heminder

This video explains a lot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkRyIN3l9wg

[quote name='BassTractor' timestamp='1442767251' post='2869317'] The sheer "you-have-to-have-a-Fender" tendency in this world is sooo mindnumbingly unintelligent and uninformed that if I ever buy a Fender, it will be after a long stern look at myself and in the secure knowledge that I bought it despite - not because of - what idiots say. [/quote] +1

OK, I said in the first post that I determined that it is definitely the cable and no other part of my signal chain. Yes, I'm in a band. Yes, I know how to coil a cable the right way. Yes I have soldering skills. Yes, I have electronics equipment. Yes, it measures 36pF/m. Yes, I can hear a better signal and I'm in my 20's. No, I'm not interested in wireless at this point.

No, I'll be keeping the cable. I don't bin perfectly usable equipment that just needs some work. As for the snake oil, I bought the cable having compared it first hand in the shop to others and I can definitely hear an improved signal quality. I haven't seen any of their marketing, but cable capacitance is a very real phenomenon if you know anything about electronics.

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1440700405' post='2853149'] I take it you are not a songwriter? [/quote] Yes. What's the significance of that? It's their practices that are highly questionable, not mine. [quote name='lowdown' timestamp='1440701457' post='2853156'] That's a bit unfair. Are you aware of what PRS do for Musicians and Composers, or why? It might be worth having a look here, it's part of what they do, and try to achieve. [url="https://www.prsformu...essarchive.aspx"]https://www.prsformu...essarchive.aspx[/url] [/quote] Had a brief read of that link. So it appears that they also work with other copyright trolls like GEMA, and lobbied against the [url="https://juliareda.eu/copyright-evaluation-report-explained/"]Reda Report[/url] in the EU which called for sane copyright laws. They also lobbied against peoples' rights to private copying in UK court. I see very little that they do [i]for musicians[/i]. They are lobbyists with a jurassic mindset and verified trolls through and through. It's exactly these kinds of organisations that welcome internet censorship, DRM, and the policing of everyone's connections and in doing so invading the whole public's right to privacy, all in the name of "copyright enforcement". I do hope SoundCloud outright wins the legal action against them.

Ugh, freaking publishers. They're modern day dinosaurs. Parasitic dinosaurs. This is the kind of crap copyright trolls pull. From PRS' Wikipedia page: "In 2007, PRS for Music took a Scottish car servicing company to court because the employees were allegedly "listening to the radio at work, allowing the music to be 'heard by colleagues and customers.'" In June 2008, PRS for Music accused eleven police stations of failure to obtain permits to play music, and sought an injunction and payments for damages. In one case it told a 61-year-old mechanic that he would have to pay £150 to play his radio while he worked by himself. Plenty more stuff like this at [url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRS_for_Music"]https://en.wikipedia...i/PRS_for_Music[/url] EDIT: On further reading their page, they're not even publishers. All they seem to do is be a troll and collect fees when they feel entitled to. They're the lowest of the low.

Indie pop is a genre.

Thanks guys. It only pops very occasionally, but when it does it's pretty damn loud. I'll have a controlled wiggle (lol) and hopefully a good length of it is salvageable. If not, I'll just make patch leads out of it I did contact Elixir and they set me a pack of strings, since they don't make cables any more. All is well in the end.

I was hearing popping sounds while I was playing one day, and by process of elimination I determined that the cable I was using has gone bad. It's an Elixir cable which really does sound fantastic due to its ultra low capacitance, and they don't make them any more. Now, I'm not experienced in bad cables, so I was wondering if this kind of problem usually happens at the connectors or along the cable itself? The reason I ask is that I'd like to try to salvage the cable by replacing the jacks, but if the problem happens along the wire then I may not bother.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi3mCzmU8MY

I was in a shop interested in a few pedals. The guy plugs them in series into a tiny Roland Cube with the power supply daisy-chained off a generic wall plug. Bzzzzzzzz. Beware of techs too. I went into PMT Birmingham asking if they could do stainless steel frets for one of my (non-bass) guitars. The tech said "No, they make you break strings faster". I facepalmed hard and left him in his hole.

[quote name='PaulWarning' timestamp='1416846191' post='2614204'] bought a smoke machine from them once, came with a funny looking plug on it, had to cut it off and put a super duper UK one on, oh, and the bloody thing went up in the wrong kind of smoke after a year and a bit [/quote] They're standard European plugs. You can specify to them at checkout if you want a different plug and they'll send the extra leads. Gear going wrong after over a years use isn't exactly the fault of the retailer.

I've always wondered if sites like these use pre-defined algorithms for everything that gets sent their way. In Sean's examples I can hear a hiss in the intro of the mastered track that wasn't in the original.

[quote name='MilkyBarKid' timestamp='1416790461' post='2613684'] Don't forget the other benefits - probably 25% or more of your purchase price goes to supporting the ailing German economy. Cutting the retirement age to 63 years just isn't enough for those poor Germans. Please support German companies to allow the poor downtrodden German workers to have a further reduction in retirement age. Their roads are pretty poor too, and their cities and transport infrastructure are third world standard - they need all the help they can get. Seriously - I hope none of you on this thread are complaining about financial cuts in the UK!! [/quote] It works both ways: paying UK VAT directly supports a corrupt and dastardly British government. Pick your poison. At least Thomann have the great service, which is more than what can be said for many UK music shops. The Germans are doing something right, that's why people buy from them.

Sucks the low end out. Good vintage Marshally distortion for a guitar though.

If you're a good band and will deliver the goods for the pub, you really ought to increase your prices. The pub benefits greatly from having live music, so you should be compensated accordingly. They'll [i]always[/i] argue that they're short on their budget, but they're clearly not if they're actively seeking bands to play at their place. Their management, whether good or bad, will already have factored into their business plan what it costs to hire a professional band. Music performance is skilled labour. £150 is nothing, unless the members are hobbyists.

[quote name='stingrayPete1977' timestamp='1416076193' post='2606669'] This coffee analogy doesn't work though, if star bucks are comparable with a band like kings of Leon then your little coffee brand is no more than a cart in the street so no matter how Nice your coffee is unless you can get a few people to taste it those £3s are going to keep heading to star bucks. As musicians we make out that we are the only ones having to do this,I can't think of a business that hadn't had to sell them selves short initially to get a foot on the door. [/quote] The analogy also breaks down in that recorded music can be replicated infinitely with no effort, whereas coffee requires a significant amount of labour to produce every single individual copy. [quote name='ambient' timestamp='1416079053' post='2606705'] It's not just my music, or the OP's music that people expect for nothing, it's music in general. The huge problem is that big name bands give theirs away. U2 for instance, and Radiohead with their pay what you want. They can afford to give their music away, it doesn't really matter to them, because they're not really giving it away free. Radiohead made more from [i]in rainbows[/i] than their previous album, and U2 got a fortune from iTunes. The public however, perceive that it's for nothing. It's also not a question of getting a foot in the door, the precedent is set so that it's just for nothing, whether you're an established band, or total newcomers. [/quote] It's not that they can "afford to give music away", it's that they know what they're doing and are with the times. You're essentially saying that they shouldn't do it because you don't want them to, even though they can make their recordings as available as they desire. If you really think that distributing your recorded portfolio with bytes is all "just for nothing" then just don't bother. All creative fields do it, it's easier now than ever before, and only certain musicians want to nickel and dime for it. You're right in that it's not about getting a foot in the door; it's about putting some shoes on first before going out there.

[quote name='ambient' timestamp='1415920257' post='2605361'] If you're selling a CD, then maybe give a code for a free download ? [/quote] What'd be the point of that? People can just rip the CD.

[quote name='flyfisher' timestamp='1415358381' post='2599530'] Very probably (well, not 'too' much) - because you are passionate about music, you understand the creative process and you are rightly proud of your creations. And herein lies the thing about music. We can write a song, change it, add a bit, delete a bit, work on it for days, weeks, months, maybe have an idea rattling around for years, until we're finally happy with it, then go through the process of recording it and again adding/deleting/changing/tweaking it until we have faithfully replicated what was in our head, all the time investing huge amounts of intellectual and emotional energy and condensing it intop 3, 4, 5 minutes of this thing we call music. Then, when we are finally happy to release it to the world (perhaps in a live performance after more weeks of rehearsal with other musicians to hone the performance to perfection), most people will spend the 3,4,5 minutes listening to it and say 'yes, very nice' before moving on with their lives and never listening to it again. This music lark is a very asymmetric business and musician will inevitably have an inflated sense of the importance and worth of their creative output. [/quote] Truth.

Make a download/torrent available free and charge the standard rate for a pressed CD (around £10-15). People who like will buy it, and those who don't buy it wouldn't have done so anyway. Either way you'll be getting your work out there.

[quote name='ambient' timestamp='1415322527' post='2599304'] I kind of agree with you, that's why I originally decided it to be 'pay what you want'. I thought it'd be good for it to be heard. What really decided me to change the pricing, was something I heard at uni, a discussion about why do people think they should get the creative output from someone for nothing. It is after all something that can be enjoyed over and over again. People think nothing of spending £2 on a cup of coffee from costa, £2.50 on a sandwich or £3 on a pint of beer, all things that have a finite life and enjoyment period. The music that you own is there indefinitely, you may tire of it after a bit, then go onto something else, but unless you delete it, its still there and available for that moment that you feel you want to delve into it again. [/quote] This is true, but at the same time when was the last time someone paid similar change for amazing desktop wallpaper? I myself don't know anyone, but we'd all totally buy a print of a photo/painting just like we'd buy a pressed CD/merch if we became fans of the music. If we're really huge fans we'd commission the artist for a photo/painting, or the music equivalent of that - see them live.

I personally view recorded music as a portfolio. The more people that have a copy of it the better it is for us as artists since it will be more likely that more will come and see us live. Painters and photographers go to great lengths to make sure as many people see and save their portfolios as possible, which they spent a lot of effort and expense in creating. Because bytes are essentially free to replicate the cost of distributing our work diminishes but the money is still in the actual performance of our craft, just like how it's always been.

That bass is very snazzy! How would you describe their output? My current pickups are pretty weak, but I don't want to get EMGs since they have to use batteries.

Anyone?

I run it through a 212 and can get home-friendly volumes. The pot is right on the threshold of being off but it's usable. Not sure if the Ashdown comment is a compliment