KingBollock

Thinking about it, the only really bad case of GAS I have ever suffered started in 1989 while working in the Guitar shop. I wanted a BC Rich Warlock. We'd never stocked them, the only BC Riches we had in were a pair of Iron Bird 6 stringers, they were lovely, but not Basses. I had only ever seen Warlocks in pictures. What I [i]really [/i]wanted was a BC Rich Warlock, made of clear Perspex with a pink crackle in it, like a marble, with a Widow headstock and a whammy bar! I finally got a Warlock a few months ago, though it's just black and doesn't have a whammy bar. I had still not even held one until it turned up at my door. It was the internet that made this finally happen for me but it started nine years before I even got online.

Looking online is a lot easier than the walk to the local shop where I could smudge my snotty nose against the window in awe. Even when I ended up working in there there was still [i]That Wall[/i] with all the expensive Guitars hanging up, all Hamers. One of them was £2000! The most expensive Bass was only £900.

Perhaps it's the rig he's after... and when you turn up with it the only thing you'll leave with is a concussion.

I was thinking along those lines too. My rig takes up a footprint of 24 x 18 inches, whether I just use my 1x15 or my 4x10 or both together, it just stacks. And when it's all stacked, including the rack, it stands shorter than me.

I have put both your charts together and printed them out on one sheet, which I shall laminate and stick somewhere where it can easily be seen. They shall come in most handy. Thanks dude.

The Mole Grip idea is the best, but another way, if the screws are too short but still sticking out a bit, is to either file or saw, using a hacksaw, a slot for a flat head screwdriver into the end.

Just had a pedal from Col and it is in mint condition. He's a lovely bloke, very patient and understanding. This was my first experience of trading over BassChat and it was a happy one.

[quote name='grumble' timestamp='1341762042' post='1723694'] Mid 70's Jap knock off of Triumph basses Peavey Milestones De Armond Jet-Stars Cort Curbow 5'ers Italia Tipos All unfashionable, all in my collection Fashionable ? Anything with Fender on the headstock In that respect I'm happily unfashionable [/quote] I wish I could find a use for a Cort Curbow. I like Cort and have a couple myself, though one isn't a Bass, and I love the idea of having something almost entirely synthetic., They look good too. It's an odd feeling, believing that I have all my bases (ah ha!) covered and won't ever need to buy another. It's good too, considering I can't even justify what I've spent on them already, and I don't buy expensive Basses.

Some naughty people aren't reading the title and first post, are they?

I started playing in 1987. I put my first band together after about 3 months. But I joined my first proper band (one that had had a manager!) after about a year. Everyone else in the band were 18+ and I was 13. From then until just before my 18th birthday I was never without a band. Since then I haven't been in a band as a drastic and secretive move meant I lost contact with everyone I knew. There have been a few "Oh yeah! We should certainly do something!"s and a couple of failed get togethers, but nothing proper. I miss it so much it makes my heart ache.

Some Aria Pro Basses are quite well liked lately, except mine, of course. Also, some Westfields are well thought of, again, except my discontinued one. Anything by Cort and most BC Rich Basses are very uncool. So, that covers all mine then.

The problem I've got with my Warlock is that the fretboard is only 5mm proud of the body and with the bridge set at it's lowest the action is twice as high as I'd like. I checked my other Basses and they tend to have the fretboards around 10mm proud, which works better.

[quote name='EdwardHimself' timestamp='1341597393' post='1721692'] You can buy patch bays as a separate unit. Luckily my sound card has a breakout box. As you can see, I've got plenty of room to plug and unplug cables, but a patch bay or some kind of mixer would be something to think about if I couldn't reach the back of them for whatever reason. [/quote] Yeah, I have a little 6 channel mixer sitting on my desk just so I don't have to get at the back of my rack, which is only an 8u ABS thing, so it's not very heavy. I'm just lazy. Although I do have stuff piled all over it that I have to take off every time I want to get at the back of it. And the midi cable attaching it to my PC is too short so I have to go under my desk to unplug that...and so on... Moving a desk on wheels might well be easier.

[quote name='EdwardHimself' timestamp='1341596196' post='1721662'] +1. You should have all the controls that need editing at the front and all the controls that are permanently plugged in at the back. If you have inputs that need unplugging that are at the back of a rack unit, then you can get patch bays for 1/4" jacks and you can run multicore cables to breakout boxes from your mixer to the microphones if required. [/quote] Ah. I don't have any patch bays with my rack stuff, so I didn't think about them. Though I should have done because as part of my desk I built a panel into it that has sockets and switches that connect to the inputs and outputs of my PC's Soundcard, which sits under my desk.

[quote name='Valhalalf' timestamp='1341592120' post='1721580'] I'm pretty sure you didn't offend anyone With the RTA it is really easy to wheel away from the wall to get round the back of it. Plus I cable tied the mains supply to the back of it and make full use of the cable manager. This means there is only the mains lead running away from the desk at the side so everything moves with it. I could in theory unplug the mains at the wall and wheel the whole setup into another room in one go. Nice and simple. [/quote] I didn't really mean "offend" I meant to type "insult anyone's desk" but all of a sudden I had a brain burp and lost the words. That seems to be happening more and more lately.

[quote name='EdwardHimself' timestamp='1341591425' post='1721559'] Well luckily it's not your desk then [/quote] True! I wasn't intending to offend anyone, it was a genuine question, I wondered if I'd missed something obvious. Trouble is that I'm a rather large chap and clambering about under my desk is a nightmare.

[quote name='EdwardHimself' timestamp='1341588591' post='1721502'] Funny you should mention "wheels" because this one is actually on castors [/quote] Well, that explains it. Though it still seems quite a faff to move a whole desk.

[quote name='Commando Jack' timestamp='1341585707' post='1721437'] I vaguely remember reading in Sound on Sound that setting up in the corner was a no-no because of the bass resonances. [/quote] Is that because the sound should ideally go to a flat wall, or because they shouldn't go into an opposite corner? Because of the long shape of the room the desk isn't pointed at another corner, just an angled wall. My desk isn't a studio desk, so I don't worry about that at the moment. But the plan is to get some monitors and do it properly, but, like I say, I am planning on building a new, straight, desk anyway.

I was looking at these desks with the built in racks and thought they were a good idea, and I'm planning on building a new desk at some point as I've been dragging this bloomin' gre't big Frankensteinien things around with me for years. But once you've got your rack gear bolted in, how do you get at the back of it? My rack gear is in an ABS rack next to my desk and it's a pain to turn around to get at the back of it as it is, but having to move an entire desk...? Part of my new desk design does have a rack, but it's on wheels and will roll out to allow access to the back. Also, I see no one has posted a corner desk. That's what mine is and I find it cosy and find everything easy to reach. Though my plans for a new desk will be a straight one, the full length of the room. I shall actually bolt it to the wall for extra stability. Be interesting to see some more designs for desks for more ideas.

[quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1341468903' post='1719396'] Can see what you mean (although this one looks bolt-on). [attachment=112226:BC Rch.jpg] Bizarre they make them like this. Did you fix it? [/quote] Not yet. I don't want to stir up the old thread, it still gives me nightmares, so I shall post here. This photo is out of focus but I forgot to take another. In it you can see that the fretboard is low and the action high: This doesn't help: Here you can see the difference between having the sliders in and not. Unfortunately there's no way to hold the saddles in place without the sliders, apart from string pressure: This is what the slider and saddle look like together: Here you can see what the action is like without the slider and only the saddle. Much better: Ideally I should sink the bridge into the body, but, the depth I'd have to go would mean I'd have to replace the bridge as there would be no way to get the strings in on this bridge unless I had some of the body behind the bridge removed too, which would need refinishing... So my thought was to take some material from the bottom of each slider and each saddle, enough to make up about 5mm. That way it would look and work just how it's supposed to but be lower. And, if I completely cock it up I only have to replace the bridge (£20 for the same model) and I'm back to square one.

[quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1341442260' post='1719316'] so.... what was the problem? [/quote] Badly designed Bass. The neck, which is neck-through, is flush with the body, so there's only the height of the fretboard to make the action closer to the strings, as the bridge won't go below 10mm, meaning the minimum action was 4.5mm when taking the fretboard and gap to the lowest bridge setting into account. It turns out that this is to do with the design of the NT BC Rich Warlocks and the NT Mockingbirds, as far as I know.

The dread of the Truss Rod is drilled into beginners. I think it must have started out as a "Just be a bit careful, if you were to knacker it it's a pretty big deal" and went on to become "Don't touch it! It'll eat eat the first child of every generation you spawn from here to eternity!". I often wonder if it's professional repair people that helped spread the fear. Over the last few years I managed to shed that fear and have been setting up Truss Rods with no problems at all. But, a few weeks ago, I had a Bass turn up and I couldn't quite figure out what was wrong with it to start with, so I panicked and immediately blamed the mysterious Truss Rod. So I'm not immune. I mentioned it in a thread on here and even when I later figured out that it wasn't actually the problem I still had people insisting that it must be. It's not some odd, magical device created my evil Magicians in dark, damp caves at the dawn of time, made purely to confuse and unsettle. It's actual quite simple and easy to use if not abused. Unfortunately, a lot of people never get over the initial warnings and end up carrying it on to the next generation.

[quote name='JakeBrownBass' timestamp='1341315149' post='1716748'] [url="http://www.musictheory.net/exercises/ear-interval"]http://www.musictheo...es/ear-interval[/url] Standard ear training, it doesn't happen over night, As with everything, practice makes perfect. [/quote] I've just spent the last couple of hours playing with this. What I've been doing is let it play the note and interval and then I find it and play it on my Bass, making sure to identify the actual note. It takes away some of the interval training but it is helping me to learn more about the fretboard, what's where and how it sounds, and how it sounds in relation to other places on the fretboard. I think it makes a good exercise for a beginner or someone who has skipped this part for far too long, like me. It's also useful to know that pressing the spacebar will play the notes again, so you don't have to mess around reaching across and finding the button with your mouse, I just had the keyboard set near the edge of my desk to make repeating the notes easy. Some of the other exercises on there are really useful too, and it's good that you can customise some of them to better suit you and your instrument. A very useful site. Thanks for posting it. http://www.musictheory.net/exercises

[quote name='jackers' timestamp='1341341826' post='1717433'] Cheers guys and KB, I think that is really useful, thanks I might have to buy a set of Chromes when my strings die. [/quote] I think it would be more useful if lots of people use it, even if someone has already done it for the same set of strings, it would be better if we could get a proper consensus on each set. Actually, we need for it to cover where on the bright to mellow range each set comes, as well as their life span. I tried to do that to but realised they conflicted and I suddenly couldn't get my head around it, but I'm sure someone cleverer could come up with something more suitable.

I remember, 20 odd years ago, being told that flats don't die because they were never alive, they always sound dead. But this was by a Guitar shop full of Guitarists... Using that Bright Bar idea from the above video I have come up with my own. [color=#ffffff].......................[/color]Bright[color=#ffffff]..............................................[/color]Dead Roundwound: |--------------------------------------------------| Flatwound:[color=#ffffff] ...............[/color]|--------| The top bar represents the life of the Roundwound string. It starts off bright and gradually dies to a dull thud. The bottom bar is the life of the Flatwound string. It doesn't start off as bright as the Roundwound string but it isn't dead either and it remains pretty stable. My Flats are on their second Bass now and I haven't noticed any difference from when I first put them on the first Bass. The only Flats I have used are Chromes, so they start off, and remain, relatively bright. Perhaps people could use a similar bar device to represent how bright or mellow the makes of Flats that they've used? It's probably a stupid idea isn't it? (Hint: I've used full stops to make the bottom bar stay where it is and coloured them white so you can't see them.)