uk_lefty

I had no idea there was any complexity to it. How stuff works isn't my thing. Thanks everyone, I'm glad I asked before buying a load of second hand rubbish off eBay that wouldn't be useful.

Weirdly I'm right footed so it shouldn't be an issue.

A bit of a Noddy question but here goes. I'm assuming that any simple four button footswitch with a jack connection will work on my incoming Ashdown ABM? The new price for Ashdowns own FS4 seem very steep for what the pedal actually is so I'm looking for alternatives. I'm also thinking of going to someone like Bright Onion and seeing what they can do. As far as I can see it's just four simple on/ off switches connected to the amp by a jack lead. I can see footswitches by the likes of Fender sometimes have additional functionality so I've ruled those out. I'm just hoping that something simple, compatible and reasonably priced comes up soon on classified ads. Just wanted to check my thinking first...

Ten years ago I saw the Red Hot Chilli Peppers at Knebworth. The vocal was almost entirely inaudible. I thought Anthony must be sick or something. Then I bought an MP3 download of the gig and the vocals were very good, well mixed. It was just the engineers on the night just have decided that it wasn't important for the paying punters to actually hear the lead vocals. It ruined the whole evening, one I'd been really excited about. I rarely even listen to RHCP now and I'm sure it's down to the rubbish experience at that gig. I can understand poor sound at the beginning of a set but not an entire gig. There's supposed to be someone there to sort it out.

It's nasty to keep your money and give crap excuses. It's not nasty to say enough is enough and I will have to get the money back through formal means.

Oooooh that is nice!!!!

I did it with a plumber who left me with all kinds of issues from a botched installation and was somehow always ill, had a dying relative, etc. And never, ever rectified the fault. It went down to the wire but it ended amicably and with him agreeing a repayment plan which he stuck to. It feels horrible having to do it but sometimes it's your only option.

My suggestion would be to threaten with small claims court. Give a deadline until you start proceedings. It's not a very nice thing to do, but neither is keeping hold of your money and not paying it to you. The small claims court process is very simple, but you should demonstrate that you have firmly set out your stall before taking things down that route. Write a professional, firmly worded letter to the seller stating the facts and copying any paperwork. Give them a reasonable deadline like seven days from receipt of the letter (send by recorded delivery) to make the payment otherwise you file with small claims court.

Saturday 25th June, the Desert Penguins will be at the Golden Bell in Leighton Buzzard. Guitar driven "pop goes rock" covers, high energy, bass player is left handed. It promises to be a fun evening. Any bass chat members coming along please say Hi!

There's one for sale in the BC ads.

Did a one-off 2000's indie rock night last night. Had to learn eight new songs to get a full set of rockers from 2000-2010 but then disaster struck! We managed only one rehearsal with the new songs then both the lead guitarist and I came down with bad illnesses. I almost didn't make the gig. Well... It was hot yesterday wasn't it? We had a small audience, less than thirty I think, which isn't great for us at all, but they all wanted to be there and LOVED the set list. It makes a difference when they're smiling, singing, dancing and staying to the end. In the new songs I think we found a few "keepers" so all the sweat was probably worth it in the long run.

I just bought a new ABM 600.... I love my Rootmaster but I just want that added... Wait for it.......... Heft. There are features I've come to rely on from Ashdown amps: EQ button to go to flat, switchable drive, I even use the sub harmonics. Whenever I've used ABMs in the past, just in rehearsal rooms, and found them excellent for passive P basses, so I'm hoping that with some dedicated time I can get a fantastic Stingray tone from it too. Really looking forward to having the extra headroom and meatiness to the sound!

Ta will give it a throw

Has anyone got a decent OC-2 style patch sound? I find the octave on this very uninspiring. I even prefer the built in sub on my Ashdown amp.

I'm sure other stores are very good but I've always found a call to Northwest Guitars sorts out any weird hardware requests I have.

My five, almost six, year old LOVES playing my guitars and basses but she is a little small for them. I keep seeing ads for Loog guitars, a little three string guitar built for kids that comes with all kinds of learning materials. They're £88. Wondering if anyone has one and what they think of them? The summer holidays could be very long with my kids off school and nursery so thought this could be nice but it's a lot of cash... Any thoughts welcome

I'm 5 foot 8 so by most standards quite short. A jack Casady is fine. It does have a bigger body than most basses but it's light and feels good. I've never had or felt a need for short scale or smaller bodies basses, I just play what I like. Precision basses also shouldn't look silly on you. I do like the look of a big bass though and found that white basses look "bigger" in outdoor gigs.

All of it! But please don't explain, I don't think I need to know and my head couldn't cope with the information.

Right now it's amps. I've got a perfectly good amp that is loud enough, doesn't have valves that are expensive to replace and is flexible enough for each bass I have. I really want something with a tube front end though, like an Ashdown ABM. I also really like the look of the Markbass Marcus Miller stuff... Complete opposite, I know! I really like the GK amp sound too and I'm a sucker for trying to find old SWR amp heads going cheap. I don't need any of it at all.

That sounds interesting, I had the old Bronco 40 and thought it was great for what it was. I am very late to this party, but a few months back I acquired a Spark. I didn't have an electric guitar amp since getting rid of my Blackstar BEAM which was a great bit of kit that I moved on too hastily. I saw the Spark as an upgrade on that. So far I've only had time to be using it as a plug n play practice amp. For guitar that's great, I recently moved on my budget electro acoustic and budget electric guitars and got myself a lovely Epiphone Casino. Tweaking the amp and effects is Ok but not stellar on the android app but I feels a bit restrictive with just what's available as standard though I may not be educated enough to swap out effects and so on just yet. I have a Helix Stomp so in theory I have all my effects and amp Sims there really but I wanted the one box simplicity of the Spark for recording without having to mess about getting out all the pedals, leads, power supply, USB mixer... Etc. The Blackstar was great for exactly this (here's a demo I did in minutes with just the Blackstar USB recording into my laptop, no other hardware Listen to Take on Me by clive mustang on #SoundCloud https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/Gybdw . ) For bass I find the Spark disappointing tbh. The speakers don't like the bassinet notes, they get a bit farty from A downwards I find and I don't play at any kind of volume. The sound is a bit thin and weak. It's ok for playing along to tracks to learn them but it's not ideal if you really want to get into the detail of your sound. The bass amp models seem limited really. Again, maybe I need to do a system update to get hold of more options but for some reason mine just won't the handful of times I've tried. I've had better options for amp sim and effects in the old-tech Fender Bronco I had but that didn't do guitar. If I can get something at the right price I will probably be buying a bass specific practice amp and only using the Spark for guitar. One app feature I don't quite understand is the video thingy... You can video yourself playing but it's just the same as doing that off your phone anyway, so it doesn't record a direct signal of your instrument for the video which would be more helpful if you were doing an online demo of a tune. Overall if I am to make demos of songs as I want to in future I can see me only using the Spark for guitar tracks, and only if I prefer the sound there than what I get from my Helix. If I get the time to get stuck in I would like to use some of the jam functions and learning tools within the Spark, I just need that time!

They are hard to find but keep checking eBay and Reverb etc. Maybe put a wanted ad up on here. I prefer my ABM Neos to the Rootmaster cabs I had. I expect I'd prefer even more the non-Neo ABM cabs too and keep a track of those online, they go very cheap second hand but they are not lightweight.

Wonder if this is what Bruce Springsteen was playing in his early days, struggling to get a decent sound when someone said to him "nice bass" or something like that.

I got fired from a band once by email. I was quite relieved, it was never what it claimed to be. Two female singers doing funky jamiroquai type stuff, I signed up, auditioned ... The audition was an odd experience. We went through a number of weeks trying second guitarists, drummers and a keyboard player and I stuck with it through all this because the singers were good. But. The material was all over the place. The guitarist basically loved the Stereophonics so it was about four or five Stereophonics songs. The girls were amazing singing 80s power ballads, we did two but guitarist refused to do any more. We settled on a line up and rehearsed for a few weeks. The guitarist's behaviour was odd in how he treated people and how quickly his "ideas" changed. Me, a guitarist and the drummer got fired after a few weeks. The email read something like "you all rock and you're amazing musicians but there's just too many different ideas and it's hard to keep everyone happy..." It taught me a lot about being in a covers band: set out your stall early on what the direction is and stick to it. Or, play to the strengths of your biggest asset (in this case the singers). And a lesson I learned more recently: If someone turns up all enthusiastic but just wants to do the songs they know and love from a different genre to the band direction BIN THEM NOW because they will never, ever stop.

Maybe they were being honest, but they're just completely deluded? So, so many muso types are unfortunately.