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You Done Me Wong - Ray Price

Sorry for the delayed response 😂

What gauge do you use mate?

i think you might need to increase the gauge ..half my basses are tuned to standard d and they don't sound muddy but i do use heavier strings ...regular gauge would probably be too loose and floppy.

Yes I’d put a smear of silicon under the tuner plate to hold it down i avoid drilling holes if possible

The mighty Gut.

Now down to 4 basses in my stable, two medium scale ACGs (below), a short scale ACG and short scale Conway Instruments fretless. Ever since Alan built me my first 32” bass back in 2014/5 it’s felt like “home”, and after several iterations as I played around with different shapes, woods and pickups, earlier this year he built me what I can only describe as the most perfect bass for me - the 5 string RetroB (see here). I’ve thoroughly enjoyed gigging her all summer and got to thinking how comfortable I find the RetroB shape both seated and standing, and how much I love the RFB pickup in the bridge position (essentially an ACG take on an MM). So I commissioned a 4 string version. It’s less exotic - no fancy top wood and accent veneer, no blocks in the board - but it’s scratched an itch I’ve had for years about having a black/maple bass whilst also giving me the shape and tones I am after. So these are my medium scale siblings now and I really can’t see anything making me want to change them.

Sergio bought my warwick $$ 5 string ..excellent basschatter with great communication 5 🌟..

Some good advice on here 👍🏼 after singing and playing bass for 50 years, when I have a new song to learn it still takes me a LOT of practise time to nail it 😖 Bass line first. Got to have it perfected before moving on. Lyrics and phrasing next. Then the tricky bit 😆 I talk my way thru each phrase of a verse - whilst trying to marry the two up - then the same process, gradually working throughout the rest of the song. But as said many times on here, practise is the key 👍🏼

Hi all, My current band is downtuning to D for the singer and my tone sounds shit. Really wooly and undefined. I'm using a Terror Bass and Ampeg 410hlf. Even with the bass rolled off it still sounds boomy. Is it the tuning? OK, I've had no setup and literally downtune before a rehearsal but it sounds bad!! Help!!

Good luck with the surgery. I broke my collarbone some years back after face-planting off my mountain bike! I am also the veteran of many broken bones. I was lucky that the collarbone displacement didn't require surgery, but if they pin yours, then theoretically you might be able to do some lighter activity a little sooner. The critical thing as, everyone else is saying, is speak to your consultant and follow their advice. Don't jeopardise your recovery by pushing it too soon. In the grand scheme of things the weeks you may be out of action are just the blink of an eye, and you'll return to the bass even more motivated to get playing!

I'm travelling from Essex to Manchester on Monday. I can't make any major detour as I'll be very tight for time, but if this seller can drop the bass off at either the Ford Dunton Technical Centre before 10am Monday (when I'm leaving) or his address is very close to the north side of the M25, I might be able to help...

I know the difference between Magistrates and Crown Court. My question was how does that comment confirm that it was in the Magistrates Court and has now been kicked upstairs to the Crown Court?

I had a Paulownia P bass, lightest bass I've ever owned, that looks like a really good lump 👍🏼

Personal preference?

Speak to the medical professionals. In my experience, doctors are usually pretty helpful if you ask them a direct question. Never crowd source health advice on a forum and never take a chance with your long term mobility. Good luck with the surgery.

Skindred at the Cheese & Grain in Frome last night. They're a bit cheesy and their set includes a lot of padding but they really know how to entertain a crowd. The mosh pit was lively from start to finish and I think everyone there had a great time. The band certainly seemed to enjoy themselves. I took both my daughters and they loved it, I took the youngest (14) to the edge of the mosh pit which she loved. There was a noticeable lack of a bassist though, apparently founding member and bassist Dan left the band before the tour so bass was on a backing track so that was a shame.

I ordered pickups on 17 Sept (just before all this started) and heard nothing, despite several emails to chase. I got a refund yesterday. (I’d rather have got the pickups obvs, but happy at least that I got my money back).

Did you mean maximum? I don't think that there is any magic about speaker protection. Excluding manufacturing faults, which thankfully seem to be very rare, there are only two ways in whicvh a drive unit will fail. Over excursion leading to mechanical failure and over heating. There is just one complication, if the coil spends time outside the magnetic gap then it can't dissipate heat into the magnet so that there can be a special situation where over excursion and heating combine, but all of this is very predictable. For years folklore or perhaps more politely 'rule of thumb' has allowed musicians to match speakers and amps. In the 60's most of us would allow for speakers to have twice the power rating of an amp if we wanted reliability. As high temperature materials were introduced most of us now would now expect to be able to use double that power and match the amp and speaker power. In PA however well trained engineers have pretty much always gone for amps that were twice the power of the speakers. That way they could manage the peak excursion and overheating issues because they had a basic understanding of the duty cycles and frequencies they were pushing into the speakers to get extra peak sound output without distortion from the amps. It all depended upon skill levels and experience but the advent of active speakers and now DSP has brought that to all of us. As @Stub Mandrel has said we can predict the heating/cooling of any part of the speaker from the testing done during the design phase and knowledge of the power going from the amp and the ambient temperature. You can also predict the position/excursion of the coil from knowledge of the frequency and power level , that's what the speaker modelling software does to predict frequency response. Temperature rise and excursion are entierly predictable for any given speaker. With the amp and speaker built into the box and DSP 'knowing' power and frequency levels you can afford to use higher power amps to get higher sound levels with the DSP taking sure to dynamically limit the power if things go outside of the parameters of the drive units. DSP is doing what the sound engineers were doing in big professional PA's for decades past, and class D amps are so cheap that putting big amps in small speakers is cheaper than building 5 different PA amps for every different speaker model. At the moment I'll guess that there are no sensors for ambient temperature in most base level systems used by semi pro bands. From the advertising I don't think RCF for exampe do this. What they do have however is a proxy for ambient temperature: the amplifier monitors it's own temperature as there is overheating protection built into the amp. If the ambient temperature rises the cooling on the amp is challenged and the temperature there will rise in proportion to the rise in the voice coil again this is all predictable. Obviously a sensor on the speaker itself would give an extra layer of protection. I found it really interesting to know which amp modules were being used inside these boxes and it's fairly easy to track the design decisions being made generally from these videos. I think it is fabulous that we can buy speakers that manage themselves in ways that allow bands to use more of the available output of the drive units. This sort of thing is already starting to spread to budget cabs and I suspect it will be moving to bass guitar combo's fairly soon.