you are all lying b'stards or the quiz is broke, I didn't even pick throw keyboard player out of window option! I answered honestly and got Sid Vicious, surely I have more talent than that.......hang on, white / black Precision, pick player, ex punk / still punk at heart, actually used to have the nickname Sid, the good looking one in the band....it's all coming together [/quote] I got Sid, too.

[quote name='karlfer' timestamp='1472247784' post='3119873'] I dunno, I leave you lot alone for an hour................. I've always wondered how Freddie Kreuger managed the toilet [/quote] Perhaps it's a seemingly complicated arrangement that is obvious to those who know. A bit like the sea shells...

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1472204435' post='3119371'] When it comes to the internet I never cease to be surprised by the absolute self confidence of the immature, inexperienced and logically challenged. [/quote] [quote name='Wikipedia']The [b]Dunning–Kruger effect[/b] is a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive inability of those of low ability to recognize their ineptitude and evaluate their ability accurately. Their research also suggests corollaries: high-ability individuals may underestimate their relative competence and may erroneously assume that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others.[1] Dunning and Kruger have postulated that the effect is the result of internal illusion in those of low ability, and external misperception in those of high ability: "The miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others."[1][/quote]

This is the worst one that I own.

[quote name='SpondonBassed' timestamp='1470466870' post='3106149'] Off topic for a post entitled "Music Tapes in 2016"? [/quote] Oh, I don't know, have you heard Mathcore?

A few years ago I cracked out my old Spectrum 128. All the games that were on tapes that were kept in cases worked fine, but every single one of the games whose cassette didn't have its case, failed to load. I was always a bugger for not putting stuff away properly when I had used it, which is why I never liked vinyl much, too easily damaged (and all the records that I did keep well got damaged by someone else, every single bloomin' one of 'em!). Yet I have always been really careful with all my CDs.

[quote name='SICbass' timestamp='1469848516' post='3101505'] The film is called `Sybil` or `Cybil`? Sally Field plays the leading role. In it, her "safe-place" where she can open up to her therapist about her terrifying childhood is a large, overstuffed armchair she refers to as "the big chair". I remember reading somewhere that the Tears for Fears' album and track, "Songs from the Big Chair", are a side reference to this. [/quote] Yes! In the past, when I have searched, that is the only thing that ever came up, but I only had that one scene to go on and could never find any images or clips of it, and I don't remember any of the stuff from Sybil that I could find. However, I have just found the exact scene on YouTube. So, thank you, I can now tick that one off!

[quote name='Dad3353' timestamp='1469843002' post='3101499'] 'Tales That Witness Madness', the 'Mel' episode... [url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_That_Witness_Madness"]Tales That Witness Madness, Wikipedia ... [/url] http://youtu.be/eZg0uUJGm50 [/quote] Did you know or did you get the info from the name in the jpg address? Or maybe a Joan Collins filmography? All I remembered was that a man fell in love with a tree, and in the end the tree wins. There are a couple of films I remember watching back then that I would love to know more about, but I only remember certain scenes. One looks like a hammer horror in which people are sacrificed on a stone alter (attached to a wall at one end) where a large, wrought iron gate looking thing, with what looks like the shape of a bat in it, hinges down and crushes the victims. The other was very disturbing. It's supposed to be a true story. There was a girl whose mum would keep chained to a piano for hours and hours, and when she inevitably wet herself, the mum would take a hot poker to her insides. It was nasty. I don't want to see it again, but I would be intrigued to know more. I would have been around seven years old when I saw them (~1982). My mum loves horror films, but she didn't like watching them alone and my dad worked nights. And as I was the oldest son, and the only one that didn't get freaked out, she liked me to stay up and watch them with her. I saw quite a few of the "video nasties" before they were banned.

[i]It took me ages to find this. I never knew the name of the film, even though I remember seeing it several times when I was a kid[/i]

I've never had the money to go buying into new formats, I always have to wait until the prices come down, by which time they're usually better established. However, I did buy a PC in about 2000 with a Zip Drive in it. I never had any disks for it, though, because they were £8 each!

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1469569212' post='3099513'] I remember the consumer battle between VHS and Betamax. VHS won out, but Betamax was the superior format. [/quote] From what I gather, this was somewhat down to size (I was first told this while working in a tv and video repair centre while repairing a Betamax machine for the first time). The Betamax machines had a much larger head drum than vhs machines. And the internal mechanism in a vhs took the tape from each side of the cassette and introduced it to the half of the head drum closest to the cassette, whereas a Betamax took the tape from one end and wrapped it around almost the whole drum. Which meant that you couldn't build Betamax machines as small as vhs. Betamax tapes were smaller than vhs which, while they were slightly easier to store, meant they didn't have as much tape in them. Also, having typed this thread I am now more aware that Betamax also takes longer to type, so perhaps that was the cause of its downfall? I used to have three Betamax machines and hundreds of the cassettes. We still have a vhs, somewhere, and a big box full of videos in the garage, many of which you can't get on dvd. A few weeks ago I finally unplugged my standalone audio cassette player and moved it out of the way to make space for something else. I also threw away a bin liner full of cassettes that I had recorded on to, too, though I have kept most of my official cassettes and blank cassettes still in their packaging but they're now in a box in the spare room. I also kept a couple of mix tapes that I had been given by girlfriends when I was a kid, though mainly because I like the songs but some of them I don't know who they're by or what they're called, so I can't get anywhere else. I was looking at mini Hi-Fis recently and several of them were just amps with auxiliary inputs on them, though some had digital radios and/or Bluetooth as well.