Alien

What about buying a big leather belt, cutting it in the appropriate place, and punching holes for strap buttons? Mate of mine had a strap that started life as a belt. Andy

Just 3 for me [size=6]239[/size] Andy

As far as I'm concerned, the answer is the same whoever you are. You need the amount of amp power and speakers that gets you heard. That amount could be anything from a 20 Watt practice amp to a full-on concert rig running 3000 Watts through speaker stacks the size of a house. Horses for courses really. Andy

I had a similar problem on a Fender copy a few years back. The 'key' part of the machine was loose in the shaft, where it's slotted and pinned in. I took the tuner off, pulled the shaft, and clamped it in a vice to squeeze the shaft back into a tight fit. Wicking a drop of superglue along the joint between the key and the shaft would probably work OK too. The Allen screw holds the shaft into the body of the tuning machine - don't undo it while the string is tensioned, as it'll launch half the mechanism across the room! Andy

Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor. To the layman, the only important word is the last one As to why they're preferred over valves, well, price and weight are the obvious answers. Andy

Tricky subject, because it's so subjective. One mans meat is another mans poison, YMMV etc. Andy

Bought an EBS Octabass off him. A great pedal in near perfect nick, for a good price, well packaged and delivered promptly. What more can a bloke ask for? Andy

Yeah, sounds cool. I daresay there'll end up being a lot of cliches on a lot of discs, but the chance of the odd gem far outweighs having to trawl through everything else I reckon. Andy

I can do you a better price on a Microbass [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=1487&st=0&p=15354&#entry15354"]http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=...amp;#entry15354[/url] PM me if you're interested Andy

[quote name='DHA' post='96153' date='Nov 29 2007, 02:37 PM']The problem is output valves need output transformers and high voltage supplies which means another large transformer. Some have used pre-amp valves generating sub-watt levels into a load but this is not the same as having an output transformer and dummy load.[/quote] Does the output transformer make a difference? I thought that a good transformer worked fairly evenly across all frequencies. Wouldn't it be possible to leave it out and simply use a higher resistance in the dummy load (obviously with the same power rating), since the transformer is used to match the high output impedance of the valve to the low impedance of the speaker. It's just matching the dummy load to the valve impedance. Andy

Ed Alleyne-Johnson's solo stuff blows me away - just him, an electric violin and some effects. Andy

[quote name='LukeFRC' post='91207' date='Nov 20 2007, 12:55 AM']i wonder if someone could invent speakers you could fold up.[/quote] I've been doing some work with folding speaker cabs, on the principle that you're carrying around a big box of air that's not needed until the speakers are working. Bracing is a big problem though - getting a cab to fold up to half its original size and yet still be stiff enough to sound good is something I've not cracked yet. Andy

A soundman friend of mine runs a d&b Technologies PA rig, and the cables that came with it are 5-core 2.5mm Pirelli mains flex, the sort of thing that's used to wire up large 3-phase equipment. If a company like d&b are using mains cable, then it ought to be OK for us mere mortals Andy

It looks like your amp is rated down to 2 Ohms, so adding another cab will be fine. If you add another 4 Ohm cab, the overall impedance will drop to 2 Ohms, and your amp will deliver its full 620 Watts, which will be shared equally between the cabs. You'll want to look for a cab with a power rating of around 300-400 Watts. If you add an 8 Ohm cab, your overall impedance will drop to around 2.7 Ohms, and your amp will deliver about 500-550 watts. However, only 1/3rd of this will go to the 8 Ohm cab, with the 4 Ohm taking the other 2/3rds. In this case, your cab would only need to be rated around 160-200 Watts. I'm not even going to get into relative efficiencies, as it all starts getting pretty complicated. Generally speaking, more cone area = more noise. Andy

One of my basses has a switch on it that's not wired to anything (never got round to it), but most people believe they can hear a difference when I flick it to a different position! Andy

Sold him a cab - no problems. Andy

Continuous power rating = the amount of power the speaker can handle for a long period of time. Program power rating = the amount of power the speaker can handle for a short period of time. With the BW, it can handle a 350 Watt amp, running a sine wave, flat out but with no distortion, and it'll basically do it forever. The program rating means that you can actually use a 700 Watt amp running real music (which has loud bits and quiet bits), because it will only actually hit 700 Watts occasionally. (With a dynamic instrument like a bass, the average power will probably only be about 70 Watts if your loudest peaks are 700) There are other things to bear in mind though. If you put 500 Watts through the BW at 500Hz, it'll probably be fine. However, 200 Watts at 50Hz will probably kill it through overexcursion. There's only so much bass you can get out of any given speaker, and if it starts to distort you're using too much power, or too much low EQ. Speaker power ratings are a guide to how much power to use (plugging a 1000 Watt amp into a 10 watt speaker is pretty dumb - you'll never get the amp above 1), but at the end of the day if it sounds OK it probably will be OK. If it distorts, turn it down, or get another speaker if you need to be that loud. Andy

[quote name='Weird War' post='79961' date='Oct 26 2007, 10:02 PM']Blimey, this brings back memories... [i]Hey Mister Bassman... play the f**king bass![/i][/quote] Hey Mr Bassman... get the f**king night bus home! Quality stuff - I'm gonna have to watch 'em now Andy