flyfisher

[quote name='neepheid' timestamp='1360153627' post='1965625'] Other rookie mistakes I can think of - don't use the soldering iron as a prying tool while desoldering, that's not what it's for. [/quote] You mean in case the desoldered wire suddenly comes free and you flick molton solder all over the place? Yeah, I learnt that one as a youngster when I went through a phase of taking apart old radios and stuff for their components. Soldering is a useful skill for anyone who dabbles with wires and stuff. Not too difficult to become 'adequate' with a bit of practice but, like most things, proper soldering takes a lot of time and experience. A bit like my welding really. I've made lots of bits and pieces for my old tractor with a mig welder and have repaired my ancient ride-on mower many times in the same way. Everything is good and solid but if a pro welder could see the results they'd fall about laughing.

Am I the only one here who thinks its a bit morbid, odd even, to remember the anniversaries of people dying? Who wants to be reminded about such sad events? My wife can't remember when her parents died (well, roughly, obviously, but couldn't tell you the date unless she looked it up) and we never mark the occasion in any way. But we regularly talk about them and the fun, happy times we had with them. Much better, I think , to remember the good things rather than the bad. I often play Gary Moore's music, and Hendrix, and Peter Green, and a bunch of other long-dead artists, but I couldn't tell you when any of them died. Personal preferences I guess, but it can't be healthy dwelling on gloom and doom all the time can it?

Ah, interesting. I was thinking about their rigid cases (the sort of thing I use for phones and cameras when sailing), but I've just had a look on their website and I see what you mean now.

Do you really need to keep the phone in the case when playing it through the hifi?

Yes - practice first. The easiest way to do damage when soldering is to take too long so that things get too hot. But if you rush too much, things won't get hot enough to form a good joint. That might make it sound difficult to learn, but it isn't really. You just need to develop enough confidence so you can be positive instead of hesitant. Find a few bits of old wire and practice until you feel comfortable. Desoldering is generally trickier than soldering, depending on how the joint has been made. For example, a wire may be wound around a pot terminal and then soldered. This will make a very secure joint, but it may be tricky to desolder the joint if you can't see how the wire has been wound around the terminal beneath the solder. You could consider just cutting the wires to the pot - though I'm not really sure exactly what you need to do so it's only a suggested option.

Gone to the great crop circle in the sky. I was thinking of going to see The (remaining) Troggs at Herford Corn Exchange on Feb 22nd.

I guess it's the traditional 'British reserve' that prevents people from leaving feedback about timewasters.

Interesting views. I'm with mcnach - you agree a deal and you should stick to it. If you get found out when breaking it then you take responsibility for it. Seems to be more the Japanese way of 'honour' than in the west where the knee jerk reaction is increasingly to run crying to a lawyer or some 'rights' organisation to moan about how unfair the world is and try to displace the blame onto someone else.

This is the way to deal with ignorant band members who have no respect for the rules: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21299324 Can't see it catching on here though - our society doesn't seem that big on contrition.

Is it worse to miss out on a big break or never to actually have one? I'm still waiting for mine . . . and I'm not holding my breath.

Tea towel.

How old is too old? Easy - being dead is too old, otherwise anything goes (as long it does no harm to others).

Just re-read this and you don't mention whether the active monitors have jacks or XLRs or both. Standard guitar leads will work (assuming jacks) but are not balanced so very long leads might cause noise problems, depending on the environment. If you have a choice then XLRs will be best as they are balanced, so no noise problems. I try to stick to XLRs for all our signal cables (mics, desk, active PA/monitors etc), speakons for speaker cables and jacks for instruments. Jacks are the main source of possible confusion so I try to keep use coloured cables for instruments and black cables for speaker cables. It's not always possible but I think it's a good aim.

Ah, how sweet. Perhaps people who name their basses are also five years old?

I may be missing something here, but what's the point in artificially bumping up the view count on YouTube if nobody has actually viewed it?

I'd suggest it's a fairly straight forward wear and tear issue. If you have a bunch of pedals and a bunch of cables and you plug them all together for a rehearsal or gig and then unplug them all again afterwards, etc, etc, then that's a lots of wear and tear and better quality, more robust cables are probably a good idea. If you have a fixed pedal board with all the wiring neatly held in place then there should be little wear and tear and cheaper cables should last a very long time. As for actual sound quality, probably the only thing that would be a real improvement would be the use of balanced cables between everything, but that would add cost so is unlikely to happen.

[quote name='AttitudeCastle' timestamp='1359321951' post='1953138'] Doesn't really bother me, the internet is full of pointless rubbish anyway [/quote] Exactly. Imagine a system whereby everyone on the planet (well, half of them anyway) can post whatever they like and everyone else can look at it. Now, imagine how much of that stuff would be of little or no interest to you personally, for a myriad of reasons. I'd hazard a guess that it would be comfortably in the vast majority. Welcome to the internet.

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1359294087' post='1952553'] But are they marking any kind of mark beyond the on-line world. [/quote] I'd suggest that the "on-line world" reaches a great deal further than the physical one. Playing to 50 people down the Dog & Duck isn't making much of a mark is it - or even playing to a few thousand in a theatre - when a YouTube video can be watched by millions. I really don't understand all the animosity. Perhaps it's because people feel threatened in some way? Or perhaps it's because musicians playing bloody hard for a relative pittance with little chance of ever making it big, get upset that other people just do it for their own fun and contentment as a hobby?

I've no idea, but if I did then I'd be buying them all up, not telling everyone about it on a public forum.

Yes, that was my first thought too.

[quote name='ThomBassmonkey' timestamp='1359203965' post='1951481'] What's wrong with it? "It makes me squirm" isn't even justifying why you think it's wrong. There's nothing wrong with referring to inanimate objects as "she" or even naming them IMO. Posting publically on a forum that (I assume) will contain a lot of people that do what you don't like accusing them of not being in touch of reality or asking them to stop really makes you look very judgemental without any kind of justification. [/quote] +1 Live and let live [size=3](subject, of course, to the over-riding principle: 'Do No Harm')[/size]

[quote name='silddx' timestamp='1359142141' post='1950768'] Mmm, I wouldn't trust it too much. But it will be about right, there should be some documentation with it saying how out it can be and not to use it for professional purposes. [/quote] Agreed.

[quote name='XB26354' timestamp='1359146374' post='1950861'] The problem is wading through loads of total crap to find something with any value. [/quote] That's possibly the biggest challenge of the modern world isn't it? Even allowing for personal preferences, there will be more stuff out there that we'd enjoy and find of value than we can ever experience in our entire lifetime, so how do we choose? We'll never really know if there is even better stuff out there than we've ever experienced, even with the best search engines.

[quote name='Lord Sausage' timestamp='1359145876' post='1950850'] God there's some miserable bastards on here. Can't people just enjoy themselves. Surely the initial point of Youtube was to share your own video's with people. It's not like everyone is trying to do their own Mona Lisa. [/quote] Yep, that's what I was trying to say in my earlier post.

[quote name='silddx' timestamp='1359112397' post='1949986'] The first noise action level is 80dB(A) and the usual informal test is whether you can have a normal conversation with someone a couple of metres away without raising your voice. At work we have to limit exposure at this level. I'd suggest you consider wearing some hearing protection if this sort of noise level is maintained for some time. Your rehearsals may well be much louder than this and I definitely advise wearing hearing protection in most band rehearsals with drums. [/quote] Thanks for that - exactly the sort of info I was looking for. Thanks. Actually, I recently downloaded a decibel meter app for my phone. Haven't had a chance to use it at rehearsals yet, but I will next time. I doubt it's particularly accurate but it'll be interesting to see what readings it comes up with and should be a rough guide anyway.