KingBollock

[quote name='louisthebass' timestamp='1354393730' post='1885592'] Failed guitarist here - too ham fisted to play the skinny stringed instrument, so a mate of mine who wanted to start a band said "why don't you learn bass - it's only got 4 strings & can't be that difficult?" Have never looked back . [/quote] Gah, only four strings! 20 years ago I could play the Violin a little and I think I could have been quite good at it, I seemed to take to it naturally. Unfortunately I got fat and can't do it anymore, I just can't squash my fingers close enough together on the neck. Wish I could afford a Cello.

[quote name='MiltyG565' timestamp='1354320002' post='1884919'] Something i discovered yesterday- going from playing bass, to learning finger style guitar.... it isn't right. If anything, it is down right difficult. Hard to get the old head around using your thumb and finger across different strings while playing a chord. [/quote] I started to learn finger style with thumb and two fingers, when I started playing the Banjo. I find it transfers nicely onto the Bass, galloping is ace, especially with finger and thumb picks on. Metallica's Orion is a really good song to learn that style to, on Bass.

My Dad decided he wanted to manage a band made up of my three brothers and me. He, for some reason, wanted me to play Drums. My thought process went something like this: I sure as sh*t ain't going to do what my Dad says and I don't want a Drum Kit, I want a Radio Controlled Monster Truck! (The Tamiya Lunch Box. I was 12... I still want one). I was a huge Motörhead and Iron Maiden fan, bands with very prominent Bass players. I knew some Guitarists and Drummers and I can't sing for the life of me, so if I took up Bass I'd have a better chance of getting into bands. I explained most of this to my Dad (missing out the bit about not doing what he wants) and he thought it was a good idea and that Christmas I got my first Bass. It was probably the best thing he ever did for me. The band he wanted never got started. I did start a band with my next youngest brother, who played Guitar and was into similar music to me, but after a year of playing I started playing with proper bands. I'm the only one that ever went on to play in bands and the only one still playing at all. I do own Guitars and have done for 17 years, but I still tend to play them like a Bass player.

Ah ha! I shall remember that! You learn something new everyday.

Is foam better than springs? I suppose it would be as once you set the height you don't really need to move them again. I need to replace the mounting screws on one of my Basses, as they're too long, and I was going to mount them with springs. Can't find anywhere that sells the screws I need at the length I need, though. They're either too long or too short, bloomin' typical.

[quote name='leroydiamond' timestamp='1354288199' post='1884501'] [color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]To be honest I'm not really arguing with people here.[/font][/color] [/quote] I said something that could too easily have been taken the wrong way. It was meant as a general thing but could have been taken personally. I seem to do that a lot on here and need to learn when to keep my gob shut.

EDIT: Nevermind, not in the mood for an argument. Sorry about that.

[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1354216854' post='1883814'] You're talking about a bit of eq for reasons of taste, which as I said earlier I have no problem with. This is semantics though, you aren't 'fixing the mix', you aren't 'fixing the mastering' at all. You are merely getting your system in your room to represent the output in a fashion that is more pleasing to you. Which is totally cool. But, it may well not be the mix, or the mastering that is the root of the problem, nor even the fact that you don't have crystals on your shakra, far more likely is that the problem is acoustic (although I'll grant you that And Justice is a shocking mix, no amount of bass boost will actually turn up the bass, its buried by, well, everything, you just turn everything up in that area of the spectrum, as well as the bass). [/quote] To be honest I'm not really arguing with people here. I spent a very awkward few hours with a very drunk, Glaswegian with a very, very strong accent, who was also a Led Zeppelin fan and an Audiophile. He spent those hours lecturing me on the superior music of Led Zeppelin and his stereo system. He told me the price of every component of his system and why he has a little weight that sits on his CDs to hold them in place while playing and a large proportion of that time included a talk about why he doesn't have an EQ and why no one else should either. And to top it off, on my way down the stairs into the, busy, Pub he lives above, my belt buckle came undone and my trousers fell down. Every single word of that is absolutely true. Audiophiles make my teeth itch and my balls draughty.

[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1354205811' post='1883610'] Why would you expect a stereo to 'fix' anything though? It just plays back what is there into the space it sits in. Cr4p in cr4p out. If the acoustic is also cr4p then you can end up with a cr4p filter on the good stuff coming out of the stereo too. [/quote] Sometimes you don't have much choice. One of my favourite albums is Cradle Of Filth's Cruelty and the Beast, but the mix is bloomin' rubbish. Adding a little treble and taking away a bit of the middle helps loads. Obviously I love this album for many other things than the mix. And, like I said, all of Sabaton's albums sound crap unless you do to it whatever the Jazz setting does to it, and I love those albums too. Then there are the early Metallica albums which are famously poorly mixed, especially when it comes to the Bass, but there are things you can do to help. And how many bands have remixed and re-released their back catalogues? These are brilliant albums with fantastic music (in my opinion...), but you can't always account for it when one bloke gets a stubborn idea in his head of how the music should be mixed, whether it's the mixer or some know-it-all from the band who is insisting on it being mixed a certain way. But I'd rather have to fiddle with it than not get to listen to it at all. I think one of the problems was that early CDs weren't specifically mixed for CD, requiring them to be remixed later. But until that happens you have to listen to what you've got. Maybe in the future it won't be such a problem, but there is always going to be a human factor.

I have some CDs that I probably couldn't listen to if I couldn't fiddle with the EQ a bit. Mostly it's because they are CDs by bands with not a lot of money. That is my main point but I have my own personal taste. On the stereo in the conservatory and the one in the bedroom there is no proper EQ, just Rock, Jazz, Classical etc, options, I have a tendency to go for the Rock option with nearly all my CDs, except the Sabaton ones which sound awful on anything other than Jazz (including no EQ. They're even the same when converted to MP3 and played through an MP3 player, they have to be set to Jazz.). Granted we're talking about a £500 stereo not £2000, but even a £2000 stereo isn't going to be able to fix a CD that was mixed on a shoe string budget.

So, are we back to what I said earlier? Not all sources are mixed perfectly so having a solution to tailor it to your own personal taste isn't such a bad thing.

When he describes the kind of person that would play his wide necked guitars it makes me think of that angry Treeman bloke.

I think someone's winding him up with that 5 string Banjo question.

No Bass, but there are a couple of items I'd like for my rack. Also, I quite fancy some of those huge Ashdown pedals. I'm hoping the current trend for tiny pedals might help bring second hand pedals into my price range.

I know an audiophile who swears that no EQ is the way to go, but I don't understand it. It's not just that every room is different, but also peoples' hearing is different. I suppose I might be able to accept it if every CD was mixed perfectly, but they're not. You might be able to tailor your equipment to the room it's going to live in, but the source and the receiver (CD and your ears) are too variable for such a feat.

[quote name='Hobbayne' timestamp='1353957629' post='1880286'] Unless he had made some MDP 'improvements' on it and felt a bit embarrassed about it? [/quote] I wondered something similar. Perhaps he'd knackered the truss rod or something and wanted to pass it off? You can't claim "it came to me like that, I had no idea" when it came from the person you're trying to sell it to.

My biggest problem is that I don't really know what I the software to do. I did record a very simple tune with just Drum, Guitar and Bass tracks, just to see if I could. I posted a link to it on BassChat and someone asked if I had set all the tracks down the centre, with no stereo movement. Which is exactly what I had done to most of it, I didn't know I was supposed to do anything different. Some people suggested that some instruments should go down the middle but others should be moved to one side or the other to make space for others, which makes sense, but when I tried it the result was horrible. And trying to find information on those kind of basic things, things people assume everyone trying to record must already know, proved difficult.

The get a mate to help suggestion is a really good one. I am in the same position as Lurksalot and would love to have someone to sit with for a while just to get me familiar and more confident with the software, I really feel it would help. Alas, I know no one and I find myself getting frustrated and giving up too easily.

What do you use the Boss for? I have the same one which I use for Guitar.

[quote name='RMacd1' timestamp='1353167110' post='1872330'] I have a Fender Aerodyne Jazz (Japan model) with set of EMG PJX pick up's and with having had EMG active pick up's before i knew that i wanted 18v but i also did not want to go down the route of trying to fit the two batterys into the cavity already there (which i dont think you can or if you can would be pretty crammed) so i decided to try an idea i thought of (its probably been done but it will have gone straight past me!) which was to fit the two batterys inside a box thats mounted to the side of my amp (as i first attempt i took the cheap option wiith everything) so that i could power the pick up's with 18v with out butchering the guitar to make them fit aswell as being much less hassle to change the batterys in the future, so instead of having the normal cable and jack to the guitar i have a DIN 8 pin socket on the guitar, matching DIN 8 pin plug on the cable (the cable i used is shielded with 3 twisted pairs) which goes into a box (metal) mounted to the side of my amp with a regular jack on it then into the amp, you will see in the pictures that the box looks pretty rough which it is as this was just a try out i did today also the control place is an old non fender part i was happy to drill. when i tried it on there was no hum or interference or any unwanted effects of having power and signal in one cable. Not likely to be a great idea to everyone but it works well for me and also means i dont have a slightly less valuable guitar on my hands! [attachment=124053:P1050362.JPG] [attachment=124052:P1050360.JPG] [attachment=124054:P1050363.JPG] [/quote] That's a cracking idea. I, personally, would have made the box a plastic one, so it would be lighter, and have it so that it clipped onto my strap. This would require a far shorter cable from guitar to box. That way you aren't tied down to one length of lead and it's not such a pain to replace if you break it. If you see what I mean.

You have to admire his get up and do it attitude, as far as it goes. It's such a shame that he hasn't taken the time to learn properly. Just simple lessons, like if you need to take a lot of nut material away, because it really is too high, then start with taking it away from the underside. As it is it's hard to know if some of what he says is out of ignorance or deceit. It's worrying.

[quote name='PaulWarning' timestamp='1352991689' post='1870256'] he's still got 100% feedback,has anybody on here actually played one of his 'conversions', we're all taking the piss and he could be a genius [/quote] Surprised he hasn't got 101% feedback (jk). Wasn't he selling a Guitar that he'd already sold and got good feedback for?

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' timestamp='1352926339' post='1869534'] When two batteries run down to 6v each, you still have 12v so the pickup still works, unlike with a single battery where you post on basschat asking what could be wrong with your bass. [/quote] I was imagining 2 different pick-ups, one that needs 9v and one that needs 18v. In which case the power consumption would have the same effect over the drainage of capacitance. I see now that this isn't the case in this scenario, with the pick-ups able to run at 9v. Thanks.

[quote name='Marvin' timestamp='1352933435' post='1869643'] I have a voice that makes people cry...and not in a good way [/quote] I know that feeling, I have a voice reminiscent of broken pianos and cats being set on fire.

[quote name='dood' timestamp='1352845946' post='1868461'] I'll go with that - Certainly I noticed more headroom and iirc, I had more punch from my slapped bass low end- again, probably due to having the extra headroom. [b]Oh and if nothing else, you'll have waaaay more time before your batteries run down low enough for the preamp to stop working completely. i.e. if the preamp can no longer function below 6v (for example) then it'll take longer to get down there from 18v than it would from 9v.[/b] [/quote] Are you sure? I was always under the impression that if you had batteries in series you got twice the voltage but they would last the same amount of time as one battery. To get twice the time you would wire them in parallel, but then you only get the voltage of one battery.