Happy Jack

Venues which are converted cinemas, theatres and music halls tend to be fine. Decent sightlines, usually decent acoustics, and crowds measured in hundreds, maybe thousands. In the last year, I've been to gigs at Koko, The Forum, Shepherds Bush Empire, Hammersmith Odeon (I know, I know) ... all absolutely fine. The moment you go supersize and industrial (Earl's Court, O2, NEC) and the crowd is measured in tens of thousands, the whole dynamic changes for the worse. I wouldn't want to give up going to gigs, even at my age. Happy as I am to blast out Piledriver on my stereo at high volume, it's not the same as singing along to [i][b]Don't Waste My Time[/b][/i] with 3500 other Quo fans at the Odeon.

[quote name='Number6' timestamp='1395842514' post='2406980'] Quite a few of the gigs i've seen recently have been at the Shepherds Bush Empire.....or the O2 or whatever it's called this week..... But as a smaller venue i think it's ideal [/quote] Apart from the utterly atrocious acoustics, especially in the balcony.

[quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1395834426' post='2406810'] There's a difference? [/quote] Edited to avoid people thinking I was being serious.

What's an emoticon between friends?

So your guitarist looks at your new bass and asks: "What is it?". And you reply: "It's a [color=#333333][font=Calibri, sans-serif][size=4]Maelstrom Black Belemnite Concept Symetry Bass Guitar.".[/size][/font][/color] [size=2][color=#333333][font=Calibri, sans-serif](Although you probably spell [i]symmetry [/i]correctly. Unlike this vendor.)[/font][/color][/size] [color=#333333][font=Calibri, sans-serif][size=4]And then, once everyone has finished laughing at you, you put it back in the rack and pick up your Precision again.[/size][/font][/color]

There's a difference?

The existence of GAS is a form of proof of the old adage: "Everything in moderation ... including moderation."

Nope - sounds like tosh to me. On occasion I have routed some bass through our PA, and we quite frequently mic up the bass drum which is FAR more likely to produce an unmanageable peak signal. No problems at all. I don't see how the bass could damage the desk anyway. Even if you deliberately overloaded the signal to a massive extent, you'd simply encourage the input clip to do its job and protect the delicate circuitry downstream.

[URL=http://s1128.photobucket.com/user/h4ppyjack/media/Basses%20CURRENT/Fender%20Precision%201984%20CURRENT/CIMG1335_zps32eb0fb2.jpg.html][IMG]http://i1128.photobucket.com/albums/m496/h4ppyjack/Basses%20CURRENT/Fender%20Precision%201984%20CURRENT/CIMG1335_zps32eb0fb2.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

And another +1 from me, playing DB with a singer-songwriter. He sent me demo tracks to learn where I really struggled with the intonation. At rehearsal I really struggled with the intonation, and checked the tuning on my bass every 10 minutes. We gigged his set twice at different venues and I really struggled with the intonation. Started to rehearse some new stuff and I lost my rag, stopped playing and shouted that we had to do something about it. After 10 minutes of discussion it emerged that he'd bought a new clip-on tuner the week before he met me, accidentally set it to 435, and literally every f***ing note he'd played or recorded in the previous month had been out of tune.

For some reason, I keep getting mental images of someone carefully winding copper wire around a blob of putty ...

No worries, Paul, whenever you're ready.

I'd love to ... but I suspect that I'd be stepping out of my league!

[quote name='Roland Rock' timestamp='1395696555' post='2405301'] Got it. It was quite well hidden, as if there should be some prior knowledge on this? [url="http://www.martamp.com/index.html"]http://www.martamp.com/index.html[/url] [/quote] Mmmmmmm ... chickenheads ...

Bwahahahaha!!! Good spot - I never got that at all.

Understood Lemmy, but why would he get someone to come round and remove a date written on the fretboard unless he knew it was a fake date?

When you need a P, there's no point in fighting it ...

I've played venues that are smaller than that rig ...

[quote name='Chiliwailer' timestamp='1395603141' post='2404253'] Amazing how we often think the worst of people, sign of the times. [/quote] [i]"Ok so having been asked by so many people about the date written on the end on the fingerboard I have had someone come round and remove it ..."[/i] It's quite hard to read that sentence without a certain amount of cynicism creeping in. No matter how hard I try to put a positive spin on it, it still translates as: "[i]Oops! someone spotted it - damn!"[/i].

[quote name='paul_5' timestamp='1395660705' post='2404715'] I think he's selling an amp (or three, I'm not sure) which may or may not have a 'almost no distortion' switch. That feature sounds almost useful. [/quote] Yup - entirely on board with that feature. I do wonder though, what happens when you switch OFF the 'almost no distortion' function?

[quote name='skankdelvar' timestamp='1395668637' post='2404829'] Top TP tracks (maybe) not already mentioned: Strangered in the Night [/quote] One of my all-time favourites, but with lyrics which (in one place at the very least) were pretty damned borderline even in the 70s and wholly unacceptable now ...

Yup - I had one of these years back and was actually pretty impressed. Essentially you have (I think) 16 different capacitors, each one of which results in a fairly distinct change of tone. I seem to recall you could get a smooth-turning control or one with [i]detentes [/i]to give a click at each change. The conclusion I came to was that the system works, but is of limited value in a live setting. I was a bedroom noodler at the time and it was fun to be able to click around until I found the "right" tone for each song I wanted to play along with. Once I started gigging regularly I quickly realised that it was just a distraction and could actually do harm to my sound in the band mix. If I spent a lot of time in recording studios I think I'd get another.

When he "dimed the mids", WTF was he talking about? I've never dimed anything in my life, and I'm not sure I want to start at my advanced age ... ps: That's a very good demo, Gareth. Roughly the equivalent of walking into a decent bass shop and being able to play with the amp for five minutes without some clown starting to slap on a Markbass rig ten feet away. One question though ... how did you record it? I'm guessing that's a Zoom Q3 or similar so you're working within the confines of the on-board (very good) microphone. Some lovely tones there.

[quote name='solo4652' timestamp='1395394822' post='2401892'] ... and then handed the XLR to the guitarist who plugged it into the desk. [/quote] Well[u][i][b] there's [/b][/i][/u]your problem ...

[quote name='solo4652' timestamp='1395349217' post='2401523'] @Happy Jack, This is going to get embarrassing, I can tell. I have a Behringer BD1-21. It's entirely possible I don't know how to use it. I plugged my bass jack lead into the IN socket and then ran an XLR lead from the BAL OUT socket into an available XLR socket on the desk. I have no idea whether it was a mic socket. [/quote] OK, that should have worked. The XLR inputs on most mixers are there for mics, and they have independent Gain controls - usually a fairly small black knob at the top of the channel strip. You may simply have plugged into a strip where that Gain control had been turned right down for some reason. The input signal level from a mic is absolutely tiny, so a mic channel strip should be more than man enough to take a signal from a DI box and boost it sufficiently. One possibly irritating suggestion though - you mentioned that it is an active DI box. So what state is the battery in?