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uk_lefty

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Everything posted by uk_lefty

  1. Oh great. Mortgage has sky rocketed, energy bills through the roof... And I've just read that these guys are based in North Yorkshire, where I was born and raised ... And they don't discriminate against left handers. Bad case of GAS setting in.
  2. Six months on.... Mixed reviews on this I guess. We all love a bass at first sight don't we? I find myself not using this as much as I'd expect. It comes out for wedding gigs mainly, but I also took it to the biggest gig of the year in a rock club in Amsterdam! I deliberately took my "cheapest" gear because I didn't know what to expect in terms of risk of stuff going missing in transit, the hotel and the club. I've never been let down by the sound of the bass and it makes me play in a different way to how I play my Stingray or Jack Casady. I think I'd be happier with a four string though. I got a fiver because I joined this band in October last year and their set list is huge. Some songs need a low D but it's not been necessary to venture lower than that.... Yet. I have a drop D tuner on my Stingray so it's not like I bring the Sire out just for two songs. I guess I just find the neck a bit wide because I don't play fivers as much as fours and my other fiver has a very shallow neck and I've owned it twenty years so it feels completely natural. The satin finish on the neck is better than the glossy finish on the old V7 I had but nothing, absolutely nothing, feels as good as my Stingray neck. I still can't believe the value for money on this bass. Even so, as good as it is, I guess it's just the kind of music my band plays that has kept this on the rack more than I had expected.
  3. That looks great. I generally like the look of their basses but this has the retro futuristic style I love.
  4. Don't give Ryanair ideas. They'll charge you per string!!!
  5. I was expecting to see £5k or something crazy. As far as second hand Fenders go, particularly a rare one in lovely condition like that, I was surprised it's under £2k. I've never seen one of those before, looks right up my street!
  6. CIJ PB70 reissue in white with black plate. I had one of these. Sold it to buy a jazz. Sold the jazz. I want my old one back for my current band! It's on at a fair price too. Everyone seems to want a grand for MIJ basses but £750-£800 seems a lot more realistic to me.
  7. Thanks everyone. I'm gunning for a Corona Chorus, either mini or full size, seems like that will do what I need. I'd love to love the EHX one but the number of their pedals I've had that just turned out to be disappointments is too many. It sounds great on demos but their pedals just don't seem to be up to much when I play through them sadly.
  8. I also love Mick Mars' style. There's so much feel in his playing. Anyhows... I was saying just the other day how I don't have any Fenders anymore but somehow have a few "Gibson" instruments. At one point I had a Fender MIJ P Bass, MIM Jazz, Fender acoustic guitar and a Squier Tele. Now I have an Epiphone Casino guitar, Epiphone Jack Casady bass, and the old faithful Kramer (while owned by Gibson) fretless bass. I have a Sire jazz so that's Fender inspired but tbh I hardly play it, and my number 1 is my MM Stingray, made by Leo but he didn't put his name on it. I was thinking "am I a Gibson man now?" Then realised I never want a Thunderbird ever. I'm an Epiphone guy, that's it!
  9. Hi everyone, I'm looking for a good quality chorus pedal. I'm liking the Duff McKagan style sound rather than anything too radical. I'm also on a budget (aren't we all these days!), so don't want to be spending more than £70ish. I'm open to secondhand but wary of buying from random people after a few bad experiences. Chorus pedals I've owned in the past: Eden 18v thing, hated it. Behringer bass chorus, bought two brand new, neither worked. Hartke, was dead cheap and surprisingly good, sold when I went to multi fx. Boss Bass Chorus, just found it so bland and not effective. I like the look of the EHX Bass Clone but to be honest as much as I want to like EHX pedals they just never, ever stay on my board.
  10. It's been a while.... I dallied with multi fx. Thought this is great, got an HX Stomp, but added a wah. And added a Boss SY-1. And an outboard tuner. And a Boss OC-2. Realised I was barely using the HX Stomp so I sold it. Now this is my board.... Bass>smoothound wireless. Smoothound into Fender Downtown Express with compressor engaged, drive and EQ ready to go. Tuner out going to HB micro tuner. Fender Downtown Express going out to Boss OC-2 Boss OC-2 into Darkglass Duality Fuzz. Fuzz into SY-1 that has the Nektar expression pedal. Finally, the AMT Bass wah. I love sending the OC-2 into the fuzz set low on the old school setting. And sending that fuzz into the SY-1. The wah and SY-1 don't get used that often. I'm still finding places for the OC-2 but when I used it live at the weekend the sound-man jumped 😄 Happy to take any advice on pedal order and setting etc.
  11. If you absolutely want to save every penny and this is the same as the Caline ones (it looks like it is) then go for it. It won't cause you any issues at all. Problems may come if you like adding cheaper pedals, or more expensive and more thirsty pedals. Then you might get some noise bleeding through and having a decent PSU at least rules out that as a source of unwanted noise. I'm on my second Caline PSU. Nothing wrong with the first one, I just gave it to an old friend who's still using it when I went to a massive multi fx unit. I'm now back to separate pedals and I went straight for a Caline PSU because I know it works.
  12. I pop in there occasionally, there's always something interesting in there. They had a secondhand Warwick double buck I would have bought online but went in and played it and the neck was thicker than the Hulks thighs.
  13. If you'd posted this just ten hrs earlier you'd have sold me two pedals....
  14. Looking for opinions here... I used to use my Ashdown Rootmaster with the compression always on at around 12 o'clock. Compression-wise it wasn't doing much but what I noticed more than anything was a big volume boost. I traded up to an ABM 600 which is a beautiful amp for the EQ and drive. But the compressor.... It doesn't seem to do much at all except make everything a lot quieter. Am I doing it wrong? Is anyone happily using the ABM compressor? Why would the Rootmaster compressor be a big volume boost and the ABM be a huge volume cut?
  15. The Zoom is going back to Thomann! While it's a perfectly acceptable little thing and world's beyond the old BFX708 I had many years back it's just not doing enough in my set up. The Darkglass really put things into perspective for me, and if cashflow were a little better I'd be buying a Darkglass preamp/ drive pedal. As it is I've gone for a second hand Fender Downtown Express. I've gone for that because I don't want to clutter my board but I think compression is a must at the start of my chain, the switchable EQ is a benefit particularly when I can go from a Stingray one gig to a Jack Casady the next, and the drive could be useful going into my ABM. I also like the simplicity of having it all out in front of me to tweak between the two or three settings I'll use.
  16. I've been a Megadeth "appreciator" since discovering Youthanasia aged 13 and working my way through other albums as and when I could scrape the money together. The "new" sound of Megadeth from Dystopia and the latest album is not a return to Peace Sells or Rust in Peace. It just isn't. I don't think it's trying to be either. It's more in step with other big metal acts of the moment, it has commercial relevance I guess. It still has Mustaine's voice, lyrics and guitar style but the overall sound is more up to date. I'm ok with that. If I want to listen to Peace Sells I'll put that on. If I want to be disappointed by Megadeth I'll listen to their utterly pointless duet version of A Tout Le Monde with Christina Scabia. On the whole I'm not blown away by it, I'm not going to make it my favourite Megadeth album over Youthanasia or Rust in Peace, but I'm glad it exists and hope it does well.
  17. Have already sent to the drummer/ sound-man in training and the guitarist who is an engineer and likes all this technical stuff. Thank you!
  18. That's on the list! Along with the Fender Downtown Express, and maybe an EHX Battalion though I had one briefly in the past. Alternatively I could get a dedicated compressor and separate preamp. I'm trying to spend as little as possible though I do genuinely think the more you spend the more you get! It's a tough one.
  19. Not sure really, it definitely could have been. We're spending four hours on Weds night getting our PA out, all our gigging gear and setting our levels and making sure we all know exactly what we are doing. The lads only used the PA system once or twice before I joined and they're still learning more and more about it. The guitarist has in-ears now, a very expensive fancy set, and that helped because though we didn't have ambient mics he could hear conversations going on over near the bar! My hunch is the main issue was sound pinging around the room but if we know the PA gear inside out and all the little troubleshooting tips then we will be better at managing these things in future.
  20. Saturday night, private party for a friend of the signer. Bringing our own PA gear except some speakers in situ. Sound issues all over, sadly. The room was small and there was some weird reverb on the bass notes. If I played a note that would usually go "dum" and end in this place it would go "dumMmMmmmmWhooooomph". Worse still notes below A caused a swelling mush of low end. The singer couldn't hear his monitor, and I usually rely on that monitor too. Still, nice crowd of people enjoying themselves and celebrating their friends birthday. Once more we had a request for a song I've never learned but the band had played years back before I joined, so I had to busk my way through... Made harder by the singers notes being chords for a guitar with a capo at the 2nd fret, quite hard to do on the fly! But we got through. Don't know about anyone else but if I make even small mistakes it haunts me forever. I don't know if the audience notices at all but it bothers me a lot. Plenty to work on in rehearsals this week!
  21. So.... Played a private party on Saturday night. The sound on the venue was shocking. Honestly the worst venue. I can usually deal with not hearing my bass properly but still hearing the singers monitor, or the other way round, but this was truly awful. Any note below A produced a swelling mush. There was natural reverb in the room on the bass notes that was quite eerie, it sounded like an effect being applied. Anyhow, pedals verdict: Zoom B1.four. I used standard settings for amp Sims and compression. Jury is still out here. I need to either get into this pedal with my PC or return it quick. Part of this feeling is explained by... Darkglass Duality Fuzz. Woah. This is built for gigging. I never used fuzz much until this last year but it's become something I rely upon now. I love this pedal for how easy it is to use, how much variance there is to the sound off just four rotary dials, and how perfectly it sits in the mix. This explains where the money on good quality individual pedals goes when you compare to something like the Zoom. Even in comparison to my old Helix Stomp there's just something to the sound that's a smidge "better". Boss OC-2. Unfortunately with the sound so poor I couldn't really hear this as well as I would have liked to and only bothered to use it on one song. Next week's gig should have better sound so more chance to explore it then. So this leaves me with a small quandary on what to do with the Zoom. I feel like I need a compressor, my amps onboard compressor just doesn't do it for me. I'd like an overdrive of some sort, though I play through an ABM amp which has its valve drive and can turn the gain right down on the Darkglass if I want to. I would like a chorus but I'm not so bothered on that front right now. It would be handy though to have something that can go straight to PA if the amp fails or is forgotten or whatever, so a preamp/ DI type pedal would be useful but not essential. My marketplace, eBay and Reverb searches continue!
  22. Based on this, and all other courier rants, the whole thing just seems like a lottery!! Or Russian Roulette.
  23. All couriers can be awful, I'm sure, but I have found the intermediary companies to be a completely false economy. They might get you a parcel cheaper but if you book through them you are f***ed if anything goes wrong. You can't contact the courier because you aren't the buyer of the service, the intermediary is, and if you contact the intermediary they have zero power or interest to help you AND will not refund you if the courier messes up and your parcel comes back months later looking like Mike Tyson set to work on it. They are a complete blocker to getting any sense out of anything and not worth the small discount they can give.
  24. So my band are going bananas about getting the PA settings digitally set. It makes sense. But... The bass doesn't go through the PA today except for the drummer's monitor. Even so, I need to go to a very lengthy rehearsal to get all the levels set. Level setting apparently needs to also consider effects settings. As I am in the process of experimenting with my board some pedals will come and go. I've been looking at preamp pedals that have an fx loop. My very simple thinking is, loop all my effects into one preamp pedal (I'd like a preamp pedal with compressor) and then I can control output volume with the preamp pedal. Is this correct? Would it limit volume spikes off my fuzz etc? Or, is it behaving like an amp in that it only wants modulation etc in the loop and not drive and others? In which case the use I want it for is not carried out. I'm confused. Guitarist can't help me. Please help?!
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