Dan Dare

Cleaning a bass? My good man, have you taken leave of your senses?

This. Shops are in business and need to make a decent profit in order to keep the lights on. If you want the convenience of a trade-in, you have to accept that you are going to get less for something than you would if you sold it privately. If you really don't want to sell it yourself, asking a shop to sell on commission is probably the next best thing. They will probably be able to get more for it than you would, although they have to offer a guarantee, clean and set it up, etc, which will eat into what you receive. Probably not the best time to sell an instrument right now, with everyone spending their spare cash on Christmas baubles. Do you really need a new bass right now?

A colleague I used to work with, who did not drink for religious/cultural reasons, insisted that we should go to a dry premises for team social events - Christmas lunch and so on. When I pointed out that I was not forcing her to drink at a licensed premises, whereas I was prevented from doing so if we went somewhere dry, there was talk of "discrimination". Sadly, others were frightened by this and caved. I just dipped out of social occasions with them from then on if she was going. Thank Gawd I'm retired now and don't have to navigate that b/s.

Since when were they ever making music?

I'm surprised to learn the percentage is as high as that. Given that most people either loathe or, at best, can't be bothered about most of the music they hear, the band may be limiting it's potential appeal a touch.

This

Blimey. So someone wants to have a vegan band. Not my cup of meat, to quote Bob Dylan, but who cares? I wouldn't want to be in it, anyway.

I wouldn't be swayed by reviews, etc. Trust your own ears. Remember most pickups are not actually active. It's the onboard pre' that makes a bass active. In my case, I added an East active pre' to my J bass and found I preferred the instrument in its passive form. The active pre' made it sound more generic, for want of a better term. Bigger sound, more poke and more versatile in active form, but the signature J bass quality was missing. It just sounded like everything else. I returned the instrument to passive form and sold the pre'

humour /ˈhjuːmə/ 1. the quality of being amusing or comic, especially as expressed in literature or speech.

I realise that (did you miss the part where I said I'm a PRS member?). However, a lot of smaller venues or ones where music is only performed occasionally, are not licenced. When we play a licenced venue, we are asked to complete a PRS return, listing what we have played. It certainly doesn't happen everywhere.

True. Strictly speaking, if you perform someone else's song/music and it's still in copyright, you should pay a royalty to the composer, copyright owner et al. Obviously, it's impossible to police or monitor all occasions where this happens and the cost and effort of doing so would not be worth the return. Consequently, effort is directed towards situations where there is some sort of profile, rather than the band playing in the Dog & Duck on Tuesday evening. I'm surprised sometimes when I read my PRS statement and see where payments - often of only pennies - originate. It doesn't matter whether or not there is any financial benefit to the performers. If they are making use of someone's intellectual property, the property owner can pursue a royalty or seek to prevent them from using his/her property. Benefit to the performer is often not financial, in the immediate term, at any rate. It might take the form of pleasing or impressing friends, gaining followers, persuading potential bookers to hire them and so on. The fact that we can and do play music written and owned by others without paying for the privilege does not make it our legal right. It just means nobody has noticed, or that it isn't worth it for the owners to pursue us.

Pour encourager les autres. Exactement.

Have a look at the qualifying statement with the headline figure. It will usually say something along the lines of "400w into 8 ohms at 1khz for xx amount of time". Wattage ratings are pretty inexact, but manufacturers and consumers need some sort of yardstick. Wattage is easy to understand, so watts it is.

No, it wouldn't "mean that the copyright law has been repealed". Repealing a law can only be done by the body that makes the law (a nation's Parliament or its equivalent). However, precedent is important. If artists do not pursue cases of copyright infringement, they could be creating a potential loophole for pirates to exploit. There are many laws on the statute book that are no longer followed or enforced, because custom and practice has caused them to fall into disuse. Formally repealing them would be costly and time consuming and a waste of limited government time and resources, so they are left to languish. Once that happens, it can be difficult to resurrect them. What appears to underlie your argument (and that of others on this thread) is that it's OK to steal from someone, provided the person being stolen from is wealthy and the person doing the stealing is not. Given that we are musicians on here, it baffles me that so many can argue against enforcing copyright laws. Would we feel the same were it our work that was being pirated?

Most drivers can tolerate occasional short term peaks that are higher than their rated input power. Most amps are rated according to how much power they can deliver in short bursts (think milliseconds) at a particular frequency. Their continuous power delivery will be lower, often considerably so. The disparity between your amp and cab is not enormous. I wouldn't worry about it. You'll know if the speaker is struggling because it will not sound pleasant. If that happens, turn down.

Sorry, you are wrong on so many counts. SD's most important point was in his first paragraph, to wit: "One thing that's common to copyright laws in different countries is that if a copyright holder knowingly fails to act on a copyright infringement then a subsequent infringer (?) can use this as precedent to demonstrate that the copyright holder does not defend copyright, ergo there's a loophole for full-on bootleggers to exploit. You can't pick and choose which copyright infringements to go after. You have to go after them all." Read that carefully. If he/his lawyers fail to pursue a case of copyright infringement, they are effectively giving a get out of jail free card to subsequent pirates. You acknowledge in your third paragraph that piracy is rife in Germany. Artists have no choice other than to pursue every case or risk setting a precedent that will enable pirates to ply their trade with impunity. Too much white knighting going on in this thread.

I carry a socket tester for this reason. They're cheap enough. Have found a couple of sockets where neutral and earth have been reversed over the years.

Good summary and certainly sounds plausible. I couldn't care one way or the other about EC, but I don't see anything terrible in what is ascribed to him here. I'd be surprised if he even knew his lawyers/management/record company approached the woman, certainly initially. He won't be wasting his life scouring the 'net for every possible copyright infringement. He pays people to do that for him. Had she said fair enough and withdrawn the CD, I'm sure that would have been the end of it. However, it seems she (or, as Al points out, lawyers acting on her behalf) decided to pick a fight. More fool them.

Did they ever have it in the first place? Farmer George (Keef's nickname for him - see his lovely video tribute to him on YouTube) was too nice a bloke.

There's an Eden Ext112 in the Marketplace (not belonging to me or anyone I know) that would probably do the trick for not much money.

You never get back anything like what you spend on customising instruments. In fact, it usually lowers their potential resale value. If the bass does not work for you in its present form, probably best to sell and put the money towards something else. Given that you refer to your electric basses, I assume you also play upright. Can you still manage it with your arthritis? I would have thought the stretch and hand pressure needed to play it would be greater. If so, might it be worth having the frets pulled on the Ibanez (a decent luthier will fill the slots with hardwood - that is what I had done when I converted a bass to fretless), which should be cheaper than commissioning a new neck? That won't solve the issue of reducing resale value, but it will enable you to keep the Ibanez electronics and sound at lower cost. Soft, even tapewound strings and adopting a more upright hold of the instrument (closer to that you'd employ with an upright) may help improve playability for you.

Motown. P bass with high action and well worn La Bella flats via custom preamp direct to board. Sorry, B15 fans, but the amp was only used for monitoring in the studio (to enable the rest of the musicians to hear the bass). The sound from it did not go to tape.

Derision, even.

Indeed. The hi-fi world is already awash with such nonsense. Some spend hundreds, even thousands, on phono and loudspeaker cables woven from virgin's hair and butterflies' wings. There are attempts to persuade musicians to waste their hard earned on "tone cables", but most of us appear too skint or sensible to fall it.

I bought some half metre square heavy rubber shock absorbing tiles from a company that supplies them to children's playgrounds and the like (they are supposed to stop the little dears bashing their brains out when they fall from the slides, etc). I use them under the PA subs and my bass rig. They work very well and were pleasingly inexpensive - a LOT cheaper than Gramma et al.