adamg67

I just bought a Maruszcyk Hellwood bass from Pete and everything was super smooth and easy. Great bass, fair price, good comms and he arranged the courier and got the bass to me next day with no delivery dramas. Perfect.

Worth remembering that the headphones that get handed out to bass players in the studio for monitoring are not necessarily the good stuff, which is locked away somewhere 🙂

I think Sandberg big pole pickups are just rebadged Delanos.

I got myself a Hakko 888D a couple of years ago and, and at the same time I also brushed up a bit on proper technique as it was a long time since I'd learnt. I'm happy enough now to rewire basses and make my own leads and some of that is down to the Hakko. I pretty much know what temps I need for soldering different things and for desoldering. I think the big thing with temperature controlled is that it will try and maintain the iron at a temp, so if you're doing a pot and it soaks up a little bit of heat, the station will get it back up to temp. I've noticed that I can solder earths to pots as easily as anything else now and it used to be a proper pain in the proverbial with an iron.

Cheers for that, I love this fun stuff! Perfect after an hour wrestling with Erik Satie on the piano, and yes I know you can't get that image out of your head now.

Well, you're not missing an opportunity to dig up the old "I don't get it" / "am I missing something" post 😜

Hello to the flat bits of Yorkshire from the hilly bits

Whilst an in depth study of human psychology would help in answering a lot of questions that get asked round these parts, it's maybe asking too much that we all start looking at it these things in that way? My own personal answer would be either a) because I have a monkey brain and make decisions subconsciously, only adding the illusion of rational decision making afterwards to make my internal model of the world slightly more consistent, or b) there's no free will so the question "why" never even makes sense - depending on what mood I'm in. a) is only really a variation on b) anyway.

I’ve had a pair for a year or so, used most days and no issues. I did some research before I got them and never heard of anything like that, they were well reviewed and rated by SOS and others

Oliver bought a pedal from me, nice and very helpful basschatter, deal with confidence.

Lovely. A PRS really can cure GAS. I occasionally think I might trade the S2 up for a "core" for the arch top and a more dramatic finish, but every time i think about it I find myself liking the understated effect. Another PRS is the only thing that would make me trade it though.

I had some cables from this guy before I started making all my own: https://procables.audio/ - Neutrik connectors on good quality cable, and not expensive. Mine is something like this https://procables.audio/epages/b0f6386e-46a6-44b1-b8fb-63fabf175cd2.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/b0f6386e-46a6-44b1-b8fb-63fabf175cd2/Products/NP2X-AU-SILENT-Tri-NP2XB - £22 for 15 foot with Neutrik black on one end and silent plug on the other.

I'm also a Studio One user, it came with my audio interface and I upgraded it to the Pro version when there was a deal around. I really like it, yes it's the one I know so I would but it does seem relatively easy to understand - I like things where you can get your head round the concepts they have designed around, and it seems like that to me. It's widely used enough that there are lots of tutorials etc.

Mine is bit lower rent than most, and isn't a bass, but still a good deal. The guitarist in a band I was in a few years back gave me a Gretsch Electromatic Pro Jet as he had run out of space for more guitars and it was his cheapest! They're the made in Indonesia (IIRC) variety but still not super cheap, with Bigsby trem & filter tron pickups. I tried to give him some money, nope, eventually managed to get him to take a bottle of whisky (tried to give him 2 bottles, nope). It played nicely but I wasn't into the sound. In the end, instead of selling it I traded it for a PRS SE (and did quite well in that deal really) and then traded that for a PRS S2 which I still have as my main (probably soon my only) guitar, bit of a keeper.

Alex bought a Midi thru box, quick payment and great comms, top Basschatter, cheers mate.

Quiet PC also build... you guessed it... quiet PCs! https://www.quietpc.com/ I have one of their silent UltraNUC boxes but not for music (and not running windows, it's a linux box). I run a Scan gaming PC for music. That can be noisy when running lots of plugins which normally doesn't matter as I'm not using a mic. When I'm using a mic I just bounce everything to one track and turn the plugins off and it goes quiet. I have a PC because Linux is part of my job (and I love it), although to be fair now you can just run Linux in a VM on either Mac or Windows, and in recent years it's become a lot more usable as people aim more and more hardware and software at both platforms. Everything has worked out of the box for me. I might try a macbook if I need a smaller lighter laptop sometime, mine is pretty beefy as I don't usually take it anywhere (and it has a desktop class processor instead of a mobile one). I like my iPad Pro, works a treat with iRig, so I'm not an Apple hater at all. When I got my current laptop it was about twice the spec of the best MacBook Pro for about 2/3 of the price, although I think Apple have caught up a bit on specs since then. I've never had the performance meter in my DAW above 50% and I like double tracking things with seperate tracks for separate sections. For my amateur attempts at mixing I dont even bounce the tracks so I end up running a lot of stuff and it has never struggled. It's a couple of years old now as well.

I'm not an expert either but I think the SE I had was the bottom of the range at the time, I traded a Gretsch Electromatic that I picked up cheap for it and then traded the SE for the S2. It had the les paul scale length as well. Just from bits I've heard recently maybe SEs are better quality now, I think the prices went up a little bit as well.

I've got a PRS S2 Custom 24 and if you want the sound and playability of the "real thing" for less money than the core series they are excellent. They're made in the US, same standards, same QA, set neck etc, they just don't have the carved top (there are a few other minor differences as well). I had a PRS SE (are they still making those?) and it was nice but not a patch on the S2, which was why I traded up. I'm currently selling my other guitar (Fender Tele) even though it's good, because all I need is the S2, with the coil tap it's very versatile. You don't get the "ten top" amazing colours on them but I like mine, bit more understated which is fine cos I don't need to be drawing attention to my playing. They should be around second hand for £700 - £800 ish depending on the finish? Maybe less - they did some on solid colours that were about £1200 - £1300 new I think.

I really did vote for yours more as an expressive piece of art than because i actually enjoyed listening to it

It's easy to misremember, in my head the Katana didn't look too bad... that was definitely wrong!

I did, all Squiers, plus a few pages stating that Fender did the guitar as a Fender and a Squier, but only did the bass as a Squier.