mcnach

Edinburgh - Whistle Binkies and Stramash, £300-380 depending on the band.

Maybe there is a future for humanity after all!

+1 on the Fusion. I still have a F1, which has been discontinued, but its replacement "Urban" looks pretty much as good as the F1. Plenty of room for storage, good protection, and unlike the Mono, extremely comfortable.

I own both an LM3 and a D800+. I really like both. I wish they had a baby and the result were a D800+ with a LFE and VPF controls I find the D800+ has a bigger presence and can get a powerful but defined sound more easily than with the LM3 (the variable HPF + voicing + bass EQ interaction is magic in this amp, IMO). I can get the D800+ to sound much like the LM3, but the D800+ gives me a lot more too. For that reason the D800+ is the one I use live right now. Before I got the D800+, I borrowed a D800 for a while and tested it side by side with a LM3 and a Streamliner 900 I had at the time. The D800 didn't impress me as much. It was good, but I didn't feel it was enough of an 'upgrade' from the LM3. The D800 had more 'body' but I found it a bit too dark. The D800+ fixed it with the bright switch (which I leave on permanently) and the semiparametric EQ comes very handy too, although all I ever need is some very minor tweaks.

I didn't, but when ordering my Sandberg at Guitar Guitar, there was a guy there trying both, switching from one to the other (same cab), and I was paying attention. From where I was, both sounded pretty similar if not identical, but I suspect that's because this guy was going for that particular sound. They're both supposed to be different, but they clearly have a large overlap. Of course, I was there only like for 30 minutes, so I didn't get to see what he could do with different controls, especially bringing the gain up a bit etc. I did talk to him just before I left. He had been trying to decide between them, and he felt the WD800 was nicer, but he could not make up his mind. I think it's safe to say, from that and the comments I have read elsewhere, that they both cover a lot of the same range so for a lot of people there may not be a lot of practical difference. But the WD800 is designed to get you other flavours that you don' get with the D800+, and viceversa. I'm not familiar enough with Mesa amps, but the designer was comparing them to different older ranges in that huge thread over at TB. Sorry, I realise that this doesn't really help much

I used roundwound cobalts for a while on my Stingray, and cobalt flats on an ATK300, and never found any issues like that.

I rather suspect a disconnect between what was said, what was meant, and what was received.

I loved the format on those. I still have the BEF and owned the BEF Pro and Multiwave distortion Pro. They were big, but super easy to set and enough presets easily accessible. The One series is great but for people like me who don't love scrolling through menus (that's the reason I ditched the otherwise awesome Zoom MS60-B) and like to easily tweak presets during live practices, that's not so great. However, the C4 is finally making me feel that it may be worth investing the time in getting familiar with the whole midi/neuro hub thing. I've been holding on to an EHX Bass Microsynth which has a pretty good array of cool noises that I can (by now, but it took me a while to get there) access/set quickly by tweaking knobs between songs, but the C4 is in another planet entirely.

Damn you Source Audio!!! I'm going to have to get my hands on one of these... plus the whole Neuro thingy.

The point is that predicting whether two different cabs will work well together or not is not straight forward, no matter how much you stare at the frequency response curves and try to take into account different beaming etc. If you use two of the same, you will remove that uncertainty. That's all, and that's no snake oil.

Amazing price!!! I paid about £110-120 for mine!

I have used those Isolate ones, and I liked them. They attenuate a lot, and the response is not flat, but on stage I could hear what I needed to hear pretty well. I have gone back to custom moulded ACS -17db, which allow me to feel a bit more 'connected', but I still like the Isolate ones and use them sometimes.

Indeed. To say that earplugs don't work is a very unfortunate and misleading statement, and I hope nobody reads it and goes "ah, I'll do without then"

Yeah, I'm familiar with that chat about pickups... but unless a pickup is remarkably bad, it comes down to personal preference very often, so the pickup you'd choose is not necessarily the one I'd prefer and viceversa. The various Sandbergs I tried (briefly) all seemed adequate, even those with Delanos (and like you I'm not a big fan of Delanos either, based on my limited experience of a couple of MM and P types, although I don't hate them either). When I get my VM4, I'll hopefully like it enough as it is. If not... the fun may begin, I've got enough pickups, preamps and various bits and pieces in my collection to keep me busy for a while. But I'd rather just play the thing. Let's see... ETA was 'around September'...

It's not just the loudness, but the increased clarity when things are quieter

Indeed, and then it seems crazy how loud things are.

You could start wearing them before you start playing. Get used to how things sound with them, and then when it's time to plug in they feel more natural. I didn't like them at first. Now I won't play without them, in fact I take them with me to bars and gigs. I love music, the ability of hearing things well give me a lot of pleasure. I'm not sacrificing that.

Unfortunately, from what you say it sounds like you're fighting a fight that cannot be won. I've quit bands for various reasons, including volume. Bandmates that do not seem concerned with making the *band* sound good together are not really bandmates. Use earplugs. Now! Don't delay. Once the hearing is damaged it won't come back, and all for what? It does take some adjusting, but you're at the mercy of others with little consideration for the effects on their sound on you, so you never know when it'll be critical. I hope you manage to get some sense in the band and fix it. I am not optimistic, but I can be wrong and I hope I am. It may be easier to find a new one. Sometimes people are ignorant but they're open minded and they react when they realise they're doing something wrong. Then, you may find guitarists with speakers pointing at their ankles whose idea of a solution for their perceived lack of volume is to turn up... or those who point their speakers at another bandmate and proceed to blast them out... You can't fix those, in my experience. If they get butthurt and/or laugh about your concerns... you won't get anywhere. Too many wannabe rockstars and not enough musicians.

I can't remember the last time I felt stressed about a gig. If I do it's more to do with bad logistics and "where is the singer???" -it's always the singer- Gigs are fun, for me, otherwise I really don't think I'd be doing them. Money is just a very welcome bonus which often gets reinvested in music related things.

So it's a matter of sound, then, which to some degree is subjective (there's basses that left me cold that others went "ooooh" about) and can be addressed by using different pickups/preamp (if it mattered enough). Funny what you say about "master of all trades"... One of the most versatile basses I've owned was a Warwick Corvette $$: two MM pickups with individual switches for parallel/series/single coil, 2-band preamp... you could spend all night trying different sounds, and it never seemed to grab me, but then I got a single pickup Stingray and I was at home. Versatility is a nice thing to have, but not necessary. Give me one good basic sound, and I'll be happy with that and minor tweaks. The reason I asked what made the Schecter so much nicer for you is that as far as I can tell, the Sandbergs are really nice, and if it's a matter of finding theright electronics for you on that bass, it may be worth experimenting a bit. I'm waiting on a VM4 I ordered a few months ago... To be honest, I didn't spend much time thinking about the pickups for it. Being an order, I can't just go and try it first, so I just went with whatever standard electronics use these days, and I'll modify to taste if I think it needs it.

It's "cojones". Cochones sounds too much like colchones, which is a lot softer (it means "mattresses" 😛 ) That Schecter is beautiful, I love that look! I'm not sure that another bass not being able to sound like it is a measurement of anything other than... well, it's a different bass with different pickups and electronics, so no surprise there. What makes the Schecter a much better bass than the Sandberg, for you? Is it just that it makes a sound that you prefer? Is it versatility? Is it built quality?

Really? Do you see evidence of that in this thread? Or did you just come here to shoot d... oh, I see.

still happy with it!

+1 I think it's more a case of sometimes being asked to use a specific bass like a Precision. Not because it's passive, but because it's been so widely used in the past 50 years that it is a sound a lot of people are familiar with and like. But passive/active... I don't think it has any relevance. They record all sorts of signals, I doubt they'll suddenly trip because a bass is active. In a typical recording situation (shortish cables etc) I doubt it would make much difference at all anyway.

To be fair, the bag is no worse than bags provided by many other manufacturers... *IF* they even provide one! It's a nice touch. Like buying a guitar and getting a gigbag with it. I can use it, but it's not designed for every kind of use. For my guitars I use either a Hiscox hardcase or a Fusion F1 hybrid depending on the level of protection I need. With amplifiers is the same. If I spend >£1000 on an amplifier, adding and extra £50 for a decent case is not much of a problem. The one I ended up using was actually around £30 and while I wouldn't want to run a car over it, it protects it against the kind of common hits you may get in a band bus, with enough padding inside to absorb the impact from any reasonable drop. The bag that came with my old TC RH450 started to come apart at the seams on the very FIRST time I took it out. At least the Mesa one looks a bit better made