NancyJohnson

I'll admit I'm a little obsessed with trawling You Tube for guitar repair/build content; these Lignum videos are a joy when compared to the lengthy Crimson ones.

I'll pop this is the build area; I've been following these guys on You Tube for a while - their carpentry work extends beyond basses, but if you enjoy a bit of watching CAD design make guitars, this is a joy.

I saw Dream Theater a long while ago. After two hours plus of fretwankerage, they left the stage, returning a few moments later and did an 'encore' that lasted about another hour. They might have well as had an intermission so we could have had an ice cream, or something.

This is spot on. Pretty much every post I do now raises the point that tone is subjective; an earlier post here cites a reviewer saying that in one instance the pickups 'were not that good'. What actually constitutes good? I currently own six basses, broadly they cost me £20-£5,500, they all same pretty much the same, I wouldn't be able to say the pickups thereon are 'good', because what they do is subjective. Christ, it's a £250 bass; if Geddy Lee decided he was going to go the HB route, players globally would be hoovering these up and saying they're the greatest basses since they hoovered up his Signature model.

I've got six basses (honest, guv), three passive, three active. My point really is all about forgetfulness; we've all been there. The primary thing is that I used to favour passive instruments, but the Spector changed that; a creature of habit, I've had 30+ years of just leaving basses plugged in and change can be a pain in the a**. I'm still a little surprised that decades since the advent of active circuitry (and the complexity therein), just leaving the jack plug in can lead to 100% failure.

What have I started here? 🤣

Given the tech that's inside the Spector (or any other active circuit), the major stumbling block is battery life. Call me an old fart, but I love me a switch with a little LED; I suppose these things exist already in other basses, but really, how difficult would it be to have the bass wired for a two-way/three-way mini toggle, that's wired to light a small LED when the bass is active and properly off/circuit isolated when the bass is passive (or off)? Mini/micro-toggle switches are £10 for 12 on Amazon, mini-LEDs are pennies.

It's just a pfaff to be honest; especially as sometimes I just want to have a noodle for a few minutes. I forget to unplug it the cable is on the floor.

I shall try and word this properly. It's known that leaving an active bass plugged in effectively keeps the circuit open and drains the battery. Is there any way to leave the bass plugged in? Over the last few weeks all my basses have gone into hibernation except for a Spector. Can't leave it plugged in, so I was wondering whether there was something like a kill switch that I could go through to just leave it plugged in. Doesn't matter if it's a mini footswitch pedal with an in/out and a button.

While I profess to have never knowingly heard a single note by Kingdom Come, I think what made me chuckle about this post was the throwaway 'whoever they might be' comment. They were known as being Led Zeppelin-esque since their incept in the late 1980s and have released about 20 albums. Isn't is a case that imitation is the highest form of flattery?

I was there for the unboxing. It's bloody lovely.

I've never heard of these pickups. Often thought about installing the guts of a Rickenbacker into another bass, but never got around to it.

I just got confirmation from Rough Trade that my Tears For Fears live CD is on it's way; £13 incl. shipping. Honestly can't fecking stand the scalpers selling online a day after the event; there's copies on sale for £100 and a live auction up to £66 at the time of writing. We just seem to do this greed model here; it just destroys the whole spirit of RSD.

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).