Leaderboard

"unexpected stool content" ... Yes, I am a ten year old trapped in a middle aged body.

Few months back I got thinking if I was happy with my tone from my Dingwall basses… and the answer was “ish”. But I always loved my Status basses. Given my band were down at G# i thought there was no way I could use one again. My guitarist suggested trying to play at A# on a 5, so much more attainable and likely stable. And it worked, most of our stuff can be done at half step down, and for those G# times the Quad Cortex does a fine job. So, given Rob was feeling better and making basses again - albeit wooden with graphite reinforcement - I decided to place an order for a CW-2 with blue tint and white LEDs. I’d been after this combo for years. I thought the bass would still sound good, even though it wasn’t rocking as much carbon graphite as my CW-1. Possibly different, but still good! It has now arrived and… it’s fantastic. Great feeling, and the sound is awesome. Very similar to the CW-1. I went straight into a session to record a new track and it sat so well. I’m a very happy bunny. I am now considering selling my Dingwall 😂 potentially ordering another Status! If you’re considering a new Status, but think “oh they’re not made of graphite now”; don’t worry. They are still sounding brilliant. Genuinely excellent basses!

I’m pretty much finished building my new fly board but I have a little bit of space on the lower deck of the board for some kind of micro pedal. I’m looking for something to fill that space that I don’t need to access often, like an always on pedal. Set it and forget it kind of thing. Does anyone have any suggestions of something that could fit in that little space? Signal path for those that are interested…. Harmonic Booster (always on) > Eons > Infinity > Julia > Delverb > Looper > Element. I use the tuner and compressor on the Infinity so not really looking for a separate pedal for those needs

The Earl Haig with Bluesfire today, a short-notice gig to fill in for a very good local band. Good numbers, maybe 100 at the start, quite a few more by the end. Setting up, a dodgy di lead on my amp was freaking when the spots turned on. Took a while to track down. But we had the full light show, there will be photos. First half it seemed ok to us, but apparently sound was very harsh. Our sound guy unfamiliar with house pa. Second half sounded better apparently. Audience randomly joined in the vocals for sharp dressed man, quite a lot of dancing and upriarious applause. Although some of the time we couldn't see the audience for smoke. Lots of happy, enthusiastic punters and great feedback. Alex got a few sets of applause for his solos, was like a jazz gig! Apparently the bit where we co-ordinate and Alex does trills and I do finger tapping was 'epic' - we think it's silly but fun 😁 Lost track of time so started to finish early but ended up doing three encores. Were taken aback to get applause just for starting Purple Rain. Final song was let's stick together which gets manic and my fingers started behaving oddly and then virtually cramped up... just made it to then end.

Saturday night to Trowbridge Steam Fair - usual set up, gennys rattling away, traction engines puffing about, beer tent with pallets for our stage, soggy field after epic rainstorms during the day. It was a closed event for the exhibitors who had clearly decided to have a good time and get into the cider and ale for a serious session. Our dep gitrist from Weymouth (even further to drive than my 65 miles) fitted in well, just lost it a couple of times in my sax set (he did OK considering how few covers bands in the area suddenly launch into sax-led numbers like One Step Beyond, Midnight Hour and Geno after the standard guitry crowd pleasers) Long day, got home at 01:05. Cat was not pleased at the lack of pandering since 5.30pm previous afternoon! Pic below is of me being a poseur (aka knob) on sax during 'Geno'

You can keep my jealousy in there!

Rumble 800 Head and 2 x 210 ! Nice together with an old P

"Ive taken up playing bass guitar, Mrs Saunders" "I can see you like to do it standing up with a strap on, Mr Gimlet" "Yib!Yib! Pmnff!Pmnff! Weep!Weep!"

A couple of pics to “fix” that bass.

EnoFest in Durham, North Carolina

Haven't seen this yet, but should be good. Only broadcast in Northern Ireland but now on iPlayer for 11 months. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00206t5/the-rory-gallagher-story?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2XFBxI1Kof2npKFVsJHY24FS_-pRzq3eGQFhczYeD9nfGUnK8psb8_Dzk_aem_ZmFrZWR1bW15MTZieXRlcw

I'd buy an Ender 3 Pro or similar. get the latest version as it's cheap and does a good job for the price. They are between £200 and £300 depending on the version and the functionality. Get a magentic mat so you aren't messing around with glass beds for your first printer. Some people will argue that it teaches you about the basics of printing, so does winding your own bass strings, make it easy for yourself. If you can afford a printer with automatic bed levelling, thats the one to go for. Do not be fooled by adverts of bikini clad men and women (I'm not sexist) oozing about these incredible prints. They might not be telling the truth. Also do not be seduced by no name brands. Get a few rolls of the same brand of filament, preferably PLA or PLA+. Ignore PETG, ABS, TPU, CF and anything else. Some of these are difficult to print, some of these are very difficult to print and some of these are toxic to print with. get the same brand so you can learn what temperatures work. 3d printing is very temperature sensitive. My printign values in my house on my Prusa are going to be different to yours on a different printer and bed. Get the same brand as you have a fighting chance of doing the same print twice. Ask questions, ask lots of questions in this thread. I think this is the main thread for this sort of thing on Basschat unless I'm told otherwise. When you think you have asked far too many questions, keep asking. You can make a lot of simple mistakes doing all this, I know as I made most of all of them. I may have even invented some new mistakes all on my own. I'm good like that. Start small and learn. Learn how to bed level, learn about temperatures for PLA and PLA+, learn the workglow of going from a model to something printed. You will need a printer, a slice (new term, this takes a model and slices it into layers for your printer to print. Your printer is pretty dumb, until recently your microwave could probably outthink it. You dumb phone certainly could and your smartphone is at Einstein level. The slice takes a complex 3d model and converts this into information that your coffee machine can understand. (and thats more intelligent than your printer). Your slicer has to communicate with your printer so use an SD card that you know works. If you are lucky your new printer may have an Ethernet port or WiFi port. This makes life a little easier. Once you have a sliced model, you load it into your printer, tell it to print (you have read the instruction manual that appears to be written in something that looks and resembles English but isn't quite). Get another good book, something big and heavy and wait. And wait, and wait and wait. 3d printing is not for the impatient. Models take a long time to print, big models take the cube of a small model to print. 8-10 hours, a mere blink of an eye, 20-30 hours, thats not bad, 50-70 hours. Thats serious printing. Start small and stay small is my advice. Only go big when you need to. Ask questions, did I say that before? Ask and ask and ask and watch videos. 90% of the videos on 3d printing are self congratulatory middle aged bearded bankers (spelling mistake) showing you their latest Ironman mask. These are often recorded in a dark basement where they still live with their parents. These are badly filmed, unedited, an awful lot of bad facial hair, bad dress sense with bad 2000's black t-shirts advertising bands no one has ever heard of in Seattle, Wisconsin or Immingham. These are a waste of your life, 20 mins of watching somebody attempt to speak a cohrent sentence with 7 consecutive umms or ahh's, severe camera shake, that could be condensed to 45 seconds is 20 mins you will never get back. Choose your videos carefully, if they have less than 500 followers, go elsewhere. Learn to use a design package. There are loads of free ones. Good ones take time to learn. I am still learning Fusion 360 after nearly four years. In my defence this is not my primary job. Ask questions and put the time in. You do not need to be a programmer or devops to learn Fusion460 or OnShape or FreeCad or SCAD or whatever, you need to learn to think the way they think and sometimes thats hard. Keep trying, it will take time but you'll get there. Ask questions (I might have mentioned that) and keep trying things out. never stop learning, I haven't. Thanks Rob

Or if you are a tone purist:

Had to share this. It’s Harvey mason- chameleon band at the Java jazz festival. Freddie’s playing is so good. Pocket legend but so groovy. He has the special sauce. I LOVE how he makes those Bartolini’s sing. Wow. Kamasi is a legend in my eyes. enjoy. I did.

Not sure about gig posters but I am very pleased with my new avatar

And killed off the slower, weaker brain cells, leaving only the fit, healthy ones.

Thomas Lang and I make up the rhythm section for this massive prog production featuring The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra!! Arjen Lucassen and Marco Sfogli guest. Line-up / Musicians - Youmna Jreissati / vocals - Elia Monsef / vocals, charango, acoustic guitar, programming, composer, arranger, producer - Alain Ibrahim / rhythm & acoustic guitars - Danny Bou-Maroun / keyboards, piano, percussion, programming, orchestration & conducting, composer, arranger, producer - Alexander Abi Chaker / percussion (1,2,4,5,8) With: - Michael Mills / vocals (as Utopia) - Marco Sfogli / guitar (1-3,5,8,11) - Özgür Abbak / guitar solo (6) - Arjen Anthony Lucassen / guitar solo (9) - Jokine Solban / violin solo (2) - Yamane Al Hage / violin solo (3,8,9) - Roger Smith / cello (1,10,12) - Nobuko Miyazaki / flute (9,11) - Mohannad Nassar / oud (5,10) - Dan Veall / bass - Thomas Lang / drums - The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra - The Lebanese Filmscoring Ensemble / string quartet

Queen, "We Will Rock You", and Queen, "We Will Rock You"

Great gig at Black Deer Festival yesterday. We may have been on one of the smaller stages (Caffe Nero tent) but the vibe of the place was great and we had a laugh. We had a special guest with us playing second acoustic guitar and - more importantly perhaps - lap steel, which added a whole new layer to the live sound. (There’s a thread on here investigating the use of the original album instrumentation tracks in the future but having Cris on stage with us was so cool). Muddy as hell, all my cases, cables, pedalboard and cab need a damn good clean today, as does my car which almost got stuck in the car park when I was leaving after the mighty Sheryl Crow and her band had played a cracking set on the main stage. Oh, and there was a wicked drone show at the end. I need to go re learn 1 song which I kept getting in the wrong order in my head, and learn how to live with a big hat, a mic stand and no space to move around 🤣 But other than that, awesome 🤠

Oh, it has to be Penn and Teller. The sound is pure magic.

Also been testing out how strong PLA glues are. I have loads and loads and loads of test pieces so I thought I'd see how strong my preferred glue of choice, FloPlast is. Glued two flat bits together at right angles and put a lot of effort in to breaking the joint. The joint held and the plastic broke. Thats good, so I feel comfortable with using FloPlast as a glue. Just for information. Rob

After a lot of thinking, I have decided to keep the MK4. The issues I had/have are: 1. Display integration with Octoprint is a joke, but by putting a cheap TFT display and case on the Raspberry Pi, that replaces the MK4 display screen. I just don't look at the MK4 display now. Simple and cheap fix. Need to tidy desk as well 2. Using the TFT means I don't use PrusaLink which is not fit for purpose. 3. I still have problems with the filament sensor not detecting that I have removed the filament when it runs out. What actually happens is that the filament sensor is at the top of the extruder, it detects that the filament has finished, but there is still circa 10cm of filament past the sensor on the way to the hot end. This seems to work very well and I haven't had more than one problem. Once the sensor has detected no more filament, it moves the head to the bottom right corner and will retract the remaining filament, about 10cm, back out of the top of the extruder. This works fine. I then have to put new filament in, the sensor keeps saying that there is still filament in the extruder when its ejected it, I have to put in and pull out a strand of filament 5x to 50x before its acknowledges there is no filament actually there. It thinks there is but there isn't. Tried blowed compressed air and made sod all difference. It does work but it's annoying constantly pushing in the filament and taking it out. 4. The other issue, the BIG one, is that Prisa have not implemented the Gcode command to inform Octoprint that the filament is out. I have an Octoprint plugin that detects this command then emails me so I can having dinner downstairs and get a simple message to change filament. No need to keep my eyes glued to the printer. This is unacceptable from Prusa as it's just a firmware update. I'll be writing words to Josef Prusa on this. The upside to the Mk4 is the speed and quality. Its 2.6x faster than my MK3 due to the Input Shaping. I used the six pieces of my V3 headless as samples and used PrusaSlicer to work out how long each piece would take on a MK3S+, a MK4 (without Input Shaping) and a Mk4 with Input Shaping. So TR, Top Right, would take 794 mins, 766 mins and 295 mins below. The speed of the Mk4 without Input Shaping is pretty much the same as the MK3S+, its about 5-6% faster, which is not worth an upgrade. When you turn on Input Shaping, the difference is dramatic, it's all software (apart from a tiny accelerometer) and suddenly the MK4 is 2.6x faster, so an 88hr print (yep thats how long some things take, and I have done things that take even longer) now takes 33.5 hours. The quality is still excellent as well. A 50 hour timesaving is fantastic. I now time the long ones overnight and can do 2-3 pieces during a (long) day. When it took 88 hours, everything had to be perfect and I had to be around to change the parts, no longer. The other thing that I now know, thanks @SamIAm, is that I have a chance to upgrade my MK3S+ to use Input Shaping and possibly get the same speed up. Still investigating that one, but if so, it's a no brainer. Quality is also high, I am now printing at 0.1mm because it's so fast. Rob

The one (or would that be two.....!?!) that come to mind for me (albeit one is a '.......and........') are.... And...... I prefer the 'Fast' Version......my old guitarist, the 'Slow'......so we were going to do a mash up of both.......until the drummer threw a tantrum and quit over not being able to go to the beach......but that is another story.....!

Can't find a pic of me with a bass right now, so this is me showing off my SOUNDS freebie shirt (given away in the early 80s). The shirt is thin as heck but lovely on a hot day, there can't be many that survived - although a good condition one did turn up on eBay for £500 recently.

Following on from @Tim Chapple's superb Spotify Playlist of Basschatter's work, I thought I'd remind us all that there's this collaborative list floating about (I'll add it back to my signature soon) for a great bass line general resource! http://basschat.co.uk/topic/246416-spotify-best-bass-lines-evaaar-playlist-get-involved

I recently got myself a Lekato WS-70 UHF wireless kit after getting the bug (if you'll pardon the pun) at the NW bass bash in May. Used them at a few rehearsals and a couple of gigs and it's been great so far. Loved being able to do the walk out front and check the levels. Last outing I got a quick lesson in the perils of venturing out into the crowd - some guy wanted to put his arm around my shoulder and in his uncoordinated state he managed with bullseye accuracy hit my A tuner (yes, the A) and knock it out of tune. In a further showing of surprising accuracy, it was almost exactly a semitone out, so was able to finish the song by moving up a fret on the A string until the end. Live and learn! But on a technical level, no complaints - I got no dropouts, no interference, battery is more than long lasting enough to handle a full gig (probably could chance two before absolutely needing to charge). I did suspect there was a bit of a negative effect on note sustain, but now I'm not so sure.

<raises hand hesitantly>

Last full rehearsal with the Hulla band for next Saturday's Hullabaloo festival headline (well, we organise it so we get the best slot 😃). It went very well - tightest I've heard the band play. Add to that tea and biscuits during the first half and you have a very refined evening. Our BL is a massive Springsteen fan, so he bases the set duration on Bruce's marathons. We were just over three hours start to finish last night, with perhaps 10 minutes of break. In previous years, the crowd participation, extended intros and requests for encores has taken us to the 4 hour mark. I'm also playing with a scratch band made up of three Hulla bandmates in a support slot earlier in the afternoon. Our last rehearsal is Thursday. Friday is set up day - we have a large marquee to cover the stage which is set in the village green and most of the band help out with that in return for breakfast and fish and chips at the end of the day. Our sound guy does the event sound and I'll be helping with that too. A busy week ahead. 😃

My experience of capturing is Tonex based - but in general I find that using the controls to make small changes on a Capture are actually damn close to how the original unit would react, but when the changes are larger that's when it starts to not react the same as the original. Subtractive EQing seems to work a lot better than Addition though. As for fully adjustable - I'm not sure that capturing is the right approach for that as it would need the user to do manually set everything in all the millions of possible settings. Modelling has to still be the way forward for that, because that is already at the component level. My concern isn't the processors etc for as component modelling gets better, it's the size of the files. They are already massive compared to the last generation, and that is the reason why there is no instant Patch changing anymore - that's why we have Snapshots / Scenes / Whatever so all the needed items are loaded into a single patch for instant use. But the bigger the files, the more DSP is needed, the fewer blocks available, or the more expensive the kit as additional DSP chips are added.

Gavin Harrison (Porcupine Tree) and I make up the rhythm section of this sonic soundscape epic EP that was later added to The Book Of Gates album by EON, featuring an all-star line up. I'll see if I can find that too! Amadeus Awad ~ Guitars, Programming & Keyboards Elia I. Monsef ~ Vocals Gavin Harrison ~ Drums Dan Veall ~ Bass & Danny Bou-Maroun ~ Orchestration & Additional Keyboards.

Thanks for putting me right on the capture process. I suppose what I really meant by the last question was when will the tools be available to allow users to create their own fully adjustable models which duplicate the way all the controls on the original work?

Do you not have an artistic friend you could slip a few quid to to knock one up? This sort of thing has a "thin end of the wedge" vibe about it.

Might be stretching the definition of "pop" here but Nirvana, "Polly" off Nevermind and "(New Wave) Polly" off Insesticide?

Just found this, thought some may be interested.

TONIGHT! The Cantina Band at the wedding of Lewis (?) and Gemma (?) at a posh hotel somewhere near Nuneaton. The happy couple had seen our subtle blend of extremely loud rock covers and slapdash half-arsedery at a gig a few months ago and liked the cut of our jib for some reason, so they booked us to play their wedding. We mainly play Motorhead, AC/DC, Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, Clash, Ramones, Sabbath type stuff, so obviously they thought "This is the perfect band to make our special day truly memorable". Arrival at 5:30, load in to a tiny marquee filled with very well turned out wedding guests, elderly relatives and infants sliding across the small dancefloor. This... could be a weird gig, lads. Quick setup, soundcheck resulted in lots of bemused/disgusted looks before a quick pint and band conflab (many variations on "We're going to go down like a broken escalator/turd in a lift/Pork pie at Passover") and then we were on. Three songs into the first set, half the people had left. I can't say I blame them. One table seemed to be quite enjoying it (including Uncle Knobhead (there's one at every wedding)) so that was something. A few hardy souls braved the dancefloor for a couple of the less overtly offensive numbers, and at the groom's request we'd learned a McFly song (!) for the bride (Five colours in her hair (that's the name of the song, not... the bride only had one colour in her hair. Two, max) which is good fun to play and more complicated than you'd think) so we got her to join in with the singing on that, which went down well (especially with Uncle Knobhead, he loved it) and dispelled some of the air of "WTF?" . First set done, we stepped out for a vape while they cut the cake and had their first dance (not counting five colours in her hair (the song)). Second set kicked off with Highway to Hell, and suddenly they were all loving it. Packed dancefloor, everyone singing along and having a whale of a time! The second set has a few more well known/not as deliberately obtuse rock numbers in, so it went down really well. I took to the dancefloor for Sex on Fire, and had a boogie with Uncle Knobhead and the mother of the bride, which was an absolute hoot. The singer was recovering from a chest infection, so he was really struggling by this point... I helped him out on Jonny B Goode, then attempted to give him a hand on Proud Mary, before realising I don't actually know any of the words (apart from "Left a good job in the city" and "rolling") so it became a comedy number. Played the Sterling ->small board -> sansamp -> MB 121. All done, loads of people said they'd really enjoyed it (some of them even aked for our card(!)), couple of onion bhajis from the buffet, photo of the bride on the drums and the groom on Bass, pack down while the DJ played the sort of music you'd actually *want* to hear at a wedding, well paid, home about 11:15 for last nights chicken curry & dahl and a pint of old father StingRayBoy's homebrew cider (ABV unknown). Actually a pretty good gig, considering how bad we thought it was going to be.

Tee hee, couldn't leave it alone... Replaced the cream jack plate with a black one with gold screws... And added a bit of silliness...