Stub Mandrel

The Stones will be touring with no actual members, they will just all be hired hands like Darryl Jones, and the profits will go to the owners of each member's estate.

Search was quick for me, just over a second to find all used fenders.

I've seen this a few times - a shorter warm-up to encourage early birds. Worth coming a day early for Reef, they weren't on my radar until rceently, but I've seen them three times now.

Not quite in my budget zone I'm afraid.

Not yet... a basschatterwho needs to be involved has been away. There has been some parallel discussion on Farcebook.

OOps! It does do 3.5 jacks, but Speakon would be handy.

I'm not convinced. The majority of pedal effects run happily on 9V. I'm not sure why you should need super low output impedance (unless you want to run old 40R headphones dirct from your bass). Even the venerable 741 is 75 ohms, nothing compared to any amp input. Mic level is usually 2k and line 10k.

Being cynical, it's to provide sufficient headroom for the excessive gain of some active basses. I'd love to know what benefits are gained by the higher output level of active basses beyond generating the requirement for lower gain input stages on amps to compensate. I hardly think it's justified as improving signal to noise ratio or microphones would be boosted to similar levels.

We have earthquakes in Wales. Just small, civilised ones.

Impressions: Ampeg is much darker, even muted sounding.

It's been OK but not perfect, one of the straps fell off... I thinned my rig quite a lot, but I'm sorting a PA, so it will be useful for carting around 4 or 5 mike stands, plus some accessories. Latest purchase was a big wheeled box from a local bargain store, 'Buyology'. Big, with good handles moulded into the box (so they can't fail) and a sturdy lid. Pretty much all my leads, mikes and accessories will fit in it.

I bought one of these as I am sorting out a PA and many of my existing leads are elderly. It has a great, simple display that shows a cross for a good XLR lead/balance jack lead and a line for a good unbalanced Jack lead. It also has three LEDs taht light if you cause an intermittent fault by 'jiggling' the connector or wires. It also has a sturdy, if rather retro, plain steel case. You can see some other functions such as various level test tones etc. Unfotunately it doesn't contain a 'test cap' for installed cables, but these can be made simply by commoning all the pins in a suitable socket/plug. I think it's paid for itself already! I tested several existing leads, made up some new ones and modified others. Not only did it help me find a few intermittent faults caused by solder blobs shorting to earth or over-long shield connections and helped me thin the herd of old jack-jack leads by spotting the dodgy ones, it's revealed my own incapacity for soldering XLR leads by instinct rather than checking the pin numbers... So i say if you make your own cables or have lots and sometimes have issue, get one of these for the price of a couple of high quality leads.

The irony is not lost on me...

Two gigs in early August:

So much good advice! I will reread it all tomorrow. I like the idea that I make sure everything I get will be a step towards my 'final' PA. Nice thing about the folio is it has a sub 100hz filter on most channels. I hear the rest, and clearly monitors are a priority. If I want the monitors to function as a vocal + kick PA for small gigs (and then use my 10" monitor for vocals) I will need a bit more performance than for pure monitors. Also may need to EQ them for monitor use. Tempted to pair a powered 12" with a matching passive speaker to keep things simple. As Bill notes the ultimate step will be a sub or subs (a sound engineer I know is in the Bill camp and insists you only need one dub even for a tidy sized club), and a pair of powered subs that can stand alone. A club I regularly go to has a sub with built in crossover so everything goes to it, and it sends the mid up to two active speakers. I hope to be playing mid-sized venues not just pubs & small clubs, as the other band I'm in does (the BL's dad has a 4kW pa all singing and dancing with digital control - having seen how often the tablet connection fails worries me a bit although it 'fails safe' so things keep working). I'll re-read all your thoughts tomorrow. Thanks folks!

I'm not sure what the right topic is for this... My brother has given me his band's old PA as it was starting to go downhill in his garage and had become too scruffy to sell. I'm starting up a new band and we will need a PA, and I'm just tidying it up. I've helped out on PAs on the odd occasion for over 40 years, so I 'know enough to be dangerous'. It's a venerable but decent 600+600W stereo amp, a Soundcraft Folio 8+4 mixer and two huge The Box 2x15 cabs. They are only rated 450W RMS, but he says they never missed a beat and his band (like the new one) is very much classic rock and quite loud. I've got a fair stock of other gear including lots of leads, half a dozen decent mikes (SM58, two good clones, a bass drum egg and a condenser pair for drum overhead) and a few cheap mikes. I have ordered extra leads and stands as well as a snare mike. I've also ordered a second hand 6-channel mike mixer for the kit from eBay. I also have a little 8" active monitor, intended as my personal vocal monitor. The new band is a five piece (lead vocal, two guitars) and it looks like four of us will need mikes. I'll expect anyone who wants to sing to get their own mike - that SM58 is MINE I tell you! My brother used to use the whole setup everywhere, but I would rather cut down for smaller gigs. My thoughts are: If we do somewhere really small, just put vocals through the PA, perhaps just using the 6 channel basic mixer. We have decent backline amps and are old enough to be sensible about volume levels. For typical pub gigs just mike up snare, bass drum and vocals. Say six channels but through the proper desk. For bigger club gigs use four vocals plus the SM58 clones to mike up two guitars, DI bass, and snare (or would it be better to put kick) through the 8 channels with full EQ. The extra mixer gets the kick (or snare), three toms and two overheads and mixes down to stereo that goes into one of the two stereo channels on the main mixer. Leaves a stereo channel spare, just in case! First questions are: 1 Does that sound reasonably sensible. Or should I stick the vocals through the other mixer? Or am I just being over ambitious? 2 Is it better for the kick or the snare to be allocated a full channel? Now the bit causing me angst. The speakers are big and heavy. My thought is to get some decent monitor speakers and use them as PA for the small to medium-sized gigs, then when we go out with the full PA, they become our monitors. So questions are: 3 Is it reasonable to expect the same cabs to serve as both vocal (or vocal + kick/snare) PA and as monitors? 4 Powered monitors or another stereo amp and passive cabs? 5 What sort of size monitors? I'm guessing 8" won't do it, 10" will struggle, 12" probably OK, 15" overkill? 6 What sort of monitor power? Sorry this is all so rambling and long... I've spent most of the weekend browsing the net and trying to come up with a strategy!

Hmm... gig with my Orange Terror 500W. Backup is my Trace Elliot Elf 250W. I have been know to gig my Trace Elliot 4x10 combo (300W with extension cab). I have a few practice amps: Joyo Badass 50W hybrid in my music room. Orange Crush 20 in the bedroom. Joyo 10W combo in my partner's front room. Hotone Nano 5W micro head (preceded the Joyo Badass). I gave my Laney ProBass 150W and a 50W 4x4 homebrew combo to my brother. Have two Blackstar Fly 3W combos, meant for guitar, but have used them as travelling bass amps.

Yep, one look and it scared the s*** out of me!

I have foolishly embarked on starting up a band. My brother has given me the bare bones of a pa (mixer, amp, cabs) so I will be in charge of the sound at last!

Congratulations to a paper that had the attention to detail to spell Daryl and Darrell correctly AND get them the right way round!

The C&G case that came with my American Vintage ii. The stand alone price is £255 at Fender!

Stuff humblebragging, I'm just going to boast. The gig we did last weekend has had so much good feedback face to face and on Facebook. I've even had people who didn't go telling me they heard how good it was. That's never happened before, feels like we have "levelled up" 😁 Must all be down to my bass solo 🙄

As low bass isn't directional they probably heard a decent amount of bleed from the pa and assumed you knew what you were doing. As long as they here themselves most musicians tend to accept the mix they get even when it's bad enough to compromise their playing. Problem is most of us part timers rehearse songs but don't rehearse our sound.

I think Fender use self tapping screws, not wood screws. Tapping Screw #10 x 5/8", Phillips Oval #8 Head, Chrome (Qty: 100) Brings up a US screw that looks spot on, except #10 is about 4.8mm diameter. No exact UK equivalent. I'm guessing you need something like #2 x 16mm. https://www.westfieldfasteners.co.uk/Self-Tapping-Screws/Phillips-Csk-Self-Tapping-Screw-AB-No.2x16-A2-Stainless.html 2.2mm diameter

I've fitted two, I used standard straps button screws but cut the ends off with hefty combination pliers and drilled a full depth hole. For a vintage bass try these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bulk-Hardware-BH02295-Slotted-Countersunk/dp/B00O7P1FQC