All Activity

Would love to hear some sound clips if you have any.

Oh, there's also a phenomenon I can't explain, but I believe it's real enough. When I listen to my crappy tv speakers, while browsing BassChat on my laptop for example, I often look up in surprise, as, when someone in a film plays music over their Hi-Fi, it's easy to hear whether their Hi-Fi is any good. I often comment-in-my-head: "Oh, that's a good system .... but how the Hull can I hear that?" Good+crappy > crappy+crappy, and markedly so.

Makes me want to put my pristine Revox B291 turntable on, but after 15 years of silence, the capacitors must be a bit dry and the motor may start a fire... No need for a preamp as I did the Studer/Revox mod to turn the internal RIAA preamp on, which is a great plus. Itching a bit...

So am I.

Not to be a stick in the mud guys , but this is the beginners guide to home recording this latest discussion may as well have been a dissertation on quantum physics for what I understood of it 😁

That, and all the other known stuff, and also someting I see mentioned few times: people's ears and pre-conceptions. The shop I worked in was up-market. We once organised a day of listening, and twas done so the listeners didn't get to know which gear they heard (dark stage, thin veil between gear and audience - lit from audience's side). People started bickering as they all heard different, often opposed, things. - "Way too scooped sound!" - "You're crazy! Way too little bass and treble!" - "Way to open! Tiring! It's that demn veil!" - "Way too compressed! It's that demn veil!" You get the drill. Twas the last day I was a fanatic. It's easy to point at a weakness the CS 505 has: it's harder to tweak than most more expensive decks. There's also the point that with a cheap Dual like that, there are more measurable differences between individual units. (We had a system for that, Ortofon perhaps, which tested the unit and printed a report.) Point remains: Put an Ortofon MC30 on the Dual and also on an SME on the GyroDec, and, to our ears, one could live very happily with the modest Dual. Oh, another story. We were to start selling Cabasse speakers. Listened to their most expensive model and were seriously underwhelmed. However, me listening concentrated, with closed eyes, I suddenly startled at a certain sound, and opened my eyes as I thought the importer was joking with us by playing a real instrument in the room. Of course the importer wasn't, and that "real instrument in the room" was actually the sound from those Cabasse speakers. Whoa! Also, during the 1812 Overture, I was obviously sitting in the wrong chair: the cannon shot right through my chest and I died on the spot. That's Hi-Fi! 😉

For some reason, I always loved this tune and video...

Ok that’s cool - but how about this???

I wish to thank you for not saying "colourway".

The poly finish applied to Kramer instruments from the 70s is a complete bastard to remove. Don't ask me how I know. You'll need a good power sander, a LOT of course grit sandpaper, a well ventilated space to work in, and MANY hours of free time before you'll get to see any bare wood. And be very careful removing and replacing the wooden pickup surrounds as they are prone to damage and the ones on your bass still appear to be complete which is a rare thing in itself.

I quoted what I was replying to? But while we’re here. There should obviously be a premium on a well established name with a good reputation compared to a new brand. That goes for any product or service. How much that premium is, the market will dictate.

Toltec is a brand belonging to Laverack Guitars based near Leeds, UK. https://www.laverackguitars.com/toltec-pickups Lee Laverack is the chap that makes them. They are very boutique and many are wound to people's individual specs. Lee is very helpful and engaging and loves a new challenge of trying to get a pickup to match a customer's requirement. He's done two custom jobs for me, one was a pair of splittable J humbuckers, the other was a PJ set that doesn't sound like a "normal" PJ set. I've also got a pair of J pickups from Lee that I'm hanging on to until I need them. They're that good. My advice would be to contact Lee and have a proper chat if you need anything. He's a gem.

Well I play other gigs as well, just not that many at the moment. The only comment I ever had about my bass was when I turned up to a Working Man's Club cover band dep with my Jackson Charvel complete with pointy headstock and the band leader took one look at it and said "Just stick to the roots - nothing flash." Not long after that I bought my current bass which looks a bit less flash and looks far more expensive than it was. Sounds like January might be an expensive month for me, currently eyeing up some £1700 basses to get rid of some cash I have lying around.

I think judging by the poll results so far it's fairly Conclusive that anything over the £1-2k mark is considered expensive. I really don't think anyone buying a £3k bass, regardless of how much money they have in the bank is thinking it's not an expensive instrument. Probably the opposite, they may be thinking I'm glad I can afford an expensive bass. I think a lot of people project what they think 'rich' people think based on some strange societal stereotyping. We know actual rich people tend to be rich because they don't waste money on expensive items if they don't need to. Probably the closest comment so far is the most expensive bass is the one that never gets played.

Because you're worth it. Don't let that pesky imposter syndrome get in your way. And lose the "just". Even "just" doing pub gigs you are already in the rarefied air of musicians who actually make it out of the bedroom.

Like what would happen if it replaced the cab m and the Siméon and….

I've spoken to ACS about their Ambient series, and while they do acknowledge there'll be some loss in bass response, their approach has been to design the inears to minimise this. It's a trade-off, I guess, and the results will be acceptable to some and not others. Sadly I don't have the cash to try them out, and like all custom inears it's a leap of faith. I sometimes have to pop one inear out to hear the drums properly (venue/setup depending, especially with deps), and even then (with the bass turned up in my mix), it's plenty. Talking to other band members, though, I think the ACS 'squidgy' casts are more comfortable than the harder shells of some other vendors...I can wear mine for hours, where the other guys (on a long day's session) were getting uncomfortable. I would add that I've done some gigs on the runup to Xmas with bands that don't have the full quiet stage/inears setup, and I absolutely wouldn't go back; not hearing myself clearly and accurately (as well as at a volume I can control) is a deal-breaker for me these days.

Don't worry about the mixing app, it's essentially agnostic about how it connects over the network. Connect the tablet using the inbuilt settings app. Mixing station should still be set on wireless. Not that this matters if you can't connect to your home router and browse the web though, it seems as though the adapter itself either doesn't work or isn't configured properly.

The thing that puzzles me about this one is that I don't think the fingerboard is ebonol - it's not jet black, I can see grain in it (and in the light), pretty sure it's a wood of some sort, if not rosewood then some other dark wood. And the grain on the back of the neck looks a lot like wenge to me. I have no idea what the "AL" in "CURBOW 4 AL" on the back of the headstock means, but maybe it's a clue?

Here's my cover of Sonny & Cher's "The Beat Goes On" written by Sonny Bono before he formed U2. B3 Organ, drums, & FX are all native to Logic Pro. Bass is my Rickenbacker 4003 recorded using ric-o-sound to make the treble pickup a bit hairy. Clean guitar is my CIJ Fender '72 Tele thinline, and fuzz guitar is my Fender Ben Gibbard Mustang.

Doing a search @Sean, your name appears to pop up often. Could you offer some more insight?

In that case either the main input or more likely effects send is a switching jack. So plugging a patch cable into one or the other should make it work. EDIT - it looks like the effects loop can be turned on or off by the footswitch, so make sure it is on as well!