EliasMooseblaster

How quiet do you need to be? I dare not use mine after Mini-Mooseblaster's gone to bed, as it would wake him straight back up again, but if you've no small offspring to worry about then you can get a bit more clarity at lower volumes by flipping the "bright" switch. It'll never get down to the sociable volume levels of your PC speakers, for instance, but it should be pretty workable as long as it's not right up against your neighbours' walls.

I think you've inadvertently answered the question yourself - whereas ITV, Channel 5, etc only had to fill one schedule back in the day, someone at the top of their respective operations clearly felt they needed to expand to remain competitive with other channels. Unfortunately, more channels means more schedules to fill, and a need to try and attract an audience to each of them. Of course, they could have gone for arty and highbrow content instead, but I presume the same people who gave a green light to these new sub-channels, simultaneously glanced at the viewing figures for BBC Four, and decided that brainless, low-brow cobblers was the way to go...

I'm surprised by the paucity of true "pop" artists in this list so far - does nobody get requests to play Kylie Minogue, for instance? (I mean, nothing gets a crowd going quite like Where the Wild Roses Grow...)

I believe Rotosound do this, at least to some extent - the "standard" stainless steel RS66s have red silks, whereas the nickel ones have light blue. I've not heard about anybody varying the colour for the gauge of the set, but... ...D'Addario, and more recently Rotosound, put different-coloured ball ends on their strings so it's easier to keep track of which string is supposed to be 1st, 2nd, etc. I wonder if anybody's thought about extending the colour scheme to denote lighter/heavier gauges.

I agree with you - I've seen (and been guilty of) plenty of laziness, and - my god - have I ever seen the above martyr complex writ large! But I wonder whether Andy's situation is one part laziness to two parts ignorance. He mentions that the band are all mid-30s upwards (not that this is a problem in itself), but I have observed that the older some musicians get, the more wedded they become to the "old model" of doing things. Their drummer clearly thinks that if they plough time and money into re-recording one of the songs with extra unicorn dust, they'll be able to waft it under the nose of some publicist or booking agent who'll pluck them out of obscurity and make sure the whole world hears and adores them. Which, as plans go, is obviously cobblers. But then, our drummer insisted that the only reason we weren't already filling stadiums was that "our show wasn't good enough." I don't know if it's coincidence or not, but he was the oldest member of the band; in any case, he believed dogmatically that if we just quit our jobs and toured more intensively, our fortunes would just magically reverse one day, and we'd rolling in it*. He scoffed at the idea that I was making better progress by pushing it to audiences via social media. When I pointed out that I'd sold more CDs that way than we'd at all of our gigs that year, it obviously stung: he grumbled that perhaps we should stop playing live altogether. A few weeks later, he tuned back into the same old channel and was banging on about how it was high time we quit our jobs and hit the road. It can't just be an age thing, because I know there are plenty of people on here who are older than him and far more savvy about this kind of thing. But it did feel like there was an aspect of Old Dog / New Tricks about it. *Also known in some circles** as "The Underpants Gnomes' business model." **me, when he was out of earshot

Your drummer sounds exactly like ours. Andy, you are completely in the right in this case: the music will not market itself. The "build it and they will come" mentality is a surefire recipe for ensuring that your EP remains ignored. It does not have to be the most "professional-sounding" record for people to listen to it and, heck, maybe even buy it. A fraction of that sum spent on well-thought-out advertising will do far more for the band than retreading old ground in the confines of a more expensive studio and arguing about when the backing vocals should come in. Get that EP in front of an audience, and use the knowledge and experience gained to improve your next recording. If you can market it well enough, you may even be able to raise some capital to go towards a producer for the next one!

Ooh...thank you for the tipoff - I've obviously only heard it at the wrong times of day!

This is probably the extent covered by the initial lasso of a station like Planet Rock, isn't it? Notice also how they tend to only play a very narrow selection of stuff by The Stones (Brown Sugar or Start Me Up, perhaps?) or The Who (generally only the ones that got picked for CSI title credits), despite them generally being considered a little on the influential side everywhere else. Oh, and nothing too psychedelic either - Hendrix and Cream sneak in as a rare breath of fresh air on that station some days...

Not quite the same story, but I found myself in a similar rut about ten or eleven years ago, once the two bands I had going were dwindling in activity. It became apparent that if I wanted to devote more time and energy to music, I would have to set off without them, so I started loitering around jam nights in town. Not all of them were worth going to, in hindsight. And yes, you will no doubt wince at the number of times you're asked to do a 12-bar blues, or have to put up with some Bob Dylan wannabe who gets butthurt about the other musicians not knowing Ballad of a Thin Man, or whatever, but at least you'll get to meet a lot of other musicians very quickly. And they almost always need good bass players. By analogy, if you compare it with answering a band's advert and going along to try out, a good jam night can be more like speed dating. It's still no guarantee of success, but at least you get to scope out more of the local scene more quickly.

Wow. That drummer does not look happy.

Ugh. I felt slightly nauseous after reading that. But also, what part of him thought it was a good idea to discuss this in such disturbing detail in a public interview? "So, you're here today to promote your new tour?" "That's right, Holly. And while I'm here, I'd like to make absolutely sure that my few remaining fans know I'm a raging nonce."

From looking through this thread, I think it's fair to suggest that everyone has a different threshold of "setupness" below which they would start to have doubts about the instrument. At the very least, I think there's a border you cross between "hmm, that's not how I like it, but I can fix that", and, "does this just need a little tweak, or is there a fundamental flaw in this guitar?" And I guess that border will shift depending on how much confidence and experience you have in adjusting necks, bridges, nuts, etc, as well as the price tag on the instrument. I'm happy to adjust nut slots and bridge saddles, for example, but much more reticent to play around with the truss rod more than I absolutely have to: I'd find it much harder to judge whether a bowed neck could be fixed, and that might put me off. Though I might be more inclined to risk it for a £200 bass than a £2000 bass - so I can see why the examples you tried might have come as more of a shock!

I make do with what I'm given; for someone who spends a lot of time up the "dusty end" of the neck, I only ever owned a couple of 24-fretters in my lifetime. At least, I assume my Shuker is a 24...is kind of hard to count as it's fretless! It's a little irksome that Fenders (and most copies), and indeed Thunderbirds, stop at 20 - but it's not as if there are many occasions where I need to run all the way from bottom E to top E. I seem to remember both my Schecter and my Epi EB-3 stop at 22 - whilst it's nice to have access to a top E and F, it's not like their services are required that routinely...those routinely soloing in D minor may beg to differ.

I avoided this by having my arm fretted in advance.

Just market it as dual purpose: jewellery and exfoliator in one.

Don't know if the same would be true for the Evos, but I've found with my CTM heads that if you really want to make them crunch, your best bet is to push the mid frequencies. Might be a different story if the Evo has a dedicated drive stage, but if there's any similarity with their voicing, the mids will probably give you the clarity to help that lovely soft clipping to shine through.

I imagine that neck plate spent several years, maybe decades, holding a gate onto a wall before it was repurposed.

Personally I'd nominate Eruption by Van Halen, and maybe something by Pig Destroyer.

I think Scheff only played on the LA Woman LP, but they had other session bassists in for most of their studio sessions; it was usually only live when Mr Manzarek's left hand took over the role.

Happens to the best of us, to be fair...

...and just to muddy the waters further, over at the Epiphone offices: The EB0 is the short-scale (30.5") with just a neck mudbucker, The EB3 is has a bridge pickup as well...and is long scale (34") Gibson did originally distinguish their short- and long-scale twin pickup models by calling them "EB3" and "EB3L" respectively; Epiphone appear to have ignored that convention!

Use? A bit. Need? No. Over the years with Cherry White, I added a Tubescreamer as a boost for solos, and a Big Muff for a couple of songs which were recorded with heavily distorted basslines. Both were off for the majority of a set, and the night we left my pedal bag back at the studio, I reassured myself that I hadn't become dependent on them. Useful, but not essential.

This may be an unpopular choice, but I think the OP's concept is epitomised beautifully by The Human League's most famous hit, Don't You Want Me? I'm treading lightly, because I understand the fans get very defensive. I've listened to people compare them favourably with such electronic innovators as Kraftwerk and Gary Numan. And, to be fair, the intro to the track suggests something in that vein - a moody synth melody, which seems to be setting the tone for something dark and atmospheric... ...and then Phil Oakey starts singing, the music behind him lurches through a massive gear-change, and suddenly we're in naff '80s pop territory. By the time he's singing the titular line, "don't you want me?", I've very much made up my mind that no, I do not.

Not having any background in psychology, nor having read enough Freud that I feel compelled to ascribe all thoughts, dreams, and other subconscious brain activity to an inherent desire to have it off with one's own mother, I'm afraid I can't offer an explanation for your dreams. I can, however, reassure you that you are not alone. I have had similar dreams in which my instruments bends, folds, or shrinks to the size of a ukulele. In one case, I was on stage trying to play a borrowed bass on which the strings resembled those coiled, springy, rubber keychains that were briefly popular in the mid-to-late nineties. In another, I left other band members to pack the gear while I went ahead to set up the venue, had to berate them for forgetting to pack my amp, and found myself trying to amplify my bass using the "paper cup telephone" method and running a taut string from the body of the bass to a floor tom. I'm sure there are others; in some respects I'm quite grateful that I forget the majority of my dreams...

I'm struggling to process this degree of stupidity...did she just assume that Jack & co were playing a very elaborate form of Guitar Hero along to the music on your tablet...?