bnt

I think I said this on the Taylor Swift thread: artists and TicketBastard have gotten wiser about the way scalpers made money through tickets being sold at below "market value". The scalpers are still trying to make money e.g. there are already Oasis tickets listed at over £6,500.

I lived in London for most of the '90s, and you couldn't escape the Britpop Wars: Oasis vs. Blur, Norf vs. Sarf. At that time I was in to Progressive more than anything else, and it wasn't until years later that I got in to late-period Beatles. So it was no contest from my POV. I couldn't imagine Oasis making anything with the power of Charmless Man or the understated emotional punch of Coffee & TV.

My ToneX One arrived today and I've played with it for an hour or so. The basic functionality works very well e.g. I loaded up "The Fridge" tone model and lost track of time for a while. It does that thing I like about an amp that just makes me sound better, and I added a bit of compressor for the smoothness. The software needs work, though.

Junk Culture - OMD

White China - Ultravox

Wonderland - Big Country

The Thomann prices have come down since launch, too: £149 / €175 incl. VAT. I had to add some strings and cables to my order to get my order over the €200 threshold for free shipping. 😉

Robbery, Assault & Battery - Genesis

I just ordered a TONEX ONE, so I'll find out by next week. In addition to the amp and cab sims, it has some features that will come in handy, such as the compressor and the audio interface. I think it will go great on my small board with octaver and phaser in front.

Bye Bye Bye - NSYNC

Cat Food - King Crimson

Clockwork Angels - Rush

Thursday's Child - David Bowie

La Grange - ZZ Top

Raincloud - Bankstatement (Tony Banks & friends)

I suggest you check this setting from the article: paste about:config in the address bar and accept the warning search for network.cookie.cookieBehavior : if you see a value of 5 next to it, that's a possible cause. You can hit Edit (the "pen") and change it to 4 as a test.

The Scan QR Code method worked fine with my iPhone's built-in Passwords management system too (under Settings). This combines a password manager and code generator in one place i.e. you can save the password there too. For anyone interested in the geeky stuff: all these Authenticator apps use an industry standard called TOTP, or time-based one-time passwords. Microsoft's version has added some extra functionality that simplifies the authentication through notifications, but it can fall back to use TOTP standard.

And now for something a little different: I just put together a second board to go with a computer of some sort, starting with my 2018 Apple iPad: Harley Benton PowerPlant Tuner / PSU (new) tc SpectraDrive preamp (old) Lead Foot volume pedal (new), which is bigger than I thought I wanted, but it all fits in the case and I like it. Boss MD-200 Modulation (a year old) Thomann t.mix. MicroMix 2 USB (new) The mixer acts as a USB Audio interface, in to the iPad via an old Camera Connection Kit (CCK). It can also play back Bluetooth audio from e.g. a mobile phone, for practice. It has to be powered - the iPad can't power the mixer off battery alone. I was concerned I might need a powered USB hub, but I think I avoided that, barely. On the iPad I'm trying various things. You can do complex audio routing with plugins through an app called AUM. The screen currently shows the AudioKit L7 Live Looper, which is pretty powerful, has pre- and post-loop effects, and runs great on this iPad as a standalone app. It can be controlled entirely by MIDI if you have that option, but I'm thinking of mounting the iPad on a mic stand for easy access. I might run vocals through it too, since the mixer has a mic input spare. The board needs to be tidied up and some cables need to be improved e.g. the RCA cable with 1/4" adapters is way too long at this point. But it's working and sounds very good so far. With the Bass VI, I'm not exactly up to Frippertronics standard yet, but we shall see!

Nothing too drastic since the last time I posted the board. The new pedal is the Mooer Soul Shiver, which is an odd bird. Its effects don't quite follow the conventional expectations. The Vibrato setting has some Tremolo going on, while the Rotary does a better Chorus than the Chorus setting. For the little it cost, I'm impressed, though I don't use it heavily. I got it since I thought my Bass VI could use a bit of that. After the Peterson tuner and the Orange KongPressor, the main change is the way I'm using the Complicator (the Simplifier clone) at the heart of the setup. I don't really need the parallel loops since I mostly have effects with blend controls anyway, avoiding the dreaded tone suck. So I've reconfigured it to give me two switchable channels: Green (main) channel: Parallel Send to the MXR bass octave deluxe, Mosky Silver Horse (Klone, low gain) and JHS 3 Series Phaser to the Donner A/B switch. (Yep, I still think Phaser is a must-have, and this is a good one.) Red (alt) Channel: Complicator Internal Preamp section (mild gain) to Preamp Send, T-Rex Diva Drive, Tone City Matcha Cream Fuzz, Mooer Soul Shiver and Sonicake Sonic Ambience, to the Donner A/B switch. (The Matcha Cream fuzz, which is not subtle, doesn't kill the bass if I keep the tone setting low.) Then from the switch Y output back to the Parallel return and cab sim. I use the headphone output to the USB-powered wireless transmitter for my wireless "TV" headphones; they do colour the sound a little, but it's good for practice. I can feed music from my old iPad to the Aux in too. Plans? I'm thinking about a different fuzz, maybe the Pigtronix Octava Micro. I'm still searching for a good pseudo-8-string tone, so I want a solid octave up, analogue if possible. I've read good things about the Pigtronix here and elsewhere.

I checked CME again, and their ETA for the Purple FSR CV is now November. Which means that Anderton's aren't going to get them till then at least. With the heavier La Bella strings on mine, I had to tighten the truss rod several times to try and improve the action, and in my latest attempt today, one of the strings broke at the tuner. I may be able to fix it, but I'm back on the original D'Addario strings for now. The 0.084" low E is definitely too floppy and wooly-sounding, a common complaint, but that's all D'Addario sells. You have to look to other companies for better e.g. La Bella, and StringJoy says they've designed a set specifically to address this. I didn't loosen the truss rod again, and with the original strings, the action is getting close to what I would call good action. I did the relief check (Fender method) with a capo on 1st, fretting at 18th, and measured 0.35mm at the 8th = acceptable but could be a little better. Still happy with the bridge, intonation was fine with the heavier strings. If anyone says they can't intonate it, my first question would be whether they have physically moved the bridge to the centre of its travel after tuning it up. I move it until it's upright and centred, give the vibrato bar some exercise, retune, and then the intonation is very close. Tuning is stable as long as I give the bar a little yank up after using it. (This happens to Strats too.) Electrics: I've gotten to the bottom of the problems I had. The earth wires from the pickups are soldered to one of the switch screws. That screw contacts with the switch plate. That plate contacts with the screws on the choke switch. The ground wire to the output is soldered to the body of said choke switch. So you have multiple unsoldered metal-metal screw connections that have to make good contact for the pickups to work. After some rescrewing (?) of all the switch screws, it all seems to be making decent contact now. It's still a questionable system, though. I wanted to know whether we have humbucking in effect in the 1+2 and 2+3 pickup combinations, and after some high-gain tests through headphones, it appears that we do. After fixing the grounding problem above, it took some major gain to hear much noise at all, which says good things about the shielding. The noise dropped off with 1+2 and 2+3, and increased with 1+3 selected. So far I prefer the tone I get from 1+2.

I’ve been almost militantly fingers-only for decades, despite being a fan of some great pick players such as Tony Butler and Chris Squire. A change is being forced upon me for medical reasons, though. I was never the strongest fingerstyle player as it was, no ‘Arry, but I did OK with some Rush songs, for example. MS has affected my plucking fingers and I can’t rely on them to play quickly and consistently any more. So I’ve decided to try more pick playing, and getting a Bass VI is part of that. I’ve lowered the action to borderline “too low”, and am starting to develop more speed. I kind-of shocked myself today by playing Hysteria (Muse) on it with a pick, through the Crunch Cab preset in Apple MainStage, and it sounded decent. On my main bass it’s a struggle. Re. Picks, so far I’m liking the Harley Benton light ones (0.6-0.9 mm), which have a kind of parchment finish that helps me with grip. I’m dropping them much less than standard picks. I read that players such as Carol Kaye used felt picks, the stuff hats are made of - sounds interesting:

What about a "Klon" circuit for a mild boost/overdrive? I'm a cheapskate, so I got the Mosky Silver Horse, which has "Gold" and "Silver" "Klon" circuits. I could have saved myself a tenner by getting the Golden Horse, which has only the "Gold" circuit, which is lower gain. Last night I put the Bass VI through it and on one setting I could hear a little clipping when I played hard. I find the "Gold" circuit to be bass-friendly too.

Correction - July! Damn Yankees and their weird MDY date formats.

I just installed the La Bella flats on it - at work - and so far that looks OK. Intonation is very close on all strings. This is after pushing the floating bridge to roughly the middle of its travel after the string change. With the bridge floating like that, I suspect that perfectly accurate intonation is an unrealistic expectation. I'll keep the advice in mind and may reconsider later, but so far the bridge is good enough for my purposes. Vibrato still works, slightly less travel. I have more dialing-in to do still. However, I'm already having trouble with the pickup switches, cutting out after hardly any use, and so they will be the first thing to get scrutinized & maybe replaced. PS just remembered to check that the strings aren't contacting the back of the bridge: all clear there.

I wanted one of those purple ones, but didn't get in quickly enough. From what I know, they are exclusive to Andertons and Chicago Music Exchange, and CME says they're getting more in May. Which leads me to think Anderton's will get them too.