Huge Hands

I was a sound "mixist" in the late 90s/early 2000s and I can say that there are some useless sound people and some prima-donna d**khead band members out there too. My rule was pre-amp DI wherever possible, but if it was obvious the "sound" was all being done in the amp, I would take it post. A bit of discussion with the band always helped, unless they felt they were too important to speak with you. I can remember the bass player who insisted on using his own home-made preamp thing which appeared to output DC and melted the voice coils in the event's shared backline 8x10, or the guitarists/drummers who insisted on playing all the time when soundchecking. However, I have also been playing gigs where I have had to show the sound person how to operate their own desk, or get rid of some really bad resonance on stage, things like that. As for backline - I was never sure if this was an urban myth or not, but I remember a guitarist once telling me of another guitarist pal who once turned up at a venue with his amp that kept cutting out, only to find the venue had the same one so he swapped them after the gig when they weren't looking and left his in place of the venue's good one!

You are Charles Berthoud and I claim my £5....

I think Mr Sapko and myself would have completely different music tastes judging by his playing on clips, but I find the guy funny and love some of his not-so-subtle mickey takes when he lists people and puts another person's photo up. Carry on Danny as far as I am concerned.

From the thread title, I thought this was going to be an erotic dating thread.....

Its not bass related but in the 90's, when at University, my Dad was an avid car boot sale visiter. I was doing a project on why VHS prevailed and Betamax failed, so I asked him to see if he could find me an old Betamax machine that I could use to demonstrate the differences in design. He duly came back with a machine with a box full of free tapes, all with well known movie labels on them. I was pleased to find the machine worked, so set about testing it with the box of tapes. They were all p**n films.... I had to re-record over them before I could use them for my Uni demo. One of the tapes was marked "Jimi Hendrix Live". After I told that story at a job I later worked at, it became a running joke that if anyone was sharing mucky videos around. the question would be "Is Jimi Hendrix on tour at the moment?"

I have always had a thing for lollipops after seeing that photo of Macca with a Jazz with them in the studio. I recently bought a set of 4 Gotoh standard ones with an extra LH one for my 5 string Squier P build. They have a much bigger footprint than the original Squier ones and as such the in-line 4 are almost touching each other. The upside down one wouldn't fit under the others, so I ended up grinding off a corner and re-drilling the plate to make it fit. I should have gone with the Ultra-lite version which others have suggested......

I would be interested to see how it compares to the Sonicake Pocket Master, which (if memory serves) is a similar price and has a screen so you can see what you have selected. I have the Sonicake and love it as a headphone amp for noodling in the house and can also bluetooth my phone to it to play along with stuff.

The AI stuff is obviously polarising and a lot of people understandably won't even listen to it, me included.....until..... I accidentally dropped my phone while listening to Spotify and must have accidentally played this (I assume it was a recommended one) below. I don't think it is a reworked cover, so may be "original" in the fingers of the person that put the parameter in for the AI? Hopefully someone here would know but Google is not bringing up much. I love this track though, sorry!

I bought a pair of the KZ ZS10 in-ears a couple of years ago from Ali-Express that were mentioned in the in-Ears thread as a good starter to try when I thought I had a in-ears gig coming up. That fell through, but I use them a lot for noodling in the house, connected to my Sonicake Pocket Master (with a mini-jack to 1/4" adaptor). I did buy a second set as I didn't think they would last, but they have, so the 2nd pair are still in the box. I don't normally like the rubber bung type earbuds but they do seem to work well for that. I have not tried them on a sweaty gig though.

I guess it depends on your view on the morals of it, but a lot of it seems to be happening from what I have seen - I saw an old Squier P5 recently where they wanted more for the body than I paid for the two I have second hand. I suppose it is no worse than someone having an old banger on their drive that they have been offered £200 scrap for deciding to pull it apart and sell the spares to others trying to keep theirs on the road. It means a lot more hassle and having to go to the post office a lot, but you can make more money if you can be bothered...

I have always assumed the noise is coming from strain around the plastic hoop between the main strap and the bit that attaches to the guitar (just above the Lekato plectrum pocket on your picture). I admit I don't use straplocks, just the original button with rubber rings around the outside, a-la Grolsch bottle top seals. I have had this on one of my fairly average weight basses, and not just the Sire boat anchor. Maybe I just got a bad one.

I have several padded straps from Thomann over the years which I really like but bought one of these Lekato ones to try. I find the strap is quite grippy, so you can't easily slide the bass around on your shoulder without feeling it is going to rip your top (I have a band jacket with rope epaulettes in the concert band, so it feels like it is going to wreck that). I also find the bit that attaches to the top horn is very squeaky under load, as though the plasticky leather stuff is about to split. Just my experience, obvs.

They remind me of some EV single 18" subs a venue I worked in had about 26 years ago, and they were probably a good few years old then. They were probably about 10 times the weight of your designs, but those EVs used to act like they had sold their soul to the sub-frequency devil and rumble away like mad! I have fond memories of them - I assume yours will be just as good if not better!

This was on at the weekend and always bugged me. I'm sure he did it for comic effect, but Larvell Jones (Michael Wilmslow) "playing" bass on the back of a Strat? jgszgrxj6lg41.mp4

At university in the 90s doing Electronics and Music Tech we had an ex-BBC engineer as a lecturer who decided to try and teach us how to correctly set up the head bias (he had set out of kilter) on a Studer with an oscilloscope. I remember saying to him "This is all well and good, but what if something went really wrong with it? Wouldn't it be good to look at that?" He replied that he didn't want to break his precious Studer any more than that as they were too expensive... He was a lovely guy so I'm not knocking him personally but I always got frustrated that we never got any real-world electronic failures to deal with on our course, just lots of theory.

Are they 1/4" tape? If they're like the ones in the OP's photo. then surely you would need to buy studio quality machines like Studer etc with those big locking hubs? My dad was into reel-to-reels in the 80s and had some pretty professional looking domestic models. but they all had the small 3 prong hole in the middle like @Rosie C's example. Not that those full size reels would fit on Rosie's machine! I wonder if they do adaptors for the centre? Not that I am planning to go down this rabbit hole of course! It's a long time since I tried splicing tape on a Revox B77! EDIT - I just clicked the link and saw how much they were - definitely not!

I bought the 10W Joyo practice amp last year. It sits on my home office desk and is great for quick play alongs, but is very noisy when not touching the strings, and not something I remember hearing about in online reviews. I would hope this one is better for that.

The language on there sounded a bit like the English you get from Chinese adverts, so had a look and they are on Ali-Express for about the same price. EDIT - I would be interested to know how easy those little wheels would be to turn once the strings get up to tension...

A guy in our Leeds office at work was telling me that the owners of Vintage (JHS) are selling up and this means that Vintage are being closed down and a lot of stock is being sold off cheaper (he lives near their base and knows a few in the company). I don't know if the brand is being retired, or someone has bought it, but I would imagine it might affect you getting a new one. Last time I looked on Vintage's website about a week ago, most basses/colours were out of stock. I hope I'm correct in what I'm saying and not causing a panic. I did see a thread on here from about 4 months ago that was saying a similar thing.

I feel this needs further explanation.....i.e. why? I'm getting visions of someone making a model to practice their next bank job...🤣

Ummm, I don't think they'd want the one I cleaned my drain with..... EDIT - I had a proper look at that site. Imagine buying something thinking you might be getting a bit of Noel Gallagher's finger skin on it, and you end up with Mr No-Name's greasy bacon sandwich finger marks from West Sussex lol

I think I read that as a euphemism first time around....

So, yesterday, I got a guy out to fix my washing machine that wouldn't drain, suspecting the pump had failed. It turned out that the weird down/across/down bit of drain pipe between the washer drain and the main soil stack in the downstairs loo on the other side of the wall was blocked. The guy had one of those metal tool grabbers with the plunger and 3 little grabby bits on the end, but the housing for those was too big to bend around the corners. We tried to tip some drain cleaner in, but only got about a capful in before it got to the top. I scratched my brain, and remembered I had the rounds that came with my HB PB-50 in the packet for the flats I put on it. I got out the E-String, and was able to push through the blockage to allow me to pour more drain cleaner in. The washer is now running away happily as I type! It got me thinking - has anyone else had any great alternate uses for old strings that isn't in a musical vein? Discuss!

Having a dig around on Youtube, it looks like it was the Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards, which is a yearly occurrence. I have found another listing of that clip that says it is 2011, so your guess is as good as mine as to when it actually was.... It does look like I was right and it was a show band backing the star vocalists.

The clip says it was a "Lady of Soul" show, so I assume it was more about Aretha/female singers, and Stevie was a guest appearance for this song. There appear to be so many US TV shows like this where they have a house band and guest singers come on and off stage, so I doubt it would have been Stevie's band/Nate Watts.