Woodinblack

OK, todays posting seems to go to the correct place, except some of them go through facebook, so I guess if you don't have facebook that might not work!

It was, thanks, although the surprise I wasn't expecting is that lit up basses actually attract flying biting insects outside!

Every year or so I remember to check the batteries on my actives, and if any are low I will replace them. It isn't that common, but it means I will often be spending upwards of £3-4 every year on batteries! I carry a spare PP3 in my kit. I have used it twice - once for a guitarists effects pedal, once for the drummers light control. Haven't used it on a bass yet. The only time one did die in a show was the wrongo, and I thought it would be ok as I had replaced it the week earlier, but turns out it was wired to not switch off, so it had been just wired on since I put it in.

Private festival yesterday - very well attended, I think it is private just so that they can save on the public insurance while still inviting everyone! There were two 'stages', ie flatbed trailers with haybales in front of them, like this: and it went on from about 3:30 until we stopped at ¼ to 12, but people were staying there in big premade tents and a couple of motorhomes / vans. There were two bands before us, a guy on a piano doing really impressive covers of large band songs, and a group of people doing general covers in a sort of hilbilly style. We were supposed to start at 8:30, but even though we were setup and ready by 7:30, the middle band just carried on until 8:25 which meant we had practically no time to get sound setup, other than line checks. Still when we went on it was good, although I was playing the bongo, and I couldn;t see the fretmarkers at all, so made some silly mistakes, and also while the sound was good at the front, the bass where i was was deafening, probably because of standing on the same bit of metal as all the cabs (but the guitarist couldn't hear the bass at all). Switched to the acrylic bass, as at least I could then see, sound not as good but overall the image was better. Went down a storm with people dancing all night, and really wanting us to not stop, and paid pretty well too.

At the point you notice some signal degredation I guess - it would depend on the bass, but seems like people are worried about batteries so I guess it must happen to them a lot.

Yes, rechargeables are fine if you have a problem with buying batteries. Except they don't last as long and you have to remember when to charge them.

I do although there is a tinge of sadness with the lack of some familiar faces. Still, its going to be good to catch up again

Ooh - sounds like a plan. It would work fine on 90% of active basses, and burn out the preamp of the other 10%. Remember there is no standard on which way round the wiring needs to be, even between manufacturers. Still, a great way of saving £2* at only a slight risk of costing a few hundred! *or less - just got 10 duracell power batteries for £11.49 from battery station.

Yep, mine will be there. I will put a resistor to the neck circuit (obviously no idea what is going on in there, there are leds at 3, 5, 7, 9, 12x2, 15, 17, 19, 21, 24x2 so 12 leds in total. The ones in the body are series, but I will probably put some kind of circuit to make them do something more interesting (and maybe add a few) String spacing is a bit wide for my liking, a bridge is a bridge and the pickups, although they are low level sound ok. Yeh, strings not great but I played it live straight out of the packet so it will be better when I can actually adjust it!

Effectively - they are two unrelated circuits, so they are just connected to the battery via the switch

Get you with your fancy measuring - I always just lobbed something in and see how it went! I had a look at the LEDs in the body, it is just 6 LEDs wired with their leads in series, with a 9v battery across. I would prefer a less direct light, so thinking of putting some LEDs behind the pickups and bridge, where they can light up the back. and maybe turning the leds on the neck down a little bit!

My action was high and the relief was none, although I still gigged it and it sounded fine. I did the neck releif but there is no way the action is going down without a shim so I need to do that. then I think I will do something about the LEDs, I might replace the bottom LEDs with multicolour ones and have a bit more of a sound to light thing going on. i mean, if we are going for tacky here, might as well go the whole way! The drummer was impressed, but then he has a green acrylic drum kit, so the only dissapointment was that it wasn't green LEDs!

so what he says is that he is dissapointed that the Mike Kerr Sig jaguar he got doesn't sound like he wants it to sound unless he adds some compression or distortion, like, err.. Mike Kerr?

will be there, obvs!

Generally about £30

Yes, I need to shim the neck. I believe it was already shimmed, but it needs more shimming. I have some acrylic sheeting though so I will use that.

This is how the chapman railboard is powered - it is either passive if there is no power or becomes active if it is phantom powered.

The myvolt adapters are pretty good, I have one. The cheap ebay ones may possibly generate a lot of noise. Bear in mind that any built in pre-amp wouldn't have power conditioning or filtering on the input source like an effects pedal would (why would it, it just comes from a battery), so any noise you generate you will really hear.

It would be an easy thing to do, but puzzled as to why do you want to do it in the first place?

A contour?

Yes, clicked on the jazus fretless and it took me to a page saying they didn't have any warwick gnomes!

I have had a X18 for many many years now and done hundreds of gigs on it. I use the inbuilt wifi for practices and have no issue with it there. I used to use it for gigs, and had no issues for many gigs with it until one large outdoor gig when it just became completely unusable, like you couldn't adjust anything and the mixer was just frozen. every minute or so it would sort of work, but luckily have been setup it was fine for what we were doing - if I had had to adjust anything i wouldn't have been able to. Since that I never relied on it and always used an external router, but of recent years, that has become less of an issue as I also have a X-Control desk which I use for normal operations, which is ethernet, so that and the X18 are connected to a router by ethernet and the iPad is by wifi - 5GHz wifi and obviously no issues. So even if I got the most stable built in wifi from some device, I would still need ethernet from the router for the X-Control (unless I ran that off another wireless router) so it wouldn't help me. For me the built in wifi is handy so I don't have to take much to practices, but not something I want to use live.

I would say it provides contrast, there are quite a few songs like that.

Yes, the body lights up too - its an acrylic bass from aliexpress with blue LEDs - as per here:

Two gig weekend. Night one, first time in a local pub (only lived here 20 years and been playing with this band for 7!), so didn't know what to expect, very small pub. Setup in the corner, very hot then people started coming in, and kept coming in. Setup, the sound seemed ok at front but I really couldn't get much sound from the bass in my iems - no idea why, and the bass speaker was slightly in front of me. The sound where i was wasn't great. As a result I didn't really enjoy the first half and I played really hard. For some reason my EHB strings seem really tight. Second half I switched to my acrylic bass - if I couldn't hear it and it was hurting, I might as well dazzle the audience right? The output of the acrylic isn't high, unlike the action, but I boosted my iem levels in the break and it seemed better. But so hot, luckily the guitarist had brought a fan. Very up close and personal gig, by the end of it my fingers hurt a lot. After the gig we got a lot of good comments, although the only ones I got personally were they liked the bass! Realised I had done some damage, and sure enough got blisters, which wisely I popped. Bought some plectrums on saturday, and went out to do another local club - we had never played the general room there, just the event room at other peoples request, but I had played the front with other bands. A lot more room, still hot but with a fan and an open window. Started off quiet but was soon heaving. Did the first half with the #1 ibanez that I hadn't used for a while, remembered why I liked it. Second half I did with the acrylic as it seemd that sort of venue. Everyone up and dancing and quite lively. Had to play everything with a plectrum, and can't say it is the way I play. although ok for most of the songs, but some things I really can't do - Impression I get, Alright now, poker face, so made a few mistakes trying plectrums on that. Anyway after that gig, lots of nice comments - one woman who came out to see us having seen us in another pub said that we were the best live band she had ever seen - I pointed out that maybe she needs to get out more - A lot of 'you were great lads' and offers of other gigs. Always nice to hear when you finish anyway.