Woodwind

I have a project turntable bought 20 years ago to replace a project I'd bought 5 years prior and had burned the motor out on. I forget exactly what debut model, but it would be lower mid range in their current debut line up with upgraded cartridge and some other tweaks etc. It extracts what I want from a record, but it is a painfully dull, pseudo minimalist, pedestrian piece. If I had a Dual 505 I would be excited to play records in a way I'm not with the project. Get a new belt and drop the cash on a new stylus or even a whole new cartridge and enjoy the music.

I think ending up with the double 4 is the best possible outcome. They are great amps - knowing your music Rob, going beyond bass if you do have or acquire a pickup or mic system you can move across all your wonderful guitars the double 4 will reproduce all the tones perfectly. I use mine as stage amplification for my woodwind instrument.

Ha there we go. Tim typing exactly what I was saying at the same time

Let us know what you think of the amp and the cab. A criticism of this amp back in the day was that it didn't seem very loud, but this was apparently from people turning the knobs as they would on an amp they were used to ie judiciously. Don't be afraid to push the gain right up.

Bit late to this, sorry. What is the actual difference in scale length between the two basses? A friend of mine tours internationally and when she can't take her instrument she has to make do with whatever the venue or promoter has managed to hire for her gigs. This means she adjusts to different string lengths and D/ Eb necks with very little time to practice with an instrument. She has a little leather patch with double sided tape that she sticks on the neck at the D position as physical marker for her thumb on Eb necks. Works brilliantly. As you own both these basses you could make a wooden block to a similar shape curve to D neck and hide glue it on to the Eb neck. Easily removed if you wanted to sell the bass. That's what I'd be inclined to do. As others have said, please Don't shift the bridge - a couple of mm is fine in reality, but there would be no gain in doing this as the difference in scale length is probably an order of magnitude greater than what you could compensate for by moving the bridge (and you would need to tweak the soundpost after moving the bridge). Carving the new nut is definitely the only way to make them have the same scale length without commiting to a neck graft. It shouldn't be expensive and if you are handy is not an especially difficult DIY project, certainly to test the waters at least. You don't need to use ebony. Your Luthier may in fact want to nudge the bridge towards the fingerboard by a few mm to help maintain a D neck with the new nut etc etc, but they will then adjust the soundpost. As others have said the aesthetics may put you off, but I was close to buying a bass with an extended nut which had a C extension so it all ended up looking pretty good indeed! Let us know what you decided to do. Good luck

Well I'm very impressed that they are using thick cable. If I had a trace I would definitely be following your fine example!

Love this so much. Do you know if the mains cable is .75mm2 or a beefier 1mm2?

What a fantastic instrument! Is that a slap relief cut out under the G, and and A strings? What surgery is it having?

So much so that The Fast Show lampooned the phenomena back in the 90's

I would love to catch them live. Always had to work late when they have come to London over the last few years. Glad you enjoyed the show!

The very best sounding 5 strings - Low B specifically- I have ever played (Didn't own any of them) were a Warwick thumb 5, a stingray 5 and a Status Barracuda (probably the best sounding out of all of them). All of them weighed an absolute tonne. Whether that was related to the quality of their low end I can't say, but I could never own an instrument as heavy as those

Other than the cachet of the name I have never really understood the fuss over Kays. The one I played on at a dealers place was eclipsed by every other bass of any construction method at any price he was selling. If you must own a Kay then £2.5k will get you this. If you want a double bass then £2.5k will get you some choice. Rant over 🤣

My radio alarm clock goes off to LBC in the morning and the presenter on breakfast show (I'm not naming them deliberately) was really scathing of the whole thing. Laughing at the average age of attendees being 39, scathing of acts whether they had made political statements or not, etc etc Very odd!

If you want to get the most transparent sound you can from your Laney plug your pedalboard output into the FX return socket on the back of the amp. Technically the inbuilt FX loop is for line level signals which are louder than instrument level signals, but as long as you can get a healthy volume level from your pedal board you'll be doing ok. By doing this you bypass the preamp section of the amp where, theoretically, most of the tone colour resides.

As long as the frets are all level you can get the action as low as you want really. I can't tolerate high actions or higher tension strings so have actions of around 1mm on all my basses, but I play with a light touch as a result. Also Don't be scared of adjusting the truss rod in future. Just being careful - small turns and let the bass settle to the new tension before adjusting more, but it doesn't seem your current setting needs adjusting unless you change strings. Good luck

Bit late to this, I love my Line Audio OM1s which I use as a stereo pair, or use singularly combined with a ribbon for close mic'ing. Their CM4 is meant to be great as well and I very nearly bought one on eBay recently for live use where I would want a cardioid pattern rather than my omnis. Line audio are made in Sweden in small batches and are at bargain prices. https://www.lineaudio.se/ Since leaving the EU it's tricky to get them directly, but there is a UK distributer - I haven't used them as I bought direct years ago. https://pinknoise-systems.co.uk/collections/line-audio---microphones?srsltid=AfmBOoqlo1VbCHSPNyRVw8t286EIRm_r-2ZJiQBzCkJPjHCxW_Fog9k2#

Only bass I regret selling. Groove 5 string. Phenomenal bass. I initially wished it sound more like a stingray, but then realised the sound was "better" - more useable. And Yes that neck, damn. I saw my old one up for sale and didn't move fast enough to buy it. As you say, they're rarely on the second hand market

Is this similar to your current one? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/177048483189?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=nrhfh01pq1o&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=IEanl3fNSaK&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

I go to quite a few flea markets around London. I have seen old washboards for sale on a couple of occasions, but as with anything at these type of markets it's when you aren't looking for it that you see it. Car boots would be another avenue to explore, but as Reggaebass says waiting for one to turn up on eBay might be the best bet.

I hadn't heard of hearthis. I will be in a similar position to you later this year where I'll need to share some works in progress and I was totally put off setting up a new SoundCloud account, so I will give it a look

You could use bandcamp for this, but personally I wouldn't as it's primarily designed as a sales platform for finished recordings. YouTube is quite handy for this. You can mark the video as unlisted so it won't show up in searches, but you can then send the link directly to players who might be interested in joining. Obviously you need to upload a video, (which can just be a still image) rather than just an audio file. I ditched SoundCloud a long time ago so I don't know how useful it would be in either its free or subscription form.

I would take that Covent Garden address with a pinch of salt. The address is very familiar to me as I have dealt with various companies and charities that use it. It's an office complex that offers all sorts of services from postal boxes, to hot desking, meeting rooms up to shared office space. Many, many companies are registered there: https://open.endole.co.uk/explorer/postcode/wc2h-9jq

This is the thread you want -

It's not your perception. I only use Instagram. It's still immensely useful, but a poor relation to how useful it used to be up until a few years ago. The algorithmic approach where it feeds you more of what you like is completely at odds with the organic way people search for things. Previously I discovered many, many artists, labels and promoters through basic general searches (and was discovered in a similar way). These connections proved very fruitful leading to releases, gigs, tours etc etc Now whenever I search, Instagram just shows me stuff it thinks is related to what I have liked previously, Usually from an American perspective. Similarly people don't discover my stuff unless they search for me specifically. A lot changed when they stopped you being able to search hashtags chronologically. It was great to see the latest posts tagged with #whatever, but now it's just the most popular posts tagged with #whatever, which could be years old and just become a cyclic regurgitation. I don't know what the answer is, but I would suggest you're better off on there than not in the short term and look for something else in the meantime. I never got Facebook or twitter to the point of being useful for me even with a fair amount of time invested and deleted both years ago.