Dave Vader

[quote name='Greggo' timestamp='1369738001' post='2092067'] I wonder if its a hangover from the guitar world where it gets drummed into you from magazine/forums that you need a straight as an arrow neck and the lowest possible. [/quote] Not true there either, bestest tone monsters out there have telephone wire strings and high action (SRV for one) I tried straightening and lowering out my old Strat, it sounded crap. The SG likes it though. Low action is pointless for anyone who likes to hit the strings properly rather than tickle them like a girl

[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1369410192' post='2088998'] I understand that, not a problem. But its nothing to do with the design of the amp at all, they are designed correctly, but can be misued, like a rifle. The amp is designed specifically to allow lots of different levels to hit the front end and be attenuated or amplified to a sensible volume fo rthe amp to deal with internally. Thats the gain control. Then this signal passes through eq and who knows what, and dependant on the nature of the signal going in the front, huge boosts in the eq can also cause the power amp stage to clip unexpectedly. A lot of amps have a limiter built in to help stop this, but its not nice, and no analogue limiter in an amp is going to contain everything that could be going on (they cant look ahead in real time for one thing). Then there is abuse of the output seciton, especially by the chap who has eq'ed oodles of sub in to get 'his sound' that subsequently cant be heard at anything less than terraforming volumes. So he turns the master up to those levels and puts loads more stress into the cab, and its crossover. Amps are designed to be useful for a wide array of people and kit. They can equally be misused by some of those people and this will be detrimental to the life expectancy of the rig. As far as I am aware my rig wasnt bought by a cretin , I am determined that it wont be used by one ever either, not while I own it. There are probably several people on this forum that would argue that it is in fact clearly owned by a cretin already [/quote] Thanks for that Si, very helpful stuff. My problem has always been that I come at everything like the punk guitar player I started out as back in the late '80s, when we all had crappy old Sound City valve amps (that are now worth a great deal more than we thought) and the only way to get a useable guitar sound out of them was to dime all the controls. They never died. I still do this to my little 15w Vox for guitars, it is also perfectly happy. Never done it to a bass amp (not quite true, I once had a big old sound city valve head, with the same problem, but they were very much passive controls I believe, and I fried it eventually with a guitar, more due to sustained years of abuse than any single incident). Different beasties perhaps? Or maybe I was just lucky back then.

Another bit of happy irony is that I expect a fair few people are trying to sell their fakers to put the money towards a real deal Ric. They won't be able to buy one now. Nice own goal.

I don't deny that it is possible, I was just trying to work out why these things are made this way when they are generally bought by cretins. I admit my question was put in the simplest terms, and I've blown up a few amps in the past exactly this way, so yeah I do understand it, but I remembered a guitar player I was working with once who remarked on my buying yet another amp. I told him that I had blown the little one I had on as it "wasn't designed to go that loud" (again I was putting it simply) He then told me that it clearly was as the design allowed it to do that, so it's inherent design meant that it was designed to go that loud. I suspect he was either trying to be clever, or a bit thick. Apologies if I came off like him Si, really I do get it, I just like the odd bit of clarification now and then. Was a genuine question about the electrical aspects of the amp, not a dig at all you non-sharers, I understand your points, I always patiently explain how my amp works to those who share it (usually it's the other way round, as I am not precious about my sound so will use any old tat.) I am nice to other people's stuff as well, usually don't touch anything, unless it sounds horrid. In which case i will bypass all the shiny things, and turn input and outputs to adjust, remembering to put them back after. Calm down dear, I'm not going to hurt your amp.

Honest question, if turning everything up full on an amp will kill it, surely that's really rubbish design? Why have parameters you can't use?

used to just shout piss off down it, as that marvellous combination of letter gets you a nice check for pops. Now I berate the engineer and say come on, is it not right yet? Really, you should have sorted that out by now, etc. etc.

By no means the worst thing to have happened, but many many years ago a guy from a band who I knew a bit, not very well, their fiddle player was a good mate of mine, but it wasn't him, asked me if he could use one of my guitars as his had gone bang that day. I said fine, use the Les paul, I am not bothered about it so much, but please leave the strat alone, I've not had it long, and it is quirky (to say the least). I came back in from a jaunt to another pub in the middle of their set, to see him happily playing away on my beloved strat. Wasn't too bothered, not like he was abusing it. But I did have to chuckle when he turned the volume down on it (or so he thought) and hung it off his back to do some acapella singing bits. What he didn't know was that the top control was a tone control with a reverse taper on it, so he had in fact just turned the tone up full, and allowed a ton of screamy feedback and weirdness to flood the room. Few years later I was watching a video of another gig at another pub and spotted a very familiar looking yellow stratocaster in a similar situation. I didn't even know these guys at all, and the twat had clearly just grabbed my guitar from behind all the piles of gear at the back of the stage and used it for their whole set after he twanged a string on the first song. Didn't ask me before the gig or afterwards, and the first I knew of it was when I picked it up for our set and found that my strap had disappeared and had to borrow one. Because I was in the other bar having a drink and enjoying myself away from the noise. Was months later I saw the whole video and put two and two together. bastards the lot of them.

as a business man that was a damn fine way of advertising your damn fine bass that I wish I could justify buying off you. Well played sir.

[quote name='iceonaboy' timestamp='1369394739' post='2088671'] [sub][size=6]I have no problem with folk using my gear, but as was said, bloody ask first. That sounds like a case of taking the p*sh! Im surprised the bands who were supposedly "headlining" didnt have their own gear anyway![/size][/sub] [/quote] This, and yeah, if I was on first, on a weeknight, and they expected me to stay all night while they use my amp, they can either ask, or be very very quiet in the bass frequencies.* *because I would have gone home with my amp, for the hard of thinking

[quote name='andydye' timestamp='1369389937' post='2088602'] almost this but make the perspex hollow like a bottle/tank and fill it with glittery liquid or small plastic goldfish! [/quote] Goldfish, real ones, with a small watertight door, for replacement/feeding.

I found some time, I listened to them all on my kitchen speakers (old PC ones, not awful, but not great, I check most of my mixes on them. Probably because they are next to the wine rack). Picked the one that sounded nicest, seemed like the point of the exercise. Well done everyone for trying (If that's not too patronising)

[quote name='foxton4001' timestamp='1369324121' post='2087843'] I'm afraid the people who buy Rics (Beatles, Jam, and all Mods in general) are not going to stop buying them [/quote] Didn't Foxton play an Ibanez faker?

[quote name='icastle' timestamp='1369311034' post='2087580'] What did he just say? [/quote] No idea, i was distracted by his ridiculously large sig....

yeah, but now I'm annoying myself with my excessively large signature, I might have to put me on my ignore list.....

I'm not as bad as Jack, there's only [color=#5A5A5A][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif][size=3]3,573 posts of mine to search through (including Off-Topic).[/size][/font][/color] [color=#5A5A5A][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif][size=3]And 2 of those pictures are of my bass, in varying states of change. So technically just a normal showing off sig.[/size][/font][/color] [color=#5A5A5A][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif][size=3]Although I admit the comic sans may have been going too far.[/size][/font][/color]

done, bottom is in white, enjoy the keywords....

[quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1369303252' post='2087433'] Please see my revised Signature (below). I'm guessing that a search engine will struggle to differentiate between post content and the signature at the end of it, so now every single post I have EVER made on Basschat contains ALL those keywords. [/quote][size=4][quote name='charic' timestamp='1369303442' post='2087435'][/size] HJ, feel free to change your signature text to white just to really help them [/quote] Might have to do that....

I think it might be more fun if as many posts as possible now in the forum used the words rickenbacker, rickenfaker, rockinbetter, toaster, etc. etc. thus ensuring that the legal beagles of RIC have more to search and more work to do.

[quote name='flyfisher' timestamp='1369078787' post='2084659'] Very good - liked the 'folk vibe'! I've done a similar thing for a friend who plays risque originals on a ukelele under the "George Pornby" pseudonym. He wanted to record something and I wanted the production practice so we made a CD as a bit of light relief. Mind you, it often goes down better than our 'serious' band originals. [url="http://www.reverbnation.com/johnbell/songs"]http://www.reverbnat.../johnbell/songs[/url] (NB: 'Grace Darling' is not one of mine) [/quote] Ah, Che Guevara T-Shirt is proper class, like that a lot (and generally I can't cope with that much ukulele)

[quote name='Phil Adams' timestamp='1369244458' post='2086870'] And I thought this was gonna be about a Band song. Put the load back on me.......... [/quote] Me too, take a load of (sic) Fanny....

[quote name='Zenitram' timestamp='1369085148' post='2084751'] [url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js-6Lx-SZso"]https://www.youtube....h?v=Js-6Lx-SZso[/url] [/quote] Not heard that before, was a bit worried I may have totally ripped something off again. Not that close at all thank god. Reminds me of a Hale and Pace sketch from years ago where they do a cliched musical in about 2 minutes. (Which I did rip off a bit) Like George Pornby so far, decently funny.

I still haven't had the time to listen chaps, sorry, will try and get to it at some point. If you want some challenging mixing material I could try and dig up some of my old stuff with overclogged channels recorded badly with a load of hiss straight out of a mixer to the soundcard. It would be challenging if nothing else.

My thoughts are that your geekery knows no bounds Paul. And it probably varies a lot.

[quote name='Geek99' timestamp='1369219774' post='2086374'] Totally disagree - bargains are entirely findable [/quote] Sigh... when I mean can't afford, I really mean can't afford, I have stuff for 3 or 4 quid on my watch list so I can come back to it after payday, or next payday, or whenever I don't have to fork out all my money on electric/food/rent etc. Different world for some people innit?

[quote name='sprocketflup' timestamp='1369172833' post='2085940'] Mick Karn did play some stuff fro Kate Bush yes. Not sure about Gilmour playing fretless tho. My personal fave bass player of Kates is John Giblin, his fretless work is just sublime, a joy to (try and) play. As for kate being a bass player, I hope not [/quote] Danny Thompson played on some stuff too, and obviously Del Palmer. Gilmour played some guitar on sensual world, and produced her first demos, not sure about him playing bass on any of it though. As far as I'm concerned kate can play anything she likes