NancyJohnson

There's a very sweary English guitar builder on YT that posted up a video over Christmas about a Glarry Stray copy. He said something about the setup along the lines of, 'all guitars come out of the factory with terrible action to cover up for the awful fret jobs'. This really struck home. I've lost count of the amount of guitars and basses that I've casually picked up in shops where the factory set up makes the instrument almost unplayable. The guys signing these instruments off in the plant need firing TBH. In over 35 years of playing, I'd confidently say that my (Plek'd) Lulls were the only two basses I've ever bought that played brilliantly out of the box and haven't required any tweaking. You get what you pay for, I suppose.

I'd never follow any manufacturer recommended settings. Just set your kit up as you like it. Too many variables.

Years back I had a Sunn Mustang bass; it was (I think) made in India and despite the name was a fairly faithful Precision bass clone. Needless to say, it was cheap and in pretty rough shape when I got it, so it got some necessary TLC and I ended up running it almost exclusively as BEAD. The neck was quite chunky, the truss rod worked and did the job intended, and it was very playable. Nut didn't require reshaping. I did though have shorten the spring on the saddle for the B-string so it could be intonated.

Thar she blows!

I've got a black, four-way extension cable that has a sticker on it that says, 'The Dags'. My dad got it for me (I suspect he may have swiped it from work). I can date this to 1978.

Always used to take a couple of basses when I gigged, but can only recall one time where I swapped basses out (and that wasn't anything to do with instrument failure). Stopped carrying more than one bass a long, long time ago.

I'm running a very simple set up - old HP PC, DAW is Cakewalk (free), Focusrite Scarlett 2i2, M-Audio BX5 powered monitors. Aside from power, three cables; USB to the PC, cables from the Scarlet to the monitors. I'd hasten to add that I've never been a fan of bundled DAW software (or whatever came with the Scarlet), so didn't install anything off whatever disc came with the hardware. From the outset I had a mahoosive issue with the PC; there was some particularly nasty Harmon Kardon software that was running a soundcard that was nigh on impossible to override - you'd get things working, then the HK software just rebooted everything with every restart, so I took the soundcard out of the PC and junked it. Fixed! Once you ensure the firmware on the Scarlet is up-to-date and you point your PC audio to the Scarlet, Cakewalk pretty much handles everything (you just need to assign the left or right inputs to individual tracks in Cakewalk or simply go with stereo on a single track). I have issues elsewhere though; in 2023 I bought an Arturia MIDI keyboard to add noise to recordings...I just can't get it working.

I'd raised this previously, but the thread didn't go too far. I'm also the owner of a very old Aria Primary bass and while I have no issues per se with the neck, I prefer the visual aesthetic of a rosewood/dark fingerboard. What does £70 buy you? Visually they look ok, but you could be getting something with the strength of balsa wood. Swapping the hardware shouldn't be too much of an issue, although at £70 you may need to factor in a fret dress. I might pull the trigger at some point, just actually see.

It took a long time to admit/realise that I was never 100% happy with a standalone amplifier that had dedicated pre/power stages; while I'd used separate Trace Elliot pre-amp/poweramp stages, I think the simplicity of jacking a BassPOD into the effects return of an old Ashdown MAG combo was the first revelation, what 25+ years ago? Pretty much that point I knew, for me at least, power amps were the purest way to go, allowing you to have control over what you needed to amplify rather than what manufacturers felt you needed.

Aah, the use of inverted commas for emphasis. Perhaps you'd like to provide me with a synonym for people that better suits your narrative. Sherlock? What a compliment. Made my day.

By way of troubleshooting, do the pedals do what they're supposed to do in isolation/one at a time? You're absolutely certain everything is plugged in correctly for signal flow and each unit is getting the correct/required voltage? Connector leads are all okay?

Not wishing to dig myself into an ever deepening hole here but the thing with Precision/Jazz basses (along with, let's face it, any other bass that shares the same/similar geometry), is that the elongated top horn improves the balance of the instrument while it's on the strap; I suppose you could use the time-honoured quote that it was something Leo Fender got right (and continued to get right at MusicMan and G&L) and that it was something the boys at Gibson didn't. Despite not being a fan of Fender basses, I've owned some in the past and in support of the design I'd say without hesitation that they do have incredibly good balance on the strap. You could go into some depth here about pivot/fulcrum points, triangulation of the fixed points (strap connections and break angle at the shoulder) and rotational symmetry, all whilst factoring in other variables (viz. weight of chocolate bars on the headstock), but of course people aren't really interested in the maths or science behind it. In closing, Happy New Year.

The Hercules part arrived a couple of weeks back, but to be honest my schedule has been very full pre-Christmas, so it'll get sorted in the New Year. I've taken the top of the original stand apart (a little more than at the point of my last post) and did a little figuring out about how to join everything together. I just want to retain the stand's originality so I can revert back to default if needs be. I have a young bloke nearby who did a bit of metalworking for me a while back, so I may knock him up to do this.

I'll do a test post and maybe up the estimate 😏

I'm figuring most of the smaller stuff should just go into a small padded envelope.

I've amassed a huge quantity of cables that I'm never going to use. HDMI cables, speaker cables (hifi), MIDI, CAT5, lengths of CAT5 cable (you'd need to crimp plugs), phono cables...I think there may even be some SCART cables, random lengths of two/three core cable. Need to have a clear out. There is honestly too much to list. All very good quality stuff. I'm going to be opening a few boxes over the next week or two that contain a lot of HDMI splitters and some very useful HDMI over CAT5 stuff (useful if you're trying to shoot 1080 video to a second TV. I'm happy to just move this on free, but don't necessarily want to spend a fortune on postage, so the cables/connectors are all free, maybe a quid postage per item? PM me if there's anything you need. Happy for pickup. (Crowthorne, Berkshire). Kettle on.

It's not Fight Club.

Good grief. Are you stalking me? Anyhow, I've fixed that for you.

The reduced size of kit you need to carry now is insane. There's absolutely no need for 6x10s or 2x15s and a 40lb head. Should have bought a smaller car.

I got my Baby Sumo on my birthday (start of December). It's blindingly good/capable. I've just got a Samsamp 2112-DI pre-amp at the front end.

Speaking from personal experience with the AO900, I found the drive engines way too aggressive for me; the allure here was the combination of output and the thought that it would do everything I'd ever wanted in a tidy little box (had Tech 21 produced a similar unit with a GED-2112 or XB Driver front end, I'd have bought that without hesitation). There were just too many knobs on the thing, all of which had a subtle effect on each other and in the end, I just kind of gave up on the thing, favouring the belief that jacking a Sansamp into the effects return would at least give me a usable front end tone and reasonable levels of output. Clean tones were easy, though. There just didn't seem to be any issue once the AO engines were off. You could go from dubby, through ponky, to a shrill slap tone with ease.

To this day I can't really get my head around the obsession and chase for weight saving when the saving is grammes; unless you're using a headless bass there's inevitably going to be some weight on the headstock end. Seeing as how it's Christmastime and that most people love chocolate bars, let's look at the weights for perspective. 49g per machine head is just shy of the weight of a standard Mars or Snickers bar; if you're struggling with lifting four of these bars, then honestly you need eat more red meat or hit the gym to build muscle mass. You're looking at saving a possible 9g per machine, so the total weightsaving of 36g on the headstock or roughly the weight of a single Double Decker multipack bar. On my thousands of posts here, I tend to pepper my content with the terms subjective or it's a nonsense. The amount of weight you're looking to save is so small it'll make no difference whatsoever. My ten year old niece regularly picks up my basses when we see her, she wouldn't struggle with an extra 36g on the headstock.

I use my live rig just turned down quiet.

A much repeated story. Years ago my old band played with a band of young upstarts that were using an iPod to fire off backing vocals/keys etc. it did not go well and disaster/hilarity ensued. If you're removing the human element, you really need to be completely on top of your game; no room for errors, nothing.

I watched Rick Beato's post last night. In fairness Trevor, he has nothing bad to say about any of the musicians lumped together under the Yacht Rock banner/genre, he just hates the terminology. It is pretty awful, let's face it.