chriswareham

When changing strings, the old set goes in the case with the added benefit that the string is already cut to length. Only needed to use a spare string on one occasion, when of all things the E string snapped at the headstock end. Rapidly changed the string, but as I was getting it up to pitch ... SPROING ... the damn spare snapped as well. Turns out the edge of the machine head split shaft bit where you bend the string in had somehow become razor sharp and normal tension was enough to press into the string core and snap it. No spare bass guitar, and neither of the other two bands on the bill offered to lend one, so my band finished the set with no bass. I started taking a backup bass to gigs after that, but then stopped when I switched to using a medium scale bass as my main instrument and all my other basses are long scale that now feels uncomfortable.

The Sisters of Mercy rank as one of the worst live music experiences I've ever had. Missed their early incarnations pre-Floodland as I was too young. Saw them twice in the Vision Thing era, but it was third rate metal as Eldritch thought that would make the band massive in the US. Then saw them about eight years ago, since my partner bought tickets to see them at the Roundhouse as a present. Therapy? supported, and were their usual superb selves. The Sisters were like a bad parody doing techno versions of the old songs without even a bass guitarist. I also walked out of Ultravox at the Roundhouse, as it was more like a Midge Ure solo show with his terrible guitar playing drowning the rest of the band out. Found out afterwards he'd insisted on his personal sound engineer being in control of the FoH mix. Peter Murphy at the smaller venue in the O2 dome thing. Billed as a mixed set of Bauhaus and solo material. He spent almost the entire set laying on his back and refused to sing most of the songs to the obvious embarrassment of his backing band. A few months after he was arrested for driving under the influence of, and in possession of, drugs. Not a surprise.

I'd recommend the Sound on Sound review of the Tascam Model 12 - it improves on the 16 in so many ways, so if you don't need the extra tracks it could be the better choice of the two.

I sold a Sequential Circuits TOM drum machine to buy an Alesis SR-16 when they came out. The Alesis was terrible, with sounds that were soaked in a reverb that couldn't be removed and I've always regretted that "upgrade". The TOM is now worth about ten times what I sold it for as well. At least the Alesis didn't have a habit of scrambling its memory just before a gig, which is what the TOM's predecessor - an Oberheim DMX - used to do. The only solution to that was recording the drums on a portastudio and putting up with the resulting hiss that was quite something at gig volumes over a PA system.

That's why I added the caveat about class compliance. Some devices need drivers if they offer higher bit depths, since this wasn't in the earlier USB standards for audio.

If you don't want access to all the plugins that you can use with a a computer based DAW package, then something like the Tascam Model 12 might be a good alternative. It's a standalone, hardware mixer and multi track digital recorder. Very simple to use, and you can also start integrating it into a DAW setup at a later stage since it can act as an audio interface and control surface for the most popular DAW packages. As for someone mentioning a Mac with the inference it will just work. No, it won't. Exactly the same issues as Windows, with latency problems and potentially conflicting drivers if you use anything that isn't a "class compliant" USB audio interface.

She's a great luthier. It's quite poignant at times when she has to stop filming because the power has failed due to Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure (she's based in Kyiv). Ted Woodford, who is the gold standard for YouTube luthier videos, has spoken approvingly of her skills.

For me the best pedal purchase was a Boss BF-2 - the often maligned flanger. It was after I watched a YouTube video where it was shown how versatile an effect it is once you understand how the controls interact with each other, resulting in chorus, uni-vibe, comb filter and other effects in addition to the expected flanging. It's replaced my much used but incredibly noisy EHX Clone Theory, and has the added benefit of fitting in a guitar case.

I played drop C on a 4 string for a number of years, so C-G-C-F. Heaviest four strings from an Ernie Ball Power Slinky set. For stuff I'd normally play in standard tuning I just adapted my playing to suit the drop tuning. Wouldn't work if you need open strings from the Eb tuning for double stops or drones though.

Perhaps we also need a thread on misleading band names, album titles or artwork. Something like Throbbing Gristle's "20 Jazz Funk Greats":

The Saints were awesome, up there with The Church as one of the Aussie bands that shoud have been far more successful than they were.

This thread made me think of the excellent Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. And the Frank Spencer Blues Explosion.

There has been research into this - the confidence that some people have in their "gut feeling", and how right or wrong that conviction is. Turns out that people's preconceived notions about something they don't actually understand are almost always wrong. Drastically wrong. Seems to be bloody obvious to me, but as you say, Trump's gut feeling, sorry, I meant to say gut feelings trump actual knowledge and facts these days.

Biggest problem with Bax (and Thomann) is that they usually send electronics with "deathdaptors", those wobbly converters from EU two pin plugs to British three pin ones. I kind of expected it with Thomann, but got fooled by Bax having a .co.uk website address. At least I already knew to not order from DV247 (the former Digital Village and now known as Music Store), who did a "flat pack" restructure a few years ago, with many suppliers left out of pocket and the company basically moved to Germany. I was actually working in an office above their Barnet branch when they restructured overnight, and came in to work one Monday to find their confused staff standing outside a locked and empty store.

Well, woman actually: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx_Sqq6jooI

The Korg one seems to work very well on bass, better than the Snark ones I've used before (they would also break quite quickly - the little tabs that hold the display to the stalk are very fragile). The "no clip on tuners while we're playing" thing is an aesthetic choice - we're heavily influenced by new wave and post punk music, so we make an effort to look like those bands did. So our equipment is either old 70s and early 80s stuff or indistinguishable from it.

Very few purchases this year, but best is an HH V-S Bassamp, an old solid state amp head from the late 1970s. Desperately needed a lightweight head for a gig where cabs were provided and transport was a problem. The only thing available locally, and my only memory of them was from teenage years when reharsal studios were full of knackered HH kit that had been absolutely thrashed. This one had been serviced with new power transistors and even the backlit display works perfectly. Tried it at a rehearsal and was amazed - it's very loud, very clean and even the "Valve Sound" proved useful on a song where I play double stops and root-fifth power chordy things high up the neck. Switching the V-S on made me sound remarkably like Lemmy! Worst purchase was several Korg clip on tuners. Actually great bits of kit, but the singer insists we remove them during shows. So I've now mislaid two of them after checking my tuning and then leaving them on the top of house amps, from where they've probably fallen down the back thanks to the vibration.

I can confirm that Strings and Things in the UK are super helpful. I bought a second hand Ray 34 last year, and it was only after I got it home that I noticed the "treble side" machine head was bent. Strings and Things sent a replacement free of charge after I made an enquiry about spare parts. If you have no joy with the Belgian distributor, perhaps one of us Basschatters in the UK could try getting the parts for you and sending them on. Worth noting that most it not all parts on the US made Stingrays are not compatible with the Indonesian made Rays.

Good joke. You are joking aren't you? Actually it seems like you're not. Well f*ck me. Microsoft are utterly incapable of making secure software. They've made a rod for their own back by having to be backwards compatible with the horrendous APIs they've put out since the 1980s. APIs that are absolutely so full of holes that they simply can't be fixed without breaking the legacy software that are the sole reason they still exist.

Ah, Manic Street Preachers. The band that have been releasing the same one f*cking song their entire f*cking career. I remember when the NME and Melody Maker journos first started claiming they were the next big thing, and saying they were the "new Clash". If the band member who used to mime on guitar hadn't disappeared, making said journos guilty about starting their "we built them up, we'll knock them down" ego w*nk, than they'd have been consigned to history a long time ago.

We've had people known for other endeavours than bass playing, but how about bass players that use fretless bass in unexpected settings? I recently discovered that James McGearty, bass player of seminal death rock band Christian Death, used a fretless bass. Not something I'd expect in that genre... There again, he might have taken a cue from David J of Bauhaus, who also prefers a fretless bass: And Stuart Morrow of New Model Army was also a fan of fretless basses, having defretted a cheap Precision copy of some sort:

Wow, just checked out a few of their other songs and they're brilliant. Kind of what Royal Blood could be if they actually tried to be original rather than just recycling tired hard rock cliches. Which brings me back on topic, as I loathe anything by Royal Blood, since everyone assumes that as a bass player I must like their neanderthal plodding.

Got confused and thought this thread was going to be about a terrible "Oi!" band. Turns out I was thinking of C(o)ck Sparrer.

"Yellow" by Coldplay. It's a terrible song to begin with, but my wife is a piano teacher and several of her students are learning it for grade exams. Even played as an instrumental version it's utterly irritating. Anything by George Ezra. Before the virus I worked in an office where I had to endure the musical tastes of the boss, which extended to the fag ends of Britpop like Oasis and contemporary "singer songwriters". Ezra's "Budapest" with that grating "ooh" brought me close to quitting at one point. My plan was to initially try and get signed off work for as long as possible with mental health issues by running around the office with nothing on below the waist, while urinating and shouting "it won't stop". Thankfully the whole office complained that we should take turns at putting music on. My turn started with the entirety of Einstürzende Neubauten's "Kollaps" album: