nilebodgers

That’s a nice sight for a repair tech, plenty of room and parts replaceable without a microscope.

I wonder what the Ashdown RMs are like to fix? I assume they are almost entirely surface mount with a single board class D power amp/power supply in the middle?

Note that there are different audio tapers too - e.g. https://www.axesrus.co.uk/CTS-Pots-Solid-Shaft-p/cts63.htm there is a “vintage” and “modern” audio taper that will affect how volume varies with pot rotation. (There are actually other variations, but they aren’t commonly available, at least in the uk)

Shouldn't the speaker have a very offensive yellow cone?

(I quite like the look really!)

I use my cordless 18v dewalt combi drill for jobs like this. Complete overkill to drill a 1.5mm hole in a guitar, but the chuck has no visible run-out so it is very precise. The small 2ah battery pack keeps the weight manageable for 1 hand unsupported operation.

Does it matter though? It's a standard P-bass footprint pickup, if you don't like it you could flog it and choose from loads of alternatives to replace it. I doubt you'd end up more than £30 out of pocket selling the DiMarzio.

On rosewood fretboards I use "Howard Feed-n-Wax" which is a beeswax/oil wood finish. I only apply occasionally (yearly maybe) and use sparingly if the board is looking a bit dry. I let it sit for a minute or so and then polish it off as much as I can. Makes the fretboard look very nice.

I've read the dire warnings about letting oil penetrate into the fret slots, but I reckon it would need really slathering on heavily and leaving for hours for that to be a potential danger.

Ki0gon Jazz bass Vol-Vol-Tone format loom. Solderless connections.

250k CTS audio taper pots, 47nF capacitor and switchcraft jack socket. Pots and jack have all the correct nuts+washers inc. the star lock washers.

Removed from a fairly new bass I bought on here (I have replaced it with my own loom design).

Price at £30.00 including UK mainland postage (parcel post - too thick for the cheaper letter rate).

I like the bass on the Girlschool version. Quite a rocking song in the right hands.

(Haven't got a clue about synth FX though.)

Nice colour!

1 minute ago, Chienmortbb said:

Yup you got me. 
 

I must admit I don’t use that much dirt so perhaps that is why I don’t notice it. 
 

One of the things I like about it is the tuner. Very fast settling and seemingly very accurate. I must check it against the Peterson App on my phone. When you consider how much a GOOD tuner costs it is amazing. 

The tuner doesn't fall much short of the current TC polytune for speed and accuracy IMO (in monophonic mode). It only falls down on the mechanics of having to press 2 pedals to activate, I pretty much always accidentally change patches doing that so I couldn't use it live.

Which patch is selected? Some of the stock ones are really noisy, especially the ones with distortion or FX (I think patch 40 is the basic SVT which would be a good starting point).

The series has been great. The only one I skipped was Suzi Quatro, she was copping a strop about them not playing her xmas single and I gave up on it. It might have got better, but not much of a sense of humour was being exhibited.

The irony of all this is the FOH engineer at a decent size gig would completely ignore a pedal compressor anyway. The channel strip compression facilities on any decent digital desk runs rings round any of these pedals.

3 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

A lot of truth in that Kev! And maybe why the topic remains so controversial?

For example, I was having a listen to this generally decent gear review of the Boss BC1-X and he recommends a setting for live use (for all the reasons that others have given during the course of this thread) at 6.29+ onwards. He plays both without (7.17) and with the comp (7.29). It's really easy to hear the difference, but personally I so much prefer the uncompressed tone which let's the playing dynamics breathe. Maybe others prefer the compressed tone and maybe it's better in the mix, but the starting point is a singularly unattractive one tonally for me. 

 

Yes, you are right - he went too far with those settings and it has squashed it too much. I didn't watch the bit where he discussed the parameters used, but it sounds to me like the attack was set too fast so none of the transients come through.

They are nice old things the Bandits. I bought a later version just to have a decent low-maintenance guitar amp around the place. I agree about the clean sound, it is good on those.

GLWTS!

8 hours ago, Bobthedog said:

Based on a lot of threads I do not think it would make a difference to this forum, other than perhaps a name change. 😀

LowFrequencyChat?

On 09/05/2021 at 08:14, Happy Jack said:

Which piece of gear would you run a mile rather than buy?

 

 

Each channel has seven knobs, nine switches, two LED meters, and five LED indicators.

And there are eight channels.

And all of it to do something I never understood in the first place.

Where is @51m0n anyway?

 

A lovely bit of old school analogue processing rendered redundant by modern digital mixing desks. 8 channels of compressors and gates in one unit.

Those were the days!

Thaar she blows! Get the harpoon ready!

I was noodling around on my B1-4 this week and the octaver into a distortion patch came up with a pretty convincing sound for a modern pop/dance track cover.

I wonder how much better a separate octaver would be? The B1-4 gets a bit warbly if you go too low or sustain the note too long.

LOL. IMO the time for gear that requires a risk assessment and a manual handling training course to move around is over.

6 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

This is similar to the argument we used to have with the old-school sound boys in BBC Studios. In Post Production Sound, where I worked, we were of the opinion that our function was to make the audio sound as good as possible - FX or not. Old Studio Boys thought they were there purely to reproduce what they recorded, with virtually no eq, no reverb, no delay, no compression. This was OK if the recorded artist was absolutely perfect, the room was perfect, the recording was perfect; but there was a time when they decided that ToTP should all be live. Some may remember the horrific sounds some bands produced, simply because they would normally play live with their own sound mixer using any fx he/she felt were needed...

And nowadays, if a band with limited budget goes into the studio, it's a lot easier and cheaper to quantise that occasional drum beat or bass note that's out of time or to autotune that errant high note, than it is to re-record the whole lot!

I’ve got no problem with a certain amount of studio artifice, that’s part of the creative process IMO. No problem either with the fix ups, makes sense economically and this has always been done anyway. It’s a lot easier now with digital workstations than having to do manual dropins to fix a duff note or timing.

1 minute ago, keving said:

I find it odd that there is such a strong reaction to pitch correction but not to quantising.  One is to correct imperfections in pitch and the other to correct imperfections in timing.  Arguably, fixing the timing has a much bigger impact on the groove and feel of a song so could be considered the bigger sin.

By the same token, we use dozen of effects on guitar and bass, so why shouldn't vocalists?  Sure, it's a matter of taste and some consider that it gets overused, so why isn't distortion/overdrive considered overused when it is far more prevalent?

I'm not entirely sure of my own feelings on the matter, so I am just trying to keep an open mind.  

Over-quantising is annoying too when it squashes all the human element out of the music. The Rick Beato YouTube video on that topic is illuminating where he shows how it is done in protools.

Having said that, I don’t mind a bit of really thumping dance music when I am in the mood and that is as artificial as it comes.

3 minutes ago, tegs07 said:

Is this the same as auto-tune as in Cher “Believe”? 
I really don’t like the way the effect has become almost obligatory alongside a bit of rapping in a lot of commercial music.

Apart from that I can see the benefits but agree with @Nail Soup I would prefer character and imperfections any day. Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Michael Stipe even Neil Young sounds like a muppet and he is phenomenal.

That’s the exaggerated version of the process used as an effect. I thought it sounded like a cool effect on Cher when I first heard that song.

It sounds like a hack cliche now.

I’m old-school in my opinions. If a singer requires pitch correction then they should keep their mouth shut and seek other employment. I’ve got no problem with odd/quirky singing voices, but being in tune is non-negotiable.

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

Can some please explain with science why constantly clipping the front end of an amp will cause it to fail, because I can't see any reason for it? 

In 40 years of playing I have only had two amp failures.

One was a very ancient and badly looked after valve amp that I had acquired for next to nothing and which stopped working between sets for no apparent reason the second time I used it.

The other was user error when I inadvertently plugged both sides of a stereo amp into the same speaker cab and released the magic smoke.

It won’t. Any competently designed solid state amp should be able to light up like a Xmas tree and be soundly thrashed without skipping a beat provided it is operated into the rated load impedance.

The speakers are a different story, if their thermal limit or physical cone excursion limit is exceeded then they are toast.