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bnt

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bnt last won the day on June 24 2022

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About bnt

  • Birthday 02/05/1968

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  1. I’ve been almost militantly fingers-only for decades, despite being a fan of some great pick players such as Tony Butler and Chris Squire. A change is being forced upon me for medical reasons, though. I was never the strongest fingerstyle player as it was, no ‘Arry, but I did OK with some Rush songs, for example. MS has affected my plucking fingers and I can’t rely on them to play quickly and consistently any more. So I’ve decided to try more pick playing, and getting a Bass VI is part of that. I’ve lowered the action to borderline “too low”, and am starting to develop more speed. I kind-of shocked myself today by playing Hysteria (Muse) on it with a pick, through the Crunch Cab preset in Apple MainStage, and it sounded decent. On my main bass it’s a struggle. Re. Picks, so far I’m liking the Harley Benton light ones (0.6-0.9 mm), which have a kind of parchment finish that helps me with grip. I’m dropping them much less than standard picks. I read that players such as Carol Kaye used felt picks, the stuff hats are made of - sounds interesting:
  2. What about a "Klon" circuit for a mild boost/overdrive? I'm a cheapskate, so I got the Mosky Silver Horse, which has "Gold" and "Silver" "Klon" circuits. I could have saved myself a tenner by getting the Golden Horse, which has only the "Gold" circuit, which is lower gain. Last night I put the Bass VI through it and on one setting I could hear a little clipping when I played hard. I find the "Gold" circuit to be bass-friendly too.
  3. Correction - July! Damn Yankees and their weird MDY date formats.
  4. I just installed the La Bella flats on it - at work - and so far that looks OK. Intonation is very close on all strings. This is after pushing the floating bridge to roughly the middle of its travel after the string change. With the bridge floating like that, I suspect that perfectly accurate intonation is an unrealistic expectation. I'll keep the advice in mind and may reconsider later, but so far the bridge is good enough for my purposes. Vibrato still works, slightly less travel. I have more dialing-in to do still. However, I'm already having trouble with the pickup switches, cutting out after hardly any use, and so they will be the first thing to get scrutinized & maybe replaced. PS just remembered to check that the strings aren't contacting the back of the bridge: all clear there.
  5. I wanted one of those purple ones, but didn't get in quickly enough. From what I know, they are exclusive to Andertons and Chicago Music Exchange, and CME says they're getting more in May. Which leads me to think Anderton's will get them too.
  6. I’ll find out soon enough. I’m encouraged by what I’ve seen so far, particularly with the bridge. There are videos of guys having to cut intonation screws in half because they were catching on the strings.
  7. You've basically described the kinds of issues I'd read about and hope to avoid. I'll hang on to the stock strings, then. Odd thing is that I'm seeing videos about heavier strings improving things, not making them worse.
  8. Yup, I've jumped on the Bass VI bandwagon: I've been thinking about a short-scale bass for a while, but also something that will lend itself more to plectrum playing. I already "play" guitar tuned in all fourths (EADGCF), and this will get the same treatment. Not quite yet, though, since I had it delivered to the office and a couple of people are interested in seeing it, so it's there for the weekend. So I don't have a photo,but it's identical to the one on the Fender site, in black. I've seen a few YT videos of people documenting the problems with these out of the box, and spending a lot of money to remedy their shortcomings. Sometimes more than the cost of the instrument itself. I won't be doing that. Some known issues and my conclusions so far: Strings: yeah, the stock roundwounds are crap, with a 0.084 low E. I wanted flatwounds anyway, so I got a set of LaBellas with the 0.095 low E at the same time. Haven't installed them yet. Pickups / Electronics. Working, but I haven't done any critical listening tests yet. I want hum-cancelling with the 1+2 and 2+3 pickup selections, and if I don't already have that, I'll try and make it so. I'm getting conflicting information about this. If I have to swap the #2 pickup wiring phase, I hope I can also invert the magnets to bring it back in phase. (Or maybe I want some out-of-phase quack.) Neck: action seems pretty good, it has been set up for those stock strings. I will need to tighten the truss rod a little for the new strings, and a quick test shows it's very tight under string tension. I'll try again with the strings off. Frets: very happy so far. They seem level with no sharp ends at all. Indian Laurel fingerboard is extremely dry, as expected, so it will get lots of lovely lemon oil. Bridge: others have reported severe intonation problems. on the low E in particular. I didn't find a problem there with the stock strings, and I can see room for adjustment in both directions. There's more room for adjustment forward, and they say that's what the heavier strings will need, but I won't know until I try it. The adjustment screw won't contact the string at all. In a quick test I was able to lower the bridge to "too low", which hopefully means that no shimming will ever be required. (I do not like shimming at all.) Vibrato: it's not going to get a lot of use, and I'm not expecting much, but in a quick test it didn't seem worse than a typical cheap vibrato. After pushing down, a quick tug up to get it back in position, and tuning seemed OK. One thing I only learned recently about this type of vibrato is that the bridge is designed to move when you use it. The strings do not slide, the bridge moves with them. It's on the Jaguar and Jazzmaster guitars too. Some YT-ers have replaced the stock bridge, but I think I won't need to. So on first inspection it looks like Fender / Squier has addressed many of the problems that have been reported. It's a new area for me, and I'll need some time to get used to the scale and string spacing, and I expect to do a lot more with the plectrum. I wish it was smaller and lighter, though; with the long body and big headstock, it's definitely a full-size instrument.
  9. I've gone a bit mad: home board, I doubt I'll need all this stuff live: Peterson StroboStomp Mini out in to the Ly-Rock "Complicator", using both its effects loops: Parallel Loop for lows: KongPressor (almost always on), MXR bass octave deluxe, T-Rex Diva Drive, JHS 3 Series Phaser, Lekato Loop Auto (looper). I've settled on no LPF, so I can have just the KongPressor for an un-effected tone. Only just got the looper & stiil thinking about how I might use it. These pedals are all bass-friendly, even if they aren't "bass pedals". Preamp Loop for highs: first the internal preamp set to a little dirt with a mild bass cut. Out to a Donner A/B switch so I can turn this whole loop off. The A input is where I would insert a guitar (at home), or the bridge pickup if I start playing with "stereo" bass wiring again. Then to the Mosky Silver Horse (Klone) - still playing with tones there, but quite low gain. Tone City Matcha Cream fuzz set to fairly aggressive. Both pedals can reduce the bass if turned up, but that's not a problem now. The SoniCake Sonic Ambience: basic delay and reverb in a pretty cheap pedal. Then both channels back in to the "Complicator", blended about 50% each, and in to the cab sim. Headphone out for practice, amp or DI if I need them.
  10. Fun factoid: this is a clone of a specific Boss OC-2 owned by Janek Gwizdala. He talks about it here:
  11. I recently picked up a Ly-Rock Tone Monster DI pedal - see this thread - which has opened up some more possibilities around split processing of my signal. I've been looking to avoid the expensive bass drive pedals - DarkGlass etc. - while trying to avoid the dreaded bass suck associated with using pedals made for guitar. I have two drive pedals before this latest purchase: a Tone City Matcha Cream Fuzz, which acquits itself rather well as long as I keep the tone control down, and a T-Rex Diva Drive, which is basically an inexpensive Tube Screamer with a Mix control. With split processing now available, I thought it was safe to try a Klon type pedal. For this NPD test, though, I used it on its own without splitting the signal. The Silver Horse has a voice switch for two modes: switch down for the classic low gain "golden" Klon type, and up for the higher gain "silver" Klon type. I found the "silver" mode less useful so far, and I think I could have gotten away with the Mosky Golden Horse instead, but it only cost me about a tenner extra for the option. In "silver" mode I think the distortion comes in too quickly and heavily, which may be more suited to guitar. At the highest gain levels it just kills the bass frequencies. In "golden" mode, things are much better on bass, I think. After I placed the order, I read that the Gain control on these pedals is essentially a blend control anyway. With Gain down and Volume and Tone at 12, switching the pedal on or off made no difference to the tone at all, so I can believe that. Increasing Gain also increases the volume a fair bit before you hear much distortion, which makes sense given the way some folks talk about using the Klon as a clean boost. So "golden" mode is low gain in normal use, and on lower Gain settings it didn't seem like the pedal was doing all that much until I turned it off. I think this will work well in combination with an amp (or cab sim) and sit nicely in a mix. Higher gain tones are less useful and I'm not so keen on them. Amazon UK has the Golden Horse for under £40 today. This is where your input signal level can have an influence too. With my "always on" Orange KongPressor, the gain was too much and weakening the bass by the 12-o'clock position in either mode. With the KongPressor off this didn't happen until I boosted the Gain further. I'm not too concerned about this since the split signal will have different gain structure, and I may find myself using the "silver" mode again with the parallel bypass signal blend.
  12. I should have mentioned this one before: I haven't been to this shop, but do look at the website occasionally. https://www.jimismusicstore.ie/product_info.php?products_id=6060 It is a 4003 (not 4003S), no year given but it has the old bridge, so pre-2019. Listed for €2,750 (about £2,350), which includes 23% local VAT. I've been meaning to go there some time, actually.
  13. I got one of these delivered yesterday, ordered through Fruugo, also slightly guilty. I won't get to use it fully until the weekend, when I plan to rebuild my board around it. I've been meaning to try something like this for a while, for split processing and also to accommodate a possible return to dual-output bass. I have an ABY switch pedal on the way that will let me turn off the high channel easily, since this has no foot switches. So far impressions are generally positive. The cab sim seems pretty good, does improve the sound, though the effects of the various controls on it are quite subtle, at least through some not-too-great headphones. The preamp seems to need a hot input for real dirt, which it will get since I'll have the Orange KongPressor in front. PS the full name is Ly-Rock Tone Monster-Amp.DI Bass. Yikes.
  14. There’s also a new EHB1505SMS, upgraded version of the short-scale. I like the colour on this one:
  15. I’m still learning about this stuff myself, but from the descriptions on this thread, it sounds like neither the Beebo nor Dwarf has the raw CPU power to run the “full fat” NAM models. They run “nano” or “ feather” version i.e. lightweight. PS I see there is an official amp capture website for capturing your amps and converting existing NAM files. The descriptions on firmware updates like this appear to confirm it’s NAM Nano models only on current hardware. That thread is about a proposed new pedal to run all NAM models - still some way off.
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