Jump to content
Why become a member? ×

NancyJohnson

⭐Supporting Member⭐
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    6,259

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    4

 Content Type 

Everything posted by NancyJohnson

  1. NancyJohnson
    I know there's probably not a right or wrong way to use BDDIs or VTBASS type stompboxes, but personally I've never had the desire to simply lump one into the front of any head. I played with a guitarist one time who got a pretty acceptable tone by playing a Les Paul into a Fender Twin Reverb. For some insane reason he started building this huuuuge pedalboard with several distortion/fuzz pedals on it...he just couldn't grasp the concept of how coloured his tone became when he piled output from a distortion pedal on top of an already distorted amp tone; he'd look at you like a lost puppy. 'Clean? Wny would I want to have my amp running clean?' He threw thousands at gear and eventually wised up that the Les Paul/Twin Reverb was the best tone he'd ever had. Sigh.
  2. NancyJohnson
    I just read a thread elsewhere that Ibanez are rumoured to be buying Gibson. Brilliant.
  3. NancyJohnson
    GT2 on hold now.
  4. NancyJohnson
    Up.
  5. NancyJohnson
    I'm a little late to this thread, but last November I quit a band I started about seven years ago now. We were gigging too much, rehearsing too much, travelling hundreds of miles playing to 10 unappreciative people, arguing, the singer was a control freak and asshat (I think Andy/Wolverine sussed him out reasonably quickly when he travelled with us to a gig in Kent). The link to the thread is here if you're interested. [HERE] Notwithstanding the fact that we were a really decent band (sometimes great) band...on point, acerbic, clever at times...ultimately it came down to a few things; was it still fun (no), did you like the people you were playing with (honestly, no, not really), do you like what you're playing (at the end, not so much), does it affect your band/work/home lives (yes, totally), so I walked. I enjoy reading the singers ridiculous posts on Facebook big-upping their recent activities and took an immense amount of pleasure at calling the replacements in my band 'The Imposters' and hearing that the singer, rattled, nearly popped a vein at one gig, barking out, 'We are not the imposters!' between songs. Interestingly, don't be too qualmed about being a man of a certain age and not being able to get a band. Three months on, while still harbouring a tang of bitterness, I have three new projects going on, but they're all sensibly planned and unpressurised. I'm done with plans for musical world domination. It's just not worth it.
  6. NancyJohnson
    No, no it didn't.
  7. NancyJohnson
    The ivory one with the tortie guard looks dreamy.
  8. NancyJohnson
    Here's the FBIV; a fortuitous early Sunday morning eBay purchase. I just think I was very lucky to bag it for less than £400.00. I remember seeing it, doing a panicky double take and thinking, 'No, it can't be. Noooooo, it can't be.' There was scant information online, so I eventually trawled through Ross Halfin's Motley Crue book and found some mid-80s pictures of Nikki Sixx playing one and did a Buy It Now about five minutes after first seeing it. It plays beautifully and the only maintenance required is a periodic truss rod tweak. I've no idea what the pickups are, but concensus appears to be they're unbranded DiMarzio. Irrespective, they do sound great. I was considering swapping them out for a set of those large-pole Delano sets, but there's no point really; it would only have been for aesthetic reasons.
  9. NancyJohnson
    Here's the Scarab I bought at The Bass Centre, Wapping some time in the 1990s. It sounded great, piano like tone, beautiful neck, it balanced quite nicely. The only thing I'd criticise was the finish...for such a new bass, there was a ton of crackage. At one point, I considered having the body worked to make it a little more contemporary, but finally just moved it on. What a stack that Laney was as well.
  10. NancyJohnson
    The series one Cruise was as different as a mk1 Precision to the Precision bass we know now. They had different body/headstock shapes, the series one had pointier horns, a P/J pickup configuration and a Hamer badged Schaller high-mass bridge. There was also two headstock variants. US made. Designwise, the series two was just softer all round...the 2Tek bridge involved a major body rout to accomodate it. Generally J/J pickup config. Produced in the US and Korea (the Korean one had a BBOT bridge). I'd take a solid colour series one any day of the week. It's uber-cool and they don't go for much either...sub 500 English pounds. I post up in the Wanted section for on every so often. No joy yet.
  11. NancyJohnson
    I'm curious. For a company that was synonymous with production of high quality instruments out of their Chicago shop (and some decent far-east made guitars), there's barely a whisper on here or Talkbass. I still have one and am still trying to track down a series one Cruisebass. I've owned three...they all played great.
  12. NancyJohnson
    @Tech21NYC You have a lot of love over this side of the pond. We'd love to know what's going in in your R&D rather than the odd comment!
  13. NancyJohnson
    Sorry, just so to avoid a little confusion (I've had a load of PMs). 1) The Tech 21 VTBASS DI is not for sale...it went a while back. The photos are representative as to what the board looks like; the VTBASS isn't listed in the advert. 2) One member here has first dibs on the board & bag, end mix panel and speakon powercon socketry. I have made it clear (and we have agreement) that in the unlikely event that none of the stomps sell, I will hold onto the board until most of them do as I don't want a load of pedals and no board (because that would just be stupid!). Paul
  14. NancyJohnson
    I've just decided to have a bit of a clearout. Here goes.. Sansamp BDDI. £150.00 Has just become a bit redundant since the arrival of my GED2112. You know what this does. Clean, no tin. Sansamp GT2 £80.00 Nicely roadworn. I've run this in a dual channel setup with the BDDI and it sounds epic. Combined it gives an acceptable dUg style tone. Lovely. Boss ODB-3 £40.00 You all know what this is. Clean. No idea of the going rate. £40? Boss TU-3 Tuner £40.00 It's white. It's a tuner. Morley ABY box £40.00 Signal splitter. Temple Audio Duo17 board, soft case, modular end panels. Moving along to the board, I really wasn't a fan of Velcro, so went with a Temple Audio Duo 17 board. (https://templeboards.co.uk/collections/duo/products/duo-17) It's a robust professional 17x12 board with modular end panels; I've added a 4-way Jack patch panel (£40) and Neutrik Speakon PowerCon (£20) to handle input power. Carry case was £40. There's a Harley Benton Power Plant (£40) powering the whole board, which has run faultlessly. The little silver box on the board is a little lamp that illuminates the board via a gooseneck lamp fitting and I'll throw that in. Effects are attached to the board via adhesive quick release plates - see here: QuickRelease I have a few small plates that I haven't used, so I'll throw these in too. £150 for the board and power brick. If anyone is interested in the whole thing, let me know. I used this set up for some live studio and TV stuff I did last year with the old old. Videos below.
  15. NancyJohnson
    I haven't read all the comments, but I have my desired tone, my drummer wants something else. By and large, the audience don't give a rats-donkey what my bass sound's like.
  16. NancyJohnson
    You do have the option with a Sansamp of switching between line and instrument for the XLR output which will alter the XLR output strength and ideally the Sansamp should be at the end of your signal chain. You can always tweak the level down as well (it's not always about getting the hottest signal possible into the desk). I've never been a fan of sticking any pre-stage into the front of an amp either. Your Trace gear will have it's own tonal characteristics (and from memory the whole SMX fascia it pretty much there to shape and filter what hits the poweramp side of the head). All you're doing is loading the Sansamp pre-stage output on top of the Trace pre-stage, so things will get muddy. Neither the Trace or Sansamp operate on a true bypass format, so both units will work together and generally not for the best. There's an argument that for best results, the Sansamp should just go into the effects return on any amp (just use the 1/4" output jack), thus bypassing the pre-stage. (You may need to put a jack plug, or one of this mini-jack to 1/4" headphone connectors, into one of the amplifier's front inputs to facilitate this.) This way the Sansamp will control your entire tone. I know there's a lot of controls that will become obsolete, but try it, you might be surprised.
  17. NancyJohnson
    And he's wearing a beanie. Indoors.
  18. NancyJohnson
    I just watched from a few minutes in (and only a bit of it) and honestly it made my chest hurt. You know, there's this whole thing that we refer to as showboating; you know the type of guy, you're in a music shop, someone comes in, picks up a bass, turns up, goes rackity-rackity-slap-pop-pop-pop* and frankly it's just an unmusical mess that contextually you ask yourself how the feck does it fit into a band scenario. (*In fact, this will be the soundtrack to next month's bass show.) It's almost like these guys have found something they can do with a bass that has little or no relevance whatsoever; I used to have a Saturday job in a butchers, the guy who ran the shop had a party piece in that he could juggle with meat cleavers. Man alive, it was the highlight of my Saturdays, but that alone doesn't make him a good purveyor of raw meat. OK, that guy can do something we can't, but meh. Irrespective of the talent elsewhere, to repeat a quote from an earlier post, yes, it does sound crap and while initially I was going to say I'm sorry if this upsets anyone, my apologist period was last week. Those little double thumb nuances will just get lost once you start adding other instruments and a voice. It's a nonsense.
  19. NancyJohnson
    I did some work at a trade show a while back (London, Docklands) and was demonstrating for Conklin and RBS. When I arrived they gave me one of these and pretty much said, 'Here you are, off you go.' I'd only ever played a four string up to that point, so was horribly out of my depth. That said, after about an hour of noodling, the Conklin felt oddly comfortable and playable. It was just a fantastic thing. I begged them to let me have it in payment when the show finished (sadly, only money changed hands), but it was going off on your to other shows. £750 is a steal. These are amazing extended instruments.
  20. NancyJohnson
    Ooh, I just found a chrome pickup cover. That's going on.
  21. NancyJohnson
    For a while now, I've had a load of bass bits sitting around in my garage...essentially enough to make a Precision bass. Everything was a bit knocked about, so it seemed only right to knock it about a bit more and screw it together. The basic neck/body are from an old Sunn Mustang; an Indian built Fender-licensed Precision bass copy. The neck was covered in a really think varnish, so I sanded that back and oiled it. It was originally black, I'd sprayed it red years ago and done a matching headstock (which I also rubbed back). The bridge? Dunno, It's roughly a BadAss II in size, heavy...it's been in a box for years. I bought some Wilkinson tuners (£25) and a Warman pickup (£13) - I've used Josi Warman's stuff on other guitars, it's cheap and top notch. Old set of Dunlop Straploks. Bought a pre-wired loom (£10, incl. knobs) and a minty-green scratchplate (£17)...broke out the soldering iron and it lives. I was considering putting in an MM pickup, but to be honest, it was more hassle than it's worth, so Josi helped me out. It doesn't sound too bad really. Neck is nice and straight, action is good an rattly. I might put a decal on the headstock (not a Fender one). Dunno if it's a keeper, but it plays nicely, so maybe.
  22. NancyJohnson
    Bump.
  23. NancyJohnson
    Fiebing Oil Dye maybe? See my thread elsewhere...they do different colours, so you could try and blend colours.
  24. NancyJohnson
    Lasers. You need lasers.
  25. NancyJohnson
    It was/is oil dye, so it's not going to dry out the mahogany. I'm unsure whether I'll (lemon) oil the board again either; it's the only board I've ever oiled and to be honest I only did it to darken it.
×
×
  • Create New...