mcnach

On 27/04/2023 at 22:21, ezbass said:

I had a Basic VM4, which was a brilliantly built bass. However, whilst sounding fine, I found the pickup and/or preamp uninspiring. It was as if a Scandi style guru was asked to design the sound. It never sounded bad and I was happy with it for a while, but there was something missing. Hopefully, this is something that has been addressed in the many years since. Perhaps your idea of going passive with a tone capsule is the way to go.

You're describing my feelings about the VM4 for a few years. Only last month I was considering selling it! I'm doing a bit of a Spring cleaning selling stuff I don't use much, and it was tempting. I think if my Stingray hadn't failed me, it'd have been put up for sale by now.

Glad I didn't now! It's always been a great bass to play, light, comfortable, the neck could have been a bit wider but it's fine... However, the sound was never really there. I got good results with DR Pure Blues strings, but still...

By 'forcing' myself to use this bass I've managed to get the sounds I needed, 'though. It's still not where I want it to be, but it's very close. I hope the Tone Capsule will give me the extra amount of versatility that would allow me to use this bass in any setting. I will report back.  

On 27/04/2023 at 22:15, ezbass said:

It kills me every time you post a photo, because I can't see them  

 

 

EDIT: Ah ha! I have found a way!

How did you manage?

I'm doing all I can to hide all my pictures from you!!! 

Seriously, it's frustrating, I know some people have trouble seeing my pictures (which is not great especially on the Marketplace!) while others have no trouble. I haven't figured out why. It happens regardless of the picture size, and it's not like even 1 Mb is a lot in 2023... 

I'm hosting them on Dropbox, as I have done for about 10 years, but only recently I've become aware of an issue.

On 27/04/2023 at 21:37, dmccombe7 said:

Something i've been curious about is how others run their bass / amp with EQ.

Appreciate there are a lot of variables here so its just a bit of fun and nothing too serious.

I'm finding i need to boost the low end (bass) on the VM4 while keeping my amp almost flat EQ. Pan is mid-point.

What about you guys ?

Just curious.

Dave

I tend to roll off treble a lot and leave the bass EQ flat, or add a TINY bit sometimes. Then for pickup selection, I either use the P alone, or blend in a bit of the bridge. I find a sweet spot around halfway between the centre detent (both fully on) and the neck pickup alone, and switch to only P for a more aggressive sound and blend in bridge slightly to give me a tiny bit of a mid scoop to soften things somewhat. 

That's where I've settled with it, which works very nicely for ska/funk/reggae. When I turn up the treble (up to 'flat', I never boost it) it gets a a more aggressive sound that turns out to sound better in a more 'rocky' setting. 

I do miss a passive tone control. I know in passive mode one half of the treble control works as a passive tone, but it doesn't go as deep as I'd like, plus I like to have a passive control for the treble even in active mode, so that's the main reason I'm replacing the electronics. 

It may be too early to say, but... continuing on my love/hate relationship with my VM4, I think I may have found a new #1 pushing away my trusty Stingray 😲

I had to stop using my Stingray because I carelessly damaged the preamp. It still works fine and I could use it, but the mids module doesn't work well, and until I get a replacement I turned to my VM4 and I'm really liking this beast now. A little bit of a sponge did the trick!

I still plan to put the Tone Capsule in this bass, plus a passive tone control always available, but I'm getting such a great sound from this bass now that I'm not in such a hurry. First, the neon DR strings mellowed out much faster than their otehr coated strings from what I remember, and that was nice although their low output bugs me sometimes. And then I had a gig with the UB40 tribute and I thought about cutting a bit of a sponge from Ikea (the one that's very soft on one side and coarse on the other, seems made for this bass  )... what a sound! 

It's a completely different sound from my usual with the Stingray, and it's not quite Precision either... it's got a lot of low mids, and the low end is mellowed a bit with the sponge mute, less of the very low end, but still fat and retaining great definition. It's a sound that seems to trigger my synth pedal very nicely too.

So I will definitely repair the Stingray very soon, but I'll be playing the VM4 primarily for a while... I love how light it is too, compared to the Stingray or the Ray35 that I tend to use.

2 hours ago, Nail Soup said:

I read the blurb too, and yes it does aim to be more than a spanner. It grips the inside so it doesn't twist while it turns the nut.

If it works I think it's a pretty useful tool. I'll consider getting one.

 

Although as others have said, there may be steps you can take to prevent loose nut in the first place.

Yeah, I like the idea of having one of those in my gig bag.

1 hour ago, stewblack said:

 

That's like permanent-drool-inducing beautiful, and by the sounds of it, it also makes very righteous noises!

I have a Sandberg VM4 (in metallic orange!) which is pretty much the same configuration and I keep looking for a justification to get one of these too, as I've discovered how good some Harley Benton models can be... You're just feeding the fire... (fine, I'll say it!) mist.

1 hour ago, markbunney said:

Thanks. I have tried taking the backplate off as well, and holding the inside of the jack whilst I tighten the outside but it still came loose.

 

this device is I think meant to only tighten the nut whilst holding the rest of the jack tight

If you already did it by taking the plate off and it came loose, the tool will allow you to tighten it without removing the plate but it'll come loose again.

Best to address the loosening by using a locking washer, whichever method you use, and ensure it'll stay tight for the foreseeable.

On 19/04/2023 at 20:48, fuux said:

PM'd

and replied

16 hours ago, TheGreek said:

I had one for a while.  

Far too cumbersome to be used regularly. 

I don't know why they're called "Stingray killers" - I  didn't see them as directly comparable. 

Yeah, "back killers" maybe, but I didn't see anything Stingray Killer about the one I had (which was very nice, but a real boat anchor).

On 12/04/2023 at 21:11, StickyDBRmf said:

Zappa always mixed it up. Sometimes to his bands bewilderment. He went thru a phase where he was calling all the songs in reggae. (You can make any song reggae.)

You can, but it doesn't mean you should. However, if you do, please do better than UB40  They started out so well, and they lost the plot after 3-4 albums... 

8 hours ago, hiram.k.hackenbacker said:

I ventured just 14 miles from my house tonight to play a gig at a pub I didn't even know existed.

We arrived around 6.30pm, by which time it was still relatively light. Going inside the pub, it was unusually dark by virtue of lengths of tarpaulin hung by bits of string in front of the windows. Blinds were obviously too much of an extravagance.

It was a bit rough and ready, obligatory 'wet floor' triangle in the Gents making the populace aware that the floor was partially flooded around the urinals, as if you could fail to notice.

The licensee was very friendly though. Seems he had recently taken over the pub and had reintroduced live music every weekend. He found that managing it was a bit onerous and had scaled it back to just once a month.

After loading in, we were asked to set up in an alcove. I didn't have high hopes for what was to come, but the kit was going to be mic'd and my rig was right at the front, so I hoped for the best.

Midway through set up, the drummers throne collapsed. Apparently there were three screws holding the base to the seat and it had been living on one screw for a while. The remaining screw sheared off and there was nothing to be done.

Cue frantic drive home for him to get his spare throne.

Meanwhile, I go to the loo and find this....

 

 

 

....now looking at this, you could probably be forgiven for thinking we are a Ska band (we're not). The rest of the set is Queen, The Stranglers, Deep Purple, The Who etc.

To be fair, we do play one song each from the bands shown (Night Boat to Cairo, Too Much Too Young and Mirror In The Bathroom), but that's it as far as that genre goes.

Drummer arrives back two minutes before our start time and we start our set with no sound check.

I walk out front during the opening song (Hush) and it sounds unexpectedly good. I turn myself up slightly, but other than that, it's fine.

I return to my space and realise I can see nothing of my fretboard. I spent the first few minutes wishing I had optioned Luminlays on my Shuker, then managed to kick one of the LED light units around so I could actually see something. It wasn't ideal, but it was better than nothing.

The first set went well, they certainly like their music. Obligatory drunk dancing type persons getting dangerously close to P.A. bits and our guitars, but no damage sustained.

During the break we get asked to do Mustang Sally, Sweet Caroline and Geno to which we say no. We could have blagged Geno as 75% of us know it, but we elect not to try.

We kick off set two with A Little Respect, which catches them off guard and they're now quite into it.

No real issues for the rest of the gig. Someone comes up and asks us to play Dakota again. No, once is enough thank you.

We get two encores after the end of the set and then finally get to turn the amps off.

Being the incredibly self critical type I am, I feel it was a good gig, but there was room for improvement. This is our first gig with our new keys player and it doesn't feel 100% yet.

We then get presented with this which was left by one of the punters....

 

 

What a lovely gesture. I wish I could have thanked them personally.

All in all, an enjoyable and satisfying night.

I misread the board as saying "Skaturday" instead of Saturday... 

On 02/04/2023 at 02:03, tauzero said:

This may or may not be of interest. Because I wanted to practice using headphones with no wires into or out of the Tascam GB-10 I use, I finished up buying a Lekato MS-1 IEM system from AliExpress (this is the item in question). 3.5mm stereo input, 3.5mm stereo output, charged via USB, you supply the earphones. Receiver has volume up/down, transmitter can pair with up to 8 receivers. Costs £30. Not exactly sophisticated but perhaps an easy and cheap way to go from wired IEMs to wireless.

I just got one of these (£41 on Amazon).

I have been using a wired IEM system for a little while, simple but it works, although that thick combined instrument/phones cable is not the most comfy. I bought a U4 to give the wireless option a try but ended up selling it unused since, of course, most of my gigs at the moment seem to be those where I need an amplifier.

But for £41, being stereo, I thought it could be useful at home, and that's what I got it for.

It sounds good, no significant noise added (I thought for a minute that there was some hiss but turned out to be my drum machine, so very quiet overall), and the units are tiny and superlight. I'm waiting for a Backbeat (ordered in September, shipping this month, yay!), so with the MS-1 and the Backbeat I hope to have a nice home setup at least.

I have not yet experimented with cummulative latencies, that's for the weekend. Used on its own (using a Zoom R16 as a mixer/recorder, where the drum track is recorded direct, and sent to my ears via the MS-1) it's just fine. I tried adding my ancient Line6 G30 wireless instrument unit to the mix. Not sure what's its latency, but I'm pretty sure it was around 4-5ms. Again, that worked well. But I'm not sure how it'll be once I start adding digital FX etc, this unit is not going to suit everybody but if you use no effects, or a few analog ones it'll probably be okay too. 

For a cheap home-use solution they seem quite useful as long as your personal chain does not take the latency to the point it gets noticeable.  

1 hour ago, Mnw said:

Hi Folks. New here and about to attempt my first ever mods. Just got a Mb-4 SBK and would like to upgrade the pick ups and tuners. Has anyone used the Seymour Duncan SMB-4D? would this be the most 'sting ray' pick up? I could do with advice on wiring if it's not just a case of swapping like for like, on this or the warman pickup. Thanks for the help.

 

It's a very nice pickup (I do prefer slightly the SMB-4A), but it's not trying to replicate the Stingray pickups. If you want to get as close as possible to a classic Stingray sound you'd be better off with the Nordstrand MM4.2 which sounds very much like the original in my Stingray, or the Aguilar (I forget the model) one. If you just want a great sounding pickup, the Seymour Duncan (both D and A versions) is a great option. It'll still sound unmistakeably Stingrayesque, no question about it, it's just that the Nordstrand/Aguilar ones are closer to the originals.

I used to play an OLP with the SMB-4A and the Seymour Duncan preamp, as well as the Stingray. They sounded different but they were just different flavours of 'nice'

4 hours ago, ped said:

The forum doesn’t support img tags any more if that’s how you’re entering them. You can just upload the image itself directly. 

I'm just providing a Dropbox link using the 'insert image from URL' option under 'other media' at the bottom.

I'm inserting every image like that. Most times it works just fine, but a few images seem problematic for some. Reducing the image size to under 500 KB didn't help... It's a mystery to me.

Chris bought my Broughton HPF pedal. Transaction as smooth like a baby's bum.

Nik bought my Mooer Radar. Very pleasant transaction/communications 👍

On 08/04/2023 at 09:44, silverfoxnik said:

Just bought a Mooer Radar pedal from @mcnach, aka Jose.

 

Great comms, item exactly as described and a pleasure to deal with Jose throughout. 

 

Highly recommended! 

 

Thanks Jose 👍😊

Thank you, Nik  

4 minutes ago, Bunion said:

Even if you quote others with an attachment it goes toward your quota. 
Alas I can’t help then I’ve always used add files photo library. 
maybe a pm to @Kiwi

No, that wouldn't matter. I'm not using attachments, just an external link so no storage used at BC.

I have used 2 MB out of my 488.28 MB allowance, according to my account details. Some old files I don't even remember what they are

You're right, I think I'll have to contact the higher ups 

8 minutes ago, Moose said:

PM sent.

and replied

19 minutes ago, Bunion said:

Click  “my account” > “attachments” see if you’ve used your allotted quota 

 

 

I don't use my attachments quota, all the images are hosted externally (Dropbox at the moment). 

It looks like some people are able to see them but others can't :shrug: No idea what's going on. 

Here's a direct link. It's a bit of a faff having to click on things but... I don't know what to do different,

https://www.dropbox.com/s/12u6lkuqklhtwzc/IMG_20230408_110420392.jpg?dl=1

It was brought to my attention that some pictures were not showing. All I can think of is it may be related to their size :shrug: so I made this smaller and hopefully it'l be better:

16 hours ago, krispn said:

All your pictures aren’t showing 😖

agh, It's happenning for some, I don't know why. I can see them all but that's not very helpful, I already know what they look like  They're all hosted on Dropbox and they're not particularly big... 

I'll reduce the size and see if this works:

Sandberg won't post accessories to the UK anymore...  B-loody B-nuisance.

(what B word?)

Fortunately they post to Spain and I'll be there in a few weeks.  

all PM's replied

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