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I can see how megastars like Adele have to put a 'no contact' clause up. First couple of times people want to chat to you it's fine - but after the fifteenth person wanting you to ring their mum and do a verse of Chasing Pavements down the phone you're probably pretty tired of it so you say no, and then they get upset because you were OK with the previous fourteen people asking you for it and go tell everyone you're a beach. Eventually you figure you may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb and institute the "no speaky unless spoken to" ban so they'll leave you alone. Then you go slowly mad through isolation, build a theme park in your back garden, invite a bunch of pre-teens for sleepovers, and your nose falls off. It's a weird business.

Yes, we've never had it so good, record employment levels etc.......stinks to high heaven. Rant over.

Here you go. Bypassed, GEQ 50Hz -12dB and multiple AC BS Pres

This thread is not helping with my waiting period! 😀

No mention for J&D? https://www.musicstore.de/en_GB/GBP/Jack-Danny-JB-Vintage-1975-BK-Black/art-BAS0004370-000 I paid £119 for mine (brand new) about three years ago. OK, I've made a few mods, but the only one that wasn't purely out of personal choice was the pickups. One of the originals developed a fault so I put some Toneriders in. I still gig the bass, and until I got my Maruszczyk (in December) it was my first choice, go-to bass. Seriously good value for money and one of the nicest necks I've played.

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You gotta make them road worn

As a young fella reading Guitarist mag 2 basses stood out for me. 1 was a fretless Tune Bass Maniac and the other was a Vigier. It was the Arpege model but over time I preferred the look of the Passion. Took me 32 or 34 years to track down the Tune fretless and with the big "Five O" fast approaching thought I better start looking for a Passion. Since they rarely come up for sale in the UK I was looking at Europe. Exchange rates and insured shipping add a fair chunk to the cost. Cost was a factor as apart from the house and a works van I've never spent more than £800 on anything. Luckily for me our very own @ped was there to offer advice and links to ones for sale. Cheers Chris A breakdown in communication last week saw me miss out on one in Germany,even though I'd offered the seller 200 euro more than he got on eBay I was still gutted Wednesday saw one appear in the classified and it only took 2 Msgs to sort out the purchase. @pajhartley lives the other end of the country but suggested we meet halfway in Stoke on Trent. Saturday we both set off on our 500 odd mile round trips,. Glad he suggested Saturday as it's a year today since my last bass buying trip to England and that ended badly,car crash A1/write off/broken knee cap/4 month off work And here it is. Well worth the wait

Since many of us use only one speaker cab for portability, but amps put out more power if connected to two, surely there exists some kind of device into which one could plug a second speaker cable and "trick" the amp into "thinking" that it's connected to another speaker cab. A stompbox sized unit with some circuitry inside is what I imagine. I've never heard of such a thing, have you? Perhaps there's a good reason why it wouldn't work.

Why not send a message to Big Poppa telling him you're popping in to see him to demonstrate some 'worthwhile upgrades' that can be made to his basses with a view to publicising them on the MM forum. I'm sure that work work a treat and give you full access to the facility.

I was it this gig stood straight in front of Tom!

Mate it’s the beans, go for it! bad photo, but well designed and easy to wear, compartments open opposite ways

Yup, get there slightly earlier than you're meant to & do the best you can in the time you've got. If your desk is digital & someone's got wireless to go out & check levels, you're golden. Leave someone to work the mics if you get asked to put speeches thru em. & if the speeches start going on too long, chuck a sneaky ring mod on the vocal channel to give everyone a good laugh & bring things to a close so you can get playing & get finished.

I’m focusing on the giant subwoofer the stool is on

A limp what?

Oh, and be sure to use the same gauge for each shoe or you’ll get a limp.

Some really good contributions in this recent thread if you fancy a skim through - I found it very helpful. Lots of really good points were made in that thread, but I'm going to call out and draw your attention to @51m0n's posts in particular, as being just excellent! This one below from him pulled a lot of thoughts together and I've quoted it in full, because it's so worth revisiting: "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. It's 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 that's 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 can't really hear or feel it if you are just playing solo (don't be concerned if when playing normally the 3dB light doesn't 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 "

Just to put the other side to this, we played in Leicester on Saturday night supporting Mathew Logan Vasquez (Delta Spirit) Mathew and his band came straight over when we arrived, introduced themselves, offered us beer and to use any of their amps, they were brilliant, after the gig the drummer said "I love it when a support band is really good because it makes me nervous and makes me play better, you guys rocked it!" top comments from some top guys I know from previous experience support bands can get treated badly by the main acts but as per the above the reverse can also happen.

other bass heavens and hells heaven - basslines loaded with 16ths played fingerstyle a la Rocco Prestia hell - solo bass stuff when whatever's being played might as well have been done on a guitar

I'll come up from West Sussex for this one.

Jazz trio gig with Mike Gorman (Incognito, Culture Club). Lovely player, lovely guy. There was Beethoven.

nearly as naff as wearing a hat! Only kidding! Have fun with them!

There, you've gone and done it and totally undermined your rational sales strategy! Afraid nothing further I can do to help and Mrs Lukin will not be happy with your gear jus' lurkin' around the living room 'cos you can no longer shift it...

I think all employers are putting their employees under tremendous amount of pressure regardless the impact on their health.

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I think that's really down to the amp's EQ. I like a quite thumping bottom end, but I was rehearsing yesterday and the band felt it was too boomy (I was using the rehearsal studio's amp and cabs) so I wound down the bass on the amp and boosted the upper mids, it then had bite to spare. And that was the LaBella equipped Precision, played with fingers. In fact, for my taste, it was too toppy, so I'll take my own amp and cab next time. So even a 'bassy bass' like a Precision with LaBellas on it can be made trebly. I think the LBs excel at producing a warm mid range that sits well in a live situation. Yesterday's band was a 6 piece, with two guitarists, keys and 2 drummers in addition to my bass.

That looks great. The darker fret board is now definitely more in keeping with the vibe of the bass.

I'd be tempted but far too much lacing for me!

The Marshall reflector is also a nice budget option. It can be used mono or stereo, controled with a expression pedal, and When you turn it off it still let the reverb fading (Spill Over).

Trustworthy person to deal with.... thanks for a smooth transaction

Looking good!!!

Shouldn't that be tort with sunburst?

I have to say it appears not to the bass' fault but your reaction to it. To sell it without playing it is a very weird response to a musical instrument. (An investment maybe less so.) Play it... it could be 'the one' for you. You also shouldn't be spending £1k+ sums when you're obviously prone to fickle, possibly arbitrary decisions, "a week after purchase I discovered I should be playing a short scale"...

Result

The 'series 3' of the FDeck HF Pre design has a 12dB/Octave fixed frequency (35Hz) HPF, followed by a variable frequency 12dB/Octave (35-140Hz) HPF so you will have 24dB/octave anywhere below 35Hz. https://sites.google.com/site/hpftechllc/home/hpf-pre Although a circuit diagram is not available for the series 3, adding a fixed frequency HPF to a variable frequency HPF would not be difficult for an average electronic DIY enthusiast. David

If you like the D’Addario EXL170 set then maybe the balanced tension set would work better? EXL170BT, 45-107. I like them on my Precision.

you could try 105's as your E string, they'll be a tighter tension, I've never had this trouble but mines a MIA with high mass bridge and grooves for the string

Have you checked out the pinned thread about Bass Chatters willing to help out? Maybe one of us is close enough to be able to have a look.

Local charity BYOB gig last night for Clan, was busy with 200 people down for the night so was a perfect chance to play some new songs. Some went down greatly, others not so great. Was a great gig for me though because I got to use my new sire MM V7 bass that arrived earlier that week. Sounded and played incredible with a huge amount of low end!

Yeah. I've found that keeping your teeth in the glove compartment of the van on those long overnight drives never endears you to the younger members of the band.

Without wishing to be rude - that looks a cheap and nasty lead anyhow, get a decent lead with a proper plug on it and you'll kill 2 problems in one. OBBM here in this parish is renown for his top quality leads https://www.basschat.co.uk/profile/12-obbm/

Think I'm probably not the only one on here who has had to sell a great instrument when finances dictate it?

Well I had the pleasure and privilege of trying out one of these last night: And A/B'd it against this very bass: First impressions were that the 12 is richer and fuller and why on earth had I ever been thinking of an 8?! Second impressions when exactly the same riff was being played on both one after the other by @Wolverinebass and me listening carefully was, 'hmmm...actually that 8 is pretty darned good' and likely to be easier to play well for me! I guess (and maybe this is pretty obvious to others) but the 12 string bass in terms of sound alone (not playability) is like playing a normal bass + 12 string acoustic guitar whereas the 8 is like a normal bass + 6 string acoustic guitar. A 12 string acoustic has that lovely additional fullness and richness of sound. But there's also a reason why most folk play a 6 string acoustic.

What about Norman Watt-Roy and Bruce Thomas?