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Ignore any chafing observations that may appear here. In expressing your dissatisfaction with a musical instrument retailer you are following in the highest traditions of BassChat. Not a week goes by that one of us does not put finger to keyboard the better to chronicle the deficiencies of sundry guitar emporia and / or their carters. Some abhor the over-pushy salesperson; others detest the chap who cannot hand us a bass without first sitting down and slapping away like a spoons-player with St Vitus dance; profound contempt is reserved for the purse-lipped, nicotine-stained geriatric proprietor and his dopey, hopeless shop-boy alike. The happy retail experience is so vanishingly rare that it is greeted with wide-eyed surprise. Even beyond the retailer we hurl our bile at wholesalers and manufacturers and their endorsers and their suppliers and their advertising agencies and so ad infinitum. Frankly, it's the right thing to do. Any erring retailer who gets off with as little as a redacted thread like this should count himself lucky. For myself, when thwarted by some ghastly till-monkey I adhere to a firm two-step policy of (i) a savage, public tongue-lashing followed by (ii) a bullet in the face in a deserted warehouse.

To those who feel I should have contacted the store in question...please re-read my original post! It was the first thing I did. Before starting this thread. It was meant as a general sound-off, not to demonise what I otherwise regard as a reputable business, which is why I took pains to keep the identity of the offender's totally anonymous. It may not be the way you would have done it, but hey, it's a free country for us all. An update. I received this morning a very nice email from the store owner. Very professional, very apologetic, very positive. As in all these situations, there was more than met the eye. Suffice to say said employee feel below the standards expected of him by his employer, and it has been dealt with. I can't say fairer than that.

Unbeknown to me until recently there appears to be a vast resource of information about compression, both on this site, and over other areas of the worldy wide webbie, who would have thought..... Some people seem to like it, some people don’t. Just when the reaping has occurred and a victor/truce has been announced, the Capitol announces another compressor games where previous immunity holds no sway and we are back into the bear pit. Maybe a short survey could provide a fresh outlook. Os there continued hunger, will a truce be called, or will it be Groundhog Day? Stay tuned.......

@Bluewine , look at it like this: I would have no problem turning up to a local venue that had PA, lights and often backline provided to play a 30 minute set of our own songs for free, have a couple of beers and listen to some other bands. We get to have a good night out with friends, network with other bands in the same genre and get pictures and reviews posted to online blogs which could lead to bigger paid gigs at festivals or support slots. I would not drag a full lighting rig and PA to a far away venue, play a 4 hour gig and still be packing up at 2am even if you paid me. My day job pays me more than enough to live comfortably, so I don't need the extra money nor want all the ballache required to earn it.

It’s funny how the expectation of good customer service completely switches us off to others on a human level. So whilst it’s entirely possible that this young chap isn’t a very good salesman, it’s also very possible that he’s having an awful day/week/year. So instead of checking what the case is, we complain on social media as opposed to seeing if we can offer help/guidance/advice on how that person might either fix their problem, or at the least, get better at their job. ”Oh that’s the job of the shop manager/owner” you cry! Nope, it’s the job of anyone who cares. Si

So, Just because I can, thought I'd "improve " the head amp cabinet of my BTA300 ashdown, spurred into action by the aquisition of MatampGt1Mk1amp'n'cab that is wine coloured with gold faceplate and corners. Besides many hours, this stands me at ninety quid so far, and I think will be great in the lounge on its Orange cab, yes, that's next after this !

He's nine years old, a grade 8 drummer and chose to play bass a month ago.. We've a Fender Jazz that rarely gets used, so let him try it first...... Took to it like a duck to water.... We asked what he wanted for his birthday and it was a clear "Can I have a Precision bass please?" After hunting around for a decent donor, we found a beat up Squier 20th anniversary, missing a few electronic bits - plus no 14 hole pickguard, strings or nut. Overall though, it wasn't too bad. Got it home and made a new pickguard (small design tweak around the controls - just to add something unusual), added the bits, new Fender nut, strings and gave it a good clean (oiled the board etc.)......... Here's his pressie........ To me it looks awesome and plays great. Can't wait for the reaction................

To quote the Goonies, “ HEY YOU GUYS!” So this is happening now. contacted everyone with invoices, no rush till the end of month but some have paid already and therefore hold a special place in my heart. I still have April as the delivery date which is a large window so when I get more accurate dates I’ll update you all. the geddy 2112 pre came with a badge of geddys signature so what does the dUg pre include? A free 12 string? A free six pack? have to wait and see I guess.

I like them both but I prefer the newer ones with dark against the body. Will you cap those with dark wood as well? PS: DOH! They're upside down aren't they? Still works for me like that though.

Great minds think alike... Although I've used standard MoP, this is what I remade last night: I've also made some more to replace the brass knobs on my own build

I voted Yes , I am on BC to talk bollocks

Well, if you don't really want the redundant 4 strings, I suppose I could look after them. I'll even half you on postage!

Clever comment! But in all seriousness there are of course reasons why classical musicians tend not to use compressors: The first and most obvious is because they tend to play acoustic/unplugged and so there’s... err... no signal chain for the compressor to be linked into. That's quite a biggie, really. Compressors are definitely most transparent when there's nothing to plug them into. On occasions when classical musicians are mic'd up and their performances fed through a mixing desk, there'll certainly be some sneaky compression being applied to help manage the overall mix. But yeah, you won't find it being used on stomp-boxes at the musicians' feet. Classical arrangements are written to avoid clashes between instruments of similar frequency. That’s not how composers think of it, they tend to think in terms of balancing tone and timbre, but it has the same end result. Very different to five tubby blokes belting out Moondance with instruments all fighting for the same frequency band. Classical concerts tend to be performed in rooms with far better acoustics than your average Dog & Duck. Other than that, yeah, classical musicians are mostly amateurs. Why anyone would waste their time with that sort of guff is beyond me

Something similar happened to me, my wife was nagging me about soemthing or other, I dunno I wasn’t playing attention, but on this occasion, I put her vocals through a compressor, and Lo and behold what she was saying suddenly made sense and I could hear it correctly. Well, I took out the bins, emptied the dishwasher and even took my weekly bath. Afterwards I managed to get a really squashed sound just by twiddling the knobs. As a result this one may be a keeper....

In recent months I've attended several concerts (Philharmonia Orchestra, a violin duo, a solo pianist) where there were no compressors (or indeed any amplification) in evidence at all, despite it being, as others have pointed out above, a scientifically provable, unarguable fact that compression makes music sound better (it is, after all, a simple matter of the measurable behaviour of sound traveling through air). As far as I could tell, the only mechanism they had for managing their dynamics was to rely on the skill and musicianship of the individual players! Honestly, I felt embarrassed for them. I did ask one cellist whether she'd considered using a compression pedal to help her "sit better in the mix", but she just looked at me as if I was some kind of weirdo. Amateurs.

Should we...? HELL NO! Will we...? HELL YES!

I've gigged one of these, it blew me away.

Correction: Vacuum sucks. Gravity's heavy.

Why don't you tell us what you really think rather than always sitting on the fence....?

The thing is Al, you might as well ask what impact wood glue has on the comfort of a dining chair? (bear with me...!). The glue helps to hold the chair together. Without it, that function is left to the screws alone. The chair still stands, but it's not as sturdy. And none of this is noticed by the people who sit on it. Thats about all I've got left on this discussion. My tank is empty, but I wish you well

If it was mine, I would make sure I had compatible varnish and thinners by testing on a hidden area, maybe under a tuner, make sure there's no reaction between old and new. Then apply thinned varnish to the cracks, gaps and especially under the decal where it's lifting, pushing the decal down flat onto the wet surface underneath until it sticks. When dry, build up layers as required, finishing with a coat or three over the whole area. Patience will be required!

This comment allows me to hopefully explain some of the misunderstanding around compression, so if you don't mind I'm going to dive in a dissect it a little Firstly, and with respect (not wanting to single you out), this type of response suggests that you don’t fully understand the purpose of compression. And I’m not trying to be deliberately patronising here! It's just an unfortunate by-product of me trying to explain all this. So apologies and please bear with me. Unless you are slamming a drum kit with hard New York-style parallel compression, it is very unlikely to ever give someone “a boner” as you put it. Boner causation is just not the purpose of compression, I’m sorry to say. It really is the 'bass player' of audio effects in that respect. Quiet and steady, doing its job, holding things together; no real glamour or glory. That's a compressor. Great! And you can pretty much stop right there, because you've got it - that is precisely the purpose of a compressor. And helping you sit better in the mix should not be understated. It’s the difference between a great-sounding band and indeed, one with potential to bring about boners. Even amongst the female members of the audience. And that's the part where the misunderstanding sets in. Other than very hard compression, which can be done for effect, there really isn't "any other application" apart from helping even out your signal so that it sits better in the mix. And maybe it's because you expect compression to do something else that you find it underwhelming. It's great that people comment on your tone and they most certainly do so because you’re a competent bass player and you use nice gear. But if you were to give me a bunch of your band's recordings and asked me to mix them, I guarantee there would be moments on each song where your bass is noticeably too loud or too quiet - and this would need fixing if I were to do my job properly as a (albeit unpaid amateur!) mix engineer. I could approach this by trying to automate or ‘ride the fader’: manually adjusting the level of your bass to compensate for loud and quiet notes. Or I could use a compressor to do this automatically. And the important thing to note here is that a compressor doesn't just apply to the solo instrument: it's about helping that instrument sit well alongside others playing simultaneously. It's a tool for helping to mix the whole band; not a tool for drawing attention to any one player. Does this matter in a live context? If you, your band and your audience are happy with your sound, then no it probably doesn't. As I’ve said before, compression is rarely essential, but it's nearly always beneficial. If you’re an obsessive like me, who likes to squeeze every % of quality out of a performance (live or recorded), then yes it matters. And that’s why the bass guitar on nearly every recorded song - and played by nearly every professional musician - has compression applied either at source or at the mixing desk. Such pro players have technique in spades and they use compression: because they want to attain the best sound possible. Does a pub band need to do the same? That's a question for you to answer. But if you're spending good money on your instruments and obsessing over string types/gauges, maple/rosewood boards, etc, then you're already obsessing over things that arguably have a lesser effect on your band as a whole than compression. TL/DR: you can mix your porridge smooth, or you can mix it lumpy. It's still porridge. But if you want to add other ingredients, like some blueberries and bananas, then it's best to mix it smooth for a better overall experience. Simple, right?

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

Do you know that is entirely fair. Even the 'experts' amongst us are forever saying 'use your ears' to get the right setting / 'sweet' spot when adjusting your compressor to get to the optimal setting. There have been some blood*y good bass players in some pretty decent bands on this and other compressor threads who have said they can't hear any difference when they've tried compressors out. And if they can't hear a difference, what chance our band-mates and even less our audiences? But...just maybe that was down to the first of your comments?

My comment was directed at cultural differences nationally and internationally for bar bands not compression. Blue

I love vouchers. Forces the money to be spent on something fun/selfish rather than stolen by her indoors for something less important like food and clothes.

I think that there may be something in what SpondonBassed said...

I have two TRB's, a 5P-II and a 5P. They're different beasts in tone and the 5P-II is my go-to bass as i can get any sound i want from it. Both are dead silent all original so my best bet is that your basses just need some maintenance to get rid of noises. You should have the electronics cleaned and checked, new quality batteries aplied and since you're at it you can cover the electronics and pickup cavities with graphite paint or copper foil and wire the bass's ground to it, it will help you get rid of ground noises and will add some shielding to it against RF interference. I haven't had to do it in any of my Yammis yet but i did it on a Ken Smith i owned wich had a bit of grounding noise. Painted the cavity with graphite spray (over an existing gold coloured paint of the same type that had soaked in to the wood with time) and hooked a wire from the electronics ground to the paint with a small wood screw, that bass became silent after that. Don't forget to take a look at the jack as it may become old, oxidized and loose with time, it will affect the signal also. If you don't have definition from those basses you must be doing something wrong with your EQ, possibly cutting the mids. TRB's are full/extended range basses very well balanced in their tone. Soloed they may give you the impression that their tone is a bit sterile without the personal character that some other brands have but it works a treat in the mix. Try recording them with flat EQ with the desired pickup configuration for the tone you want and leave all the tone shaping for the tech in production. Use fresh strings for recording, i like the d'addario prosteels with the 5P-II and the Nickelwounds with the 5P. I belive the references are EPS170-5SL and EXL170-5 respectively. Hope it helps, if not you can allways sell them to me!

But IMO it's also about having the right tools for the job. And the right tool for this job is a Roland TB303 (or a sequencer and sound module that sounds like it) and not a bass guitar. I've just had a look at a few "bass covers" of this song on YouTube and while the players are all very accomplished and have got playing the bassline down pretty well, none of them have come even remotely close to the sound on the recording, which is equally important in getting the feel of the song right.

Good question. And that sounds like a great band, by the way! If you have a sound engineer on your team who knows the band well (you mention the band leader) and if you're not familiar with using compression yourself, then I'd leave it up to him. It's always best if one person has the role of adjusting the band's sound as a whole. BUT... (that's a big but)... there's nothing stopping you from using compression to shape your individual tone; it can be used for that purpose (the classic "fattening" effect) leaving your band leader to then mix your compressed signal in with the rest of the band - even applying a second compressor whilst doing so if he wishes. ^ Good comments from Cuzzie above too.

Forget your compressors... have you guys seen my tube screamer?

Nice! Did you pimp your toaster too?

I would have been not long ago, but my Mesa D800+ has a variable one built-in that works very well

By the look of it quite a bit of lacquer has lifted too. I assume that it's nitrocellulouse. You can carefully use a small brush (i.e. artist's watercolour brush) to build up where the lacquer has flaked off. It will take many coats to do so. That might wick under the lifted lacquer and help to stabilise it. Nitrocellulouse will blend in with the existing lacquer - the solvents will slightly dissolve it. Obviously take necessary precautions if using nitrocellulouse - it's nasty stuff to breathe in! You'll also want some cellulose thinners for cleaning your brush. I had some lacquer chipped around the frets of the guitar I built and had to do similar. It's very time consuming. The lacquer needs to be built up slowly to allow the solvents to evaporate - 2 or 3 coats a day and then leave it for 24 hours. Scrape back any excess with a razor blade and repeat. I used rattle cans to lacquer my guitar, so sprayed a little into the cap so I could brush it on. Finally you'll need to sand it flat - I used micromesh pads then Meguillar's ultimate compound to polish it up. If worst comes to the worst and you end up with something resembling a dog's dinner, you can always strip it back, get a new decal (Rothcoe and Frost) and refinish it properly

That's just one way to use it, for speaker protection. You can definitely turn up the cut off frequency higher into the audible range and get very useful results too. Bass is not that much about the lowest frequencies, for most people, even if they don't realise it until they check. I used to have a Thumpinator, but once I tried a frequency-adjustable one, the Thumpinator went, as I often found useful to go above its rigid cutoff of 30Hz

The spectracomp does t do that at all, the volume is as close to identical as it could be on and off. I can only guess it’s either a setting or how the pedal has been designed on yours.

I have a BB734a, it's wider than my Streamer but it's not uncomfortable. I think it's 40mm, the Streamer is 38mm.

Have you ever thought of going on QI? No? Good

To answer the thread: If you know how to set up a compressor properly nobody in the audience will notice it's working. If you have decent technique nobody in the audience will notice if you turn it off, but people that are aware about sound/eq/tone, normally other musicians, may notice the subtle differences between on and off.

Not all Squier Affinity basses pass muster. A friend brought me his because the neck was bowed. However much you adjusted the truss rod it just stayed bowed. Concluded the truss had broken. There are a lot of budget basses out there, look at Spector Performer series, or lower priced Ibanez, you may do better than a Precision.

I think you only think you know who he's talking about, and i think he's not talking about the same shop as you think he's talking about

Great suggestions - thanks guys. In the end I plumped for one of these:- https://www.dawsons.co.uk/armourdillo-bass-light-case?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIsLPztqLd2QIVG2cZCh0wNAdeEAQYAyABEgKd4PD_BwE The right price & the image gave me comfort that the headstock was going to get decent protection.

Nothing flash, but that's a proper bassline.

Gigs & website/social media, if you're prepared to take orders Ed. Gigs definitely. I've only used CD baby for download sales.

You could buy them all and build a 4 x 21 cab rated at 6000w....

I’ve gone stereo bass!

I have trouble with some of my own basslines! Make some, play some and everything is great. Have a break then go back and I've lost the feel or timing! It's just like someone else had written them...

The OP asks about protecting speakers "etc" so I do not think that excludes variable frequency high pass filters, which I agree only cut at 12dB/octave, but are much more versatile than a fixed frequency device cutting at 36dB/octave. In my case, my reflex cabs were designed using WinISD, and the ports are tuned in the low 50s, although I play a 5-string. According to WinISD, the speakers could be damaged by a strong 30Hz signal, but adding a 12dB/octave filter tuned to 40Hz removes that risk, so I use an FDeck clone for speaker protection, and where necessary, I increase the turnover frequency to get rid of boominess. In my experience, using a pair of Jack 10s, or a pair of reflex 10s, you can take out most of the bottom octave before the sound starts to get 'bass-lite'. David