SimonK

Yes made me suspicious as well as generic parts for most things can also be purchased - mind you it is true that specific circuit boards often need to be sourced from manufacturers, but thus said if you can get the schematic they can be made for a lot less. However, lateral MOSFETs are apparently a problem: https://www.electronicsworld.co.uk/its-the-end-of-the-production-line-for-the-lateral-mosfet/34469/ but can be solved if you pick up some broken amps and scavenge!

...he's the sort of person who will do anything for a bottle of wine so long as the understanding is that he doesn't guarantee results, and if it breaks again and he doesn't fancy/have time to look at it again that's just how it is (although in my experience he has fixed everything I have given him apart from one tricky GP12 that we still can't find the source of a buzz!). PM me if you have something as we are very close (about twenty minutes from Waterlooville).

My relationship to the Trace pre-shape (granted on the GP11/12s) has been to turn it on, play a few notes, say "cool", then turn it off for the gig. The compressor is fine if you don't have anything better on your pedalboard, albeit I normally use compressors for peak limiting rather than anything more drastic.

I'm really lucky in that I have a friend who builds amps for a hobby and seems to relish me bringing him something old and broken. I am frequently amazed by quite how quickly he can fix things - often just a component worth pence that needs finding and then switching out. You very seldom need to source something original from the manufacturer (even whole circuit boards can be remade). We then did the figures for setting up a repair service (and market on forums like this), but to be viable would need to be charging £60 to £100 an hour for labour alone. Problem is a lot of the second hand equipment is worth a lot less than the labour cost to fix it regardless of how cheap the components are and simple the problem.

...you may have just achieved legendary status on this forum going for that as your first bass! Either that or you work in the city and in which case legendary status is revoked.

I think you missed my T2 fail after needing to get some wireless IEMs (11th Jan on page 5 of the thread).

I suspect the effort that it may take to get AI to write a hit single might be similar to the effort of a person writing it from scratch... But for remastering/recording/adding instrumentation I think it is a tool that is here to stay, and sadly will take people's jobs.

If AI is destroying anything in music/media I think it is the online social media/content creator roles (and I struggle to be sympathetic about this!). I find myself scrolling far less due to the sheer amount of AI related trash on facebook etc. While online marketing has helped many especially younger musicians over the last ten years or so, I think things may start moving back to the importance of a musician being someone who doesn't create glitzy and technically perfect 20 second online clips, but actually someone who plays real music to real people!

I'm increasingly teaching ethics and AI in a University. I use music as quite a good example. We need to see AI as a tool, and like any tool it can make some work more efficient, but we must not mistake quantity with quality. Generative AI in particular can create large quantities of music etc. very rapidly, but that doesn't mean it is any good. Conversly, in the right hands, AI can help creators generate really high quality work - for me the main benefit of AI in music is more in recording/remastering than composing (for instance). There's plenty of aphorisms about this but I quite like: "Those who are carried to a goal should not think they have reached it" regarding AI - it's one I use with my students and coursework!

Philosophers call this "Qualia" which is loosely defined as the "what it is like" of experiencing something. The kicker is that we can never know what it is like to experience something from someone else's perspective, and thus the best we have is indirect evidence from others who act/report the same sort of things as we do for a given experience/stimuli. There's also the fact that while not identical, our biology is close enough to others to infer that what I experience as the colour "red" is most likely pretty similar to what you experience, but we can never know for sure. Probably the most famous discussion on this is Thomas Nagels' "What is it like to be a bat". But this is high falutin philosophy, with IEMs it probably is just minor differences in ear shape!!

Sadly Christianity has been complicit in some of the most horrendous crimes of the last couple thousand of years, and indeed the argument that many people give about not wanting to have anything to do with religion for this reason and instead pursuing secular humanism is entirely reasonable on this basis. Furthermore, if you follow contemporary Christian worship over the last thirty years or so, almost every one of the big worship marques has had a scandal/fall from grace at somepoint (or if they haven't yet they are probably about to) meaning that we wouldn't be able to use anything. For me, where art or technology are concerned, I prefer to separate the product from the author/creator, but nevertheless if you were in my congregation and specifically raised these songs and told me why you prefered for them not to be played I would absolutely, and prayerfully, consider the perspective.

Whenever we have preamp threads more people recommend the Tech 21 than anything else. Thus said I really like my Genzler Magellan pre because it has two very different "flavours" (foot switchable), a HPF, mute switch, and really powerful EQ settings. Not sure if it sounds like "tubes", but through the IEMs yesterday it sounded awesome (albeit I also add a Keeley compressor as well).

The problem is that people are weak and fail. If we didn't use anything because of moral concerns about the (human) creator we would have to stop using most technology, tools, art, music etc. As such there is a careful balance to be gained between sensitivity and practicality. I can see avoiding something if you know of a specific concern, but at the same time if you dig deep enough into anything I'm sure one will find moral reasons not to use it (and knowing what evidence can be trusted is also difficult)... so the upshot is that it is complicated, and difficult to be fully informed about anything. As such I would rather judge the motive of the user of the tool (e.g. song) than try to determine the history of the original creator of the tool. I still play/listen to lots of the older Kevin Prosch songs - he was black listed for a long time, but nevertheless his songs were really meaningful to me during a period of my life, and I maintain the song and the singer are two different things.

I was using the same yesterday and was having a problem (well minor annoyance) with the bass tom causing some type of resonance that sounded like a note - I think I worked out F# - which was really annoying, but something unique to my IEM mix as when I popped the ear pieces out I couldn't hear it in the room. I wonder if this was from the ear pieces or something else?

Interesting - been enjoying my late 90s streamer (posted a page or two back next to the Trace stack) but yesterday played a fully IEM gig using a Genzler Magellan pre as DI. Now normally I use the bass in active mode (as I figure more is more) but because I had the IEMs I was playing around with the settings and remembered the passive mode so thought I'd give it a try. My word, the growl that came out of the bass was awesome, so much so that at the moment I can't imagine myself going back to the active mode - I can see how having some onboard EQ is helpful, but at the expense of tone?