Huge Hands

They remind me of some EV single 18" subs a venue I worked in had about 26 years ago, and they were probably a good few years old then. They were probably about 10 times the weight of your designs, but those EVs used to act like they had sold their soul to the sub-frequency devil and rumble away like mad! I have fond memories of them - I assume yours will be just as good if not better!

This was on at the weekend and always bugged me. I'm sure he did it for comic effect, but Larvell Jones (Michael Wilmslow) "playing" bass on the back of a Strat? jgszgrxj6lg41.mp4

At university in the 90s doing Electronics and Music Tech we had an ex-BBC engineer as a lecturer who decided to try and teach us how to correctly set up the head bias (he had set out of kilter) on a Studer with an oscilloscope. I remember saying to him "This is all well and good, but what if something went really wrong with it? Wouldn't it be good to look at that?" He replied that he didn't want to break his precious Studer any more than that as they were too expensive... He was a lovely guy so I'm not knocking him personally but I always got frustrated that we never got any real-world electronic failures to deal with on our course, just lots of theory.

Are they 1/4" tape? If they're like the ones in the OP's photo. then surely you would need to buy studio quality machines like Studer etc with those big locking hubs? My dad was into reel-to-reels in the 80s and had some pretty professional looking domestic models. but they all had the small 3 prong hole in the middle like @Rosie C's example. Not that those full size reels would fit on Rosie's machine! I wonder if they do adaptors for the centre? Not that I am planning to go down this rabbit hole of course! It's a long time since I tried splicing tape on a Revox B77! EDIT - I just clicked the link and saw how much they were - definitely not!

I bought the 10W Joyo practice amp last year. It sits on my home office desk and is great for quick play alongs, but is very noisy when not touching the strings, and not something I remember hearing about in online reviews. I would hope this one is better for that.

The language on there sounded a bit like the English you get from Chinese adverts, so had a look and they are on Ali-Express for about the same price. EDIT - I would be interested to know how easy those little wheels would be to turn once the strings get up to tension...

A guy in our Leeds office at work was telling me that the owners of Vintage (JHS) are selling up and this means that Vintage are being closed down and a lot of stock is being sold off cheaper (he lives near their base and knows a few in the company). I don't know if the brand is being retired, or someone has bought it, but I would imagine it might affect you getting a new one. Last time I looked on Vintage's website about a week ago, most basses/colours were out of stock. I hope I'm correct in what I'm saying and not causing a panic. I did see a thread on here from about 4 months ago that was saying a similar thing.

I feel this needs further explanation.....i.e. why? I'm getting visions of someone making a model to practice their next bank job...🤣

Ummm, I don't think they'd want the one I cleaned my drain with..... EDIT - I had a proper look at that site. Imagine buying something thinking you might be getting a bit of Noel Gallagher's finger skin on it, and you end up with Mr No-Name's greasy bacon sandwich finger marks from West Sussex lol

I think I read that as a euphemism first time around....

So, yesterday, I got a guy out to fix my washing machine that wouldn't drain, suspecting the pump had failed. It turned out that the weird down/across/down bit of drain pipe between the washer drain and the main soil stack in the downstairs loo on the other side of the wall was blocked. The guy had one of those metal tool grabbers with the plunger and 3 little grabby bits on the end, but the housing for those was too big to bend around the corners. We tried to tip some drain cleaner in, but only got about a capful in before it got to the top. I scratched my brain, and remembered I had the rounds that came with my HB PB-50 in the packet for the flats I put on it. I got out the E-String, and was able to push through the blockage to allow me to pour more drain cleaner in. The washer is now running away happily as I type! It got me thinking - has anyone else had any great alternate uses for old strings that isn't in a musical vein? Discuss!

Having a dig around on Youtube, it looks like it was the Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards, which is a yearly occurrence. I have found another listing of that clip that says it is 2011, so your guess is as good as mine as to when it actually was.... It does look like I was right and it was a show band backing the star vocalists.

The clip says it was a "Lady of Soul" show, so I assume it was more about Aretha/female singers, and Stevie was a guest appearance for this song. There appear to be so many US TV shows like this where they have a house band and guest singers come on and off stage, so I doubt it would have been Stevie's band/Nate Watts.

Took mine to rehearsal on Monday. Found them to be very noisy when not playing. I suppose it could have been interference on the channel I was on but didn't have time to mess around and try other ones. Replaced it with a cable and all quiet as a mouse.

My only experience in this is that my first 5 string was a new Cort C5 about 21 years ago and although it was a great sounding bass, I found the string spacing to be too tight for me compared to the 4 string Jazz I had before. I think that is the Cort in my Avatar on the left. My sausage fingers kept tripping up over the strings so I have ended up always trying to get 5 strings with widest spacing over the years which isn't easy at the budget end of the scale - I note it is not even mentioned on a lot of online listings.. I also remember that after about a year of ownership a ground wire to one of the pots fell off and it kept cutting out, so I had to get my soldering iron out. It was fine after that but did concern me with their QC - although he later ones may be better. It is the only bass I have ever sold on (due to the spacing), but I sold it to a mate and he seemed very happy with it.

I received mine last week - have only tested them so far but all seems good. Forgot to take them to rehearsal last night - hopefully will remember next Monday!

John made me a passive Vol-Blend-Tone loom for my 5 string Precision build. Dead easy to install (even if John was super-fast in delivering it and you've lost the wiring diagram in the weeks it took for the pickups to arrive) and sounds great. Thanks again John!

That is one sentence we can definitely agree on. I do remember working with a pantomime dame who insisted on using his own costumes he had built up over the years. He had a Christmas tree dress that would be lit up when he walked on stage, then turn off. I assumed it was some sort of battery thing until half of the lights stopped working and he asked me to take a look at it. There were fully mains 240V bulbs wrapped around him on 2 circuits. He would walk out with himself connected to mains, then he would disconnect it by pulling an in-line 2 prong connector apart with one hand and getting the crew to pull the cable back off stage. The two prong plug looked like it was made of bakelite and the socket side could have easily been bridged with a finger when pulling them apart. When I started going through the dress cabling, I could see where bulb holders had been removed, the wires twisted back together and wrapped (badly) in dried out electrician's tape. He was a heavy smoker, so a coughing fit and slapping his chest would have probably killed him! I condemned it there and then and forbid him from using it, which he wasn't very happy about, but I slept better during the run!

Hi Tim, I think we are kind of agreeing in different ways. If the amp was faulty, or causing a PD to its own earth, then yes it would need looking at before it caused itself or the guitarist any damage. Remember, it is the current that kills, not the voltage, so in some schools of electrical thought, what you read on your meter may have been inside some sort of tolerance (although I doubt it). Did you get it fixed, or just leave it as was? What I did with the mic cable in my case isolated the guitarist/amp from the PA. so I think, especially as we had a rubber floor on our stage, isolated him enough to stop it hurting his lips or grounding himself in any other way. I only guessed it was his amp as we didn't have that problem again in the same venue. However, as I said I vaguely remember him coming the next year with the same amp, so assume he either had it fixed or wasn't faulty either.

My point is, I am not a qualified electrician but am qualified in audio tech and have worked with it and single/3-phase electricity enough over the years to have the experience to know it is not direct mains electricity flowing through these people. If it was, they would definitely know about it and would have probably bitten their tongue off at the very least! However, I agree that precautions are obviously best and having socket testers/inline RCDs is good for peace of mind. What these people experience is a static and sometimes impressive looking small blue flash like you would get from Nylon trousers, or poor shoes, or a balloon.. It is caused by small static or potential build up on a ground plane, because for whatever reason any inducted voltage caused by nearby noise or whatever, thinks your mouth is a faster route to earth than its current connection. It is not caused by a fault causing the live mains to somehow connect to the casing of the microphone. It is also worth noting that with the example I quoted, the guitarist did the whole gig with no problems. He then turned up the next year with the same setup and never mentioned his amp killing him in that time. I have also seen this issue with RCDs in place and they don't blow as it is not seen as a leakage to earth from another conductor.

Hi @TimR, most DI boxes I have opened up over the years just have a simple switch that causes a break in the connection to pin 1 of the XLR, there is no resistor. I think it would have to be of a pretty high resistance to give the same noise cancelling effect, which would be the same as a break in the connection. Mic cable shielding is not designed as a safety earth plane. It just happens to connect to earth in the mixer to aid with signal shielding if there isn't inherent noise being inducted it on the run. I have seen installations with all shields removed at 1 end on multi-channel snakes in noisy environments before. It wouldn't be my choice as it limits your options for noise issues, but I have seen it done.

Hi @LawrenceH - I don't know if that was aimed at me, but I was not suggesting moving physical earths from PAs or equipment. I was suggesting disconnecting the signal shield from the microphone. This would avoid a "bridge" between varying earth planes (existing or not) in various equipment plugged into various sockets in the building. A signal "ground lift" is a common option in DI boxes to isolate this to stop hum and no different to what I am suggesting here. I totally agree with the safety precaution of carrying a socket RCD and have one in my gig bag too. However, I think people need to understand the difference between serious electrical faults like mains voltage/current shorting to earth and small potential differences caused by less resistive paths to earth, which can happen due to bad connections, or some poor wiring in venues. Still not great and should be looked at by the venue and resolved, but if a microphone genuinely had mains voltage flowing through the casing, your mouth would have to be peeled away with a wooden pole once you'd burnt to a crisp (assuming a RCD hadn't tripped and saved you). These shocks are generally like static from your shoes or when you used to rub a balloon on your jumper. I am not belittling them by the way, I know they can bloody hurt, I have had a few myself in the odd venue over the years.

I saw bits of it, so didn't see the start or any context of what it was fully about. I agree that Beverly Knight was her usual amazing. For me. it lost a little in some of the arrangements and song choices, as though some were trying too hard to embellish or change the feel of the original songs. I also agree some of the vocalists seemed a little off. I recently saw a video on Youtube of a house band including Will Lee on bass playing a Curtis Mayfield tribute with the WDR orchestra and Ledisi/Bilal singing. Much more well done and true to the feel of the originals IMHO

Hi TIm, Agreed. I think you're arguing the same points as me, but probably in a more succinct way. The problem with potential differences between ground planes on different sockets in a room is usually that they are not commonly earthed, or the connection for one is not as good as the other or is not there at all. In my example you quoted, I assumed it was his amp/guitar setup as we had a multitude of guitarists using the same setup in that venue without issue. We kept the doctored cable marked up on a peg in our office, but don't think we ever used it again (probably until he came back the next year).

Hi Tim, The point of what I suggested is that you isolate the ground to the mic itself. I assume in the example you quoted, someone has lifted the ground elsewhere, so the mic is still connected to the PA ground via the cable shield, and therefore any potential in the PA earth plane is earthed through your mouth and guitar/amp. I think this is more likely than it travelling from your guitar earth to the PA earth if you're saying the ground was removed? If you remove the shield from the mic, the casing of the mic should not be connected to earth and therefore stop you getting belts. Maybe I have misunderstood what you meant.