BigRedX

[quote name='leroydiamond' timestamp='1481723095' post='3194547'] Sorry to say that £1000 for vinyl play back equipment is pretty much the starting point for getting to where its at, in terms of discovering the potential of this format. However audiophiles will often have as much invested in CD equipment. My CD (Primare cd32) cost the same as my vinyl playback equipment (Clearaudio concept, Dynavector 10x5, dynavector P75). For me, they both have their place [/quote] And that post to me completely sums up why I don't like HiFi. IMO there is something seriously wrong with the delivery medium when you need to spend thousands of pounds to "properly" appreciate the music on it. And I can't help but feel that you have been conned when it comes to your CD player. The important part of this system is the DAC and I simply can't believe that you are getting a better quality DAC in your CD player, than the audio interfaces used to record or transfer most of the music you are going to be listening to on it. When you can buy and RME ADI-2 Pro which is one of the best stand alone 2-channel studio converters available and does both ADC and DAC for around £500, I smell something fishy.

[quote name='karlfer' timestamp='1481661545' post='3194158'] There better not be any more of those really irritating moving ones [/quote] Irritating animated GIFs can be banished with the use of an Ad Blocker. Simply right-click the avatar in question and open it in a new window. Then copy the resulting URL into your Ad Blocker's banned list. You'll never see it again.

As the title says. eBay seem to be intent on bombarding me with emails for items I've looked at just the once. Normally things that have been posted here that I've had a look at to see just how awful (usually) they are. If I look at an item and I'm interested in it, I'll add it to my watch list, and if I'm really interested in it, I'll put on a bid. Everything else AFAIAC is useless crap that I never want to see again, and I certainly don't want to receive an email asking if I'm still interested in it a couple of days later. I've looked through my eBay preferences and can't see any obvious settings to change. Maybe someone on here knows what to do?

Looks like a good result for the OP. Pity I couldn't have got that kind of support when my Superfly amp started producing a high pitched whine through the speakers and only switching on intermittently.

Depends entirely on the band and what skills the other members have. It's ranged from simply showing up the rehearsals and gigs and playing my bass, to doing pretty much everything (both musically and organisationally) except sing, write the lyrics and play the drums and bass on stage. In that second example I also owned all of the equipment except for the drum kit. In the Terrortones everything is fairly equally divided between myself and Mr Venom. He writes the words and I do the music, and at a push we could do everything in the studio between the two of us since he is a very good drummer and I'm a passable guitarist. For the non-musical stuff Mr Venom handles everything that requires people skills like social media and organising gigs, while I organise the email list and the website. Everything else is handled by both of us together, or farmed out to people with the appropriate skills.

As the others have said, it's as loud as you need to be to be balanced with the un-amplified instruments (drums). For me, using my cabs that's somewhere around 1/4 the travel of the output volume control on my Tech Soundsystems Black Cat amp. The only time I have ever gone past the half way mark is when I was using it with some very inefficient Laney cabs. To the OP if you need more volume you would have been better off adding a second identical 8Ω cab which would have given you more speaker surface to move the air.

Be thankful that Downdown started this thread and not me. I've had this brewing in my head ever since the first RIP thread of 2016, and mine would have been a lot more unsympathetically entitled "Dead Pop Stars (Rotting In The Studio)". Here on Basschat we tend to fall into the older age groups and probably our "heroes" are going to be older still. Therefore it's not really going to be much of a surprise that they are now coming to an age when their life expectancy is getting shorter all the time. Added to the fact that even if you don't go mad on sex and drugs, the "rock n roll lifestyle" in the early part of your career is hardly the kindest to the human body, and I imagine it must be much the same for actors, comedians and anyone else following a creative path. There is nothing extra special about 2016. In fact I expect 2017 to be just as "bad" for celebrity deaths. And most of it is down to social media. Many of the people who have passed away this year would have done so almost without being noticed except for a few column inches in whatever specialist publications cared enough. I think this sums up my feelings on the subject perfectly: [quote name='Downdown' timestamp='1481216784' post='3190686'] I was prompted to start this thread by the Greg Lake RIP topic. I'm a big fan of his King Crimson work, have most of their albums on vinyl and listen to them with reasonable regularity, even though I 'discovered' them years after they had split up. But let's be honest, that body of work has existed for around 50 years now and it really doesn't matter if Lake or the others are alive or dead. In fact, until the recent news broke, I'd have had to guess if he was alive or dead - my point being that his existence today is irrelevant to his body of work that I admire so much. Against that background, his death is pretty much as meaningless as Joe Bloggs who I've never heard of - to me anyway. [/quote]

Thank you for the kind comments on the music! It's weird but The Terrortones are probably the most "conventional" band I've played in yet I've got more use out of the low B string with them than any band I've played with since I got my first 5-string back in 1989. A lot of it has to do with the keys we write the songs in which allows me to drop down to D, C and even B. "Tight Pants" is one of three in the most recent set that uses the low B string, although on that one it's for position rather than getting notes lower than E. Unfortunately the band is currently on indefinite hold due to Mr Venom being too unwell to perform.

[quote name='PaulWarning' timestamp='1481560750' post='3193296'] I've got several hundred of them with recorded radio programmes on them (they were great for that, well that's all we had) it's a right pain in the arse transferring them into mp3's [/quote] I've got a big box full of demo recordings of Nottingham bands from the 80s and 90s on cassette. I'm about half way through getting them all converted into uncompressed AIFF files.

Thanks! Although the Warwick is the bass I play live with Richard Venom & The Terrortones, I used all 4 basses when recording the most recent LP - SnakeOil For Snakes.

It's not quite so straight-forward if you are viewing just new content (something I have never used so I had to go and look to see how it worked). You have to scroll back to the top of the page and then select the icon with the four squares in the top right corner. From there you can select View New Content and get back to the list of new posts. HTH

[quote name='Leonard Smalls' timestamp='1481532371' post='3192891'] Luckily, the resolution of vinyl depends on the grain size of the vinyl used, just how well the mastering engineer has carved the master disc (as well as the quality of the master), and how well the "pin" tracks the groove. If the "pin" is small enough (like my Audio Note cartridge is), the arm and cart are sufficiently isolated from outside vibrations (wall-shelf, 20kg turntable), and the RIAA decoding is accurate, a well-cut record has at least the resolution of cd, with a higher potential maximum frequency, but lower available dynamic range (not that most cds use that range, wot with loudness wars). And it also has the advantage of not being a torch dragged across a lumpy plastic disc! [/quote] Just how good is vinyl production these days anyway? My impression from being on the production side of the fence is that a lot of the people involved are having to re-learn almost forgotten skills. There are very few production plants anywhere in the world at the moment, and as you say a lot of it is down to the skill of the cutting engineer, so who/where are the new big names in vinyl cutting with the reputations of George Peckham, or Denis Blackham? I was lucky enough for my very first record release back in 1980 to be a "Porky Prime Cut". He certainly worked wonders to make my band's tinny lo-fi offering sound good enough to attract the attention of John Peel.

[quote name='Leonard Smalls' timestamp='1481546710' post='3193098'] I've done that on a few occasions, though I can't guarantee the mastering process! Frinstance, Bootsy's "Ultrawave" sounds lots better on vinyl, as does Nazaire's "Whose Blues"; they're the only 2 duplicates I've got. But you're right about cost; a cheap cd player is much better than a cheap record player. If you want to get the best out of vinyl you'll really need to spend well over £1k (new, that is). My phono stage alone has an rrp of £1200! But then I'm sad hifi nerd who used to spend all his money on box-swapping. Luckily I'm happy with what I've got now... [/quote] Looking at the release dates of those I doubt the Bootsy album would have been mastered in such a way as to make the best of the medium, in fact it is quite probable that the CD version was made from a second generation pre-EQ'd vinyl production master tape (as many CD back catalogue issues in the 80s were) in which case it won't be a very pleasant listening experience. The majority of music I still have on vinyl is low-budget DIY releases from the late 70s and early 80s, when the pressing quality for all but the biggest selling artists left a lot to be desired. I'm snapping up CD re-releases of these as quickly as they get produced and in every case it's an improvement on the original. I suppose if what you are buying has has a sensible recording and production budget in the first place then good quality vinyl will be pretty decent.

I don't know what it's like on Windows (or the current version on the Mac TBH) but MotU always used to have their own way of doing things especially with the interface which means that there was a lot of extra code in their applications to do stuff that the OS should have been handling. This re-inventing of the wheel doesn't always make for the most stable or intuitive of systems. As an alternative to PT on Windows I would have suggested Nuendo, but it seems to have been repositioned as an audio post-production system for video, so it might not be suitable anymore. On the other hand the sooner you find an alternative for PT the better. Avid seem to be in the process of a company melt-down which could have dire consequences for their end-users (and that's before we deal with all the iLok fiascos!)

[quote name='Rocker' timestamp='1481539442' post='3192980'] First I select 'New Posts' (since my last visit). If I open a thread and close it to return to the new items list, a black box showing the word Loading appears mid screen. I can still scroll down, it usually disappears when I select Page 2, disappears until I open a thread on Page 2. You get the picture. Is there something I can do to stop this happening? Thanks. [/quote] Don't use your browser back button to navigate the forums. Use the links on the page instead.

This one: This one: This one: And this one: All different, so which one I use will depend on what sort of music I am playing. The black Gus and the Sei were made especially for me. You can't beat a good custom bass.

[quote name='Leonard Smalls' timestamp='1481466282' post='3192454'] I feel that those who shout loudly about how crap vinyl has always sounded have only ever heard a 20s hand-cranked gramophone with hawthorn needle and large horn, or at best a Dansette! Once you've experienced a really good vinyl system you'll know what all the fuss is about... Now I'm off to oil my beard and sculpt my man-bun. [/quote] I have a reasonably good Pro-Ject turntable (it was in the middle of the range price-wise when I bought it about 15 years ago), but in back-to-back tests it can't even compete with a CD of the same album in the DVD drive of my Mac Pro (going via the built-in TOS-Link optical out to my HiFi) for sound quality. This is my biggest beef with vinyl. I'm sure if you spend £1000+ on your vinyl playback equipment, there will be an improvement, but IMO there is something very wrong when you need to spend that much money in order to get the best out of the delivery medium for the music. With a digital file it is simply down to how good your DAC is, and as I said in my first post in this thread the gap in quality between what is now consumer grade and professional equipment is pretty small and getting smaller all the time.

[quote name='ians' timestamp='1481379723' post='3191873'] Can't see the point at all as vinyl only sounds good if the recording process is 100% analogue. Simply pressing out vinyl thats had a digi signal thrown at it cant possibly sound authentic. [/quote] And these days making a record with a 100% analogue production path is near on impossible. When The Terrortones made our mini-album "The Monster Pussy Sessions" the original idea was to do something quick and dirty live in the studio and put it out on cassette. Once we started the process we decided to try and go analogue all the way. The band recorded live onto a Otari 24-track tape machine, and we limited overdubs to a few replacement vocals and theremin. This was then mixed down through an analogue desk with only analogue outboard processing on a Studer 1/4" 1/2-track tape machine. We also made a digital copy of the mix at the same time so we could take it home and listen to it straight away. It was just as well that we made this digital copy because when it came to getting the album mastered we could have supplied the analogue version, but the mastering would have been significantly more expensive to do completely in the analogue domain. And none of the cassette duplication companies we contacted would take anything other than digital files. It was much the same when it came to get our next album produced on vinyl - digital was the preferred medium for the production master. I'm sure that if we had the budget and time available it would still be possible to have a totally analogue signal path from the mics in the studio all the way to the vinyl cutting lathe, but it would involve a lot more expense and someone from the band or record label to be present at both the mastering and the cutting stages in order to approve the analogue version.

[quote name='Leonard Smalls' timestamp='1481373149' post='3191817'] CD easily outperfoms vinyl? Depends on what you're listening to them on! My Advantage cd player rarely sounds as good as my Clearaudio/SME/AudioNote/EAR vinyl set-up... [/quote] Have you done a back-to-back listen of the same album on CD and vinyl where you know that each version has been specially mastered to make the most of its respective delivery medium?

[quote name='Billy Apple' timestamp='1481282767' post='3191156'] It says Thunderbird II, but only has one pup. Was there a TBird I? [/quote] I think the Thunderbird numbers were picked to fit between the Firebird ones which were designated I, III, V and VII. Pity there was no 3 pick-up Thunderbird VI...

To the OP. What are you actually after? An increase in tension/stiffness or thickness of your strings?

Putting on a performance surely is the whole point of playing live. The audience needs to be entertained visually as well as aurally. If you can't do the visuals you might as well play a recording.

Peterson Stroborack

[quote name='bubinga5' timestamp='1481199680' post='3190416'] I find the outer nut that sits on the washer can come loose. Maybe I'm not tightening them enough. I also like the look of the Ernie Ball locks [/quote] Every single failure of Schaller strap locks I've seen (including mine) has been down to the fact that they haven't been fitted properly. IIRC EBS Freak posted a comprehensive guide on how to fit them so that they don't work loose. How do the EB version work? AFAICS they look very similar in method to the Dunlop/Warwick design. I've had the Warwick version of these fail mechanically in the locking mechanism with no warning at a gig. They were replaced the following week with a set of Schallers.

I used to play the Balalaika. It's been a long long time since I last picked one up so I don't know how competent I am on it anymore. I even made a solid electric version when I was at school back in 1978, partly as a trial run for making my electric guitar the following year.