pete.young

I have a couple of K&K sound systems pickups on bobuzouki and mandolin, which were supplied with K&K's own tape. That works really well.

1 hour ago, Phil Starr said:

 This cab is around the size of your Monza and roughly the same weight you could go smaller IMO. 

Or just buy a Gnome/Elf and use that with the Monza.

I hope it's a great evening @bass_dinger .  I well remember the time that Steve Lawson graced a SE bass bass with his presence, he's a phenomenal talent and a very nice chap. It's good to see that he's out and about again.

It's not that Phillips guy from ebay is it?

19 hours ago, PaulKing said:

(**Edit - just looked it up, Markbass uses parallel FX loop, so adds FX loop signal to dry signal... well I never)

 

Anyway that seemed to fix it, at least in home setting. So: NuX straight into amp. EQ and Tuner on FX loop.

I do lose the tuner's auto-mute which is a shame. (Just had a thought ... I should try tuner inbetween receiver and amp. Yeh!)

And I may need to improvise with house amps if they don't have FX loops. 

 

Thankyou for listening...

 

 

With a parallel loop, you're only applying it to part of the signal (probably 50%) and the un-EQd signal will still be getting through. My guess is that the signal sounds fatter and fuller with the EQ off when in the loop, because your EQ is filtering out the things that make it sound fat and full in the first place.

Some Markbass amps (for sure, the LM2 and LM3) had an internal jumper that allows you to change the loop from parallel to serial. That means you get the whole signal modified, at the expense of getting complete silence if the effects chain fails.

The other thing to be aware of is that most effects loops are designed to work with line-level voltage equipment (think rack effects) whereas most stomp boxes work at instrument level voltage. So they may not work properly, may require gain changes, or they might be absolutely fine.

And with house amps, not only do you have to worry about whether they have loops, you also have to find out whether they're serial or parallel.

My experience is effects loops on bass amps are best avoided altogether, unless you have something like a rack-mounted DBX 166 studio compressor and want to apply it to the whole signal, all of the time.

18 hours ago, Bass Novice said:

If the government know you sell £1,700, how will they know what to tax you on this? You may have taken £1,700 and made no money on it?

It's income, not profit.

26 minutes ago, Pow_22 said:

Another thing I have had with eBay recently, having sold quite a bit of gear these past few months with a rig rebuild, is they now want my National Insurance details as I've hit their threshold.  Apparently if you sell more than £1,700 annually they will now ask for this

To be fair to Ebay, they have no choice in that. Once you sell more than £1740 Ebay is obliged to notify HMRC under UK digital sales legislation. You're required to pay tax on anything you earn over £1000 p/a.

Might be an idea to fill in a self-assessment form if you're in this position, to stave off any unwanted interest from HMRC.

Carrying a DI/pre-amp is all very well, but unless you actually test it at a gig all you have is a theory.

31 minutes ago, dave_bass5 said:

We have a gig coming up there soon. This will be the first gig without our own PA and im just wondering what the monitor situation is.

 

Played there earlier this year. I think they provided 3 monitors: right, left and centre on the stage apron. There is a sound guy there who sets everything up and operates it.

On 21/09/2025 at 11:31, Chimike said:

So, in fairness to Andertons, they didn't promise to have it there for me, so I can't complain when it wasn't !

"probably in the warehouse behind a pile of deliveries, awaiting unpacking ", was the comment.

Hoping to hear about shipping to my home, quite soon. Will report back .

I'm ooking forward to hearing how this works with your Monza.

On 02/09/2025 at 20:23, TimR said:

Is there a Search bible somewhere?

 

Looking to do a search in the for sale area that comes up with hundreds of pages but want to elimate all the sold items. 

 

-sold doesn't do anything. 

You could try running  the search in google with site:www.basschat.co.uk/<the for sale area you want to search>  and -sold

1 hour ago, prowla said:

I don't think Eko (Italy) did 4001 copies?

I don't know whether they did or not. I think they made various copies in the early 70s for Rose Morris, but not which ones. I'm not an expert. 

I think the Japanese made ones were neck through. Not sure about the ones made by Eko. I was looking at the tuners and hardware.

Anyhoo, I'm well out of my depth here. @Bassassin and @prowla , can you help the nice man please?

I'm not an expert, but it looks like a Shaftesbury to me.

I had an Aria Pro II RSB for a while and it was definitely 34" scale.

@kristo has a nice looking medium scale Jazz for sale. 

3 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

eBay made a big thing about making listings free, so they got rid of fees on transactions and then added a manditory buyer protection fee, that the seller pays, 

 

 I think you'll find it's paid by the buyer. 

I've used a SmoothHound system with both a Shadow piezo pickup and a Krivo magnetic and it seems to work fine with both, so I'd infer that it's working at a higher impedance level, although I don' t have a way to measure it.

20 minutes ago, Joe Nation said:

That is cool, but the solid-body Sahara is even cooler: https://lindoguitars.com/product/lindo-sahara-electric-bass-guitar/

Aaagh! My eyes!!

Last weekend I did a dep job on bass guitar for a 16-piece amateur big band. This is not my normal bag. The only regular reading gig I have is with the brass band, which is in treble clef. I did it as a favour to help out the Musical Director and also out of curiousity, to see what big bands are about and whether I could hack it. 

The set list was 25 pieces, none of which I'd played before,  encompassing Glenn Miller, some jazz standards, soul, show tunes, pop songs from the last century, some oddballs like Birdland, You Can't Stop the Beat, The MD sent me a link to a Google drive with 75 pieces in it, so I decided to wait for the set list which gave me about a month to look at it.

80% of it I was able to sight-read in one take. There were six pieces which were more challenging, mostly fast walking lines in unfamiliar keys or timing issues (Birdland!), so I was lucky to have some time to work these up. Finding YouTube vids of bands playing the same arrangement was very helpful to get the sense of these pieces.

There were no rehearsals. The gig went pretty smoothly, I got lost a couple of times but found my way back. The MD and the band manager were happy with the outcome and have asked me if I would dep for them again if the need arises.

Important points for me:

Stick with the arrangement and don't go off-piste. The arrangement is the arrangement, the MD will point out any exceptions before you start playing. In particular, look first for key-changes and geography (repeats, DS/Coda) before you worry about the notes.

Be confident, and do as much preparation to help you build confidence. For me this includes bringing enough spare equipment so that you can cope with any kind of failure.

Dress code - this is always important and as long as you have black shoes and trousers and a white shirt, bands will provide you with what you need (in this case, polo shirts, but in the brass band world uniform jackets and ties too).

Pay? Dream on. No pay, no expenses, and a 40-minute drive both ways. I got the same as everyone else!

Another good test for the Monza last weekend. I did a dep gig with a 16-piece big band - drums, keys, trumpets, trombones and saxes. No PA. Outdoors.

I was just about loud enough at Fortissimo, with the iAmp Doubler running pretty much flat out. It's notionally 450W into 8 Ohms. The Monza handled that quite happily.

To get a little more headroom and move a bit more air,  I DI-d the signal from the amp into a TecAmp Puma 10 combo.  A more powerful amp would have been a better option, but since I'm not planning to make a habit of doing this gig I'll stick with what I've got for now.

46 minutes ago, crazycloud said:

WTH does that mean?

 

Transparent to me means clean with no particularly definable sonic signature of it's own with the EQ flat.

 

Harley Benton Block 800B. Very clean especially if used as just the (ICEpower 700AS) power section.

Beedster didn't say that. I did. Get your attribution right before you start slagging people off.

On 09/08/2025 at 20:21, AndyTravis said:

A1 in Manchester, visited a few times before it changed to Academy of Sound. 
 

Yes, I remember A1 Music from the late '70's . Could never afford anything there, but I remember you went down the stairs and there was a huge cavernous shop underneath which went all the way under Oxford St.

Also in Oxford street a few doors up the road (past the Salisbury and Oxford Rd Station) there were a couple of music shops, one of which sold Wal basses.

My favourites from that time were both next door to one another on Chester Rd, next to a dodgy pub with a pool table. They were Muir Music, owned by Geoff Muir. They sold electric guitars, drums and PA. Dave Lunt was the amp repair guy who worked there.

Next door was Sounds Acoustic, run by Charlie Carter and his friend Graham. They sold acoustic guitars,mandolins and banjos. I spent a lot of time there and still have a Fylde Orsino which I bought second hand from them, hire purchase £10 a month!

On 10/08/2025 at 17:13, Mediocre Polymath said:

I don't think that was the same place. County Music was the one on the left as you were walking up towards the castle, right? – quite a wide, double fronted shop with keyboards and a separate room full of acoustics, yes? This one was on the right, on the junction with (checks Google maps) Rosemary Lane.

 

It might have only been there for a few years. It was there when I started undergrad in 2004, therefore it had always been there as far as I knew.

 

County Music was also great though. That was where I bought the Yamaha BB604 that was my main bass for several years (£180 second-hand!).

That might have been SoCoDi Music. They were originally in The Friars, from the early '70s on. The name was a corruption of South Coast Discos. I think they moved to Castle Street around that time.

Kennards Music were in Northgate, opposite St John's Place. I had piano lessons there for a while. It's now an Indian Restaurant. Reggie Forwood's music shop was on Palace Street, for classical stuff, and Judd sold instruments, records and other bric a brac there. It's where I bought a Futurama bass and my vinyl copy of Back Door's first album.

29 minutes ago, Beedster said:

EA yes, but Walkabout transparent? 

"more old style than modern transparent" not clear enough? Sorry. 

Walkabout Scout is not remotely transparent but sounds fantastic whatever you plug it into. Better?