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Dean Town - Vulfpek

Just bought a lovely vintage Trace amp from @King Tut, aka Colin, who - apart from being a really easy and great person to deal with - happens to own two fantastic Rickenbacker 4003 basses! 👌👌 I was on my way to a rehearsal unfortunately, so there wasn't enough time to stay longer for the obligatory 'bass chat', but I hope we can get to do that at some point in the future, because I know it'll be a lot of fun. 😁 Suffice to say that you can deal with Colin in complete confidence, Folks. 👍 Thanks a lot for the Trace head Colin, and here's to the next one... 😊 Cheers, Nik

Oh Deanna. Nick Cave atbs

Our guitarist/singer couldn't make it last night. He's had shoulder pain since before Christmas and has been on some meds for that waiting for a physio appointment. And he let us know yesterday that he was in such pain that 111 had advised he call an ambulance. Turns out the shoulder pain meds were not playing well with the cocktail he also takes for his back and it was giving him chest pains. Glad that the doctors know why he was having that issue. Doesn't sound fun and needless to say, he couldn't make practice last night! So a bit of an odd one. We hope he's well enough to at least sing at our gig on Saturday the 7th. I decided to bring my Fazley jazz bass along to practice with my Spector to see how they compared. I did the first half with the Fazley and it's such a lovely bass to play. The neck is super quick and very playable, but it wasn't quite cutting through. I also missed my high C string for my usual CGCFC tuning. It just brings an extra element that I feel is part of my sound for the band when I'm doing big open three octave hits. The Spector for the second half just cut through perfectly. The sharp fretboard edges are quite annoying though. I'm going to need to roll those. I've been spoilt by the entirely rounded edge of my Dingwall! I also put the Mojo Mojo and Bass Big Muff back into my effects loop of my GX-100 for practice yesterday. It's a different texture to the options I have in the Boss unit and I fancied having that available again. I think there's one song in particular where it works better. There were other bits where I think it didn't work as well as the fuzz I've got from the GX-100. Completing the gear was my trusty Laney Digbeth DB-500H head and the practice space's Ashdown 810. It's such a joy being able to use an 810 regularly! I love big cabs!

paging @Andyjr1515 the control cover on my swift is held on with magnets, I'm guessing he could point you to where they were bought from (it works very well on my bass) Matt

Another thing I would check if the new string doesn’t sort it is the nut slot height for the string. If the string is slightly thicker than the old string, it may be sitting higher in the nut slot. Also check your relief again, too much relief may be causing a bigger gap and more movement therefore sharpening the string especially 7 - 9th fret where relief may be greatest. This is the order I do my setups; Set relief Cut nut slot correctly check relief Set action check relief Set witness points Then intonate at 12th

(said in fun) Hmm.. I wonder what an AI generated message board squabble would look like. How much time it would take (1ms?) to generate and how many characters it would need (a zillion or two?). That could be the new tech fun, get AI fighting itself! Anyway, I think we humans are in a new era where we have to double check what we see and hear, ask if it's AI fakery. I think it's the intention of "the powers that be" to confuse us, so we can't tell what's real or their propaganda, they know most people won't bother to ask, they will just believe what they see/hear. What makes humans human is, the ability to ask.

Interested to know from people that have played these - given that there’s no tone control, where would you say the tone sits? Is it fixed wide open, in the middle?

Check my YouTube channel for a video later today. Exciting times!

It's great to see a fun finish. Don't get me wrong, black and white basses are all well and good, but not exactly much fun. With Sire and Sterling now doing swirl and sparkle finishes, bring on the the fun revolution!

That's a great question and I had to think about the answer. Part of this is that I rely on experience, I've spent a lot of time building and modifying cabs. When I build pairs of cabs I'll often try modifications on one cab and then A/B them next to each other so you do get an instinct about small changes The first thing is that the efffects are slight. First of all most of the 'sound' of the speakers is what goes on above 200Hz and the box modelling is about the response of the true low end below that frequency. The other David has tried the cab out as a sealed cab andit 'works' and it probably sounds OK, even though he will get 3db of boost of the low end with a port plus a lower roll of frequency. Secondly the calculations give incredibly percise answers but in real life it's a bit messier. Manufacturing tolerances mean measured speakers vary and the published figures I use can't always be trusted. Thre are always air losses from a cab which are allowed for in the calculations but I use a 'standard' value of Ql=0.7 which is middle of the bell curve. Importantly I then build the cab so ay significant error would show up. I'ver no control over how accurately people build the cab so calculating port sizes to 3 decimal places doesn't make much sense. You can build the cab successfully even if you make small mistakes, which should be reassuring Anyway I've looked at the responses with the same tuning and the box sizes increased and decreased by 10% but tuned to the same frequency. This is the box you are all building with the Fane in blue. You can see that increasing the cab by 10% (red) gives you a bit more bass but reducing the cab 10% makes a smaller difference. The red trace gives 1db extra at 60Hz and you'd hear that with the cabs next to each other but only just. You wouldn't be able to detect the difference with the smaller cab in this case. This is a 2l shift in volume and the increase in port size is only 0.2l so insignificant. It looks like my instincts were good in this case, Phew

Hey all, just wanted to check in and see how you're doing with the books! Happy 2026, and wishing everyone lots of good musical momentum in the new year.

So yesterday I sold the last of my SWR gear. This ends what has been a thirty plus year obsession with the brand, started by my love of the bass playing of John Paul Jones. Over the years I have owned and gigged: 1) Black Beauty combo 2) Black Beauty combo with Workingmans 210 3) 750x head with Goliath III (4x10) and Son of Bertha (1x15) 4) 750x head with two Goliaths 5) Grand Prix preamp (twice) 6) SM1500 head with two Goliaths 7) SM1500 head with one Goliath Senior (6x10) 8).SM1500 with one Goliath 9) SM900 with one Goliath 10) Marcus Miller preamp (twice) 11) Marcus Miller preamp with Amplite poweramp (the setup I should have kept). I know that Fender swallowed up the SWR brand and then promptly did nothing with it, but boy would I love an SWR pedal sized preamp with the semi-parametric EQ and the famous aural enhancer (marmite to many),

Yes, Tempera strings are not cheap but I am currently loving the hybrids! Stupidly easy to bow. They seem to do what Evahs claim to but are so much nicer. Rufus Reid uses them and he was on Animas before so I guess they are similar. I was a Velvet Garbo fan back in the day.

I was listening to the What Makes This Song Stink (Lenny Kravitz special episode) podcast yesterday. It included a spoof advert for bandcamp which used the slogan "...because three of your friends have to listen to half of one of your songs somewhere" seems accurate to me.