flyfisher

I have a sennheiser unit that works very well but I've only used it a few times because I find a simple cable is far easier. I guess I don't do enough cavorting on stage.

+1 Personal circumstances are not really relevant are they? Anyone looking for a dep just needs to know if they can commit or not.

Perhaps it's all about the enjoyment-payment equation. The more you enjoy playing, the less financial reward you need? Maybe that's why playing cheesy covers for weddings seems to pay quite well? That would be too much like a real job for me.

[quote name='lojo' timestamp='1378545717' post='2201599'] Either, Niether or both , totally depends on your desires and situation [/quote] Exactly. There's no "should" involved, as implied by the topic's All sorts of people have all sorts of interests and unless they are truly professional (in the sense of earning a living) they spend a lot of their spare time and spare cash pursuing those interests. I've never really understood why musicians feel the need to earn money from their playing in order to pay for their gear when, for example, sailors, divers, cyclists, runners, climbers, etc etc rarely feel the need to earn money from their interests in order to justify spending time and money. Perhaps it's because many musicians are secretly playing 'rock god' and believe that their 'fans' should shower them with a rich and famous lifestyle, just like their own idols?

House Of The Rising Sun, though that was on acoustic guitar. I can't remember my first bass line . . . It probably just followed the root notes

The best thing about forums is the very fact that they're NOT real time, which allows me to pick and choose when I access them and not be 'pushed' into replying. IMO, of course.

[quote name='MB1' timestamp='1377795556' post='2192016'] Reminiscent of that "when we were Fab" track. [/quote] . . . which I think I prefer, on the whole. [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=Kxr3tV-ieyY"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=Kxr3tV-ieyY[/url]

I always find these sorts of things very interesting to watch but I don't think I'd ever choose to just listen to the audio.

I wouldn't be at all surprised. It would be entirely consistent with their philosophy of controlling every aspect of the 'user experience'.

[quote name='Count Bassy' timestamp='1377458730' post='2187827'] As for the idea of "wanting to get back what I paid": Never did understand that one. You buy at a price that you are prepared to pay, and sell at a price that others are prepared to pay. This may be more or less than you paid, but to think that you automatically deserve to get what you paid for it seems a bit odd (to me at least). [/quote] I find that a bit strange too. I can understand that someone might have that view but it seems strange to include such wording in an advert, especially if they also say they've been gigging the item for the past year or so. It's basically like saying "I don't think I should have to pay anything for the gear I'm using". Nice if you can get away with it, I guess.

[quote name='barkin' timestamp='1377462334' post='2187880'] Of course The Apple OS knows exactly (with only a few known variations) what hardware components it'll be running on. Limited choice of supported motherboards (eg, no AMD CPUs), GPUs etc. It was the OS that I had in mind. [/quote] Ah, I see your point now, and it's fair enough, though in the PC world the BIOS and device drivers add the required level of hardware abstraction. The whole open-vs-closed debate is an interesting one and closed systems will certainly be more likely to be stable because things are a known quantity, but it will reduce flexibility and tend to force users into a specific way of working. I reckon this is why Apple polarises views so much. The users who are happy to do things 'the Apple way' find it a good experience and become converted but the users who find 'the Apple way' not to their liking end up hating it with a passion. But it's all horses for courses. One thing that does bug me about Apple though, is the emphasis on aesthetics. Apple certainly makes some lovely products but they have a history of compromising functionality because of looks. Two examples that spring to mind (having recently read Jobs' biography) are the iMac and iPhone. The iMac designers wanted a standard CD player 'slot' so that the CD drive could be upgraded when the forthcoming DVD burners became available. Jobs overruled this because he wanted the iMac case to be sleek and only have a single thin slot for the CD/DVD disc to be inserted (like in car audio systms) instead of what he thought was an ugly extending tray. His decision prevailed and iMacs lost a lot of ground for video editing and other applications because PCs were first with DVD burners. Similarly, when the iPhone was about to be launched, Jobs decided at pretty much the last minute that he wanted an aluminium surround to the case so against internal protestations this is what happened. Of course, the technical effect of this was to cause operational problems with the phone transmit/receive circuitry and Apple got a a lot of bad press as a result and it cost them millions to fix the problem and swap out the faulty iPhones. Just two examples of how Apple give aesthetics a higher priority than functionality. So if you want neat, cool looking stuff, then Apple is the way to go - but maybe wait until any new products have been field proven.

Good points. I reckon the use and abuse of computers is by far the biggest factor in their reliability or otherwise. Unfortunately, this makes it very difficult to judge the relevance of all these undoubtedly true anecdotes.

[quote name='thisnameistaken' timestamp='1377429320' post='2187337'] Sort of I suppose. If you went into a shop and they had one of the thing you wanted left, and another guy bought it and offered it to you for 200 more. That's basically arsehole tax. [/quote] But who would be the arsehole? The seller or the buyer?

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1377356631' post='2186669'] What's the problem? [/quote] No problem. As I said, just wondering.

I know there are no absolute rules for pricing used gear, but I'm wondering if there is a generally accepted etiquette. Is it reasonable to sell something for more than it was bought for? Is it reasonable to buy something, use it for a period of time, possibly for fee-earning gigs, then sell it on later for the same price. On that basis, we'd never have to incur any wear-and-tear costs ourselves would we? Just wondering.

Incidentally, those couplers would work equally well with speaker cables and instrument leads. I'd also regard them as a temporary fix because they introduce unnecessary joints in the cable, which can lead to dirt ingress and a noisy connection. Theoretically they'll also introduce a 'discontinuity' in the characteristics of the end-to-end cable connection which could affect the audio quality, though my bet is that you'd need fancy test equipment to measure such an effect and that your ears will be none the wiser. I've got a box full of various adapters that have helped me out of tricky situations at various times but always on a temporary basis. If I find a regular need for a particular cable then I make one up or get one made for me.

[quote name='Hobbayne' timestamp='1377337360' post='2186336'] Does anyone object to others using your gear? [/quote] I've lent out my amp and cabs but never my bass. If someone wants to play the least they can do is bring their own instrument. I've let fellow players have a noodle and I've done the same, but when it comes to an actual gig I reckon it's bad form for someone to expect to use someone else's instrument.

Are you suggesting that Apple hardware is somehow a more 'known quantity' than PC hardware? Even if that were true, what sort of application software has anything to do with the underlying hardware? Isn't that the job of the OS? Here's a bit of insight into Apple's closed system philosophy: http://www.infoworld.com/t/mac-os-x/apples-operating-systems-fortresses-or-prisons-194412

[quote name='Marvin' timestamp='1377279463' post='2185826'] I've owned both Macs and Windows machines. Our first windows 'machine' had XP on it. Within 20mins of us having it, it had a virus. The only web pages we'd been on were MS to register the machine and Norton to update definitions. It was a continual PITA. Lasted 2 years at most before a hardware failure. Next machine, iMac. It still works and has for the last 5 years without doing any 'maintenance' to it. It's only problem is the screen has become slightly faulty and to replace it costs too much. We now have a Laptop running Windows8. Within 2 months of having it, it crashed completely and had to be completely wiped and reset. Not that it actually had anything on it, we put no files on it, didn't set up email on it, just used for web browsing. It's still probably the most obstructive machine I've ever had the misfortune to own. Hence we now also have a MacMIni. Cost not much more than the laptop, including getting a screen for it, I loathe having to use the laptop even more now. Just my experience, but I would never opt for a windows machine if I have the choice. [/quote] While I've no doubt that is all true, the difficulty for anyone seeking this sort of advice is to decide how representative it is. My file server PC is a windows XP machine built by me in 2002 using an ASUS mobo, AMD CPU and 512MB RAM. It started off with 2x80GB hard drives in a Raid1 array and over the years I've added additional drives and it currently has 2x 1TB hard drives. It has never missed a beat and is still in daily use. All my other PCs are Dell and are also running WinXP. The newest one is 2007 and all are still going strong. I'd say PC reliability is mainly to do with how they are used and abused, which is always a risk with so-called multi-purpose machines.

Yep - proof if ever I heard it.

Is this the time to mention that playing a cheap bass doesn't seem to have harmed Macca's musical career?

[quote name='EliasMooseblaster' timestamp='1377268050' post='2185629'] I'd say this: it depends if you've got the time to tinker with Linux. You may not even need that much time: the modern versions of Ubuntu are phenomenally easy to get up-and-running. [snip] But if you have the time and patience to set up Ubuntu Studio on a PC, you can get more processing power for your money, and you may find the hardware lasts longer. [/quote] I've got an old 600MHz, P3 Dell box with only 384MB RAM running Ubuntu and it's absolutely fine for web browsing and email, which just goes to show that an efficient OS can give old PCs a new lease of life, long beyond the stage where bloated Windows won't run any more. Really, the biggest issue with performance these days is the quality of the OS and it's very unfortunate that Microsoft has a business model that requires ever more features to be added to Windows in order to encourage people to keep upgrading both their OS and their hardware. It creates a really daft arms race where the consumer ends up requiring more and more power just to run the same basic applications. Perhaps things will change now that Ballmer has announced he's retiring, though I doubt it.

[quote name='Ziphoblat' timestamp='1377262343' post='2185492'] Blue screens are caused by failures in hardware (usually memory or storage). [/quote] Not true. I know this for a fact because a few weeks ago my 'office' PC wouldn't boot and went straight to a blue screen because it couldn't read the hard drive. A hardware fault certainly crossed my mind, but it turned out to be file system data corruption and I fixed it simply by running CHKDSK from within the windows recovery console. I lost no data and the hard drive has been working perfectly ever since.

[quote name='Ziphoblat' timestamp='1377266326' post='2185583'] The main problem with Windows XP is RAM limitations. [/quote] Er, not entirely. Yes, it's a limitation if you want to run loads of things at once, or an application actually needs a huge amount of RAM, but that's the problem with bloatware and is the reason why a perfectly powerful PC from five or ten years ago is now deemed to be unuseable, even though the hardware is still as powerful as it ever was. In terms of what the vast majority of people use PCs for (I.e. 'office' stuff, email and web browsing), 10 year old PC hardware is more than adequate, yet the OS providers play us like mugs by making their software require ever more powerful hardware just to run the same basic applications.

[quote name='cheddatom' timestamp='1377265910' post='2185572'] Do you really need support for XP though? Unless it's got some sensitive data on it and it's used for browsing, I'd just keep the AV up to date and leave it. [/quote] Yes, I often wonder how ''essential' all those windows update patches really are. I'll probably find out next year when they stop providing them. I doubt the machine will suddenly stop working!