NancyJohnson

The video below was delivered to my Instagram feed earlier. I've honestly no idea why. It's just some bloke doing tricks with a football. It struck me that these (cough) skills (cough) have little or no relevance in real world football, where the opposition are more interested in kicking lumps out of you rather than how good you are at keepy-up. https://www.instagram.com/reel/CkfPgCDAXzV/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y= To a degree something clearly short-circuited in my head at such an early hour and I was reminded of some videos I got from a client one time of a bloke slapping and popping a bass that had D-tuners on every machine head. It was frankly unlistenable. They asked, 'Can you do something like this?'. My answer was, 'No, and why would I, this is unusable in the real world and frankly it's a bit sh*t.' The response from them was, 'Wot, are wuu a likkle bit jealoush?' (this was the actual spelling). That was the last I heard and I never got paid for the rest of my work. There's the real world at work for you.

Interesting how people's entry points to bands alter one's perception. This album was the beginning of the end (of Rush fandom) for me; mud.

I think the first time I was aware of bass was Steve Priest's bits towards the end of Rock & Roll Disgrace and the bass breaks in Man With The Golden Arm. I wasn't playing at this point but it was just something I loved the sound of. I suppose my more formulative grounding would have been Geddy Lee (All The World's A Stage), Sparks (Martin Gordon era) and bass-heavy singles by The Stranglers (although I was never a fan). Despite loving Kiss, I couldn't see anything of merit from Gene Simmons' tone. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, but the reason I loved Thunderbirds was more about Overend Watts and Jackie Fox than Nikki Sixx. Shhh.

I try to read some of the more technical posts here and it's like I just go word blind; I'm not saying this data isn't useful in some capacity to some people, but by and large surely, given the amount of Poweramps and stomps out there, a lot of this is no use to anyone? As previously posted, I ran (several) rack set ups for 30+ years. Not once have I suffered from anything not working or under performing. Not once did I refer to the manual of any unit to read up on input sensitivity (or anything). The only thing I didn't do 'properly' was to always have the poweramp outputting at 100% and controlling the output volume off the pedals/rack kit. Maybe I was just lucky.

For many years I ran a 4U rack, a dual channel Matrix Poweramp (2U) that could be bridged for more output, Korg tuner (1U) and a variety of Tech21 units RBI (5/5), GED2112 (initially great, developed a fault, distributor hopeless 5/5 to 1/5), VTBass (sold on, didn't like it). The great thing about the different pre-stages is you're just amplifying the manufacturer's unit uncoloured and it's pretty simple to swap these around for different applications. I also ran a board with a dual channel set up BDDI/GT2 which I ran into the Matrix and into two cabs...this kind of emulated the dUg tone. If @tech21nyc had rolled out the dUg pre in a 1U unit, I'd probably still be running the rack to this day.

Yikes! From wikipedia: 'Fingernail and toenail loss may occur a few weeks later, but they will regrow with time.' What? Whaaaaaat? Get well chum!

Well if there is an upside to me pulling out because of my knee, me and the wife (plus mother in law) are all positive for COVID, so I'd probably have infected a few of you...

Not certain what you're asking here...

I'm struggling for Sunday now too. I had knee surgery about six weeks ago and I'm still hobbling about. Spoke to the consultant yesterday, he's just suggested the ongoing pain I'm in is part of the healing process and has suggested I keep off the leg (Rest/Ice/Compress/Elevate). I'll see how I go today.

My desired tone has been a gritty hybrid of Geddy Lee, dUg Pinnick and Jean-Jacques Burnel, largely facilitated by using guitar heads into large enclosures, then following the gear clearout of 1999 I went to BassPODs, then a variety of Sansamps until I hit paydirt (GT2s, BDDIs, VTBass, Geds, DP3). Honestly never had an issue with mud or shrieking highs. If you're interested look me up on Spotify (Lutz/Lizard Sweets/Ninety Six Decibels).

Hmm. I appreciate that every facet of the signal path has the ability to alter tonality, but realistically unless you're using a cable that's hundreds of meters long any loss of tone will be negliable. A couple of weeks ago, I watched an interesting video about a guy who was running power, water, twisted core and audio cable (for an intercom) to a garage on his property. Said garage was about 80m from the junction box and exterior wall. There was a drop in voltage of about 8% over that distance which was accounted by the length of cable and resistance in the copper. Everything suffered over that distance, even the water pressure was a bit iffy. The point being a drop of 19.2v still kept the supply within a usable 220/240v. The same principal will apply (more or less) in instrument cables. I would wager that if you connected your bass to your gear with one of these, you'd not notice any improvement over a 10m cable.

Onboard preamp (active circuit). I used to own a Bongo 5HH. Would sound lovely at the start of a rehearsal, little bit of tweakage to get a decent sound/clarity for levels and the room. As session would go on, inevitably everything would be tweaked to the max and isolated tone would be a horrific mush. Lesson#1: if you need to be heard, turn up the amp. Lesson#2: while it's difficult to keep away from the knobs, leave them alone once you're happy. Outboard preamp (Sansamp etc.). Set your tone and leave it alone (aka Lesson#3). I use a mix of passive and active basses into Tech 21 DIs. I tend to favour John East units on the basses that have gone from passive to active conversions. My general rule? Go with lesson 2, then lesson 3 and then lesson 1.

You don't actually need the valve pre-amp, you know this, right? You're effectively pushing a (Sansamp) pre-stage through a second (Ashdown) pre-stage, before the signal hits the poweramp. My experience of the valve side of the ABM was that the drive just added an unpleasant crackle rather than any creamy/controllable drive or dirt. The BDDI is more than capable of providing everything you should need. You're also saying that you're boosting mids off the BDDI and scooping (removing) them with the pre shape button, which is a bit odd. If it works for you, fine!

Plug it into the effects return and stick an unused 1/4" jack plug into the front of the ABM (this will fully bypass the ABM pre-amp; it's a quirk of Ashdowns, they need something plugged in the front for the effects loop to work) and just let the BDDI drive through the power amp side. You're welcome.

I'm on Andy Partridge/XTC Fizzy Warbles albums today. I do adore XTC, although I came very late to the party (they'd already called it a day). Some fondness of the singles, but beyond that they passed me by. The Fuzzy Warbles sets are nine CDs chocked full of demos, alternative takes and nonsense.

Walter Schreifel stuff. Rival Schools/Quicksand/Vanishing Life.

When you played another bass through your amp, same thing?

On the OP, we were always a fairly tight, well rehearsed unit; we booked a studio for an early start one Sunday (10.00am start) and did five songs, all recorded live with a click, three takes of each. Chose the best ones, guitarist did his solos and we were retired to a nearby bar by 12.30pm, leaving the singer to do his stuff. We went back about 2.00pm to do BVs (half hour). Rough mix and home by 4.00pm. https://wknancyj.bandcamp.com/album/cops-and-robbers

Jellyfish. The 4CD Fan Club box. Demos, live, nonsense.

Never had any desire for multi-effects...I mean, I've owned stuff but they never really did it for me. I had a Fishman thing that was a riot, but totally unusable in a band context. End of the day it's all about a gritty core tone, currently have two Tech21 things - dUg and a GED2112 DI. They're all I need.

About three years ago, I left a band I started about ten years before that. Had I not left I think it would have started affecting me mentally. A bit of advice? Lick your wounds, move along. It hurts now, but you'll forget that. I've probably been more productive since leaving. I don't miss the rehearsing, the time lost, the expenditure, the angst, the disagreements with the singer, the almost constant schlepping over southern England playing to five people 'because it's good for our CV', etc etc.

Just an aside (and despite the Fender connection) I'm amazed that Gibson haven't jumped on him for a signature line of Explorers, rather than hurling $$ at Simmons and Brown for their wretched line of Thunderbirds. U2 were way better when he played Explorers.

I just fancied listening to The Darkness. I don't know whether the first album was ahead of it's time; it's certainly not as bad as I remember it. As I type, I'm just reaching the last couple of bars of the first album. Next up, The Sweet.