BigRedX

Good: Bill Lawrence pickups. Back in the 80s, way before the internet. I was doing some modifications to a guitar which left me with a Strat-type single coil pickup to go in a humbucker-sized hole. My local music shop used to be a Bill Lawrence dealer and I could remember seeing a suitable humbucker-sized surround with a single-coil cut-out in their catalogue. Unfortunately by this time the shop were no longer selling Bill Lawrence products and none of the others in the area could help. I had Bill Lawrence's US address from something I had bough previously so I wrote them a letter, asking if they were still selling such and item and if so how much would it be including postage to the UK. About 2 months later when I had forgotten all about it, I received a package containing two surrounds in black and cream plus all the necessary fixing screws FOC, with a very nice letter thanking me for the enquiry and apologising that they didn't currently have UK distribution. Variable: Boschma Cases. Anyone who has owned on of their rack mounting cases will know that there is one exception to the excellent design in that the rubber feet have a tendency to become detached from the screws holding them in place under any kind of rough handling. The first time this happened, Boschma very kindly sent me 4 replacement feet FOC. Over the years I slowly used these up, and when I came the enquire once again if I could get some replacements (which I was perfectly happy to pay for) the company no longer wanted to know. Terrible: Ashdown. I know that just about everyone else on here has nothing but praise for them, but my experience has been very poor. I was one of the many who had problems with My Ashdown Superfly amplifier. First it developed the well-known high-pitched whine, but after a while I also started having problems getting the amp the switch on. Emails to Ashdown revealed that they really weren't interested in getting this amp working, and when the intermittent switch on problem turn into a seemingly permanent one, I stuck it in the bin. I would have left it at that, but then at least one person on Basschat revealed that not only had Ashdown fixed their Superfly amp long after the warranty had expired, but that they had done it FOC! When I pointed this out on one of the Ashdown threads I got a very sarcastic response from @Ashdown Engineering, providing that their crap customer service lives on if you are not one of their favoured customers.

IMO there is no excuse for having badly matched pieces of wood for the body when they are on show no matter what the price of the instrument. Save the good bits for "natural" finish and cover the others under a solid paint finish.

"The Virus" by None So Blind. Which is actually about electronic surveillance so works on several levels.

Thanks! However I won't be bothering with wireless. Bluetooth puts an unnecessary drain on the batteries IMO, and the lack of wires has no advantage for me. Also last time I was looking at headphones I was specifically warned off wireless as I was told the the latency puts the video and audio out of sync.

Since this appears to be the most up-to-date headphone thread I thought I'd post here rather than starting a new one. My Edifier H850s have just failed at the joint between the phone and the headband, which appears to have also damage the cable inside, so they are going back to Amazon for a refund. So what to replace them with? I liked the sound of the Edifiers, and since they are to be used for listening to music for enjoyment and when watching TV/films on my laptop I don't want anything with a massively increased bass response, as I find these tend to render the dialogue incomprehensible to me. I also want something with a decent (read better than Edifier) build quality.

If you need to adjust the truss rod you will have the slacken it off. The B-string is considerably lower tension than the G.

Actually most rock bands these days look like quantity surveyors except for the tattoos.

IME anywhere small enough to not have the whole band in the PA, it will be nigh on impossible to pin point where a particular instrument's sound is coming from using your ears alone. Bass frequencies are particularly hard to place so there is little point having them anywhere but in the centre on the any stereo sound field.

If you do decide to make use of the stereo field, I'd suggest that you don't make it too wide. There's always a temptation to hard pan anything stereo, but often it sounds better if you restrict the sound scape to about half of the full width. Also check that your mixes still work in mono. Especially if you do anything with the clean signal one one side and an effected version of it on the other. Many effects are made to sound more impressive by putting the effected signal out of phase with the original. In stereo it sounds massive. In mono the phase differences will cause it to virtually disappear.

It might be simpler and cheaper to by a standard 16 hole 1U panel, populate the holes you need with the required connectors and fit blanking panels to the unused ones.

Personally I wouldn't bother. Most of the recordings of the sorts of bands you mentioned would have been in mono anyway. The need for stereo comes mainly from studio trickery and wanting to separate out similar-sounding instruments. Since your instrumental line-up is simple and you aren't doing any overdubs there's no need to separate anything out. Just make sure that the guitar is EQ'd so it doesn't swamp the vocals while there is singing. Edit: And do not pan the bass. It should always be in the centre for maximum impact. If you have backing vocals they can be spread across the stereo, but even then I wouldn't go too wide with anything.

And I would. The nicest looking (IMO) laminated necks I have seen were on the Overwater Originals and Pedulla Buzz I used to own. All the laminates were pieces of similar-coloured wood and then covered with a semi-transparent stain. You could only see that the neck was made of multiple pieces of wood if you looked really carefully.

Any neck made with good quality wood that has been properly "seasoned" before use will be fine so long as you don't expose it to wildly different climactic conditions and expect it not to move at all. Personally I don't like the look of the contrasting multi-laminate necks. They were interesting in the late 70s and early 80s when they were new, but now, to me, they are just a tired cliché.

Technically since the DI box has a "speaker" setting it should be possible running it from the speaker output of the amp, with two caveats. 1. You will still need to have the speaker plugged in. The DI goes between the amp and the cab. 2. Check the rating of the DI box in speaker mode. IME most of these devices are designed to be used with small guitar amps rated at under 50W, and transformers aren't suitable to cope with high output bass amps. You have the same problem using Power Soaks. Most simply aren't designed for the sorts of levels/currents that a valve bass amp in full flight will put out. I used to own a Marshall PowerBreak which technically can go up to 100W, but even with a 50W guitar amp some sounds would cause the cooling fan of the PowerBreak to go into overdrive and often after a gig it would be hotter than the amp! The other thing you may well find is that it's not the distortion of the power amp valves that is giving you the bass sound you want, but speaker breakup. The only way you get this is by running the amp at full tilt and mic'ing up one of the speakers.

I'm assuming there is an amusing typo in there? Unfortunately my dyslexia won't let me see it, and I probably wouldn't get the joke anyway...

IIRC the proximity effect (which requires you to lift the cab a long way off the floor to break) was more important than mechanical coupling for a good bass sound.

IMO it is not the mass of the bridge that makes the difference (after all the extra mass over the BBOT in relation to the weight of the body is minimal) but the fact that they tend to be better engineered, especially with regard to reducing lateral movement of the saddles. Of course if you play with heavy-weight flats it probably doesn't matter what bridge your bass has.

Strange. I've owned two Kramers and several other aluminium necked basses and guitars and never had any extra temperature-related tuning problems with them.

However the best song writing partnership I've been in was with a guitarist whose guitar style was almost exactly the same as mine only loads better. He could take my guitar ideas and play them brilliantly first time and always seemed to get exactly what I was after. Never found that with another guitarist, they always struggle to get their heads around my guitar playing even when I think it is something really simple.

Both of the guitarists in InIsolation are probably better bassists than me. I’ve also auditioned several bands as the bass player and ended up joining, playing guitar or synth because one of the other musicians who also auditioned was a better bass player.

Do you need to detune? The one band I’ve played in the had a detuned guitar, I kept my bass in standard tuning. It meant the bass lines I was coming up with for the songs were more interesting. of course if you need to do loads of octave/unison riffing with open strings then detuning might be the only way.

The neck should be the same colour as the body.

I believe that if your are brand new on eBay and haven't built up a buying history, or you list 1000s of items every month then you might need to pay some form of listings fees. By the time I came to list my first item for sale on eBay I'd been buying stuff for over 5 years and I was offered a limited number of listings for free, but I would have to pay for any additional ones. I've always been careful to keep within my free listings limit. I've just checked and currently I'm allowed 999 free listings each month. I doubt anyone other than those who make a living out of selling on eBay pay listings fees these days.

What sellers fees for listing? I've been selling on eBay for 15 years and I know I've never paid anything for a listing. However IIRC if I wanted to set a reserve price it would actually cost me.

I really don't understand the point of a reserve price on eBay. If you don't want it sell for less than a particular price, start your auction at that price. As a buyer I see little point in placing a bid on an item which has not yet reached the reserve price. This is from several previous experiences where I have ended up being the highest bidder but have not "won" the item due to the reserve price being higher than my winning bid.