NancyJohnson

Well, credit to you for pitching in and soldiering through it. When you've been in this game for as long as I have, you're going to amass stories that start, 'There was one time when I...'.

Reading this, the ensemble seemed even more nutso than reading the original post. Flute, two different keyboards, a swap of guitarists and (this one made me laugh loudly), a ukulele-banjo. This begs the question, but what material were you actually playing?

Fish gags aside, this whole set-up seems to be bothering me immensely and I can't put my finger on why. Right now, we have no idea how loud the band will be playing, but given pretty much every gig I've done where we've only had a rudimentary vocal PA and we're expected to find our own balance, the drums will just swamp everything out, simply because that's what drums do. The expectation of hearing anything from the other side of the room (keys/guitar/vocals) when you're next to a drummer is best described as 'quite low'. I think 'So you'll hear them' needs to be replaced with 'in the remote possibility that you'll hear anything'.

While I'm not a huge Fender fan, I think it may have been Jimmy Bain's 50s Precision (or perhaps it was a Telecaster Bass) that this has it's roots in; the longer separation between headstock and cloverleaf looks so much nicer.

Nope, not in the slightest! I've often wondered why they looked taller; it's a far nicer look than 'short-stem' ones. Thanks muchly!

Can someone give me a definitive here. When you look at the machines on certain (older) Fender basses, the stems on some look way longer than on others (the clover leafs seem to tower over the headstock). Are these different by design or is it some kind of optical illusion?

I'm wondering whether the OP will be using a StingRay.

Mmm. Pie.

Deciphering this, there's going to be a drummer, bass player and trumpet player in one area (A), a keyboard player and a guitarist in another area (B) and two singers wandering around an area between the two groups (C), one of which will singing acoustically, the other singing through a small amp that's also being shared with the keyboard and guitarist in area (B). Area (C) will also be full of people at tables, eating. I'm not going to sugarcoat things here, but everything you've posted indicates this has all the necessary elements for this to be an unmitigated disaster on so many levels. Please report back after the event. Let us know how the fish supper was.

What dig you do? 😂

What did you do?

I was just looking through some old holiday photos, here's me, pre-pandemic, Chichen Itza, Mexico. When we booked, the guy we booked through said, 'We plan to get there about an hour before sunset. The place will be closed.' We were like, 'Yeah, OK.' On arrival, our little busload of eight people were all there was in there. It was magical being in the place when it was so empty.

Here you go. This is something that I recorded a couple of days ago. The guitar is an Epiphone Pantomatic, P90 in the bridge position and passed through the Vintage side (A). The bass was my Spector Euro LT through the Hi-Gain side - I find the Spector is a bit toppy, so tend to nudge the bass up a notch to phatten it up. It's a very rough mix and the bass is high within this to demonstrate what the pedal gives. Just as an aside, I habitually mix the guitar to the left and the bass to the right; always wanted the reverb on the guitar to just be on the right side and only worked out how to do this last week! mix.mp3

Yes, but bear in mind I'm only going to use this for recording and convenience as all my backline-related Tech 21 stuff is elsewhere. It seems quite happy handling bass - obviously you can blend wet/dry on each channel and you have a choice of (let's call it) vintage/modern pre-shape circuitry.

Warman pickups are great, Josi is a nice bloke and good to deal with. Alternatively, shop around for used. If you're like the majority of GAS-suffering bassists, if you buy cheapish you're always going to be wondering what something different will give you. I bought a used P/J EMG Geezer Butler set recently, no buyer's remorse, reasonably hot/high output; the solder-free looms make fitting very easy too.

What? That not everyone has one?

Ooh, no. I'm not a fan of Alanis Morrisette...when this started I hadn't looked at the video title, but thought it sounded familiar. Lasted maybe 30 seconds. Always been of the opinion that if you're going to do covers, you have to better them, you know, make them your own and exceed expectation. This does neither.

We sat out until about 1.00am last night, lovely temperature, clear star-lit night, Jupiter and Saturn ascending in the south east, firepit going, couple of bottles of red. Perfect. I have a decent Buena Vista Social Club (and associated artistes) playlist, including Ibrahim Ferrer, Ruben Gonzalez, O'Mara, Compay and we just had that going. It was like the planets aligned.

I needed/wanted a simple distortion pedal for home recording of guitars; just wanted to dispense with recording off an amp and wanted something a) dual channel and b) switchable. 9v PSU or battery. It's got two gain/dirt channels (A/B), both with a rudimentary tone control that just ramps up the treble a little (there's a switchable bass boost which works over both channels simultaneously that just adds a small amount of low end). Channel A is best described as more vintage/old school tonally, Channel B being more modern high gain; both channels be run individually or blended. It's blissfully simple - I don't need to run extra cables to the audio interface, just swap guitars and rotate the Blend knob to A or B. Bass is nice and gnarly (very BDDI) and at £75.00 this is ridiculously cheap. This is a belter of a pedal.

I've got two Lulls and in the last five or six years (since delivery), I've never felt the need to venture anywhere near the truss rod. These are the most stable basses I've ever owned and the JAX-T4 has the skinniest neck of any bass I've owned, as well. With all due respect to HJ, I'm of the belief that this kind of seasonal tweaking back and forth is just a slippery slope down, but then I don't live in an area where there's huge swings in seasonal humidity.

While we never took it that far, the guitarist in a project I doing last year suggested we 'do something microtonally, with a middle Eastern feel.' Thankfully (and largely down to the fact that he was struggling to find a left-handed instrument), we didn't explore it further, but that would have resulted in the double flat/sharp thing.

You're falling into the realms of the surface tension of the cores here and the effect on movement. There's probably an equation to support an argument about hex-core Vs round-core, but given that we're talking infinitesimally small amounts of flappyness. Bear in mind that the string winding will also be contributory as well (remember those DR Helbourg strings, that all had single wraps?).

Someone will be along shortly shouting pedantry or something, but I learnt from the outset that the root notes were E F F# G G# A Bb B C C# D Eb and this is what they always used to be called, but I guess renaming these may make certain musicians feel they have an air of superiority by referring to an F# as a Gb. If note-naming us so fluid, feasibly you could easily dispense with F & B; why not simply go E E# Gb G G# A A# Cb C C# D Eb.

So C#/G#/C#/F#, then. I'd try a set of 50-110. A half step down against the A/D/G strings should be fine, the E string might be a bit flappy.