Russ

So it's here. First impressions - smaller than I thought it'd be. Solid construction. Nice packaging and cool carry case. Not many default presets to play with. Not sure I like the Darkglass Suite software - maybe I haven't got to grips with it yet, but I haven't found a way to just visually build patches by dragging and dropping blocks. Honestly, a little underwhelmed so far. But I'll persevere.

So you can't do it all directly on the Anagram? That's disappointing. I thought you could just connect up, say, a pedal to a send, then the output of the pedal to a return, and capture it that way, all directly on the Anagram itself. Here's a question... if you set up a patch with an amp and IR, is it possible to route a signal with them to the XLR out, and a signal without them to the 1/4" output jack, so you can go into an amp without the amp emulation?

Foderas rank among the best-playing basses I've ever put my hands on. The necks, the setup... absolutely sublime. They practically play themselves. But you're right. They're tame-sounding. They're very clear and detailed, but are lacking in heft, for want of a better word. The lows and low mids just aren't thick enough to work in a heavy-sounding band. I'm sure they'll make you one with thicker-sounding pickups, but I've yet to play one.

I'm going to audition one. Sweetwater got them back in stock, so I snagged one. If I like it, I keep it and sell some other stuff, if I don't, I send it back. Does it have instructions about how to do neural captures?

Over in the thread about acrimonious band splits, I was talking about the band I was in where the guitarist just upped and left after a gig. Here's a pic of that band, and it's the oldest pic I have of me onstage (there's probably a few more that I have as actual photos, but this is the oldest one I have on the computer ) - this is from around 1997, and that's me on the left. ...and this is a more recent one from a year or so back, playing my trusty Sei.

Can't remember who it was, some famous-ish bass player, but he had no mobility in his middle finger due to a similar injury, and he picked using his index and ring fingers. He reckoned that it was more consistent because your index and ring fingers are closer to being the same length. Maybe something that's worth a try? There's also Dann Glenn, who plays with his thumb and one finger in an alternate-picking manner due to an injury that caused the other fingers on his right hand to curl up towards his palm. Interesting technique, it's worth looking him up on YT.

I'd love one. I'd like to wait until they add some more preamp models though - I'm quite dependent on the MXR Bass DI+ model in my Zoom pedals and I'd like to be able to reproduce that. I suppose I could attempt a Neural Capture of it, but I'm not sure I'd know where to begin. My sound is basically that, into the model of the MXR Dynacomp - the Luminal model will take care of compression duties nicely, but I need that Bass DI+ sound!

I was in a band in the late 90s, and we had a "battle of the bands"-type gig lined up. We'd have some trouble getting hold of our guitarist for the previous week or so, and he'd been a bit off at our last rehearal. He showed up at the gig about 10 minutes before showtime, and basically told us this was the last gig, and that he'd decided he didn't like rock music any more. We got up, we did the gig, the guitarist played most of the show with his back to the audience, and then he left immediately afterwards and nobody saw him again for years. It wasn't dramatic or anything, there were no punches or pint glasses thrown, but it felt like a very selfish act on his behalf. He wasn't lying either - a few weeks later I saw his two guitars and his Marshall up for sale in Loot. For what it's worth, we won that heat of the battle of the bands thing, but, of course, we couldn't progress to the next one. I guess time heals though, our old drummer and him recently reconnected and started a new band. He obviously rediscovered his love of rock music sometime in the intervening 20-odd years! Our former singer now curates an art gallery in Germany, and I'm stuck out here in the States, but it might be a nice idea to get the band back together for some kind of one-off thing one day.

Not a fan, personally. They sound very bland to my ears and have no sound of their own. They're functional, and that's probably the best I can say about them. You're seeing more and more Nordstrand Big Singles showing up in lieu of the Mk1s these days, and they're a lot better. They actually have a bit of welly.

It's real mahogany - the mahogany family of trees is pretty extensive. Indonesian mahogany comes from the toona sureni tree and is comparable to most other types. It's not as desirable as Brazilian mahogany, but preferable to Indian mahogany. Basswood gets a bad rap because it's often been used in cheap instruments and has an extremely plain grain pattern. No such thing as "quilted basswood"! All Bongos have solid finishes so the grain doesn't really matter, and it's got the right weight and sonic properties, so why not?

I don't hate them, but they're very "polite". The MMC/MME MM pickups were decent in terms of tone and output, but didn't really have the MM sound. Their cheap Mk1 pickups are ubiquitous on basses from the Far East and are fairly terrible. Low output and not particularly pleasant-sounding.

For me, the best P-bass-with-a-pick sound is: Small boost at about 200Hz Big but narrow cut at 500Hz (that "boxy" frequency) Small boost at about 3kHz Treble and bass shelving flat Not a frequent pick player, but I actually like thin ones best. 0.5mm, ideally. Having a skinnier pick gives you a bit more control of dynamics, I find, and still gets you that pick-y articulation. I also quite like the green Dava Control ones - they're thick-ish but flex like a thin one.

If you're after a particular vintage-y tone, preferably on a short-scale bass, they can be a shortcut to getting that sound. But you can approximate that tone on a full-scale bass with rounds, but not the other way around.

My 2003 CAR Bongo has the full-size tuners (the other ones I owned had the smaller, lightweight tuners). Even compared to that, the Sterling ones look wrong, like the tuner shafts are too long.

It'd get us out of the "tariff trap" - almost all the wood that's used in the construction of the guitars comes from either Canada (spruce, maple) or South America (mahogany, rosewood). We might have to stop making guitars with Brazilian rosewood entirely because of the tariffs (we also use East Indian rosewood on some of the cheaper instruments). The stuff from Canada is partly covered by the existing USMCA deal (the updated NAFTA deal from Tangerine Palpatine's first term) but not entirely. Having another facility in Europe or the Far East would bypass all of this crap for rest-of-the-world sales. We used to have the old Sigma range made in the Far East (various places, mostly Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia and Korea), but we sold those off back in 2007 to some German company who now make cheap, Temu-level sh*t using the same brand name, which is a travesty. One of the best acoustic guitars I ever played was a Japanese Sigma DM-5 (basically a D-28) - every bit as good as the US-made instrument.

At the end of the day, all tax and NI ends up in the consolidated fund at the Treasury, where it's disbursed. A small percentage of NHS funding will come from NI contributions since it's all coming from the same bucket at the end of the day, but it's budget and allocations is based on a percentage of income tax, VAT and other tax receipts rather than NI. That's why when you get your tax document from HMRC every year, the NHS is a big slice of the pie on the pie chart. I work for a well-known US manufacturer of acoustic guitars and we're seeing a significant dropoff in overseas sales, to the point where we're considering moving some manufacturing out of North America (we currently have factories in the US and northern Mexico). Not only have our instruments become more expensive, people around the world just don't want to buy American stuff. Or, at least, American versions of American stuff - supposedly Fender Japan have seen a big surge of interest in their stuff this year...

I'd always encourage anyone who's not convinced by the 5-string experience to restring it with a high C and try it again. It becomes an entirely different beast.

I like the supplied gig bag, but, for me, the big oversight is that it doesn't have a shoulder strap, just a handle. For the good ol' one-trip load-in, I want the bass on my back, pedals/FX/head hanging off my shoulders, and I need one hand to drag the cab and the other to open doors! All smaller Class D heads should have a gig bag.

When people get their first Stingray, they always do the same thing, especially if it's a 2EQ - dial the bass and treble all the way up. Then they wonder why all they can hear in a band context is woof and click, with no midrange. So they sell it. Eventually, they discover that the EQ controls are kinda interactive, as you dial up the bass and treble, it actually sucks the mids out. So you end up only adding a tiny bit of boost to each, and, all of a sudden, you can actually hear yourself in the mix!

Also not a fan of flatwounds. They just feel wrong under my fingers and I'm not a fan of the tone in the slightest. If you like them, more power to you, but they're most certainly not for me. Precisions - love the tone. P-bass+rounds+pick = legendary sound. But not a fan of the look, dislike the feel, and I've never played one that balanced in a way that I'm comfortable with. Markbass heads - they were flavour of the month for a while and I dabbled with a Little Mark II back in the day. Found it a bit anaemic and underpowered, and kinda woolly-sounding (and that's with the VLE control turned all the way off). They also seem to break down a lot, and they don't fit them with universal voltage PSUs. Plus I'm not a fan of the gaudy yellow and green graphics. On the other hand, I like their cabs.

Back on topic, here's three of mine - I don't have the black 6-string or the purple fretless any more, but I do still have the CAR one:

NI pays for the state pension and various benefits, not the NHS, so that's not a good comparison. The NHS is funded from general taxation. OK, using current figures, a salary of £50,000 brings in £3,293 a month, or £39,521 a year after tax and NI. That's an effective tax rate of 20.95%. Using today's exchange rate, the equivalent US salary is about $67,800. So let's pick a state - let's say Virginia, that's a middle-of-the-road state in terms of state income tax. Adding up federal, state and FICA (basically NI) taxes, you end up with $52,728, an effective tax rate of 22.23%. In some states, it'll be a bit higher, in some a bit lower. So. not a great start for the US. That amount of tax only covers healthcare if you're a military veteran (the VA), so poor as to be indigent (Medicaid), or pension-age (Medicare - which has a whole different bunch of requirements). The way it generally works, assuming your employer provides health insurance, is your employer will pay a percentage of the total premium - typically 50%, leaving you on the hook for the other 50% which comes straight out of your pay cheque. Some employers pay more than that, but 50% is pretty standard. That number is subject to how many people the insurance is covering - might only be a couple of hundred if it's just you, up to well over $1k for a family, and, like I said above, the insurance premium is only one payment out of many that you have to make. There's also various levels of insurance, the availability of health savings accounts, and all sorts of other nonsense. The whole thing is a colossal cluster-fornication. And add in that the cost of living is probably about 50% higher than the UK... yeah. You see where I'm going with this.

Back then the exchange rate was in the UK's favour - it was nearly $2 to £1, so it seemed very cheap. The weekend flight to New York to buy cheap stuff was a thing, where you'd save more than the cost of the plane ticket, but that's most definitely no longer the case. People in the UK don't believe me when I tell them about the US medical system - even with insurance, you have an excess ("deductible") you have to meet before they pay anything. After that, you're still having to pay co-pays - in our case, it's $40 for a GP visit, $75 for a specialist, and anything the doctor prescribes is subject to the insurance company approving it (there's a lot of "computer says no" going on). And there's 26m uninsured Americans, with a large number of the rest being under-insured. The stress of dealing with the medical "system" over here just makes sick people sicker. Yes, the NHS has its issues, but you'll never be panicking about paying bills or worrying about an insurance company's algorithm deciding you can't have a particular procedure or medication. Went to Austin a few years ago. Cool city, lots of music, good food, very geek-friendly, quite student-y. But you don't have to go far to be reminded that you're in Texas - all the shops with "no weapons allowed" signs, gigantic megachurches, insane weather (including hailstones the size of cricket balls), the unbelievable heat, and so on. Nice enough place to visit, but I certainly wouldn't ever want to live there. Especially with kids. Anyway, oh yeah, Bongos...

Given my situation (Brit living in the US... for now), the cost of living over here is astronomical. Almost everything is more expensive, with the exception of petrol and some consumer goods. And the consumer goods are getting more expensive because a certain Tango-tinted sociopath decided to add an import tax to everything not made in the States. I earn quite a lot more here than I ever earned in the UK, but have less disposable income. Groceries/shopping - anything from 50% to 100% more expensive, for sh*tter food. Medicine - don't go there. Bills - energy about the same, phone/TV/broadband much higher. Taxation - once you add up federal and state, not much different in my income bracket. Property taxes - dependent on location, but makes council tax look like a bargain in many places. Loads of "stealth" taxes too. And then, of course, you have health insurance and all its associated expenses, which is just plain usury.

Not sure I've come across any replacement MM pickups that use neodymium magnets - they're all ceramic or alnico, and hence don't nail the Bongo sound. If anyone knows better, please let me know - might sway my decision to get one. Noll do a 4-band EQ that Klaus can configure with the Bongo frequency centres (for reference, they're bass at 40Hz, low mids at 400Hz, high mids at 2.5KHz and treble at 6.3KHz, all at +-15dB).