Leaderboard

I was told after a gig in the 80s, “mate, you’d be a great singer if you had long hair”. True story.

Last Friday, actually - not that anyone cares, I'm sure. This was the third gig in an uncharacteristically busy six weeks for our originals trio. We'd had to miss our last rehearsal due to the drummer/singer being poorly and so I'd not been able to check out my lovely new (to me) 4003s ahead of the gig. I still took it but the strings it came with looked like they'd been used to scour pans so I restrung with the only set I had to hand (Warwick Reds bought on a punt). I hate new strings and would never replace a set within a month of a gig if possible, so you can imagine how horrible the originals were. This was also our first gig using Ableton to trigger some samples and between-song FX. We've strarted using a couple of projectors to project black and white footage behind/on/around us but the venue was mainly black so we decided to hang up some band t-shirts as a partial backdrop. Half of which got left at my house but were rescued by my brother on his way down. The venue is one of our local favourites and the soundman was a friend with great gear who had all our presets saved from last time 😃 Improbably, it all seemed to work out ok. As ever, I made some new and entirely unexpected errors on the bass while gliding through the bits that should have tripped me up. It was boiling hot and the Ric wouldn't stay in tune so I'm sure I annoyed all present by having to sdjust after virtually every song. The samples worked ok apart from me managing to trigger one on a loop during one song and not being able to stop it. The t-shirt backdrop thing worked as well as could we expected - we'll probably get some cheaply printed with our logo and sell them for a couple of quid at the end from now on. The only downside was about half the audience walking downstairs to the bar about halfway through and not coming back as they found they could go out the front door hear everything through the open windows while staying cool and enjoying their inhaled substances of choice. Thoroughly enjoyed it, got a decent recording, some nice photos and £200 in the kitty. Would fully recomend the venue (Whip & Kitten, Rawtenstall) to any nearby original bands...

As requested! I’m looking forward to finding some time to have a good play and then clean it! It has roundwounds on at the moment......

Through gritted teeth, I did in fact sign up for this. So far, I've found it absolutely excellent. I can sort of see a justification for limiting it so that you have to spend a week on each lesson. That structure is really good and helpful and stops you tearing ahead. I think I'll make it to the 26 week mark no problem, and I'm sure my playing will have changed quite a lot by then. The live Q&A stuff I haven't really found useful so far. I guess that is his justification for "opening" and "closing" the course, but it seems unnecessary to me. Too many people sharing one hour with Scott, it's just never going to be that helpful. Apart from the overall structure being so beneficial, the sheer amount of focus you end up putting on tiny things has yielded surprising results. Some weeks have been easy. Others have shown me very clearly where areas of my technique are falling down, and given me exercises to improve those areas. I don't see how this could have been done any better, to be honest. I'm sure some people won't like the boring repetition of the exercises, but I find it quite therapeutic. So this grumpy grouch is actually quite impressed. I feel like even 8 weeks in, I've already got value for my money.

I would not buy a bass from this man, even though he can guarantee there is no buckle rash

The new Sandberg California Central

Hi folks! I've had my eye on the Laney Digbeth pre-amp pedal for a while, and having recently joined a new band I had a good excuse to try one out. I've seen a decent amount of positive reactions to this pedal here and there, so I'm just going to cover some of the info that I wasn't able to find out about before buying. If you want to check out photos and the basic specs, head on over to https://www.laney.co.uk/amps/bass/digbeth/db-pre Before I start on the graphs, I'm aware that firing white noise into a pedal isn't the most accurate form of measurement, and obviously we don't listen with our eyes, but I'm happy that it provides some value by demystifying what some of the controls actually do. First off, here's as "flat" as my audio interface will record - no pedal involved at all: Frequency along the bottom; relative dB up the side There's a little roll-off below ~50 Hz and above ~8 kHz, so bear that in mind when looking at the rest of the graphs. Time to plug the pedal in. Before we touch any of the dials, does this pedal have a baked-in tone? Well, the manual says that the EQ controls (bass, lo-mid, hi-mid, treble, tilt) don't have any effect at their detented centre settings, so let's see what happens when you toggle the "bypass" footswitch. Green: FET (clean) channel, all controls at 5-out-of-10 / 12 o'clock / centre position Red: Pedal in "bypass" mode Pretty flat! Bypassed it pretty much looks the same as having no pedal at all. I've read elsewhere that this pedal is buffered rather than true bypass. Switching on the FET channel with everything at noon, it's slightly above unity gain (i.e. a little louder). There looks to be a very mild bump in the mids, and a little roll-off in the low lows. A good starting point to start turning things and seeing what happens... First, the Bass control: Red: minimum Green: maximum Is that a shelf, or just a peak at a low enough frequency that it runs into the limits of what the interface will capture? Either way, you can get around 10 dB boost or cut at about 50 Hz. On to the Lo-mid. This one's got three possible settings, and the manual lists them in the wrong order. With the switch in the upper position, you get this: The manual says: The graph says: 12 dB boost or 8 dB cut at 180 Hz. With the switch in the middle position: From the manual: Yep, that's definitely wider than the previous setting! About 15 dB boost or 14 dB cut at 480 Hz. Finally, the switch in the lower position: A narrower 15 dB boost or 14 dB cut again, this time at 700 Hz. Now the Hi-mid: Looks like 15 dB boost or cut at 1.5 kHz. I'd say this is closer to the "pop / fret noise" zone than the 700 Hz lo-mid setting 🤷‍♂️ And the Treble: Interesting 🤔 The curve's a little different when boosting vs. cutting. Overall it looks like it peaks around 8 kHz, but with a shallow slope right down to the mids. Last but not least, the Tilt control: Red: minimum (most bassy) Green: maximum (most trebly) As most reviews have pointed out, a little goes a long way with this control! 😂 The pivot point is around 830 Hz. I think the idea is to use this to make slight adjustments to the overall sound for live usage, e.g. giving it a nudge to the treble side if you're on a hollow, boomy stage. But it interacts in interesting ways with the rest of the controls, especially with Bass and Treble adjusted in the "opposite" directions to the tilt. For example, you can approximate a 60s cab where there's a bump in the low-mids, but output rolls off a lot below that. Overall, this pedal has a very versatile set of controls. The EQ points are all in sensible places, and the mid controls are focused enough that you can hear what they're adding or removing, rather than just a big old blob of MIDS. I've used it for a few rehearsals with random studio amps, but not live yet. Currently my starting settings are: Lo-mids 7 (with the switch upwards), Hi-mids 7, and Treble 6 - everything else flat. That's giving me some punch in the lows, and some presence and pick attack further up. Other things: The face of the pedal is covered by a ~1mm thick glossy plastic plate with all the control labels on it. This feels like it might be prone to cracking, given that the point of a pedal is to be stepped on. But I could be totally wrong - it's backed by a flat metal surface after all! Time will tell The Digbeth logo is an additional moulded bit of plastic that sits on top of that. I think it looks cool; you may think it's tacky! As a Birmingham resident, I'll admit that the name did sway me a bit towards trying this pedal out 😁 It's a bit taller than your average pedal (i.e. the distance from the floor to the top of the footswitches is greater) - could be awkward if mounted on a thick pedalboard It comes with rubber feet attached, but they peel off cleanly What about the Tube channel? Well, it doesn't involve any actual tubes. But it does sound pretty good! There seems to be some additional low-pass filtering compared to the FET channel, and some mild EQ pre-shaping even with all controls flat: Red: FET Green: Tube (at minimum Drive) I failed to set these to approximately equal volume, but you should be able to see the difference in the EQ. The filtering of extreme highs means that it doesn't get too fizzy when the gain is turned up - it almost acts like a cab simulation. This means the DI signal doesn't sound atrocious with dirt! 😅 I don't have a lot more to say about the Tube channel, as I've not used it much yet. I might record some clips in the future. Well that's your lot. I hope some of it was helpful! 😁 tl;dr Pedal is good!

Although this is a guitar, I'm think of the possibilities for bass. Probably a through neck, so the base bass is a fully playable 'cricket bat' type bass, then interchangeable flying V, and Rickenbacker type bodies.

Record a bit of the playing that she likes to hear, and play it back, audibly, whilst you play your stuff with your 'phones on.

Have you considered divorce? It might be a solution.

Told my son about this. He said. "But Dad, you have a great heir". Coat fetched.

How cool a program is this eh?! Especially for those just starting out. Almost impossible to imagine something like this being made today, sadly.

passed away today at 58, way too soon and only few hours before a gig. First album (Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out)) is one of my favourite albums. Production by John Cale is raw and perfect. Still sounds fresh today and Paul's bass is pretty much backbone of it:

Maybe the stockroom has a lot of mirrors in it and they all looked right handed... But little did they know...!

Diversity is just what you don't want. The two cabs would be both augmenting and detracting from each other, depending on frequency, while the 410 would likely be cruising comfortably while the 115 is stressed. Mixing different size drivers to take advantage of the main difference in how they work, which isn't response, it's dispersion, is SOP with hi-fi and PA. But in hi-fi and PA crossovers are employed so that the different sized drivers are not operating within the same frequency bandwidth. They've done that since the 1920s. Electric bass cab manufacturers as a whole are just a wee bit behind the curve. 🙄

Nah, that's nothing... When I were a lad my fingers used to have to catch the bus to get down to the fretboard...........

you can if you freeze it.

I feel I have lead a charmed life never to have encountered such a narcissistic freakshow.

Yesterday I received mine, and had a chance to play with it a little bit. First impression is: I like it. I quickly tried playing around with EQ and "tube" and, yes it sounds nice, really musical. I did a comparison with my GK MBSIII line out (current setup for my recordings) and with the bass straight to the audio interface, a Focusrite Clarett 8 Pre. Here's a little demo recorded with a Spector Legend 4 Classic with new strings (D'Addario EXL 165 Nickel Wound 45-65-85-105 - changed yesterday just before recording). The 3 samples are recorded consecutively, 8 bars each and are: Bass -> Clarett 8 Pre Bass -> Digbeth (XLR) -> Clarett 8 Pre Bass -> GK MBSIII (Line Out) -> Clarett 8 Pre Both the Digbeth and the GK have their settings flat, set to their mid position (on the GK "contour" and "hi boost" are not engaged). The pedal seems to be quite neutral, in accord with the graphs shown by @MartinB. Interesting how the GK adds a significant amount of high freqs. I do like its sound quite a lot too, but the pedal is "truer" to the original sound, even if I do feel like it's adding a little bit of lo-mids, but I didn't check with FFTs or any other tool. They have different use bass_di_digbeth_gkmbsiii.wav

I play fretless purely for fun. No band, no studio. That seem to be Jonesy's plan as well at the moment. Have owned two unlined and two lined. I find that I enjoy unlined much more. Having the lines pushes me to look more. Not having them pushed me to listen more. Ultimately I have settled on a lined HB JB75fl because for what I am looking for, you cannot beat it in terms of value for money. But sometimes I think about replacing it with an unlined. Which is why I am following this thread closely. But it looks like options are not infinite on a budget.

Thank you - Bunion - carlitos71 - Crusoe - SpondonBassed 😊. I'm late for the show here - was out gigging at a local festival. @carlitos71 I play a variety of music Rock'n roll Progressive rock Hard Rock Blues Pop Dance music Reggae Folk music Country Music I try to keep myself busy learning as much as possible - the narrow way doesn't work in this country - you gotta cover alot of area. Instruments: Fender JazzBass+ 1993 model Precision Bass 1960's model (parts build) Fender Aerodyne Precision Bass Line6 Variax 700 Yamaha TRB1005J with Bartolini PU and Delano Preamp Traben Array Limited 5 string with Delano PU and Preamp Amplification. GK 1001RB -II Crown XLS1502 Mesaboogie Subway Preamp & DI TC BG250 2x10" Ashdown Cabs I tend to use smaller rigs or IEM systems at present - and let FOH run the rest.

Maybe someone told the thief to keep taking guitars until they had nothing left. I'll get me coat......

They look the same to me... I'd take em out and see if there is a sticker with the model on the underneath... They might be ceramics...

6 music in this and many other cases.

Love the bass break in this

Home practise, for me, is quite a personal thing. It's me time, after a day at work, I like to play my bass, to unwind, to get in the zone, and breathe again. Sometimes it's out loud, sometimes it's through phones..... However....... I'm finding Mrs Raymans' insistence on me playing out loud, so she can hear it, along to some funk or hip hop stuff she likes, as opposed to any rock or pop that I might want to play to, IRRITATING! IT'S MY BLOODY TIME NOT YOURS!!!!! So yesterday I was about to put the phones on and dig in to some pop, when she says "No play out loud, I want to hear it". ........sigh..... ok...... so I start playing along to some pop, some Gwen Stefani as it happens, (actually great for pop groove practise), and she groans and pulls a face. "I hate that stuff.... play something I like" 😣 IT'S MY TIIIIIIIIIIIIIME !!!!!!!!!!!! It's doing my head in.

Technically we’re not married Well….. we’re just not married period, there’s no technically about it. I could just throw her out tbh

My Mrs doesn't know which part is the bass, even if I play it right in front of her!

I play with a band that uses this between the audience and band. . . . sometimes it works!!

So she likes funk? Play along to some old school James Brown or Meters or early Funkadelic tunes. Like “Maggot Brain” or “Funky Dollar Bill” or something. And hiphop? Play along to “Mexico Or Bust” by New Kingdoms. You’ll probably only need to do it the once before she begs you to pack it in... I mean, I loooove that New Kingdoms album but it’s as sludgy and messed up as hiphop gets. Mrs Rayman will soon be pleading with you to play along to “The Birdie Song” for a bit of light relief afterwards. I won’t upload the video for that because, well... probably an instant ban innit 😂

Latest post punk thing to hit my Radar - Horsegirl. (All-female 3 piece from Chicago I think)

https://youtu.be/mPObzJkWueY

Some of the Novation Software is now free, including the 'B(donkey)-Station' and the 'V-Station'. EDIT: It should have read B(a*s)- Station.... The profanity filter kicks a*s on Basschat..! Novation Software | Novation Downloads (novationmusic.com)

Though singing in tune in the first place would be preferable.

Pearl Necklace ZZTop Oops way too late.

Oh, I actually have an EMG killswitch fitted to a bass which I put in to fill a hole where the original preamp used one more pot than the EMG system with stacked pots that replaced it. I've not really experimented with it so I'll have to have a play.

Well, i can't sing , i ain't pretty, and my legs are thin. Nor can i keep time. I'd be perfect for that horrible mess of a band Oh, 'ang on.. Not much hair. Over 40. Dont move around around. No dress sense. Forget it

Imagine something with a similar tonality to the SVT-2 PRO with KT88s. Doesn’t need all the controls (if anything the 2 has too many!), but the splitting of ‘gain’ and ‘drive’ onto two separate controls/tube circuits so you can obtain very good clean and very good dirty sounds would be mighty agreeable. Something like that in a smaller 100W package, with a decent DI, would go down very nicely.

We (The band I'm in) had our first recent 'outing' on Sat, we played open air to entertain the folks waiting for the start of the Pride march in Worthing. It was a beautiful day and the crowd seemed to enjoy it (perhaps almost as much as we did!). I became aware of a few things: 1) twiggy is light, wonderfully so! I took Ponty (My shop bought 4 str short scale) along 'just in case' as this was twiggy's first outing ... didn't need him, but I realised how much heavier he is than twiggy ... I've a bad back so it was a blessing. Flo will probably be a bit heavier as I'll be using harder wood, with a similar design to twiggy, tho the 'body' will be a few cm wider and thicker to allow me to house the electronics fully in the wood. 2) My battery powered Roland Micro Bass Cube cannot compete with any noise, I had it cranked up to 11 (with my effects box gain up to pre-distortion levels) and even then the band member at the other end of the lineup could not hear me! I took advantage of the recent Prime Day sale and just received a small inverter and lithium battery so I can use my more powerful Ant + Mighty Mini combo for our next gig (We might even have power there) 3) The 'grab the ball end of the strings' mechanism on my tuners are failing ... the stress is just too much for the Nylon 3D printed parts. As a result I was struggling to keep my D2 in tune; one advantage of a fretless was I could make an allowance for it in my finger positioning but still ... So I set out to replace them; I decided to go for Aluminium replacements ... I bought a small block of stock and after a bit of CADding I fired up Xena. xena.mp4 Even at the mildest of cutting depths, this task is wavering around the upper limits of what she is capable of ... so I decided to finish them off by hand. I must say, it was not a great finishing job I managed, but they work and seem very solid. I've redesigned them to be fully CNC'd next time and sometime over the next week or so I'll pop into the MakerSpace where we have a more robust CNC machine and then they'll look quite nice. S'manth x PS, this is us finishing our set after the march participants departed, you can make out the tones of twiggy! Qukulele.m4v

Hmm... I'm glad you asked, because I think I may have made a mistake 🙈 So the white noise is a 30-second sample generated by Audacity on default settings. I'm using Voxengo SPAN inside Reaper for the frequency analysis. Playing the raw white noise sample inside Reaper shows a nice flat line: And playing back that sample, with an output from the interface looped back into one of the inputs, gives a very slight difference: You can see a bit of roll-off below 50 Hz and above ~10 kHz. The interface is an old Mackie Onyx Blackjack, recording at 24-bit 48kHz. However... this isn't the method I was using to send the white noise to the pre-amp pedal. Instead I was using an Akai MPX8 sample player connected to the Laney, so it seems like maybe it's been limited by the frequency range that can produce, rather than what the interface can record. The "Red: direct signal into audio interface" in the very first graph I posted is actually the MPX8 directly into the interface, which backs up this theory. What I can do is repeat the tests using the loopback from output --> input instead, and then update the OP with new images. It's slightly fiddlier, which is why I used the Akai instead, but it shouldn't take long. UPDATE: I've re-done it properly and updated all the graphs in the original post, so it's much more accurate now 😅

@dmccombe7 not sure if you’re aware of the “new” Ashdown Little Bastard - this will be closer to what Martin is aiming for however he wants to make it his own: https://ashdownmusic.com/products/lb-30-2-n We’re also aiming for 40cm wide as that’s what the original Little Bastard was, and it is the max I want to go for to suit my Barefaced cabs

I'm a drummer. Anyone wanting to chat to me whilst I'm playing is almost certainly within range of my implements, and I can get pretty clumsy if disturbed. It happens rarely, but is always over in seconds. I try to keep the bloodstains off the drum heads, naturally.

Update: 1. Will probably aim for adding a bias selector so users can choose KT88 or 6550 for ~100W or EL34 for ~60-70W 2. Preamp will be designed with a Gain control to create drive 3. Power amp Martin says he likes to design as clean as possible but “100W is 100W” which makes sense 4. Chassis more likely to be like the new Ashdown LB30-2 than the Orange Terror; Martin says he wants a fresh, original look that’s different to anything else 5. Nothing will really happen until August or September but when he can he will prototype something and get some local bassists to trial it so as to get design feedback before we go any further. I’ll keep this updated as things progress

I had the seniors recline on the sofa. You know, them being old and all.

I’d bet if someone at gibson seriously put their mind to it they’d be able to make a bass that looks feels and sounds as good as the epiphone vintage pro thunderbirds