paul_c2

Long term will this actually translate to...........less high street music shops? AIUI it was basically Fender doing the wrong thing for the right reason - to try assist the high street shops over (mainly) online retailers.

Personally amazed a company would be stupid enough to do it. It can't be just one rogue employee - what were the others thinking? Just go along with the illegal idea? Reminds me of the VW emissions scandal.

No direct experience but it doesn't seem right to me and it would definitely be worth checking the quiet one to see if there is an electrical issue. You'd be able to check yourself if a pickup isn't working (and I'd not expect such a dramatic output level difference anyway) and neither would different strings make such a difference.

Also I've just realised, I will never be able to sell an amplifier on BC! (Bringing it back on-topic).

I have my own theory, no idea if its right (or how you could possibly prove it) but I think its because the equipment gets transported frequently, as in >3 times a week. So its always doing about 20 miles per rehearsal, giggled around in the car.

I didn't expect it either as I was leaning over the amp plugging the mains lead into it! Neither did the shop, when I took it back and promptly blew the store's electrics circuit breaker.

Off the top of my head: Fender Rumble 30 (3x) Fender Rumble 100 Orange Crush 50? Alto TX212 Behringer B205D Vox Valvetronix Harkte A100 and a few others I can't remember details of So there's no single manufacturer or style. I think its just that these are "consumer" level amps, typically £200-300, and not a "professional" £1000 amp. They are basically all built to a cost; and the manufacturers reckon that most people keep them in a bedroom, they get an easy life and can make it through the guarantee period. I play regularly and transport my amp to-from rehearsals in a car, it goes in the footwell or the boot, I won't put it on the seats 1) because I can't get to them - its a 2 door and 2) it will damage the seats. Maybe a thick sheet of foam in the boot would help?

I've (in my lifetime) bought 4 basses and currently own 3. The first one I bought 32 years ago and still have. Then there was this cheap fretless thing which wasn't that good - I bought it new in a music shop and sold it (I think) on eBay, the buyer collected it, ages ago (no problems with the sale). More recently (3 years ago) I bought a secondhand off of Reverb, a Japanese dealer. And the most recent (2 years ago) was a secondhand from a music shop. So I've only ever sold one bass. Amplifiers.....now that's a different story! I seem to have a weird relationship with amps, they keep blowing up or catching fire. I'm on my 10th. I think I'll just keep buying new ones and keeping the receipt safe - most have blown up in the warranty period; a few outside of the warranty. Fortunately I sold one amp just before it blew up, I did try to claim from the courier but I didn't get any money back off them.

For 100% clarity, the impedance of the entire circuit (DI box --> cable --> mixing desk input) is high because the mixing desk input is (deliberately) very high, around 100k-1M. The line itself (around 45) and the DI box (around 600) are negligible here. Its high relative to lines which do degrade, for example long runs to speakers or mains power.

Ideally the section needs filters for different types (eg fretless, 5+ strings, left-handed) (I'm sure you can think of many other ways to classify too) and location/distance. Just like eBay, as a dedicated buying/selling platform, does. But someone would need to develop it (or buy and install/implement the plug-in into the forum software).

At the lengths likely used in audio, the impedance of the cable itself is negligible. Its not like its an impedance-matched circuit; or power transmission (where losses are important - although there are v little/none in lengths likely used for audio); or signal runs of an appreciable distance eg 10s or 100s of miles. To put some details: the impedance of a guitar pickup is typically around 10-100k; an amp input 1meg (1000k); and the cable itself 45 ohms.

ETA, the main reason a balanced line is (almost completely) immune to interference is because its balanced. It doesn't need to be a high(er) signal level (Although of course, physics would say that a line level is less susceptible to a mic level. But its not the main reason - we don't all run active DI boxes and have shares in Duracell or need the phantom power). Passive DI is perfectly okay, and has the advantage of not needing power (batteries or phantom power or even a mains adaptor etc etc). So long as the thing its plugged into has enough gain on the pre-amp to utilise the signal properly.

Balanced = 3 wires. Ground, + and -. Ground is at 0V, when the + line has (say) +0.001V the - line has -0.001V, thus any interference which alters those values (it will add the same to both) acts upon both the + and - and the circuitry can cancel it out. Lo-Z. The pickups of a passive instrument are, by their physics, high resistance, due to the windings around the poles. For this reason, and so as not to cause alteration to the sound, the input (eg of a mixing desk or amplifier) is high too - convention says it should be at least 10x higher. This is deliberate. Put simply, the high impedance means very little current actually flows, which means there is very little loss of signal over (long) distances. A passive DI box can't create energy on its own, its transformer is there merely to 1) tap off the - as well as + signal and 2) isolate the electrical path (by its transformer converting the energy to magnetic, then back to electricity for the line). Thus, the actual power transmitted down the wire is still very very low; so irrespective of the DI box's output impedance (which is around 600ohms) or the input's impedance (which will be very much higher), it will still be low currents and low voltages too. https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/understanding-impedance It can be a confusing topic but you don't really need to know all the details. The main thing to "take home" is that when you plug a passive pickup guitar/bass into something, the "input impedance" of that thing needs to be high. If its not, it will alter the sound. DI boxes, by their nature (because they're designed to have instruments plugged into them) will have a very high input impedance.

Do they shift it or do they advertise it?

High

The screws to adjust string height on a standard Jazz (BBOT) bridge, which will eventually chew up the soft gig bag if you take the bass in and out of the bag and transport it ~15,000 miles jiggling around in the car. The gig bag is basically a consumable.

For clarity, I understand it as this: * A "DI box" is a thing which converts a 1/4" jack instrument level signal into a balanced XLR signal (of indeterminate level.....because there's different kinds - an active does a boost, a passive doesn't/can't do any boost). * So long as the mixing desk's input pre-amp has enough gain, there is nothing technically wrong with a passive DI signal. Yes the volts are very low but 1) the signal is balanced, so very unlikely to be interfered with 2) the impedance is high, so long runs aren't going to degrade 3) the vast majority of mixing desks, so long as they have an available suitable input, can & should cope with this, and amplify it as relevant. If they can't, its not the inferiority of the DI box which is the issue here. * A passive DI box, for all technical considerations, is a simple device which does not interfere or put its own "colour" onto the signal, except perhaps as rounding errors when measured with scientific instruments. * An active DI box shouldn't colour the signal either * There exist other devices (ie, pre-amps, other pedals/effects units) who's entire raison d'etre is TO colour the signal (in a nice way); they include a DI output for convenience but its the effect unit colouring the signal, not the fact that its output is by XLR connection. One could debate whether the signal is different on different outputs, if it has more than one (it might be deliberately different?)

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User uploads tab which is correct first time.

"An XLR socket across different equipment does not a consistent signal level make".

Personally for me, they're sufficiently different (in sound) that its worth owning one of each. However, regards technique and role, they are almost the same; and the same. I find fretted easier than fretless, but part of the "fun" of the fretless is being able to play it (I do a lot of (sight) reading too) and make it fit in, most of the time that means it sounds very much like a fretted. The main difference in sound for me is that the fretted has roundwounds and the fretless has flatwounds.

As above.....a simplistic view is that the bass, or the EQ, or the amplifier etc, ISN'T the problem. Its the others which are the problem, and you should be focusing on those first. In reality though, its difficult to oblige others to change (or turn down....) unless there is someone in overall charge or they are not selfish; and often the situation descends to "what do I do to cut through" and often that produces the answer of "turn up the volume/EQ" which results in volume wars etc etc not great.

They have one pickup? When I play guitar in a band I play a Strat, almost always bridge pickup; and the amp has the bass all the way down to almost nothing. Mind you I am looking for a gap amongst a bass, piano, saxes, trumpet(s), etc

What is the guitarist doing? Specifically, what kind of pickups does his guitar have and where is the pickup selector switch? Is a keyboard player involved too?

Works for me in simulated tablet mode (in Chrome, press F12, then Ctrl+Shift+M)