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SteveO

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Everything posted by SteveO

  1. Never done any work on a bass, but I have done inlays before. I use a dremmel and a [url="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bosch-26150335JA-Dremel-Plunge-Attachment/dp/B0009EQ5QA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1313250143&sr=8-1"]router attatchment[/url] The smallest bit I have is 1.5mm which all but eliminates the problems of bit radius on corners when you follow a template. You can get smaller, but I never needed to go any smaller than that. With a bit of practice it is fairly easy to get good results.
  2. Regardless of the arguments for and against taking such a deal, a quick google says that a pub can expect net profits between 5% and 10%. It makes no sense for a pub to give away all of its profits, unless it's a way of making sure that the pub doesn't make a loss that night. Of course this deal also means that it wont make a profit either. Unless of course its 10% of the bar takings.... after costs.
  3. [quote name='cetera' post='1203328' date='Apr 18 2011, 11:20 AM']Jevnaker, Norway ‘Untouchables’[/quote] Hey, thats just round the corner from me Not that I'm complaining because it'll be great to see you guys again, but given that there is a huge KISS fan base over here how come you're only playing one gig in scandanavia?
  4. [quote name='skankdelvar' post='1254884' date='Jun 3 2011, 01:16 AM']Wherever he is, I'm sure OldGit will be enjoying that particular juxtaposition [/quote] Had a sad little moment when I saw OG's post on P1, but thats made me smile
  5. Practice moves? No. Practice while moving? Yes. I used to make a right fool of myself hitting bum notes and totally loosing track of where we were when doing simple things like switching a pedal or on one occasion moving slightly to get out of the beam of a particularly bright annoying spotlight. Someone (I think on here) said that when he nailed a song his next step was to walk about / watch TV / talk to his girlfriend whilst practicing it. Been doing that for about a year now and I find it helps a lot. Not that I move around much onstage anyway, but the number of bum notes has dropped right off. Also practicing in front of a mirror and then eyes shut have helped me a lot to remove my tendency to fretboard gaze. As has been said, its not just about the music we're also entertainers (exemption granted for Bilbo ). IME a band that sounds great but stand as still as waxwork dummies don't go down as well as a band that engages the audience but are musically average. Sounding great [u]and[/u] giving a visual show will almost guarantee a good night.
  6. I've had squires with ply bodies and with rather nice ash bodies (although the latter was japanese I think) If you can take it apart and take photos of the pup + neck cavities then there's a chance of ID-ing it as the paint in there tends to be a bit on the thin side. If its ply it will be obvious.
  7. Hmmm. I wonder if he wants to borrow my crappy squire bitza. I'm only an hour away.
  8. Whole Lotta Noize wll be playing 2 Sets of hard rock covers, split by a set of ACDC covers with special guest vocalist Gunnar Gundersen. All this will be followed by 2 sets of original Rock from the Apes of Space First gig for Whole Lotta Noize with the new line up. All Scandanavian BCers are invited to come see crap gear being played badly. Possible the first time Behringer gear will grace the stage of the Hard Rock Cafe Oslo. Free entry to BCers (well, its free entry to everyone really, but you can walk through the door with the smug feeling that if everyone else had to pay then you would have been able to get in for nowt ) Doors open at 16:00
  9. 1st thought is that you have an old crt monitor. Some throw out lots of em radiation. the obvious solution here is to dump this and get a lcd or led screen*. Mobile phones are also a real problem in that they are [u]designed[/u] to pump out radiation on order to communicate with the nearest antenna. solution here is to turn off your mobile when you're recording. I have no doubt that there are some solutions to filter out the noise, but I would guess that they are relatively expensive and a signal with the noise filtered out is going to be worse than one with no noise to start with. *edit: of course if you don't have a crt monitor then you can safely ignore this suggestion
  10. I'd wait to see what gets delivered. The things that you ordered seem to fit nicely into three packages: the amp in one, The little stuff all together in the 2nd and the bass in the 3rd. It was only yesterday that the first 2 packages were dispatched. My guess would be that the third will be dispatched today.
  11. [quote name='Johnston' post='1167963' date='Mar 19 2011, 10:11 AM']...Before Duties, on that day with the exchange rate to dollars £30 a unit [/quote] Not that surprising really. A decent mp3 player gan be bought new for 15 quid that has vastly superior electronics than a bass. A decent chair can be bought new for 20 quid that has much more wood and more intricate joints than on a bass. There's no reason that a factory can't stamp out basses to the same quality as these 2 items for similar manufacturing costs. Of course the higher quality instruments will cost a great deal more to make both in raw materials and in labour, but I'm sure that the likes of fender mark up their mass produced basses by a staggering amount, purely because they can based on their brand name. Obviously I'm not saying that the mass produced instruments are as good as the hand crafted ones, just as the IKEA chair that i'm sitting on is not as good as the leather and mahogany one in my grandad's study, I'm just saying that low price is not necessarily an indication of bad quality. It occurs to me that it could also be an indication of a seller that has a low profit margin on their goods which isn't inflated due to brand name. anyway, this is all semantics on justifying conclusions based on assumptions. The most valid opinion so far for the OP was BottomE's who has tried an HB bass and found it to be wanting.
  12. I can't see anyone arguing with your opinions, but rather pointing out that "Oh, it'll be crap, for that price." is a bit of an assumption, and an unfounded one at that. HB make cheap, but decent quality instruments, as do quite a few other budget manufacturers. This observation is made on owning and playing several of their products. You have played some HB stuff and found it to be crap. nothing wrong with that. Either your standards are higher than mine (quite possible) or i've been lucky. either way up there are 2 differing opinions on the quality of HB gear by people that have tried. the gripe is that the only comments concerning the bass in question are [i]'I've not tried one, but its cheap so it must be crap'[/i] which I don't think can fall into the category of valid advice to the OP. I actually thought that your comment (if you'll forgive me for paraphrasing your first post) of [i]"It's an unknown bass. It's better to go for a cheap bass that has a good reputation"[/i] is a very good one, and one that I agree with, however I can't see the point of getting defensive when someone points out that none of the people who says they're crap seems to have tried one. Oh and I'm from Teesside (Just live over ere), and that'll be my defense for pushing in and getting involved with someone else's argument Anyway, I'm off back to lurkers corner... see you all in another 3 months.
  13. HB stuff is good. I own a HB semi acoustic bass, a HB semi acoustic guitar and a HB classical guitar. The guitars are in the same quality bracket as my yamaha classical and fender semi (I bought both HB guitars as cheap disposables so I wouldn't care if they got trashed during drunken jamming sessions on the beach) the acoustic bass is also as good as any acoustic bass I've tried (i.e. too quiet to play unplugged) and again the quality is v. good. in all 3 cases I have guitars that are comparable to middle of the road alternatives at a tiny fraction of the price. Thomann are the mutts nuts to deal with. I have returned an amp (arrived broken on delivery) and trombone (I found a cheaper 2nd hand one between ordering and delivery) and both times they didn't ask what the problem was. They organised the courier (at their expense) and refunded everything I had paid back to my account before the courier arrived to collect. [bitching] there are 2 ways that these threads about cheapies go... either following the perception that they can't be good because they're cheap, or that they've been tried and turned out to be good VFM. here it's cheap = crap. redstripers link points to an alternative by people here that seem to actually own or have tried one, which points to good VFM. The fairly recent Sue Ryder bass thread is in the vfm vein. I'd be surprised if there wasn't also a "Sue Ryder basses are cheap therefore crap" thread in these pages. A 5 min trawl through TB will probably find threads on both sides, along with similar couplets for ibbys, yams, epis etc of course there are those that try and don't like, and the points of view of these people I respect, but like Mr redstriper I find the views of people making assumptions based purely on price to be totally worthless. [/bitching] I have not tried the bass in the OP, but I can honestly say that If I was in the OPs position I would order one to try, because there is nothing to loose.
  14. First Bass Owned: Chinese Squire P bought in early '90s 'Go To' Bass: JV Squire P 'Your' Bass: JV Squire P I keep buying and selling basses because like most here there's always some flavour of the month that gets the GAS going, but nothing feels or sounds as 'right' as the JV for me (could be a psychological thing)
  15. [quote name='Wil' post='1135737' date='Feb 21 2011, 05:41 PM']Doesn't Guy Pratt post on Basschat?[/quote] He did, under the id of "Dougie". Haven't seen him around for a few months now. Either he's decided to avoid us as have most of the 'pro' bassists that wander through, or he's busy, away playing stadium gigs, writing books, doing standup... being famous.
  16. [quote name='Mr. Foxen' post='1051714' date='Dec 8 2010, 03:22 PM']That is amazing, he was supposed to be fighting for them, unless he was some sort of communist who was fighting for North Vietnam against the south who make things for export.[/quote] beat me to it Why is something being made in the far east so bad? The best TV's are made in the far east The top of the range Laptops' are made in the far east IPhones are made in the far east Ok, we can argue about wether or not IPhones are good quality phones, but if the best electronics goods are made there then why is making bass gear in the far east automatically a bad thing? I would propose that the Japanese fenders etc are [b]made to be worse than the american equivalents[/b] in order to protect the perceived value of an american fender. I don't have a problem with that marketing strategy, but it leads to the conclusion that if Ampeg [u]wanted[/u] to they can ensure that the far east manufactured stuff is just as good as the other stuff. If they decide to give the customer a choice between products with 2 levels of quality by having american and east models, then how is that different from fenders strategy? Of course the 3rd option is to make cheap tat, sell it at the same prices as old and destroy the brand image thus killing the company. Cant really see the board making that decision.
  17. [quote name='Dom in Somerset' post='1050160' date='Dec 7 2010, 08:52 AM']I'm re-stringing and setting up some basses for someone and they've also asked if I can help with another problem: They have an active Yamaha bass, I don't know the model , it's a four string with two soap bar pick ups. He noticed a few years ago that it seemed to be rather battery hungry so he went over to removing the battery when not in use. I've got two active acoustics that I keep the batteries in with no ill effects. He thinks the problem is getting worse, the last battery survived three gigs before being consumed. Any ideas?[/quote] The usual culprit for short lived batteries is leaving the bass plugged in, in this case I think the problem is the Yamaha. My Yam (375) also eats batteries, so much that I get fresh batteries every time I gig with it (which is not often). This has come up a few times in the past on here with yamaha owners. If I knew how to do it or could be bothered I'd see about measuring the current drain and comparing it with other basses. Of course it could be that he's using the batteries that are 10 for a quid in poundland... A quick google shows that a Duracell 9v battery is about 580mAH, but you can get them as low as 100mAH
  18. It seems that most of the songs we play are out of tune or in dropped keys. Its easy enough to drop the E string to a Eb, D, Db etc, but microtonal changes are a right pain. Of course we usually play in the closest available key (JJF in B I think) Amazing Slower Downer really helps for the learning / play along at home time as changing the tuning is only a click away. You can change tuning and speed up / slow down on the fly so you don't have to wait for the tune to be re-rendered (my personal bugbear with audacity) and its cheap as chips.
  19. Looking at that clip the first thing that springs to mind is whether the singer can hear himself. Some notes are in key, some are wandering a lot. Our front-girl was pretty hit and miss until we worked out that she had crap monitoring and was struggling to hear herself. The second thing that springs to mind is how he's the only one who seems to care about the music. Get up, get in there, get a bit of eye contact with each other and make it look as if you are loving every second of it. Its amazing how much better everyone plays when there's a buzz going on. Sitting at the back looking bored is not going to inspire anyone. This is not personal to you btw, your drummer looks like he's thinking of last nights eastenders and the guitarist seems to be wondering if he's brought enough fx. Anyway, hopefully he will get a wake up call from seeing that, realise that there is a major problem and work on his pitch training.
  20. I heard somewhere that guitar through bass amp is ok, bass through guitar amp is bad. Maybe something to do with the sealed / open back designs and the speakers shaking themselves to pieces if handling too much low freq. Twas such a long time ago that I've forgot the details. Maybe it was an old wives tale. Maybe i'm going senile. Maybe someone who knows these things will set us straight. Unless its a freebee or a real bargain I'd go with a bass version anyway - the preamp / eq section is likely to be tuned to higher freqs of a guitar, and may be all but useless.
  21. I started to notate stuff down a while back, with grandiose thoughts on compiling a file that I could dip into, but soon lost interest and gave up. I think its a good thing to be able to do, but to note down a track even roughly takes me about 3 times as long compared to just learning it. There are loads of tabs or Guitar pro files out there that make the learning of stuff even easier, getting the learning time down to 2 or 3 times though the track, so spending an hour transcribing a track just doesn't seem worth it.
  22. [quote name='skankdelvar' post='1022971' date='Nov 13 2010, 11:33 PM']Got one.[/quote] Me too [quote name='skankdelvar' post='1022971' date='Nov 13 2010, 11:33 PM']It works fine.[/quote] Yup [quote name='skankdelvar' post='1022971' date='Nov 13 2010, 11:33 PM']Maybe not high end audiophile quality but it did the job[/quote] yup [quote name='skankdelvar' post='1022971' date='Nov 13 2010, 11:33 PM']and none of the punters have complained.[/quote] yup. No nonsense, no frills. The guy in the anorak at the back who claims to be able to tell the difference between and rosewood and maple necks by listening alone may be sporting a sneer, but the rest wont.
  23. Only 60 made... this one is number 929 I know, I know, it just made me chuckle thats all.
  24. Without wishing to go too far OT, I also have no idea who Christina Hendricks is, and cant be bothered to google. Can we infer from TNIS's pst that she's some sort of actress? I always thought that Pete was being ironic by having a dowdy bint in amongst the rest of the soft porn avatars.
  25. [quote name='BurritoBass' post='1020495' date='Nov 11 2010, 07:18 PM']I have to say if that had been me I'd be equally fuming![/quote] forgive my ignorance, but what is the problem here? I mean the fact that people are watching means that people are in the market for this model yes? and so he's got a pretty good indication that somethings wrong - too high price maybe? Anyway, just because people are watching doesn't make any difference to the auction does it? I mean does it matter whether there are a million watchers or none if no one makes a bid?
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