BigRedX

[quote name='icastle' timestamp='1448903137' post='2919049'] You're reading it too literally. It's not the direction of airflow, its the item used to create the airflow. A household vaccuum cleaner has a motor spinning around and will create static A can of compressed air doesn't. [/quote] I still don't get it. The vacuum motor is at the end of a great big long plastic tube and probably even further isolated in the case of the modern cyclone vacuums. The important bit is what is happening at the nozzle where the air is being sucked or blown as this is the bit that is in contact with the equipment. A bit more science is required I think.

As you've discovered the latest crop of semi-rigid gig bags are too big for the Bass Safe. To be fair it wasn't deigned to work with them. If you are determined to use the Bass Safe then I suggest you get a normal medium priced Ritter gig bag, or similar, which is the kind of bag the Bass Safe is designed to accommodate and you'll have to live with the fact that your bass doesn't have quite as much protection when it is just in the gig bag.

[quote name='stevebasshead' timestamp='1448897238' post='2918957'] None, I hope I was taught that there's a lot of static created around the hoover nozzle where the air rushes in so it's best/safest to blow dust away using a can of compressed air. Static and motherboards often disagree with each other... [/quote] Can someone then please explain why sucking air causes static, but blowing doesn't?

[quote name='DaytonaRik' timestamp='1448870834' post='2918639'] I don't use any bass effects at all so a board isn't something I use. Hell, even when I played guitar in bands all of my gear was rack-mounted and midi switched...just so much easier as one foot switch changed EQ, gain, levels, amp channel and all my effects associated with that patch. I never understand guitarists (and bass players) who want to tap dance all night! [/quote] Very much this as regards effects. I ditched all my non-programmable effects in 1990 replacing them with two or three rack-mounted programmable and MIDI controllable devices in both my guitar and bass rigs and I haven't looked back. I think the frustrations of many years in the 80s of playing non-programmable synths had a lot to do with it.

"I Dream Of Wires" Essential viewing for anyone interested in synthesisers. Although I should point out that the edit available on Netflix is about half the length of the full version.

[quote name='Lozz196' timestamp='1448718544' post='2917626'] As above, Gildan for quality (not too expensive either) and L & XL for the majority of your stock (unless you`re a band with young skinny fans that is). [/quote] We're a band with a good proportion of young and skinny fans. They simply don't buy T-shirts. Hence we have sold out of all our XL stock, only have a few L sizes left.

I can honestly say that there's not a single thing mentioned so far in this thread that I would want for christmas. In fact there's a couple of things on here that would result in the sender being crossed of my presents list for next year if they turned up in my stocking!

Either a T-shirt printer that is local to you or Awesome Merchandise - whichever is the better deal. These days unless you go very cheap you should be getting good quality shirts. Most places currently offer Gildan which are excellent quality. Expect to pay between £300 and £350 for 100 shirts with a single colour print on one side. Regarding sizes IME no matter what your core audience looks like the L and XL sizes far outsell everything else. It's worth having a few in every size though including ladies - we've sold T-shirts on several occasions simply because we were the only band at the gig who had them available in the right sizes... For the rest of the stuff, I'm really not sure. Certainly our audience wants mostly recorded material (CDs and Vinyl) and T-shirts. Every time we've done other things they haven't sold particularly well and we've ended up giving most of them away.

Apart from bands I was in, I don't have any band T-shirts from before 2000. Not because they haven't survived, but because I never bought any. When I first started going to gigs at the end of the 70s by the time I'd paid to get in I was lucky if I had enough money left over for a drink. I don't think band merchandise was ever on my radar - certainly not T-shits. If I did buy anything from the bands at the gigs I went to it was most likely to be a recording either on cassette or 7" vinyl depending on what was available. Even now I've got less than 10 band T-shirts from gigs I've been to as a member of the audience.

I have to admit I quite like the looks of that. I'll defer comments on the positioning of the pickup with regards to the sound until I've actually tried one.

Love the looks of some of his designs, but haven't yet played one that I thought was anything other than "meh" in terms of feel/playability. In the end I got Martin to build me a Sei Offset Flamboyant.

[quote name='Telebass' timestamp='1448470320' post='2915706'] Les Paul. I was staying across the road from thr Iridium in NYC and it was Monday. But I was very tired, and didn't bother to walk 20 yards. BIG mistake... [/quote] When was this? I went in October 2008. They don't half pack the punters in - barely enough elbow room to eat your burger. The band were fantastic and Les Paul is a great story teller, but unfortunately arthritis had rendered his guitar playing to a shadow of what it used to be. However he was still a better player than I'll ever be! Oh and they usher you straight out after the show to make way for the next one...

Start by changing your strings. When you say they are in tune is it at every fret or are you just checking the open strings? Even strings that are less than a year old can wear away at the point where they come into contact with the fret. Once this happens the unit mass of the string is no longer consistent along its length and the fretted notes will never be in perfect tune any more. Of course it may be that the recordings you are playing along to simply haven't been recorded in standard pitch (A=440Hz). There's no reason for them to have been. Anything recorded to tape may have been vary-speeded up on down the get the right tempo which will have changed the pitch. Also anything recorded before the mid 80s when electronic tuners started to become more common will have been tuned to what ever was a convenient reference in the studio - normally something like the in-house piano or an instrument that the band used that was difficult to retune. There is no guarantee that any of these were exactly at "concert pitch" so long as the whole band was in tune with each other it didn't matter.

IME the current range of high specification semi-rigid gig bags are all too big and too heavy and IIRC the Mono is one of the smallest and lightest (it certainly was when I bought mine). TBH by the time you've paid out for one of these cases and a Bass Safe you might as well have bought a Hiscox Lite-Flite case which is only slightly heavier than most of the current crop of semi rigid cases and is actually smaller than many of them.

Last time I looked at getting a Peli case, I found that the sizes were a bit tight on the width for some bass guitars.

When I first discovered pop/rock music I wasn't really ready for going to see bands, besides I lived in a town where touring bands rarely played and even if I had been any my parents would never have allowed it. Looking back I think I might have like to have seen Bowie, Slade, The Sweet and T.Rex around 1973… But maybe I'm better off with my records. When I left home and got into my big record buying and gig going phase in the early 80s and onwards I was lucky enough to have been able to see pretty much every band that I was into. I missed out on Joy Division and New Order but everyone I knew who had seen them said that live they were pretty awful. From that era I regret having never seen The Human League pre "Dare" and Cabaret Voltaire when Chris Watson was still playing with them. I've seen both bands since then and while they were excellent, those earlier times where when they were playing most of the songs that I really liked. Since then the only bands that I've really liked but haven't as yet seen are Mew, M83 and Styrofoam.

I've found the easiest and quickest way to sort out problems like this is simply to report your original post with a quick note of what is wrong with it in the report.

[quote name='Truckstop' timestamp='1448356509' post='2914625'] I'll remember that when you start playing big shows. [/quote] TBH as much as I'd like my band to be reasonably popular, IMO the music is too much of a minority interest for that to realistically happen.

[quote name='cheddatom' timestamp='1448362602' post='2914693'] I don't understand this. Are they going to change what they're playing because they've become popular? [/quote] No IME bands that I like become popular by changing what they play to something I no longer like. I am very much aware that my tastes in music are fairly minority, it doesn't really bother me.

[quote name='ubit' timestamp='1448297314' post='2914244'] To be honest, I usually follow this philosophy, but every now and then, the buggers get popular! [/quote] By the time a band gets popular enough for tickets to be expensive/fast selling they are no longer playing the kind of music I want to see/hear.

[quote name='Telebass' timestamp='1448054484' post='2912832'] Really, I'm totally surprised. In that situation, I'd be looking at which was duff, the bass or the amp! In the OPs case, as he's certain the bass is that low an output, I'd be spreading its guts on the bench to find out why! Maybe it's got 25K pots instead of 250K... [/quote] My thoughts exactly. I had a bass with low output - even after I'd connected the pickups directly to the output jack. Turns out that it was a duff set of pickups. However I was still able to get a usable volume out of it by turning up the input gain on my amp.

I'm trying to get a quote for shipping a mixing desk. Unfortunately it weighs more than 50kg which is the limit for InterParcel. In its packaging it's going to be in the region of 65kg and the size is 120 x 90 x 50 cm. UPS have quoted me £200. Can anyone recommend me another good but cheaper service?

[quote name='heady' timestamp='1448022321' post='2912358'] It's interesting you spoke about construction over scale length when it comes to a decent low B string - what exactly is important about the construction? I can't remember who (either Fodera or Mattisson I think) build basses where the B goes through the body at the bridge, making it's scale 35" on a 34" guitar. [/quote] IME it's all about the stiffness of the neck and the rigidity of the neck joint. Personally I haven't found a 5-string bolt-on neck bass that had what I would consider to be a decent low B. Theses days I'm exclusively a 5-string player and all my current basses (Gus, Sei & Warwick) are either set-neck or thru-neck construction. Stringing the low B through the body doesn't change the scale length - that's dictated by the position of the nut and the bridge but it does alter the compliance of the string and with the right strings can make it feel stiffer.

Unfortunately we have had to cancel this gig due to Mr Venom not being very well at all. :-(( We're hoping to re-arrange a new date as soon as possible and I'll be posting the details up here when it happens. In the mean time feel free to [url=http://www.dickvenom.com/merchandise.html]buy a copy of the album[/url]!

With that kind of money to potentially spend the world is pretty much your oyster. What you need to do is go and play as many 5-string basses as you can at every single price point until you have truly worked out what it is that you like and don't like. So start by arranging trips to Bass Direct, Bass Gear and The Gallery and get your hands on some basses. Plus while you are at The Gallery have a chat with Martin Petersen of Sei Bass and see what he can do for you. BTW construction is far more important than scale length when it comes to getting a decent low B string. My 34" Sei Bass has the best low B of any bass I've ever played.