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BassTractor

⭐Supporting Member⭐
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Everything posted by BassTractor

  1. OK, I'll bite. So, I get up at 7AM and start my work for the day. It's gonna be a busy day, and, trying to cater for the customers' perceived (or preferably real) needs, I hardly have time for a coffee or lunch break, so my wife shoves food down my throat with a goose stick - at every opportunity. Customers even come from the extreme North of Norway to the extreme South where I live, specifically to talk with me and to try my boats. I sell hundreds of boats and do not have the capacity to sell even more, as that would detract from the level of quality that my customers wish for and that I think they need. After 7 or 8PM, the shop now closed, I'm having a few hours of administration. At 11PM, I start answering emails, and am not done before 2AM, after which I'll get five hours of sleep. Then, just as I'm to shut down the computer, an email arrives from someone who knows better, the email telling me for example that my website isn't good enough, to which I reply: "If my website had been any better, I could have sold even more kayaks, and that would mean less time spent with each individual customer. I don't wanna do that." That same email could also have been about my lacking email response. IOW: please do not curtly say that "ignoring your clientele is not a sensible way to do business". It's not certain that you're a better judge on this than the shop is. As I said: IME and IMHO, email is the least sensible way of communicating. It's detrimental to the customers' interests, whatever those customers might believe (of course depending on the nature of the emails).
  2. Allow me to once again look at the email thing from the shop's side: IME as a former shop owner (mainly high-end sea kayaks), email is the least efficient way of really helping customers and also the least efficient way of surviving as a shop. Of course, there's a huge difference between the email: - "Could I visit the store on Sunday when it's officially closed? " and the email (of which I've had more than enough) : - "Your kayak "Greenlander" vs. competitor's kayak "Transporter". Discuss. " There are many aspects to this, but among those: - It starts with half-interested customers firing short emails at several shops at a time, demanding lengthy answers. - It's incredibly time consuming to answer well, especially when you do not know the customer in question, and do not know their aims or their needs. - Even when you decide to answer well, there's no impressive revenue as a result. Revenue comes from people phoning in and especially from people actually visiting the shop and trying out the kayaks that might fit. I could go on and on. A quick, live, exchange of thoughts, the shop asking the right questions and responding well to the answers (and in my case: seeing the customer on the water) helps the customer best and at the same time helps keep the shop afloat. My website specifically asked people to avoid email because of its inefficiency.
  3. PMs in Status Updates. How? Why? Mind boggled, as in: not critical, but just not understanding.

    1. AinsleyWalker

      AinsleyWalker

      I think it stems from this: if you go onto someone's profile, there is immediately a text box to submit a status/public message on their feed. I can only think a lot of people don't read the labelling and assume it's a private message.
      A case of strange website design choice, tbh. Not sure when/why you'd need to post a public message from someone else's profile..

    2. BassTractor

      BassTractor

      Thanks so much, @AinsleyWalker !  Yeah, that seems to make sense, and probably explains a lot of this. It did my head in, but I think I can now leave it be. Yeah, strange website design. Maybe there is an explanation for it. Thanks!  Bert

    3. SpondonBassed

      SpondonBassed

      I miss the good old days on the older BC forum.

       

      @Les would report on the post-gig feast on the band's way home of a weekend.  He would include a photo with the report.  We've lost that because of an "upgrade" a few years ago.  Weekends are just not the same.

       

      It was fun to follow the band's gastronomic adventures in finding food outlets after hours.  It was helpful too.  Every one knows that Wigan is the "centre of the known universe".  Les's reviews could be of great value to musicians travelling through.

       

      Now... where did I leave my tin of phonograph needles? I want to play my 78s.

       

       

       

       

       

       

  4. Aye, and to help us elderly, they should from now on be called Cardi G. This here is Cardi A, and who knows: there might even be more of these.
  5. ... and here's the third. Glorious once more, and (again) it reminds me of Stereolab and also a bit of The Free Design.
  6. Here's the first single from LSD. Glorious!
  7. Thanks for posting this, @steve-bbb. I had no lsdea whatsoever that they were being active. Whilst sounding very nice, Woodeneye, to me, is far from the most innersting song they've made. Still: what a treat with those rows of chords, and what a promise. I'm sure to purchase LSD on CD.
  8. Hehehe. I fondly remember how I played for funerals and weddings on the same day - playing the same pieces twice: in minor and slow at the funeral, and of course in major and up-tempo at the wedding. 😀
  9. Could that be Isaiah Brown by any chance? In a YT vid, he plays a lefty Sire Marcus Miller M5.
  10. To really, really, really ruin the band's name: Ye
  11. I've just looked it up, and indeed his 2020 conviction was suspended with a two-year time frame. This guy has been at it for more than 35 years, spent six months in prison in '89, and already in 2020 had roughly ten convictions - maybe more in the mean time. He's not gonna stop.
  12. Aye, "within the time frame". I'd be surprised if our man Mick's suspended sentence, from years back, hasn't passed its Sell-By date. One can only hope the prosecutor knows their stuff, and can draw the complete picture for the judge.
  13. My sister and I both had similar experiences: You don't wanna shove these people right into the arms of the other racists, homophobes etc, and you try to talk to them. Then you don't make this a full-time job, and you see that nothing happens. Then you give up and walk away. My sister stopped giving work to such a person; I stopped having contact with such a neighbour. The latter lost about eight friends in just two years. 😱 I see the user manuals online that teach you how to deal with these people, and it's always about keeping the communication open and about asking them questions and about letting them talk until they understand something isn't quite right in what they say. I've not seen that happen, and do feel I've not tried hard enough. That said, when I worked in child protection services, we saw the sweetest boy in town being shaped by a politically extreme group, and we did manage to get him out of there. Sometimes your work comes with a positive achievement.
  14. Dunno how much the Hohners differ, but in the case of my B2B, I found that the length of the strap was essential - and the B2B has been the only bass I've had that was that particular about it. With that bit out of the way, however, the B2B worked perfectly for my body. Of course different bodies have different measurements, angles etc. I'm guessing maybe the L2 likewise is particular. As to sitting, I missed that Steinberger fold-out thingie, but even better solutions should be easy fixes.
  15. You can't know if music is A.I. A.I. has no idea whatsoever as to the underlying forces in musical composition, and its music is just as bad as music made by most humans. 😁
  16. Only had two flawed gigs as "bass player", so this is about my classical "career" as a pipe organ player: An ideal gig is one where I deliver the goods, or better, and afterwards someone comes over and says something along the lines of "I just learned something new about Bach".
  17. Weird thing (to me) is that we have the same in the classical music world: some young people with enormous online presence and Wikipedia articles about them, and who travel the planet to give concerts ... and ... they can't play for the life of them. Sophomoric at best, and in fact I've had 1st year students play better than these. I think their visual appearances have something to say in this.
  18. Whilst I shamefully must admit to speeding up the playback for bass parts, I can now see how slowing down could work: Just slow down by a factor 128, and use tally marks on a sheet of paper for the individual hertzes. 👍😐
  19. Rob answered that one on fb, as seen in @Linus27' excellent post: "I only met John in later life but we instantly hit it off."
  20. That's exactly what we did in basso continuo: longstrings person and keys person got together for a little chat before playing the piece. Ha. I'd never known that modern bands are just like baroque orchestras! 🙂
  21. Can't provide you all you need to know, sorry, as I don't know everything, but I do see that, currently, you're not a paying member, which means you can not have a jazz for sale. Maybe this in part explains your editing troubles (not that I understood everything you wrote). Did you put the ad up when you were a paying member previously?
  22. Year started "playing": 10 (yup! 1980 was that good; the playing not so, though) Number of basses: 2 (down from 16, but up from 0) Music theory: 10 (but some of my teachers have 100) Technique: 0 Groove: 0
  23. As to takes, also the Guitar Hero III version of "Cult of Personality" is different than the album version.
  24. Can't offer direct advice, sorry, but: Whatever you do: do not jump on the chance of getting a second hand Yamaha U1 or similar without thorough investigation. There's a whole industry out there, sending semi-rotten pianos to Poland or China for new veneer, or importing newly-veneered same from Asia, and the buyer is the victim. Other than that, our own tiny upright came extremely cheap from the local Salvation Army's second-hand shop, and I can honestly say that it has given me more joy than the Steinway and Bösendorfer grands I used to play before. Maybe an idea. One has to keep in mind that second-hand pianos can be had for peanuts, and not all of them are bad. Look at the seller: if the piano comes from your typical "classical" family, it's probably one that has been well taken care of. Your choice whether you want to buy in a shop and get it delivered and placed, or wish to organise the move through a specialised piano moving company. BTW, in addition to our upright, for the money we saved we bought a digital one, and would sometimes even play together on two instruments. Also handy for the divorce! One each! 😂 (My wife wanted the SA one; I got to keep the Roland.)
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