BigRedX

9 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Some genres still sell enough vinyl to be viable.

And for some genres Compact Cassettes are a viable option. When The Terrortones released our mini-album on cassette we sold enough copies to make a small profit even though you could download the tracks for free from Bandcamp.

And a band who we played with at Whitby in April - Social Youth Cult - were selling their EP on cassette. Our synth player was going to buy one because he still has a cassette player in his car, but they had packed up their merch and gone before the last band of the night had finished playing, re-enforcing my assertion that in order to maximise your merch sales you need to stay until the last punter has left the venue.

17 hours ago, Piers_Williamson said:

Weren't Carlsbro Green before Trace Elliot?

Looks like the Carlsbro swap to green happened around the same time as Trace Elliot were making their first bass amps (1979/1980)

1 hour ago, TimR said:

It's not very environmentally friendly. 

 

Creating trinkets that will mainly gather dust once the initial buzz has passed and the next CD is released. That's mainly what marketing and consumerism depends on.

 

What's the objective? Raise money, or spread the band's name in the hope more people come to gigs in other towns than where your mates live, and you make money from that?

But is it any less environmentally friendly that the amount of power required for 5+ competing streaming services (who all have mostly the same catalogue) and the devices they are being streamed to?

And the objective is both, and if you are entertaining and good at promotion, IME it works.

My first amp was a Carlsbro Wasp 10W "practice amp" bought in 1976 for £20. I used it for guitar and later bass - it worked well for a Peter Hook type sound at low volume and was used on the recordings that got CBS Records interested in signing my band in the early 80s. 

In the 90s my big bi-amped rig included a Carlsbro 15" Cab and a Carlsbro 2x300W PA amp.

That vibrato mechanism is a bit optimistic.

I have a Burns Barracuda 6-string bass and with decent (95 E or heavier) Bass VI strings the vibrato mechanism is inoperable.

Ex Bassworld member as well. I joined some time in the 2000s probably a year or two before it became Basschat. IIRC I was looking for more information about Spalt Basses. I joined BassTalk around the same time. I've not been back there for years now.

10 hours ago, Bassassin said:

I'm aware of the brand but know nothing about it, in fact I don't think I've ever seen one before just now. And now I've seen two.

The guitars in particular seemed to be a regular fixture of the second-hand section in music shops in the mid-70s.

Mark Burgess of The Chameleons is a massive fan. The brand has been re-issued recently with prices of around $3k hence the overinflated prices for "originals".

13 hours ago, prowla said:

I'd quite like a Gus; I had a go on @Happy Jack's some time ago - I think he said he acquired it from @BigRedX ?

I've only seen 3 basses for sale second hand in the 20+ years I've been playing them. One was the 4-string fretless that Happy Jack bought off me, One was a 5-string fretted in flip purple that I bought and had refinished in CAR when it was refurbished by Gus. The other was a 4-string fretted in cream with a carbon fibre scratch plate that believe was owned by @6feet7 for a while?

56 minutes ago, Boodang said:

Kramer aluminium neck. Again a very basic utilitarian look to the bodies but there was something about the necks that made me want one. 

Again not so rare depending on which model you want. I've owned 3 and the Hondo copy of The Duke. However these too are now starting to edge into ridiculous pricing.

1 hour ago, baldwinbass said:

Burns Flyte Bass - I had a lovely silver one.

No particularly rare, but almost always over-priced when they do come up for sale.

Next two gigs for Hurtsfall:

Re:Vamped Weekend

We're playing at the 1 in 12 Club in Bradford on Saturday 24th May. Doors are at 5.00 and we're on first at 5.15

Dot-To-Dot Festival

We're playing on 25th May in Nottingham at The Chapel which is above the Angel Microbrewery. The venue opens at 1.00 and we're on at 3.00

The instruments date from the late 60s to mid 70s. 

The adjustable nut was a feature on all Micro-Frets instruments. It makes more sense on the guitars where it helps make some first position chords sound more in tune. 

It's a good price at the moment even taking into account the condition and the non-original parts, I think the machine heads are replacements too. There are a number of well-known Micro-Frets collectors so I don't expect it to stay this cheap for long. However if I was still collecting unusual instruments I would be taking a punt on this.

I'm of the opinion that if you are prepared to wait long enough and spend time looking at all the different selling outlets eventually anything, no matter how rare it is supposed to be, will come ups for sale. I went through a phase of buying unusual guitars and basses and there were several models that I never expected to see for sale let alone at a price I could afford, but I was still able to own a Born To Rock F4B Bass and a Yamaha BJ5B of which only 50 were ever made

I think that's a bit out of date now...

1. No longer true for all services. Of the main streaming services Spotify is now the only one that doesn't offer an option for a format without lossy compression. However how important is that? I do much of my streaming listening in the car where the audio has to compete with all the noises of the road and driving. When I originally ripped all my CDs in the early 2000s for use with my iPod and HiFi, I spent several evenings deciding on the best format to use and decided that under most listening conditions I couldn't tell the difference between the original CD and a 320BR MP3. I suspect that most streaming listening is done in far worse acoustic environments.

2. What does this actually mean? When you buy a CD the only thing you actually own is the piece of plastic that the music is encoded onto. The music itself is just licensed. If it's a CDR rather than a glass-mastered replicated CD, you may find that your piece of plastic is no longer playable after less than 10 years. Then it's just a piece of plastic with hopefully a nice design on one side.

3. It could be argued that CD artwork is but a pale imitation of what you would get if you bought the same thing on vinyl. It also depends on how good the sleeve design is anyway. I have plenty of CDs and vinyl where the packaging adds little or no artistic benefit to the listener. I've also got some with fancy packaging that is actually an impediment to listening to the music. PiL's Metal Box (vinyl) and Scissor Sisters Ta-Dah (CD in a box) spring to mind.

4. Personally I like the algorithms. I like the way that when an album I've been streaming on Apple Music comes to an end the algorithm will play me more songs in a similar style. I've discovered several new bands this way. 

2 hours ago, TimR said:

Back in the day you'd have to spend hours physically cutting and splicing tape, it was easier to recored the whole piece again.

Not necessarily.

While there are stories of bands who would do multiple live takes to 2" multitrack tape and then physically cut and splice them to produce a track made out of the best sections of each take ready for overdubs and mixing, the normal practice was to do a drop-in to replace the offending section of a track. Whilst not as scary, it still required the tape-op to hit the punch-in and out at the correct points and for the musician to be confident that what they were going to play would be an improvement on what was already there as there is no "undo" with analogue tape. Things became a bit easier from the tape-op's PoV with the advent of time code which allowed the punch in and out points to be automated. 

Most of the venues I am playing now have "green room" which is for all the bands to use for relaxing, getting changed and storing cases and gear when not playing. One venue even has separate changing rooms for the headlining and support bands. I've not seen the headliner's room, but the support band's room is tiny. Whilst you could get a 4-piece band in there it would be so cramped that no-one would actually be able to get changed and one person would be in the toilet!

Has to be something available in 1978 when the song was recorded.

26 minutes ago, Chienmortbb said:

The one thing you cannot reproduce through IEMs or amp less through the PA, is the trouser flap. Stand in front of  a well designed front ported bass cab at volume, feel the noize.

I have never produced "trouser flap" even when I had my massive bass rigs. 

Firstly I haven't worn trousers with enough material to flap since some time in the mid to late 70s which was before I started gigging.

Secondly if I had been playing that loud, I'd be even more deaf than I am already.

13 hours ago, Tech21NYC said:

An IEM is not a musical instrument amplifier. The idea is that it takes the place of wedges for monitoring. FRFR speakers are designed for sound "reproduction" vs sound production. The electric guitar and bass were designed to be used with a musical instrument amplifier not an IEM. It works and if you like it or prefer it that's cool but know it for what it is. When I'm at home and play guitar or bass I don't look for my IEM's to play through. 

That conveniently ignores the fact that musical instrument amplifiers only form part of the "sound" because when amplified instruments first started appearing the technology wasn't up to producing clean tones at any serious volume. The original idea of the electric guitar and bass was that they replicated the sound of their acoustic counterparts put louder. Of course with what was available and, more importantly, affordable in the 30s and 40s that was impossible, so they settled for being able to be heard over the rest of the instruments in the dance band. Listen to early amplified guitarists and they are all favouring clean sounds. The "character" that the amplification process imparted on the sound was an annoyance and not initially a desirable feature. While it is possible to build a clean valve amp, it's not cheap and it's not very efficient in electrical terms. Had the idea of the electric guitar and bass not come along until solid state amplification was well-established and easily affordable, the sorts of sounds we'd be used to would be very different.

The Squier Jazz Bass I had was definitely thinner than standard, because I had to route an extra millimetre or two out of the control cavity to get a J-Retro Pre-amp to fit.

20 hours ago, Lozz196 said:

I cut mine at

12cm for D & G

11.5cm for A

11 for E

 

To me that seems completely counter-intuitive. The D and G strings go under the a string retainer, so you only need enough string the anchor it properly to the machine head which is 2 full turns around the post. Any more will mean the string takes longer to settle stretch out, as the length of string around the machine head post takes longer to settle down than the rest. The more string wrapped around the post the longer tuning instability lasts with new strings. However the E and A strings need have more turns around the post to get the correct break angle over the nut, and in this case two turns is not enough. The actual amount will depend on the post diameter and the thickness of the string.

Having had another listen it could possibly be a Korg VCF pedal which has a combination of an envelope follower and a manual pedal for controlling the cut-off frequencies. It's a long time since I last used mine but it produced a similar flanging effect with the right settings and playing plus pedal technique.

However, I think it is stillest likely to be a Bass Balls. Again with the right settings and a compressor it could be set so it only re-triggered when you really dig into a note.

9 minutes ago, HeadlessBassist said:

That's a very cool 80's-esque look you have going on there. Are you auditioning for a Depeche Mode reboot? 

Thanks! It's part of a set of illustrations I did of my band to go on the back of the CD copy of our latest single "Robert Smith's Eyes"

The CD version has added googly eyes to match what I did on the front cover:

And as we're a post-punk/goth influenced band the 80s look was very appropriate.

Instead of wasting vast amounts of computing power on AI-generated images, you could go old school and actually draw something.

Here's an illustration I did of me.

11 hours ago, Bluewine said:

Nice pics. You guys look great !

 

Daryl

19 hours ago, dmccombe7 said:

Always great classy pics you have.

Dave

Thanks both of you.

However as I always say great gig photos are just as much down to having a good photographer, good lighting and not too much clutter in the "stage" area as they are to the band looking and acting interesting when they perform.