NancyJohnson

Morning bonny lads...need a bit of help. My band have recorded about 40 songs which are in mastering at the moment - we're pushing this up to Spotify etc as three albums, rather than going Sandanista! on yo'asses. We've recorded this remotely, singer down on the coast near Littlehampton, me and the guitarist/producer live about five miles from each other and are recording in spare rooms. We've kind of hit a wall with mastering, guitarist is obsessing with an odd few db here and there and all of us pitching is with stuff (strangely enough, I've not asked for the bass to be louder anywhere). I'd be grateful if (should you have a minute or 120) if you could dip into the Dropbox link below and have a listen to the files LS1/LS2/LS3 Tracks in Sequence (these are all single track MP3s containing 12-13 songs each, each one is about 40 minutes long) and tell me how you think they sound; they're 320KBPS MP3s, so comparable with what you'd get on Spotify/Apple/Amazon. If you want to do a bit of a comparison, there's a further file 'LS1 First 4 Tracks Mastered' that is the first four tracks of the Tracks In Sequence file remastered down a few db. Be brutal. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2c2m8jd6tf5imxt/AABWyNBPTfT8bsdBsPDMt_JQa/NEW_MIXES?dl=0&lst=&subfolder_nav_tracking=1 @hiram.k.hackenbacker @Al Krow and @Wolverinebass have been helpful previously, so just tagging them here. Thanks

If nothing, this demonstrates you can't shake off your internet past. I suspect that in 100 years time (if we're not all dead from something else), there'll be an old clunky server still squirting out ones and zeros containing data from now.

Just did a little tweaking (yes, I know I should be working); it's amazing how sensitive these are. Just dropped the bridge unit a couple of mm and the results are stunning. The bridge unit seems very hot compared to the nexk pickup and these are very phat/thin unit.

I just checked the OPs profile. He's not visited BC since 2009. Clearly, Hope Remains Lost made it huge and @hrl_damo is living off his royalties in some beach fronted property in California.

Ken Haas offered me an artist endorsement a few years ago; I was in love with Thundergun basses, just needed a backup to my Thunderbirds and something I could be a bit carefree with. They were rare over here...contacted Reverend direct.

I was using Adobe Audition for years; the only thing that forced the change was a new audio interface that just didn't work with Audition. I'm glad I moved to Cakewalk, it's free (yay!) and does a ton more than Audition ever did - as my recording prowess increased it was very much a case of formulating workarounds to achieve what I wanted; the only problem with moving DAW is this constant thing of having to unlearn how you've done stuff previously!

Pictures speak a thousand words.

IF you're familiar with recording to a PC (ie plugging your bass into an audio interface), it's a piece of cake. Cassette deck > Audio Interface > PC. I tend to use Cakewalk (it's free), but any DAW will do the job. You'll need to get RCA/Phono to 1/4" jack cables to connect the cassette recorder to the audio interface. Just point your DAW to the audio interface and arm two tracks to pick up the mono left and mono right inputs, hit play on the cassette deck to determine input gain, adjust until you're happy and then hit play on the cassette deck and record on the DAW. To be honest, it's probably simpler to just let your cassettes run for the full side length (30/45 minutes), mix those to your requirements and then break up/split the recordings into single tracks thereafter.

I've never been a big Fender fan guitarwise, but the prospect of customising a Telemaster body, for a single humbucker and a volume control, just makes me go wobbly. Left handed neck on it, yummy. Might be a project for next winter.

KT Tunstall. Only know a couple of early songs and well, it's just nice quiet Sunday afternoon stuff. Funny...as I was writing this it got unnecessarily sweary. Shame.

Check out Matrix poweramps; lightweight, loads of power/headroom. A workhorse! I ran a 4U rack for a long time, a 2U Matrix GTX series (I think they've done facelift models recently), plus a rack tuner and a variety of Sansamp units. It was just as happy working off the Sansamp or a floorboard (which was wired for a dual channel setup). Would generally run it bridged (into one cab), but it was equally adept at operating on a dual channel set up (twin cabinets).

My Vitriol today. They should have been massive.

Nah...i lasted about 30 seconds. I'm still holding a massive grudge about him working with NIN.

I recently acquired a set of Geezer Butler EMGs from @doc40hz of this parish, with the intended recipient bass being my newly acquired Hamer Cruisebass. The Cruise was still fitted with the 80s DiMarzios and two of the three Hamer stamped pots; clearly someone had been in the body cavity at some point as there was evidence the tone pot had been replaced. Half of my basses are active, either from stock or John East and I just fancied to keep the Hamer passive, but didn't really like the DiMarzios...they just seemed to toppy and shrill. Installation was easy enough. The J-unit dropped in without issue, but the P-unit was too deep for the existing cavity - the push-fit connectors cause the pickup depth to extend 2-3mm outside of the casing, so chisels out. Took the opportunity to shield the cavity. Connection was simple, fun in fact. I took the opportunity to replace the barrel jack as well (the old one was very noisy). Tone. Aah, subjective I know, but mother of god; while I tend to generally play with everything full on, here I doubt that will be the case. I've tried this with the DG A/O head and the dUg stompbox...the P-unit is off the scale tonally; phat and beautiful...the bridge pickup is more complimentary; toppy and there to roll the volume up to achieve the right amount of clank to sit behind the P-unit. Damn, these are awesome pickups. The only negative thing is the Hamer's body rout mean from a visual aesthetic, the strings don't sit plumb centre of the poles, but I doubt this has any issue other than the visuals (I can always break out a Sharpie if it annoys me!). 5/5

The Quiet Life deluxe from Japan. Honestly couldn't be assed in paying £50 for a box set, it's dropped onto digital formats today. I'm a member of a couple of Japan Facebook groups, it's been amazing reading the comments there about this release. End of the day, I've got everything that's on it in one shape or form, even the bootleg of the 1980 audience recording that forms the second (albeit different) 'Live At Budokan' release from the band in the last six months, and folks, it is a bootleg recording and the quality is quite dreadful, but hey, if cassette recordings from nearly 40 years ago (oh, imagine the quality), where the surrounding screams of the female teen-Japanese audience is more prominent in the mix than the music ('Mickeeeeeeey', 'David-saaaaaaan') is your thing, then knock yourself out.

I'm starting out the day with Phil X & The Drills. After that's done, I'm going to migrate to the Futureman Records XTC tribute, 'Garden Of Earthly Delights'.

Last night I fleetingly skipped through one of Ben Crowe's Crimson build videos on the tube of you. He made an off the cuff remark (along with a wry look on his face), that if you could tell the difference between two or three different woods you had a better ear than he does.

Living Colour today.

I am aghast at the prices companies suggest for what are essentially Jazz and Precision (and to a lesser extent, Thunderbirds) copies. Much as I love my Lulls, why anyone would pay £3K for a Precision or Jazz copy is beyond me. As for the OP, why would anyone pay a vintage price for a brand new distressed instrument? Mental.

UFO - Strangers In The Night. Any version. You can close this thread now.

Blimus. Unlistenable.

Hey Ian, I'll try and find them. Hope all is well.

We only switched to Lizard Sweets for this project as we caught some johnny-foreigner passing himself off as us online. There wasn't a Lizard Sweets anwhere (apart from the gummy variety).

I had some isolated bass tracks by John Deacon, one of which was Liar. If you're familiar with the track, you'll know there's a solo bass thing going on in the last quarter; while the bass sits nicely in the mix, isolated it's quite shocking how (for a fretted instrument) far off the notes are. So it brings us to a similar route many of my posts seem to come around to recently, in that does <the subject matter> really matter. With the odd tweak, all my kit is set up to work per my requirements; action, intonation, relief etc. but this is probably me just needing to know that when I play a note it's going to be the note that I expect, not the sharp or flat of it. Given the isolated recording I mentioned earlier, I'd never noticed that the bass was so off and I'd listened to Liar dozens, perhaps hundreds of times over the years. Perhaps our brains are just wired not to notice nuances like this, or more to the point, 100% spot on intonation probably doesn't matter. Just moving along, my band (Lizard Sweets, look 'em up) will be moving into uncharted waters for the next batch of songs. Guitarist/producer is experimenting with quarter tone stuff (which sounds distinctly middle-eastern); god knows how that's going to work.