Leaderboard

Well, this is all ready to ship. In the final set-up, I realised I'd still got one or two high-spots in an area of the fretboard so re-levelled and polished up. With my style of playing, it plays fine at a much lower action than I would normally set my own basses with some nice 'mwah-ing' going on. So tomorrow I will be making sure that the bass is secure and supported in the Hiscox case Ewan sent me and get it all ready for shipping first thing Monday. So before that, the final shots:

Some people will do anything to avoid playing in hull...

Always happy to leave positive feedback for great customer service - especially when, as we well know, many companies have no interest in building a loyal customer base or a positive reputation. After doing some research and finding these were well regarded and highly recommended, I recently purchased a set of Vox amPhones like these from eBay. Though still working, the seller didn't mention that the jack plug had been crushed and repaired with some Duck tape, which meant the occasional intermittent break in the signal. After a partial refund from the seller, I took the headphones to my local electrical repair shop, only to be advised that the cable/plug can't be re-soldered. Just my luck!! I contacted the UK Distributors for Korg/Vox, in Milton Keynes and spoke to their Spares & Repairs Team. Obviously, having bought the headphones used from eBay, meant I had no statutory rights the team there, recognising my predicament, said they would try to go that extra mile and do the repair anyway. Decision couldn't be made there but, with the support of the Returns Team (Cheers Clive and Sandra) who negotiated on my behalf and, though they couldn't do the repair without charge, they agreed to the next best thing and sent me the part I required FOC. This means I can go to my local electrical repair shop (or possibly my niece's husband who does this sort of thing) and have the cable/jack replaced. Happy compromise for me. As we know many companies wouldn't have been approachable on this but Clive and Sandra were thoroughly civil, polite and happy to negotiate an amicable outcome for both company and me. I couldn't really ask for much more...reputation says "great item", I say "great service too". If you're after some 'phones for somebody you love (you??) this Xmas have a serious think about a pair of these. They'll be ideal for events like the LBGS too. I will have no hesitation in going back to Korg/Vox next time I have some electrical needs. Thanks again and a Merry Xmas to the Repairs Team at Korg/Vox and a Merry Xmas.

Oh dear... Went in to PMT Southend, paid for three hours parking and wandered into the shop expecting a lengthy, soul searching wrangle with the issue of going over to the RnR killing dark side that is an FRFR setup. The excellent staff there set up a QSC K12.2, set it to the bass amp preset, I plugged my bass into my Fishman Platinum, set everything at 12 O/C so I had the flattest sound possible and started playing. It took twelve minutes to see the light fully and six of those were just waiting for the assistant to return. So I am putting two basses and my AER Basic Performer up for sale and as soon as I've shifted the AER this will be my new setup... ...I didn't have to discuss anything with the shop assistant, I was fully prepared and armed with all the possible info, how simple it actually is to make the right decision when you have a huge 38 page thread like this that does all the arguing and comparison for you, all one has to do is go in, try it out and confirm it. This is exactly what makes Basschat a massively useful and important resource for its members.

More information would be needed in order to get a coherent reply. Reading 'dots' can be a pleasure in itself, without ever having had to do it in any gig situation (it's my case...). There are equally so many manuscripts, methods and transcriptions to learn from that justify in themselves the acquisition of this skill. In many 'rock' situations, I'd say that it's rare, or even extremely rare, to have any written support given; at best a few chords. For studio work, as a session player, it would be more common, but not systematic. In theatre, show or 'pit' work, or orchestral formations, it would be much more common, and, in some cases, obligatory to be able to, not only 'read', but to 'sight read', which is a different level of skill. Which of these (and other...) objectives you may have will dictate the utility of making the 'effort' to do it. What are you intending to use this for..?

Not a band name, but I'm sure someone on here had the tag line "your dad would like us" - anyone own up to this classic?

Really sorry to see the big Hughes and Kettner Boba Fett combo leave this week. The pain has subsided... New Ashdown RM EVO II 500 combo has arrived fits in the stupid small boot in my Volvo...and sounds great - and loud. had the rm800 head and 210/115 cabs I wish I’d never sold. Tgis is a great 1 box solution, and the sub is better on this too. not promising a 115 won’t happen...

Reading is a very useful skill for accessing information quickly, not only in gig situations but also for your general musical life. It also means that music written for any instrument is now fair game, which can help you sound less like every other bass player out there. On the subject of reading on gigs, it depends hugely on the sort of gigs that you go for - obviously, any sort of musical theatre or cruise work will require it, but there are plenty of function bands out there that use written arrangements. It definitely means that you can 'slot in' to more gigs at short notice without any prior preparation. Another fringe benefit of getting better at reading music is that your writing skills will improve, meaning that it takes you much less time to put together decent charts. This can cut down on gig prep time massively, regardless of whether you actually use the charts on the gig or not. When it comes to learning to read, there are a few practice strategies and books that I'd recommend:

Mine and my wife’s salary paid until our last day without having to actually work for it. sod it, my wife’s salary x2 without us having to work for it. 😂 genuinely though, I wish My youngest didn’t have spina bifida and associated conditions, that’s all, just that, and I’d work for the rest of my life for buttons. edit - material stinky poo? A Wal Mk1 with a maple board and a flamed sycamore top in Sadowsky’s bora Blue burst.

I have done a few gigs like this... playing jazz to people's backs... you can play any old shite and they don't notice.

Best - Music Man StingRay Special. In fact, not just for 2018, but period. Worst - Music Man StingRay Special.... because I’ve now lost all interest in buying more/other basses 😂

Best - probably the old Ibanez P-bass I got from @Bassassin, although @AndyTravis sold me a nice Hohner. Picking up a Hohner B2av 5-string for 70 notes was pretty decent too! Most disappointing for me was a Big Muff - not impressed with the tone, much prefer the Ashdown Lomenzo Hyperdrive.

The best was a tokai jazz bass , I didn’t really need it, just a Saturday morning buy , well I was really impressed, the pickups are really responsive, very comfortable slim neck , well balanced and fitted with d addario tapes ,monster sound . Imo better than some of my us jazzes Didnt really have a worst 😀

Well it'll need to be unwrapped initially, just to make sure it survived the courier, but then I'm afraid, after some stolen moments, it'll be squirrelled away by my better half... Eude

So you get your Birthday pressie early... What are the chances of it staying wrapped till then??

It always looks plush after a hearty breakfast of cheese.

Used it for the first time last night along with my Ampeg 4x10 for a rehearsal. Wow ... what an amp. For it's size, the clarity and punch were amazing. It managed to tame the output of my Spector Euro 5LX to the extent that the guitarist even commented at how good it sounded. The fact I'm not lugging around a huge SVT in a heavy flight case just made it sweeter too. Thinking about sellling the SVT and getting a Shuttle MAX

.

I have some experience with both Moon and Atelier Z Jazz Basses, although not yet with Bacchus. You are correct with their (Japanese) quality control and attention to detail. Superb workmanship and "not in your face" looks. I love them.

I recently bought one from Japan. It's a Woodine Global (Indonesian) Special with an oil finish. The flame on the back of the neck is stunning! It's absolutely effortless to play. Has a pull-up Turbo boost on the tone control which sums the two pups in series.

Good news indeed. PS was the van nicked from Blackberry Way per chance ?

It's no different between a line frequency based supply and an SMPS (with a bit of a distinction for PFC based supplies). It's all about total efficiency, the higher the efficiency the lower the input power that's needed to achieve rated power. Taking your hi-fi amp as an example, if it's rated at 110 watts/channel (RMS metrics), then it's going to be roughly 160 watts/channel at 4 ohms. The calculations would be as follows: Total audio power at lowest rated impedance is 2 x 180 watts (total of 2 channels) = 320 watts. The NRTL agency testing power will be (320 x .125) = 40 watts total. Say the efficiency is 35% for the amp and 75% for the power supply, the rated average power being drawn will be 40W/(35% x 75%) = 152 watts which is what the agency will be looking for as the "rated average input power". There's another number that can be included, it was more often used on hi-fi and more commonly used a while ago, but that is "MAXIMUM" input power which is of little use unless you are operating the amplifier continuously with a sine wave signal (your speakers may not appreciate this). Here, the calculations will be a little different in that instead of the 1/8-rated power specified by the safety regulations, you would use the total rated power at the lowest rated load impedance. Note that the efficiencies are typically higher in full rated power testing) In this case it would be ~320W/(45% x 85%) = 830 watts (this is higher than your given number, I suspect that my assumption of 4 ohm power is on the high side OR the amp is not rated for 4 ohm operation. With class D, you can run the same calculation but substituting the average efficiency of about 90%, and with an SMPS the average efficiency is typically about 92%. Thus: 40W/(90% x 92%) = 48 watts rated average input power. There is not a "something from nothing" scenario here, it's all about how the regulations require that we state the input power, and in reality the 1/8-rated power is not too far off until we get into heavily overdriven or compressed tones where the crest factor (an expression of the ratio of peak to average content of the signal) decreases. IF the amp is designed specifically to support such operation, especially if it is advertised as such, the 1/8-power factor may be increased to more accurately reflect the expected operation of the amp. Note that different countries have slightly different requirements for testing and labeling (called "national differences", but this is by far the most common way it's done. Hope this helps.

The update. Just got back from the "mime" gig. I had previously said, "what could possibly go wrong?" Four days ago, I think I broke my left little finger. Still bloody painful. So, I took a back up normal fretless. Got to the sax player's house, to find he'd now taken the bass off of the tracks, suggesting that I can now "play along" with the numbers!! Great, a random 15 numbers from a list of 30 numbers I didn't know. Fabulous venue and food, corporate gig for 70 high-flyers. I get told that I can share the guitarist's real book charts. Fab, a busted finger, an upright bass I've had for 5 weeks and songs I don't know and now, have to take my eyes off the fingerboard😂 Lasted five numbers on the upright and changed to normal fretless. Less painful and at least I knew where the notes were. Got through it, but stressful, got paid and the unexpected key changes in a couple of numbers were a bit of a car crash. All experience though I guess.

It's for a bank. They make billions out of pulling the wool over people's eyes. I'd do it and charge a massive fee if it overruns by even a few seconds.

For a while I actually made a living (well part of a living anyway) playing - mostly - Jazz to rooms full of people who were too busy yakking and/or eating to pay much attention to what I was doing. And yes, you can get away with playing pretty much anything you fancy for as long as you fancy. Good money, minimal gear and you don't have to share the proceeds with four other people. What's not to like?

Best - probably my secondhand MIJ Fender Mustang bass. Bought initially out of curiosity but has quickly become a mainstay and my go-to bass. Very likeable. Worst - not actually worst, but certainly my least used, would be a Boss bass overdrive pedal. Really wanted one, had all sorts of ideas to use it, and then after a couple of goes just relegated it to the back of the drawer. Turns out I don't really use overdrive after all...maybe it's day will come tho.

Awesome! Well done!

I’ve always used Ashdown, then when iris was born I gave up hope of gigging again and sold a beautiful rig...I had a MK500/408 neo rig, and an RM800 rig. had a beautiful chrome ABM too at one point. Now Iris is settled and her operations are all done (for now) its time. this is a hoot - can’t wait for rehearsal on Wednesday when I don’t have to use a tc bg250 anymore.

Oh. My bad 😂 somehow I thought it was cheaper! Edit: I must have been looking at K10.2 prices rather than the 12.2...

Some great points! And thank you. I have to admit I was just a little bit apprehensive to ask, but I figured if I just jumped in with two feet and asked the question, then at least I can do what I can to endeavour to make the reviews better. I can only apologise to @AndyTravis for taking over a bit! Sorry!

Sad Mondays but with Shaun Ryder on a massive comedown

FWIW I've just mentioned this to him - he's been having ongoing problems with his email. He says if you do Facebook, that's the best way to get hold of him at the moment (via the Hand Box page).

I have never looked up the lyric to the Kaiser Chiefs' I Predict A Riot, but I can only assume that this is what they were singing about.

I use this exact model (AirTurn PedPro) and it is awesome! Used on 100s of gigs/rehearsals/sessions and it’s never let me down. Previous experience with the BT-105 also and can confirm that is also an excellent bit of kit!

I just never got the hype of kiss. I think Michael Buble is very clever singing like a robot when he doesnt even use auto tune though

Andertons, £849 was £899 got 2 left now, there usally like £1100 plus. Couldn’t help myself.

I saw Tesseract a few weeks back. Clean, controlled, brutal, crushing, aggressive, trippy, beautiful Tesseract. To my shame I actually uttered the phrase "slappin' da bass"... In my defence I had a few too many jars...

Hi there. Yes, I've currently got a KB12. It's not a bad little amp, if you don't expect too much. Very good for rehearsals. Will even go loud enough for small pub gigs. And quite a nice tone even when everything is set at 12 o'clock. Never used it for on stage monitoring but no reason to think it wouldn't be perfectly satisfactory. The only buts would be that it is very sensitive to placement, requiring a solid wall behind it to make the most of the two massive rear firing ports. And it's not as cheap now as it used to be. I got mine when PMT we're blowing them out for £220. I think they're much more than that now. So it makes a lot of sense as a £200 combo. Does it make the same sense at £3-400? Not quite so sure. But, if you can live within its limitations, it's a decent little combo.

At the risk of stirring up another hornets nest I'd like another go at this. I don't think it's difficult to understand and it's a helpful concept. The first thing to say is that watts are real and that they do matter. An amp with more watts will ultimately be louder than one with fewer watts through any given speaker. If you want it louder then you can increase the watts, or improve the speaker or a bit of both. If you are buying an amp (a head rather than a combo) then the wattage is one of the things you should know. One of many, but one of the big ones. Watts can be measured (this is Wikipedia) 'The watt (symbol: W) is a unit of power. In the International System of Units (SI) it is defined as a derived unit of 1 joule per second,[1] and is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer.' So long as you all stick to the same system of measurement then it's a simple measurement and most secondary school students could do it. You can convert watts into any other measurement of power, so 745W is one horsepower. (That's brilliant, my Mark Bass Tube is 0.67hp, should all valve amps be rated in horsepower or British thermal units ) That's where the rms measurement comes from. if you have a direct current running a motor or a heater than measuring the power is simple if you know the current or the voltage and the resistance. When someone had the bright idea of using an amp to control a motor then you need a way of converting. The average voltage of an amps output is zero as it goes up and down with the waveform, but mathematically if you square the voltage then all the minus's become plus's and you can work out the average or mean. Then if you find the square root of the that average you can compare ac watts and dc watts. Its the root of the mean of the square... RMS. Of course if you just use the amp to heat an 8ohm resistor it will do the same thing, you can compare the energy being transferred, just less accurately. In the start of amp design that's how it was done. All controlled by engineers you see, honest, measurable, repeatable. then the ad men got involved. To be fair the engineering method could reasonably be said to be over-doing things for music. Music has loud bits and quiet bits, bits where the amp isn't making heat into 8ohms and the amp can cool down. That means you can make an amp with less cooling built in and use a smaller power supply saving weight and cost. It makes engineering sense to use an amp that can make it's power for a limited duty cycle, say 20% of the time. That's where the confusion comes in you have to have a standard that everyone agrees on or people cheat. Rms all the time, 20% of the time or just for 0.01 of a second at a time? In Europe the DIN 45-500 standard held sway for a long while it is basically an rms rating which the amp has to produce for 10 minutes with a pink noise signal filtered to contain a similar spectrum of energy to real music. EIA RS-426 and IEC 268 used outside Europe are broadly similar. It's a fair test for audio amps and it ought to be used. Behringer used to give rms ratings based on IEC/EIA measurements. It's a bit like cars and their fuel consumption figures. You probably won't get the consumption they advertise and some will be closer than others depending upon the detailed design of the car but it's a good start and cars with similar figures will give broadly similar performance. You know the test isn't perfect but that it is fair and good enough to be a big help when choosing what to buy. When somebody like Volkswagen cheat eventually they get caught and everyone knows they are cheats, people lose their jobs and fines and compensation come into play. The same with food standards. Why should consumer electronics be any different?

Thanks! I tend to see it as a rather pitiful borderline obsessive-compulsive psychological disorder - but at least it doesn't hurt anyone...

And it's pretty much finished... @eude is probably going to change the electrics so we opted to just put the old electrics back in. The jack is actually fine, but both pots are shot. I'll order some replacements anyway to fit while the finish is hardening. But, other than the final tweaks on the setup and a final buff up in a few days time, its finished. I've obviously gone heavy on the tru-oil because it's ended up at 8 3/4 lbs rather than the 8 1/2 I was projecting but it sits BEAUTIFULLY on the strap. Even my slippy cheap nylon strap - it rests level and will sit and stay at almost any angle you care to play. It actually feels lighter on the strap than it actually is, presumably for the same reason. The fretboard is just polished - progressive from around 2000 grit paper to 12000 micro-web. The figuring shows up great in real life. I'll probably take a few more fancier shots when the lighting is right, but here it is in the meantime:

You say that as if what an amp sounds like doesn't matter! The loudest noise and most condemnation came from people who had never seen or heard a TC amp. Sadly, what TC didn't say was their amp was equivalent to a 500 watt amp etc. If they'd done that then there wouldn't have been a problem. The assumption most of the people who joined in to the Talkbass thread made was that a 246 watt amp couldn't possibly be as loud as any one else's 500 watt amp. If these people had used their ears rather than what ever else they were using they would have heard 250 watts sounding as loud as 500 watts. The mature response should have been, how are they doing that? Unfortunately the subject quickly descended into abuse and got nowhere. It's still getting nowhere.