NancyJohnson

Niiiiiiice!

Well, this year there's two RSDs - 12th June and 17th July.

Anyone venture out for this superspreading event? I popped one of my wife's sleeping pills last night and didn't stir until gone 10.00am, so stayed home. I was only after the Tears For Fears live album (on waxed disc, 'cos I'm so damn hip), but seem lucky enough to have secured a CD from Rough Trade, so we'll see. It's just getting too big now, most of the releases are really not new or special, but credit to Tears For Fears for putting out some new (even though the recording dates back to the mid-80s).

I've given this some thought in the past. Unsure whether it's a luxury or not, but (assuming I'd be stranded wearing glasses), I'd go for a really good pair of nail clippers. I can't bite my nails, never have been able to. I don't have a Windsoresque horsey overbite or anything, but the layout of my front gnashers is such that nails go unbitten; they just don't work for that.

Where specifically Guildford area. I'm a few miles away.

Two albums dropped here today; Wolfgang Van Halen's 'Mammorth WVH' and another from past Chez NJ house favourite Garbage, with 'No Gods, No Masters'. The Garbage album is just awful. The Wolfie album has been on rotation since 9.00am...4.5/5.0. it's a great shame that these fanboys just want another Van Halen type album, which this isn't; it's just a great slab of modern AOR. Production is top notch.

Nope. That's a keeper.

OK, this arrived about an hour ago. I'm running into the effects return on my Darkglass A/O and have experience of the old GL racked version - the input voltage is 9v/18v, for today I'm running at 9v, works fine, but I have an 18v PSU coming so will be able to determine what difference the input voltage actually makes (I'm assuming this may affect the output of the unit, so we'll see). For reference and as I'm a bit of a whore for @Tech21NYC kit - I've been running the dUg Pinnick DP stompbox as my pre-stage and have extensive experience with BDDI, GT2, VT Bass (rack and DI) and RPM units in the past. I've had a little noodle. Initial observation is that it's a bit of a difference beastie to the rack - this might be that I'm running different basses (Gibson Thunderbirds gone) - oddly the rack 'clank' was there immediately, this may just take a bit of tweaking. I'll report back when the 18v PSU is powering it.

Are Brandoni still trading? If you're looking for something odd/quirky that suits, they used to carry a ton of weird stuff.

I gigged with a band in Basingstoke one time, they were running additional audio from a little iPod. Drummer was running things; just had a splitter, one cable going to FoH, the other to headphones that he was wearing. Bit of a shambles to be honest. Drummer was hitting the play button and there clearly wasn't enough time for him to drop the iPod, do a four count etc. before the song started. Backing vocals and keyboards coming in at the wrong time. To compound things, the lead guitarist was a bit of a nob, changing guitars every song; different tunings. He picked the wrong one up on the last song, which was tuned down a full step and he was too in-the-zone to realise/bother, so it was two guitarists playing in different tunings with the BVs and keys coming in at the wrong time. Awful. I'm not saying that using backing tracks us impossible on a budget, but you really have to be on your game. These blokes weren't.

Belter! Thank you. Now then, how do Basschat users wangle some discount?

I'm going to throw a little bit of advice here. My grandfather did carpentry on the side. Rather than buying a drill bit, if you need a tiny hole, find a round wire nail the width of the hole you want to make, nip off the head at a slight angle with pair of snippers, put it in your chuck and you're done. It'll be sharp enough to go through any wood. A 1mm steel nail will be inherently stronger than a 1mm bit (half the shaft of which is grooved to eject shavings).

Just sniffing around for an update here. Apparently the two channels can be blended; there's a toggle switch inside the unit that can be accessed inside via one of the battery boxes (it's under/behind the fascia and located next to the 'mute' button). I suppose this works like the jumper thing on the rack unit.

While my musical roots are pretty much in punk/post-punk, it can go as heavy as it likes, so long as it's well written/crafted, well played, interesting and the vocals are good. Can't stand cookie monster vocals.

I had one of those Gibson Thunderbird non-reverse reissues a few tears ago. Bought it new. Couldn't have been any more different than the regular Thunderbirds that I'd been playing. Heavy, fat neck and it sounded like mud. It's all documented elsewhere here.

The cost does really hurt BUT they stay bright for yonks. Back in my busy times, I was using Dunlop/D'Addario; cheapish and pretty cheery, but these sets would go off very quickly, on my preferred bass it wasn't uncommon to to change strings twice a month. Granted I'm not doing as much now, but one of my Lulls has had the same Elixirs on it for nearly two years and they still sound bright; better (*subjective) than a two week old set of D'Addarios.

If you want to try another brand of coated string, I bought some Markbass strings a few months ago (there was a business trialing them), just got a four string set and they're wonderful.

I love the strings, but the five string issue really irritated me. £60 or thereabouts by this method (and having to go extra long too). It's a pity Elixir aren't on here.

I blame half a bottle of red and three very large Bourbon & Cokes.

Presidents Of The United States of America.

I've played in loud bands, quiet bands, tiny venues up to medium sized festivals. I honestly believe the rule of thumb is to buy headroom, know your frequency, know the room you're playing, know where your amp sounds best (ie how far away from walls etc.) and not run everything at 10. Gear now is way more reliable than the heavy old stuff I inherited in the 1980s and with that comes better tolerances. If it plugs together, it'll work. I know when I post here I will put in caveats that tone is subjective, I doubt anyone would be able to tick a box and say with any authority that they recognise a 50watts hitting their ears over 100watts. The secret is to ensure - irrespective of what style you play - that the bass sits well in the mix with the drums and then roll the guitars/keys/BVs up to compliment that; if you're playing in a room with a sound guy, he should be able to identify where things are going wrong and Identify that. Nobody runs their gear at 10 all the time, do they? My gear right now is a Darkglass A/O head - I only utilise the power side and prefer my tone to be shaped by a @Tech21NYC dUg stompbox. It's supposed to be 900w. I played with a very loud punky/rocky band a few times in 2019 and I never took the DG output over 40%, the cabs (I tried a couple) didn't melt down or anything. I couldn't have been any less concerned about the ohm-age of either.

The amp/cab impedence thing comes up frequently, doesn't it and we, as a group, seem to be obsessed with headroom/amp-power/wattage. You know, and perhaps I've been lucky, I've been in this game for over 30 years and I've never experienced gear damage due to mismatching or over-egging things with my backline. I'll admit here that I still don't fully grasp the whole ohms/watts thing and don't let it worry me. Take comfort from this.

There was a Hamer B12 up a few years ago in Jeff Ament specs; 12 string, matt black, had different pickup configuration. £1,700 I think it was, which was a fair price then. We had building work going on and just didn't have the spare £££ at the time, although my wife did say (after it sold) that if it was special enough we could have found the money. Ack. I did message the seller to see where it went. I think about it every day.

While it's a huge shame that they only put out two official albums, we're fortunate that labels like Not Lame and Omnivore kept the flag flying with the 4CD Fan Club boxset, the live CDs and the StakATrak editions. Omnivore still (apparently) have more stuff that they've yet to put out.