Gottastopbuyinggear

53 minutes ago, funkle said:

Another tiny weight saving idea. Maybe...

Could be tricky for doing at home, but with a grill, it could perhaps be bent at the edges so that it acts as its own stand-off from the front baffle? Then no wood/foam etc is required on the front baffle to screw the grill in to?

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.

On 23/11/2018 at 12:42, andrea mason said:

I have a solution to the problem as I have two that has gone the same way! isopropyl alcohol and some kitchen towel and a little bit of elbow grease will cure this, I have found this on many items over the years and it's very unpleasant.

On 23/11/2018 at 15:47, Nicko said:

I had the same on my Roberts kitchen radio.  I'm fully culpable as I cleaned it with Dettol multi surface cleaner and its attacked the plastic.

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.

2 hours ago, EliasMooseblaster said:

If nothing else, it hopefully gives you a reason to venture out and have some fun trying a few different basses!

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.  

1 hour ago, LewisK1975 said:

Any pictures floating about?

EDIT - I've just seen the other thread about the American performer Mustang bass.  I incorrectly thought that there was a new model Bass coming out called the Performer, DOH!  Now I understand it's a new series of instruments that seem to be replacing the American specials...

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!

22 minutes ago, NJE said:

Typical Fender, the instruments are out in shops before there is any official acknowledgement that they officially exist, they really are a useless bunch. In such a big corporation with such a huge amount of resources, why cant they find someone to update their website.

The original link I found has disappeared but I have pinched this from a chap on Talkbass:

"I asked about more details on the Yosemite pickups, he said that they don't have all the marketing info together since this series isn't supposed to be released until January. Retailers have been selling them when they're not supposed to and they're trying to get it all together faster, the customer relations dept hasn't even seen them yet"

Here's the specs:
 

Colors:
(0198600300)3-Color Sunburst (Rosewood Fingerboard)
(0198600380) Arctic White (Rosewood Fingerboard)
(0198602302) Satin Lake Placid Blue (Maple Fingerboard)
(00198602384) Penny (Maple Fingerboard)

Gloss Polyurethane, Satin Polyurethane (302)
Body: Alder
Neck: Maple, Modern “C”, Neck Finish:Satin Polyurethane
Fingerboard: Maple or Rosewood, 9.5” (241 mm)
FRETS: 20, Jumbo
Scale Length: 34” (864 mm)
Nut: Synthetic Bone, 1.625” (41.3 mm)
Hardware: Nickel/Chrome
Machine Heads: Fender® “F” Light-Weight Vintage-Paddle Keys with Tapered Shafts
Bridge: 4-Saddle Vintage-Style with Steel Saddles
Pickguard: 3-Ply Black/White/Black
Pickups: Yosemite™ Single-Coil Jazz Bass (Bridge), Yosemite™ Split Sin-gle-Coil Precision Bass (Middle)
Pickup Switching: N/A
Controls: Volume 1. (Middle Pickup)
Volume 2. (Bridge Pickup),
Master Greasebucket™ Tone Circuit (Rolls Off Highs without Adding Bass)
Strings: Fender® USA Bass 7250M, NPS (.045-.105 Gauges)
Case: Deluxe Gig Bag, P/N 0991522000


MARKETING COPY: Born in Corona, California, the American Performer Precision Bass delivers the exceptional tone and feel you expect from an authentic Fender—along with new, player-oriented features that make it even more inspiring to play. The American Performer Precision Bass includes the Yosemite™ split-coil Precision Bass middle pickup and a growling Yosemite single-coil Jazz Bass bridge pickup, designed for rich, expressive tones. With flat-staggered pole pieces to increase output and a shellac potting that lets the coils breathe while controlling feedback, Yosemite pickups produce dynamic sounds ideal for any musical situation. The American Performer Precision Bass also features Greasebucket™ tone circuitry that lets you shape your highs without adding bass, preserving your sound. The “Modern C”-shaped neck sports a 9.5”-radius fingerboard that’s comfortable for almost any playing style, along with 20 jumbo frets, allowing you to easily express yourself musically.

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.

13 hours ago, paul_c2 said:

Are you looking for someone to say "yeah just go ahead and buy it!"? 

I'm afraid I'm not that person - not because I dislike USA Fenders, but because I don't really "do" GAS - well at least I hope not. Especially with 2nd, or 3rd or whatever basses (I have a bunch of pedals and amps - but for a good purpose). For me, I have one bass which does the job, and is good enough (and produces enough variety of tone) that it covers all the bases (excuse the pun) I need. Yeah sure, if I were a squillionaire I'd buy more stuff with impunity, or I'd just cruise around the shops all day and pick up needless stuff on a whim.

I guess you had already decided you had some spare cash and wanted something, just didn't know what....otherwise why would you have even gone to the music shop? To socialise? 

The only crumb of actual bass-based advice I can give is....before you buy a new USA bass, have you considered a Japanese Fender?

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!

Original model Marshall The Guv'nor for sale.  This is one of the original made in England pedals, which I bought new in 1990.  The pedal is in pretty good condition for its age, with only a few minor scuffs.  The controls all work, although the pots are a little bit scratchy in places.

For those not familiar this pedal is meant to simulate the sound of a cranked Marshall amp.  An interesting piece of trivia is that Gary Moore can be seen ostensibly playing one on the sleeve of his album Still Got The Blues (A far less interesting piece of trivia is that the drummer in my band was actually in a band with Gary Moore in the days before he left Belfast to go to Dublin and join Skid Row - it's a bit of a mind blower when he casually drops that into the conversation...)

Looking for £125 posted, or £120 if collected from me in Cardiff.

TC Electronic Flashback for sale.  In excellent condition, with original box.  Velcro on the bottom of this, but could easily be removed.

Looking for £60 posted, or £55 if collected from me in Cardiff.

TC Electronic Hall of Fame for sale.  In excellent condition, with original box.  Not much more to say - you probably already know what these excellent pedals do.

Looking for £60 posted, or £55 if collected from me in Cardiff.

On 11/11/2018 at 20:43, Jean-Luc Pickguard said:

I use a TC Spectracomp into a Tech 21 VT Bass to achieve a nice saturated tone without fizzy distortion, but there are some times in the set (eg the bass solo in 'substitute') when I could do with increasing the volume a few db but without changing the tone or adding more  distortion. I'm thinking that a TC spark mini after the VT might do the job, but there are  a few other pedals that might be suitable like the Electro harmonix LPB-1 nano and various cheap & cheerful mini pedals in the £15-£25 range.

Can anyone offer any experience/recommendations for a clean boost pedal?

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!

16 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

I would have thought it was less hassle with a wireless. I'll be looking at mounting the receiver in my rack somehow but will experiment with it to see what works best.

The TX i'll mount on my strap somehow so its just a matter of plugging into whatever bass i'm using.

Dave

 

 

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...)

1 hour ago, martthebass said:

To be fair, if I go out front to get the sound balanced, say 25m from the receiver I can tell there’s a delay. If I was going to run around the room I’d have to change the settings. On a big stage, no matter where I am, I cant detect the delay.

I think this is a small price for the sound quality and lack of break up on the standard setting.

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.

50 minutes ago, Skybone said:

Who says that you need an amp for home use?

A half decent amp modeler with headphones is all you need if you want to amplify things, or just play your bass without plugging into anything. That at least is simple, cheap, and only needs you and your bass.

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. 

2 hours ago, BigRedX said:

For £500 my second hand Mac will be 12 Xeon Cores and at least 32GB RAM. Plus I'll be able to transfer all my SSDs and HDDs from my previous Mac as well as the second DVD drive.

 

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.

3 minutes ago, floFC said:

I am genuinely surprised, I have never heard of this before. How does the static electricity build up occur?

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!

27 minutes ago, floFC said:

The Velcro on the back of the pedals can create static electricity? And that can destroy pedals??

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?

23 minutes ago, karlfer said:

I don't. It's about the OBC 112's, not backdoor advertising for other people's products. They can do that properly through the commercial parts of BC.

Now, Orange I believe.

 

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.

Thanks for the info.

The way things are going I’ll have to change my name as I’m not really living up to it at the moment.