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Strictly speaking this is Off Topic, but I put it here because it's a response to a thread within General Discussion. In the thread about the most musically talented musician of all time, I wrote a post that I now believe must have been way more hard hitting than I imagined when I wrote it, and Bassman7755 especially was (or seemed) its target. I have read and re-read the offending post, and now believe that it was an ugly thing to write. I therefore apologise to Bassman7755, and of course all others who may have felt they were its target, for that post's general tone and the aspects of it that put down other people. What I should've said was that the most talented person likely is not a person we tend to know. What I said instead was that people who mention McCartney have no clue about this stuff. I'm very sorry, and wish Bassman7755 and others all the best. Bert

Look I am an advocate of using whatever tools you have to get the best results you can for yourselves and your audience. No one NEEDS a compressor on their bass. There, I said it ? You may find one can help you to either achieve a tonal goal or to sit in the mix more easily. You may find its all smoke and whistles and too much shag and hassle. It's all fine. Really. Go play, enjoy the heck out of it. If anyone on herequest ever wants to ask anyone more about compression, ask away. People will answer. If anyone considers someone a lesser player for using compression I'd respectfully suggest they don't really know why someone might want to. It ain't a magic wand it ain't never fixed crappy technique for me, quite the opposite actually, it makes quiet stinky poo louder so any string noise rings right out ? Play how you want. Peace...

This is possibly one of the most intelligent, polite, helpful and well meaning forums I've ever come across, and Bass Tractors post just proves this. Long may it remain this way! By the way, best wishes to all for 2018, wherever you are and whatever you're planning/hoping to do.

I have not read the original thread so can't comment on it. However I applaud your ability to acknowledge that you may have offended someone and are willing to apologise for it. This is especially relevant on the internet where it seems that so many people are happy to troll etc. Good on ya

A couple more.

Now then. Some of you may recall the Smitten Kitten thread from a while back. I fell in love with a five-string Mike Lull NRT5, sold a bunch of basses and put in an order. Six months on, the photo below dropped into my inbox today with a brief message saying Mike Lull will be building it this week, so hopefully I'll see it before Christmas. I guess it's pretty rare to see his work like this, so posting here. I am heartedly excited. P

I am sure he will be very good. I haven`t seen a bad performer on there yet. I did notice he had a music stand on the clip though :p. I have just bought my ticket, so will find out more about him if he is there on Saturday

http://bfy.tw/Fagm

No idea what you're referring to to, but I'm sure the apology will be accepted in the spirit it was intended.

Not quite - Ron Grainer was the composer, Delia was the arranger. Not to belittle Delia's contribution in any way - her work on Doctor Who alone is of colossal importance, truly astounding. There should be statues of this woman.

Agreed! I'll try a Gmail account and report back.

Oh I get all that I'm just taking a break as I'm shattered I'll have a poke around and see if I can find anything. In the meantime if you could try changing your email address to an alternative (ideally a different provider) to see if the problem goes away that would be awesome

If you need to be completely un-amplified you are going to need a double bass. Acoustic bass guitars simply aren't loud enough to compete with anything more than a single quiet (not strummed) acoustic guitar because the body isn't big enough to project the sound. Low notes and a decent volume requires a large body, hence the size of the double bass. There are a few very large bodied acoustic guitars like the Earthwood Bass, but they are very rare and expensive. The other issue you will come across is that decent small-bodied acoustic basses (one you will be using with an amp) tend to cost a lot more than an equivalent quality electro-acoustic guitar, partly because they aren't so popular and also because once again amplifying low notes is more complicated than a standard guitar. Unless you get very lucky with something like a bargain-priced second hand Takamine TB10, expect to pay at least £1k to get something of the equivalent quality to a £350 electro-acoustic 6-string guitar. TBH if you are going to have to reply on amplification you might as well use your favourite electric bass and a small and unobtrusive combo. It will sound better and you won't have to worry about feedback or excessive handling noise from cheap piezo pickup systems.

Why Chris, you bass-ho!

Better than ever!

Yeh...but you can make everyone else weep when you let them know what you paid for your house back at the end of the 70s!

We changed a couple of settings Let me know if you get logged out again though. We're turning on a few features one at a time

It's so easy to dodge the responsibility for what's been said on the Internet. I applaud your honesty and for accepting responsibility about what was said.

Here's the link to the Kawai - it's a beaut!

HGBM only £69 delivered here, bit of a bargain: https://www.scan.co.uk/products/one-control-bjf-series-fx-hookers-green-bassmachine-bass-preamp-pedal-true-bypass-aluminium-enclosur

Yes, weight is an issue for many of us, who've reached a "certain age" now Gone are my days of lugging speaker cabs the size and weight of fridges.... Trace gear tends to be on the heavy side.... that is, it seems to vary from "very heavy" to "*@$!*?* heavy"

I've historically been the same, but have recently started using my frantabit with the least amount of bitcrushing, and a high gain going in (reduced to unity with its volume) as an always on effect. This just add a tiny bit of texture to sustained notes. Think the end chord of plug in baby.

It's a ring modulator, which is a completely different beast.

Here's an example of an analogue 'sample rate reducer' I believe the frantabits destruction mode is a digital recreation of these...

He's got a pretty good harmoniser, then..!

Yeah, women do that to me all the time!

I used to own a Frantabit, it was very good indeed, you can for example manage some nasty velcroish fuzz sounds with it, apart from the ringy weirdo thing. Eventually I found it pretty useless and my woman was about to leave.

What Naxos said...I knew anyway.. That Satin finish is amazing - really brings the grain to life. Mike must be suffering while he's waiting...

You are right Andy - your a genius

Well deserved Alan. Always admired your work from afar. Look forward to seeing one "in the flesh" one day.

I've somehow gone from one Precision (and a couple of Jazz basses) a year or so ago to five precisions, one Jazz and a couple of other makes. I can't even use the 'different colour' excuse as three of my Precisions are sunburst!

Many thanks. Look forward to meeting in what I hope will be sunny LA.

Don't desolder the wires at the pick up end but from the controls.

Beautiful! I do love a fretless bass.

If you want it shell pink you might be better off buying a Flea signature body from Stratosphere ( LINK ) and selling the sunburst body, it would certainly be cheaper than a decent respray.

Given your thread on work pi$$ing you off then this can be seen as nice things happening to nice people being somewhat borne out.

Okey dokey I have numerous Rickys over the ears my fave being a 1992 4003s which i stupidly sold, i have a year old 4003s in Midnight Blue and to me it,s not a patch on my old one. The weight of the 92 was like playing with a truck on it weighed a ton, but thats how i liked it at the time, when you gigged with it, you knew you had gigged with it. I have tried many many basses over the years, Musicmans, Ovations, Overwater, Shergold, Yamaha,Gibson etc etc...even a Fender Precision Lite which was the dogs nads, and then i came across Spectors, i have a thing for thru necks, just think they feel more solid, so i purchased a brand new Korean Legend Custom........and since then have not looked back, that bass cost me £238 off ebay, and it knocked everything into touch, to such an extent that my main is now a Euro 4 xl, and its higher end brother a Forte helium Usa, which is just beyond words in quality and sound. I have always loved the Ricky sound but for build quality and unbeleivable guts it has to be a Spector.

Have you been on SwissChat?

Yes, well done Alan, the accolades are deserved.

Having owned and played a " Few " ACGs over the years I can only say " Hugely Deserved " and congratulations . Serious GAS for this when I pop over to Alans website for a drool ... Best Basses in the World ......( Probably ) .. Gary

Well done Alan. I remember he came down all the way from the Borders to our first Yorkshire Bass Bash a few years ago. ......Nice to see a Bass in BGM that actually exists ( this comment refers to my Topic 'Vote and Win') regarding 3 Jackson Basses that were offered as prizes by BGM.

Cats in Space - Scarecrow. Never heard of them, until I saw them as they supported Deep Purple, they were great, so bought the album.

And he we are again, what are transparent compressors good for in a pub band? Not about to try and teach anyone to suck eggs, if you know this stuff, sorry for the post, if you are not really interested please skip it, if you want to know why a compressor might help you in a live situation when it apparently 'does nothing' or 'kills my dynamics' then feel free to have a read. Its like a very cut down compressor 101 chat I gave once, which some of you are still scarred by..... Originally compression was supposed to be a transparent tool to prevent an engineer from having to ride a fader throughout a take or a mix. All it was supposed to do was keep that level more even - as often as not by just slightly modifying the envelope of the input sound, hence the attack and release control. And with VCA compressors they pretty much achieved it. But before VCA compressors there were Vari-mu compressors (real tube compressors), Optical compressors and FET compressors. All these types have pluses and minuses, they all have different attack and release curves all of which do more than just transparently alter volume and help out an engineer. On top of these types of compressor there is tape compression and and amp/driver compression - no driver is completely compression free when you push it hard, no amp is compression free when you push it hard, all overdrives and distortions and fuzzes are also compressors, just totally not transparent ones. The best ever compressor you will ever experience is the pair you have strapped on to the side of your head all day. Yes your ears/brain are simply the most powerful compressor you can buy. The quietest sound you can hear is equivalent to your ear drum moving the width or a single molecule apparently, whilst the loudest sound you can hear before deafening yourself pretty much instantly is hundreds of thousands of times louder (you need to look into the way sound pressure level measured in micro pascals and decibels work as units of measurement). That amazing set of compressors on the side of your head has an unfortunate side effect, without a direct reference you are almost totally volume blind, small changes in volume are beyond you to describe, you can not reliably perceive them. Unless they are compared to a level that has not changed and is not changing. Obviously bigger differences are easy to perceive but the differences that can make or break a mix, if you aren't listening to the the mix happening at the time, nope, not a hope. So a deliberately transparent compressor you can't hear working on your signal in isolation, until you are doing way to much with it, and thats about when you feel your dynamics disappearing, because you are doing huge amount of compression in order to hear anything much at all. In a mix way less compression would be 'enough' to change the envelope of your signal to make your instrument be easier to hear, but you aren't in a mix so in order to hear anything at all you put way too much compression on. Thing is, a studio engineer has the time and choice to select the right type of compressor for the particular part of a track he/she wants it for and then set it up just so. What it does to an instrument in a mix then is help prevent 'masking', this is where the envelope of the signal drops in such a way, either because of the player's technique or their instrument or their preferred tonal choices that some other instrument makes it hard to hear when it plays at the same time. Near the end of a mix when two instruments are masking each other I have found that a change of as little as 0.1dB can sometimes make a real difference to the way a pair of instruments sound in a mix. Back to live then. If you are trying to use a compressor to help you be heard in a mix you need very very little for it to make a difference. If you are using compression for a definite effect then you may need bucket loads. If you like your tone as it is but feel you sometimes 'disappear' in the mix and are constantly turning up, then a transparent compressor, set just right, could be the answer to the fight. But you need good critical listening skills, you need to do this 'in the mix' unless you have great metering on the pedal to help you out otherwise you probably will put too much compression on the sound in order to hear it happening. Compression is difficult to master when you are in the safe space of a mix down with no distractions and lots of time to experiment. In order to make it 'easier' to use many pedals have no 'confusing' metering and not all the required parameters to really control the compression. This is a double edged sword, no metering and 'doing it by ear' are nigh on impossible with a transparent compressor unless you are setting it up in situ in the mix. On the other hand a full featured compressor is waaay to complex for an average bassist to get the best out of, and also remember that little detail about setting it right for a particular song? Well you cant with an always on compressor, so you have to set it to help you a little bit all the time, and that's another skill. Ultra low ratio (1.5 to 1 even), very low threshold, slow-ish attack (50 to 80 ms) and fast release (less than 30ms) giving not more than 3dB total compression on the loudest parts is probably a good target for a general touch of compression type of setting on bass live IME. No you cant really hear or feel it if you are just playing solo (dont be concerned if when playing normally the 3dB light doesnt light up at all, you are still getting some compression if your threshold is set right). In the mix you will be easier to hear, whether you are a loud or quiet band. Not because of tonnes of compression but because your individual note envelopes are changed just a smidge so that the post transient part of the note envelope is a touch louder than before. Hope that makes some sense, probably not though

My BB2024X arrived I was worried for a short while that it'd be just the same as my 1024x ....and I'd be a few (!) quid poorer....but the more I've played it (only had it a few hours) the more the differences really show. First thing was the weight, noticeably lighter than the 1024x. The neck on 2024x is slicker with slightly less clunky dimensions (I've not measured! Just my initial feel), the neck near the heel is finished much more smoothly meaning access higher up is a lot easier, quite noticeable. Finish much much nicer (to be expected though given price difference). Frets are also not as 'tall' which certainly adds to the playability. Sound-wise, there isn't a lot in it as has probably been expressed elsewhere, and they are currently wearing different strings so not an accurate comparison, but the 2024 seems a bit more articulate and even across the board....but maybe only the player can tell! Overall, couldn't be happier! Merry xmas to me

Ooh very nice, I was admiring that for a while on the retailers website. I may get a gang of angry traditionalist after me with pitchforks for saying this, but I thought a tort guard would look amazing on that.....(runs for cover ?) lovely bass though, I am starting my savings tin in the new year for a CS Relic.