Obrienp

I used my C24 HPF/LPF at a NYE gig. I was using a Barefaced Two10 with an LFSys Monza on top (making 3 x 10) driven by a Blackface U700, which can handle the 2.7 ohm load. HPF set at the lowest frequency of 30 Hz and LPF at around 4K. I had the gain control set to give a slight boost over the dry signal. This combination was definitely thickening up the tone (which seems counterintuitive) and removing any brittle high end. I wasn’t running the amp anywhere near max volume, as I was DI’d into the PA, so I can’t tell how much extra clean headroom the filter will give me. The effect seemed to be a bit like a compressor but I guess it wasn’t smoothing out the dynamics. I definitely liked the effect and kept the unit on through most of the gig. I only switched it off when I really wanted the top end to pop. The bass was a Maruszczyk Elwood (Jazz copy) 4a 32”, which I use almost exclusively in passive mode.

I did my NYE dep gig with Backtracking at the Spreadeagle in Erpingham (in the middle of nowhere). It is a long carry from the car park, which was full when I arrived at 6pm: funny, the pub wasn’t. In fact there were only about a dozen people there? How did they manage to drive two cars each? Anyway we set up and got the soundcheck out of the way by about 7:30 by which time the place was filling up nicely. This band has a full time sound man (he knows his onions) and for the evening a lights technician as well! It was a ticketed event with a buffet, which the band were given access to and we were all allowed to bring a significant other for free! The landladies were very welcoming and concerned that we had everything we needed. I wish other venues would take notes! We kicked off at 9pm and did about 1 hour 45 for the first set. A bit of a slow response for the first few songs but then people started to dance and kept going. The room went from pretty chilly to sauna hot quite quickly. I was dripping by the end of the first set and had to go outside to cool off, where it was blowing a real gale. We started our second set a bit after 11 and went through until about 0.45 am. People were dancing all the way through, which was great. I could have gone on but I think the drummer was feeling it by then. I actually got home about 2:15 but what with unloading the car and unwinding with a large Irish whiskey, I didn’t get to bed until about 3:30. Up this morning to start the 100 press ups a day challenge: challenge being an understatement for me today! I went nuclear on gear because the drummer is quite loud: Blackstar U700 head; LFSys Monza on top of a Barefaced Two10; MB LM3 500 on hot standby; HF/LF filter pedal and Boss TU-3 tuner; Maruszczyk Elwood 4a (32”); bitsa 32” P bass as spare; DI into the PA. Not unsurprisingly I was asked to turn down a bit. I think the master was at about 9 o’clock. I was really impressed with the difference the HF/LF made to the sound. It seemed to really thicken it up, while taking out any brittle upper end. I had it set around 30 Hz HF and 4Khz LF. I made a few mistakes: worst was messing up the intro run to Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me). I’ve done it so many times and then when I do a dep gig…. doh! Picture now added. My nuclear rig 😀 I know it’s only 3 x10 but you can hear it alright. Fortunately the U700 can handle the 2.7 ohm load.

@Bluewine now that’s a good NYE gig! I hope it goes to plan!

Yes, I’m with you on that. I’ve got to turn up at 6pm this evening but our first set doesn’t start until 9pm and we expect to go on until around 1am. Then breakdown and home. It’s quite a long way down steps from the car park at this pub as well and it’s a dep job. Doubt I’ll be home much before 3am. Fortunately, I enjoy playing with this band and I like their set list. More after the gig….. I optimistically signed up for the 100 press ups a day in January challenge, to raise funds for Cancer Research. I think day one might be a bit hard after getting to bed at 3am! 😬

I would love that, if it had a 38mm nut. Funny how 4mm can make so much difference to playing comfort for me these days (arthritis in the left hand).

I had a shorty made for me by my local luthier and I seem to recall him saying that the body was scaled down by around 12%, which is roughly the difference in scale length between a full scale and a shorty. However, I don’t know if that is the formula used by Sandberg and Sterling.

So do pretty well all companies and large organisations of any kind (charities, etc). I guess they could try to ban them for private individual use but they are a useful tool to provide added security when using the internet for things like banking. There would be quite an outcry if they did try to ban their use.

I can see this creating a new market for risk assessments. People will set themselves up as experts offering a risk assessment service for sites and forums. Who knows, Ofcom might set up qualifications like there are for financial advisors. What’s certain is that it’s going to cost people more than it does now.

I guess this is going to create a market for forum hosting services that provide a complete turnkey solution, including compliance enforcement. At least I hope so, otherwise it is going to drive everything onto Facebook and similar. I can see AWS, etc, providing this kind of service but how much it would cost and where the buck stops for legal liability, could be real issues for the likes of Basschat. Unintended consequences of well intentioned but rushed legislation? P.S. I don’t suppose this is actually going to stop the hate/perv forums. It will just drive them onto the dark web instead of mainstream media. At least that will stop the unwary straying onto them on main stream media channels but it looks like their will be thousands of perfectly innocent forums that have to close down.

I wonder about that. I had two One10s and then got a Two10. The Two10 is definitely greater than the sum of the two One10s, so I am wondering if the Three10 is greater than the sum of One10 and Two10, 3 x One10? There is also the impedance issue that arises from the combination of those cabs. Fine if your amp can handle a 2.7 ohm load but for a lot of modern class D heads the 4 ohms of the Three10 is a lot friendlier.

I’m one year behind you and I drive myself, plus one of the PA towers and one, or two monitors that I also provide, plus my bass gear, loads of spare extension cables, the stage box/snake, loads of kettle leads, XLR cables, spare mic, emergency DI box, tools, gaffa tape, etc, plus sometimes a mixer desk and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. Every so often I get a bit miffed about it as I have back issues, arthritis and lymphoma but then one of the guitarists is 72 with prostate cancer and provides the regular mixing desk. The drummer is only a year younger than me and provides the other PA tower, plus lugging his kit. Vocalist is much younger and I think should provide her own monitor but she works in the care sector, so really isn’t paid enough to be able to buy anything worth while. I do wonder how long I can go on doing this but I get such a rush from playing live that I really would miss it. We just got a new line up too, so a lot more fun to be had yet.

One band I play in tunes down a semitone to Eb, which I understand is 415 hz. It is much more friendly for the singers apparently. It is a bit of a pain as I tend to play short and medium scale basses and the third and fourth strings can get a bit flappy. Consequently, I have to keep a bass set up for Eb. I guess 432 Hz might not be such a problem with a conventional setup but does it really help the vocalists as much? Eb was good enough for Hendrix, so who am I to argue?

I don’t think they work that well with bass anyway. A stomp is much better IMO but maybe not the Boos Tu-3 which I find a bit disappointing, despite so many positive reviews. However, I agree with @neepheid, it’s none of the vocalist’s business how you tune your bass.

I seem to have become de facto band manager for one band I am in after the departure of the original BL. He was BL because he formed the band and, as an ex-RAF officer, he was very comfortable with taking charge. He was also younger than the rest of us and good with social media, etc. He handed the website, FB page, etc, over to me when he left because I used to be in the IT industry. Trouble is, for around the last 15 years of my career, I didn’t do anything remotely hands on. He wrote the web-page directly in a combo of html and JavaScript, pretty old school and in theory should be within my capabilities as an ex-programmer but when I say ex, I mean I moved on to other roles in the mid 90s. I still haven’t raised the courage to look at the files that make up the website after 5 months! I know I’ve got to set aside at least a couple of days and several weeks beforehand on a crash technical refresher. In the other band I have also ended up stuck with the FB stuff and a lot of the gig hunting but fortunately everybody takes a share in finding gigs and another band mate acts more in the BL role. It can be very time consuming doing this kind of band admin/management. I’m retired and I find it difficult to set aside the time! The trouble is these days you really do need to be constantly doing the social media, online stuff, otherwise the gigs dry up pretty quickly, as we have discovered. Almost worth letting someone take 20% of earnings in return for staying on top of this stuff and keeping the gigs coming. After all, I play in bands enjoyment as much as for cash and sitting in front of a screen, after 30 years in the IT industry, is not enjoyable IMO!

Pretty cool though, literally! 🤟

Thanks for the tip. My fix at the time was to move it on but I’ve had the same problem with my Guild Starfire 1 and the cure for that has been stick on foam edge protector: the kind that you can get to stop toddlers from braining themselves on tables, etc. I have seen adverts for full length forearm sleeves for classical/flamenco guitarists, which might also be worth a try.

Well he was good enough for Zeppelin to write a song in tribute: “Hats Off to Harper”.

Late entry for my worst is a Digitech Drop pedal. It didn’t do what it said on the tin at all. Very disappointing as I had read reasonable reviews of it elsewhere. Fortunately, Merchant City Music took it back without quibbling and refunded the money promptly. Great after sales service IMO and I will certainly consider buying from them again.

In Norfolk it’s any make of car, tractor, van, lorry, or other self-powered farm machinery regardless of country of origin. There is obviously a special spec list for cars bought here: most drivers save money by not specifying indicators. If they do use indicators, it normally means they are trying to trick you and will actually be turning in the opposite direction to that indicated. They will wait at a junction until there is a car coming and then pull out very slowly and drive at a steady 38 MPH in the middle of the road, regardless of the speed limit, whether it be a 20 limit in front of a school, or a 60 on what passes for an open road (there are no motorways in Norfolk and few dual carriageways).

Are they genuine humbuckers now, or still the single coils pretending to be? Not really a problem: the singles sounded good but a lot of people got upset at them being passed off as humbuckers in the specs. The main problem with these for me was the slab body; the edges really dug into my forearm to the point that I started to get tendinitis. Other people’s mileage may be different and I guess it’s not much different to a Mustang in that respect. If they haven’t changed the rest of the hardware fixings, it’s an easy bass to upgrade. Tuners, bridge, etc are fairly easily replaced without modification and there are umpteen choices depending on your budget. Postscript: I just enlarged the picture and the BBOT bridge is different: a screw on each corner, rather than the previous 5 screw Fender fitting. That might reduce the range of drop in replacements available.

Are those humbuckers? The spec doesn’t say. Expensive for a (presumably) Far Eastern made instrument! I suspect the street price is going to come out a bit less than that after a bit.

I do occasionally play the standard tuning songs a semitone up on my detuned bass but I get confused sometimes, especially in the more complex songs, so I find it less risky to keep a bass in standard tuning for gigs.

This thread has landed at exactly the right moment for me. It’s reassuring to know others get it wrong. I had a band rehearsal yesterday and I couldn’t do anything right. I couldn’t keep up with the pace of some songs, I hit wrong notes (worse than missing a note), I forgot stuff, I couldn’t get the bass to stay in tune; on it went. It came to a climax/anti-climax in “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” when I did the B flat major scale run down wrong (ended on A) and as for the two little three note chromatic run downs, I just couldn’t get the timing right. It threw me into a complete depression about my playing, fearing that age was causing a decline in my abilities and I was contemplating suggesting they get another bassist today (after 5 years in this band). Anyway this has cheered me up. I think I’ll postpone any self-destructive decisions until I’m absolutely sure I’m crap! 😀

Just regurgitating this thread. I read it and decided to try the Digitech Drop that looked perfect for what I wanted. One band I play in does a lot of songs detuned a semitone but also a few in standard tuning. I find I need two basses because even one semitone difference seems to cause all sorts of tuning stability issue, if I try to use one bass. However, a second bass on a stand can cause overcrowding problems on the kind of “stages” we tend to get (5 piece band), plus delays between songs. Well my experience with the Drop has not been good. My main gigging bass with this band is a Guild NS Starfire 1 (the one with the P pickup) but I also use a custom shortscale P/J. I tried the drop with both basses, plus another partcaster medium scale P bass and a medium scale Maruszczyk Elwood (jazz copy). The Drop just didn’t work well with any of them. On lower strings the drop was either flat or sharp and on the upper strings it started doing a sort of octaver thing with both a dry and pitch altered note, which sounded horrible! The only feature that worked OK was the actual octaver setting. That tracked well on the top two strings but got less accurate and more laggy as you dropped to the lower strings. That seems pretty much par for the course with octave pedals, so no worse than most. I have sent the pedal back and I certainly wouldn’t recommend it. I am now contemplating whether it is worth trying the more expensive EHX Pitchfork. That seems to get mixed reviews and I have a feeling it doesn’t do semitones, so I suspect I’m going to have to stick with two basses.

Thank you for the comprehensive response @stevie. A second Monza is on the list but it might have to wait, as one of my daughters just got engaged. They are looking to buy a house and I think the Bank of Mum and Dad might have to step in, not to mention wedding costs, which I understand average around £30K these days!!!😱😱😱😱 Looking at the price of prestige 800 watt plus amps (even used), the Monza looks like the best value option to get more clean headroom. The 4 ohm load will double the output of my current amps. Although, as @Phil Starr pointed out, that is more than I need for the kind of gigs I’m playing, it would give me plenty of headroom (as I understand it).