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Strictly speaking this is Off Topic, but I put it here because it's a response to a thread within General Discussion. In the thread about the most musically talented musician of all time, I wrote a post that I now believe must have been way more hard hitting than I imagined when I wrote it, and Bassman7755 especially was (or seemed) its target. I have read and re-read the offending post, and now believe that it was an ugly thing to write. I therefore apologise to Bassman7755, and of course all others who may have felt they were its target, for that post's general tone and the aspects of it that put down other people. What I should've said was that the most talented person likely is not a person we tend to know. What I said instead was that people who mention McCartney have no clue about this stuff. I'm very sorry, and wish Bassman7755 and others all the best. Bert

Look I am an advocate of using whatever tools you have to get the best results you can for yourselves and your audience. No one NEEDS a compressor on their bass. There, I said it ? You may find one can help you to either achieve a tonal goal or to sit in the mix more easily. You may find its all smoke and whistles and too much shag and hassle. It's all fine. Really. Go play, enjoy the heck out of it. If anyone on herequest ever wants to ask anyone more about compression, ask away. People will answer. If anyone considers someone a lesser player for using compression I'd respectfully suggest they don't really know why someone might want to. It ain't a magic wand it ain't never fixed crappy technique for me, quite the opposite actually, it makes quiet stinky poo louder so any string noise rings right out ? Play how you want. Peace...

This is possibly one of the most intelligent, polite, helpful and well meaning forums I've ever come across, and Bass Tractors post just proves this. Long may it remain this way! By the way, best wishes to all for 2018, wherever you are and whatever you're planning/hoping to do.

I have not read the original thread so can't comment on it. However I applaud your ability to acknowledge that you may have offended someone and are willing to apologise for it. This is especially relevant on the internet where it seems that so many people are happy to troll etc. Good on ya

A couple more.

Now then. Some of you may recall the Smitten Kitten thread from a while back. I fell in love with a five-string Mike Lull NRT5, sold a bunch of basses and put in an order. Six months on, the photo below dropped into my inbox today with a brief message saying Mike Lull will be building it this week, so hopefully I'll see it before Christmas. I guess it's pretty rare to see his work like this, so posting here. I am heartedly excited. P

I am sure he will be very good. I haven`t seen a bad performer on there yet. I did notice he had a music stand on the clip though :p. I have just bought my ticket, so will find out more about him if he is there on Saturday

http://bfy.tw/Fagm

No idea what you're referring to to, but I'm sure the apology will be accepted in the spirit it was intended.

Not quite - Ron Grainer was the composer, Delia was the arranger. Not to belittle Delia's contribution in any way - her work on Doctor Who alone is of colossal importance, truly astounding. There should be statues of this woman.

Agreed! I'll try a Gmail account and report back.

Oh I get all that I'm just taking a break as I'm shattered I'll have a poke around and see if I can find anything. In the meantime if you could try changing your email address to an alternative (ideally a different provider) to see if the problem goes away that would be awesome

If you need to be completely un-amplified you are going to need a double bass. Acoustic bass guitars simply aren't loud enough to compete with anything more than a single quiet (not strummed) acoustic guitar because the body isn't big enough to project the sound. Low notes and a decent volume requires a large body, hence the size of the double bass. There are a few very large bodied acoustic guitars like the Earthwood Bass, but they are very rare and expensive. The other issue you will come across is that decent small-bodied acoustic basses (one you will be using with an amp) tend to cost a lot more than an equivalent quality electro-acoustic guitar, partly because they aren't so popular and also because once again amplifying low notes is more complicated than a standard guitar. Unless you get very lucky with something like a bargain-priced second hand Takamine TB10, expect to pay at least £1k to get something of the equivalent quality to a £350 electro-acoustic 6-string guitar. TBH if you are going to have to reply on amplification you might as well use your favourite electric bass and a small and unobtrusive combo. It will sound better and you won't have to worry about feedback or excessive handling noise from cheap piezo pickup systems.

Why Chris, you bass-ho!

Better than ever!

We changed a couple of settings Let me know if you get logged out again though. We're turning on a few features one at a time

It's so easy to dodge the responsibility for what's been said on the Internet. I applaud your honesty and for accepting responsibility about what was said.

Here's the link to the Kawai - it's a beaut!

The one in PMT was £800 but that was in about 2004!

It’s come up as a pic for some reason, but double click on it and you will get the full manual.

This is a stunning resource for anyone into the electrics side of things: only in German but most of it is self explanatory and there is a German-English bit for the technical terms at the end.

My BC message alerts have been sent to "junk mail" today. Folks it might be an idea checking your "junk mail" folder and marking any BC messages "not spam".

Yes, weight is an issue for many of us, who've reached a "certain age" now Gone are my days of lugging speaker cabs the size and weight of fridges.... Trace gear tends to be on the heavy side.... that is, it seems to vary from "very heavy" to "*@$!*?* heavy"

I've historically been the same, but have recently started using my frantabit with the least amount of bitcrushing, and a high gain going in (reduced to unity with its volume) as an always on effect. This just add a tiny bit of texture to sustained notes. Think the end chord of plug in baby.

Here's an example of an analogue 'sample rate reducer' I believe the frantabits destruction mode is a digital recreation of these...

Yeah, women do that to me all the time!

Reported it - didnt want people scammed.

I don't know if the CoPilot Orbit is actually a bitcrusher, or just a bitcrusher-esque fuzz, but John Davis uses/used one of those too. There are some version out there without the switch that can't do the same 303 laser sounds though, as I was disappointed to find when I bought one second time around. Looks like the latest version on their site has 6 knobs, replacing the switch with a dry volume control, although a google image search did turn up one with 6 knobs AND the switch, so I'd get in touch with them if interested in buying one.

What Naxos said...I knew anyway.. That Satin finish is amazing - really brings the grain to life. Mike must be suffering while he's waiting...

You are right Andy - your a genius

Another victim of the BC auto-censorship algorithm?

Well deserved Alan. Always admired your work from afar. Look forward to seeing one "in the flesh" one day.

Don't desolder the wires at the pick up end but from the controls.

Beautiful! I do love a fretless bass.

@51m0n that's an excellent summary! Your posts on this thread have been particularly helpful and have certainly taken my (and I suspect a fair number of our fellow BCer's) understanding of compression forward a good deal, cheers mate!

Sims Custom.

I like that a lot

Last night I played at Newcastle Cathedral as part of a concert raising money for a cancer charity. There was music, comedy and Christmassy stuff. Amongst other things, we were asked if we would do Fairytale of New York with a wonderful guest vocalist. I love the song, but it's pretty complex, and we only had piano, acoustic guitar, bass and voices to make it work. But I think it came out pretty well...

Have you been on SwissChat?

Yes, well done Alan, the accolades are deserved.

Having owned and played a " Few " ACGs over the years I can only say " Hugely Deserved " and congratulations . Serious GAS for this when I pop over to Alans website for a drool ... Best Basses in the World ......( Probably ) .. Gary

Agree...I love the finish on my Harlot SC...

I do hope this brings in orders for ACG. If not swamped with work already, this will pump them up into orbit. Well deserved. ACG are up there with the most stunningly finished basses in the world. Its a small club, brilliant to know a UK builder is amongst the elite.

Well done Alan. I remember he came down all the way from the Borders to our first Yorkshire Bass Bash a few years ago. ......Nice to see a Bass in BGM that actually exists ( this comment refers to my Topic 'Vote and Win') regarding 3 Jackson Basses that were offered as prizes by BGM.

And he we are again, what are transparent compressors good for in a pub band? Not about to try and teach anyone to suck eggs, if you know this stuff, sorry for the post, if you are not really interested please skip it, if you want to know why a compressor might help you in a live situation when it apparently 'does nothing' or 'kills my dynamics' then feel free to have a read. Its like a very cut down compressor 101 chat I gave once, which some of you are still scarred by..... Originally compression was supposed to be a transparent tool to prevent an engineer from having to ride a fader throughout a take or a mix. All it was supposed to do was keep that level more even - as often as not by just slightly modifying the envelope of the input sound, hence the attack and release control. And with VCA compressors they pretty much achieved it. But before VCA compressors there were Vari-mu compressors (real tube compressors), Optical compressors and FET compressors. All these types have pluses and minuses, they all have different attack and release curves all of which do more than just transparently alter volume and help out an engineer. On top of these types of compressor there is tape compression and and amp/driver compression - no driver is completely compression free when you push it hard, no amp is compression free when you push it hard, all overdrives and distortions and fuzzes are also compressors, just totally not transparent ones. The best ever compressor you will ever experience is the pair you have strapped on to the side of your head all day. Yes your ears/brain are simply the most powerful compressor you can buy. The quietest sound you can hear is equivalent to your ear drum moving the width or a single molecule apparently, whilst the loudest sound you can hear before deafening yourself pretty much instantly is hundreds of thousands of times louder (you need to look into the way sound pressure level measured in micro pascals and decibels work as units of measurement). That amazing set of compressors on the side of your head has an unfortunate side effect, without a direct reference you are almost totally volume blind, small changes in volume are beyond you to describe, you can not reliably perceive them. Unless they are compared to a level that has not changed and is not changing. Obviously bigger differences are easy to perceive but the differences that can make or break a mix, if you aren't listening to the the mix happening at the time, nope, not a hope. So a deliberately transparent compressor you can't hear working on your signal in isolation, until you are doing way to much with it, and thats about when you feel your dynamics disappearing, because you are doing huge amount of compression in order to hear anything much at all. In a mix way less compression would be 'enough' to change the envelope of your signal to make your instrument be easier to hear, but you aren't in a mix so in order to hear anything at all you put way too much compression on. Thing is, a studio engineer has the time and choice to select the right type of compressor for the particular part of a track he/she wants it for and then set it up just so. What it does to an instrument in a mix then is help prevent 'masking', this is where the envelope of the signal drops in such a way, either because of the player's technique or their instrument or their preferred tonal choices that some other instrument makes it hard to hear when it plays at the same time. Near the end of a mix when two instruments are masking each other I have found that a change of as little as 0.1dB can sometimes make a real difference to the way a pair of instruments sound in a mix. Back to live then. If you are trying to use a compressor to help you be heard in a mix you need very very little for it to make a difference. If you are using compression for a definite effect then you may need bucket loads. If you like your tone as it is but feel you sometimes 'disappear' in the mix and are constantly turning up, then a transparent compressor, set just right, could be the answer to the fight. But you need good critical listening skills, you need to do this 'in the mix' unless you have great metering on the pedal to help you out otherwise you probably will put too much compression on the sound in order to hear it happening. Compression is difficult to master when you are in the safe space of a mix down with no distractions and lots of time to experiment. In order to make it 'easier' to use many pedals have no 'confusing' metering and not all the required parameters to really control the compression. This is a double edged sword, no metering and 'doing it by ear' are nigh on impossible with a transparent compressor unless you are setting it up in situ in the mix. On the other hand a full featured compressor is waaay to complex for an average bassist to get the best out of, and also remember that little detail about setting it right for a particular song? Well you cant with an always on compressor, so you have to set it to help you a little bit all the time, and that's another skill. Ultra low ratio (1.5 to 1 even), very low threshold, slow-ish attack (50 to 80 ms) and fast release (less than 30ms) giving not more than 3dB total compression on the loudest parts is probably a good target for a general touch of compression type of setting on bass live IME. No you cant really hear or feel it if you are just playing solo (dont be concerned if when playing normally the 3dB light doesnt light up at all, you are still getting some compression if your threshold is set right). In the mix you will be easier to hear, whether you are a loud or quiet band. Not because of tonnes of compression but because your individual note envelopes are changed just a smidge so that the post transient part of the note envelope is a touch louder than before. Hope that makes some sense, probably not though

I know you say you're not a fan of Markbass cabs But I own a MB 2x10 traveller. It's crazily lightweight - even lighter than some cabs that are physically smaller than it And it sounds much bigger than you'd expect. You might also want to look at Epifani Cabs. I've got a 1x10UL and it's superb. These days, my rig consists of a couple of heads and 3 different cabs. I like to keep the rig as lightweight and portable as possible, yet with the ability to be as flexible as possible - depending on the band I'm playing with and / or the size of the venue... Definitely look at a MB 2x10 traveller - remember, it will sound different, depending on what head you use it with Use it with the head of your choice, and it may surprise you. Good luck with your search

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.

[quote name='lojo' timestamp='1510081103' post='3403870'] My orange rig , to heavy but would have been a great ornament [/quote] I had an old Orange head (just like The Donald) that I'd like to have again although it was very heavy, and very loud. Got rid of it to get what turned out to be a really nasty sounding Carlbro Cobra 90 combo- which I strangely kept for 20 years - [quote name='jezzaboy' timestamp='1510083249' post='3403898'] An almost brand new 2008 P bass in black and maple .. [/quote] I think I saw that during one of our transactions? It lay in it's case like a holy relic, radiating it's loveliness.. or something