flyfisher

I was on the verge to subscribing but will now be delaying my decision given the uncertainty about issue regularity and, more importantly, lack of communication. The changes mentioned in their reply to maxcat sound good but why on earth would a magazine not communicate this to its current and potential customers and choose instead to cause widespread concern by delaying publication. Surely it would have been better to publish issue #3 in the normal way and explain in that issue how the next one may be delayed because of all the wonderful proposed changes? I suspect that no news is bad news and will be hanging on to my money for the duration.

[quote name='scalpy' timestamp='1330800459' post='1563251'] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pws0ITGyogo[/media] First time I heard Floyd, 13th birthday present. [/quote] I remember it well. Poured with warm summer rain, which really enhanced the lasers and other lights!

[quote name='Truckstop' timestamp='1330781039' post='1562899'] Listen to 'Echoes' and 'Comfortably Numb'! [/quote] Excellent choices Sir! To be followed, if I may be so bold, with Shine On You Crazy Diamond. Album-wise, I would venture to suggest Meddle and Wish You Were Here as a fine pair. Further recommendations will be unnecessary as, by then, the OP will be completely hooked and searching out the entire catalogue.

[quote name='icastle' timestamp='1330528355' post='1558891'] On balance, if your cabs use Speakons then I'd be more inclined to go down the 'daisy chaining' route and take advantage of the more robust Speakon connectors. [/quote] Agreed. The other advantage of speakon cables is that they can't be mistaken for instrument cables. I'd like to see the use of jacks disappear completely from cabs and amp outputs.

[quote name='Stealth' timestamp='1330509897' post='1558426'] For theft from home you need a 5 lever mortice on all external doors AND the same on the internal door room where the equipment is stored, [/quote] Ludicrous. Even the police don't advise locking internal doors because once inside the[s] thieves [/s]bastards will just break down the door and cause more damage. Anyway, surely a normal home policy will cover music gear when indoors?

SMPS also use transformers, but because they operate at relatively high frequencies instead of the 50/60Hz mains, they are far more efficient and can thus be much smaller and lighter.

Fair point about testing mains earthing for safety purposes, but that's a high current application whereas noise currents are relatively tiny so different considerations apply - not that they should override safety considerations of course. But you're probably right that we've done this to death now. Good discussion though.

[quote name='BRANCINI' timestamp='1330393038' post='1556862'] Nor me, but then I know what I'm looking at, the OP probably doesnt. I only said that [i][size=5]even [/size][/i]a battery and bulb would do as a sort of figure of speech, but actually, it would be sufficient to check continuity between his Bass and the mains plug. it wont be milli ohms though, the lead alone will be a couple of ohms probably. Using his DMM to measure between his radiator and his amp or his mains earth would be pointless, as he wont get a true reading on an ohms range anyway. [/quote] A DMM may or may not give an accurate ohms reading but a battery and bulb won't give ANY sort of reading - thus such a test is of almost no value when trying to find a noise problem because it gives little indication about the 'quality' of the mains earth connection. Thus it's the battery/bulb test that is pointless, not the DMM measurement. So, yes, the OP may live next door to a mobile phone mast or other sources of interference but if he has a bad quality mains earth connection then this will make his rig more susceptible to pickup. It may seem like a pedantic point but I wouldn't want to encourage the view that a bad earth connection - which would pass a battery/bulb test - is OK.

Well, I only worked in electronics for 27 years, including 10 years as chief engineer on some of the largest video switching and distribution systems in the country and I never found any need for a bulb and a battery in my test equipment armoury. Sure, a battery and a bulb will tell you there is some sort of circuit continuity but it won't tell you the indicated resistance in the circuit, or the voltage, or the current. So I'm struggling to understand just what it would tell you, apart from the fact that there is enough, albeit, unknown voltage/current to light up a light bulb - which basically says nothing about the 'quality' of the connection. And, when it comes to eliminating noise-related problems, it's the ground connection 'quality' that is usually the key. I'd much rather an inexperienced person gave me results from a DVM than just saying that a light bulb has lit up.

[quote name='BRANCINI' timestamp='1330262164' post='1554751'] As I said early on, I'd try it at a different address. [/quote] Given the results so far, that's sounding like a pretty good idea.

[quote name='BRANCINI' timestamp='1330256820' post='1554610'] Precisely, thats why I suggested that the OP might be better using a continuity tester or a battery and bulb rather than a DMM. a few ohms aint really gonna make much difference, so he should be looking for either a high resistance or an open circuit. [/quote] Well, I agree that a battery and bulb will give an approximate indication of continuity to within a few ohms but if I was looking for ground-related faults I'd want to verify that the ground connections were good to within [u]milli[/u]-ohms. The introduction of resistance/impedance in supposedly-grounded circuits is a classic recipe for induced interference and a few ohms could make all the difference.

No, didn't see Top Gear, though I can imagine the sort of thing they'd make of such things. 'turbo' is a bit old-hat these days, though vacuum cleaners still seem to use it a fair bit.

[quote name='dood' timestamp='1330296658' post='1555474'] If anyone dare use the word 'digital' in reference to D Class, I'll come round and slap them with a kipper!! There's no Analogue to Digital conversion and thus they're not digital. I.e. the D doesn't mean 'digital' it's just the class. [/quote] The 'D' may not mean 'digital' but, at the risk of being slapped with a kipper, it's an understandable popular description. Another way of looking at things is that class D is not an analogue amplifier but operates by switching fully-on or fully-off, which is certainly reminiscent of a 'digital' mechanism. I guess it's mainly marketing guff really - a bit like the craze to add 'turbo' to loads of product names. Funny how switch-mode power supplies are not generally regarded as 'digital' power supplies though.

[quote name='BRANCINI' timestamp='1330168167' post='1553596'] Better to use the continuity check I reckon (diode check with some meters) or try an analogue meter, even a battery and bulb would do. Not often you get a 0.00 reading on low ohms, theres always a little resistance in practice. [/quote] I'm not convinced that a battery and bulb would reveal anything that a DVM wouldn't.

[quote name='flyfisher' timestamp='1330032469' post='1551892'] There was a court case last year where a pub won the right to use a Greek decoder card to receive sky footy in the UK. As usual in rip-off Britain, the sky pricing was over 3x the price in the UK and they took legal action to prevent the cheaper Greek decoder cards being imported and used, but the European Courts decided this would be against the 'common market'. Good old EU eh? [url="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15162241"]http://www.bbc.co.uk...siness-15162241[/url] [url="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/competitions/premier-league/8807377/What-you-need-to-know-about-the-Premier-League-TV-ruling.html"]http://www.telegraph...-TV-ruling.html[/url] [/quote] Now there's a coincidence: The London High Court has also just upheld the ECJ decision. Cheaper footy on the way? I somehow doubt it. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17150054 [i]"Instead of using Sky, on which it costs £700 a month to see Premier League matches, she used the Greek TV station Nova, which has the rights to screen the games in Greece, and which cost her £800 a year.[/i]" So, 10x the price to watch the same matches in the UK compared to Greece! What mugs we are in the UK (well, not me, I don't watch any footy, but I'm sure the rip-off principle applies elsewhere )

I agree with the sentiment but I think it's not quite so simple in practice. I agree with the earlier comment about a post count of '1' in the for sale section setting off the warning bells. I'd probably not do a deal with a newbie unless it was face to face. Not entirely rational, I know, but there we are.

Being around prima donna wannabe rock stars makes it easier to tolerate prima donna wannabe fat cat executives with all their stupid business-speak nonsense.

There was a court case last year where a pub won the right to use a Greek decoder card to receive sky footy in the UK. As usual in rip-off Britain, the sky pricing was over 3x the price in the UK and they took legal action to prevent the cheaper Greek decoder cards being imported and used, but the European Courts decided this would be against the 'common market'. Good old EU eh? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15162241 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/competitions/premier-league/8807377/What-you-need-to-know-about-the-Premier-League-TV-ruling.html

[quote name='Jungle VIP' timestamp='1330025477' post='1551724'] What do you mean by 'floating'? [/quote] In this context, 'floating' would mean not connected to ground. Sometimes referred to as not 'tied' to ground, hence 'floating'.

[quote name='Jungle VIP' timestamp='1330024464' post='1551704'] I'm confused To me it seems logical to expect there to be no problems if the results have no resistance but I still get these problems. [/quote] Clearly the problem is not being caused by badly earthed or 'floating' bits of metalwork on your bass. That may not sound very helpful but these sorts of problems often require a process of elimination to track down the real cause. You've now confirmed that all the metalwork on your bass is connected together, so we need to start looking for something else. Have you verified the ground connection in your cable? Your bass metalwork may all be connected together but it still needs a good ground connection. This is achieved via the cable to connect to the ground of the amp.

Not confusing really. The [b]Ω[/b] setting is measuring resistance. .000 means zero resistance when the probes are touched together, as expected. So.000 between everything on your bass means that everything is also connected together with zero resistance.

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1329994956' post='1550909'] That’s 228 miles away from where I live so . . . . [/quote] The taxman allows 45p/mile to run a car, so a 228x2 miles round trip will cost £205.20. Factor in the cost of equipment and I can't see how any but a tiny minority of people can ever make a living as a musician. Basically, they need a 'proper paying' job in order to subsidise their hobby.

Surely an audience - whatever you think of them - is the only thing preventing us all from just being bedroom noodlers?

The 'headline' or maximum burst speed of USB is faster than Firewire. However, for real-time digital audio it is the sustained throughput performance that is more important. Firewire is generally faster than USB in sustained data transfer applications. This is why it was used for miniDV camcorders where the transfer from tape couldn't be regulated and any loss of transfer speed would result in dropped data - clearly an undesirable thing. These days, most camcorders use HDDs or memory cards and the data transfer can be done in bursts so USB is fine. So, given the choice, I would choose a Firewire interface. I have a 12 channel firewire audio interface and have never had any data loss problems.

I'd much rather go to Jamaica than a Bass Guitar Show. Hmm, maybe that would make a good T-shirt slogan.