NancyJohnson

Just going back to my mate, he used to (no pun) wax lyrical about different elements he could add to his system to make it sound (subjectively) better.

I can recall speaker isolation systems (spikes, then this ball bearing/cup system).  Crocodile clips (on speaker cable) attached to curtains, speaker cones made 'from the same stuff that they coat the tiles on the space shuttle'.  Power supplies.  Power amps.  Different cartridges for different music ('Yeah, this one us better for reggae.').

He would say regularly that achieving 85% of musical audio fidelity was cheap and simple, the big money is in the final 15%, which I suppose is where his business model lies.

6 hours ago, Dan Dare said:

In my experience, those who claim vinyl is fundamentally flawed (what method of music reproduction isn't flawed in some way?) have never heard it at its best.

I have a mate who owned an extremely high end hi-fi business.  We're talking installs running into the tens of thousands; another of my mates is one of his clients.  It's ridiculous money changing hands (£750 for a turntable power supply, I mean, WTAF??).

Anyhow, I reckon I've listen to enough records on high end kit and - while it's a personal opinion - no amount of money thrown at various set ups is going to convince me that those crackles and pops and surface noise etc. would be worth the outlay.

Could you imagine if, in an alternative universe, CDs actually came first, then 100 years on some wag said, 'Hey look, I've invented this, it's 7" bigger, made of black plastic.  It's prone to scratching and if you play it a few times, it'll actually sound worse!  You won't be able to use it anywhere other than in your house and the hardware will cost a fortune.  It's great, and oh, it's going to cost you three or four times more than those CD things.'

7 minutes ago, MacDaddy said:

 

If they're no longer good enough for Hooky, they're not good enough for me!

Provenance though!  Think about the provenance!  😂

Isn't there some correlation between desire vs. price vs. ownership where people will just go, 'Oh, it definitely sounds better than the old one.'

It's the same with (meandering down a muddy path) pickups and strings and tonewoods.  (This is why Paul/Milehouse Studios You Tube stuff is such a delight to watch; small pots, pickups, wood etc. "It makes no difference.  It's all bullshit.")

I concur with @BigRedX, some stuff - like my old Sparks, Sweet, Mott The Hoople singles - needs to be played on an old Dansette.  No amount of £2k tonearms are going to make those babies sound better.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1C4VRzNLwe/

Peter Hook's New Order flightcases for sale in an Uppingham Antiques Centre.

Be quick.

Reading the comments here (and elsewhere) about belt vs direct, how to get the best out of your system etc. 

What I never seem to read much is how vinyl is a flawed and degenerative delivery system (but plenty about how all those rumbles, crackles and pops add character to the music) or how turntables are trying to negate outside issues.  Christ, I remember how even walking across the room would cause my old deck to rumble.  My brother had bricks in his rack in an effort to negate outside influencing effects.

We've come so far, haven't we?  My mum was playing Led Zeppelin albums on a stereogram which played at 16, 33, 45 and 78.  The stylus being able to flip 180° dependent on what you were playing.  She regularly played old 78s.  Nobody cared about whether you could hear a bit more high-hat or low end.  Now it's all, 'I paid £500 for a tone arm and it makes such a difference.'

Redux.

There's a load of photos from Jersey.  

Stuart

We were crawling over the soundcheck:

St Helier airport 7.00am (note t-shirt that Stuart gave me).  I'd just come back from Spain, hence my complexion reflecting mu Portuguese heritage.  And glasses!:

I had nothing to sign, so I bought a book and they signed that!

Despite moaning frequently about these younglings buying vinyls (😏), I'm getting a bit of a vinyl itch on.  I don't know whether it's the having or the getting tbh.

There's about 100 albums and a few boxes of singles in my spare room, plus I have access to a ton of vinyl that comes through the charity where I volunteer.

For me, I just need a built in phono stage and wireless (Bluetooth) connectivity so I can squirt the output into a Sonos system.  This isn't going to be a full blown addiction thing.  It would be nice to just hear a few things that aren't on Spotify.

I saw Big Country a few times. 

Just before The Crossing was released, me and a mate flew to Jersey to see them.  He worked for an airfreight business, they had an office in St Helier and he got someone to procure tickets; both of us had family working at BA, so we got cheap flights out.

We had nowhere to stay and travelled in shorts and t-shirts.  Found a room in Pontac.  Gig day we thumbed a lift to St Helier (in a Lords Taverners minibus!), found the venue (Fort Regent Centre) and just holed up in a bar there.  We saw the load-in and then Stuart and Bruce came in.  This was mid-afternoon.  Drink was drunk.  They're stunned that anyone would want to fly somewhere to see them.  We were invited in for the soundcheck...it was just me and my mate and a couple of crew (private gig!), more drink (Stuart gave us fresh t-shirts), then the gig.  It was a great gig.

Next morning we were on standby flights, so we're at the airport at 7.00am, same clothes.  Band come in, see us, Stuart cheers (I remember him putting his arms up like he'd scored a goal), he tells me proudly that he's bought a wristwatch for £2.99 (this memory has stuck with me, him just going, '£2.99!'.). It's noticeable that despite the hour, he's not holding back in the spirits.

Cleared to fly, we're on the same flight...Stuart is cheering when he sees us boarding.  He's in the row behind us.  Amazingly, Kenny Dalgliesh us sitting in the row in front of us.  Over the years, we run into Stuart a few times and he always made some remark about the Jersey blokes.  

I genuinely miss him, it was a tragic, terrible, lonely and pointless death.  I often wonder what could have been, but at least his legacy us pretty much intact.

1 hour ago, MacDaddy said:

Which bass?

This one and the XB Driver, I reckon.

So.  After three-odd years containing knee surgery, a pulmonary embolism, torn rotator cuff, additional knee work and hand surgery, Sunday sees me back in the studio.

I'm genuinely feeling energised to dip my toe into things.  It's a blank canvas, we just go in, write in the fly and hit record.  Old school.

I had Mike Lull build me an NRT5 (see below) with Bass Direct having to handle the logistics.  I'd gave preferred to have gone direct, but Bass Direct were the business handling UK distribution, so I pushed to go through them.

By way of advice, check your build specs several times and contact the builder directly for confirmation of these.  From memory, I specced out everything in finite detail; woods, pickups, hardware, colour etc. but what was confirmed back was littered with errors.  I was forking over more than £5k for this and I wanted it to be right, so I was a bit frantic.  Eventually, I just went to Lull direct to firm things up.

I've been searching for an answer on an FRFR unit.

All I'm seeing is people jacking in HX Stomp type boards...my question is whether an FRFR unit will work with a rudimentary distortion pedal (in my case a Fender Pugilist).

5 hours ago, hiram.k.hackenbacker said:

Four grand.  Jeepers.  It's an SB-1000 with his name on it.  Can't you pick up an original one for a quarter of that?

Maybe this'll be the start of something for Aria.  The Buggles edition.  The Planet Earth edition.  Take a stock(ish) instrument, slap a facsimile signature on it, sell it as something special.

Well, as NAMM 2026 is more or less done and dusted, my personal opinion is that it was pretty underwhelming from a bass perspective.

The majority of (new?) basses just seem to be reissues/reboots of decades old designs and the amps/processing all a bit meh to be honest. 

Where's the innovation?

25 minutes ago, neepheid said:

?

 

It went into production, you gimboids! I ain't a pox on bass production, how very dare you, sir!

 

https://www.thomann.co.uk/harley_benton_hb_50_vintage_orange.htm

I was honestly of the belief that it didn't go into production!  Apologies.

Just now, tauzero said:

 

So if Neeps buys it, they decide they won't make it?

I think it's a curse.

Don't we see this type of scenario periodically?

Harley Benton announced an (orange coloured) EB2 style bass a few years back, I think it was @neepheid that bought the prototype and did some mods to the guts, but from memory the bass never went into production.

Possibly something similar here?  Fanfare for a model that may not appear?  

9 hours ago, jonno1981 said:

That the one with the “insane” channel aka wasp in a jamjar? Still a lot of fun! 

Yep.  And all the patches.

On 19/01/2026 at 16:32, patrikmarky said:

I use the 1 x12 genz Benz ..x 2 ..super light ,I did have the dark glass 2 x 12  and they are a fantastic cab ..cant think why I sold it ..😤

Darkglass stuff is stupid money, and I own a pair of their 1x12s.

Just got my amp back from a bloke who's had it for about a year, old Line 6 Spider IV 75 combo (incidentally @jonno1981 sold me this when he was in the business); that said, I'm not really a huge fan of this amp, only really used it for home recording.

The pickups are really quite decent, suprisingly so; I'm actually wondering whether it's worth dropping in a new pair of P94s to be honest, although I do prefer the visual aesthetic.  It's completely silent from a grounding perspective.  Nice!

On 20/01/2026 at 14:47, SteveXFR said:

What does a reverse P configuration achieve compared to the standard Fender configuration?

Ive got a bass with each type of P pickup but they're so different in terms of preamp and pickup position and bridge setup that I can't tell what reversing them has done.

For me it just offers a slightly phatter tonal output on the D&G strings.  It's not much, but (to my ears) enough that all the strings sound similar, rather the E&A booming and the D&G twangy.

Pickup here is a Tonerider unit.

12 hours ago, rwillett said:

I'm going to try and summarise this as a set of mathematical equations to try and work it all out. I'm not sure English is capable or sufficient.

 

Slightly nervous I may need to either rebuild the whole of maths to incorporate this OR enter the realm of quantum mechanics to solve. 

 

It's a belter.  

You remember those 'Rock Family Trees' things?  I often thought it would be a blast to have one with this band's history on it.

2 hours ago, hiram.k.hackenbacker said:

I’ve e-mailed Banger Films.

 

[email protected]

I'll admit I chuckled at bangerfilms.  

1 hour ago, Mykesbass said:

When something similar happened to one of the big CD manufacturers (PDO - Phillips Dupont Optical) they honoured every one that got sent back for many years. If this is a known problem perhaps the Blu-ray manufacturer will do the same.

The disc is years old and out of print, so I doubt the maker will honour anything.