Leaderboard

In the early sixties we had ridden the trad boom and very soon our music would be pretty well totally eclipsed by rock. The four of us out of six lived in a series of Cheltenham flats or houses in Young Ones disorganisation. We read in the local paper that Gloucester’s Mayors Ball (Mayors had balls in those days!) couldn’t find a dance band. This gig was a big deal in those days, black tie, very formal. So we wrote to the organisers under The John Goodwin Ballroom Orchestra and offered to do the gig for a fat fee. Whether the organisers smelled a rat I don’t know but they wrote back ‘reluctantly’ accepting our offer but insisted that we provide continuous dance music for the duration, which I remember was in excess of four hours. We were a trad band so what was this dance music about? We’d have to do waltzes, quicksteps, Fox trots, old time and some ‘novelty’ stuff. Most of us could just about read but where could we find a library? As it happened a local band leader had recently died, so recently that the corpse probably wasn’t completely cold. But with the hubris that only the young have we went to see his grieving widow to express our condolences and, by the way, could we borrow his library? We drafted in a local baritone sax player and a pianist. So we were an eight piece dance band with a library. No time for a rehearsal but what could possibly go wrong? On the appointed day we formed up on the stage in Gloucester’s Guildhall and looked down on the Mayor his invited guests and all the assembled throng in their finery. We started the first number and the sound, nay noise, we produced was hideous, apalling, awful. Every few seconds the young piano player would emit a loud nervous laugh and, looking round, I could see all our faces were white, all the blood having drained. Anyway, we struggled through the first two hours with diminishing confidence and increasing disharmony until we left the piano and drums to it while the other six took a break and ‘fortified’ ourselves. We decided we were onto a complete loser and on our return to the stage we played a two hour Dixieland set. The hitherto rictus-set audience started to warm up and went crazy. What started as a mismatched disaster turned into a success. But it was a close thing, oh yes, very close.

I have tried a search for this, but I don't think it has been posted before (worth another watch if it has).

you're going to be pointed to look at... Line6 helix Zoom B3n when you remark at the price of the Helix a bundle of top end separate pedals for the folk that don't recommend the amp modelling route a sansamp someone will pop up telling you how good their Behringer DI is. It probably is. the IEM thread and probably some others.

On my basses a dying battery causes the sound to begin resembling a fart, and the output volume decreases. Perhaps others just experience the decrease in volume. Always best to put in a new battery at the beginning of the gig, if you are in any doubt. Unless you're gigging for three hours every night, batteries do last quite a while, but do remember to unplug the lead from your bass (after muting the amp) every time you stop playing for more than a few minutes. Active electronics are connected to the bass' socket, and when the lead's jack is in, it will power them and discharge the battery even if you're not playing.

Agreed. Why should Sandberg be immune from critical questions? Other manufacturers get their fill, so why not Sandberg? In this case I think it's justified.

I think Sandberg should put another filed zero fret behind the nut. Y'know, belt-and-braces. You can never have too many nuts on a neck, it seems.

Many years ago when I lived in Swindon, my blues-rock trio (Hendrix, Gary Moore, ZZ Top etc) had a booking at the Plessey Social Club... when we walked through the door, we lowered the average age in the room by about 40 years. As we set up, I could feel the glares from the light-&-bitter brigade burning holes in the back of my head. We had backline and a vocal PA only, nothing DI'd or miked up -- Steve the drummer was first to get set up, he sat down and picked up a stick and hit his snare drum ONCE... and I heard a croaky old voice from out in the shadows say, "ooh, it's a bit loud..." Predictably the first set was horrendous, every song met with almost total silence apart from a few “turn it down”s from some of the coffin-dodgers and one or two claps. One of them even walked right up to me mid-song, stuck his fingers in his ears and bellowed “It's TOO LOUD”. End of the first set couldn’t have come soon enough for me. When it did, the club MC asked if he could borrow one of our mics to do the bingo. Ye gods. Eventually we couldn’t put the second set off any longer and trudged to the stage. I was just putting my bass on when a woman approached me. I thought, if she tells me to turn it down I’m just going to pack up and sod off home. But she said cheerfully, “OK lads, all the old farts have buggered off, they only come for the bingo... you can turn it back up now”. So we did needless to say, the second set was a lot better and we never set foot in there again

Years ago I had a tape with 6 acoustic tracks by billy bragg on that someone had given me, including the only acoustic version of 'The Few' and a great version of 'tank park salute'. I lost the tape around 1996 when I moved to the states, and have been looking for versions of the few for year. The other day I thought I would have another look and found this, which includes 3 of those tracks, so I was really happy. I picked up a guitar and tried playing Tank Park Salute - found it still causes me problems trying to sing it clearly. My dad died in 1996, and it still brings everything back even after this time. One day I will play it somewhere!

Ah Swedemason, he's a clever dude. I like this one

Coincidence, I went on to put up a thread about going naked, and here one is We gigged on Sunday with my occasional duo. Beer festival where we were on last, the previous guy was still playing when we arrived and the place was packed, Little time to set up and minimal soundcheck and we were stuck in an alcove next to the smokers escape route on one side and the gents on the other. Tight enough space that people kept knocking into my bass which didn't enhance my timing. On top of that the acoustics were awful and we couldn't really hear the backline. Three songs in the landlady had a complaint about noise and asked us to turn down so we lost whatever balance I'd achieved earlier. We survived and the audience seemed to enjoy themselves but grrr.... So Monday was spent setting up with no backline, I thought my mate would spit his dummy out about his guitar 'sound' but he'd found that gig as stressful as I did and was happy to give it a go. I like to keep things simple live, so we went for using the same monitor mix as the audience mix. To be honest it was total bliss. The bass sounded great through the monitors, acoustic guitar was the best sound ever and thanks to a G1XON so did the few electric guitar parts. BV's were so much easier to judge when you know what the audience are hearing too, I can sit in just under the lead vocal with confidence now. With the mixer sitting between the monitors we can fix everything immediately and turning volume up/down needs just one twist of a knob. So what gave the great bass sound? Bass straight into the mixer and two Behringer 1320D floor monitors.

Branded Kay, made by Cort. Cort did a whole bunch of guitars & basses based around that through-neck template, all identifiable by the (rather sexy) triple dot brass inlays. These turn up branded Cort (obviously) but with plenty of other names - Targa, D'Agostino & Lotus are three that spring to mind. Speaking of which, I'd love to add one of these to my collection of neck-divey, symmetrical body, single-P basses that I never play: Cor(t) blimey!

I say no need to apologise. You're properly entitled to an opinion and your generosity of expertise is appreciated here :-)

TBH the relicing thing was a joke

COUCH PIC!! I am absolutely ecstatic, does anyone know how long shipping is to Ireland?

Pleased to say that I've had a refund from Stringbusters

I joined the two,pickup cavities on my Thunderbird build by drilling from both ends, 200mm long drill bit the angle meant that it was never a goer in one hit. I drew a pencil line between the two and followed that as far as possible. It worked perfectly but I did expect to have to mess around a bit. It’s not a way I would choose to do it though given an option. The ground wire hole was more nerve wracking as I worried that if I messed up there was small risk of it breaking out the back. As it was that went perfectly as well. Planning and measuring everything about ten times helped.

I'm not sure I'd abandon the idea, @Jimothey - it's more about taking steps to increase the chances of success and modifying expectations of how close you can get. I can't remember how much of the iron-on approach to veneering I've gone through recently, but once the bulk is on and attached, I then ease the edges round - using the hot iron as the shaper - as far as they will comfortably go and stick by using the iron to deform the veneer and then hold down with a cloth very firmly until the melted PVA has cooled and gripped. Some veneers are better at this than others because some will split more than others. Then, when I've bent it round all the edges as far as it will go, I then trim around the glue line and finally sand round the glue line. So my cautionary note is simply that the strip of veneer on the top horn will be thinner than on the example you show, because that is a wooden top sanded round and not a veneer. But you will be able to get it to curve part way round. The less extreme the curve, the more it will curve round. So, if you went for an oval carve on the horn rather than a cylindrical carve, then the veneer will cover more of the horn. Does that make any sense? The veneer itself generally isn't that expensive, so worst case is that you have to scrape it off. That's pretty easy - you just heat it up with an iron to soften the glue and use a decorator's scraper - if you use the right kind of PVA, this is completely repeatable in terms of re-melting and cooling. Then you've simply need to sand off the PVA residue and you are back to where you were.

I was so impressed with the products and their support of BC bass bashes, that they were the company I approached when setting up my repair/set up business. Have to say that the support for their dealers/traders is also exceptionally good.

Sounds like the ideal setup. Get everything loud and mushy, absolutely perfect!

Got booked for a private gig - 40th birthday party - but the chap said all his biker mates from his club would be there and we could expect 200+ people to be there. Arrived at the address he gave us for the venue and were a bit confused at first as we couldn't see and pubs, halls, hotels or anything that looked like a venue for a party - just a big council housing estate. He then comes out of his garden gate and calls us into his small back garden where he's just about managed to fit an old army mess tent for us to play in. We got to play for him and his immediate family (literally him, his wife, 2 kids and his elderly parents). Turns out he didn't even own a motorcycle let alone be in a biker club - or apparently have any friends. The low point of the evening (although only one of many) was when he got into a fist fight with one of his neighbours over the noise. The high point was watching his elderly parents slow dancing romantically and not letting the fact that we were playing Paranoid at the time put them off.

Thanks. I was curious because I'm a big fan of DRs and I was wondering which ones you were comparing them too. Previously I used to just get D'Addario (EXL170 in my case). I mostly use DR Fat Beams now (stainless steel) but also use Sunbeams, and I find them less bright from day one than the D'Addario, as well as more flexible... which is why I ended up preferring them. Just personal taste/opinion, of course.

I'm one of those people who use one bass for rehearsals and gigs and change the battery once a year. Apart from Hogmanay and auditioning drummers I've only been using my Sterling. I checked the battery at the last gig a couple of weeks ago and it still read 8.79 volts. It will be getting its yearly battery change, polish and cleaning of the fretboard on Friday night along with a new set of strings

I think that deserves an award for going above and beyond the call of duty @Andyjr1515 !

here's my contribution.

It's also worth noting that batteries should be removed before putting a bass into storage as they can leak over time.

I had a local tech replace a truss rod and fix a twist in the neck. This entailed removal of the fretboard. Truss rods can cost very little and the labour was around £100. So, it may be worth keeping it all original. It's up to you.

Could be many things, but start without Sansamp. If bass into amp/cab doesn’t produce gigging volume, then there’s a problem (speaker cable/sockets?). I’m guessing the PV is a power amp, not full head. Should still be ok, if the Sansamp uses the jack output set to its high/line level option (with the small push button). Also, look up the manual for the amp and get to know the options for speaker connection (sometimes complicated for power amps with multiple uses) best of luck

Protostar arriving tomorrow! I’ll let you all know how I get on. I’ve been waiting five months for this to be in stock.

and mine is 'proofread'

Thhhppp!

Sounds like a load of Aussie Bulokes to me...

I'm a touring sound engineer and also run a production company that supplies fancy-pants function band agencies with systems and engineers, and I can confirm that this is an utterly daft setup you're running. If the only reason he can manage is that you don't have enough monitor mixes on your desk, sell one of the two pairs of tops and your current desk, buy one of the raft of relatively inexpensive tablet-based digital mixers that are now available and have plenty aux outs (or a used Allen & Heath MixWizard, if you're of the strictly old-school analogue persuasion, as that'll fit in a standard 19" rack width and do six aux outs). Ten years of band-leading doesn't automatically mean he's got any idea at all about sound reinforcement.

https://www.manomano.co.uk/wire-fencing-uprights-and-accessories/nato-razor-wire-helical-wire-roll-galvanized-steel-100-m-731534?model_id=731534

Ringing ears are damaged ears - get some attenuators right now...

Sounds like a very odd (and pointless) arrangement. IME you either put the whole band through the PA or you have backline and put vox only through the PA. Your arrangement appears designed to give you the worst of all solutions. Has your 'band leader' explained his reasoning? And will he listen to reason?

Sounds like overkill to me - what's the quality of the PA gear at the moment? I've found it's the same as backline: the better the quality, the less (and smaller) boxes needed. We have a sub and two 12 tops on stands (RCF ARTs), and we're seriously considering moving to just two ART15 tops and ditching the sub. We're a 3-piece (mostly, but we do go out as a four piece now and again), and we're all through the PA with in-ears; no backline. PA speakers at the back of the band sounds odd...

John East, check out his site. www.east-uk.com/ G.