Dan Dare

This. I remember the first time I ran my bass direct into the board in a studio with proper monitors, not the little nearfield speakers everyone uses these days with their desktop studios (it was at the BBC studios in Maida Vale in case that's of interest). The sound was smooth, clean and even - all the notes spoke equally. It was also rather characterless and needed eq, etc to make it work in the mix. As others suggest, look for an amp that has a baked-in sound that suits you and go from there. Some are certainly more overtly baked-in sounding than others, but what you like and what suits the music you are playing is what counts, rather than how it measures on an oscilloscope.

Essentially, it's just a descending scale, as you say, although he jumps up an octave part way through when he runs out of notes on the B string. What are you listening on? If using the speaker on your computer, it may not be clear, but it's easy to discern on a decent pair of headphones.

Thank you. It's what I was attempting to say when I responded to the claim that we "boomers" had it easy, bought cheap property, etc. It's sad to see how ordinary people are being duped into attacking each other and fighting over crumbs. This is rather disingenuous. Telling someone who has worked for 50 years and earned average wages at best that they "had it easy/easier" or that they don't "acknowledge their privilege" is a slight, however you dress it up.

Afraid it doesn't. Currently, the average wage in the UK is £31.5k. The price of the average property is £278k. Both are ONS figures, not plucked from the air or the Daily Mail. So the average home costs around eight times an average individual's annual wages. That is very similar to the position we were in individually back in 1983. Neither of us could have afforded to buy our flat individually. We were both earning average salaries. We could only afford to do so because we pooled our resources. The same is true today, when, with the exception of those in well-paid work, only couples or people who are older and have some equity or money behind them can afford to buy. Two people earning average wages - £63k combined - could afford the average property in exactly the way we could. In fact, eight times £63k is actually a little over £500k, which equates to something quite a bit nicer than the average property. Property values are dictated by the market. If people were unable to pay them, they would remain static or fall.

Hate to break it to you, but it wasn't "easier" for us to buy our homes. When I tell people my late partner and I bought our first home (a two bedroomed flat in a fairly run down area) for £38k in 1983, they often roll their eyes and say "It was all right for you" and similar. They are, of course, judging the price we paid by modern day standards, wage levels, etc. That is patently ridiculous. We borrowed five times our combined salaries (I was a civil servant. She was a teacher) and put down a 10% deposit. Interest rates at the time were much higher than they are currently, which pushed up the monthly repayments considerably. It was possible, but not easy - we couldn't afford to run a car for a few years and furnished it courtesy of hand me downs from friends and relatives. If you take five times the average current civil servant's and teacher's salary now and add 10%, you get around £350k. That's enough to buy a two bedroomed flat in many - although certainly not the most expensive - areas. But when were average first time buyers ever able to afford to buy in desirable parts of town? Cheap property for boomers is a myth, pure and simple.

It's sad that you, like so many others, have fallen for the myth that is being peddled presently, which is that the financial ills of recent generations are the fault of those "greedy Boomers", who "bought all the cheap property" (already dealt with above), grabbed all the pension funds (also dealt with above), etc, etc. Surely you can see that the vast majority of us so-called "Boomers" were/are just ordinary folk who bought a single, modest home and accepted the pensions and conditions of employment that were on offer during our working lives. We worked (for 50 years in my case), paid our taxes (which, incidentally, helped fund the education, health services, etc of subsequent generations), just as those who came before us did. There are some very dodgy people who have a vested interest in setting ordinary people at each other's throats - divide and rule and all that - and you have swallowed their nonsense. You need to look elsewhere for the culprits who are responsible for the current state of affairs.

I have to disagree. Led by thieves would be more accurate.

If you pull the frets, you'll need to fill the slots tightly with strips of hard veneer or plastic (a light colour is handy as you can check your intonation visually). Some years ago, I made the mistake of pulling the frets on an old bass and filling the slots with ordinary filler. The neck promptly bowed when I took the strings up to tension, as the filled slots were less resistant to bending. It was bad enough that I couldn't correct it with the truss rod.

I wouldn't recommend using a guitar preamp. The frequencies the eq is tuned to will likely not be ideal for a violin/viola. I think you'll find ukulele tuners will be too long to fit in the pegbox of a violin/viola. The pickup looks like the one on my Yamaha silent violin, which uses a conventional violin bridge that sits on a vibration sensing base. Violin bridges are traditionally made from maple. Changing the wood for something more dense, hard and heavy, such as ebony, will affect the ability of the bridge to transmit vibration from the strings. Whether that will be for better or worse can only be found by experimentation. However, given that violin bridges have been made for hundreds of years, it's likely that it has been found that maple does the job best. Bridges are not drop-in replacements. They have to be fitted properly - cut/trimmed to height, thickness, etc. The come as blanks which are a little too large. Doing it right is a skilled job. If you want the bridge black, why not stain it?

It makes perfect sense. There is a big difference between education and training. Education develops the whole person. Training enhances a person's ability to perform in a certain role. The fact that someone may have an interest in and a talent for a particular subject at the age of 18-25 doesn't mean that will be the case for the rest of their lives. As people develop and learn/see more of the world, their interests and desires can change, often markedly. There may very well be few opportunities to work in the field one has studied. Studying a subject to degree level and beyond does not mean you will only be proficient in that subject. The methods and techniques you learn and the abilities you acquire whilst learning will transfer across a wide range of related and unrelated topics. Absolutely. When we boomers bought our "cheap" houses, they weren't cheap by the standards of the day. We were in a similar position to the one you describe. Yes, we owned a house (or rather, the building society did. They graciously allowed us to live there in return for a hefty monthly payment), but it was furnished with hand-me-downs from relatives and junk shop finds. We had no car for several years (sold them to put towards the deposit). We took camping holidays and life was strictly no frills for quite a while. I'm not bleating about it. We made our choices and knew it would come good in the end. However, it boils my p*ss when I'm told we "had it easy", etc.

This is key. It's understandable to think "My amp's only turned up a quarter of the way. Therefore I'm only using 25% of its power", but it ain't so, because of the taper of the pots. They don't increase volume in a linear fashion. You usually see a large increase during the early stage of the pot travel, with the amount of increase lessening as you turn it up further.

Beyer DT770 is noted for its bass response. I'm still happy with mine after many years of use. Around a third of your budget, which is nice.

You really need to try things rather than buy on spec' and hope. What rig do you use? Is it capable of giving the desired result? Even if it is, so much is in the player's hands.

A BF 4x10 is capable of being pretty loud. Are you playing stadiums? I'd be looking at driving it harder (BF cabs will take some serious power), rather than adding a 2x10.

I went to an old-fashioned grammar school, where it was assumed everyone would go to uni'. By the age of 18, I had had enough of being a broke student and wanted to go out and earn some money. Didn't have any desire to do x or y and had already started doing the occasional gig for beer money, so told the careers advisor (aka the maths teacher) that I fancied playing music. Once he accepted that I didn't want to go to uni' (I think I was one of only 5 from that year's sixth form who didn't), he was actually quite reasonable - told me how precarious it was, etc and suggested I have a backup plan in case it didn't work out. Gave me all the usual suggestions - the City, Civil Service, Forces and so on. All clean hands stuff - the school was one of those where you learned Latin and ancient Greek (very useful in the 20th/21st century...) and doing anything hands on, save for things like medicine, was regarded as being a bit infra dig. A common and very short sighted attitude back then (early 1970s), especially as the economy is always crying out for engineers, technicians and skilled people. I did actually apply to the Civil Service and found it to be full of interesting and often talented misfits - people who had no burning ambition to be any particular thing, but who wanted to do something socially worthwhile in convivial company. I felt quite at home. One of my first bosses was a sax player. He was blind and did all his work on a braille typewriter. He would sometimes bring his sax to work and practice during his lunch hour and we would occasionally play together. I left several times over the next forty odd years and had spells of playing music for a living (as well as doing various, sometimes grim, odd jobs when the phone wasn't ringing), before going back to working for the government. Had some good times, ended up with a reasonable pension and can't complain how life has turned out. It's only now that I appreciate how fortunate I've been, considering how little I planned and how I drifted into whatever seemed a good idea at the time.

Iggy Poop, The Donors, The Beagles

Let's unpack this a little. Sound equipment is not designed or built to perform badly. Assuming it's of decent enough quality and adequate for the job, how else can it sound bad other than through operator error?

I did not say that "often bad sound is user error". The word "often" was in your post, not mine (save as a quote). Obviously, missing, damaged or malfunctioning/faulty equipment or corrupted mains power is outside the control of musicians (assuming it isn't their equipment that is missing, damaged or malfunctioning/faulty). I always carry a power conditioner. It's smart to do so, not just because it will treat mains-borne noise, but because valve gear especially does not like poor quality power, especially over voltages. The mains voltage can often fluctuate and spikes/surges are not rare. I've heard/seen plenty of bands that sounded terrible because they didn't know how to use their kit properly. Leaving aside the instances to which you refer, poor sound rarely "just happens".

Come again? It may not be one individual's fault (several people may be conspiring to make it bad), but it doesn't just happen. Not learning how eq, gain, etc works is definitely the fault of those who don't/won't do so. One of the biggest obstacles to a good band sound is each player insisting on using "their tone". The sound(s) they like might be pleasing in isolation, but combine them at any volume, especially if you fail to take account of room acoustics and the result can be a mess. It's part of the job of being a musician to understand these things and know how to compensate for them. At a dep' gig, the singer/guitar player was struggling with the mixer at soundcheck and it sounded appalling. I looked over his shoulder and the gains were all over the place. I suggested he set them properly and he said "What do you mean?". I set them correctly, adjusted the eq and all was fine. To his credit, he said "Oh. You do know what you're talking about" and asked me what I'd done, so I showed him.

I use several of those aluminium (they're actually ply with an alu' skin) camera cases you can buy from Argos, Amazon and similar for mic's, cables, etc. Cheap and sturdy.

True dat.

Pickup swapping seems to be the musician's equivalent of the hi-fi buff's cable swapping. I've never been able to hear much difference between quality p/us. Granted, you'll notice a difference if you replace a POS with something decent, but apart from that...

You sure about that? Blockhead + one extra letter (a single "o") = (drum roll) Bolockhead. See the "Read before posting" thread 😊

Ian Dury and the Bolockheads (I know, mis-spelling, before the grammar nazis attack).

There are plenty about, but you wouldn't want to play with most of them. I assume you've tried the usual places - Join my Band, etc? It's a bit of a chore, I know. You usually have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince.