NancyJohnson

By a curious quirk in the space time continuum, 'A Day In the Life' just came up on a Spotify playlist. Considering this was what, five or six years into Ringo's time with the band and this (as a track) is several country miles ahead of Love Me Do, the drums are just awful and yes, I know this is only one song. To the casual listener (and perhaps non-muso), The Beatles are about melodies and words rather than the instrumentation. The drums on Let It Be really aren't that dissimilar to A Day In The Life; I know it's a ballad, but there's no attack or flair, it's peppered with those awful (lazy) tom fills, the loose hi-hats. Thing is, I don't have an answer as to an alternative and besides, it's never going to happen...the calibre of most modern rock drummers would leave Ringo Starr in their dust. Could you imagine Dave Grohl, Matt Cameron or Stewart Copeland playing on either of these? I could envisage Keith Moon, Clem Burke or maybe Roger Taylor doing it justice.

I'm not really that much of a Beatles fan, but Ringo Starr is more a case of right place, right time. A mate of mine (and a Beatles fan) once said that his playing was 'clueless and uninspiring' and the the ability gap at the end was akin to having Meg White replace Mike Portnoy in Dream Theater. Chuckle.

Here's a test I did a couple years ago. I owned a pair I'd Aguilar 1x12s for a short time and a tested these against a pair of a mate's Barefaced 1x12s and my Big One. Hands down the both Barefaced set-ups won that shootout on all counts; they had more if the tonal characteristics I was chasing and were just more exciting compared to the Aguilar units. That said, there was little between the two Barefaced 1x12s and the Big One and not enough to for me to consider shelling out for a pair, so I sold the Aguilars and stuck with the Big One until last December. The Darkglass (IMO) suits me better than Big One, but there's not much in it.

I've run dozens of different cabinet combinations over the years, from ridiculous tri-amp enclosures to quite simple 1x12 setups. Personally, downsizing is the way to go; like you I'm running a Darkglass 112, which I figure I'll double to a 2 x 1x12 set up at some point (despite the fact that it's unlikely to be used in anger any time soon). There's probably a ton of arguments for and against running a pair of 12s or a 2x12, but I find the Darkglass kit seems to do what I want, the high-frequency horn is wonderful, the cabinet is lightweight/portable, capable, pleasing on the eye and a pair would give me a degree of flexibility over a 2x12 (ie if I ever need to run a dual channel set-up); these points alone mean more to me than whether the frequency range of other cabinets extend a few Hz lower or higher. We're just at the stage where bass doesn't necessarily require 15s or 18s to allow it to rumble. I've got a Barefaced Big One as well if I needed it.

I have one of these.

Darkglass AO 900. Cough.

Other way round: Last night guitarist took an Epiphone Les Paul Junior to rehearsal. Bass player says: 'Why didn't you buy the Gibson?' 😂

Just back on topic, I've used 2" wide Levy's extra-long polypropylene straps for longer than I can remember. 100% vegan. (Before anyone goes off on one, yes I know the bulk of Levy's business is leather based.)

Home recording aside, I've no musical ventures going on, haven't stepped into a pub or restaurant since mid-March 2020 and have little desire to do so. Good friend of mine (double-vaxxed), tested positive at the weekend; weirdly he was photographed with a bunch of people at a pub on Saturday, had a 'nasty fall' at the end of the night (not sure of the circumstances), ended up in hospital where he tested positive. All the more reason to stay home.

There has to be a syndrome (I don't have a word for it, but let's refer to it as Bargainicious Bumm-a-kissious Syndrome), that a psychiatrist would point to as the owner's unstoppable belief that a less expensive of anything is better than the full priced equivalent thereof. I'm sure you all love your Epiphones and Squiers and are firmly of the belief that they're a country mile better than those Gibsons and Fenders you could have splashed a bit more on, but I've seen enough photographs of these instruments with Gibson truss-rod covers and Fender decals (cough, put on by the previous owner(s), cough) to know that there's a degree of vexation with the current owners. (See also hundreds of photos of single cut (Epiphone) Les Paul Juniors, conveniently cropped below the headstock.) Not wishing to unload too much, but maybe I've been unlucky and just perhaps I was unfortunate in my formulative years to have chosen a dozen or so copies that were just so simply rubbish that they should have gone on a bonfire. I'll admit to still owning one Epiphone that I bought new and blind for home recording - a Phantomatic guitar - that was just so awful that it underwent transplants of new machines, bridge and pickups; it's better (*subjective), but for the initial outlay plus the extras, I could probably have picked up a Gibson SG or a Les Paul CM. I had an Epiphone Dot Studio (335 style thing) that was equally as bad and went through the same transplants - the worst thing being that even after throwing a long throw bridge on it, it still wouldn't intonate beyond the 7th fret as the bridge was in the wrong place. In truth, things only got better when I started to splash decent money on instruments; while everything I've ever bought - cheap or old - has needed tweaking of some sort to get it to play like I want it, but from the perspective of individual factors (quality, build, playability, hardware etc.), I'd take the real thing over a facsimile seven days a week.

This ^^^ x1000. Christ, they need to write this in every manual going. I've had my live tone positively commented on many, many times. I was never happy just plugging in, too much 'ponk'. [Edit/addition: I favour a bit of a Geddy/dUg tone, controlled dirt/clank.] About 25 years ago I had a lay-off from playing, sold everything except from an old Precision bass. At a mate's insistence (he's a drummer), we took a visit to Andertons and he said to try plugging a Bass POD into the effects return on an Ashdown Mag combo; I thought he was nuts, but it was an aah-there-it-is moment of clarity (cue angels singing) - through the front input jack the POD was just mush, overloading a pre-amp by plugging another pre-amp into it. From then on, irrespective of the amp, it's always been into the FX return or into a poweramp.

I prefer a Sansamp into the effects return or a poweramp. Just prefer the Sansamp doing the work/shaping rather than it being coloured by going in the front of an amp.

I can see the point of offering pre-sale tickets to people who've made the effort to join a fan club/mailing list (or similar), although I'm not a fan of the whole VIP cash-cow (although I'll admit I'm considering it for Pearl Jam in 2022). I really wanted to see Public Service Broadcasting at the Albert Hall; there was a big mailing about pre-sales, but these were limited to maybe 100 tickets, which sold out in minutes. In answer to your question, it appears that for biggish artistes gone are the days where you could just buy decent/close to the stage tickets without having to pay a huge premium or be a member of something. I do miss being able to just swing by the Hammersmith Odeon ticket office, see what was on the board and just see what they had.

Always felt the Lakland Skyline series fell well short insofar as finishes go, but this popped up on socials yesterday and I got a bit moist. Not on the market for another bass, but as a piece of art goes, this is spot on. Purple and black, what's not to like? I've looked at a few and the colour does seem to go from light to dark(er), probably due to the wood grain and the exposure of the photos. It does look pretty. Yeah, yeah, I know I say all basses sound more or less the same, but the pickups are EMG Geezer Butler, so you kind of know what it's going to be capable of once you plug it in.

A few years back, I approached Eastwood to see whether they could do us a limited run of an Eastwood BC bass. We had a few interested parties, but before we even got as far as agreeing on a body/neck design, the thread took an inevitable downward spiral of member-bickering about hardware/electrics, with members chipping in as to why they wouldn't be interested (which really wasn't the point of the exercise). Despite the number of members here, it would never have worked. In my head though, this bass is very close in looks to what I thought we should be doing and it certainly fits the Eastwood build ethic; a bit of a quirky 60s throwback, wouldn't look out of place on The Jetsons, I bloody love that headstock!

I remember an old version of Protools came with a DVD of live loops, my old Audition box had something similar.

Could you not just star over? Wipe it clean and reinstall windows?

Odd...I run Bandlab/Cakewalk on a bogstandard HP desktop and was up and running within a few minutes after install.

I think I'll go with the NXT, simply because I can, I suppose. If everything pans out, I'm thinking it might be fun to record a video diary if sorts to cover how I get on.

I had a mate who worked for Adobe, so ran Audition for years, gave up with that about a year ago and went with Cakewalk. It's free (this was the main thing), easy to use, intuitive etc etc.

Voice of reason here. I'm all for ensuring the plug doesn't come out of the socket, but seriously, additional contact points aren't going to change things significantly from a signal perspective. Even after heavy use, whatever that is. Think back to your schooldays; tangent of a circle, anyone? The contact points are already tiny, so (with the Pure Tone) you're just multiplying tiny by two. What about the socket in your amp? That's still going to have one contact point. Jack sockets/plugs are just old, archaic (telephone exchange) tech; a means to an end. It's amazing how we have all this kit which is reliant on two infinitesimally small contact points to function; it's a huge pity that the whole plug/socket system hasn't undergone a complete overhaul by now, even if it utilizes existing cable tech (XLR etc.).

*I'm just going to post something here by way of an addendum concerning the original pickups sounding 'toppy and shrill'; I'm not a big fan of changing pickups unless absolutely necessary (ie failure). The old DiMarzios were suffering a bit of an age-breakdown - the magnets underneath (see below/not my image) had become delaminated from the resin they were set into - the resin appears to have shrunk a little causing the magnets to fall out and attach to each other. I did glue them back in, but to be honest I wasn't 100% happy with a make-do fix, so in this instance went with replacements. One comment on the Hamer group was that the magnets dropping out is common and causes the output to sound like someone had swapped the pickup for a Telecaster one. Fair comment. The Geezer Butler PJ set was offered, so I went with these. I have an earlier Hamer from 1986 (same year as the Cruise, serial numbers are about 800 apart), which doesn't appear to be suffering, so I'll leave it as is. They don't sound significantly different from each other. I'd recommend anyone running a bass with 70s/80s DiMarzios to pull them out and just check the condition below decks.

I know several drummers, one is in about five bands, others are just sticking with one band, sadly the best of the bunch gave up and sold all his stuff, just disillusioned with the music biz. As an aside, when I did the Lutz project (it's all on Spotify, kids), we used Beta Monkey live loops during the recording (no MIDI for us old farts); we actually toyed with going out live as a three piece - just bass, guitar and a vocalist (everybody sang/shouted), plus another guitarist - and just playing along with the a stereo mix of drum tracks and the voice/noise samples from the recordings. The whole thing of being on-stage with just laptops/pads/IEMs appealed to me immensely, but sadly the singer moved to the west country, the idea lost pace and then C-19 put a hold on things.

If this is a dig at me, then meh (shrugs). I'll stand by my comments that pretty much every bass sounds more or less the same and will do so until they screw the lid on. The only bass (IME) that bucked that trend was a 4003. So what if I don't own a Stingray; that makes my comments invalid? (I did use a late 70s one for a gig about 20 years ago, but suppose in your book that doesn't count.) We're drawn to certain instruments because of shape/design; it's how we are. Just because it looks like something else doesn't make it the instrument it alludes to be. Look at the comments when people post NBD pics, the comments are heavily weighted in favour of how lovely something looks rather than what it sounds like.