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Andy is a top guy and I never expected to see the bass again after 2 years - to say it made my week would be an understatement! My lesson learned is always unload the car post practice and gig regardless of whether you're knackered and it's chucking it down and get insured..... the other guitar, an ACG, was returned in similar circumstances a year ago by a great guy in Hebden Bridge As Andy says bass players are a fantastic community of like minded souls - my faith in human nature is reaffirmed! Cheers Justin

Hi everyone, I'm posting this story because it reinforces what a close-nit community that we musicians, and in particular, bass players are. Some of you might have noticed recently I advertised on basschat a lovely Paul Everson Caiman bass for sale. I acquired the bass through a trade about a year ago with a guy who advertised it on Facebook. We met in a service station. I swapped a very nice 4 string Shuker bass for the Everson, had a nice chat with the fella who bought it and returned home. Whilst we were talking the lad confessed to me that he had found the Everson Bass in one of those second hand chain stores that have 'cash' in the title. He knew next to nothing about basses but had liked the look of it and bought it. He then tracked down Paul Everson on Facebook to get some info about the bass. I loved the bass. It appeared to have been treated quite badly. The electrics were shot and it was covered in a weird thick dust. I had it cleaned, sorted and set up and quickly picked up another Everson that appeared on Facebook. That was around a year ago. I recently decided to sell the caiman. Id always had a little niggle in the back of my head about 'Cash _________' and wondered if I'd been a little naieve in my trust. So to put my mind at ease I contacted Paul (Everson) who told me he had sold the bass through the great British bass lounge. I then contacted Drew who was running the lounge and asked them both if any Everson basses had been reported stolen. They both did some digging and came back with a resounding no. Drew had a record of a sale to a lad called 'Justin' who lived near Bradford (I'm in Macclesfield). So back to present day. After advertising said bass on Facebook and BC I received a message from a lad called Justin who explained to me that this was his bass and that he'd had it stolen in early 2016. I immediately phoned him and we discussed at length what to do. Now the dilemma. Justin hadn't been insured and had lost the bass along with a whole heap of equipment. He had been scouring the Facebook sites to try and recover the bass for the last 2 years. I had essentially swapped a 900 quid Shuker with it. The lad who had bought the bass oringally had moved the Shuker on. We were all victims of crime and it was a difficult puzzle to unravel. Justin had contacted Yorkshire police for advice and they had said it was a civil matter. Anyway the final result is that we met the following week and Justin got his bass back. It was a great end to a saga and needless to say Justin was chuffed! Just a big shout out to Paul Everson and Drew for caring enough about this story to help me with my clumsy detective work and a big shout out to Matthew who contacted me on behalf of (current) BBL. The photo below is of Justin (on the left) recieving his beloved bass back! Moral of the story. Cash ___________ are a store I like even less now and Bass players are awesome folk. Andy

The OP made a comment in reference to politics, but it does bring up some interesting parallels. On one hand you have uninformed opinion based on 'belief' and a lack of ability to comprehend simple facts (about compression), and proudly shouting about it. Meanwhile on the other you have a rational explanation (of compression) from people who know what they're talking about, which gets completely ignored. It's an interesting reflection of divisions that exist elsewhere.

3 to 5 coats in and things are looking satiny

I think from a legal perspective you’re okay with that statement unless it’s leopard print

Only just received this 92 thumb.

I can only see your fingers

Sure it's overkill if you only play at home, but if said 800 watt amp is still cool to the touch at bedroom levels, then there's no reason why the cooling system couldn't be designed to be as silent as possible up to a certain temperature threshold, only kicking in the loud fan when it's really needed. I need to store my amp and cab in my room regardless, so I use it for low volume practice instead of having to buy a separate practice amp that takes up more room and doesn't sound as good!

Oh man I laughed so hard at that, a worthy choice for quote of the week methinks!

Saw this one for sale in Chichester on Gumtree. Under @Elfrasho's budget and looks like a lot of bass for the money but more importantly has a slimline neck...

Please lay off the politics and religion, folks. Ta. 👍

I thought of adding some inlayed swifts instead of the dots but then figured life is too short...

well, I changed my mind. I'm keeping it. It's just too nice to play. The Yamahas have an interesting look and sound good but they've never felt "right" when I tried them.

Why would you say such a thing!!!!! The example looks nice......

One Control pedals are built by magic elves. I don't know how else to explain how they can cram in so much into a 1590A enclosure and still have room for a 9V battery!

Ive said it for years - change the names of these pedals from 'compressors' to something like 'sound balancer' and people would get it more and know what theyre aiming for. Ps i know sound balancer is a terrible name, but you know what i mean. The name compressor immediately gives the image of squashing and squeezing the tone, which it doesnt need to be used for.

Just teamed up with a great vocalist who is also a voice coach. She proudly claimed she could teach anyone to sing and I couldn't resist. No band I've ever been in would let me near a microphone unless there was a fire and we needed to clear the room. I sing like a cow with a throat infection giving birth to a tumble dryer. However she has taken up the challenge. All of the work so far has been around understanding my body, breathing properly, hissing and humming. Not a word has passed my lips in three lessons and I am amazed to find the process fascinating. I'm actually excited to continue and while I still doubt her chances of getting a noise from me which wouldn't startle passers by and cause the dogs to hide, I am enjoying finding out just how a real singer goes about their business. Turns out that they actually practice every bit as hard as we do. The voice really is an instrument which requires work. Who knew? My respect for vocalists will of course never be more than marginally higher than that with which I esteem guitarists, but I do feel slightly less contempt for them.

You should probably just think that

same way that a flirty new girl at work makes you horny for your wife again wait, what?

To this... The new board is already full, so I think (hope?) that should mean this is now going to be a pretty 'final' incarnation. For a little while anyway! (I suspect @Skol303 may be surprised to see a particular type of pedal on both boards; a direct consequence of too much tilting at windmills )

Wrote this the other day after a fairly unfortunate vocal gig on Saturday night. Suddenly thought you lot might actually be interested in it. Singing is hard, tips to make it less hard are always welcome http://davedoesntwriteanythingever.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/some-rather-more-helpful-things-that-i.html

I tried out a number and plumped for on an Aguilar AAG700. Does "vintage warmth" rather well, but can give you clean when you want it. Doesn't do outright dirt, but I don't want that anyway.

Bollocks. its got a volume control. An amp shouldn’t need active cooling when being used at conversational levels. I gig but I play far more at home than anywhere else. I should be able to enjoy my purchases.

Not something that has particularly bothered me so far with my M900 - it's a fair bit quieter than my Mesa M6 carbine and with both of them, fan noise is something I instantly stop noticing the moment I start playing. But I'd certainly be interested to hear from you as to what mods you do put through if / when you end up doing it.

If you are used to EBS and have been happy with the sound go and try the big Reidmar head. I had one for a couple of years and it sadly got stolen. I had the lower powered head they made originally and it was massively loud and kicked like a mule, I never had to push it with my EBS 410. I replaced it with a Aguilar Tonehammer just because I fancied a change, and that has been an incredibly solid and reliable head. You can give it a vintage vibe or go super clean with it, it’s a great head and very light. If you have a good chunk to spend I would take look at the Vanderkley Spartan too.

If you have decided to do it why not just go totally flat? I've got 2 ACG's with flat fingerboards and love them. Wouldn't go back to a radius if I was speccing a bass build.

Everything. All using in ears... Keys DI'd, The guitar player was using a Helix DI'd with no amp/cab. The bass player had the only cab on stage but most of his volume through the PA....

This sort of thing deserves to be recorded for posterity so I've added Redd's first post to the Famous Quotes thread.

First Wirebirds gig since November last night, so a little bit rusty, but as soon as we started, it just came naturally. Ended after three (I think - I lost count!) encores and were packing away to calls of 'one more...one more'. Landlord and agent happy, band happy, and that's what it's all about, really.

No your right I wouldn’t!!!!! Any more of that talk and I will report you!!!!!

Damn that's where i'm going wrong.

Excellent review. And great that you're so delighted with the pedal! Hopefully it will also put to bed the view, that some folk seem to harbour, that there is any loss of low end with this pedal Are you using the pedal at 9V or 18V (or somewhere in between?)

I used my new Stage 800 live for the first time last night at a gig near Bolton and the whole band - even the drummer - complemented me on the sound. There are so many different settings and options but I found one that gave me the perfect right blend of vintage vibe I like with a bit of mid tone punch which is curiously called "young lust"!

In 40 years of playing bass, a BBE Opto Stomp compressor pedal is the only pedal I have ever used. I bought it & used it for a month at 3 gig's. I had no idea how to use it, and couldn't discern any difference in my sound other than when I turned the controls up and got a "squashed" sound. A support band bassist borrowed my rig including the Opto Stomp, and commented how great it was & offered to buy it off me....which he did. I never heard their sound check, but listen to their set. The bass sounded unremarkable (FOH festival rumble). What's my point? No idea... Other than (understatement alert)... perhaps knowing how & why a piece of equipment works, is the way to get the best out of it. I'm pretty sure sound engineers put compression on my signal....I've never asked & don't intend to, I don't care.

What theme. You can't leave me hanging like that. Not at my age Dave

I'm sure it could, but if you're going down that road you may wonder why you chose a combo and not an Ampeg fridge. My feeling is that a combo should be judged on how it performs solely through its internal driver(s) and if you need to be regularly hauling extension cabs then you're defeating the main raison d'etre of a combo - ease of use - and should maybe consider a separate amp head and cab(s) for maximum flexibility. Having said that, I suppose it could be useful to turn up and plug in to a large backline cab (that you didn't have to carry) but that situation seems less likely than simply going FOH if it's a big room and using the combo for stage monitoring. Which logically makes you wonder if very powerful combos are even necessary. And having said that... I still want one.

Pleasantly I had an opposite experience last night - I've been getting increasingly fed up with the others in the band having lower standards and saying we'd "nailed" a song as soon as we could mostly play the right notes at the right times, always at the same pace and volume, and because there was no communication - none of us were even looking at each other while we were playing. I thought we sounded clumsy and boring, but the others seemed to think it was good enough. I've had words about it, gently, a few times to no effect, and last night I was ready to say if they didn't raise their game I'd be off out of it. What I actually did was to pick one song that was crying for a dramatic change in dynamics in the middle, and asked them to give me a short bass solo at that point - just the main riff played twice high and staccato, and then twice low and slower with sustain. Nothing fancy - but because it was my solo, the others didn't have to worry about making the change with me, they just had to pick up the slower beat when they came back in after it. And they had to watch me so I could cue them. As soon as we tried it, they got the point, and we ended the night with everyone happily agreeing that we'd taken a step up and would continue that way. Very glad I didn't throw my toys out of the pram. And credit to the others for understanding and agreeing quickly and positively.

I can't speak for a 5 string replacement set, but I just replaced my Squier VM70 Jbass4 with a set of Aguilar AG 4J-HC pickups. OUTSTANDING! I am SO happy with them. They say the stock Duncan Design pickups are decent but the difference is night and day. So great having noiseless. I also spent some $ on having professional fret leveling and setup and a Gotoh bridge and when I pick up a (stock) American J Bass and think I prefer my Squier I think I must be out of my mind. I have to give the Aguilars 5 Stars+.

I have found the same thing happens when I play different music.I am in two bands that play essentially the same type of jazz/swing music but one is a quartet where we just use a lead sheet for melody and chords and the other band is a seven piece swing band where we play professional arrangements from charts and that demands real concentration and accuracy.Each band requires a different type of playing, in the quartet I can be more creative and in the septet I have to be right on the money or the arrangement doesn't work.One result is that my reading skills have gone up a lot and using some ideas from the arrangements I have started to be more inventive in the quartet. I also feel better playing bass after a session where I play guitar or banjo, like you, bass is the right instrument. And we are all so lucky that we have music in our lives!

So it's passive right now, with " high output pickups " I'm wondering whether active is the right way to go with high output pups, since most factory active basses have lower output pups, due to the boost of a preamp Still, wouldnt do any harm i guess. Just turn your current amps EQ down when you first plug in. Personally, i'd leave that gorgeous bass alone.

I will. But it's really less combative than it might seem. The necessity for using compression is borne out of the laws of physics and well-recognised good practice in sound engineering. It's not something subjective, like whether a new set of strings makes your tone sound 'better'. It's proven by the measurable behaviour of sound traveling through air. All quite dull and predictable, really. The short story is that every bass player should use a compressor. Because the bass guitar is an instrument capable of producing extremes of both low and high frequency energy, and there's not a cat-in-hell's chance that anyone can compensate for that by 'good technique' alone, least of all during a live performance. This is why 100% of sound engineers apply compressors to bass, to compensate for the 50% of bass players who apparently don't. Ultimately it's not essential. Just like changing your strings regularly isn't essential. But the question as to whether it's beneficial has been answered long ago, which is why I find threads like this a little tedious (no offence). Compression is complex and very different to the majority of other FX we apply to our instruments, where we plug something in and turn a dial until we hear a noticeable difference. And I think that is partly why it confuses some people and leads others to believe that it's a case of the Emperor's New Clothes. What I find odd is how this confusion seems most prevalent amongst bass players - the very people who stand to benefit most from compression. You just don't get threads like this appearing on sound engineering forums. Instead, you just get endless debate about 'which compressor is best for bass'... and that's just as tedious! Anyway. Next time I record some bass I'll post some clips of the dry signal and the same signal (at the same volume) run through a compressor - and also both again in the context of a mix with other instruments - so you can hear the difference. Until then, my advice would be to cease tilting at windmills

I doubt there's any malice behind the situation and you've not played in a while, so why not see it as a quick blast round the block to shake the dust off ?

I was prepared to let this thread go, but ...I never said rubbish, or that they won't work. I did point out the shortcomings of systems of this type from a purely technical standpoint. If the subs can be easily remotely placed It would be most helpful if the marketing material made note of that, and the owner's manual as well. It would be even better if the manual pointed out the advantages of sub wall placement and clustering. But every picture in the advertising, the manual, and your own demonstration shows the mains atop the subs, the subs split and away from the wall. As for the percentage of PA operators here who were previously aware that subs should be wall loaded and clustered whenever possible, and what the Power Alley is, do a poll. I venture it would be a very small percentage, because by no means are these technical aspects intuitively obvious. Knowing how to correctly do PA must be learned. It is most difficult to learn something that is not being taught. It certainly isn't being taught by the PA industry in general, and as the marketing and manuals are presently written, not by Markaudio. IMHO that makes Markaudio part of the problem. You now have the opportunity to make it part of the solution. Or continue to shoot at the messenger while ignoring the validity of the message.

You value the opinion of someone close far more than some random strangers. I will blast out backing vocals to a pub full of people but still wary of fully going for it in the house. Similarly I want to do some lead vocals and have been practicing a couple of songs hard to keep the quality whilst playing and making good progress. May take a couple of beers to step up to singing the lead at a gig though.

Never sell anything unless you need the money or stop liking it. Frank.

Great idea. You could also playfully slap them round the face as well - to see if they're violent. If they are, go straight to A&E. And don't join.

Years ago we had a new keyboard player and were rehearsing to go "up north" for 3 days. He casually mentioned that he now couldn't do the middle gig and could we get a dep. There then followed a pretty uncomfortable 15 mins while he was fired, packed up his gear and left the room. This is why I prefer to be friendly with the guys I play with but not their friend. Try to keep personal feelings out of playing.