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When you have to meet our favorite gear tart, Karl, at Lymm Services, you just know you're going home with a total rock machine. Just stunning.

I helped out a mate at an open mic night last night and ended up playing about an hour, my father in law came along to watch. He is ex bomb disposal but is a very quiet gentle bloke who is very very shy. After my first 20 minute stint I came back to sit down to find him talking to this old lady, I assumed he knew her and as it was my round I bought her a drink as well. Anyway to cut a long story short it appears he had ‘pulled’ the local drunk. She was with him all night and was hassling me for his phone number by the end. I think he was quite taken aback and embarrassed by it but I found it very funny.

Prophets of Rage.

I found myself writing something relatively coherent about this in the bass guitars forum so I thought I'd move it over here: In response to Parker's question about his bass being too quiet for his amp to be heard when rehearsing: "It is very rare for an amp to have insufficient gain to reach full volume even with a very quiet bass. The only way you'll get a 35W bass amp to be heard over a drummer is by sticking the amp in the corner of the room for maximum bass reinforcement, cut back your lows, add midrange, and give the drummer hotrods or very light sticks. Gain and volume (or more accurately Sound Pressure Level) are two very different things. It works like this: Movement of strings due to plucking generate peak voltage of, say, 1V in the pickups. This goes to the preamp part of the amp which adds, say, 5x gain, with the knobs at 12 o'clock. Thus the voltage is now 5V. This goes to the power amp section which adds gain of say, another 5x, with the knobs at 12 o'clock. The voltage is now 25V. This power amp is driving an 8 ohm load. 25V into 8 ohms equals (25x25)/8=78W. Now, say this amp has a maximum output of 100W. This means its maximum voltage output is 28V. Let's say that if you turn the preamp gain to max you get 10x gain. Let's say that if you turn the power amp gain to max you get 10x gain. This means that the amplifier has a maximum gain of 100x. So if you put your 1V signal in the amp will try to put 100V out - BUT IT CAN'T because the maximum voltage output is only 28V. If you put a preamp or booster in front of the amp you might be able to put 10V into the preamp but you still won't be able to get more than 28V out of the power amp. If an amp is not loud enough, no amount of louder effects pedals, outboard preamps, pickups, will make it louder. There is one thing that will make it louder and that is more sensitive speakers, or simply MORE speakers! The more sensitive the speakers the more dB SPL out you will get for the voltage in. So if you were to plug the power amp output of your little 35W combo into a very large efficient speaker cab or two (like a BFM DR280 on top of a Titan 48) then you would actually get enough volume to easily keep up with a drummer. But you wouldn't want to have to move that..." Alex

Really glad you like it Alan, both of us happy methinks

Ooh very nice, I was admiring that for a while on the retailers website. I may get a gang of angry traditionalist after me with pitchforks for saying this, but I thought a tort guard would look amazing on that.....(runs for cover ?) lovely bass though, I am starting my savings tin in the new year for a CS Relic.

Beauty!!! Love that original meaty pup, looks the ideal placement too. If I ever play in a rock band (rather than blues/soul) I'll be after one of these for sure.

We can merge if people give us their links At the moment the search function only finds the last year's worth of posts/topics. We're still arguing with some guys about provisioning the new server, sorry about the inconvenience but we're between a rock and a hard place until that's sorted (hopefully this week)

Bas, dirt pedals compress the signal most people using an envelope pedal will have some form of compression after it to control your quacking, can be the same for chorus type effects, but they are less particular to compression before or after. pitch shifters respond well to compression before as it’s a steadier signal to work with tune amps compress a signal DI output compresses the signal before it hits the mixer board as well as the other things people above have said. its pretty ubiquitous. i suppose you could change your question to do they have a compression pedal on their board, but the fact is still there is compression going on with a pedal or not

Me, I’m just a lawnmower. You can tell by the way I walk.

Just had a quick jam with my son, thought I ‘d stick some close up shots of the cab for your judgment. I really like the brown piping!

John Deacon's bass rack with Dbx compressor. That will be late 70's I reckon. http://www.geocities.co.jp/Broadway-Guitar/1391/bass-rack-unit.html

It’s the same but you just don’t see the ‘bump’ comments. Bit cleaner if you ask me.

Sorry, I don't believe that any amp is going to sound any better at 2 ohm than at 4 ohm. Especially through the cabs you're using.

My ipad's speakers don't work anyway so I'll need the cable either way =)

With the greatest of respect Mudpup, that sound like forum talk.

Before adding any drive or distortion, try pushing the lower mids on the amp to help give the bass a bigger presence in the mix. It might not sound too sexy when it's just the bass on its own but once the rest of the band fires up it will fill a hole in the mix. Distortion can suck the low end from the bass (depending on what pedal you are using and how much distortion you are adding) so in this case it could actually be counterproductive.

Does said guitarist by any chance have his low end cranked right up and his mids slightly scooped (cos it sounds great when he is playing at home) ???

I love the way the primary pic is of an empty case... I think I'd definitely break and/or lose that at the earliest opportunity. Or apply fire, and lots of it.

This. I've never actually thought much about it before, but it just seems logical.

I can relate to that totally, I'm not sure I could get up stage and play music I dnt actually like. Bit short sighted of me possibly and may exclude me from ever becoming a 'jobbing' bassist, but to be perfectly honest I'm not sure Id ever want to be. If I was a young thing just starting out then maybe, but I'm a grumpy old tw*t

I`ve always gone with the one with the wires going under the D & G, as they`re nearest to the electrics.

I'll be there, both days. Very much looking forward to it ???

And for those feeling a bit 'socially un-adapted', shy, retiring: you're far from alone. Others feel that way too. Here's 'People's Parties'... Sublime, and so precisely exact..!

How right you are; I'd be glad to rectify that. Three that I listen to very regularly, and which have absolutely no duff track..? Court And Spark The Hissing Of Summer Lawns Hejira There are others, but as we're only allowed three, I'll, with regret, let slide 'Taming The Tiger', 'Blue', Clouds', 'Songs To A Seagull', 'Don Juan's Reckless Daughter', 'Mingus', 'Ladies Of The Canyon', ...

I've got a couple of BB2024's and they are the best basses I have ever owned in nearly forty years of playing bass. I'm sure you'll be pleased with your purchase in the long term. I'd be very interested to hear more of your impression of the BB P34. I'm really keen to know how it compares with the previous range in terms of sound, playability and and overall quality.

Thundercat: ‘Drunk’

This is such a stretch that it starts to resemble goalpost moving - deliberate or otherwise. I don't know whether joking is involved or whether this is to be taken seriously, and a any rate, I'm not gonna discuss this further. Sparked by this post, however, allow me to talk about some concepts. LONG POST WARNING: MOST PEOPLE SHOULD NOT NEED TO READ THIS. See, I already sense/understand that this post is gonna be way too long, and only part of that has to do with me struggling to be brief in a foreign language. My apologies. Also, I'm not writing anything that I do not assume is general knowledge. It's just that some posts in this thread make it seem necessary to remind some people of some things. Apologies, again. Anyway, Bassman7755, in his very own words, said: In other words: he is able to judge that I lack social calibration. He's possibly right, and me defending myself is not why I use his text here. The point however is: WHY can he judge this? Because he himself is socially calibrated on a higher level. In his choice of wording, one of the unspoken premises in the whole enthymeme-like construction is that people have social calibration on different levels. Bassman7755 happily is one of the people who can judge that people like me (or me only) operate on a lower level. Now, I'm fine with this. I'm just about resourceful enough to realise that I'm a far-from-perfect being, and my social calibration is mixed. I do not agree with his assessment entirely though, supported by my happy experiences in the area, but I do accept that at least I should've worded more carefully and empathetically. BTW, when I used McCartney as an example, I honestly was unaware that that name was even mentioned already, and mentioned even by Bassman7755 in the same post I quoted. I naively used the name in expectation of people mentioning McCartney later. I'm truly sorry about that aspect of my post that Bassman7755 reacted to, and would have worded more sensitively had I remembered that Bassman7755 has used the name. I only had noticed him mentioning Kate Bush. But at any rate, Bassman7755 himself seems to accept the very concept that is at play here: Some people are better equipped than others in different areas. Some are better equipped than others to judge aspects about others. My neighbour judged that I had no talent at football. He was right. But if I'd shown any talent, then we'd probably need someone else than my neighbour to judge exactly how far I could go in my football career. In most or all aspects of life there are certain statistical distributions, and a startling amount of those distributions roughly follow the Gauss curve (standard distribution). This would for example mean that only few people function on a bottom level and very few on a top level - the easiest example being that few people have an IQ below 50, and roughly equally few have one above 150. Most people are less than a standard deviation away from average. As to being musically talented, without going into theoretical debates about what it is and is not, but just going by the regular term as we tend to use it, those that are least talented musically, either just have no relationship to music, or they only like the least demanding forms of it, and more demanding forms of music are deemed to be noise or similar. That non-demanding music is still easy to judge by others who're higher up on the staircase. The rest gives itself. The more advanced the music, the fewer people are able to create it or appreciate it. Theoretically, only one person at the top is able to appreciate all existing music and to create that stuff. In real life of course it doesn't work exactly that way. Oh yes, I hear voices in my head, Bassman7755's voice amongst others, but bear with me: What music can become very popular, and what music can become popular classics that we hear on the radio decade after decade? By definition it's the music that large groups in society can appreciate (not too demanding) and at the same time: that will not bore them easily. That last part is essential as it is there some of the quality lies.The quality does not often lie in the three chord harmonic development. Are those popular classics written by highly talented people? Very often: yes. Sometimes: no. Burt Bacharach and The Beatles are certainly highly talented, but others exist as well who just are not. Are they written by the one, single most musically talented musician of all time? Not very likely. Why not? Because that person very likely showed talent at an early age, and got this talent developed. That person would experience popular music as demanding little, and also as giving little, and would turn his/her brain to other music - music that is not only food of love, but also food for brain. Mozart at an early age could write much more well-constructed, well-flowing and error-free music than most of us can ever dream of, and since he only developed upwards despite his life style and general lack of Bach-like driving forces. In all likeliness, the one single most musically talented person of all time, unlike the many highly talented people of more regular shape who write popular classics, is in the group of people who are somewhere in that ivory tower that many people hate, where new concepts are created, and the borders of what can be art are moved. Bach conservatively stayed within that old baroque music, but at the same time let it go on paths where no music had gone before. If you know your stuff, the gap between Bach and Vivaldi is enormous! (I may earlier have written about how Bach and Vivaldi react differently when a certain chord/voice sequence brings the music to steeper, narrower paths with higher danger level.) As an example of what I'm on about: In the eighties, I heard two interviews. One was with a highly respected Norwegian folk music player. The other was with B.B. King. Both in all essence said the very same thing: "People always ask me what music inspires me, and what rocks my boat. But at my level, what I love, and what inspires me, is not the same stuff that the people who love my music love, and when I answer, they always respond: "But that isn't even blues anymore" / "That isn't even folk music anymore!". But it is blues/folk music! It just is more demanding, and it's appreciated by the likes of me - not by the masses who love my music." There! B.B. King said it, so it must be true even though I said it too. I'm sure I wrote some unnecessary stuff and forgot some essential stuff, but I'm quitting now. Again, I apologise for the length and for the low speed in the thought development area. I know some people on BC could have said the same in one sentence. I can't. I've started and deleted an answer many times, and have also thought many times I'd delete the whole thing written above. But I didn't. I just hope it's of service to one or two people.

Haven't you got a gnome to go to ?

For a company that is supposed to be a serious luthier suppliers Stewmac sometimes write some real nonsense! Then again if they can sell someone an £8 (plus shipping etc from the US) part that whose function can be suitably duplicated with a a piece of card that can be obtained for free, then good luck to them. The values of the shims them sell: 0.25°, 0.5° and 1° may not sound a lot but a standard business card thickness filling half the neck pocket is usually more than enough to solve most neck angle problems, and is roughly the equivalent of the 0.25° shim. The argument for not leaving any bare wood "exposed" within the neck pocket makes little sense when one of the solutions they sell will still leave some wood exposed because 1) it is unlikely to be a completely snug fit in the pocket and 2) the holes for the screws are oversized. If you are really concerned about leaving bare wood open to the air within the pocket then seal any un-laquered surfaces on the pocket and neck heel before reassembling the neck joint.

It's got about 10 thou of relief in the neck now. Dropped both sides of the tune-o-matic...... Action (17th fret) about 2mm on E side, 1.75mm on G side. Lowered the nut slots a hair. Played it for a good couple of hours last night. Being picky but, those stock strings are rough. Jeez, my fingers are sore this morning! Going to stick a set of Hi-Beams on it, later today. Would have preferred a volume, volume, tone arrangement, rather than the volume, blend, tone. And going to have a look under the pickguard and see what values they used for the tone pot/cap. It's not very effective. A bit too subtle. More treble cut required, when backed-off, me thinks. But nit-picking, really. Like Chris said, a lot of bass for the money.

I've use plastic cards, business cards, walnut veneer and cut down ice cream tub (basically whatever i could grab) all did a fine job. never heard the science of the acoustic resonance of ice cream tub though, maybe its the bets kept secret in shimming!

Looks in great nick, D and G strings have never been touched

Most of them used to be mine but are no longer with me. I ordered the Limelight because I desperately wanted a Shoreline Gold 60's P. The Limelight is a really good bass - very well made and great sounding. But it had to go when a pre-CBS Lake Placid Blue Precision crossed my path: the one shown above. My vintage Fender rotation started about five years ago with a Black/Maple 1975 Precision (I put a black PG on it, Roger Waters style): Later I traded it in for a really cool 1968 Telecaster Bass (black refin): Parallel to the '75 P I had a '74 Jazz: Both the Tele and the Jazz had to go in favour of a 1965 Precision: That one feels and sounds fantastic - I probably should have kept it. But then the 1964 LPB came along, which I could not let pass, since a pre-CBS custom colour Precision has always been my dream bass. So I traded the Limelight and the 1965 P. 2015 was a very good year (job-wise), so I was able to invest in a beat-up 1964 Jazz that sounded huge: 2017 was another good year, so when I saw the 1956 Precision (another dream bass) at Andy Baxter's, I sold the '64 Jazz to finance it: I think with the Lake Placid Precision and the 1956 Single Coil I sort of reached the top of the ladder and the rotation might come to an end. At least on the Precision side. Now that I think about it, I don't have a decent Jazz Bass at the moment. And I also find the Competition series Mustangs really cool ...

BTW the switches represent 2 clipping stages in the circuit either silicone, Germanium or no clipping and you select what you want in conjunction with knob twiddling

Proper demo of the actual pedal, shame there was not more time spent at low drive, it’s oretty good and the bottom end stays

New rig used for the first time at rehearsal on Wednesday. 2 x BF One10 MB LM2 Sansamp BDDI Remarkably loud.

You can access the full TonePrint editor on iPad too, though that’s obviously useless if you don’t own one! Surely the noise gate on the Aftershock is nowhere near as feature-laden as the Sentry?

Hey Villis. Top playing on ‘Don’t Funk With Me’, excellent stuff.

So here is part of my stuff

Nice one, Alex. Coherent indeed. The mention of Gain and Volume brings to mind one of my pet bugbears: the habit that many manufacturers have of mis-labelling the controls on amplifiers. First let's deal with the worst culprits. It seems to be a commonly held view among certain companies that in selling to musicians, they are ipso facto selling to idiots who are easily impressed by shiny objects and flashing lights, and to whom they can pretty much spin any nonsense they wish. This leads to products on which perfectly normal Signal Level and EQ controls have been given stupid, subjective names like "bite", "heat", "balls" etc. Does anyone really find such descriptions useful? I doubt it. Personally, I just find them embarassing, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who immediately ignores any product with such twaddle printed on its panel. However, even among those companies who avoid such inanities, there is still a common practice of mis-labelling going on, and one that leads to endless confusion among non-technically minded users. I'm talking about all those amps (including well-respected, high-end products) that have an input level control which, bizarrely, is labelled "Gain", and may well be accompanied a bit further down the panel by another knob marked "Master Volume", "Master Gain" or "Output Level". In nearly every case, such labels are wrong! And let's not forget that old favourite, "Volume Control". We're all used to saying that, aren't we? Yet even that is a piece of 'creative' labelling - a hangover from the days of domestic wireless sets. In a typical instrument amp, the first "Volume Control" you find is simply a pot placed in the signal path - just like the one we find in a passive guitar or bass, between the pickups and the jack socket. All it does is act as a [i]potential divider[/i]: a variable resistance that bleeds some of the signal away to earth and allows the rest through to the next amplifying stage. Turn it up full, and all (or nearly all) of the signal gets through. Like a water tap, it's a purely passive device. It can't give out more than is being fed in. In some amps this first pot is positioned directly after the jack input itself, but more commonly these days it is placed after an initial amplifying or buffer stage. Either way, the effect is the same. Likewise, the "Master Volume" or "Output Level" control is another passive pot, placed at the point where the signal leaves the pre-amp/EQ circuitry and is being fed to the input of the Power Amp. What it [i]doesn't[/i] do, in either position, is alter the GAIN of the amplifying stage of which it is part ...but that doesn't stop some manufacturers calling it a "Gain" control. Confused? I'm not surprised! So, just for the record: A true Gain control works by modifying the operating conditions of an amplifying device (varying a DC control voltage on an Op-Amp, for example) and in so doing actually determines how much gain that device can apply to whatever signal it is being fed. Genuine Gain controls are usually only found on professional studio equipment, mixing desks and so on. They are not used alone, or instead of passive pots. Both are used together, as they have different roles to perform. They're part of the variety of control options that make such equipment flexible enough to accept and process signals from the widest possible range of sources, and do it efficiently, with the best possible signal-to-noise ratio. I think that's it. Don't want to hijack Alex's excellent thread. I'll shut up now.