Leaderboard

before the fall of communism, a mate of mine, a then recent history graduate, wanted to visit Mongolia, which was Soviet controlled. He goes to the embassy to apply for a visa, and is shown through a hallway lined with busts of heroes of the Soviet Republic, into a grey room with extremely utilitarian furniture, and a very senior member of the staff asked him what the purpose of his visit was, explaining that they don't get many people wanting to go to their country. To which he replies "I've been studying eastern history from the middle ages and I'm really interested in Genghis Khan" The guy's eyes light up, he smiles, opens the door to check whether anybody is listening outside, and produces a load of information from a secret cabinet. It turns out that the Soviets were not fans of Genghis Khan because everybody in Mongolia loved him and he was seen as an anti-Soviet cult of personality. So in approving his visa the official made it very clear that he frowned upon people visiting his country for that reason, and that my mate should definitely not go to this list of towns in order to see the monuments and historic battlefields, and that the details of Genghis' achievements on the photocopied handout were not things to be proud of or to boast about

Got this from the Budgie FB page today. Had to laugh at some of the reasons. Specifically the reason for banning the punk bands.

OK - pretty much finished. I did the tweaks that @KiOgon recommended: I'll pop a set of spare strings on to do the final checks that everything is still where it should be and to get the starting positions for the bridge and pickup heights - @fleabag is going to fit his preferred strings, do the final set-up and fit the strap buttons but I'll make sure the basics are in place to start with. I'm pleased how this has turned out:

Those songs aren't really that shameful. You want to try looking interested while playing Wonderwall for the zillionth time...

KGB: Who is UB40? Is nice Ukrainian girl sing songs about tractor factory number 40? Russian Music Bloke: Is revolutionary socialist peoples playing songs of oppressed Caribbean plantation workers in style of Irish Republican Comrade Val Doonican KGB: Approve.

Every single one of the songs that inevitably get mentioned as howlers on these threads are the ones that fill the dancefloor. maybe we bass players shouldn't be such snobs.

Bass just arrived 30mins ago and have only really just had time to tune it and play around for a short period. So far the neck feels super fast with a very low action and really well set up out the box. Strings are Stainless Steel and they have a very bright tone but they don't really feel much different to the various nickel strings i've been using. I changed to nickel because they were less damaging to my fingertips but might stick with the steels depending on how long they last. In active mode there is so much choice in pickup selection along with treble and bass EQ cut / boost. In Passive mode the treble doesn't really do very much but maybe with a bit more volume from the amp it might change things a little. To be honest i like the everything set in mid points on active mode. Can't believe just how good the neck feels. Little wider than my Geddy Jazz but less than my Overwater J4 and maybe even less than my Warwick. Both my Warwick and Jazz have slim depth of neck tho whereas the Sandberg has a little more depth of neck. The feel is really good tho and allows for some very fast playing. EQ offers some amazing low end and you do need to boost the bass a little when just using the MM pick up on its own. Sounds very full and i can see where some people have said the tone has no character. It does sound quite clean and none of the "warmth" associated with Fender J or P basses. The tone isn't too far away from my Fender PJ Deluxe tho when in active mode. Bit more depth i'd say. Anyway time for lunch and then a bit more playing with the bass.. Here's a wee pic of the new bass hanging out with some friends. Dave

Hi all, my recently purchased rig, absolutely lovely.

Indeed, yes, no Rush. Although it's a real Countdown to that moment when I Turn The Pages. In the End, I hope my order didn't fall Between the Wheels and that I have to buy it on Kindle; I've never been a Digital Man.

The Village People being banned for 'violence' made me laugh.

I thought that was the best setlist ever for a minute

2 recent projects I refurbished bodies and popped together nestling nicely on the sofa - they are OK and really punch above their cost. Me 2 Sandberg’s And the other P bass with a status neck I popped together- very happy family.

A lot of good tips here - play to radio etc all really good. Hearing the chord (the defining notes) and being aware of the common chord progressions. Also whoever said call the guitar player out, he is very likely just rolling out the stuff he does at home on auto 👍 Years ago a really good player told me about his trick to build the link between what you hear in your head and what you can play spontaneously. He regularly played tunes he knew in his head - classical bits, folk tunes, hymn melodies, pop song vocal lines. All this stuff takes you to note sequences you won't normally uset. This massively helps you find any interval on your bass that your head hears. Vocal lines (any top lines really) are good because they are built totally differently to bass lines. It's one thing that changed the game for me - really opened up the fingerboard and to think an interval and go straight to it in the efficient position... worth trying (and sticking at) IMHO.

Seen this? Looks fit. Would match my incoming purchase (also surf green). want to get my hands on a little stubby too. In fact, shove another 210 under that and I’d be made up. the white cones look (even more) amazing with the contrast. looks like an expensive want...

Our guest columnist writes: No no no, Mr Skenkvar is incorrect. A Russian men vill do things wigorously -- such as pointing at vigs, building trektors, emerging wictorious against kepitalist foe -- but he vill never do them wiolently. There is no wiolence in Mother Russia, especially in KGB vich is really just a knitting circle and social club and definitely does not ever torture its wictims, errm I mean members."

The construction is completely different aside from them both being in metal boxes even then the Stubby is steel and the RM is Aluminium.... BUT that’s nitpicking. The paint is drying on a Rootmaster head as we speak

"You'd never know it's a vig, Keptin" says Star Trek's Mr Chekhov as he points wiolently at his new Armstrong Siddeley Mk II hairpiece.

A South Efrican tribute.

Capitalist, sucking blood of workers rat. And interfere in foreign policy of glorious USSR in People's Republic of Dudley. Also eroticism. Very bad.

Julio Iglasias was 'neofacism', Tina Turner was 'sex'. I'm starting wonder if they came up with the reasons by throwing some sort of multi faceted dice.

One assumes that 'Stodges' is a typo for 'Stooges'. Surprised they didn't have Iggy Poop on that list. We shouldn't laugh at the Russians, though. In 1978 the BBC refused to play Down In The Tube Station At Midnight because it was 'Disturbing'.

I agree with banning julio iglasias, his songs are criminal 😀

After chopping and changing my basses for years, I realised, that I had three really nice instruments that probably couldn't be bettered. Would rather spend the energy on playing/practicing/improving.

There's no Rush...

Don't confuse your personal preferences and prejudices with the audiences idea of a good song.

LAST-MINUTE STUFF If you have a long, cable-extension reel, can you please bring it along? We need to make sure we have enough to network power around the tables in the hall, so rather too many than not enough. Thanks!

Indeed it was. 3 out and 1 in since then 😃

These, for me, are still the best two posts on compressors on any thread I've read in several years on this forum and IMO worth digging up and sharing once every while! (1) COMPRESSORS AND PUB BANDS 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. It's 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 that's 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 can't 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 can't really hear or feel it if you are just playing solo (don't be concerned if when playing normally the 3dB light doesn't 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. (2) COMPRESSION SETTINGS: AN INTRODUCTION Right, compressor talk 102 in short then (if you know this stuff, skip it etc etc etc):- OK so there are 5 not 4 parameters, and they are as follows:- THRESHOLD LEVEL (level above which the compressor starts compressing) ATTACK TIME (time taken to reach n% of your total compression ratio, this is complicated by the fact that different circuits do this with different curves and get closer to 100% of the ratio by this time) RELEASE TIME (time to turn the ratio back down to 1:1 after the signal drops below the threshold) RATIO (slope) (amount that the compressor prevents the sound getting as loud as it would otherwise, i.e. 4:1 means the output is 1/4 of what it would have been) MAKE UP GAIN (level) (amount of gain to apply to the signal after compression, its always on though, not only when the threshold is exceeded) If you are looking to add a little 'something' extra to your bass tone, but don't have hella ears/metering/experience then I suggest this process:- Initial set up (this is actually all about setting the threshold level very accurately):- Set the attack to about 20ms, the release to 200ms the ratio to max (at least 10:1), make up gain leave at unity (0)dB Then playing at a quietish level on the A string lower the threshold slowly until either you first meter light (3dB) lights up or you hear it start to squeeze the volume. OK, this is entirely unusable right now, except from now on pretty much every note you play normally will start to compress (oh my God, think of the poor dynamics!!!) Second stage to set up:- So, we now set the ratio way back down to as low as it goes (1.5 to 1, or 2:1 are good) Set the attack back to about 50ms Set the release to about 45ms Play normal stuff. Turn the compressor off, and on, try and equalise the volume with the make up gain so that the volume is consistent whether the compressor is off or on. Now if you need a bit more 'bite' to your tone open up the attack a little, if the initial transient peak is too loud, or you want to hear the compression happen when you dig in then speed up the attack (faster than 25ms will getting very frustrating dynamics freaks!) If you feel your playing is choked by this lower the ratio, if you feel its not doing enough in the mix try raising the ratio very slightly (2.5:1 would be an absolute maximum) If you play streams of notes one after another legato and the attack of the first note is loud compared to the following notes' transients shorten the release even more (10ms is fine), I play a lot of 16th note lines, my release time is very very short Don't worry if you only see the 3dB light when you slam the strings as hard as you can, you know you are always compressing, just slightly, and just the meat of the note, after the initial transient peak. There you go you've effectively emulated a tube channel that is creeping in to saturation, on the meat of the note but left your transients untouched, and you aren't distorting. Hope this helps someone. [Source: @51m0n Dec 2017]

As per the title, I guess. Many record covers exist that are sublime in many ways, and many of these are also very well known. I was thinking we could delve into and post really unique covers that we love, but that are NOT very well known. Lemme start: Like Yes had Roger Dean, Swedish band Bob hund (stylised "bob hund") has their record cover designer in Martin Kann. For bob hund's officially untitled 1996 record, the cover read: "cover: Martin Kann" in Swedish, and indeed a photo of Martin Kann graced the cover. Ingenious, I though, and highly original. Of course, the record is now generally known as "Omslag: Martin Kann". I'll indulge in another one, also by bob hund: In 2011, their record "Det överexponerade gömstället" came with slightly different covers on CD and vinyl, one of them being of a yellow sticky note just stating: "I have no ideas for a cover. Sorry, Martin" 😁

@ped I feel a little sound demo is in order!

Cost i imagine

Finger noise drove me nuts. A certain amount is inevitable with round wound strings, especially steels. As previously mentioned it largely gets lost in the mix of a full band setting but I hated it when playing on my own. I switched to flat wounds, Ernie Ball Cobalts to be precise which still retain a certain amount of the round wound sound with reduced noise. D'Addario Chromes are another option for flats that still retain a brightness. Coated round wounds may be another option. I think Elixr do them, Nano web coating I think it's called?? Worth investigating too. Other than that, practice practice practice.

Ahh, to delve inside the mind of an '80's Soviet commissar! Bit like doing the 'Name the Song from the Picture' thread!

Canned Heat?

I think it's fair to say the UB40 played Moscow in 1986. Nice band, UB40. No sex etc, unlike that Julio Engalsias monster...

They do look violent don’t they 😂

The only American band I've ever felt were 'punk' were the MC5 and New York Dolls, well possibly the Stooges as well... Not that I have anything against the Ramones, but they did a ballad with a string quartet on it, for goodness sake! <ducks>

There's five in my band... Our set list would be a lot shorter if nobody had to play a song they don't like. I don't mind the odd one or two as long as the audience likes it. If a guitarist wants to play another flipping twelve bar blues so he can have three more boring solos when our audience loves our 80's song-and-dance along numbers then I put my foot down.

All very different in sound and feel. If I had more one would be an electro acoustic (probably an Epiphone Masterbilt) and maybe a Hofner violin bass. My old Hohner Jazz was OK too.

+1

They can look pretty gathering dust in the corner......😉

I play alembic for reggae and ironically the one I use mostly is an all maple neck through Europa with humcancelling pickups. When I first had it I thought it was gonna be too twangy and bright for reggae. It is a twangy bass with lots of prominent mids also the bottom end is healthy end has so much clarity without sounding woolly. I am experimenting with using older strings that were on a previous bass for about a year to get a thicker sound and these have been on the bass now about a year and a half and sounding good for reggae. I may try flats next time it's due a string change. But I think any decently setup bass can be used for reggae. Some of the really old reggae was don't on quite shabby instruments and I think that tone is part of the charm of that era. I did try using my P-style alembic bass for reggae but with LP filter based tone controls fully closed for a more bassy tone I started losing volume on the D and G strings moving up the neck compared to the E and A so I have a bit of tweaking to do with the pickup heights on that bass. It's absolutely fine with more treble in the mix.

There won't many who can name the guy that cut down the tree their bass is made from!

Here's an old pic (at least 5 years ago) - the only one I've still got is the blonde '78 Precision..

First and foremost, the sound is small. If you want some loudness, use an amp or buy a double bass. Don't be afraid of the fixed bridge, especially if you go fretless. Intonation is not an issue at all. Action can be tweaked with a file. Piezo reads any string that vibrates. Tuning the instrument so that the piezo/bridge parts work well may take few minutes. I have to say that I hated my instrument, a Kramer Ferrington. Sharp corners (think about your right hand on top of that bulky box), very quiet... I even tried piccolo strings on it and then it sang a bit. But the loudness (the lack of it) was the main reason to sell it. There was nothing I couldn't do with an electric bass. Some have said that it is good at home while practicing. Not me, no more.

I’ve recently gone to the La Bella Low Tension Flats from the FL, they’re brilliant. Not flappy and the sound is killer.

Oh wow...this photo is a pastel delight!

That is the very best bit. And there are loads of them. Nothing, and I mean nothing, makes me happier than finding cool things that I can use but are totally beyond me to create.