Leaderboard

Heres my Sandy PM4. Its an old one (cant find a serial number anywhere....) but a fabulous bass. Almost plays itself. sandberg 8 by Jon Ashbee, on Flickr sandberg 7 by Jon Ashbee, on Flickr sandberg 5 by Jon Ashbee, on Flickr

It's bad enough seeing the first Christmas ads on the box in September, now you've gone and started it in May I'm tempted to lock and hide this thread.

It is all a ruse. You don't need books, CDs, hifi system, magazines, videos, DVDs or TV...all you need is your laptop and a subscription to lots of things at only £9.99 per month each. Oh, and cloud storage for all your backups at £9.99 a month for when your laptop breaks. "Why am I so poor?" the junior office worker mused, listening to Spotify though bluetooth headphones on his iPhone X while clicking away at his laptop. His £4.20 large coffee with cream from Starbucks cooled next to him.

PMT is the worst, especially the one in Oxford. They're so accommodating and let you try stuff, bend over backwards not to look happy when you hand over your card...I once went in for a plectrum and walked out with two new amps! I think I forgot the pick, too.

Keyboard player set fire to me during the gig, City of London Poly, early 80's. Not entirely an act of musical criticism although I suspect that since we were both vying for the lower register at the time some degree of unconscious intent was involved. Lessons learned: (1) never let the stylist use a whole can of Elnett to get your hair in place, even if you are the bassist in a hair band, and (2) don't let the keyboard player flick cigarettes across the stage in your general direction when trying to act cool.

I understand that people don't like post EQ, but the way I look at it (I also engineer too), is that as far as I'm concerned, I use the gear I use to help create / add to my sound. My job as a sound engineer is to make it louder but also make it fit the mix too, so I prefer post EQ as that's been set how the bassist likes it. The engineer on the tour I'm on understands that, and is more than happy for me to send a post EQ send, and he loves the sound he's getting and barely has to touch it. That, in my eyes is how it should be done. I've had an engineer absolutely ruined my bass tone, I had various people say "you've normally got a gorgeous tone, but it was just muddy, what's happened?" And I saw what EQ had been done and all questions were immediately answered. Not cool.

With a 'regular' drummer and bass player The Who would have been boring, I bet. It was KM and JE's pyrotechnics that made that band what it was. They were both pioneers in their way. If PT can't see that, he must be a ****.

"Next month, the one and only scale guitarists ever need" Doh. Rae,. Me Me Me Me Me........

Nope, because even if you think you've no intention of buying anything, if you're like the rest of us, you will anyway. If not on that visit, then the next, or the one after that. They rely on it!

It will change your life. Also, this.

For the sake of your bank balance; leave the credit card at home and just go for a noodle!

All is calm, all is bright in my current band. Which is nice. I wouldn't mind some of Fleetwood Mac's success, but not sure how I would have dealt with the, ah... somewhat 'interesting' relationship and substance issues...

As a follow on from my earlier post, I`ve since found out that the guy who died is having his casket come out to one of our songs. Really moving, and just goes to show that our bands may touch people in ways they never get to know, but the two things from this for me are never get big headed and remember the audience are the ones who count, and always put on your best show/performance.

"My bass sound in the pa isn't as good as my backline, not as punchy and defined. I use a pretty flat eq on my amp, just tweaking to suit the room. Quite a few effects and I di from the amp." As stated above, the sound that you get from your amp on stage is a combination of EQ, any baked in sound of the amp itself and the influence of the sound of the speaker cab. I am not a post eq DI fan per se from a traditional amp, I would still send the signal to the board pre EQ and then doing any processing at the desk (typically tone shaping, compression and maybe add a touch of saturation). Your on stage tone is your onstage tone. You outfront tone is your outfront tone. What you want to hear on stage can be very different to what is ideal FoH so treat them independently. With regards to those that run loads of effects, then yeah, you want to get the effects in the feed to the PA - but personally, I would still remove the colouration of the speaker cabs... but like many things, this is all subjective. Some people like to dial in EQ, some people like cab emulation devices. It's all down to personal preference and what works for you. I actually run two desks - one for IEM monitors and one for front of house, for reasons that I have hinted at above. With two desks, I can EQ every instruments differently for front of house and monitors, different processing, different compression and fx etc. If you don't have all these lines of processing, you will be compromising somewhere... but in reality, as long as people can hear themselves on stage so that they can play, an aux with just one EQ over the top to help prevent feedback is what most people can cope with. The Aux fed sub is a good technique - and probably also worth mentioning, that you don't actually want a lot going through your subs at all. In fact, You may end up HPFing your bass around 80Hz to stop things getting swampy (remember, a 80hz HPF is not a fixed cutouff, you get a slope (typically 24dB/octave) so you still get some bass in the subs but not as much as you'd think. Number one problem with subs is that people tend to push too much through them and it ends up destroying the mix - I'm guessing that this is where your "not as defined" bass problem is coming from. Certainly a decent PA should outdefine and out punch a traditional backline no sweat. Depending what your tops are, switching to 80 on the crossover will probably help you clear up any swampiness - if thats a problem... and that's before you reach for the desk. Remember, little bits of EQ, focusing on cuts as opposed to boosts. Certainly you'll want to calm the top end, also some cut around 2-5k and try a HPF at 100 and work down until the bass starts to get a little swampy. You'll find the sweet spot for your setup. But remember! This will change for every room that you are in... but at this point, you should be primarily reaching for the master EQ on that main outputs to compensate for the room. Once you've got your EQ sorted for your instruments, they shouldn't really change from gig to gig.

I know it isn’t a band name but I still think Ten Benson’s album Satan Kidney Pie is possibly the best album name ever.

We played a boozer near Cannock. When I pulled up there were two guys fighting in the car park. Should have just driven home. Wen set up played the gig. An awful lot of gesturing and punters acting out sexualised behaviour on each other, with inflatable guitars. Our singer cut the set about 5 minutes short, ( which i was annoyed about) Packed up, went to pick up the silver coin and the gaffers wife refused to play as we had finished early. This was true, all be it 5 minutes. I said ok pay us what you think is fair. They were itching for a fight. We were escorted out of the pub like we were in a spaghetti western. A guy followed us to our cars still itching for a punch-up. Our guitarist, who has some serious anger issues obliged and slapped at least four of the possie before we hit the road out of dodge. We still talk about it ten years on. Good times!!

We're vinyl lovers in this house, we invested in a decent system just as CDs were being released and have stuck with the medium throughout making further investments along the way. It was only very recently we bought our first CD player, 4-5 years ago? Now I admit our vinyl player is of a far higher quality than our CD player even though it was still quite expensive but vinyl has a big edge over listenability in my opinion as long as the vinyl is spotless (we have a record cleaning machine). There is also something more of an occasion to playing a record the set up, the album art, it's less so with a CD but not gone and let's face it the sound quality isn't bad at all with minimum fuss and it still gives that sense of ownership. Downloads, we did try but it seemed wrong somehow, download, click/play despite the excellent sound quality it feels disposable somehow. So are CDs going to become relics of the past? I hope not, there is something extra to owning a physical medium Gratuitous photo of my two Tbirds next to the hi-fi

This^^^^^ the artwork and pics are all part of the music experience to me. I can picture the covers of all of my favourite albums, probably 99% of all the ones I,own in fact. I also like the fact it can’t be deleted or lost in an ‘upgrade’.

Personally I think that the Vinyl resurgence is just a flash in the pan. I'd give it 5 years at most. Who wants a medium that inherently degrades every time you play it? As for Cd's it's still my preferred medium, but then I'm an old Fogey. Just a thought - If you copy your CDs to another medium and then sell the originals are you not in breach of copyright?

Up in the sticks (out past Todmorden). No bars, not even 3G!!

I keep trying to start an INXS tribute band named Stranglew4nk, some right weirdos come to audition

Yeah he's pretty good actually. Most of my poly happens up the dusty end (in comparison to most) as I am predominantly a 6 player, but that said, there's good stuff happening in tracking midway in the direction of north of the border. Actually, tracking (in the right mode) is impressive across the board. I spoke at length with Morten who used to work for TC and I found out that within the toneprints, the parameters that govern poly tracking are also tweaked. So there's definitely some factors you can't get your hands on in the TonePrint editor. This appears to be how the get SnU to act like an analogue at times even though its definitely DSP. *I should also add that 'mini board' still hasn't been completed as I've been gigging the Helix to death right now.

Agreed. His 2 biggest hits are his least interesting musically to me. Rosalinda’s Eyes is one of my favourites. I am also quite fond of his earlier work which featured a fair amount of pedal steel guitar. He’s so much more diverse than people think with distinctive style changes over the years, he really can do it all.

First line of my CV, there.

That's a fair point my friend. About 30 years ago, or more, I was a regular attendee of many biker festivals throughout the UK. Of note were the Kent Custom Bike shows run annually by the local Hell's Angels. My god what fabulous weekends they were. A total festival environment where all were welcome and partied, whether you rode a Harley, a BMW, Guzzi, Japanese or a Vespa. They got some cracking well known bands to headline. Great times. As you say, things are different now. I'm not the party animal I once was, and the carefree enjoyment attitude just doesn't seem to be there from youngsters. Everyone is too busy with the latest iPhone to care lol. I don't ride any more, but I do play bass. It's my last thread connecting me to something different. 🎸 Geoff

Here's mine again...

Not just music venues, Mallory Park had all sorts of hassle due to this. A pub is hardish to miss but a full scale racing circuit conveniently named after the village it’s in?

Are you sure we didn’t play the same place? Exactly the same for us at above example. Herefordshire/Worcestershire border?

I think it works really well, love the shape of the headstock too. For me, matching headstocks only work on necks with Rosewood / other dark fingerboards, like this one! Well done, excellent work.!

Unless there is a specific reason (e.g. label wanting to make 96k files available for high resolution downloads), 44k should be fine in most cases. There is much discussion on relative merits of higher sample rates and whether or not people can hear differences... I stopped bothering with the 'audio quality' side of the argument when I realised I couldn't reliably tell 88k vs 44k files apart. Unless there is a production reason, IMO extra system demands and hard-disk space is not worth it.

Cast your minds back to all the "Guitarist telling me what/how to play" rants. Seeing a slight case of pot and kettle? What if the singer said to you "you shouldn't need frets, You should be able to do your ting without help to keep you in tune"? Runs away to hide

Only 1 week old? Blimey. He could have returned it for a refund if it was ordered online.

Bought a Wood & Tronics bass, make cool deal, eveything is OK

More of these?

+1 I often have to 'ease' pick guards when I've new P/ups. Two sided nail files (coarse and fine) work well, aren't too aggressive and leave a good finish.

Hope "hard copy" in whatever form doesn’t disappear, if only because I’d miss the sleeve notes.

Mine went well until I got a music stand out...

I've got a Spector EuroLX4 (a carbon-reinforced neck), and the sound reminds me of King Wenceslas - deep and crisp and even. What's not to like?

Really it depends on your ears/monitoring and also bit depth. If you're recording at 96k you want to be using a bit depth of 32bit minimum or it's kinda like "what's the point?". Basically the sample rate frequency is how many samples or "frames" if you're comparing it to video are taken a second. Because humans hear up to 20kHz then we use at least 44.1k because the your still getting a few samples even if you're recording sounds right on the periphery of our hearing range. 48k or 96k will give you more samples or "frames" if you will but that's why I say what are you monitoring on. Because like a TV it doesn't matter if your watching a 60fps video if you're TV has a refresh rate of less than 60Hz then it's dropping frames anyway. So in conclusion, do two test recordings, one at each rate, if you can't hear the difference, stick with 44.1k/24bit. Oh and bit depth is how many "steps" or bits are in single one of those samples. CD quality is 44.1k/16bit just so you have a reference point.

After years of no band and no gigs I finally sorted both out, and got myself into a gigging band...bit of a result so here is my gigging reg. Couldn't be happier.

La Bella nylon flats are superb on an acoustic, especially if you're plugging in.

Naffghan Whigs - ticks all boxes :-)

My first band was called ‘imitation crockery ‘.