prowla

I've got some very good MIM Fenders. No Japanese ones though, but I'm not sure that the factories they came from were pushing out the world's finest instruments at the time; mostly midrange stuff.

The Ric one is the BT5. I think the BT1 has the same base plate but a wider post.

I also have:

(I want a couple more!)

I have them on several basses; they work. When tuning you do have to operate a couple of times back and forth to cover off string slackening/tightening variations. The dropped position has a small thumb-screw adjuster. There are like-for-like models for most common bass tuners (they discontinued the Ric ones, though). They are drop-in replacements for the stock tuners, but you do have to use their countersunk screws rather than the original raised-dome ones (they need to be flush-fitting for the clearance of the moving part over the base plate). When choosing, they do gold/nickel/chrome/black finishes. BTN & Allparts sell them in the UK.

You can still just about read that the brand is Squier.

Maybe take it offline.

I'm not sure I'm onboard with that!

A bit of this and that.

Well, my point is that the sound quality defines the quality of the content which reaches your ears. However, I do get what you're saying; I've been to a couple of Hi-Fi shows where a lot of suppliers were playing lounge jazz, which simply bores me.

Just last year I dropped in to a Hi-Fi shop and got chatting; one of the folks there said they had a system set up and would I like to have a listen. So, I sat down in front of the rather expensive, out of my price range system and he put on some music. I said it was a bit disappointing and was lacking something, it seemed a bit lacklustre and had no life; he said hang on a mo and went and tweaked some settings. Suddenly the missing stuff was there. I asked him what he'd done and he said he'd switched the mode of the power amp to Class-A.

It's the same with most things. The most extreme case of performance is probably cars: the difference between a supercar and a hot hatch; that last 10-15% can cost £1m+. I think the differences in Hi-Fi can be quite subtle. It's ironic that musicians will happily discuss upgrades, pickup sound, valve amps, digital vs analogue, feel, and so-on, but yet argue about whether a system's ability to reproduce those subtleties is a real thing or even relevant. I don't understand how you can separate the quality of the music from the quality of the reproduction.

Yikes - I'll be spending £3k (s/h) on a power supply for my network streamer in the forseeable! https://www.naimaudio.com/products/naps-555-dr (I was going to invite you round for a listen, but maybe not! 🙂 )

I have to say I've gone digital. But one day I'll get my LP12 out of the loft and set it up again. Meanwhile we have a pic'n'mix the usual arguments: Digital is more accurate than vinyl. Vinyl has more feeling than digital. Digital has more dynamic range than vinyl. Digital sounds like sandpaper. You must be mad if you spend £2k+ on a needle. CDs are limited and you can't spread jam on them and expect them to play. Vinyl LPs warp. Anything above £250 and you can't tell the difference anyway. Some albums sound better on this and some on that. Anything above £251 and it's all a placebo anyway. My vinyl sounds no better than my digital when played over Bluetooth. It's about the music not the system. Go out and listen to some live music.

Well, I've never heard a digital system that hands-down beats a top-flight vinyl one; there's just something slightly detached about its performance. As you wander up the performance chain you tend to find that some albums sound distinctly worse than others. With something like a WiiM Ultra you can do room-modelling eq. Some digital transcodings do have tweaks done to the levels which can come across as being more dynamic. In general, a lot of the loss in fidelity of any reproduction is down to a cloth-eared engineer or producer in the studio or mixing room.