NancyJohnson

I wouldn't even consider using my monitors (an old pair of M-Audio BX5s) for practice purposes; the primary 5" drivers would just get quite pharty. I have a powered monitor up on the marketplace at the moment (10" speaker); that's about the smallest I'd go.

Just weighing in as the voice of reason here, I don't think I've actually measured the nut on any bass until a couple of minutes ago. When you're all going on about how the odd 2mm making all the difference I do wonder how you cope up the dusty end.

I'm working, so it's a case of just looking properly later. I did have a quick scan; it's surprising how little I know about the bands that played and how even on the day it was very much a case of dipping in and out and tuning in for the full sets of the bands that I wanted to see. I obviously remember the bands I recorded on VHS, but beyond that, nada. I had no recollection of The Style Council playing, or Adam Ant, Elvis Costello, Sade, Bryan Ferry, Old Wheezy, Dire Straits, The Who. The US show, I can only recall Bryan Adams and The Power Station. Blimey.

Ian Hunter solo stuff.

My wife got me a Gator 1212 gig bag as part of my haul. Perfect for the Darkglass and associated new project*. *Details TBA shortly.

It is all a bit odd how a different PC can just wreck things. Thinking back, I also had an issue disabling some B&O software on it that was processing audio as well. I'm not on the market for another desktop, but I won't buy another off the shelf/one-size-fits-all PC again.

I have a huge (15 hour) Christmas playlist on Spotify...all old crooners; Bing, Deano, Doris, Frank, Fred Waring, Burl Ives etc. Just stick it on shuffle. We usually put it on on Christmas Day and it sees us through all day, then back to normal programming on Boxing Day.

The main stuff: Early teen years - Sweet/Sparks/Mott The Hoople; Late teens through 20s - Predominantly US/Canada rock and UK punk: Kiss/Rush/Motley/Clash/Pistols/Van Halen/Johnny Thunders and The Heartbreakers. I adored It Bites. I was a huge Japan fan early on too, pretty much as soon as the first single came out; In my mid-20s to 40, I just lost interest in commercial hair-metal and punk and got more interested in what had evolved out of metal/punk. Janes Addiction/Living Colour/Dan Reed Network/Veruca Salt/Soul Asylum/Pearl Jam/Shudder to Think/Nine Inch Nails/Rival Schools/The Wildhearts/3 Colours Red (who I've been listening to today), plus stuff like Jellyfish/Sugarbomb. The last 10-15 years, I've enjoyed Motion City Soundtrack, a lot of small label US-indie stuff. Right now, I have a distinct soft spot for female fronted jangly guitar pop/rock. Momma, Dead Pony, Little Big League, Housewife, Sports Team, itrenintrenitreni. Dronningen, Blood Red Shoes, beabadoobee. I hadn't really embraced XTC when they were still together, so definitely a latecomer to that party. In addition to this, I like to dig into my favourite albums. I still adore Rumours, Band On The Run and a clutch of others.

I'd prefer to be Fauci than Trump, I suppose. Let's try and address the salient points here. #1 The headstock. You've compromised the strength of the neck behind the nut by routing so much off to accommodate the string anchor unit - how much wood is there diagonally where you've cut it out at the right angle? Less than a centimetre? The screws (eight?) will also compromise the fibres in the wood. The dowel you used to plug the old B-string hole has left ugly black marks (this may be grease/lubricant used by MusicMan to get the original ferrule in). The old string anchor hole (filled) is visible. I'm not certain, but have you shaved so much off that an original machine head screw hole is showing? #2 The front and rear of the headstock. I think this speaks for itself. The black witness line of the undercoat finish on the rear, the 'glass smooth' filled holes. The visible dowel front and rear. Honestly, #3 The new bridge (#1). While I don't doubt the hardware looks fairly robust, in your attempt to hide the scar left by the original bridge, you've rubbed back the original finish with a high grit paper and ruined the original finish; this is possibly to flatten the surface to accommodate a flat-plate of some sort for the new bridge to ride on? I'm unsure whether this could be buffed out, but it looks terrible. #4 The new bridge (#2). The rubbing back I mentioned above is clear here. Looking from this angle it looks like you've slipped with the router or there's been some chipping of the finish by the low B-string tuner. There's also an unfilled hole by the high-B tuner. Absence of any finish in the routed out area. I'm assuming this bass will be played sitting down as there's no strap button. #5 Rear of the bridge. Words fail me. It's like you've free-handed the router. I'm assuming you masked off the area with tape of some sort and when you pulled it off it tore away the lacquer. Good grief. If you'd had a catastrophic headstock break and wanted to try to get it customised rather than sourcing a new neck, then I'm sure one of the builders here could have fashioned something original under your directorship, this though? Nah. It's awful.

Cables have arrived and all sorted. Loudness has returned. Thanks t'all!

Thing is, hardware and labour account for nothing really. People want originality at the hands of the maker, not something created by a guy in his driveway. I've no idea why anyone would do this type of thing, was there actually anything wrong with it? The unfinished parts, the partially rubbed down area around the bridge, the messy filling of the machine head hole, the poorly filled machine head screw holes, the bad sanding on what's left of the headstock, the bad routing around the new bridge. There's not a lot of wood left around the nut, so with screws holding down the whatever-it's-called-thingie at the ex-headstock end, the wood is going to lose a bit of structural strength. You can argue all you want that these retail for £2.5K, but let's face it, it's not really a Bongo anymore; for £2K (and a bit of patience and haggling), you could probably pick up a 6HH easily enough (a lava pearl 6HH model sold on Reverb recently for £1,500).

*Just got an Amazon notification that the cables will be here before 4.30pm. All will be revealed!

No case = 45 year free relic service. Premium £££.

If I had the desire, need or want, I'd make it happen irrespective of the price; most I've paid for a bass is £5.5K (my Lull five string) and £3.8K for a guitar (Gibson Theodore/investment). Not wanting to go down the 'How much???' rabbit hole that much, but I was looking at the Anderton's site earlier; I'm amazed how much Fender stuff sells for new. Mexican Precisions, Jazzes and Jaguars are £700-725 (Player series...whatever that is), Japanese and 'Corona' Performer (aren't Corona basses made in Mexico and bolted together in California?) start c.£1,200 and the American stuff is a £400+ premium on top of that. It's staggering how much these retail for (and yes, I understand all about dealer markups). I can remember the old Bell Music catalogues from when I was a kid. Yes, I know it's 45+ years ago and inflation (blah, blah, blah), but a Precision bass is still a £240 instrument in my eyes.

To be honest, to restore/unplug everything to get the static/crackle back is going to be more hassle than it's worth right now! I'll wait for the new cables to arrive before I pull everything out (again). If these don't work, I'll throw the original cables back in and do you a recording.

I did some work for Waterstone a few years ago and got a TP12 for my troubles. I was playing in a three piece punk band at the time and that was never going to work out. Observations? It was heavy and I never really got close to the Tom Petersson tone I desired. It's an instrument that needs a bit of work tonally; in addition to the bass, it's useful to run it through a crossover, routing the lows/fundamentals through something like a Sansamp BDDI with a touch of grunt on it and the highs/octaves through a Sansamp GT2 with some distortion going on. (EDIT: and then running into individual enclosures.) I didn't have all the outboard kit to make this work for me; simply running it through a single amp with a bit dirt wasn't best - the octaves were incredibly bright. Of the bass itself, heavy, no forearm cut, headstock heavy. Played well enough after a considerable amount of tweaking. And on to Cheap Trick. First three albums and Budokan great. Dream Police not so great. Tom left and that was it for me. The recent 'Out To Get You! Live 1977' album is great though. Had they split up in 1979, I'd have more love for them.

Yep, tried all the USB outs. I have a powered hub, so I'll give that a punt. I've ordered some TSR cables. Let's see what happens there. Delivery Wednesday.

OK, let's address things! (In no particular order): PC is an HP Pavilion D550 or D580FPA. 2.7ghz 64bit. It's not feasible to try a different PC at this juncture. The Scarlett doesn't allow for an additional power supply; it's USB from PC/laptop only: I've tried powering the monitors from a different plug (I ran an extension from another room). I was still getting the static/crackle. Question. The monitors have "TSR" printed above the 1/4" jack socket - feasibly if I bought a pair of these, it might solve things? I just took a look at the manual for the interface - this is saying balanced/TSR cables. I don't mind throwing a little more swag at it: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Professional-Instrument-AkoaDa-Interconnect-Equalizer/dp/B095WMLY1L/ref=sr_1_24?crid=5SEVCBYBATMN&keywords=trs%2Bcable%2B4m%2Bright%2Bangle&qid=1671447860&s=musical-instruments&sprefix=tsr%2Bcable%2B4m%2Bright%2Bangle%2Cmi%2C60&sr=1-24&th=1 What does seem the oddest is that the old PC (a very old Dell) ran the interface which then ran the monitors without any issues. Standard jack cables, crackle free.

That's the DI box, yes. (It was the one in the video I mentioned earlier.) Interestingly there's no difference to things tonally with the ground-lift button in or out. PC is a desktop (HP). The current XLR cables are these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01CUI6I0A The 1/4" jack to jack cables are these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01CSVQ264 I was out to lunch with a mate of mine yesterday and he asked a very obvious question...wouldn't I be better off just buying a pair of jack-XLR cables? I didn't have an answer.

I honestly had no recollection of posting this previously! To answer the questions, the interface is powered by a USB cable from the OC and the Palmer is passive/unpowered. Cabling is (standard?) off the shelf stuff; everything has been used in other applications previously. The power cables to the monitors are the same ones that were in the box when I bought them new. I've tried all manner of problem solving, but just couldn't resolve the crackling/static issue. I reached the passive DI solution after turning up a video by a sound engineer on You Tube...it resolved the issue immediately, but introduced another in the guise of reduced speaker volume/output.

Hopefully someone will have a solution for this. I use a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 audio interface for recording and audio playback; this feeds a pair of M-Audio BX5 powered monitors. When I changed computers a couple of years ago, the audio became very noisy (electric static) but there wasn't any issue with the volume of the monitors, just the crackling. There wasn't an issue with recordings when I used the interface, everything was clean. (The signal path was simple, USB to the interface, 1/4" jacks from the interface direct into the monitors. The interface is 1/4" jack output only.) The monitors were set to about 50% and the interface output to about 20-25%; even at this it would get too loud at times. To resolve the static issue, I bought a Palmer dual channel/stereo passive DI box, ran 1/4" jacks to that and then XLRs to the monitors. The electrostatic crackling stopped (woop), but there's been a noticeable drop in volume from the monitors, so much so that I now run the monitors at 100% and the interface at about 50%. There's no way to tweak the interface up and there's nothing on the Palmer aside from a 0/-30db button (I'm running the DI at 0db). PC output is at 100%. I know this is a first world problem; but I'm just trying to get to the bottom of why everything has gone a bit quiet.

I think part of the joy is that it's an instrument I wanted to be able to play and in general, I've achieved that. I'm never going to be brilliant on it, but I feel I have the confidence to be able to play it anywhere if prompted.

Congratulations on the acquisition! It's been an odd year since I got mine! Put in a lot of hours initially, then we had a couple of months of building work, swiftly followed by a torn meniscus and knee surgery (which made standing a bit painful for long periods). I've been back on it recently, still enjoy it immensely. I'm unsure whether I'd ever be able to integrate it into any band tbh but it's hugely enjoyable to just noodle on it.