tauzero

Yesterday morning got a phone call asking if I could dep that evening as their regular bassist had got sunstroke, so I said yes. Got there and found that the drummer was also a dep. Very hot day but we were all prepared with a fan apiece - ironically the drummer's fan was the smallest (the tiny little black thing tucked under his hi-hat). The stage (a real stage!) was next to open doors just by me, so it was bearable. The thugball was on on two large tellies but we carried on anyway to a smallish but appreciative crowd. A slight hiatus when after the break I plugged my wireless dongles back in and was rewarded with silence. I switched bass but that didn't help, I swapped the wireless out for my spare wireless dongles and continued. When I got home, I checked the wireless and it was fine. My conclusion was that I'd managed to swap them over and plug the receiver into the bass. Note to self - look at the big Dyno labels on the dongles saying "Tx" and "Rx". Basses used were Sei Flamboyant 5 fretted and Sei Original 5 fretless, through Lekato WS-90 and then WS-50 wireless dongles and Zoom MS-60B to a Tecamp Puma 900 and GR Bass AT212, and footwear was once more the Caravelle memory foam trainers.

Plus the bottom two pins are insulated to halfway up so when the plug is partially inserted there isn't an exposed bit of live pin (though older plugs don't have this feature).

I had a couple of Grind BXPs, a 5 and a 6. I tried a US Cirrus 5 string and decided I preferred the neck on the Grind. I'm sure the original Cirrus was quite a bit cheaper than the reboot version.

They hang a bit strangely with the neck strap button in the original position as they tilt forwards (assuming the same thing happens as on the Hohner B2). I have seen a picture of one (must have been a Hohner B2 as it was natural finish) with the strap button moved to the shoulder but never managed to find the picture again. You may find more useful information here:

Nice.

There's a collection only one on FB Marketplace in Ashford, Kent at the moment. Price was OK but not the distance.

Generally better than the alternative though.

It's about 20 years since I worked in car insurance software, but back then putting "musician" as your profession (as I did for some test data) would give a rather higher quote than other professions (like, er, "computer programmer").

Well, it is still a current topic. Sorry, couldn't resist.

No, it's just another inaccuracy in the reading. It does mean that if you have two identical preamps, one with a diode protection and the other without, then the one without will continue working while the battery drops a further 0.6V after the one with the diode has died.

I'd rather do it with someone else's skin.

Sire have actually come up with the solution to that themselves.

Most of the basses I take to gigs are irreplaceable. I just try not to treat them like Fenders.

But think of the money, money, money. Damn, beaten to it. SOS - I need an ABBA pun quickly.

As I said on page 1, a DVM has a very high impedance and so you'll finish up with a potential divider between the preamp and the DVM. The lower the drain current of the preamp, the higher its effective resistance so the lower the DVM will read for the same battery voltage. If it has reverse voltage protection, that would just be a diode, so drops 0.6V as it would be forward biased. And that 0.6V would be lost to the preamp anyway IYSWIM.

I've had a hankering for one of these (in natural) for a while, but had decided to give up as I've probably got nearly enough basses now. However, I had a little search on FB Marketplace today and saw one that the owner just wanted to swap for a 4-string. Well, it so happens that I had a 4-string in the spare room wardrobe which had been there since 2011 - got it as a backup and then stuck with 5-strings so it was redundant. A little discussion with the seller and I threw in a bit of cash, a (adequate but not great) strap, and a (decent) lead, and headed 90 miles up to Stockport to collect it. Got a slight shock when he texted me and said he'd decided to keep it as I was in Stockport by then, but it turned out he was texting someone else who wanted it and was still doing the swap with me. So home it came with me. Very effective 3-band preamp. The neck is a little deeper than my preferred depth but narrow enough to compensate for that - I think it's a little deeper than the SBMM SUB Ray5 that's sitting patiently awaiting a preamp, certainly deeper than my Antoniotsai, but it feels OK. I think the pickup needs raising a bit. Setup is generally good. The strings seem a little odd, they certainly look like a matched set but they're approximately 40-60-85-100-120 (I think the 60 is actually more like 58). I think it will be getting a set of Elites, 40-125. There's a few very minor dings but nothing of any note. And this is the bass I swapped for it: An Aston, which I've never encountered apart from this one. Passive, VVTT, neck-through. The seller was happy with it, I was happy with the OLP and with the knowledge that the Aston was going to get used rather than sitting in a wardrobe for ever.

I know that they're in other bands, presumably as permanent members, whereas with your band, they're temps. Just asking them to be members on a more permanent basis might be a motivator, whether they accept or not.

Same here - in fact, just reading the subject heading brought it to the forefront of my consciousness. I think I've had it over 30 years - it was when I started wearing earplugs to ride bikes [1] that I suddenly noticed there was a background noise that didn't go away, like the line frequency whistle of a CRT TV which we were all able to ignore. [1] It wasn't the loudness of the bikes, it was the wind noise from the helmet that was (and is) the issue

Assuming that they're as close an approximation to responsible adults as musicians can get, it's really up to them to provide their own motivation. Although they're going to be more motivated to work on permanent bands than temp ones - have you considered asking them to join on a permanent basis?

Water isn't that great a conductor of electricity. Large bags of water with lots of electrolytes in are much better at conducting electricity, and that's what humans are. So we provide a preferential conductivity path for electricity (which is why dropping an electrical appliance into the bath will do unpleasant things to any occupant).

I did ask google "Can you fit a dead body into the boot of a Mazda MX-5" but got no answer. Looks like you can fit about the same amount into the boot as I did onto a Triumph Bonneville a few years ago to go riding round Ireland with Mrs Zero.

Which bass?

Something a bit different last night, with two rather different featured bands - Aquavit (fronted by a Danish lady) doing jazz and a brass ensemble, the Drayton Brassets, doing various songs like I'm a believer, Take on me, 9-5, and a couple of Bruno Mars songs. I had a few accompaniment slots too - including for one guitarist who started coming to these open mics a few weeks ago playing acoustic, and has now shifted to electric (and very good he is too). And nobody shouted "Judas!" either.

If you use any multimeter, it will read the voltage between ring and sleeve. That will depend on the impedance of the multimeter and of the preamp (the preamp impedance is actually the inverse of the current draw). A digital multimeter will have a very high impedance. If a preamp has a current draw of 1mA then it will have an effective impedance of 9kΩ and with a digital multimeter with an impedance of perhaps 1GΩ the potential divider between the two will result in the multimeter reading pretty much the same as the battery voltage - however, this is under no-load conditions. To read it under loaded conditions, you'd need to plug a mono jack plug into the output socket to switch the bass on, and then measure the battery voltage with the battery attached to the bass.

That's OK, I saw that. My most recent acquisition is the only one of my basses which is 18V, so it'll be fine for 97% of them (and the 9V powered Variaxes as well).