Gottastopbuyinggear

I’m not sure that it saved any weight but that’s how I did my cabs, and it gives a nice appearance. I have gasket tape around the rear of the folded edges and they don’t rattle or fall out, but are easily removed if you need to tinker. Had mine made by speakergrills.co.uk.

A big thanks to both of you. I don’t have a sticky Hercules stand, but I do have a Roberts radio in the kitchen with sticky knobs (ooh err...). I’ve cleaned them now with isopropyl alcohol and it’s as good as new!

The Audio Technica ATH M40’s come with a couple of cables, one is 3m straight, the other 1.2m to 3m coiled. I think the M50’s do too.

Ah, I'm already pretty well versed in trying them out! I quite often have a quick mooch around PMT in Cardiff if we go into town at the weekend while Mrs Gottastop is clothes shopping.

If you've googled "Performer Bass" then you've probably come across this already but apparently Fender did actually produce a bass with that name about 20 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fender_Performer_Bass - the guy in PMT was talking about them. Get that headstock!

On this occasion, and when I saw the new Mexican Player series, I was told in PMT that there was an embargo an advertising until Fender had got their advertising out, but they were still allowed to sell them. I guess it makes sense to get some into channel before they advertise, and if it leaks out a creates a bit of interest then probably all the better for it - nothing like free advertising! Looking at those specs I'm really surprised at the nut width - the neck felt deeper and rounder than any of mine, and I find chunkier P necks to be a bit too much of a handful. I guess the particular profile just suited me. I didn't play it for more than a few minutes, but I was taken aback by how good it felt.

No, I tend to make my own decisions about what I spend my money on. One of the great things about life is everyone's different - music tastes, gear tastes, how much gear you want/have, etc. The world would be pretty boring if we were all the same. I get the impression that a pretty significant part of the community here are interested in gear and new releases, though, hence the reason for posting. It was also a bit of an unusual moment for me - it's not often I pick up an instrument and get hit with a massive feeling of, wow - this feels just right. I'll be looking forward to other peoples' opinions on this new series once there's a few more of them about. Seems from the other posts here that there will be a few trying them. As it happens it was pretty much a social reason for being in PMT. I had some free time in Bristol while my youngest was at the offer holders only part of a university visit. I met up with my eldest who's already at university there, and we decided to pay a quick visit to PMT. He's into thrash metal and pointy guitars - not my taste, but it's got him into playing guitar and bass which I think is great. But I am lucky to be at a stage in my life where, despite having kids going through university, I've got enough disposable income to indulge myself occasionally (after careful consideration and not on a whim) in things that give me pleasure, and I'm totally at ease with that.

Having been in PMT in Cardiff earlier in the year and found the new Mexican Player series before they were being advertised I found myself by chance in PMT in Bristol today and they had one of the new American Performer PJ's in. I had a quick play on one, which turned out to be a mahooosive mistake because I absolutely loved it. Having spent too much in the past on American made guitars I've never tried anything more expensive bass-wise than my MIM Jazz and Precision. I don't know what it was about it but the neck on this one felt so comfortable. It's (I assume) Jazz width but quite a lot chunkier than my MIM Jazz, and silky smooth. I've got a bit of cash burning a hole in my pocket from gig money and some recent gear sales, so I was in dangerous territory. Fortunately they only had the one colour, which I think they're calling "penny" (I may have got that wrong) which is a sort of bronze/copper metallic finish and it really didn't do it for me aesthetically. Unfortunately I think they also do them in white, 3 colour sunburst and lake placid blue or something similar, so I could well be in trouble when a few of those arrive. At £1,149 it's not cheap. I'm assuming that's the standard list price and the street price will come down a bit after they've been out for a few months.

I managed to get the last one that PMT Cardiff had on Saturday morning, with the 10% discount. I don't know how many they'd had in but they said they'd been flying out of the door. I'd be happy except for the fact that it's my wife's Christmas present to me, so I won't see it again for a month!

As it happens I use a TC Spectracomp into a VT Bass for exactly the same reason, and I have a TC Spark Mini after it. It sounds good to me and I don't notice any colouration. I built a clone of the EH LPB-1 (don't know how accurate the circuit was) but didn't like it with bass - doesn't seem to have the headroom of the Spark and distorted quite a bit as I recall. I do like it for driving the front of a valve amp with guitar, but that's not the question you asked!

I have one of these to mount the transmitter on my strap - very neat and works well (Edit: I searched for this link but just realised it’s only one page back on page 18 of this thread...)

If you’re 25m away then you might have to change the laws of physics to get the latency down 😉 At 343 m/s sound will take about 70 ms to travel 25m, so around 9 times the latency of the device itself.

This. From experience IK Multimedia Amplitube or Line6 Pod Farm are excellent, and I know there are lots more. You can get great sound through headphones if you need to practice quietly, or maybe add studio monitors if you’re not worried about volume. Out of interest why will you never gig? If you simply don’t want to then great, but don’t rule it out just because you’re only just starting to play.

Can I ask how you source your second hand stuff, i.e. privately or through apple or a third party that gives some form of warranty? I tend to agree that Mac Pro’s are probably a pretty good second hand bet - as you say they’ve more than likely been pretty static all their life, and barring anything to do with transit you’re probably still in the middle of the failure “bathtub”.

Not something I would ever have expected to be saying, but I saw Slayer, Lamb of God, Anthrax and Obituary last night at the Motorpoint Arena in Cardiff. To be honest I'm not really a fan (I quite like some Metallica, but that's about as thrash as I get) but both my boys are so it was a lads night out really. I have to say I really enjoyed Anthrax, and was surprised that they were relegated to third on the bill seeing as they're one of the big four, but the thing that pleased me most about the night was how good the sound was. Not sure if it was quality of engineer, position (stood just in front of the mixing desks) or being the first time that I've used custom moulded plugs (rather than generics) as an audience member - possibly a combination of all three - but it was pretty good. Kick was still pretty high in the mix, but not as overwhelming as I've experienced recently. Most importantly my lads both enjoyed it immensely.

I’m still interested in making a pair.

It was just a guess - static possibly being generated when the two Velcro parts are separated? The more I think about it the more it sounds a bit daft!

Difficult to tell but I’m hearing scepticism? I know what you mean. Most of us are probably moving pedals around quite frequently, so perhaps it is unlikely or it would happen more often. It occurred to me because I’d just moved it to a different board.

I’ll order a couple of new JFETs and see if that fixes it. If it is static the I guess keeping it grounded through an amp might help when ripping it off the board.

I built an Fdeck HPF Pre a while ago - it's probably been on my board for more than a year, and been repositioned as I've swapped stuff around several times. Earlier this week I moved it to a smaller board, went to rehearsal, plugged in, and there's a constant hissing sound. It sounds as if the noise floor has gone through the roof, if you see what I mean...?! It's a really simple build - there's no volume or frequency pots, no phase switch - it's been built purely as a fixed 35Hz HPF so that it fits into a small enclosure. There are no loose wires or, as far as I can see, dodgy solder joints. I'm wondering whether it could be static damage to the JFETs, with static generated by separating the velcro when I've ripped it off the board. I can try replacing the transistors, or just build a completely new one (which I was thinking of doing anyway, with adjustable frequency), but if it's possibly static damage then I might rethink how I attach it to the board. Anyone have any ideas?

Advertising? Commercial? Come off it, it’s an open source design that you make yourself. As I have done, and very grateful I am for the encouragement to do so.