neepheid

The Epiphone Thunderbird Pro has a latched battery door, so even if the battery did die at an unfortunate moment it would be a snap to change. Just remember to carry a spare if you go gigging with an active bass. Most of my early active basses require a screwdriver to take a cover off in order to change the battery, so you've got nothing to worry about. They hadn't fully thought it out at that time

In theory, with two push pull pots you could make them on/off for each pickup (thus allowing one or the other or both (and technically a kill setting also)), then a single master volume and a single tone, but it's an awfully clunky way of doing things just to avoid stacked knobs. Are there no stack knobs which float your boat aesthetically? Obviously you aren't going to get individual volumes so blending is out, it'll be all or nothing with something like the above. Not a problem for me (I like a switch me, can't stand all this "a little bit of jazz pickup mixed in" stuff - just make mine a P, a PJ or half a J )

The "powers-that-be" are trying their best to squash music "piracy" and the "pirates" keep finding new ways to get around whatever measures the "powers-that-be" put in place. Is that an angle? There has been recent legislation regarding licensing for small gigs, I'm sure there was a thread on here about it. That's all I can think of quickly, I'm at work

There are two main sizes of concentric pot, measure the diameter of the fat and thin parts of the pot shaft. Outer - 8mm Inner - 6mm or Outer - 6mm Inner - 3mm Then go here and look for concentric knobs - [url="http://www.axesrus.com/axenob.htm#Knobs"]http://www.axesrus.com/axenob.htm#Knobs[/url]

I put the fat part of a flatwound (Roto I think) string around the tuner once and it comprehensively failed with a big pop as it explosively unravelled.

I don't like it. I've seen bands that do this and what I don't like is sounds coming out at me which are not attributable to any action performed on an instrument on stage. The falseness of it irritates me. Just a personal opinion, you decide

I generally have to buy my basses at distance due to my location so I usually don't have the luxury you are talking about. The only thing I absolutely require is that the neck must be suitably chunky (no less than 40mm at the nut and a generous amount of wood front to back). Once I get it, it's new strings and a full setup. Then if it doesn't work out I sell it on. Time consuming process, but it does mean I get to play a fair few basses and seeing as the vast majority of purchases have been second hand I haven't lost much money in the process. I've found a few keepers in the process, I'm happy with my lot If I do ever get the chance to try before I buy then a lack of compliance in the strings is a big turn off for me. If the strings are a chore to press down then I won't enjoy my try-out and even though it could possibly be fixed with different strings it is highly unlikely that I will buy the bass on the basis of that first impression.

Basses are inanimate objects, and therefore have no feelings. There's nothing to hurt, so own, fool around with and discard as you see fit

It's not worth 2 grand, fake or real. IMHO, of course

I passed my first band audition with a red one of those

End of thread

I'd throw Billy Cox into the mix. Some of the stuff on First Rays of the New Rising Sun is very challenging indeed (to me anyway )

[quote name='woodyratm' timestamp='1330431037' post='1557265'] Was that photo at a Panda eyes gig? Also Lemon Tree? [/quote] Correct on both points.

In general I try to not look like someone has stepped out of the audience and picked up a random instrument. It's not a snobby thing, it's just I feel better having made a bit of an effort to look like I meant to get up there. Generally a shirt and tie, with a fondness for waistcoats. Having said that, last gig was a polo shirt with lots of vaguely automotive patches on it (think someone going to a fancy dress party as a motor mechanic and overthinking it a little) and black jeans. I thought I'd tone it down a bit for the local rock dive bar

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1330350847' post='1555994'] I have read about the "OMG" setting... but what is it??? [/quote] Ou7shined is the man to ask regarding this having studied it in great depth and replicated it in one of his basses, but basically it's applying a capacitor to the output from one of the coils of the MFD while leaving the other to come through unmodified. Don't ask me how but it results in a super bassy sound, like a bass boost and seems louder, which seems impossible considering all you're doing is taking away some of the treble frequencies from one of the coils, but that's what my ears are telling me!

Do what you like. If you keep the original loom and it can be non-destructively removed and put back in afterwards if you decide to move the bass on then I don't see the problem. I presume you're going to keep the first two switches (pickup selector and series/parallel), so what you going to do with the last one? Passive safety valve? Kill switch? Just leave a dummy switch in? Replace it with a battery state LED? So many possibilities I never use the "active" settings on my Tribute L-2000 - the treble boost sounds nasty to me and it's plenty loud as a passive instrument anyway. I've been thinking for a while now of making mine 100% passive and making it possible to switch between humbucker/OMG/single on both pickups.

[url="http://catb.org/jargon/html/B/Bzzzt-Wrong.html"]Bzzzt! Wrong.[/url]

This is the first thing that popped into my head when presented with lyrics about birds and rabbits, a melody and a click track. Pretty cheesy, will probably change it completely once the rest of the band wade in with contributions, but you did ask [url="http://soundcloud.com/neepheid/bouncy-bass"]http://soundcloud.com/neepheid/bouncy-bass[/url]

How old are you? Is it too late for you to age it yourself by having a long an distinguished gigging career?

It all depends. On lots of things. It might be simply aesthetic. It might be to accentuate the bass (or treble) response of certain strings (like a split P pickup). If you think about it, the split P pickup is an angled pickup. Sometimes it's the only way to get pickups with wider pole piece spacing than the string spacing to fit. With blade polepieces it doesn't really matter.

The PJ combo on my Yamaha BB614 is great, and the J pickup is more than capable of keeping up with the P, output wise. I tend to use one or the other - in just about every two pickup bass I've played, using both pickups seems to be the most "polite" sound of all - the characters of the different pickups seem to cancel each other out leaving you with something that sounds like a generic bass sound rather than having any grit or other defining traits. Blend pot? Pah, just give me a switch (which incidentally the passive BB414 has )

I tried one in a shop a few months ago. Nicely finished and put together, but the sound was way too old school for me. Very bassy, even on the bridge pickup. Too much mud for me. I thought I had stuffed cotton wool in my ears. I really had thought the bridge pickup might have lifted the sound a bit but no. No amount of amp tweaking could bring it out. A shame, I wanted to like it. Someone must have liked it, it's not hanging in the shop any more

I redid the test with headphones and I could definitely make out the 17kHz, the 18 was debatable. I'm 36, been playing in bands for 3.5 years, worked behind the bar in a live music venue for quite a few years before that. I think I'm lucky to still have what I have, and I'm more cautious these days with using earplugs and the like. When I say "more cautious" I mean sometimes I remember to wear them. It's not good enough and I must step that up.