BigRedX

The poly finish I tried to remove from my 70s Kramer was very thick and well bonded to the wood. It was a solid colour finish so just a clear coat might not be quite so difficult to remove...

Having said that, none of the chemical strippers available to the general public 10-15 years ago when I was doing mine were successful in doing much to the finish other than making it look slightly worse after a couple of applications. I didn't want to use a heat gun because I was hoping to preserve the look of the natural wood beneath the colour without burning it. I ended up spending about an hour a day for 2-3 weeks - an hour being the maximum amount of time I could stand holding the power sander, getting the finish off and then sanding the underlying wood smooth. If I was in the same situation again I would either live with the dents in the existing finish or pay a professional to do the job.

Not trying to put you off, but just ensuring that you are realistic with your expectations.

The poly finish applied to Kramer instruments from the 70s is a complete bastard to remove. Don't ask me how I know.

You'll need a good power sander, a LOT of course grit sandpaper, a well ventilated space to work in, and MANY hours of free time before you'll get to see any bare wood.

And be very careful removing and replacing the wooden pickup surrounds as they are prone to damage and the ones on your bass still appear to be complete which is a rare thing in itself.

One more thing to try. These days it shouldn't necessary with most ethernet devices being auto-sensing, but since this is essentially a peer-to-peer wired network it might be worth checking if it can be made to work with an ethernet cross-over cable rather than just a standard patch cable.

For my current band I only own one bass that is suitable. At some point next year I'll probably buy another one, but it will most likely be exactly the same model but in a different colour. I'll then decide which one I'll be playing and which will be the back-up based on what I am wearing on stage.

Of course you have a lot more choice if a P or J style bass is what you want, and therefore price can be a consideration.

For those of us who require something different options, and price points, can be severely limited.

In my current band I play an Eastwood Hooky Bass VI. I've found that the neck is every other Bass VI that I have tried far too narrow and the string spacing too tight, and I've tried every single one I've been able to get my hands on. That means the $1399 plus shipping, import duty and VAT for the Hooky is the entry price point for the bass I need. The alternatives would be either an original vintage Shergold Marathon 6-string bass which is essentially the same instrument but more worn and more expensive, or having something custom made.

That puts a new perspective on "what is an expensive bass?"

1 hour ago, bass_dinger said:

Could you instead look at older machines, built when cassettes were a viable option for music?

 

I have an excellent Yamaha KX580, which are still available on eBay etc. Dolby B C and S, plus MPX.

Last time I looked at the possibility of getting a replacement, buying second-hand meant old, potentially unreliable, overpriced crap. However I've just had a look on eBay and there are some hopefully suitable machines for around the £150 mark which is probably worth it. Plus if I get all the cassettes digitised in a timely manner, I'll be able to sell it on when I'm done for hopefully what I paid for it.

It's a tricky one to quantify.

I spent most of the 80s playing synths and my cheapest setup would have had a replacement value of at least £1k which is about £3.5k in today's money, and that has most definitely influenced what I consider expensive now. Also this was in the days when I had almost no disposable income so finding the money the replace my setup at any point in the 80s would have been a lot harder than finding the equivalent adjusted for inflation etc. today.

All my musical equipment has been bought to be played and gigged. If I wasn't going to use it there wouldn't be any point in having it. In my last band I took both my 5-string Gus basses to all the gigs - one to play and one as a, never needed, back up. That's about £12k replacement value (I didn't pay anything like that when I bought them) and an 18 month wait with the current production times.

Also the only thing I've lost/had stolen at a gig in the last 25 years has been the jacket which I up until recently I was wearing on stage with my current band and, as it was a one-off bought in a stock sale from the designer, has turned out to be both difficult and costly to replace.

On 15/11/2022 at 12:00, bass_dinger said:

https://www.hifix.co.uk/hi-fi/hi-fi-separates/cassette-decks/

 

TEAC appear to. 

 

Or you could look on ebay for new-old stock, of the brand and model that you are looking for.

This has become relevant again as I've finally got my old Awai cassette deck out of storage and it no longer works. It makes a horrible grinding noise when powered up and although fast forward and reverse work, it won't play. The solenoids for the heads and pinch wheel seem to engage and then immediately disengage again.

Therefore I've been looking at what is available and it's a load of over-priced crap. The two Teac decks in the above link don't even have proper Dolby NR. One has something that simulates Dolby B, but no Dolby C or S. Support for Metal tapes is limited. I suspect that the transport will be flimsy plastic rather than a decent machined metal shell. All in all they appear to be little more than the most basic of mechanisms in a "HiFi" separates case.

At the moment I'm looking for someone who can repair my Awai, but it not looking good. It is possible to replicate Dolby B and C NR encoding and decoding in software, so instead I'm thinking of buying something that will simply play back the audio into my computer where I can apply these treatments to it. I've got over 100 local band demo cassettes from the 80s and 90s that I'd like to preserve.

Have you been able to wirelessly connect any of your usual devices to the external router or direct to the X18 since the problematic gig? 

Since the wireless connection to the X18 or external router is generally a peer-to-peer rather than a normal network connection I wonder if the network setting have been lost?

I would try a wireless connection from a proper computer so you can see the network settings and IP addresses, and then see if these are being carried over to the Android tablet via the ethernet connection.

In order for the ethernet adaptor to work your Android tablet must be set to USB host mode. Not all Android devices are capable of this.

Do any of the lights on the ethernet socket come on when when everything is plugged in?

Can you make this adaptor work with your laptop?

What make and model number is your Android Tablet? It simply might not be able to make a network connection via the USB port.

22 minutes ago, Quatschmacher said:

Some parameters have an exponential response (for example envelope times).

 

Filter cutoff goes down to MIDI note 36 (65.41Hz so not the 20Hz of some other filters). Still plenty useful for lots of stuff. 

That will only be a problem if there is also no envelope controlled VCA in the bass guitar audio signal path. There isn't one shown on the block diagram in the manual but as we have already established that's 10 years out of date.

8 minutes ago, Chienmortbb said:

The Hofner Jack bass really was a fine instrument IMHO

Except it was made by HOHNER, not Höfner.

14 minutes ago, Hellzero said:

Again, nobody has been reading carefully, and certainly not my post.

 

Cort has never mentioned that it was a bookmatched top, never ever.

 

You should all stop with this inadmissible argument.

 

The other flaws are the only reason you'll get a full refund, so stop mentioning the top and you'll win the (legal) battle.

But if you look at the images on line being used to sell this bass, some are most definitely book matched and, even when they are not, none are close to being as mis-matched as the example in the OP.

If I had bought the bass in the OP on the basis of the photos being published on-line, I'd be sending it back expecting a full refund including my postage costs too.

55 minutes ago, LukeFRC said:

out of interest @BigRedX - as well as getting it to work with your setup - how do you find it sounds? 

My Future Impact is my Christmas present so now I have checked that it is working, it's gone back in it's box and been wrapped so I won't get to use it again until next weekend.

I'm not entirely sure if it was down to user error or not being entirely sure how all the parameters interact, but my initial thoughts were that most of the parameter values I was interested in happened in the bottom third of the range and often increasing the value by one unit gave a greater change in sound than I would normally expect from a conventional synth. Also the LPF doesn't appear to fully close at its lowest value even on the 24dB setting which may be a problem if there is no envelope controllable VCA after the filter. There isn't one in the block diagram in the manual but that's 10 years out of date, so might not be relevant. 

I found most of the supplied pre-sets rather harsh for my tastes, but I don't expect to be using any of them as they are not really geared up for the way I expect to be using this device.

The real test will come when I start using it in combination with the Helix programming my own patches and using MIDI note information to trigger the VCF and VCA envelopes processing my bass sound. 

Ask me again at the end of January if I haven't posted anything here before then.

1 hour ago, Piers_Williamson said:

What format should the finished product be in to appeal to busy pub managers?

It should be a private link on YouTube that you can share with anyone who asks for it.

Have you missed out on any gigs because you didn't have a show reel? That's probably the most important question to ask.

If you do think you need one, then do it properly. A badly produced showreel will probably put more venues off than no showreel at all.

Unless you have lots a spare time and are interested in learning all about filming and video editing, pay for a professional. 

IMO you need good sound - the ambient live mix picked up by the camera is not going to cut it. The band need to look like a band and not a bunch of middle aged blokes who happen to have picked some instruments and the venue where you film should be as undistracting as possible.

Good luck if you decide to go for it.

The sad fact is that without the McCartney connection Höfner would have probably folded decades ago.

Even so there's a limit to how many "Beatle Basses" they can sell, and they have obviously reached now.

28.7fps is a somewhat unusual frame rate. Can your phone be set to use something more conventional like 25fps or 30fps?

Audio generally doesn't have a frame rate until it is linked to a video track when it should take on the frame rate of the video.

Check the sampling frequency of the video and audio files before they have been imported into your video editing program. It may be imposing new frequencies on one or the other.

Otherwise the only thing I can think of is that the reference clock on one of your recording devices is off. I would tend to suspect the phone over the Focusrite interface.

Recording a reference point at both the beginning and end of the video is a good idea. If you could do a 1 minute long clip and let me know how far out the end points are in terms of fractions of a second?

Also can you run both audio tracks together in your video editing program and check that they sound in tune with each other?

If the audio and video slip more out of sync the longer the video runs, then it will probably be a combination of both frame rate and sampling frequency, as they are completely separate attributes and not dependant on each other.

File Info/Properties should show you the frame rate and audio sampling frequency for your video and audio. What platform are you on? Windows? Mac OS? Linux?

What are you using to record the video and audio? How are you getting the initial sync point? There's a reason why film makes use a clapper board at the start of each take.

IME video tends to default to 48kHz sampling frequency whilst many audio applications use 44.1kHz. So start off by making sure any new recordings are done with everything running at the same sampling and frame rate. For existing recordings you may have to use a conversion tool to get them the same, as many video and audio editors will set the project to the attributes of the first Imported file and then impose those attributes on anything imported subsequently.

The only violin bass I have ever seen being played at a gig was a Grant copy used by the bassist of Nottingham band "…But Is It Art?" in the early 80s.

However I've seen plenty of very nice looking Höfner vintage semi-acoustic guitars at various gigs.

Unfortunately while there are plenty of "Beatle Basses" on the current Höfner website, the current range of guitars all appear to be rather bland and boring compared with what was available in the 60s.

Could be the room of course, and your own rig will make almost no difference.

IME "acoustic treatment" in rehearsal spaces is mostly cosmetic and makes little contribution to how the room sounds especially in the lower frequencies.

Those weird lighter bands bother me more than the mis-matched top. Although that bothers me too.

4 minutes ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

Wood species, and therefore density, makes a lot of difference in tone, as it directly impacts the resonant properties of an instrument. Speaker size alone doesn't. Interestingly I've noticed that a high percentage of those who think that wood density doesn't matter also think that the cone size does. 🤔

But species alone doesn't completely define wood density, it's also dependent on the climactic conditions where the tree was growing and to a certain degree what has happened to the wood after the tree was cut down. On top of that very few solid electric instruments are made out of a single piece of wood for the body or neck so therefore construction methods are also massively important.

In the same way that the sound of a speaker cab is dependant on not only the technical specifications of the driver(s) housed in it but also, the size, rigidity and porting. 

In both cases trying to assign a sonic characteristic to a single attribute is foolish and pointless.

Not everything I have released over the past 45 years has made it onto Spotify, but here are the bands that have:

SugarBox:

Dick Venom & The Terrortones:

In Isolation:

Hurtsfall: