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Although I use a preamp pedal - Sansamp or Behringer BDI21 - in one of my bands, I prefer the sound of my bass just into an amp which is what I do with the others. It just seems more, for want of a better word, natural.

Or at least one of them

Having owned the Blue Rock head a few years back I am intrigued by this. I thought that was a superb amp - and probably in terms of build quality and component spec, the Rolls Royce of amps - I just found that the Trace TE-1200 had a better natural tone for me, and had to work harder with the Glock to get it in the same happy place. But I reckon the Glock would be a more versatile head all told; this should in theory be more of the same good DNA!

Is it just me, or has anyone else found that Mustang pickups are prone to stripping the adjustment threading in their bases ? My Classic Vibe 60s Mustang bass came with really tight scratchplate to pickup cover clearance (which also caused some ghosting) and the threads in the original pickups stripped out because the cover wasn't free to move when being adjusted for height, so I ended up making some steel plates to fit under the pickups and drilled and tapped them to M3 (which is the screw originally fitted) and clearanced the guard a little so they could move a bit more freely. But I ended up changing the pickups for Nordstrands - but the holes in the Nordstrands were smaller than M3 and little spare material around the outside to allow for using M3s, so I ended up having to buy some smaller diameter US imperial screws with 28tpi, like many guitar humbuckers use, and they have been okay, but after changing strings today I found the string balance a little out so went to adjust the height and pop, stripped the thread in the EA pickup at the A end, so now I'm going to have to pull the scratch plate and probably de-solder the pickups and fanny on again making some plates to achieve adjustability. I know the Mustang was a cheaper instrument originally but for frells sake why haven't the pickup manufacturers moved to use proper metal threaded inserts in the pickup bass instead of relying on a small hole in the base which is made out of fibreboard and reliant on the adjustment screw cutting a thread and then not wearing the fine threads or the base plate splitting when working under tension from the springs. Leo did not get this right, imho, and afaic the modern pickup makers are equally culpable for not improving the basic design, just copying it, for cheapness and originalities sake. I wonder if this is part of the reason so many Mustangs from Fender now have Precision pickups in them, not because they sound better but because they are less likely to suffer adjustment failure issues. ? grrrrr, colour me pissed 😈 I'm tempted to just modify the instrument to take the Fideltron pickup I have in my spares box, but that is a big job and I could end up buggering it up completely

First coat of black on the headstock... that took over an hour... Also made a start on the French polish - testing it out in an inconspicuous area first - the neck ferrule holes...

Lovely bass. Play it healthy 🙂

Next I will try it with my Cioks PSU

Never underestimate the extent to which a cheap PSU can ruin a pedal experience.

No need to apologise at all, happy to explain! Sidechain compression first. Trigger input goes in to compressor, and when that trigger crosses a set threshhold, the volume on another track is affected (usually reduced momentarily). A common application of this in production situations is to feed a signal from the kick drum to a compressor's sidechain on a bass track. This means when the kick happens, the volume of the bass reduces by a desired amount so the kick is clear and not fighting the bass frequencies as much. And then 'ducking' is just a more extreme version of that, I suppose. Rather than a subtle effect for getting things out the way for a moment, it can be used to create more dramatic volume swells, pulsing etc. It's very commonly used on synths in electronic music, especially house. The Pill allows you to dial in the depth of the volume drop, and how quickly it recovers again. It's a simple effect in essence but a fairly unique one for pedals, from what I know. Demo:

Really interesting development, why should tech companies use other people's creativity without their permission and for free? https://mosis.eecs.utk.edu/harmonycloak.html

These jack sockets are great... https://puretonetechnologies.com/products/pure-tone-multi-contact-1-4-output-jack

I remember when no one used flats, back in the '80's and early '90's. At that time flatwound bass strings were something they had in the old days, like rickets and diphtheria. Definitely to be avoided. It all changed with PIno and that Voodoo album. Nowadays everybody has to have a Precision with flats on. It's become another bass playing tyranny. When I finally got some TI flats about ten years ago it was a revelation how much fun they were to play and how I could accurately emulate bass parts I'd been playing right but that didn't sound like the original. More than anything, the different attack and decay you get on flats compared to roundwounds made all the difference.

You are a genius. It is completely silent when using a USB C laptop charger but hums when using the the power supply.

when we put the Glam band together in 2018 i was the only one retired. It did make it easier for me to learn songs. I guess i'm just very lucky that the band members all think the same way as myself and that practice and rehearsals are a necessity when learning new songs or when we started the band we rehearsed every week for 3hrs for first 6mths and then the next 6 mths it was for 6hrs every 2 weeks. We did that for a full year before gigging but we knew we were good at that first gig and it just made us more confident to do the showmanship that Glam needs. Currently our new guitarist of 3yrs now is also retired with one of our singers Lynn being a semi-retired nurse. There's not a big age gap between us all tho and i can see how you imagine that's a problem but to them it probably isnt and its just how they prefer to do things. Youngsters these days have a different mind set to us old guys. 😂 Dave

<swoon>

Yes using the power supply. I will try more options tomorrow. I really want to love it but any trace of hum is a deal breaker for me.

Was this at Pirate studios 😎

That was my 1st port of call. But thanks:)

One of the Origin Effects Bassrigs will get you there. Maybe the Black Panel as that dirt tone is probably just the Fender amp behind him!

There's your answer! The Stingray 5 is such a great five string imo. You cant go wrong with one. (My 1994 blueburst is not for sale and posted for purely the purpose of inducing GAS)