Huge Hands

A few years ago, when we were regularly doing that summer fete concert with no localised power, I did start looking at the battery powered QTX PA speakers on Amazon that were about £200- £400, depending on which size driver/power ratings you went for. We had some similar much more expensive PA speakers at work (but no more professional looking) called MiPro. If the QTXs were a copy of these, I thought they might work. The MiPros had 2 little 12V motorbike batteries in them and would last for almost 8 hours when new. I used to try them in our workshop with my bass (when I had it with me at work) just connected direct to the line in and it would be plenty loud, so I think with a proper pre-amp it would have more than done the gig. Added to this, you usually get at least one toy town quality plastic radio mic with it, so can use it as an impromptu PA for other things. I never did buy one as we stopped doing that fete but thought it was worth a punt on the Joyo to see if it would do it (for just £36 on offer). It wouldn't. However, I have now relocated it to its intended location in my home office (that sounds posh - it is actually a 6'x4' cupboard) and it will do the trick in there for practicing - unless the humming ground issue does my head in and I put my shoe through it...... EDIT - Just to add - I have a double bass and an acoustic bass guitar. It is amazing how loud jangling acoustic guitars / little violin ensembles can get to the point where you're making your fingers bleed and still can't hear yourself. I think I'd be looking at some form of amplification if you can.

Well, the Joyo turned up late on Saturday. It has a cute LED light up logo on the front, but I think that is about the only positive..... Only joking - in truth, if you mess around with it, you can get a fairly decent sound out of it. It won't rumble your trousers, but does sound like a bass sound. I ended up having Volume full up, tone off and gain as high as I could get it without distorting, but that probably only just got me to a level I was happy practicing with in a small room. At those levels I was getting hum when I didn't touch the strings and it would struggle with the low B string notes on my 5 string. I am pretty sure it would not be loud enough to keep up with my concert band, so using it portable with batteries will probably never be needed. It might work jamming along with one acoustic guitar, but I reckon that would be about it. In summary - it will be fine for what I bought it for - noodling along to stuff in my office, but I will have to accept it won't sound the greatest. I think if you have really sensitive neighbours this will be good as it will never produce anything that could shake the walls, but if you don't and have the cash and the room, playing a bigger rig on quiet would probably be a better choice than this. There you go, that's my review. I'll hold on to it for a while and see how much I use it.

I will try and let you know on the Joyo on Saturday if I can get to try it while hiding it from the missus. I liked the fact it could sit on the desk in my home office and not be too obvious. I also liked the fact it could be battery powered and even has strap buttons to wear it on a second strap! I have done a few gigs with the concert band at a fair in a field where we had to hire a generator for my amp. If this is loud enough sat on a resonant surface it could be an option for that (not that we have done that gig for about 4 years, but it is good to be prepared!) Thomann have it at £33 with £10 delivery, so that may be an option once the Amazon deal wears off. Looking at the vids on their site and the Amazon one I reckon it will be better for the less low end loving bass players put I reckon it should be good enough for noodling along on my own when I fancy a play along. Thanks for starting this thread and getting me to fritter away even more cash!

At the other end of the scale, there is the Joyo MA-10B. I wasn't looking for a small practice amp, but after seeing this thread, did a search on some of the other stuff and saw they are currently on 20% off on Amazon so only £36.79 with free shipping. I'm not expecting much, but decided to take a punt at that price. Arriving Saturday, or could be tomorrow if I had Prime. Mrs HH has Prime on her account,. but thought it would be safer to wait til Saturday and hope she's out when it arrives.....

I've had a lot of plastic surgery - but only for medical reasons (not vanity) and is nowhere near my face/outward appearance. To be fair, the scars from the remains of the surgery have left me looking like Dr Frankenstein's plaything, so no one but my (poor suffering) wife and medical professionals get to see it. Even before my medical issues, I have been kicked out of bands in the past for, as an over-tall fat bloke, not "fitting their group image".

I didn't see this when it was posted in January. There is something about that trigger button in the demo video that sets my warranty repair alerts pinging - it doesn't fill me with confidence that it will last very long, especially the way she was (and I assume most users will be) hammering it.....

Technically one rig, but it consists of 2x 4ohm Barefaced 210 cabs and a Carvin head that can run both at 2ohms. I also have a backup Ashdown Little Giant head which is two channel output so can run each cab at 4 ohms. Most of the time I use one cab and the Carvin, so guess I could say the Ashdown and other cab make a second rig.....or is that cheating?

I used to sing close harmonies on a couple of songs with the lead vocalist in a band a few years ago. In certain places, I would note they would end up singing the harmony line with me, which would end up in us both singing the harmony in unison which would drop the magic and feel like a house of cards had just collapsed (to me, anyway). I now occasionally dep for them, and the keyboard player (who joined after I left) now does BVs and I have noticed he has worked this out and sings the melody when the lead vocalist goes to the harmony. I wish my brain was able to work that quickly when playing bass and doing harmonies!

I went for the gratuitous sofa shot, as that is how everyone seems to do them! If you click on my profile, the wallpaper image is taken from around 2012 with it on the right next to its modded brother in the middle. My Squier JV 4 string (which I also still have) is on the left. The stands from my 1960s Premier Jazz kit are in the background too 🙂

What's that you say? Oh, go on then!

In 2008, I had been on this forum for a while, and saw a Squier Precision 5 on Marketplace. I decided to buy it and if memory serves, made a rather large detour on my way back from a work trip to get it. The bass was in very good condition, but was an awful metallic green with white scratchplate. My intention was for this to be my first attempt at "modding" a guitar, and had grand ideas of stripping it, painting it, etc etc. To me, the pickups felt a bit weak, so got in touch with Andy at Wizard pickups who, after a couple of attempts, made me a set of lovely J pups (these early Squier P5s had two Jazz pickups in a P body, not P/J). I stuck some LaBella flats on it, and with these new pickups, did a lot of gigs (a lot for me). Over time, I fell in love with this bass, and its cricket bat sized neck. I then started to worry that if I messed around with it, and stripped the paint etc, I might ruin it, as I am no woodworker or Luthier! Therefore, I decided to buy a twin of it. I wasn't intending to, but ended up with an almost identical one in the same awful green metallic. I stripped that one, had the body routed (by a mate) for a P-pickup at the neck and a battery cavity at the back. It ended up black with a pearl pickguard. It looked really good, but have never managed to feel the mojo the original one had. I have also had an issue with the G string on it being quiet, but I have tried various strings and moving the pickups but it is always the same, so it never really gets played. I also found that after I had stripped it, the green metallic look had actually grown on me and the minute I saw it gone, I wished I hadn't done it! Fast forward a few years around 2015, a few of my pro mates were raving about the new Sire V7s as a quality budget instrument so I saw one come up on here and bagged it. It has been my main bass ever since. As I wasn't playing the Squier, I took pity on a young teenage son of a friend who was trying to play bass with his mates and was attempting do so with a homemade bass his grandad had tried to build "Brian May style", but was pretty much unplayable. I offered him a temp loan of my green P5. I figured he would get sick of the huge neck and give it back in a month or so once he'd found something better......but didn't! All the time he had it, I would see old pics of me playing it and the memories of those gigs would come flooding back and would miss it, mainly for the nostalgia aspect, I wasn't so sure about for the playing of it. Fast forward almost 10 years, and a week ago he messaged me to say he was moving out of his mum's and didn't have the space for it in his new place, so did I want it back? So, it appeared at a band rehearsal (minus the E String?) via his mother. Yesterday, I put a spare E string on it and took it to my weekly concert band rehearsal, thinking I'd start playing it and it would remind me not to think of things with rose-coloured spectacles on and I'd jump straight back on my Sire. However, wow! It was like having an old glove fit in my hands! The neck is still relatively straight (whereas the one I modded rarely stays still). Yes, it needs a bit of adjustment to string height for my preference but not a lot, and the lovely mellowness of those Wizard pups was sublime. I am resisting the urge to use terms such as butter but I really enjoyed playing it again and did the whole rehearsal with it. I don't think the kid is a smoker (his mother will kill him if he is) but the white scratchplate has now yellowed nicely in a vintage way, and that green is still growing on me massively as a different look. I'm o happy to have my old partner back. It will now be a struggle to choose between the Sire and this. I think I prefer the radiused board of the Sire, but the huge string spacing and feel of the Squier. I sure there are people out there scoffing with their expensive Wals and Overwaters (lots of other various boutique names are available) but these were all I could afford or justify at the time, (and still can!) Just thought I would share...... I'm one happy boy!

Bought a set of flats from Gareth - really friendly and fast responding. Thanks!

As others have said - it may be down to how the feed is sent to the stream from the mixer. I seem to remember a FOH engineer once told me he had worked with a band on Chris Evans' TFI Friday TV programme in the 90s. IIRC he said the mixer faders were used for the PA/crowd in the room and the TV feed was mixed using the auxiliary sends on each channel. This, he explained, was why it didn't always sound great on TV as the engineer would be concentrating on the room. I could be wrong and it could have been the other way around, but either way, you can get totally separate mixes from the same desk if done this way and might explain why it is wildly different on FB. It might also be worth checking the various points in the chain of EQ, transmission to laptop, encoding, streaming etc to see if there are any HPF/bandwidth reduction settings which may cause a perceived loss of bottom end along the way?

In all seriousness, I had this with a Squier 5 string P build (the early ones had Jazz pickups) when I tried to get some custom wound ones for it. Although I hadn't noticed it before, it became apparent that most Fender Jazz basses had two different sized pickups, to compensate for the strings being further apart at the bridge than the neck. The pickup man's first set he sent were too wide, and he told me that for some unknown reason, Squier had used two 4 string neck pickups when making my 5-string P. In summary - I think you will have to use your measurements and search for pickups that will fit the holes, unless you want to carve bits out of your bass.

This ^^ My favourite style of music is slow, well arranged power-ballad type grooves like Isaac Hayes, Leroy Hutson etc, where the lyrics are usually about love (and oft in Isaac's case - sh*gging) and therefore not depressing, but they do tend to be dancefloor killers...... I have learned to wind my neck in when discussing possible new covers.....

...and here was me thinking this was going to be a thread about Gary Lineker....

Not a mags fan then? Lol! (I'm originally from just up the road from you).

I'm happy to change my name to "Future Nancy" if you just want to bin the guitar off.......😃

In simplest terms, "Pre" means FOH will get a flat signal regardless of what you set you mid, bass and treble to. "Post" means they will get the same as your settings. Most FOH engineers prefer pre as they can do their own shaping to suit the PA, but if you have critical wacky EQ settings that suit your style of music, I would go post.

A manufacturer we buy a lot of items from at work use DHL. They had a tick box option that said "Courier to bring labels" on their courier request form to save us printing them out. However, in our experience, the DHL driver never had the labels, so the items would not get collected unless we printed and put them on the box ourselves. I have noticed that tick box option has disappeared from the request form so must have been a regular issue!

I tend to favour standing to the drummer's right as I often play EUB and sing backing vocals and want to look across the instrument/my hands (when singing) towards the lead singer who is usually centre stage. It all feels a bit backwards otherwise.

I see a lot of for sale ads offering organs for free - the type your nan would have in the 70s and 80s to try and play some Klaus Wunderlich medleys on. I also see a lot of these type of organs that were made by Hammond (but without drawbars) listed at silly prices in the hope someone will be fooled by the name and pay out hoping they will be the next Jimmy Smith on it....

I could be wrong, but it felt like a lot more than a 1mm difference to me. With the first set I got, the "ears" wouldn't fit in the notches on the body. They were catching the edges and I would have probably had to shave about 1mm off the cavities to make them fit, but they wouldn't have been central in the ear cavity and touching the side, if you know what I mean (the correct pickups don't touch the edges in the current holes and there is probably already a 1mm gap all the way around). So in my dodgy maths head - if each ear needs to move further apart and needs at least 1mm - the gap between them should be bigger than 1mm? Apologies if I', being stupid. It was about 10 years ago and someone has that bass on permanent loan from me so I can't check.

When I tried to get some custom pickups for my old Squ!er P5 (which had Jazz pickups) - I ran into this problem. It appears (from what I was told) that the different width neck and bridge pickups also have different spacing of the holes, which was a problem for my build as the body was cut with domed notches for the mounting tabs and the first set I got wouldn't fit. The pickup builder was amazed that Squier had used the not-as-wide 4 string neck casing for both 5 string positions. He told me that there wasn't really one standard and that once you add all of the copy manufacturer pickup dimensions there can be a lot of variance. I think you will have to find one you want to use, and measure it, and fit for that. This is all based on my limited experience, and of course could be very wrong!

I was told it was her favourite bar and she was always in there, but it in the 5 or 6 years we played there regularly before she died, I never saw her, other than the paintings. Someone told me it was the bar owner himself that painted them, but I don't know if that was true. Her dad Mitch was in there one night and asked to get up and sing with us. He wanted to do Sinatra type stuff and I think we did "That's Life" as we did that as part of our set anyway. He seemed a nice guy, but he didn't appear to have his daughter's talents, or not on that evening anyway.... I later realised it was all a setup, as there "just happened" to be a paparazzi in there and a photo of him singing with us made it into the Monday paper. It was only a tight shot of him and not us though! I used to sit sideways on a tall stool so that I could fit in the tiny stage area beside the drummer - I think my knee just made it into that shot!