BigRedX

Espedair Street by Iain Banks

Hurtsfall will be supporting Strange Circuits (aka Rodney Bakerr) at Rough Trade in Nottingham on Sunday 10th March 2019. Facebook event page is here.

But how much of what you hear from your TV is down to the Ampeg? You simply can't tell.

It might be worth finding out who the photographer is and asking them if they have given permission for the photograph to be used. IME promoters of this kind of event have zero idea of the ins and outs of copyright or IP. BTW the notion that just the photographer owns the copyright to a photograph and the subjects of said photo have no rights at all is likely to be challenged and overturned within the next few years.

I wouldn't fancy that considering the amount of heat my Marshall Powerbreak generates with just a 50W amp driving it.

Why would you want to have a switchable impedance speaker anyway? You can't get anything (more volume) for nothing. Guitarists use power soaks in order to get the sound of the power amp valves working hard without having to play at ear-splitting volumes. In the OP's case the power soak (if it was feasible) will simply dissipate all the extra power being delivered by the amp as heat not volume. Putting a coil tap on the speaker will halve its power handling when in low impedance mode which again defeats the object. A dual coil speaker might work, but it seems a rather over-engineered solution, when the easiest way the get more volume out of your rig is to add a second identical speaker.

I really wouldn't recommend a dummy load with the sort of power the typical modern bass amp puts out. I use a Marshal Power Break as part of my guitar rig which sits between a 50 watt valve amp and the speaker. It's a large and heavy device full of chunky resistors, heatsinks plus a fan for extra cooling. Running the amp at full power with 50% or more attenuation from the Power Break on overdriven sounds will cause the fan to kick in almost continually. I wouldn't like to think what sort of device and cooling would be required dissipate half the power from a 300 Watt plus bass amp.

But they do sell themselves as anyone who has played an Atlantis guitar or bass will know.

You are never going to get close to the sound with a chorus pedal. The clarinet has built-in phaser and was generally played through Wah pedals into valve amps. So he is going to need a 70s style phaser, a distortion pedal which can give a hint of valve style dirt and a filter pedal with a built-in envelope follower. Listening to the track you can hear slight amounts of all three effects. Also the clarinet has a very sharp attack and decay which will require some precise plucking and muting to get the same definition of notes.

Definitely a keyboard of some sort. Could be a Hohner Clavinet.

The bridge pickups on both those basses are much closer to the bridge than normal.

The true successors to Aria are of course Atlansia run by N.Hayashi the man behind all the classic Aria Pro II designs of the late 70s.

I should point out that if you are considering going the wired rather than wireless route, from personal experience standard CAT5 ethernet cables are not suitably robust to withstand the rigours of a gigging environment. They are fine in the home or office where they are going to be used to connect a piece of static computer equipment to the network and never be touched again until said equipment is replaced. However don't expect them to last very long if you are connecting and disconnecting them at every gig, and even less time if you intent to coil them up with the rest of your leads. Most cheap CAT cables aren't designed to be coiled and eventually one of the conductors will break rendering the whole cable useless. Unless the retaining clip on the plugs breaks first. This clip is the only thing holding the plug properly in the socket and without it the electrical contacts between cable and equipment will not be properly maintained. There are two solutions to this problem. Either carry plenty of spares and throw out any cable that exhibits the slightest sign of unreliability. Alternatively get them made up with special coilable Van Damme CAT5 cable and heavy duty shrouded plugs (and carry a spare). From personal experience cheap cables being used twice a week for gigs or rehearsals lasted a maximum of 6 weeks before something broke. The Van Damme versions are good for a couple of years of careful use.

IME if you have a light touch, you can be a lot less picky with your 5-string basses and their low B strings. If you look at those string manufacturers that produce tension figures for their strings, the low B is by far the lowest tension string in a typical 5-string set, to the point where even if you pair a 135 low B with a standard 40-100 set it will still be the lowest tension string. For those of us who "dig in" as part of our normal technique this does mean that the typical low B will tend to flop about compared with the other strings and produce a more distorted and less defined note. construction methods that make the string less compliant such as increasing the break angle over the big and nut do help but because they tend to apply to all the strings will still make the low B feel unbalanced. IME the more rigid the neck and neck joint construction the better defined the low B will be. Unfortunately this tends to rule out mass produced basses such as the one in the OP...

Not at all. When you look at the tensions of the strings a 135 low B is woefully under tension compared with the others. I'd be looking at that gauge B with a 40 - 100 G- E.

IME the 3 main factors in getting a good sounding and feeling low B string are as follows: 1. Good neck construction 2. Good neck joint 3. The right string for the bass (construction and gauge) There's not a lot you can do about factor 1, but you can improve the neck joint on a bolt-on neck bass, by slackening off the strings. Then undo all the neck screws by half a turn. Tune up the pitch and once the tuning has stabilised tighten up the neck screws again. Loosening the neck screws allows the tension of the strings to pull the neck as tightly as possible into the neck pocket to give the best possible joint. If that doesn't produce an improvement then I would recommend trying a taper-wound low B string, where the taper basses over the bridge and the full thickness of the string starts as soon after the saddle as possible. Suggested strings would be LaBella Steels, Warwick Black Label or get Newtone to make you a custom set.

Fairly pointless when there are potentially 20,000 phones in the audience all looking for a WiFi signal.

The problem with your poll is that you have lumped what I consider incompatible choices together. For instance I like a proper bright "white" white, but would never consider an instrument in a creamy white as I think it looks horrible. Likewise with bursts. Some look great others dull and boring. I would tend to say they choices reflect a typical man's lack of appreciation of fine details when it come aesthetics.

Unless it has changed recently the carbon fibre Enfield necks are made by Simon Farmer of Gus Guitars. I wouldn't recommend an Enfield to the OP unless he has tried on and liked the neck, all the ones I have played were extremely V-profile to the point where I found them uncomfortable, and I'm normally very adaptable when it comes to neck shapes.

Anything programmable with level and tone controls on it.

What's the reason for wanting 35" scale? If you like the extra space between the frets fine, but if it is specifically for getting a better feeling and sounding low B string you may well be disappointed. IME adding an extra inch to the overall scale length on its own does virtually nothing to improve the low B. It is far more important to have a well constructed neck and got neck to body joint, and all these things can be achieved on a well-made 34" scale bass.

Just found this photo from 1986 of me playing the Yamaha KX5 after it had been repainted gold...

Thanks! The fingerboard/pickups/ramp combination was my idea, but Martin was the one who actually made it work. When I went to collect my bass, While Martin was doing the final set-up I had a quick play on another Sei that had recently been completed. A stunning looking instrument, but it didn't speak to me the way the bass that'd been made specifically for me did. I think the trick is not the get bogged down in the specifics. Think in broad strokes - how do you want it to look, sound and feel and let your chosen luthier fill in the details.

I own this Sei Flamboyant: It's actually got an ACG EQ1 pre-amp in it, so it's got a similar sound to an ACG but with the Flamboyant shape which I liked more than the ACG shapes (sorry Alan!) I've tried a lot of Shukers but although I liked the looks I really haven't liked the feel of any of them. As others have said, it doesn't matter what we think. What matters is what you like, and whether or not you get on with the luthier. My advice would be don't expect to be able to specify every aspect of your bass, a lot of it should be guided by your choice of luthier helping you to get the instrument you want. My Sei was based on the fact that I liked the shape, wanted a Wal-like fretless sound and wanted my bass to be grey and orange in colour. Martin did the rest.

Another one with the same band as my last post. In fact it was almost definitely the next gig we played. Coventry University Christmas Party in the new Student Union building. We were support to an up and coming indie band that I'd heard of at the time but can't recall the name of 20+ years later. Impressive venue with a big stage and a massive and very loud PA. However none the the audience were in the slightest bit interested in live music. They were there to get drunk, throw themselves around the dance floor and hopefully get off with someone they'd been fancying all term. We were an inconvenience in this mating ritual. As we came on the dance floor cleared and we did our set to complete indifference, the moment we finished and DJ started up the dance floor was full again. The headliners despite being a "proper" signed band didn't fair any better. In our hurry to get away at the end of the evening we left the hard drive for the sampler and most of the framework for our backdrop behind and had to go back to Coventry the following day to collect them.