Beer of the Bass

[quote name='gelfin' timestamp='1443523440' post='2875451'] Hunt around for one of these s/h [url="http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Novation-Bass-Station-Synth-/291576196920?hash=item43e34baf38"]http://www.ebay.co.u...=item43e34baf38[/url] I use one in the same way you mentioned. All sounds built in. [/quote] These are great wee things, but if Gaf wanted piano or strings a monophonic analogue synth is not going to deliver those. Although the Novation Xiosynth from a few years later might fit the bill (still no piano sounds, but it's at least polyphonic).

I've wound a few guitar pickups and one bass pickup, though nothing of the Wal multi-coil sort. I got my magnets from Cermag [url="http://www.cermag.co.uk/"]http://www.cermag.co.uk/[/url] and my wire from Brocott's [url="http://www.brocott.co.uk/"]http://www.brocott.co.uk/[/url] . I've used vulcanised fibreboard which came in small quantities from eBay sellers, but you could improvise with other materials too. I used tufnol sheet on one, because I had a scrap piece lying around. I didn't count windings; since I've only done single coils (rather than matched coils for humbuckers) I've just wound until the bobbin looks full and then checked the resistance. For bridge/neck pairs I just would the bridge a bit fuller than the neck. My winding setup was fairly haphazard, I just strapped a small hobby drill to a piece of wood and wired it up to a little speed controller PCB which came from eBay. I had a bit of dowel with sections of cork on it to guide the wire and set the horizontal travel, and tensioning was done by hand.

[quote name='Passinwind' timestamp='1443040804' post='2871822'] That happens mostly with poorly designed tube socket mounting schemes or not so robust circuit boards, IHMO. Thermal expansion/contraction of tube socket pins can cause solder joint fractures in some cases as well. Many many pieces of gear work flawlessly for decades with board mounted sockets though. [/quote] I was thinking more of jack and power sockets, but those are valid points regarding valve sockets.

[quote name='Chienmortbb' timestamp='1443034697' post='2871743'] Good points although why would sockets being soldered to the PCB make them more unreliable? [/quote] It seems to be quite common that the PCB around board mounted sockets flexes slightly in use and after a few years the tracks fracture and crack. I'm not even any sort of professional repair guy, but I can think of at least three bits of kit I've repaired where this was the fault, so I presume it's a regular point of failure.

[quote name='yorks5stringer' timestamp='1442960847' post='2871036'] Just quoting the Darkglass latest advert for the Microtubes B3K ... Unibody chassis made in Helsinki. carved out of a single aluminium block. [/quote] This is one of those bits that appears to be done as a selling point rather than for functional reasons. They're machining cases out of solid aluminium billet which do exactly the same job as an inexpensive cast aluminium Hammond case and don't look very different, but cost a lot more.

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1442928157' post='2870611'] Seems to me he's just doing Stand Up (I know he's sitting down!) and having fun. I've thought most of what he says at one time or another in the last 20 years. It's just an aggressive satire. I would have thought everyone would know his routines are based on well known stereo types. [/quote] Yeah, possibly. I actually agree with a lot of what he says, and there are times when adopting that kind of attitude can be the most effective way of getting your point across. I'm just not quite picking up on any warmth underneath the bluster though - maybe it's just not my type of humour.

That's a huge box for what's inside! I would probably buy one as a stationary rehearsal room amp if I had a need for that though.

[quote name='mrtcat' timestamp='1442916886' post='2870430'] I'm amazed anyone uses his studio at all. One wrong comment and he'll lambast you on youtube. [/quote] I do wonder - is he trying to build up the Youtube videos and T-shirt sales in order to compensate for a not exactly stuffed studio schedule? Of course, now I've said that he'll probably bitch about it in a video!

I think a lot of the price of the small boutique manufacturers is in the increased overheads and lesser purchasing power that goes with making things in small numbers, plus some less efficient manufacturing techniques. I don't think many of the people making this gear are getting rich, put it that way. Looking at the Jule Monique, it looks to be hand wired on tag-board. This should make no difference to the sound or performance (though that topic is a favourite of multi-page arguments on guitar forums) but is more labour intensive to assemble. It uses a custom wound output transformer which will also increase the cost. The bit I'm puzzled at with the Jule is why they use a valve rectifier. In class-AB power amps, a valve rectifier can cause "sag" due to the way it responds to increased current draw during peaks, which many players like. On a class-A preamp circuit, the current draw does not vary with signal level in the same way and in any case will not be high enough to cause the "sag" effect. So that aspect of it does seem rather like an extra shiny bottle to use as a marketing USP. I'm sure it sounds good though, even if it might sound indistinguishable with 7 pence worth of 4007 diodes instead of the valve rectifier...

[quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1442851894' post='2870002'] I'm sorry guys but I have just two words to say to you. Elvis Presley [/quote] Hmm, possibly. I think his management wasn't good for him for most of his career. I suspect that missing out on the 1980s has helped him to retain a little dignity in that respect.

Not as yet. They look sort of interesting, but so far I've not quite been curious enough to order one.

Is yours at concert pitch? A friend has had a couple and none of them have been quite in tune with the outside world. They're fun instruments though - it's hard not to trot out my (rather feeble) attempt at an Ivor Cutler impersonation when sitting at one...

I miss the one Fender that I've owned, a Highway One Jazz. It was just a nice plain, simple bass that played well and sounded like a Jazz, but somehow the whole package was satisfying.

Is the headstock bound or has someone gone to town with acrylic paints? I wouldn't be surprised at the latter.

[quote name='Simon.' timestamp='1442573179' post='2867879'] I also recall being scared witless as a naive 14-year old in Bostons. What happened in the end? [/quote] It was run by this guy: [url="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/feb/15/drugsandalcohol.ukcrime"]http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/feb/15/drugsandalcohol.ukcrime[/url]

[quote name='skidder652003' timestamp='1442522439' post='2867608'] lol that won't cut the mootard against a marshall stack! [/quote] I reckon it could be excellent alongside a Fender Princeton and a drummer who's not a full-on rocker though.

[quote name='kodiakblair' timestamp='1442437296' post='2867036'] Big_Stu Was Live Music no up past the Kings at the start of the Meadows ? One I'm thinking of was opposite the Cameo an next to Bentleys Bar. Marshalls or something rings a bell. [/quote] Live Music (before the last move) was next door to Bennets bar, two doors up from the Kings. It's the Purple Pig cafe at the moment. Mev Taylors was on Brougham Street towards the Meadows for a couple of years - are you thinking of that?

The thing I like about the Paul McCartney conspiracy theory is that it dates from pre-internet times. It's somehow reassuring to know that people have always come up with this stuff, though the internet makes the process a bit more efficient.

It must be a bugger to play in tune too, since the zero fret is just a marker now and the string length starts at the nut behind that. All the fret lines must be slightly sharp!

[quote name='Big_Stu' timestamp='1442321214' post='2866011'] Before Cash Converters it was much more fun checking out gear in "proper junk shops" like Roddy Boston's on Leith Walk, or the one briefly on Montgomery Street and there was another on Elm Row. [/quote] Ah yes, I bought my first amp from Boston's. Those shops were much more fun when I was a naive teenager with no idea where they got the gear from! I think reading the news articles about the proprietor later on soured it for me slightly - every now and again I wonder where that amp might have been nicked from.

[quote name='spongebob' timestamp='1442334696' post='2866158'] I must admit, I have close in recent months. Just dissatisfaction with bands/gigs/musicians. Music has always been my life - social life, what fills up my head all day. I started to think how, or if, I could live without it - and wondered how much I do it because of the love of it, or simply because it's just 'what I do'? I've played with other musicians for nearly 30 years, started jamming at 11...so all my life, really. I feel the band and gig scene has definitely shrunk, and the opportunities are less. However, I think you can reach a point when you feel like you've done it all - I could play the same gigs for another 10 years, and they'll be still screaming for Mustang....! Like you've reached as far as it'll go, and it's just an endless loop of repetition after that....with a Mustang soundtrack. As has been mentioned - do you play anything just to be out there playing? Or do you fill your time with something else? Bad patch, I hope.... [/quote] I've got something similar going on at the moment. I had a couple of bass guitar gigs over August after having laid off it for a while. I was kind of enthused going into it, but the gigs just weren't particularly satisfying, even though I'd enjoyed exactly the same gigs in previous years it just felt a little flat this time. Another band I play in (on guitar) is feeling that way too, as we're gigging only sporadically and they always seem to be in the middle of the night in dismal concrete rooms to wasted audiences who would jump up and down to anything. We've got an album in the bag ready to be pressed, but we faffed about for so long doing it that it's all songs we were playing three years ago, which cuts down the excitement slightly. The most enjoyable thing I've got going on at the moment are some fairly ad-hoc jazz gigs on double bass with a quartet that barely exists between gigs and doesn't rehearse. I don't really have jazz chops so I'm winging it to some extent, and I guess the learning curve is part of the enjoyment there. I'm almost inclined to pursue that angle for the moment rather than more structured bands.

It occurs to me that the bands who appeared on OGWT didn't tend to be the biggest touring acts of the day (your Led Zeps and Deep Purples), more the upper-mid level of the business. I don't mean to say that they weren't great bands, more that they were the sort of acts who'd appear in a decent sized hall or club in town rather than a stadium. So I wonder if those bands didn't quite have the resources to have huge, well maintained state-of-the-art gear (with the crew to match) like the biggest bands would.

[quote name='Rich' timestamp='1442333853' post='2866146'] If I purchase something, it's because there's a particular need that it's filling. Is that what you mean by justify? Surely if I need an acoustic guitar, and there a couple one of which is £500 and the other £2000, and I try them and on balance[i] I prefer [/i]the £2k one, and it's fulfilling that need, then it's 'justified', right? [/quote] I think my views on this are affected both by having played some very nice acoustics (meaning that I'm familiar with the differences) and by knowing a couple of UK luthiers who build them. The ones I've met don't consider themselves to be dealing in luxury items, they'd rather see their instruments played by working musicians than displayed as a status symbol. I would consider that regardless of the numbers involved, it's quite reasonable for an active musician to obtain an instrument of good quality made by people earning a living wage if it's within their means to do so.

[quote name='MiltyG565' timestamp='1442332476' post='2866124'] That doesn't say to whom, though. My wording was fine. Some posters have trawled this thread and tried to make a mockery of my original point, simply because they disagree. Like I said much earlier in the thread - I see it differently, and (some of) you don't seem to be able to handle that without getting very upset. Resorting to pedantry to try and make petty points to prove that you're right to be upset about my opinion isn't a good look for you, Beer. [/quote] I'm not upset in the slightest. It's just that you seem to have a knack of rubbing people up the wrong way and then acting as if you're oblivious to why this happens. This would not be the first thread where this has happened. I figure that this could either be intentional or unintentional. I considered that in the latter case, it might be useful offer my suggestions as to why people respond as they do. But at this point I'm leaning towards thinking that you post in this manner intentionally, in which case you're edging closer and closer to my ignore list.

[quote name='MiltyG565' timestamp='1442330973' post='2866098'] There must be some confusion. I think it's unjustifiable. I don't know why me holding that opinion means that you need to somehow go to some shadowy minister of justifications and seek their approval. One simply can't state an opinion without people starting the ol' whataboutery. [/quote] Have a look at the definition of the word unjustifiable: "Not able to be shown to be right or reasonable" (from oxforddictionaries.com) When you describe something as "unjustifiable", you are not simply stating your own opinion, you are dismissing the other persons views or actions as unreasonable or wrong. If that wasn't what you meant by it, you need to consider your choice of words more carefully. If that [i]was[/i] what you meant, the reactions are quite reasonable IMO.