EliasMooseblaster

I'd long suspected I was a minority in this respect...

I've only seen this once: when I opened the box of a Fender '62 RI pickup, to install in my Precision copy, I found it had a piece of copper mounted on the back. At the time, I assumed this was to help with earthing. Admittedly, I've not opened up all my basses to check, but I've changed a fair few pickups in my time and I've never seen it done anywhere else. I'd dismissed it as a bit of a curiosity until I saw this article: https://www.fender.com/articles/how-to/asked-answered-the-difference-between-strat-and-tele-bridge-pickups?tag=electric which claims that the "ashtray" around the bridge pickup of a Telecaster affects the tone. Unfortunately, my own Tele is a variant on the classic design and has no such ashtray for me to test this hypothesis. On the other hand, I have found that the '62 RI pickup has made my Precision a lot more growly - though I'd always this was down to how it was wound. From a physics point of view, I can see how the magnet might well interact with the metal around it - but then by the same logic, people would surely start to favour chrome or plastic pickup covers for tonal reasons...anyone care to stick their oar into this one?

Perhaps I should have read the whole thread before voting. But yes, I support this initiative to keep it going - I would like to get more involved in things like the Composition Competitions, but more often than not I don't have the time, so the Noodle Bar was a good backup option for me.

A couple from Pink Floyd: [i]Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk[/i] [i]Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict[/i] Shame those two aren't particularly good songs, though [i]Careful with that Axe, Eugene[/i] is quite excellent.

It looks like a first draft of a Dead Can Dance album cover. Just strange enough to be quite charming, in the same way that I've been quite taking with some of the more peculiar Wishbass designs, in spite of my normal preference for "classic" Fender- and Gibson-style designs.

As others have mentioned, it does depend a great deal on the sound you want, and the kind of music you're playing. Just to throw my hat in the ring, I have played rock gigs with a 30W valve amp (Ashdown LB30) into a 1x15. It did the job remarkably well until our guitarist upgraded to a Blackstar amp!

[quote name='No. 8 Wire' timestamp='1490886766' post='3268827'] Could this be achieved with a PJ bass, but wiring the the P pickup in parallel (or having a series/parallel switch). Would that give the P pickup more of a J flavour, especially when combined with the bridge pickup?? [/quote] Hang on...does this mean that PJ basses are typically wired in series? This would explain a few things and possibly lead to me kicking myself...

[quote name='crompers' timestamp='1490777190' post='3267800'] Can you get a good mids growl with the QPs? considering changing pickups myself [/quote] Go for the Fender '62 if you want mids - lots of bark and growl in those. Or try an SPB-2 if you'd prefer go with a Seymour Duncan.

[quote name='ba55i5t' timestamp='1490702457' post='3267157'] I played fretless back in high school for the jazz band. Took it to a classic rock gig and got chastised for "bad intonation", even though it was a lined fretless. [/quote] You sure it wasn't the lead guitarist trying to shift the blame for his off-key string bends?

[quote name='christhammer666' timestamp='1490097122' post='3262100'] be interesting to see how this pans out. Am meant to be playing there in august [/quote] As I feel it is my Basschat Civic Duty to report back: approach with caution. Not long after I started this thread, the guy replied. He said yes, there had been a problem - "engineer blew the desk", apparently - but they'd got it sorted now. Maybe it was the fact he'd only bothered to scribble a one-line email to assuage my concerns, but something about this didn't sit right with me. As such, we went for a contingency plan. Load-in was 5.30 on Saturday, so I went straight to the venue while the others went to the studio to collect our gear. I basically had them on standby while I sniffed around for the slightest hint of problems with the PA. I got down there to find the guy who runs the venue, and a sound engineer, disconnecting their mixing desk, and suddenly I was helping somebody from a hire company lug another desk down the stairs. While the chap from the hire company tried to patch his desk into their system, I took the venue's guy to one side and quietly reminded him that we had a PA system that we could bring if he thought there might still be a problem. "Oh yeah, that might be handy actually..." I'd told him this on Monday. Only now, at two hours' notice, did he decide that us bringing our own PA might be a good idea. When the hired desk inevitably failed to talk to their system, we set up our speakers either side of the stage, and the sound engineer did a sterling job crouching down on the side of the stage by our PA amp, making sure the vocals were audible. The guy running the venue, on the other hand, went upstairs for a jazz cigarette and spent the rest of the evening baked off his t*ts. Kept telling me, "it's all rock'n'roll, innit mate?" as if this might encourage me to crack a smile. So: no malice, as far as I can see. Just utterly inept.

[quote name='Twincam' timestamp='1490533291' post='3265728'] After investigating it seems like the bass amp is pretty much the guitar 10w version with a few minor changes. So I did the led mod the same as the guitar version and it stopped the amp clipping as early. Then I hooked it up to an old cab the amp has a good amount of bass and character. I wonder if I can find some better 5 inch drivers to replace the originals that are pathetic [/quote] Sounds like it might be worth foregoing the built in speakers altogether and looking for a "living room size" cab on the marketplace - I picked up a decent little 1x10 on here a while ago which gives me a home practice option for my Little Bastard. Seems a real shame to think they'd paired a decent amp with such a lousy pair of speakers - talk about shooting oneself in the foot!

Clearly I've been mistaken - I assumed that Twincam was talking about one of the guitar amps, but I was oblivious to the bass amp that Meddle describes above! I'm with you there: why put two pokey 5" drivers in when you'd probably do better to use a decent 10"? Particularly as I don't imagine Vox go to the same lengths as Phil Jones when it comes to designing and voicing the cab...

The above is tomorrow. Tickets are still available. Very much looking forward to it.

Have they changed the design of these recently, then? I used to own a Vox Pathfinder 15, which was a single speaker - can't have been bigger than an 8", maybe 10 at a push - but it was an alarmingly powerful amp given the size of the whole thing. I gigged it a couple of times and never felt like I was struggling for headroom.

[quote name='Lozz196' timestamp='1490020546' post='3261487'] The guy we`ve always dealt with is Rulie, and he`s a really decent bloke. The management there are also nice, I can`t remember the land-ladies name but she`s been there for long time and is very nice to deal with too. This sounds like some sort of campaign to me, especially as everything has miraculously gone now. [/quote] Allow me to thicken the plot some: Rulie has not worked there since the end of last year. It's not clear whether he left or was given the push, but I've been dealing with someone completely different for this one. Thinking about it, this opens up a fourth possibility, that it's just some people over-reacting to what some might call teething problems while the new guys get to grips with the place...

I don't wish to spread malicious gossip, or discredit a venue unduly, but a turn of events over the weekend has got me a little perturbed. Just wondering if anybody else here is liaising with, or connected to, the current crew running the music at the Hope and Anchor, in Islington? The story so far: towards the end of last week, various threads popped up around a few Facebook groups to the effect that a couple of sound engineers had been parachuted in by the venue and subsequently ripped off, and the PA system was in a pretty dire state. This alarmed me, as my band is playing there very soon (sorry, it's hard to add context without making this all sound like a plug...). On Saturday, I emailed the guy at the venue to ask what was going on, and whether we should bring our own PA to be on the safe side. I was content to wait for a reply, but this morning I had a gander online and these threads had all disappeared. This makes me think: i. was it just some people trying to smear the venue's name? ii. did the venue bully the posters into taking the threads down? iii. have they kissed and made up, and the original posters deleted their threads out of good will? Basically just wondering if the dense network of BC has any inside info that might put my mind at rest. (I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it's number iii, and that I'll get a response shortly to say that all the gear is fine/has been fixed.)

[quote name='Beer of the Bass' timestamp='1489589941' post='3258213'] The silly thing is, they went a long way towards sorting that issue in the 70s with 3-piece maple necks with a volute at the headstock, and nobody liked them because they weren't exactly like the old ones. Guitarists[s]Musicians[/s] can be a fickle bunch... [/quote]

[quote name='NancyJohnson' timestamp='1489510599' post='3257553'] Is it actually the Vintage range that prompted this? I really don't know. That said, the Les Paul Junior models do look pretty good... [/quote] Yeah, I'm not entirely sure how it works, but I think Vintage are owned by JHS, who the lawsuit was filed against.

So to what extent do we think this lawsuit was motivated by all the comments on here and other forums along the lines of "[i]I tell you what, I've got one of those JHS/Vintage models, and with the new Wilkinson hardware it's easily as good as some Epiphones I've tried...possibly even better than some Gibsons"?[/i]

[quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1489500602' post='3257445'] I'm astonished that so far no one has called out Ralph on his not-so-subtle sub-text with this topic ... today's charts PROVE that Ed Whatshisname is actually BETTER than The Beatles, and he's just not man enough to admit it!!!!!!!! [/quote] Well...if we work on the assumption that this topic now means that Spotify is now the only true arbiter of taste and popularity (and nobody questions this assumption in the slightest), I did a very quick bit of (admittedly somewhat slapdash) research and found that The Beatles' most played track has been streamed some 63 million times. Ed Gingerbonce's most played track has received 523 million streams. I shall let the statistics speak for themselves and go back to being mystified.

Read this opinion piece on The Grauniad this morning. As one of many people on this forum who's still releasing original material, I don't think I'm in any danger of bothering the UK Top 40 any time soon, but it made for interesting reading: https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2017/mar/10/ed-sheeran-has-16-songs-in-the-top-20-and-its-a-sign-of-how-sick-the-charts-are So...your thoughts? Do the charts still matter any more if a massively popular artist can now flood them with Spotify streaming figures? Do you agree with the author's premiss that this is actually leading to less diversity of music in the Top 40? Were you, like me, previously oblivious to the fact that these streaming figures contributed to this ranking of songs? (Alternative Q: anyone want to explain the appeal of Mr Sheeran to me? I remain mystified.)

They do say that there's a fine line between genius and insanity. This has occasionally read about the line in Lonely Planet guides.

[quote name='drTStingray' timestamp='1489017274' post='3253841'] Noted - but how about actually turning down the kick - in fact the whole kit - it seems to have only been in recent years that drums have been mixed louder generally. I don't understand why the drums are mixed as three or four 'instruments' and given equal prominence in a mix because it clearly ends up overpowering the music - rather like having four guitars or keyboards. Listen to disco mixes of the late 70s on original 12 in singles - they somehow manage to have prominent bass drum, bass guitar and everything else mixed so that it plays its part. I'm guessing there was no 'fill the entire sonic range by pressing a button' and auto EQ ing - basically losing separation. [/quote] Is it just me or is this a problem in studio mixes as well? I don't know if some engineers are still trying to work an addiction to gated reverb out of their system, or something, but the drums on some modern albums seem to be brought up in the mix to the point that they're almost killing the groove. Not just on rock records, where there still seems to be a fetish for triggered samples rather than actual drum sounds - the drums on a lot of modern blues albums seem to be mixed far too high. I know a lot of blues guitarists are trying to ape Stevie Ray Vaughan still, but did nobody point out that if you look past his guitar playing, the mix of the rhythm section on some of his albums is dire? On the other hand, I'm listening to a recent Nick Cave album this morning, where the drums have a much more modest space in the mix, but have not lost any of the drive or punch. The whole ensemble is much more pleasing on the ear.

Reminds me a lot of my very first bass, an old Squier Bronco...to the point that it makes me wonder what the difference is between the two? Has there been some cheeky re-badging going on, or has my memory of the Bronco faded with time?

[quote name='Skol303' timestamp='1488894146' post='3252704'] It's not [i]all [/i]the fault of the engineer of course... Bass frequencies are by far the most difficult to get under control - and this is greatly compounded by the characteristics of the room/venue itself. And also the characteristics of the instruments: 'clacky', trebly pick-playing will always cut through better than a more 'fuggy' finger style. And where you happen to be standing - or sitting - within all of that. Sometimes there's only so much you can do. Sometimes it comes down to a compromise in clarity between the kick or the bass. And sometimes, yeah, it [i]is[/i] the fault of the engineer [/quote] Further to this, are we guilty of cramming rock/funk/electronic bands into spaces that were designed to help carry "acoustic" sound (i.e., without powered amplification)? Not sure why, but this thread reminded me of one of the early chapters of David Byrne's [i]How Music Works, [/i]where he talks about how styles of music evolved in tandem with the environment in which they were played. So religious/choral music puts a lot of emphasis on harmony and melody but is rhythmically quite sparse, because percussive sounds in a big, echo-y church quickly lose their definition. Conversely, a lot of traditional African music was played outdoors and so puts a lot of emphasis on busy drumming that can be heard in a crowd. To that end, was I wrong to get annoyed with the awful, booming bass resonances at the Shepherd's Bush Empire when I saw Joanne Shaw Taylor and King King a few years ago? The SBE looks very much like it was originally a large theatre, and it doesn't look like it's had a lot of acoustic treatment since it was repurposed. Should I blame the building or the engineer? Conversely I've generally found the Royal Festival Hall copes more or less as well with electric music as it does with orchestral...though of course that leaves a bad sound engineer with nothing to hide behind. (See Exhibit B: Brian Wilson's [i]Lucky Old Sun[/i], in which the PA was audibly clipping throughout the first half.)