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In my Happy New Year message to my luthier, sent 31/12/2025 I said I'll be in touch about a new commission and gave some details. I would argue that the initial contact counts as the first stage of the ordering process. And as it happened last year I'm still in!

Meanwhile Danny in Bradford is contributing this to the music industry (they may just be miming...):

Agreed, don't mess about with it any further. And if it is dodgy then shame on the retailer for flogging it as B stock - gotta check these things

I know. Appreciate the clarification.

T2 for sure, T1 is harsh

Yeh, they are certainly in the wrong place when you have used any other bass, but then once you have learned... Still, one day I will learn which knobs on the bongo do what.

We've all done it, even with the labels on the knobs.

Celebrating the old ways! Pouring cider over the roots of apple trees and singing songs to bring a good harvest, scaring away woodland spirits by banging saucepans, drinking mulled cider and Morris dancing!

So we’ve just been recording @Dankology and I; but here is the first single we did just before Christmas this is the Spotify link - but it’s on all major streaming platforms x

Down to trust really. I did an outdoor gig and brought my PA, I turned up and one of the other bands that was on later had their PA and it was seriously a professional many thousand of pound worth of audio equipment and a guy who clearly knew what he was doing, sound was fantastic. The next year they said that they were supplying a PA so I didn't bring mine, thought it would be great. It wasn't the same guy, it was 2 guys with with an 8 channel behringer analogue cheap mixer, a pair or standard behringer PA speakers and sub that was no where near as good as my PA, sound wasn't good. Third year they said they had a PA too, so I brought mine anyway. As it turned out they had somewhere between the two and it was ok, but I don't trust it anymore, and if I have the space I will take mine. Obviously you can wire yours up and chain the output to their speakers and see which sounds right. I doubt it, if they have two inputs I assume they have two sides, so if you only plug into one you would only have one side of the system working.

A little start of the year bump!

Because I've listened to interviews with Bob Ezrin etc.

Why? He is human and messes things up and sometimes it doesn't work.

...but I suspect with David Gilmour it is about the music. With some of these youtube creators currently being "outed" the intention seems more to be getting the acclaim (clicks & subscribes!) of coming across as being a virtuoso, when they are clearly not. As has been said this then makes life much harder for the real virtuosos to make a living, along with the normal mortals who suddenly can no longer compete. It is also the source of rather a lot of embarrassment when they are pulled up on to a real stage.

Caveat I’m not really that sure I know what I’m taking about she it comes to individual component costs etc but I have a couple of LBA 2020s transformers which add an audible impact and I think were about £90 but to buy the actual individual component form LBA is about $70 on average depending on the transformer. I digress. I get the discussion on price. Custom transformer are expense to make probably more expensive than sticking a tube in a pedal for the sake of it having tubes in it. There’s two custom TX’ers in this unit. The classic (very satisfying) clicky/stepped knobs like in studio gear are more expensive. I’d dare say the components are more expensive in this unit as well and from what I’ve learned so far it’s been made to be a high quality unit. A Behringer/TC rat clone is about £23 but a Jam Rattler is £229… I’ve not noticed the same kinda chat on Jam pedal threads going on about the cost. It’s been done again on the recent origin thread - Bassrig versus an affordable multifx and it’s a natural enough discussion to have. Price versus value etc. but it’s been done to death. A Caveman BP1 is about £750 and one could argue the Mantle has more features so comparatively it’s ’better value’ in this price range for this type of unit versus the Rat clones mentioned. Someone mentioned it’s cheaper than a Noble and having the transformers it might be a better suited unit for a wider range of players and more reliable as there’s no tubes involved -no additional cost down the line replacing tubes! Its got a well thought out EQ which does make sense and feels very studio-y! Not for everyone maybe but I like the LPF and HPF design. If you’re not into spending £750 on a bass let alone a pedal this was never for you. All opinions are ‘valid’ and I don’t really enjoy posting on these types of discussion as it’s all a bit pointless. I have a tube preamp which has 4 tubes, a custom Cinemag transformer, three band eq and I’d say it’s a far better ‘value’ unit than a Noble, ‘more versatile’, sounds great and isn’t the one trick pony (but what a lovely trick) the Noble is. I’d love to play through the Mantle and I wonder how the feel of it would be compared to a NAM capture of it. We’ll see them appear soon enough I’d say.

Awesome, thanks for that! The layout looks identical but some of the components are different like the DemonFX using a 74HC573D where the Sonic Research is using a MM74HC. The smaller visible board seems to handle the display of the pedal. The larger board underneath deals with the actual tuning circuitry. It's interesting that some of the board underneath looks identical (the traces, vias, and R26/C15 up top, R39 bottom right), but also a lot of the circuit underneath the jacks is missing. I might need to grab one of each and do a proper teardown to see what's going on and where any latency is coming from. It could be a lag in the display circuit due to the different chips, or a slower tuning circuit if a different schematic is being used (or the same circuit with different chips again)

Thanks @Woodinblack - super helpful as always! I guess the question is whether we use our own PA which we've been doing for several years there, and augment it with their in-house PA which extends into other rooms, or just try to use their in-house PA. I was thinking the former for the first time so our own PA would be taking the main desk outs as usual, and their in house PA effectively becomes a glorified venue monitor? Given that we don't pan our outputs, I'm assuming that a single "monitor" lead into their house PA from one of our aux outs using their cable should therefore be fine?

Knackered string, I’ve had this with G strings (an Ernie Ball) before. The G saddle should the furthest forward (towards the neck).