JapanAxe

I use Google Streetview and Parkopedia to check out parking before I leave home. Ideally I would do this before accepting dep gigs - don’t ask me how I know….

At a sound check I was getting a nasty crackling and thought there might be a problem with the drivers in my BF cab. Turned out to be a bad connection in my tuner pedal.

Welcome aboard Grace! Quite a few members here play keyboards and/or synth bass. I expect one of them will be along soon

This is only going to cost me £149 because I was looking to spend £250 on a used JHS Color Box v1 - WIN!

FTFY

That tends to confirm my choice of the '64 Black Panel!

Whichever one I get, I’m guaranteed to suffer massive FOMO over the other one!

I’m not sure I would ever have tried flats except I bought a bass that had a set fitted. I really liked the comfort and the lack of finger squeak and I ended up going flats-only for several years. More recently I wanted to go back to rounds on one bass, tried and liked Elixirs, and now 2 of my 3 basses have those on.

I can see me getting a lot of use out of one of these, both as a recording tool and as a one-box solution should the dreadful day ever come: Silent stage 🥺

My 3 Ps each cost between £1,450 and £1,666. The outlier is my Kala U-bass at around £300.

I was an early adopter of the Revival Drive, which I use in conjunction with an IR loader as a guitar recording front end, and for headphone practice when it’s not convenient to fire up a small valve amp at home. I later added the Compact version to my main guitar gigging pedalboard. My experience is that they work exceptionally well at mimicking the operation of real amps, whether clean or overdriven. I previously used either a Tech 21 PSA1 (which effectively does the job of all the character pedals) or amp models from a Zoom MS50G, but to me the RD trashed both of those. Origin pedals are not cheap but they are so worth it. My first purchase of the new tax year will be a BassRig pedal. So far I am leaning heavily towards the ‘64 Black Panel - what about you?

I wouldn’t worry about oxidisation - most cassette tape magnetic media are oxides already.

Yes they are. The coating makes them feel a bit smoother. No. I’ve read of people experiencing this but it hasn’t been a problem for me. I use Elixir Optiwebs on all my guitars with no hum problem.

All change at JapanAxe Towers! The Cobalts were flats. But I tried Elixirs on my ‘62 RI P and liked them so much that I got a set for the Dingwall too. I still use flats on my ‘73 P but I’ve moved over to La Bellas. I never did try pressure wounds.

I like my bass to be heard and to have its place in the mix, but I never think of this as ‘cutting through’. ‘Cutting’ implies treble frequencies, which may of course be present in my bass sound but aren’t what it’s really about.

Thanks, but you'd be better off consulting the many useful articles published by The Valve Wizard!

Ooh, forgot to mention. Having treated myself to an oscilloscope I fed a sine wave into the front end of the amp and hooked the test probes to an 8ohm dummy load. I worked out the amp will deliver 22.5W before it starts to clip. This is the cathode biased version with a reputed output of 25W, so allowing for the slightly reduced B+, that looks about right.

For several months, two items have been sitting on my work station, taunting me every day: 1. Bag of UF5408 diodes 2. 10H 90mA choke Until today! 1. For some reason this amp didn't like my earlier attempt to ease the strain on its rectifier valve by adding SS diodes. Today I routed the incoming AC through UF5408s mounted across to the unused pins on the socket, and all is well. No change in sonic performance, just the likelihood of increased longevity for the rectifier valve. 2. That background buzz. I thought it might be power supply related, which is why, months ago, I bought a suitable choke, with the intention of trying it between the first and second power supply nodes. The buzz was unaffected by the volume control until it was up nearly full, where there was a null point. The volume control comes just before the PI, so I pulled V2 - no buzz. I re-routed the screened cable carrying signal to the first control grid of V2, and tried moving around (with a chopstick) the wires running to V2 - no change. Then I got out my cap-shorting device, a probe with a 330R resistor inside and a croc clip on the other end that I connect to ground. When I touched it to the first V2 grid the noise disappeared. That means the only place it could be coming from was the 470k grid stopper. Eh? Examining the schematic, I saw that these 470k resistors are not in fact there as grid stoppers, but to provide resistive mixing for the two channels as they feed into the PI. Going through the schematics I saw that all except the Heritage version used 270k resistors in this position. Given that I'd built a single channel amp, I arguably didn't need a resistor there at all. Then again, I'm aware that grid stoppers can prevent oscillation, so I thought it would be a good idea to have something there. I looked at 6SL7 circuits online but many didn't use any grid stoppers. In the end I tried an arbitrary 1k, and hey presto, the buzz is gone, at least until you get the amp wound up close to Patent Pending. I'm not entirely sure why the 470k resistor would cause buzz, maybe someone can chip in with an explanation. I didn't need the choke in the end, but no matter, it will find a cosy home in one of my boxes of Useful Bits.

It sounded less good than plugging in direct. I should mention that I have modded mine to take out some of the baked-in mid-scoop, which made it slightly less bad (to my ears). I know a lot of people love the BDI21 but I don't.

I had one of these and I can confirm they are utter Barry White.

This all day. Also it's particularly distressing to see a nice 60s or 70s P that has been butchered by the addition of a J pickup about a millimetre from the bridge. Anyhow, as others have mentioned, to the OP - find the bass that feels and sounds good to you.

Cheers, any thoughts on keyed or keyless? Edit: also ‘ouch’.

Cheers, any thoughts on keyed or keyless?

Cheers Paul

I’ve been listening to Bowie’s song The London Boys recently, and the clarinet intro got me thinking about playing it on recorder. I have a couple of chewed-up (literally!) descants that I rarely touch but a lower compass would be better. I started looking at stuff on YouTube about tenor recorders and I’m quite taken with the idea of getting one. I read music and I already know the notes in the first octave so I would have a bit of a start. Recommendations picked up so far are for Yamaha or Aulos with baroque fingering. I have long fingers so could probably manage keyless. Any BCers admit to playing one of these, or maybe have a significant other who does? Top tips?