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Stub Mandrel

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Posts posted by Stub Mandrel

    John Hall?

    in Bass Guitars

    Posted

    On 06/05/2019 at 00:29, Bassassin said:

    The trashy-looking Chinese knockoffs, which are sold badged as Rickenbacker through outlets like AliExpress. They're crap counterfeits, but counterfeits nonetheless.

    Such things are exactly what all this China-America trade dispute is all about.

    I see eearches both Bangood and AliBaba auto fill 'rickenbacker electric guitar' and 'rickenbacker bass guitar' but don't show any results, which suggests that some things have been taken down.

    Short Scale 'Thing' (23" scale Headless 4 string)

    in Build Diaries

    Posted

    On 08/05/2019 at 06:44, Richard R said:

    @Manton Customs had a bright red tiny bass at the Midlands Bass Bash on Saturday. If I remember correctly it was more of a demonstration piece than a new product line, but you could contact them and ask if they would make to order. There is a photo of me playing it rather badly on the forum for that event. The guitar sound is lovely, but I personally struggled with the small size 😞

    I had a go of that too - I found it very easy to play (just like @Jabba_the_gut's) but it tends to make me use three fingers and go all guitary.

    The one thing I noticed with both styles of very short bass is that they get very brittle if hammering on, the 'clack' is louder than the subsequent note. Oterwise, they sound great.

     

    The most irritating bass (or guitar) You Tuber

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    6 hours ago, musicbassman said:

    Bl***y clickbait, I hate it.

    Aaaarrrgghhhh!!! – I RUINED my $300,000  1954 Precision with this one simple mistake!

     

    How to play your best bass lines ever with this cheap kitchen gadget !!!

     

    Top Ten bass mistakes that even the Pros make !!!

     

    Unboxing my new 17 string bass ??  Whoops !!

     

    Learn this one simple bass fingering pattern to make sure you get the chicks at every gig !!!!

    I play my bass with my massive spanner!!   You won't believe this!! Watch what happens !!!

     

    etc, etc.....  😨

    Of couyrs real bass players woudl never stoop to such gimmicks...

    I tape sticks to my fingers and hit the strings with them ... and people pay me to do it!

    I sewed soft toys all over my trousers to distract from my playing.

    Watch me play bass and vomit fake blood at the same time.

    My bass is a flamethrower.

    More band frustrations

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Rehearsals are about getting better at playing together, and sorting out arrangemens  - "OK, which of the four different ways the original band played this do you want me to do?" 🙂

    The second band I was in we wrote all our songs together as well - somone would bring a riff, progression or even a vocal line and we would take it from there.

    The third one, the guitarist wrote lots of original stuff and we leahd to learn and arrange these together as well.

    But you shouldn't be learning covers at rehearsals, unless you need other folks to help with some parts.

    Same Tuners for all band members?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Sammers said:

    Did a recording session with my old band and we all used my TU-3 to tune up to Drop-D, or so we thought.

    Turns out it has a function where it’ll still display it’s standard but it’s actual half tone flat. So we’d actually recorded in half a tone lower yet the tuner displayed DADGBe for everyone. Happened on a gig too, thought my brand new bass couldn’t hold it’s tuning and was knackered on its first outing!

    I stuck mine in chromatic mode and intend to leave it there!

    Same Tuners for all band members?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    1 hour ago, steve-bbb said:

    no do NOT trust your ears... unless you can absolutley guarantee that you have no hearing loss or impairment or suffer from impairment at volume - whilst thankfully not permanent, i do get hearing fatigue ocassionally at gigs where pitches especially in the range open E to open A just start sounding muddy and even though my korg pitchblack is telling me im perfectly in tune to my ears it still sounds slightly off pitch)

    When I took singing lessons I was told my relative pitch is spot on; I don't have perfect pitch but I could sing a song to a note on a piano and hold the not at the end and it would be dead on.

    Plus, I did a hearing test recently and went up to nearly 15KHz, which is apparently as good as the average for someone 20 years younger than me.

    🙂

    Same Tuners for all band members?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I have used various tuners; my first one was a Vox, it's about thirty years old. I just put a new battery in it and then struck and 'E' on a bass tuned to the built in tuner on my Orange combo (the needle seems to 'step' in ~1-cent intervals). I'll be honest, it's very picky, easily losing the note unless the battery is fresh, so until the advent of digital tuners I always relied on a 440Hz tuning fork and then by ear/harmonics.

    I have not been able to find any differences between these and my Guitarman clip-tuner (which is horrible as it reacts very slowly to drops in pitch), the previous fender clip-tuner (which was pretty good) and the built in tuner in my Vox guitar combo or my TU-3. I got the TU3 because I can use it with other amps and it reacts almost instantly unlike most clip ons.

    I was handed a freshly tuned bass at the Midlands Bass Bash and it sounded terrible - I though it was me being crap until I realised the D-string had been tuned to d# - the guy was using a tuner he hadn't used before. Moral - trust your ears!

    image.thumb.png.580b229d2a7860511e8fbf834d8bae48.png

    Same Tuners for all band members?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    6 hours ago, SubsonicSimpleton said:

    Back in the day, it was important to use the same tuner to tune all the instruments - even if you set the reference frequency the same across multiple tuners (same brand/model or not) the circuitry contained multiple discreet analogue components which are all subject to manufacturing tolerances.

    All those +/- 2/5/10% variations add up, which results in "identical" circuits not behaving in an identical manner, in mass produced items the components are just slapped in to keep price down, in some professional level recording equipment the manufacturer will measure and reject components that fall too far out of spec or place extra time and care matching components when they are to be used for example as a stereo pair.

    These tuners, without exception, use a quart crystal oscillator to generate the comparison frequencies. These typically have stabilities and accuracies measured in tens of parts per million, far greater than is needed to tune to the nearest 'cent'. The nature of the circuits used may affect their responsiveness or frequency range, but not the basic accuracy.

     

    • Like 1

    Two of the very best D class amps available today?

    in Amps and Cabs

    Posted

    40 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

    Ok that is funny. But is it a fair comparison to what @Count Bassy was saying? 

    Yes, if the criteria for digital is that something that works by having only an 'on' and 'off' state is digital, it is a fair point.

    Actually class D amps switch between three states you could call 1, 0 and -1.

    Personally, although class D amps lend themselves to direct digital control, I wouldn't class them as any more digital than PWM motor controllers (in fact I am sure you could use them as voltage controlled motor controllers if they are modified to be DC coupled).

    • Thanks 1

    Two of the very best D class amps available today?

    in Amps and Cabs

    Posted · Edited by Stub Mandrel

    31 minutes ago, Count Bassy said:

    Ah, that old chestnut again. I disagree with this because the output from the power amplifier side, in it's raw state is either on or off, hence digital, even if the cotrolling mechanism is analogue.

     

    That makes my light switch digital control... I suppose I work it with my finger!

    • Haha 1

    Glenn Hughes - how to get noticed

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Stub Mandrel

    2 hours ago, Paul S said:

    I'd say, also, that is somewhat comparing apples with pears.  No way Deep Purple could be described as 'Metal' in my dictionary.  Modern equivalent, perhaps, would be Rival Sons - just good old fashioned RnB based rock. 

    Back in the day Purple, Zeppelin, Sabbath and Heep pretty much defined heavy metal, it wasn't until the 'NWOBHM' came along that metal lost its blues edge.

    <edit> "I know 'cos I was there".

    • Like 1

    Playing covers - how accurate do you need to be?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    12 minutes ago, steantval said:

    Just an observation, surely if you are doing covers and the original used a fretted bass, why use a fretless, it will lack the attack IMO.

    I would personally use a fretted most of the time.

    To be honest was first and foremost an exercise in seeing if I could concentrate enough for two hours and play a random selection of songs accurately on my fretless.

    Plus, we are covering not duplicating and there are one or two songs where I think it fits. One is Crazy Little Thing Called Love where I also turned the tone right down (p-bass) and might even stuff some sponge in the ashtray just to max-out the original rock & roll feel.

    I only found myself short of dynamics on one song, so I just switched my compressor off  🙂

    Playing covers - how accurate do you need to be?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Did our rehearsal last night on fretless to see which songs sounded best on it. Saturday Night went fine but Stay With me was challenging - on the main riff I normally just 'pop' my middle finger to lazily go from e-string to d-string, but it doesn't work very well without frets, and I kept forgetting to move my fingertip across!

     

    Also had a discussion with our lead guitarist about a potential covers band 🙂 We have similar musical tastes and both want to learn songs quickly and get gigging, not be forever 'trying out new material'.

    • Like 1

    Bargain Finds

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    2 hours ago, Shaggy said:

    Indeed; I used to frequent Cranes and they always had nice vintage stuff as well as new.   Swansea has had a succession of music shops come and go, but at least it has a fairly healthy live music scene.

    You tour far afield casapete - what's your band? :scratch_one-s_head:

    Last couple of visits to Cardiff - PMT crammed to the gills, Cranes, a few doors away, almost deserted.

    From, the Street Cranes looks like a shop for 'serious' musicians - "please show your Grade 8 certificate to the attendant before approaching the instruments". But out the back, loads of nice guitars (not many basses) and knowledgeable friendly guys.

    OTOH, PMT sucks in all the wannabees and djent-merchants and has killed off most of the competition.

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