Stub Mandrel

1 hour ago, TheGreek said:

I have something similar that I use when CTS turns it's ugly head. I think I picked up a couple in my local £1 shop.

I'll pop in the range next time I'm in town.

1 hour ago, Jakester said:

I wouldn’t use something than compresses the forearm as it could add to the pressure on the tendons.  

I don't think 'pressure' is the issue as I rest my wrist on the mousemat. Its' more the sensation of the body 'stroking' my wrist as I move my hand position.

I've found a green tubular elbow support - looks crap and it's a bit loose.

I'll try it and if it helps I'll see if I can get a sexy black neoprene one that doesn't go round my thumb.

Year ago I started getting RSI/carpal tunnel syndrome, my right hand would go as cold as ice and sometimes become almost completely numb. I went as far as seeing a hospital specialist but the cure was simple - a mouse mat with a gel-filled wrist support, which sorted me in about a month.

The legacy is a wrist that 'tingles' unpleasantly if I use a mouse without a mat (caused by it rubbing on the edge of the desk).

Now I'm playing bass more, I've noticed a similar sensation if my wrist/lower arm is touching the body of the bass.

I'm wondering if a wrist cover of some sort might help. I used to wear wrist 'sweat bands' in the 80s which might help but look cheesy. An orthapedic wrist support is OTT. teh Judas Priest approach might work but will antique my basses pretty rapidly:

Has anyone else had a similar issue and found a solution that doesn't look naff?

4 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

For me the whole point of a Rickenbacker bass (or any other bass for that matter) is that it offers something different to Fender P or J and their copies.

It seems to me that most of those who try a Rickenbacker and don't get on with it really want something that plays, feels and sounds like the Fender but with the 4001/4003 body shape holographically laws over the top.

That rings true.

Rickenbacker is like many other old brands that live off their mystique/cachet and survive by selling small quantities to high standards to a small specialist clientele willing to pay the high prices associated with the product.

There are often cheaper (often vastly cheaper) alternatives that do the job as well or even better  but don't come with the 'pride of ownership' fitted.

This is true for cars, tools, all sorts of things.

OOPS!

I thought this was the Danny Baker Thread...

Just added a Behringer Ultra Tremelo for 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams' but I've a feeling it will be hard to synch the 'drum machine' to it. If I punch in a rhythm he will punch me back... 🙂

1 hour ago, SpondonBassed said:

Don't forget unicycling!

I picked my daughter from Nottingham last night at about 10:30pm on the way back we passed a young lady unicycling along the pavement. There ought to be a law 🙂

1 hour ago, dmccombe7 said:

I'm just after surgery to remove 2 large cysts in that area 2" across.

Many years ago I had a modest sized-lump appear in a disturbing location, growing slowly. After several weeks worry I finally inspected it thing I will have to go to the doctor... as soon as I made my mind up, the damn thing exploded! By the next day there was no sign of it.

When I was in school one of the biology textbooks had a picture of a fellow wheeling along his distended testicle in a wheelbarrow... we all thought he looked rather proud of it.

As I recall I pretty much always ended up stage left without any planning.

As an onlooker, I wonder if every time a bass comes up for sale inserting 'This is not a Rickenbacker' in the text of the ad might be a worthwhile distraction 🙂

7 hours ago, skankdelvar said:

A nice little restored TE20 ("Grey Fergie") would only set you back £2,000-3000. Hook a trailer on the back for the fambly...

If I ever have the space I will rstore a Fergie or a Fordson T.

11 hours ago, paul_c2 said:

I have a theory that at a particular temperature if its in tune, then going cold then warm, it will go out of tune but should return to being in tune. The theory being based on the expansion/contraction of wood, metal, whatever. 

I think that's what happened to me. I suspect the strings cooled faster and 'shrank' a little making them taughter and raising the pitch.

7 hours ago, skankdelvar said:

Chris Martin IV is passionate about Martin guitars and everyone agrees he's the nicest man in the biz.

Shame that guitar looks like a Barbie accessory

8 hours ago, Chienmortbb said:

On 08/05/2019 at 17:41, Stub Mandrel said:

Personally, although class D amps lend themselves to direct digital control, I wouldn't class them as any more digital than PWM motor controllers

The point about Class D is that it uses Pulse Width Modulation. If is modulated then amplified and demodulated ( yes it is a form of Modem)  I would argue that the PWM output is analogous to the input signal In the same way FM Radio is. It never enters the digital domain. 

I think that's the point I was trying to make? 🙂

1 hour ago, hiram.k.hackenbacker said:

A band can enjoy the songs they play, but I don’t think sacrificing a chunk of the set because they’re merely fed up with them is the right call in the circumstances described. Do you? Once that process is allowed to manifest itself then it tends to repeat and ends  up in very few gigs being performed, as evidenced in the final line by @phil.c60. 

To my mind, and I accept it might just be me, if you perform your songs to a high enough standard, that’s where the enjoyment of playing live comes from, not from putting five new songs in the set every other gig. If I had a penny for every time I’ve played Ashes to Ashes I would be very rich indeed.

 

It's one thing to replace songs you are fed up playing to an audience. Dropping ones you are fed up practising but haven't got round to playing in front of an audience does suggest a lack of seriousness about gigging...

22 hours ago, paul_c2 said:

3. When you pluck a string, the laws of physics means that the string vibrates at different frequency (pitch) upon initially being struck, then as it decays, anyway (string instruments when bowed don't do this though).

This is very obvious if you have a tuner that reacts as quickly as the TU-3.

Bye the bye, I tuned a bass yesterday, brought it to practice and every string was a few cents sharp - with this thread in mind I wondered if my tuners were at odds. But the instrument was cold. Once it had warmed up all the strings were flat by a few cents... I obviously have a temeperature sensitive bass!

22 hours ago, josie said:

Advice I picked up on BC recently - sorry I can't remember who from - is to tune on the 12th fret rather than the open string. My 12th fret readings are consistently higher than the open string readings (on all my basses - with a Polytune clip-on). Not by much, but by more than some mentioned above. Again though probably best if the guitard(s) do the same? or are the lower harmonics stronger on a bass? That would make sense... 

If your 12th fret is sharp compared to the open string, don't you need to adjust the intonation?

I always use an electronic tuner to match the first harmonic and 12th fret notes when setting my intonation.

11 hours ago, KevB said:

Deep Purple were considered 'progressive' in their early days (when they took their cue from bands like Vanilla Fudge) and even up to around the In Rock and Fireball releases, though that might be because they were released on EMI's Harvest label initially which was created to cater for their more 'left field' artists. They became 'heavy rock' and then 'classic rock' as the years rolled on. I don't think fans of DP, Whitesnake, Zep, UH etc would really describe them as 'metal' bands. Sabbath are usually lauded as the pioneers of metal but even they started out playing blues jams.

Back to Glenn Hughes, he's had quite a career and done the whole rockstar lifestyle to the nth degree and has managed to survive and remained a good singer, his voice has aged far better than Gillan's or Coverdale's. I'm off to see him later this month at Rock City, could be an interesting night though I've heard him do a few DP songs in solo gigs before.

My view is that 'heavy metal' changed, not the bands.

The likes of Zeppelin, Purple, Heep and even Sabbath always had a hefty dose of music as far away from modern 'heavy metal' as Lena Zavaroni... but a fair chunk of their songs were foundation on which heavy metal was built - Whole Lotta Love, Smoke on the Water, to me, are unquestionably so.

Ironically, some contemporary jazz (Soft Machine) and full-on prog (e.g. High Tide)  was vastly 'heavier' than any of those four bands until Sabbath Bloody Sabbath came out (IMHO) but i think these things are intensly personal and everyone will have their own views, which is what makes it interesting.

Tell me this isn't prog AND heavy... 🙂

8 hours ago, Jus Lukin said:

It's weird, of all the services which pester us to sign up and pay for the 'full' or 'pro' or whatever version, Youtube doesn't give that option. It's saved me a fortune in going and buying cd's to learn songs over the years, so I'd gladly pay a bit to clear away the ads, make sure royalties go to the appropriate place, and hopefully discourage quite so much piracy and attention grabbing crapola on there.

It does here - keeps wanting me to go to YT premium.

Ads are so crap I almost want to pay...

9 hours ago, LewisK1975 said:

Sorry to be a pedant - but the shop a few doors away from PMT in Cardiff is Gamlins.  Cranes was at the other end of St.Mary street near the castle and was closed a few years ago now..

You're right!

12 hours ago, Teebs said:

Thank you jebroad   👍

 

Seconded!

On 09/05/2019 at 18:19, uk_lefty said:

The zoom devices are great, you can just set up for ordinary volumes and balance, put the recorder in the middle of the room on a stool or mic stand and off you go. Really worth doing, you can analyse your playing a lot better and see how fills and so on are working out. And you can prove to others that their backing vocals are really, really, REALLY out of tune.

Our guitarist recorded us last night, just with a Fosusright LDC mike into his laptop via an interface. It worked much better - he just put the mike away from the drumkit and not close to any of the amps. I think we will get away with it a week Sunday!

37 minutes ago, Bluewine said:

I could easily learn 6-8 standard rock covers, however 3-4 seems to be the standard around here.

A busy working band auditioning a lot of musicians for one spot, do they have time for multiple 8 song auditions?

Blue

LOL! I meant 6/8 as against 4/4 🙂

1 hour ago, AndyTravis said:

Tell you what I love listening back to rehearsals too since we’ve started taking a zoom handy recorder

I got sent a link to a recording of one of our rehearsals  - just from a couple of condensor mikes up on the ceiling.

Put it like this, you can hear the snare really well, until the singer starts then you can hear the singer really well. Everything else is effectively inaudible.

6 hours ago, Lozz196 said:

Happened to me too, was given a set list to learn for a dep gig, got to the first rehearsal, at least half of the songs I’d been given were no longer current. And it hadn’t been mentioned that I was expected to play guitar on s couple of songs as well. There and then my decision on depping was changed for evermore.

My first audition, which was a disaster, I was given a tape full fo songs. Spent a week trying to at least learn the basics of them with help from my little brother.

Turned up 'oh those were only to give you an idea of what sort of music we are into'. Expected me (who was a pretty basic bassist at this point) to slot in with their random noodling...