BigRedX

Not necessarily. Unless the neck is bowed and needs straightening with the truss rod, you will need to add a shim to get a sensible action. Therefore if shims have the potential to cause ski-jump it becomes relevant.

Do you have photos showing it?

Wood, especially that used to make guitars and basses, is incredibly strong, despite the fact that lots of musicians appear to think their instrument is made out of twigs or balsa. I've yet to see any direct evidence that ski-jump exists and the anecdotal evidence appears to point to the fact that if it does it occurs elsewhere than in the location that would be caused by a shim. My suspicion is that is most likely cause by poor selection of lumber for the neck blank, in which case it will occur whether or not a shim has been added.

I thought that the reason Fender abandoned the micro-tilt mechanism is that at the time (in the late 70s) they were incapable to building instruments to the tolerances required for it to work properly which was doubly compounded by the fact that their worn router templates were producing over-sized neck pockets. The net result was that as well as changing the vertical neck angle the micro-tilt was also pushing the neck sideways in the pocket. In these days of CNC machined necks and bodies a shim shouldn't be necessary. Just cut the neck pocket and heel at the correct angles so that it is possible to get a suitably low action before the saddles bottom out. After all you only need to do the maths once and then the machines will create every instrument perfectly.

I suspect that most people only take the strings off a guitar or bass when they are going to fit a brand new set. The fingerboard gets cleaned, if required, when that occurs.

I'm disputing it. I've never encountered it in over 50 years of owning and playing guitars and basses No-one has risen to my challenge earlier in the thread to produce actual evidence of their own instrument that exhibits this and furthermore has adversely affected the performance of said instrument. I call bullshit.

For what I recall of interviews with him in the 80s he was content to be in the background writing the hit tunes.

I have found the best way to work with any programmable musical device is to completely ignore the presets and make your own from scratch. When I bought my Helix I didn't even bother auditioning what was already on there as I knew from past experience that at best there would only be a couple that would be even close to suiting what I needed. Instead I wiped the first Preset and built up my own basic sound one module at a time - EQ, compressor, distortion, chorus, delay. Once I had something I was happy with I used this Preset at the next band rehearsal tweaking the parameters (mostly EQ and distortion drive levels) until I had a sound that worked for the majority of the songs. I then made a copy of this preset for each song appropriately named. At the next rehearsal I would adjust the version for reach song until it fitted with the other instruments and made notes of any variations that would be needed for different sections and which I created as Snapshots. These were then adjusted to fit. I think the whole process from original purchase to having something I was happy using at a gig took about 4 practices to get right. If you or your band don't have the patience for this kind of process then programmable devices are probably not for you.

I bought my first 5-string bass in 1989. Apart from a couple of years when I was playing quite a bit of fretless and hadn't been able to find a 5-string version that I liked, I haven't played a 4-string bass since then.

I can't see how the neck is going to warp because of the presence of something less than a 1mm in thickness occupying about a quarter of the length of the neck pocket, unless there was a problem with the neck already in which case the shim is unlikely to be the catalyst. I think one of the reasons why the small card shim is popular, is because it is completely invisible on most basses and guitars when installed, whereas a shim occupying the full area of the neck pocket will definitely be visible. I wonder how many people were completely unaware that their instrument had a shimmed neck until they had need to remove it? Also a full-size flat or angled shim will need to be exactly the same size as the neck pocket for it not to look terrible. You would be surprised by how thick a flat shim needs to be to have the same effect as small piece of card. An effective card shim can be made by anyone who can wield a pair of scissors.

That's what I'd heard from another source, although that was last year and since then it's gone very quiet with regards to further information.

It depends on the people. There are musicians who I've played with in several different bands and who I would have no hesitation in playing with again. I've only had one bad experience (unsurprisingly with a drummer) who quit the same band twice, initially after falling out with the original singer and then later after begging to be allowed to rejoin, with her replacement.

And even if it does occur it won't matter, as my understanding is that the wood "moves" to fill the gap. Necks that require a shim are very unlikely to to need "unshimming" in the future and if they did then surely the wood would move back to compensate. IMO it's all fuss over nothing.

Can someone on Basschat who has experienced ski-jump due to a non full-length shim on an instrument they own please post photos?

TBH I have found other people's presets mostly useless because they are only one part of the overall sound. About 6 months ago Line6 were offering Peter Hook's main Helix patch as a download. I have to say that as a fan and someone whose current baselines are extremely influenced by his playing I was somewhat underwhelmed. I'm sure the patch works perfectly well for him, but in my case the one I had come up with on my own that uses the same type of modules (distortion, chorus and delay) as he does, but completely different actual models works much better for me.

As everyone is probably bored of hearing now, I sold off my traditional bass rigs over years ago now and I haven't missed them in the slightest. I the band is running its own PA I would consider replacing your existing rig with an FRFR that could double as foldback if required.

On a more serious note, I suspect that one of the reasons that boutique pedal builders opt for low-cost graphic solutions is that they simply don't produce their devices in sufficiently larger numbers at a time to be able to afford anything else. For anything reasonably professional looking they would need to be considering a production runs of several hundreds minimum. I wouldn't be surprised to find that some designs are only made to order, in which case the graphics need to be capable for being produced one at a time too. The other thing is that most boutique pedal builders won't have budgeted for "design". As someone who makes their living doing graphic design (mostly for food packaging) myself I deal with quite a few clients who are doing low volume production runs. Despite the fact that I consider my rates to be competitive, many of them simply can't afford for me to create anything much more complicated in design than their logo and product name printed in a single colour on the box or label.

I've solved the iLok problem by simply not even entertaining the notion of having any software that requires it on my Mac. IMO iLok is brilliant idea, but the company that currently owns the technology doesn't have the resources to properly support it to the level that is required by their users. You need to face up to the facts that everything points to insufficient testing by PACE. The problem only affects M2 and M3 Macs - maybe PACE couldn't afford to buy one in order to check out the pre-release versions of the OS. It is their responsibility to ensure that their product keeps up to date with the platforms they support. It is also my experience with both music software and copy protection, that many developers think they know best and try and make use of loopholes in the OS rather than properly optimising their code to make it run as efficiently as possible within the guidelines set up by the OS. Therefore it is unsurprising when it breaks with a subsequent OS update because the they haven't followed the rules. Also unless you have just bought a brand new Mac there was no reason to update your OS in the first place.

When I last had an album produced on vinyl the recommendation was for no more than 12 minutes a side and to have a a running speed of 45RPM rather than 33. Longer running time and slower playback speed would result in reduced audio quality. Our album had a total time of just under 34 minutes, with roughly equal length sides cut at 33RMP, and there is noticeable difference in quality between the vinyl and CD version. IMO 53 minutes is really going suffer with just two sides to play with. Have you had you recording specifically mastered for vinyl? We had two separate masters done one for vinyl and one for digital, and if I was doing this again now we would have 3 - Vinyl, CD and iTunes. Also has Cram discussed the running order with you? There are certain compromises that need to be made regarding song placement with respect to the fact that the last track on one side of a disc has to extract the same amount of information from less than half the groove distance of the first one. This is why fast, loud energetic tracks are placed at the start of each side and the last track is something much more relaxed and downtempo. We ignored this on the last album I made and the final track on side two suffers as a result.

The 80s is a very broad church which goes all the way from post-punk to acid house, via synth pop and abrasive guitar bands. Unless you cover all these genres you'll need to supply a bit more info regarding your set list.

If this is the correct PSU for the Reussenzehn BassMax then it most likely means that the bridge rectifier that converts the AC from the PSU to DC is in the pedal rather than the PSU. There are plenty of devices that do this and have AC PSUs.

According to the schematic it should give three pre-set tone shapes. However Kramer from that period were notorious for changing specifications as parts availability demanded it. Also that circuit board looks very home-made, so without checking the components against the schematic you simply can't know.

TBH the problem is with PACE who run the iLok system which has been flakey for years and who appear not to have sufficient resources to test new versions of Mac OS when the beta copies are released to developers.

If the shop has to order something in I might as well buy it on line. It will be delivered directly to my front door and probably quicker too. This might be down to the fact that the last time I relied on one of my local music shops to order something for me (a box of 100 Herco Flex 75 picks) it took over a month and twice when I had been told they had received them it turned out to be the wrong item. This is for something that should be a simple order from the distributor (String & Things).

Forward tilt is a "feature" of guitars and basses that have one of the strap buttons behind the heel of the neck.