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Anything with the word 'CAT' in it does it for me...

[quote name='Doddy' timestamp='1333629598' post='1604525'] I'd rather smile and play Mustang Sally every night to a busy dance floor than over rehearse with an unoriginal, original band. [/quote] +1 I played Mustang Sally, Sex On Fire, Johnny B Good, Brown Eyed Girl and a load of other standards last night. The dance floor was packed all night, we ended up doing two encores, walked away with a very nice fee and are currently in discussion with three of the audience in relation to playing at their weddings as well.

It's the 'chops' thing for me every time. I do not, and never have had any reason to liken my bass playing with a lump of meat, attacking foliage with sharp blades or martial arts.

If the pot rotates without crackling or grating then it's unlikely to be that - they either work or they mechanically fail. I presume you've already tried replacing the battery? If so, you're potentially looking at a preamp fault or a failed connection. What sort of bass is it?

Encore was a brand name used by Leeds based importers John Hornby Skewes back in the 1980s. The guitars were originally marketed as an alternative to the Kay brand that was being imported by British Music Strings at the time. They were, as has already been suggested, plywood built and were priced to undercut the Kay models by £10 - so a PB would retail at £89.00. The rest is history really, the Kay brand disappeared (as did BMS) and Encores took over the market space for budget priced beginner basics. Something that did happen was that Encores were then picked up by Argos and I presume that price cuts to entice Argos into a deal effectively drove a downturn in quality.

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1333759727' post='1606263'] That's where I bought mine too. Mine had a revs counter and memory..... but it came with an old battery and never bothered to replace it. The motion powered up some leds, though... quite fascinating to watch in the dark [/quote] Mine is an early one by the sound of it, no electronics involved. The thing I find so fascinating about it is the way the weight 'increases' as you use it... I can't decide whether it's physics or witchcraft...

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1333758992' post='1606259'] Why did you buy a 115 in the first place? What sound were you after? The speaker probably isn't loosened up yet so you're not really hearing the cab as it should be. What is the problem that you have with the 115? If you're finding that the sound isn't punchy enough then a second 115 is unlikely to fix the problem for you. Adding a 210 to the 115 might work but it could be that the sound you want is made by 10" speakers. [/quote] I'm using a 210 and a 115 as a full rig at the moment. I much prefer the 210 on it's own - the 115 just makes a convenient perch to stand it on.

[quote name='Coilte' timestamp='1333719269' post='1605698'] The weight lifter and the gymnast come to mind here. Each need a different training approach in order to achieve their different goals. [/quote] Yep. I'm a climber as well as a bassist. When I climb I hang on for dear life but when I play bass I ...erm... hang on for dear life... They are totally different though...

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1333704218' post='1605411'] Despite having said that I am not a fan of the Gripmaster... there is one thing that I personally used when I started playing fingerstyle and I felt it did help. I used a "powerball", one of those devices that you hold in your hand and make the ball inside turn by shaking your wrist... and as it gathers speed the gyroscopic forces increase and makes it harder for you to hold it. [/quote] I have one of those - they really work your forearms. Mine came from a climbing equipment shop.

[quote name='heminder' timestamp='1333654302' post='1604981'] i did change the battery to a fresh one and it made a small but noticeable improvement in sound, even though the old battery wasn't in any way flat. it measured a healthy 9.14V on my multimeter, and the new one measures 9.56V. [/quote] You can't actually rely on a multimeter to test batteries unless the battery is under load (i.e. connected to the circuit it is intended to be powering and working).

Back in the 70's you used to see kits of parts to build amplifers advertised in electronics magazines. That faceplate looks very similar to those supplied with those kits.

From a Midlands perspective there's certainly a lot more going on up here than there was in Bedfordshire. I had to travel 20 miles to get to a plug and play night and was lucky to get one gig a month. I've now got four plug and play venues within a 10 minute drive, play in three bands permanantly (so usually three gigs a month between then) and get dep and session work most months. You'd definately need a car though, public transport is nowhere near as frequent as London as you start to travelup the country into the Northern wastelands...

It's piezo tweeters you need to be looking at if you want to avoid adding a crossover.

To be really blunt, if I'm getting paid to play then I'll play whatever needs to be played. If I'm not getting paid then I'm far more choosey about what I play.

[quote name='32Hz' timestamp='1333310462' post='1599946'] I come from a regular guitar playing background and always love my US strat playing crystal clear through a good tube amp (with a touch of reverb)[/quote] ...and that 'good tube amp' has a pre-amp in the same way that your Genz Benz has. I suppose the really obvious question has to be... what don't you like about the sound you've already got?

Nice idea, but it won't work. Even though the Genz is set to 'flat', it's still amplifying the signal from the bass so that the power amp section is able to get a signal large enough to work with.

Nope. AC powered equipment has a rectifier to remove any voltage peaks, but a DC powered pedal that 's expecting to get 9V from either it's internal battery or from an external PSU isn't going to need anything like that. Shoving 12V into it is going to cause it a lot of pain. My feeling would be, just bite the bullet and buy a PSU - you'll never have to spend that £3.50 again and three battery changes would pay for the PSU.

I've had an SR505 for years now and I just can't fault it - if it got destroyed tomorrow I'd replace it with exactly the same. It can do everything from a mellow roll to a healthy crunch and the neck just feels so 'right'. The SRs are a massively unnoticed piece of kit that never fails to illicit a 'what [b]is[/b] that?' response from fellow basists who hear it. I'm dying to get my hands on an SR5005 to see how that compares...

[quote name='Bassman Steve' timestamp='1333228757' post='1599082'] Mind you, you have to be a total idiot to want to use a 107kg cab at all. [/quote] Either that or you have shares in a surgical truss company...

Just treat the trussrod in the same way as you would a woodscrew. To allow the neck to pull forwards you need to slacken the 'screw'.

[quote name='Salt on your Bass?' timestamp='1333182090' post='1598406'] So does it make any difference then that its an unpaid gig to provide some entertainment for the evening? Well be there for the afternoon anyway. Id be more in favour of not playing it if it was paid, or getting the set list okayd by organisers. [/quote] Whether you are getting paid for it or not doesn't change anything. If it's an unpaid gig then you should really be looking to get a paid booking from the exposure further down the line - you're getting a free advert for the band and it'd be daft to waste that opportunity by playing something like GSTQ.

Junko Parts Storius?

I took the door and architrave off of one here and turned it into an alcove for a stereo. I ran mains into it and plaster boarded the lowest and uppermost parts off.

That thin cable is a pain to fix, but it is doable if you're careful. Slide a piece of heatshrink tubing over the cable and shove it out the way - you'll need that later. On the insulated wires you need to strip back about 1mm of the insulation and tin the wire - the heat will make the insulation shrink back, so you don't want to expose more than 1mm. Something that I discovered a couple of weeks ago is that if you lay your soldering iron on the table and create a pool of fresh solder on the tip, feeding the micro wires into the pool to tin them is far easier. Join the first wires together and use a tiny piece of insulating tape to insulate them. Join the next pair of wires together and stick those to the first pair with another sliver of tape. Join the sleeving pair together - don't bother insulating those. Check your headphones to make sure all is correct and working. Slide the heatshrink tubing over the join and briefly heat it with a lighter to make it shrink tight against the repair area - ideally, you want to cover about 1/2" of the cable either side of the joint area (thus removing any direct stress against the join.

Peavey kit isn't the most expensive stuff in the world but it kicks a hell of a punch and just seems to go on working forever.