flyfisher

Many years ago I got interested in metal detecting and found quite a few silver ha'pennies and farthings. They were easy to identify as they were, quite literally, silver pennies that had been cut in half or quarters. http://finds.org.uk/database/search/results/denomination/40 In their time, they were 'real' currency and worth their denomination - not like today's 'tokens'.

[quote name='bremen' timestamp='1321377032' post='1438452'] Wooten may only have chosen the colour but he's damaged his reputation by allowing his name to be associated with that wretched bollocks. [/quote] Yeah, that's the way I read it. He either actually believes this stuff or he's happy to help rip people off. Not too great either way.

If it ain't income-generating then it has to be enjoyable. I'd suggest concentrating on playing with the band that's the most fun and cooling down on the other one. Let someone else in that band do the driving for a change. Might find they can't be bothered, in which case it'll likely die a natural death, or maybe they'll buck-up their ideas and get a second wind, in which case it might get to be fun again. Ultimately, I don't think trying to change people really works. You have to take them as they are and learn to live with their foibles (as they must also do with you) or move on. That's not to say people can't change, just that it has to come from them if it's going to work. You have to work with things as they are, not as you'd like them to be.

[quote name='bumnote' timestamp='1321313846' post='1437842'] Thats where you are going wrong. A mere £400 You need these [url="http://www.highendcable.co.uk/Nordost%20VALHALLA%20Power.htm"]http://www.highendca...LLA%20Power.htm[/url] at £2495 This will make your amp sound better, prevent you from playing wrong notes, and make you irresistable to the opposite sex [/quote] . . . and even better when used in conjunction with this £16,114.72 speaker cable . http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2011/02/08/the-most-expensive-cable-in-the-world/

[i]"The cords are also heavily shielded to block RF interference and other outside noise."[/i] So does Mr Wooten really believe that shielding the last metre of mains cable into an amp really makes a difference when the couple of hundred miles of mains cable back to the power station is all unshielded? Reminds me of that Life of Brian sketch: (cue Wooten's mother flinging open a window and shouting to all his mindless followers) "He's not a bass god, he's a very naughty boy!"

Strippers of Sudbury (http://www.stripperspaintremovers.com/) specialise in all sorts of substances and methods for removing all sorts of paints/coverings from all sorts of base materials. They have a useful 'I Want To Remove . . . ' page. They also offer telephone advice for those particularly difficult, er, stripping jobs (though most guitar projects should be pretty simple really).

[quote name='Norris' timestamp='1321275994' post='1437153'] Keep them in the warmer room to avoid any issues with condensation, especially if you have high humidity. High humidity isn't an issue unless it starts condensing - which is more likely to happen in the colder room. Keep them in their cases & if they are going to be there some time get hold of some of those packs of crystals that absorb water & put one in each case. [/quote] Although, colder air will be inherently less humid in the first place. I just keep mine on the wall all year around, except when I'm gigging when it travels in a hard case, which I open up as soon as I arrive at the gig so it can acclimatise with the gig room temperature, which means it'll stay in tune through the set.

The Rhythm Kings? Saw them some years back and Bill was doing the classic stand-still-and-don't-show-any-emotion bass-player thing. But then he's always been like that hasn't he? Still, he [u]must[/u] be enjoying it surely, because I can't imagine he needs to? Just his style I guess.

[quote name='EBS_freak' timestamp='1321292895' post='1437429'] PS - I'm good at telling "dead" batteries in an effects pedal. [/quote] Better than one of our guitarists then. His electro-acoustic was sounding totally horrible at one rehearsal and he couldn't understand why. I asked him when he last changed the battery and he answered (yes, you're ahead of me) "what battery"? A new battery was duly fitted and it sounded fine again.

Things is though, what does like/dislike or pos/neg actually mean? If it's a behavioural sort of thing related to abusive and rude posts then I can see it might have some value, but if it's an agreement/disagreement type thing then surely it's rather pointless. Suppose someone posted something saying that Fender make the best bass guitars and 1,000 people posted negative feedback because they disagreed? So the OP picks up a huge negative reputation because of a perfectly reasonable opinion, which they are highly unlikely to change. OTOH, another poster might be rude and abusive and also pick up 1,000 negative posts. which might, perhaps, make them consider their behaviour (unless they consider it a badge of honour and simply encourage them to achieve a record score for 'trolling'). But the thing that makes a simple neg/pos thing of little value is that we can never know the reasoning behind the rating, unless the voter describes their reasons in a post, in which case the like/dislike vote is superfluous anyway.

[quote name='MrRatty' timestamp='1321258416' post='1436922'] I think that if somebody disagrees with something said on the forum then they should post a response saying this and explaining why they disagree. It is not much help to the reader seeing that one or more disagree without any explanation why. [/quote] Agreed. I thought BC was supposed to be a discussion forum not some sort of multiple-choice survey.

[quote name='gelfin' timestamp='1321219216' post='1436718'] Here's another amusing "blind listening test" story for you. A panel of 6 well respected members of the Hi Fi industry regularly did blind listening tests for a magazine. No names are going to be mentioned here. The panel members are a mix of designers, sales reps and journalists. On the day in question they were testing a selection of speakers. The test was carried out without knowledge of any of the speakers being tested and they did not know what type make of electronics were used. The equipment was all set up behind an "acoustically transparent curtain". [/quote] I remember reading a similar story in a hi-fi magazine many years ago, probably in the 70s. Same sort of set up as described above but the test was for overall 'fidelity' of a hi-fi system. I forget the finer details but the gist of the story was that when they used some solo violin music to test the fidelity of the systems being tested, most listeners agreed on the 'system' they disliked the most . . . and it turned out to be a live violinist. Anyone else remember all those "Is it real or is it Memorex" tape adverts?

Well, I've fixed one guitarist's guitar, another guitarist's amp, I'm the only one who can set up the PA, I introduced the 'drummer' to drum keys so I guess that makes me a technician. Artistically, I can collaborate when we're knocking a new song into shape and I'm quite happy to jam during closed rehearsals, but I'm not comfortable with winging things for a gig. I play around with writing my own songs but I'm not confident enough to bring them to the band. My ambition is larger than my talent, but at least I recognise it and have learned to live with it - it just means perpetual frustration.

I guess it's a trade off between heavier powered speakers/subs and passives with a rack full of heavy amps. Fair point about separate amps being a bit more flexible though. Have lightweight class D amps made big inroads to PA systems as they have for bass rigs?

Do subs and 'small and light' go together? We use a mackie SWA1501. Does a great job, but it's a two-man lift.

We've tried this a few times but it slowed things down a bit too much. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf9-BCix4io[/media]

Were you blindfolded though? I've been trying to find the article I referred to but yesterday was recycling bin day and I threw out a pile of magazines. I found these while searching online though: [url="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/apr/14/expensive-wine-cheap-plonk-taste"]http://www.guardian....eap-plonk-taste[/url] [url="http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/11/the_subjectivity_of_wine.php"]http://scienceblogs....ity_of_wine.php[/url] Thing is, since it's our brain that defines our experience of things, then this is not so much a case of being fooled as "really, truly" having a better experience just because, say, the wine has been priced expensively or has been put into a bottle with a highly-prized label. Come to think of it, people spending £1000s on a mains cable might "really" experience a better sound from their rig, even though a battery of scientific test equipment can prove there is no difference in reality . . . . except we don't see, hear, smell etc reality.

I use the shortest one I can sensibly get away with - not for any sonic considerations just to avoid loads of cable lying around and getting trodden on. I don't dance around much (rare in a bassist I know!) and, having never played Glastonbury, have little need for long leads. 3m works for most of the places we play but I also have 5m spares in my gig bag should I feel like being a bit more adventurous.

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' timestamp='1321022424' post='1434494'] Fan in the wrong place can mess up airflow so might not be best idea. Fluid dynamics make Thiele-Small speaker design look a bit easy. [/quote] Well, in extremis perhaps, but if an amp is that sensitive to airflow then it really out to have some big red shouty warning words in the manual and if I were the manufacturer I wouldn't be happy to give the user carte blanche to install it in any old rack.

Rack units should have a section about installation and operating conditions in the user manual but, yes, I'd expect it to be designed to run at the sorts of temperatures it will generate inside a rack case. Good idea to have a fan? Electronic devices generally fare a lot better when running cool than when running hot, but if the amp is within its design parameters then it's not really necessary. But it won't do any harm so if it makes you sleep easier at night then it'll be a few quid well-spent.

[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1321008877' post='1434245'] Oh and sorry for the essay, I was trying to be succinct, but I think I failed ...... [/quote] Please don't apologise. You may have failed to be succinct but that was all useful stuff - thanks for taking the time! I particularly related to the pre-production preparation and the performance points. This is a definite source of frustration for me. I'm not pretending we're anything other than a bunch of mates making music for fun but I do think we have some half-decent original songs and I'd like to get the best possible recordings I can. What really frustrates me is when we rehearse a song and, understandably, it's all a bit rough and (un)ready yet at the end of the song a couple of the band members are saying 'great, that sounded brilliant' when quite clearly it was pretty crappy! What bugs me even more is that they don't seem to vary their opinion when they listen to the rehearsal recording! I'm not saying I'm any better than the others - I'm as prone to playing mistakes as any of them - but I can tell when things are not right. At least I think I can. I've always been of the view that the best way to improve overall performance (in all sorts of things) is to concentrate on developing what you're not good at. Still, I guess that's all part of band dynamics - nobody said it would be easy! I don't expect to become a world-class recording/mix engineer overnight (or ever in reality!) but I'm keen to avoid all the basic things that can go wrong so I at least have a fighting chance of a half-decent recording. But the more I learn, the more I realise how much I don't know and how much I appreciate the skills of people who can really turn out high quality recordings. Thanks again for sharing.

[quote name='Rimskidog' timestamp='1321003147' post='1434152'] This is where your process goes wrong: [quote]Set up all inputs at max levels into the DAW[/quote] You should be aiming so that your meters average at about -18dbfs maximum. I tend to be conservative even on that. -18 to -20 dbfs (ie what your daw shows) is a rough equivalent to 0dbvu (which is unity gain in an analogue system). If you exceed that it's a rough equivalent of burning your audio. (And we all know that once you've burnt toast no matter what you to do it, it still smells like burnt toast.) [/quote] Yep, agree with all that. My "max levels" comment was not vary clear. What I really meant was that I set all the channel gains to the maximum 'safe' level for the instrument with no attempt to try to mix levels at this stage of recording. I'm just trying to get the loudest recording on each track without getting anywhere near peaking. [quote name='Rimskidog' timestamp='1321003147' post='1434152'] Don't worry about too much separation when you are overdubbing drums: it's easy to forget that drums are 'one instrument'. They need to sound as such. Good luck! [/quote] Again, fair point. I've been trying to separate drums from the other instruments/vocals but not from themselves. Anyway, I don't have enough gear to mic every drum so I've been using a couple of overheads and a kick mic. I've read a few articles on micing and recording drum kits and, frankly, it seems to be very much an art borne out of lots of experience - which I don't pretend to have. I can quite understand why many people sequence their drum tracks!

[quote name='gelfin' timestamp='1320963401' post='1433931'] Sometimes I can tell in a blind test between various sets. [/quote] I'm sure you sometimes can. I'd guess it would be about 50% of the time. [quote name='gelfin' timestamp='1320963401' post='1433931'] One of my favourite answers to customers asking what cables they should upgrade to is to tell them to buy some new music a good bottle of wine or favourite tipple and just listen to the MUSIC. [/quote] That's a great answer! Speaking of wine, I read somewhere recently that most 'expert' wine buffs can't tell the difference between read and white wine when blindfolded. It was New Scientist I think - a piece about the psychology of perception.

Interesting link. I liked the professor guy who basically seemed to agree with both camps, i.e. such cables can make no difference to the sound but that people are so suggestable that they really think they hear a difference! However, rigorous double-blind trials will usually flush them out when they can't 'know' when the cable is being used. I guess the problem is that we can't actually scientifically measure what someone really hears because the ultimate mechanism is inside our brains, and we all know how fallible, or easily influenced, that can be.

Thanks for those interesting replies. I agree with the point about recording everything together to get a good 'feel' but, frankly, it would probably take us ages to get a perfect take. And if a song has to be played too many times then some of the 'feel' gets lost anyway, it seems - though that may just be us! It never ceases to amaze me how little mistakes are completely overlooked at a gig but stick out in a recording. I guess because once they are known on the recording they become predicable and part of the permanent record. I've been separating out the drums to minimise mic-spill but I like the suggestion of recording everything live for the first take (warts and all) and then re-recording each instrument separately to get a perfect take, then mixing all the perfect takes. I think I'll give that a try. Interesting point about sequencing all the drums though. Given the difficulty our drummer seems to have with following a click it might be the easiest option! I've used my Alesis SR16 for a 'proper' drum track (as opposed to just a simple click beat) on some recordings and it sometimes sounds better than the drummer. Oh dear. But it's good to know I'm not doing anything fundamentally wrong. I sort of thought that there are no real rules as such and that the end result is the all-important thing, but it's always good to hear about 'good practice' and how to make things as easy as possible. Thanks again.