dannybuoy

There's a bargain custom made bass with 70s J + sweet spot MM configuration lurking in the classifieds somewhere. Sorry I can't remember the name of it!

Check out the Mr Black Fwonkbeta also. I prefer that to the Mutron 3X and Meatball I had previously. It's darker, dirtier and thicker them the Mutron! I've been waiting a few months for my VFE Mini Mu to arrive and just got the customs ticket in the post today. A damn shame the exchange rate has gone tits up, it was a lot higher than expected!

If you want an old big-box Q-Tron (designed by the same man, Mike Beigel) to tide you over until you locate one, I have one for sale. It's not quite the same but it's still a funky little (well, not so little) box!

I doubt it very much. I've been working on the PC all day, and this only appeared when I browsed BC. After closing the site it popped up again the very second I browsed to Basschat. It's most likely a popup ad being triggered by a malicious advertising banner on this site.

Same here. Address bar in the URL starts with data:text/html;base64,PCFET0NUWVBFIGh0bWw.... and is thousands of characters long. Fake Win7 AV window in the background and voiceover telling me to ring them. Might be worth everyone at BC ringing them and leading them up the garden path as I assume it costs them money to host an 0800 number!

A radius wouldn't affect the action if the nut was the same width as the bridge; but because the bridge is wider this does affect the geometry. Take it to extremes, imagine the string anchored at the middle of the nut and the far end of the bridge; up by the nut you could get the action just right, but down the dusty end the would be a bigger gap due to the angle of the string. So a flat board will allow for very slightly lower action.

Looks like these parts fail often - mine went on my BB415 and in a pinch I stole one from a Yamaha RBX275! I'd quite like to get the old one working again so I'd also like to know!

I doubt it's a USA body either. Alder has a wider grain than that usually, that's more likely basswood, plus the sunburst on the USA is 3-tone with a bit of red in there and has a bit more depth to it, that looks more like the cheap 2-tone burst you see on the Squier VMs. Fender on the left:

Just spotted something interesting that I've not seen before. I was looking recently for a 'Ray style bass, this would have ticked all my boxes before I ended up with a Sandberg Basic. On further digging it looks like it's discontinued and this is the only one around for sale: [url="http://www.gear4music.com/Guitar-and-Bass/Greg-Bennett-Royale-RLB-4-Bass-Guitar-Black/1BIZ"]http://www.gear4music.com/Guitar-and-Bass/Greg-Bennett-Royale-RLB-4-Bass-Guitar-Black/1BIZ[/url] This Sandberg Basic of mine with a single MM pickup and TI flats is one of my favourite basses - tons of thump, throaty mids to poke through, but without the brittle top end that a 'Ray with rounds has. Works great in blues/R&B situations - this looks like it would do a good job there too!

When pushed to overdrive the Zoom Ampeg model is very mushy - with a pick there is enough bite to push through and it actually gets very close to the record, but forget trying`to play fingerstyle - it sounds like your rig is in a swamp! EDIT - seems I've already mentioned this above!

Dunlop Super Bright nickels, or standard D'Addario nickels are the brightest I know of. Also not all steels are that rough - the Dunlop Super Bright steels for example are much smoother than D'Addario FlexSteels.

[quote name='jasetbass' timestamp='1478849987' post='3172050'] Cheers, but aren't toroidal transformers supposed to have less noise by design? And are they better than digital switched supplies? Any ideas which pedals don't work so well with switching supplies? I'm confused as to whether the type should be a significant factor, or is it just different ways to crack a nut? Manufacturer's blurb says their way is best, but is it?! [/quote] Toroidal transformers spread the coil around a donut rather than all wrapped around in the same direction. I guess this results in less noise as the as each wrap of the coil is facing another going the other way so that their electromagnetic fields cancel each other out. But if you put a pedal on top with a coil in it like an old wah pedal, it would still pick up significant noise from a toroidal transformer, just nowhere near as bad as a regular one. Switching supplies don't generate the same kind of electromagnetic disturbance. But if they are poorly designed and not filtered properly they can be noisy, such as generic cheap ones designed for general use like charging your phone rather than for audio applications. I would expect anything made by the likes of Strymon or OneSpot to be well designed though. I was all set to buy a OneSpot CS-7 until I realised it would not fit under my Pedaltrain Metro.

[quote name='jasetbass' timestamp='1478860926' post='3172161'] Thanks for that, so another DC5 vote! Anything that involves me and power tools will inevitably end in disaster, so I don't think I'll be going down that road lol! [/quote] You need to drill holes in the Pedaltrain to mount the DC5 btw. It's quite heavy so double sided tape might not hold up and there's not enough clearance to use Velcro without bigger feet!

[quote name='jasetbass' timestamp='1478850737' post='3172058'] Appreciate the reply. Yeah, realise I'm limited with the Nano. That's why I'm trying to get advice on both board and supply, 'cos if consensus was that the ToneTrunk was rubbish, then that pretty much makes my mind up. The Diamond's optical isn't it? Do you think it's an optical thing or specific to the Diamond? More to the point, did you leave the Diamond off your board, or replace it with a different compressor that didn't have the same problem? Cheers [/quote] I think it must just be the Diamond, I now use an Effectrode PC-2A which is also optical and that doesn't have any noise problems whatsoever. What pedals are you powering? I would start off with a simple 1-Spot if they are all 9V and analog.

[quote name='arthurhenry' timestamp='1478953847' post='3172915'] For me, instantly recognising a familiar chord sequence takes away from the effect of the lyrics and melody. If I wrote something which fitted a I, V, VI, IV progression, I'd scrap it, as I couldn't bear to be that predictable. [/quote] That's fine if you're writing music for people to stroke their beards to. But most people who listen to and enjoy music don't even know what a chord progression is.

So if we have a bass that has gone through the machine so that it set up to it's absolute optimum setup with one certain set of strings / neck relief, let's imagine that's 99% perfect. Change the strings or tweak the truss rod and it might drop to 90% perfect. On the other hand a luthier doing everything manually without the precision or calculations offered by the machine would probably be lucky to get to that 90% spot in the first place. Then change the strings or tweak the truss and you might drop to 80%. Your argument against the PLEK process, that changing the strings or relief after the setup result in a sub-optimal setup, surely also applies to the human luthier. If the process the luthier goes through gave better results than the PLEK, why would they not just change their model / algorithm to match whatever a human would do? I suspect it is currently doing a better job than most humans, assuming the brains behind the algorithm have everything correct.

Happy Effectrode PC-2A user here, traded it with a Diamond. It's a very overlooked pedal, yet Ovnilab places it in the top tier.

I would admit defeat and get a 3Leaf Octabvre Mini. Never found a decent OC-2 replacement on iOS!

The DC5 is the only one that will fit under a Pedaltrain Nano, I recommend it (Hotrox sell them). I tested plenty of pedals on top of the power supply, into a headphone amp with the treble whacked up to check for noise introduced by pedals being too near the power supply. There was a barely detectable hum introduced with some pedals when placed directly over the supply. Certainly not an issue, even when recording. The Diamond compressor picked up loads of noise when it was anywhere on the board though, even in bypass, yet was fine when placed directly on the floor!

[quote name='redbandit599' timestamp='1478534813' post='3169674'] You might be interested in this - also a bargain, I know I got one at a few quid less £527. But £534 brand new. Looks great in black (I have a white Bb1024x too and I think teh black edges it in the looks dept.) https://www.bax-shop.co.uk/right-handed-bass-guitar/yamaha-bb1025x-5-string-electric-bass-guitar-black [/quote] I have that exact bass, and that is a bargain especially considering the state of the £ right now!

The EMG Geezer Butler is a vintage voiced pickup but with the modern convenience of coming with pre-wired pots and solderless connections. Gets rave reviews too.

Can you use it with any iOS app? Garageband has free bass amp sims that sound very good indeed.

[quote name='dudewheresmybass' timestamp='1478694375' post='3170967'] Just for pure headphone practise I use the ehx headphone amp. Sounds great, battery powered, and the size of a mooer pedal [/quote] No aux input on that though, they missed an opportunity there!

[quote name='jazzyvee' timestamp='1478540225' post='3169738'] + 1 on the PJB Big head it's extremely high quality soundwise and . I've had two of the Vox amplug things and whilst i thought they sounded fine, the weak point is the plastic jackplug which is extremely weak and is the part that broke on one of mine and the other was the headphone jack just pushed inside one day when I was plugging in. I wouldn't recommend them. The only gripe I have on the PJB is that I've never got anywhere near the "Up to 8 hours" that it says in their literature and when it goes flat, the lead isn't long enough to plug it in and keep playing whilst sat on the sofa. [/quote] It uses a standard USB lead though so you can get an extension cable, or even plug it into a power pack designed for recharging mobiles.

Maybe their 'ultra low' isn't that low! Just launched it and there is only 'low' and 'ultra low'. Tried it with GarageBand? It has free Ampeg sims that sound better than anything else I've found on iOS.