NancyJohnson

Home recording aside, I've no musical ventures going on, haven't stepped into a pub or restaurant since mid-March 2020 and have little desire to do so. Good friend of mine (double-vaxxed), tested positive at the weekend; weirdly he was photographed with a bunch of people at a pub on Saturday, had a 'nasty fall' at the end of the night (not sure of the circumstances), ended up in hospital where he tested positive. All the more reason to stay home.

There has to be a syndrome (I don't have a word for it, but let's refer to it as Bargainicious Bumm-a-kissious Syndrome), that a psychiatrist would point to as the owner's unstoppable belief that a less expensive of anything is better than the full priced equivalent thereof. I'm sure you all love your Epiphones and Squiers and are firmly of the belief that they're a country mile better than those Gibsons and Fenders you could have splashed a bit more on, but I've seen enough photographs of these instruments with Gibson truss-rod covers and Fender decals (cough, put on by the previous owner(s), cough) to know that there's a degree of vexation with the current owners. (See also hundreds of photos of single cut (Epiphone) Les Paul Juniors, conveniently cropped below the headstock.) Not wishing to unload too much, but maybe I've been unlucky and just perhaps I was unfortunate in my formulative years to have chosen a dozen or so copies that were just so simply rubbish that they should have gone on a bonfire. I'll admit to still owning one Epiphone that I bought new and blind for home recording - a Phantomatic guitar - that was just so awful that it underwent transplants of new machines, bridge and pickups; it's better (*subjective), but for the initial outlay plus the extras, I could probably have picked up a Gibson SG or a Les Paul CM. I had an Epiphone Dot Studio (335 style thing) that was equally as bad and went through the same transplants - the worst thing being that even after throwing a long throw bridge on it, it still wouldn't intonate beyond the 7th fret as the bridge was in the wrong place. In truth, things only got better when I started to splash decent money on instruments; while everything I've ever bought - cheap or old - has needed tweaking of some sort to get it to play like I want it, but from the perspective of individual factors (quality, build, playability, hardware etc.), I'd take the real thing over a facsimile seven days a week.

This ^^^ x1000. Christ, they need to write this in every manual going. I've had my live tone positively commented on many, many times. I was never happy just plugging in, too much 'ponk'. [Edit/addition: I favour a bit of a Geddy/dUg tone, controlled dirt/clank.] About 25 years ago I had a lay-off from playing, sold everything except from an old Precision bass. At a mate's insistence (he's a drummer), we took a visit to Andertons and he said to try plugging a Bass POD into the effects return on an Ashdown Mag combo; I thought he was nuts, but it was an aah-there-it-is moment of clarity (cue angels singing) - through the front input jack the POD was just mush, overloading a pre-amp by plugging another pre-amp into it. From then on, irrespective of the amp, it's always been into the FX return or into a poweramp.

I prefer a Sansamp into the effects return or a poweramp. Just prefer the Sansamp doing the work/shaping rather than it being coloured by going in the front of an amp.

I can see the point of offering pre-sale tickets to people who've made the effort to join a fan club/mailing list (or similar), although I'm not a fan of the whole VIP cash-cow (although I'll admit I'm considering it for Pearl Jam in 2022). I really wanted to see Public Service Broadcasting at the Albert Hall; there was a big mailing about pre-sales, but these were limited to maybe 100 tickets, which sold out in minutes. In answer to your question, it appears that for biggish artistes gone are the days where you could just buy decent/close to the stage tickets without having to pay a huge premium or be a member of something. I do miss being able to just swing by the Hammersmith Odeon ticket office, see what was on the board and just see what they had.

Always felt the Lakland Skyline series fell well short insofar as finishes go, but this popped up on socials yesterday and I got a bit moist. Not on the market for another bass, but as a piece of art goes, this is spot on. Purple and black, what's not to like? I've looked at a few and the colour does seem to go from light to dark(er), probably due to the wood grain and the exposure of the photos. It does look pretty. Yeah, yeah, I know I say all basses sound more or less the same, but the pickups are EMG Geezer Butler, so you kind of know what it's going to be capable of once you plug it in.

A few years back, I approached Eastwood to see whether they could do us a limited run of an Eastwood BC bass. We had a few interested parties, but before we even got as far as agreeing on a body/neck design, the thread took an inevitable downward spiral of member-bickering about hardware/electrics, with members chipping in as to why they wouldn't be interested (which really wasn't the point of the exercise). Despite the number of members here, it would never have worked. In my head though, this bass is very close in looks to what I thought we should be doing and it certainly fits the Eastwood build ethic; a bit of a quirky 60s throwback, wouldn't look out of place on The Jetsons, I bloody love that headstock!

I remember an old version of Protools came with a DVD of live loops, my old Audition box had something similar.

Could you not just star over? Wipe it clean and reinstall windows?

Odd...I run Bandlab/Cakewalk on a bogstandard HP desktop and was up and running within a few minutes after install.

I think I'll go with the NXT, simply because I can, I suppose. If everything pans out, I'm thinking it might be fun to record a video diary if sorts to cover how I get on.

I had a mate who worked for Adobe, so ran Audition for years, gave up with that about a year ago and went with Cakewalk. It's free (this was the main thing), easy to use, intuitive etc etc.

Voice of reason here. I'm all for ensuring the plug doesn't come out of the socket, but seriously, additional contact points aren't going to change things significantly from a signal perspective. Even after heavy use, whatever that is. Think back to your schooldays; tangent of a circle, anyone? The contact points are already tiny, so (with the Pure Tone) you're just multiplying tiny by two. What about the socket in your amp? That's still going to have one contact point. Jack sockets/plugs are just old, archaic (telephone exchange) tech; a means to an end. It's amazing how we have all this kit which is reliant on two infinitesimally small contact points to function; it's a huge pity that the whole plug/socket system hasn't undergone a complete overhaul by now, even if it utilizes existing cable tech (XLR etc.).

*I'm just going to post something here by way of an addendum concerning the original pickups sounding 'toppy and shrill'; I'm not a big fan of changing pickups unless absolutely necessary (ie failure). The old DiMarzios were suffering a bit of an age-breakdown - the magnets underneath (see below/not my image) had become delaminated from the resin they were set into - the resin appears to have shrunk a little causing the magnets to fall out and attach to each other. I did glue them back in, but to be honest I wasn't 100% happy with a make-do fix, so in this instance went with replacements. One comment on the Hamer group was that the magnets dropping out is common and causes the output to sound like someone had swapped the pickup for a Telecaster one. Fair comment. The Geezer Butler PJ set was offered, so I went with these. I have an earlier Hamer from 1986 (same year as the Cruise, serial numbers are about 800 apart), which doesn't appear to be suffering, so I'll leave it as is. They don't sound significantly different from each other. I'd recommend anyone running a bass with 70s/80s DiMarzios to pull them out and just check the condition below decks.

I know several drummers, one is in about five bands, others are just sticking with one band, sadly the best of the bunch gave up and sold all his stuff, just disillusioned with the music biz. As an aside, when I did the Lutz project (it's all on Spotify, kids), we used Beta Monkey live loops during the recording (no MIDI for us old farts); we actually toyed with going out live as a three piece - just bass, guitar and a vocalist (everybody sang/shouted), plus another guitarist - and just playing along with the a stereo mix of drum tracks and the voice/noise samples from the recordings. The whole thing of being on-stage with just laptops/pads/IEMs appealed to me immensely, but sadly the singer moved to the west country, the idea lost pace and then C-19 put a hold on things.

If this is a dig at me, then meh (shrugs). I'll stand by my comments that pretty much every bass sounds more or less the same and will do so until they screw the lid on. The only bass (IME) that bucked that trend was a 4003. So what if I don't own a Stingray; that makes my comments invalid? (I did use a late 70s one for a gig about 20 years ago, but suppose in your book that doesn't count.) We're drawn to certain instruments because of shape/design; it's how we are. Just because it looks like something else doesn't make it the instrument it alludes to be. Look at the comments when people post NBD pics, the comments are heavily weighted in favour of how lovely something looks rather than what it sounds like.

I've never seen Pearl Jam, I've said it previously that had I been born ten years later, I suspect they would have been 'my' band. Guess I'm fortunate enough to have done quite a few of these big things from a backstage perspective (Donington/Milton Keynes/Reading), although that ship has long sailed, but it would be nice to experience something similar one more time.

Yup.

I think this was covered elsewhere. Elixir don't do a super-long (35"+) five string set, so I was forced to buy a four string set plus a low-B. The four string sets took ages, the B was a six week wait.

Has anyone attended one of these VIP things at Hyde Park? The ticket price off the link below is £300 a pop, but I just feel that as I'm (cough) getting on (cough) the ticket price includes food and unlimited drink, proper bogs, somewhere to go and dry off (because it's a) July and b) bound to be raining), plus you're in the Ten Club area (front and centre) rather than back the sardine pit. I'm also a little conflicted as to which day - The Pixies have been announced for Friday, I think Idles (meh) on Saturday. Pearl Jam VIP Tickets BST The Ultimate Bar Experience 08 July 2022 (eventtravel.com)

I'm not certain whether MSL (www.mslpro.co.uk) were offering these here in a testing-the-water capacity; they're brand distribution as opposed to selling direct to the customer. While@Leonard Smallsis correct in saying Bass Direct are carrying MarkBass strings, they're not listing the LongEvo sets, which is what this thread is about. You can buy them direct from MarkBass, a five string set is €50, but no idea how much shipping is and remember that post-Brexit you may be hit for VAT too.

I really like them. I know they've been on for six months and I'm fairly quiet musically, but they've had quite a few hours use considering I'm only playing at home. They're still fresh and bright. I love how they feel, too. They're quite coarse under the fingers; not entirely sure whether this is down to the coating or whether the winding material. None of whatever they're coated with appears to have flaked off, so they're holding up well. Definitely a decent alternative to Elixirs; I would certainly buy them again.

Right, a bit of an update here. My nephew was over at the weekend and almost as soon as he arrived asked me to break out the Hamer. He was having a noodle on it, I was in the kitchen getting a beer and I was asking myself what he'd done to the bass as it sounded shocking. It's odd, but having the P-unit on 10 and just rolling up the J to compliment sounds great when you're sitting right on top of the amp, but from another room it sounded quite odd. He said straight away, 'I think the J-pickup is wired out of phase.' Rolling both volumes up to ten things sounded very tinny. I took the control plate off and switched the wires from the J-pickup (simply the case of unplugging the pickup, flipping the connector 180degrees and plugging it back in) and boom. The connector is definitely upside down in the cavity. I honestly don't know whether the connector under the pickup is wired the wrong way around, or if there's a construction issue on the pot, but there's no tone-suck when the J-pickup is fully engaged. Very odd!