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For some unknown reason, I have an itch to listen to some reggae and widen my understanding and appreciation of this genre. Not from a playing perspective but more of a listening appreciation. However, I know absolutely nothing about the groups etc. I do know a handful of Bob Marley track, mostly the well known ones and I really like them. I have heard of Aswad but only because they were in the charts in the 80's or 90's and sadly, I have heard of UB40 who I detest. So I guess I'm after the good shit to listen to. If Bob Marley is what Miles Davis is to Jazz, then who is John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Art Blakey, Charlie Mingus of the reggae world. Any recommendations greatly appreciated.

Just back home from the annual Christmas guitar club concert in my local village hall. Two concerts - one for the younger learners and one for the older more proficient kids. Amazing to see them progress over the years in confidence and musical skills. I bring the PA, the lights and an extra pair of hands to help with setting up and sorting/tuning etc between performers, as well as guesting on the odd song. Proper Christmas thing. Excuse the dull pic but it’s all I managed.

I just thought I'd write a quick first-impressions review here, as I can't see any other threads in the BC archives on this system. The basics first. The Distiller is an active resonant-filter tone circuit, like what you'd find on an Alembic or a Wal. It consists of a low-pass filter whose resonant frequency is swept up and down using the potentiometer. Everything above the frequency gets cut, everything below stays unchanged. You can also switch in two levels of boost at the resonant frequency. Before I go on to the review bit, I should say that I didn't buy a filter preamp because I want to sound like Justin Chancellor. This is an unusual situation in the filter-preamp market, which I've done my best to illustrate with the venn diagram below. I mention this because a lot of the existing discussions on these sorts of devices seem to judge them mostly on the metric of "how cool does it sound when I play the riff from Schism?". I, on the other hand, have no strong opinions about Tool, and just wanted something that gave me a wide range of tones without covering my bass in knobs. By that measure, I think this does a great job. The best part for me is the regular low-pass filter (with no resonant frequency boost), which is a very effective but surprisingly unobtrusive thing. With a gentle turn of the Distiller, you can roll off just that annoying clicky highest of high end without muddying the musical treble you want to keep. Go beyond that, and you have effectively a very precise and controllable version of a passive tone control. It goes from "normal but with the edge taken off" to "reggae through the wall from a house party down the street". The two boost modes are, in my opinion, very usable at the top and bottom end of the range, but perhaps not so much in the middle. At the top end with both the low and high boost modes, you get some great aggressive sounds while maintaining the option of cutting out the clicky noises. There are some good sounds there – particularly in the lower mids, and particularly with the low-boost mode – but a lot of them feel a bit too nasal and odd sounding to be useful. As you get towards the low end, the low-boost mode gives you some great dub-like sounds while the high-boost makes your bass sound a lot like a synth bass. I can see myself playing around with those a lot. So yeah. Two thumbs up from me. Oh. Also, here are some very quickly recorded and very rough samples of the three modes. Each one starts with the frequency sweep all the way up, and then goes down through the range step by step. I apologise for both the quality of the recording (just straight into Audacity) and my playing (best described as repetitive, tuneless noodling). No boost. (I checked this against old recordings, and I can confirm that the starting point sounds indistinguishable from the bass when it was wired passive). Distiller_no-boost.mp3 Low Boost Distiller_lo-Boost.mp3 High Boost (might be clipping the interface a bit here and there). Distiller_hi-boost.mp3

That's very helpful and informative, thank you. So essentially there's nothing too wrong with the Legacy in itself, but it's still distinctly different to the HAZ that's such a big part of the Spector tone. That's fair enough. I don't have a HAZ-style preamp as a point of comparison, but my assessment of the CST with the Legacy preamp is that played through my Bass Driver and Diamond BC1 Bass Compressor the tone is pretty epic and easily identifiable as a Spector NS2. It certainly seems to get fairly close to the sound we all know and love. As I said before, I'm no expert and this CST is my first Spector, despite having wanted one for more than 40 years. I'm in the market for another one, maybe even a USA model so I'm doing my research. I've got a lot of nostalgia for the Kramer-era Spector basses that as a young hopeful, I used to oggle in upmarket guitar shops in the USA in the late '80's. I've been toying with the idea of ordering a custom NS2 that looks like one from that era, with a HAZ pre, of course. That said, my CST seems so good that I might just get a Euro Doug Wimbish to keep it company. It certainly makes more economic sense to do that.

@agedhorse I think you haven't met a lot of the 'engineers' working the rough end of the circuit, at least in the UK. People skills not always in abundance. I've noticed both as a player and a punter that mixing skills aren't either. Even at medium venues I noticed heavy reliance on presets and RTAs, little use of ears or musical understanding of genres. Quite a lot of them come from AV/theatre backgrounds and do live bands as a top-up. Touring engineers that go with bands are generally a different proposition. Though IMO they still rely too much on presets.

Unless the low pass inductor is seriously undersized, resulting in high DCR and potentially going into saturation, a low pass filter won't cause clipping of the low notes. That's usually the result of inadequate driver xMax/Vd, sometimes by the cab size and tuning. If you went with the WinISD default of 41 L per driver with 58Hz tuning you'd run out of excursion at only 80 watts per driver at 50Hz and lower. Without knowing the cab specs that's all I can offer. If I was using that driver I'd ignore the WinISD default and go with 30L per driver and 45Hz tuning. If you did use the WinISD default making the port(s) long enough to get to 45Hz tuning would be better, and since the net box volume should be smaller as well you've got the room for it.

I can't find this one on Spotify Shame! Tis excellent (as is the album)... Though I think some sort of rights issue took it of Spotty.

Buy yourself some of these. It is the same thread on the bolt - this accross multiple makes and ages. I did 10 mic stands at church this morning. Everything is now super easy. Obv the stands have not been used properly, but then, as soon as any member of the public get their hands on mic stands, we know that boom arm tightening doobrie is the first thing to go if they are not dog bone tighteners. £2.55 each and they now support themselves like those pricier K&Ms that I should have bought in the first place. Happy days. https://www.thomann.co.uk/km_knebel_komplett_schwarz.htm

Yep, in incidents like this it’s the “do as little as possible that I can get away with” attitude that is prevalent. I don’t know if this happens across the water but it certainly happens here across many forms of employment.

Great suggestions, I can't keep up! I'm travelling for work now, so I'll do a mass update of the playlist probably tomorrow evening or Tuesday.

I followed this thread and repurposed a SWR Goliath Junior Mark 1 (Eden USA made) 2x10 cab. Used the same two Celestion BN10-300X and an Eminence BGH25-8 as recommended by Bill Fitzmaurice. I only used the HF part of the crossover and followed @stevie advice and connected the two BN 10 -300x direct to the input. With new ports the system worked really well. I integrated the variable HF control which provided extra control over the HF. I have been very happy with the performance of the modified system and I am grateful for the help and advice from @stevie and @Bill Fitzmaurice. It's a very loud versatile cab with huge tight bottom end.

….which is why I’m going to wait and see, I don’t relish defending an HMRC demand for income tax on ebay sales that are in most cases a used item sold for significantly less than I paid for it new. Also eBay can be pretty brutal to sellers, and while it seems ludicrous to suggest it now, I wouldn’t bet against a future scenario in which they withhold or reclaim money that HMRC believes it’s owed….

White Wine the Sun - Tim Minchin

It was going so well. Sorry, this means I cannot come.

Step Into Christmas - Elton John. I played it with the band last night and it went down well. I'd never heard it before being given it in the set list about two weeks ago.

With respect, you were operating at a level where things would get sorted out quickly and amicably, so the sort of situation I described wouldn't ever happen. You would be dealing with the same groups for weeks or longer at a time. You wouldn't have behaved in the way I'm about to describe and then annoy everyone more by being condescending with it which is why things got heated. In the toilet/originals circuit in London where I'm sure the engineers are getting paid much less than you to do a good job, they very often don't care. Worse still, the air of impunity of action in some cases can be really bad. If it's only one night does it matter if you annoy the bands? You probably won't see them again. Who cares? When you ask why they did something that has negatively affected you or your band and they tell you to f@&£off refusing to discuss it, would that not annoy you? Like one time, one muted my guitarist (he was using a helix staright into the desk) for the whole last third of a song and when asked after the gig what happened told him the exact same thing and then shoved him. No explanation, no apology. When you ask someone nicely for what you need (explaining why you need it) and they proceed to do the exact opposite is that not screwing with you? So, if you're playing in a trio the bass takes on a whole different role than in say a 5 piece with 2 guitars and making the bass all "whump" isn't going to help you or the band sound good. Admittedly, I play a more driven, lead bass style and seemingly that doesn't compute for some of them and I can't understand why as it's not that complicated. I've never asked for anything except to be able to hear myself and to point out before soundcheck that in some of the bands I've played in, the bass has played more lead figures than the guitar, so please don't cut the treble. Whilst experiences like these aren't every time, it's been enough of a negative experience for me over the last 20 years that I find it depressing that in all that time, very little has changed in how bass is allowed to be presented in a live format. It's worth noting that when I have played bigger venues the engineers have been great.

If you're using that crossover, I'd say it's highly likely to be the cause. Try bypassing the LF section of your crossover and wiring direct to the bass drivers. Then you'll know.

Dunno, ask Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor about that...

People will not have heard of her before. People will have subscribed to her. There is no such thing as bad publicity.

Slipping out of the groove in the roller saddle on the Schaller bridge when slapping due to the low break angle, I believe. Mark King said something similar and that is part of the reason why he ditched his pair. The owner was and may still be a member. I don't recall his username, but if you do a search for Pangborn, you can read it in his own words. You will have to go back a ways but there is not that much Pangborn content. What you say is true, though the late John Diggins always maintained that the initial similarity was more of a happy accident and based in large part on a customer's design specifications, which was an attempt to copy an Alembic. He would also say that Ashley Pangborn spent a fair bit of time studying his instruments at trade shows over the years and you can see them evolve closer to a JD, for example, in terms of the control layout. That said, Pangborn's instruments were (mostly) neck throughs, while JD stuck with the set neck design.