linear

It is possible to unobtrusively clear on the Ditto if you double-tap and hold while the loop is playing; it's only when you've stopped a loop and then want to clear that there's a potential issue. I must admit, for live use I'd be tempted to go for one of the units with a second dedicated stop/clear footswitch.

[quote name='uncle psychosis' timestamp='1427990046' post='2736800'] I only ever accept cash on collection on Gumtree. If I was going to accept PayPal or trust the thing to a courier I'd sell on eBay to a wider market. [/quote] +1 If selling something and having it picked up from your home/work by an untrusted party, do not take PayPal as payment. As I understand it, you won't be protected as a seller with PayPal unless you have proof of delivery. It's very easy for someone to pay you with PayPal, collect the item, and then claim they never received it to get their money back from you. If you're arranging the courier yourself that's fine, but otherwise cash on collection/delivery.

In the range of minimalist loopers, another one to consider is the DigiTech JamMan Express XT. It is somewhat larger than the Ditto, but will take a battery. It also has a couple of other features: stereo, and the ability to sync up with other DigiTech loopers. The DigiTech has relay based switching, with a very slight audible click. £61 on Amazon at the moment. I switched from the Ditto to the DigiTech, because when you clear a stopped loop on the Ditto there's a slight delay before it clears in which it plays a little bit of the start of the loop. Other than that, I preferred the Ditto, as it was smaller, neater, and just exuded quality. The Ditto [i]may[/i] have had a slight edge in sound quality, but I didn't compare them side by side for long; they have the same digital sampling rate/depth, and it's possible I was swayed by the Ditto being a more aesthetically pleasing unit. Also, the Ditto flashes it's LED at the start of the loop, and the DigiTech doesn't for some reason, and I miss that. But, the lack of 'silent clear' was a deal-breaker for me, as they say.

I have a 10W solid-state practice amp with 5" drivers, it's up off the floor, I roll the bass off, have the volume low, but you can still hear it on the ground floor, and that's with me up on the 3rd. Bass travels, unfortunately. So, most of the time, I use a Zoom B3 + decent-ish headphones, hooked up to a laptop. It lets me play along with MP3s, CDs, YouTube etc, and also functions as a tuner, metronome, drum machine, looper, and it has some effects on there too I can't say I've ever had any problems balancing volumes - I keep the bass volume constant, and simply roll the volume knob up and down on the laptop as needed.

I've never used a music stand, but after reading this thread I'm considering getting one for me and each of the other band members. This should provide an interesting level of cognitive dissonance for the audience at our next gig. [i]"Is it meant to sound like that? It must do, they're all using music stands." "The bass player has been playing the same two bar pattern for three minutes now, why does he keep turning the pages on his sheet music?"[/i] I think we'll hide them at the back until we are just about to start playing though. That way, those who would normally flee at the sight of them will have to stay until they've finished their pint at least. Only question is what type of stands to go for. I'm thinking mahogany for a nice warm tone, but painted black to preserve the high-end.

[quote name='hiram.k.hackenbacker' timestamp='1418353317' post='2629524'] Two minutes on t'internet confirms your assumption that it is quite rare. I'll let you know if I stumble across a copy. [/quote] Thankyou. I have come across copies for sale occasionally, but it's people asking crazy prices. All the more galling as I remember coming across it years ago in a shop for not much more than a tenner and passing. I live in hope that someone will stick it up on youtube one day.

God in 3 Persons is my fave by a long way, but probably best to preview that one on youtube before buying. Incidentally, if anyone has a CD copy of the instrumental version that they want to sell or are willing to rip for me, I'd be very grateful. I have it on vinyl, but am struggling to find a digital copy.

Thanks chaps. I reckon I shall give both of those a try.

Another option to perhaps consider is the Zoom B3. It's a very good multi-effects and amp-modelling pedal for bass, that also functions as a recording interface, and will allow you to play along to audio from your PC and hear the mix through your headphones. It also has a very basic drum machine built in, which I have found myself using for practice way more than I ever imagined I would. A simple looper and a tuner too. As an inexpensive one box solution it's pretty fantastic. There were quite a few good deals on second hand B3s on the forum last time I looked Obviously something like the Scarlett 2i2 is a better choice where recording is concerned; it has two inputs, input level knobs, clipping gauges, output volume knobs, and it can record from microphones as well as an instrument. Also, the Zoom is limited to a recording quality of 44.1 kHz and 16 bit, whereas the 2i2 will do 96 kHz and 24 bit. I have a both a Scarlett 2i2 and a B3. I use the Scarlett for recording me and my bandmates and the B3 for headphone practice. If you think you might want to expand the type of recording you do in the future, recording other instruments and vocals, or if having a higher analog to digital sampling rate and bit depth is important to you, then the 2i2 or any of the similar interfaces out there would seem like the way to go. If you just want it for headphone practising and recording your bass for yourself or demos, then the B3 would do all you need with the added advantage of being a very capable multi-effects pedal!

Yay, yet another thread about TI flats. I had the aforementioned strings on my bass a while back, and I liked the tone, but after being played in they were kind of funny tension-wise. It felt like I was playing rubber bands. It wasn't really a problem for finger-style, but sometimes I play alternating thumb and fingers, and for that they were hopeless. So, after a brief unsatisfactory dalliance with various rounds, I was hoping to go back to flats Now, I realise nothing sounds [i]exactly[/i] like TIs, but I was wondering if there was anything somewhat similar sonically, but with a more conventional feel. Not super-taught, but something on a par with bog-standard 45-105 nickel rounds, like D'Addarios say.

No probs. Good point about it being the tip contact that wears out; I was forgetting about that. I reckon it was my Planet Waves cables that caused the original to fail in the first place - those will be getting retired too. I'll keep it simple and just solder what's necessary. Thanks guys.

[quote name='6v6' timestamp='1415618321' post='2601955'] If you do that, you'll short the tip to ground when you use a mono jack plug in there. [/quote] I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean a situation where a jack is not pushed all the way in and the tip touches the ring contact?

Yea, it's a passive bass, and I can't see any situation where I would be plugging a stereo jack into it. I thought maybe it might increase the chances of the jack making a connection when not pushed in all the way, or when the socket's internal contacts eventually starts to lose their springiness. An unlikely speculation I guess, but I thought I should double-check.

As in the title, I'm replacing the dodgy barrel socket on my BB414 with a Switchcraft stereo socket. Is it worthwhile connecting the ring and sleeve tags with a little bit of insulated wire?

Can I just reiterate what BigRedX said: unless the upload bandwidth of our internet connection is so low that it's taking an unacceptably long time for files to upload to YouTube, you shouldn't re-encode the files before uploading. YouTube will re-encode them to an appropriate size anyway once they are uploaded. If you're passing them around to be downloaded and played on computers etc, then yea, it makes more sense, although, personally, I'd just point people to youtube. If it's a one-off kind of thing, if you stick them up on dropbox/google drive I can re-encode them to H264/AAC at pretty much any size you want them to be.

I don't have any of the ENO ones myself, I just remember the threads on here. Doing a search on here for ENO pedals brings them up. Seems the tuner is guitar only. The OCD clone sounds like it is usable on bass, but obviously it depends what sound you are looking for. I have the Joyo Ultimate Drive OCD clone, and I can't say I was blown away by it, but others on here rather like it. It's available for less than £20, posted from UK, on Donnerdeal if you fancy giving it a go.

Was it maybe the ENO branded pedals? They use the same size enclosure as the Mooer ones, but are cheaper pedals. PT-21 tuner DSO-2 OCD clone

Is there a brand/type of strings (rounds) that has a really good rep for even tone across all four? The difference between my A and D string is starting to really bother me. I'm going to take another look at the pickup height, but the volume balance seems ok to me, and it's the tone that differs.

All available evidence seems to suggest I'm not. I try not to let it bother me though.

[quote name='BILL POSTERS' timestamp='1408918003' post='2534644'] But while people will play for free, Bands who can and do want to earn lose out... [/quote] I'm not sure the above is necessarily the case, but if it were, wouldn't it just be an example of free market operation? What's the alternative? Unionisation and protectionism? Lets say I was in a band of independently wealthy individuals - shouldn't we be able to play for free if we so choose? It seems odd that we would be compelled to charge a fee purely to protect the income of [i]other people[/i]. Why should we? If you want to earn a fee, you have to actually [i]earn[/i] it, i.e. provide a product that venues feel is worth paying for. If other people are giving away for free the exact same thing you are trying to sell, then surely you've made some very poor business decisions.

Given the vintage, maybe it's 'TV Cherry'.

[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1408374784' post='2529565'] Known issue with the Zoom devices (H1 H2 H4 H4n etc) they have a pretty sh*t clock. [/quote] That sounds like it must be it then. I'm definitely recording at 44.1 on both. No click track - God, if only No digital out on the H2N, just the headphone/line out. I wouldn't have anywhere to plug the digital out into anyway, as I'm just using a basic Focusrite interface. This wasn't a pre-planned setup - I just realised that if I used all the little bits I had already bought for recording stuff at home I could get a better result than just sticking the H2N in the corner. It does work - band members were relatively impressed with the results - but I'm not going to be putting the local studios out of business just yet I've been using Audacity to get a clear look at the waveforms, syncing the beginning of the tracks, and then stretching the ones from Ableton until they sync at the end - it's a trial and error process though: "0.002%, nope not enough, 0.008% too much ..." and so on. You would think that once I'd figured out the exact percentage to use I could just do that for each session, but no, it doesn't seem to work that way. It's a pain. I guess the next step is to upgrade the recording interface, but I'd also want to buy mics for the snare and kick, stands, might end up needing a little outboard preamp if there aren't enough on the interface - it all adds up. Maybe one day. Thanks guys. This forum is so helpful

Recently I've been recording our practices with a cobbled together multi-track setup: drums with a Zoom H2N; guitar, bass and vocals through a recording interface connected to my laptop and recorded in Ableton. A problem I've been having is that the tracks from the H2N are not in sync with those recorded on the laptop. If I sync them up at the start, they very slowly drift out of sync. It's maybe half a second of drift after an hour of recording. The sample rates are the same on both, so I'm wondering if the issue down to a difference in speed between the clocks on the two devices. Is that something that happens? Or is it something that Ableton is doing perhaps?

Sold Lloyd my DC9. Great guy - quick payment, good comms. Excellent.