BigRedX

I've only owned one Yamaha bass: It's the BJ-5B, a signature model made in a limited edition of 50 for Japanese surf band Terry & The Blue Jeans. I'd been very taken by the looks of the SBV range, but as a 5-string player I wasn't going to buy a bass that I wouldn't use. Then someone on here mentioned that this model existed. When one came up for sale on Ishibashi I jumped at the chance. Unfortunately the actual bass was rather underwhelming. I was hoping for a 5-string SBV, but it's essentially a TRB-5 with a body and headstock that is roughly SBV shaped. It was also by far the heaviest bass I have ever owned with the widest string spacing at the bridge and the narrowest at the nut. I used it at a few gigs where the stage was big enough to wield this without being a danger to the rest of my band or our audience. Eventually I faced up to the fact that it was never going to get any regular use and I sold it. The only piece of Yamaha gear I own now is a Tenori-On.

Finally someone suitably bonkers but with the right amount of pop sensibility for the job. Or maybe he'll do a 3 minute 100 oscillator drone piece?

I would suspect "stereo" wiring so that each half of the split pickup can be routed to a different amp. The rest of it? Surely it's "mojo"?I

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. The lead times are one of the things that worry me. For your release it's currently 3 weeks for the CD and almost 6 weeks for vinyl, which seems somewhat excessive, when I consider that in the days when I used to do this myself at home for promo copies for my band, each CD took less than 30 minutes to produce and would have been even quicker if I had a separate printers for the on-body and the wallet. Maybe these long lead times are a result of the service being more popular than the company can comfortably deal with? I had a look through these and some of the information directly contradicts what I was told the last time I had any vinyl commercially produced which was for the best audio quality I should aim for no more than 12 minutes a side and cut at 45rpm. This is why many current vinyl album releases are in the form of two 12" "singles" even though the music would comfortably fit on a standard single 33rpm disc. I suppose if they only offer 33rpm discs then they are going to downplay this information. However that means that giving some guidance on the running order of tracks, and why it is good idea to put all the fast/loud/energetic songs at start of each side and put something more laid-back as the closing track, should be paramount, but I have seen nothing. Of course there's nothing stopping you from having whatever track order you want, but from experience putting something loud and energetic at the end of a 20 minute side makes it sound less impressive than it should. There are ways around this, but they involve a sympathetic cutting engineer and several test cuts to achieve and are not really within the scope of an on-demand service. The big advantage though is that because this is an on-demand service I could do several of my own "tests" with different running orders under the guise of different releases at £27.90 a go before settling on the version I think is the best compromise for the official release. I think also we'll probably do the CD version the traditional way as there are plenty of services offering proper glass mastered CD runs of 250 minimum at very competitive prices with a lead time of around 2 weeks for the complete production run, and from experience actually having physical product on the merch table is always more lucrative. However I think PoD makes sense for 12" vinyl formats as IME they are too unwieldy to sell at gigs and too easy to get damaged if the same copies go for too long without being sold. We'll probably get 5-10 copies ourselves just so we've got some on display, but I certainly don't want to end up with 350 unsold copies of an album on vinyl again.

I think I might have sorted it. In the notification preferences where before it said "enable in this browser" after clicking on that and getting a message asking me if I wanted to enable Push Notifications which I rejected, the status has now changed to "Permission was denied in this browser" I still don't have the cookie mentioned in your post, and I'll have to wait until sometime tomorrow at the earliest when someone replies to one of the threads I'm following to see whether or not I get the message asking me if I want to enable Push Notifications.

Thanks for looking into this for me. The problems isn't with getting Push Notifications. I have them switched off and always have since they were first introduced. I believe this is the setting you were referring to: It's the pleading for me to turn them on each time I get new notification more than 24 hours after the last one. Consequently I got another this morning as a result of your reply to this thread: As I said. I don't need Push Notifications. As far as I know I have opted out so why do I still get messages pleading with me to turn them on? Looking at the list of Cookies that are active in this browser, I notice that the Push Notification one is missing from my list. Will this be the reason that I keep getting these messages? The only reason I can think of for it to be missing is because it contravenes Apple's default privacy settings for Safari.

These days unless your band is pretty well known and has record label or management financial backing, most "tours" are a series of weekend gigs spread out over a month or so. I did two conventional tour with The Terrortones organised by someone who wanted to be our manager. The weekend gigs were fine although we could have probably organised them all ourselves and got the same result. The mid-week gigs not so good. One of the tours was supporting a German Rockabilly band who despite being excellent were completely unknown in the UK. Apart from the last gig on a Saturday night where The Meteors also played and which was packed, the only people in the audience for the other gigs had come specifically to see us. For the other tour, we were supposed to have a decent local band in a compatible genre as support for each gig, however the support bands were either non-existent or had zero following which pretty much defeated the object of having them. Needless to say we told the organiser of the tours that we didn't required his management services. Also it was hardly a Rock 'n' Roll lifestyle. We drove home each night after playing apart from one weekend where we had three gigs in South Wales and stayed at Mr Venom's parents house.

The great thing about Ishibashi is because their on line presence is based on the stock from all their shops, they have a regular turnover of new and especially of used instruments. Therefore if the bass you are after isn't in stock to today, it may well be in stock tomorrow, or next week or next month. It just depends on how long you want to wait before one comes up. None of the basses I bought from them were exactly common - the Yamaha BJ-5B was made in a limited edition of just 50 - but all of them eventually came up for sale on Ishibashi.

These are the cookies currently associated with Basschat. Can you let me know which of these is responsible for the Push Notification reminder, or if it is missing what it is called. Thanks!

Can you let me know the name/ID of the cookie involved so I can see what is happening with it?

Not that I'm aware of. Besides if I was blocking cookies wouldn't I also need to log in every time I visited? Also if I was blocking cookies wouldn't I get this message every time I got a notification?

In case anyone is wondering what I am on about, it is this: I'm currently getting it once a day when I have a new notification. I'll not see it again until I next get a notification tomorrow or later. However I've already opted out of Push Notifications so why all this pleading for me to turn them on?

My band is looking at this for our debut album, so can I please pick your brains on the process as the website is very light on actual production specifications? 1. Since this appears to be essentially print on demand I assume the CD version is CDR rather than glass-mastered. Can you confirm this? 2. Did Elastic Stage offer any advice for the running order and side length for the vinyl version? 3. Can the vinyl version have a different track order to the CD? I see that your CD version has additional tracks on the end but what I'm interested in is having a different running order for the tracks that are common to both formats to make the most of the strengths and weakness of each format. 4. Can I have different artwork for the CD and Vinyl versions? Or are they just scaled versions of each other? I don't want completely different designs but I would like the "small print" to be at an appropriate size for each size of cover. Thanks in advance.

That's the one. Here are some better photos of the one I actually owned: IIRC it was sold on to someone in the UK so it should still be around. Fernandes do lots of limited edition models with custom graphics for both the bass and guitar versions of this. You rarely see any of them outside of Japan.

Have you doubled checked that they are actually different bases and not the one on Digimart being offered by various "middlemen".

There's one on Digimart

Sometimes you need a middleman as many Japanese shops are simply not prepared to deal with foreign sales. The two instruments I bought in person came from shops that would never have considered selling to me had I not been there in person with a native Japanese speaker to help out. As others have said Ishibashi are great, but they have people specifically there to deal with enquiries and sales outside of Japan. The only disadvantage is that as a foreign buyer you will need to deal with them through email and due to time differences and the fact that the instruments are also be on display in one of their shops, you can sometimes lose out to a local sale that occurs between receiving and replying to your enquiry.

I've bought 6 instruments from Japan, and sold one of them back to someone living there when I no longer needed it, but all these transactions were prior to international shipping getting a lot more complicated. I did 4 shop sales, all buying second hand from Ishibashi. All went smoothly and I even got a discount on one bass which had sticker residue on the body that hadn't been noticeable in the original sale photos but was picked up by Ishibashi when they did their quality check before shipping. Shipping costs were very good, I wasn't able to match the price when shipping in the opposite direction as a private seller, and VAT and Import Duties were close to my guesstimates so no nasty surprises there. I also brought back a new guitar on each of the two occasions that I visited Japan. The instruments I bought were all ones that were almost impossible to find for sale outside of Japan - Atlansia Solitaire Bass, Fernades Pie-zo Bass Gothic Hello Kitty Edition, Tokai Talbo Bass, Tokai Talbo Jr Guitar, Yamaha BJ-5B (a limited edition of 50 models) and a Yamaha EZ-EG. I certainly wouldn't use it just to try and save a few pounds on something that could be imported for you by a UK distributor. Some Japanese shops are simply not set up to deal with foreign sales and even now in the 21st Century you'll get no reply when they realise that you are not in Japan. However if it's an eBay sale that is visible to potential buyers outside of Japan, then the seller should be set up to deal with enquiries in other languages - in this respect we have a massive advantage being English speakers - and international shipping. As has been said there's a whole extra level of protection if you buy through eBay, so check the seller feedback and bid away. Edit to say Japan is VERY service focused, and if anything does go wrong you can guarantee that it happen here in the UK where it is completely out of the control of the Japanese seller.

Do you have a multi-meter and do you understand what your present wiring and all the controls are supposed to do if functioning correctly?

I'm not on my phone. IMO phones a terrible for doing anything on this site other than basic passive browsing. I have already turned off Push Notifications. What I want is a way of banishing forever the pleading for me to turn them on.

How do I turn off the Push Notification reminder? Every time a reply is made in one of the threads I have asked for notifications, I get a red circle with a number in it next to the bell icon at the top of the screen. However when I go to see which thread it is I also get a massive note pleading with me to turn on Push Notifications. Is there any way of banishing this so that I never see it again? I don't need Push Notifications. The notifications within the Basschat forum are more than sufficient as I am here every day. And any day I'm not here it's because I'm doing something more important and wouldn't want to be bombard with Push Notifications. Just want some way of saying "Thanks, but no thanks". about Push Notifications once and then never be asked about them again.

IME the whole point of amps that can drive 4Ω loads is not that swapping your 8Ω cab for a 4Ω one will make it louder but the fact that you can run two 8Ω cabs which if done properly will give you twice the driver area which will be noticeably louder,

I've been using keyboard shortcuts to open and switch between programs since having multiple programs open simultaneously became possible with the introduction of System 7 (I could never get MultiFinder in System 6 to work reliably enough) so the commands required have become ingrained over the last 35 years.

An excellent idea, but I have no pockets in my on-stage clothes and I am sure I'm not the only person in this situation.

I've worn rings on my right hand for over 30 years now, and so long as what I wear on my thumb isn't too fancy they don't get in the way of my playing. I've recently been experimenting with the feasibility of wearing rings on my left hand, and again so long as they are fairly plain, not too wide and reasonably tight fitting I think I'll be alright. I have never worn a watch on stage. They just don't look right IMO and are not consistent with my on-stage persona. I've currently got a hand-me down Apple Watch and it goes in my clothes bag along with my non-stage wear while I'm playing. I do enough real steps during loading, setting up and breaking down at a normal gig to not need 35-40 minutes of fakes steps while I'm actually playing.