Velarian

Bass 2 seemed to have a slightly more pronounced tone roll off so I would say that’s the custom loom. With the tone open there wasn’t much between them. Bass 2 maybe had slightly more clarity. However, I’m thinking it’s hardly worth the effort to upgrade because of the negligible difference.

I think it depends on how heavily it’s used. Any strap has the potential to to cause wear over time. My only gigged bass (‘77 P bass) which has seen plenty of action looks like this:

I just saw that video and thought the Sire sounded better!

I can’t comment on the Ray or Yamaha but I would definitely say a Squier CV beats an Affinity hands down.

Reverb or delay?

What does it sound like? Any chance of a demo recording?

Directions to gigs seems to be another rich seam of tales. My mates band was playing in Dundee and when they couldn’t find the venue they stopped and asked a character for directions. He said he was going that way and offered to jump in the van and direct from there. When he got in, he took one look at the keyboard player who had long hair and a beard - I can’t do the accent but this character says “Christ, you’re a hairy b@stard”, which didn’t get him off to a very good start. So, they set off and after a short while he says “turn left”. They went on a bit further and he says “turn left” again and a little bit further after that he says “turn left” again. One of the lads says “if he says turn left one more time I’m going to lamp him”. Sure enough a bit later he says “turn left” and the other lad says to him “you don’t really know where you’re going do you?” to which he admitted that he didn’t. What a chancer!

My last post on the train wreck thread would probably be more applicable here!

Wondering whether your at the right gig or not reminded me of one we did at a pub which turned out to be in the middle of nowhere up on the moors . It was in the winter and, as we wound our way up country lanes, arriving at this desolate place in the rain we were already wondering what we’d let ourselves in for. Who on earth was going to bother coming out here in this weather to see a band nobody’s heard of? We went into the pub to find out where to set up and the landlord took us outside again and across the car park to this huge outbuilding. You’re in here he says. It was freezing in there and the sinking feeling continued. Nevertheless we pressed-on loaded the gear in and started setting up. When we were ready to soundcheck and switched the PA on there was a huge buzz. We’d never had this before and spent the next hour frantically checking connections and changing cables all to no avail (we later discovered it was a ground loop but didn’t know what that was or how to cure it at time). All this was with freezing cold hands with numb fingers. Anyway, we were running out of time and decided to press on regardless. At this point, the landlord comes back and wheels in this huge red cylinder thing about 10 feet long and a 18” diameter, which turned out to be some kind of industrial heater. He turned it on and within about ten minutes the place had nicely warmed up. Maybe things were looking up? Not long after the flawed soundcheck, to our surprise people started turning up. They were bikers on Harleys and trikes etc. I’m not sure if they were Hells Angels or Satans Slaves but you get the idea of the crowd that was forming, there were loads of them. At one point I went outside and there were literally dozens of bikes parked up. Given that we leaned towards the punk/alternative end of the musical spectrum we felt a bit intimidated and wondered if we’d survive the encounter. Feeling somewhat daunted, we apologised for the huge PA buzz and launched into our set. Despite the potential for it to be a train wreck, to our surprise we actually went down quite well. Afterwards a couple a of the guys complimented us and said it was like a breath of fresh air having something different to the usual diet of metal bands that played there. Feeling relieved we packed up and set off home again. I was driving and as we headed down the winding country lanes back to civilisation, we rounded a bend only to be faced with a pony caught in the headlights in the middle of the road. I slammed on the brakes, which with all the weight in the van took some effort, and we came within a gnats chuff of turning the poor pony into dog meat! Then ensued another daft hour trying to work out what to do with it to make sure it was safe. Anyway, all’s well that ends well.

Is that an M1 Mini or an Intel version? The M1 Air is fan-less and still hardly breaks into a sweat.

For an equivalent spec the Air should be just as capable as the mini but I guess the trade-off is between connectivity and portability. The Air is so svelte it is perfect to cart around. Connectivity is easily fixed by adding a hub of some sort. My plan is to add a large monitor, keyboard and mouse to get the full desktop experience. However, one limitation with the Air is it will only drive one external monitor although that doesn’t really bother me. I believe the mini will support two monitors so that may be a consideration.

That reminds me of gig we did in small pub in the 80s. There was no stage and we were just set up at one end of the room. Fairly early on in the set an oldish drunken punter was already on his feet dancing in the space in front of us, but he was gradually encroaching into our space. As he started get too close for comfort the guitarist gave me the nod, went forward got behind him and got on his knees. Meanwhile I was right in front of the guy mirroring some of his moves and he was loving it, right up until the point where I backed him up into the prone guitarist, and over he went. The rest of the audience could see what was coming and thought it was hilarious. Looking back I suppose we could have ended up injuring him but fortunately he was so drunk I don’t think he knew, or cared. It seemed like a good ruse at the time.

Me too! I hate that corny “subscribe to my channel” to make the weird lobster claw hand thing disappear. 🤮

Just to expand on this idea, how about the the theme from Jaws that speeds up as it approaches a detected person? 🦈

That’s a bit special. I bet it goes for a bit more than the starting bid. Drool 🤤

I get the hi-hat bit but surely the lower frequency tuba hum would be less directional and not give much clue as to where the scooter was coming from?

YouTube is your friend here as there are loads of videos on all aspects of how to do set ups. The only thing that does my head in is, having committed to metric measurements a long time ago, many of the US videos insist on quoting imperial measurements which just confuses the hell out me. 😂

Like most people I’ll happily do truss rod, bridge saddle height/intonation adjustments and perhaps a little light nut tweaking. I’ve installed a couple of KiOgon solderless wiring looms and adjusted pickup heights but that’s about it. I’ve yet to do any fret work. I did put a bitsa p bass together which involved plugging and re drilling the neck bolts and also positioning the bridge and shielding the body cavities. I learned a lot from that process and would recommend it to any one wanting to learn more about the instrument

I’m the same. BITD it was a p-bass, new roundwounds, tone fully up, played hard with a pick. Nowadays it’s tone rolled off about halfway, older strings or even flatwounds, finger style. I agree it’s a taste thing. My musical preferences have mellowed over the last four decades.

There is some truth in this. One drummer I knew used to joke that he had too much blood in his alcohol stream. Sadly he passed away a few weeks ago. It takes its toll eventually. 😕

Proper laugh out loud moment there 😂😂😂

The sunburst is lined but they’re very subtle.

I've just remembered another story which happened to my mate's band. Before I get in to the detail, I should just preface the story by saying that this event occurred prior to the much stricter firearms controls that were introduced in the 90s. After I'd quit gigging I often helped out with my mate's band with the sound on some gigs and, like many bands, there was always a few hangers on who ingratiated themselves and tagged along to gigs. They were always tolerated because it was useful to have extra hands to lug equipment about. In this particular case a lad starting coming to gigs and, as it later turned out, he was a bit of a nutter. It wasn't the gig itself that was the train wreck but the aftermath was. This lad was ex-forces and thought it was a bit macho to carry around a blank-firing pistol that looked pretty authentic. He suggested to the band that it might make a great finale to the gig if he came through the crowd at the end of last song and pretended to shoot at the band! With hindsight they foolishly agreed and sure enough, at the end of the gig this is what happened. He let off a few blanks and the band collapsed on the stage with guitars ending in a cacophony. It had the desired effect and it was pretty shocking. What nobody had realised was that a week or so before, in the same town someone had actually walked in to a bar and let off a couple of barrels of a shotgun so, needless to say, there was extra sensitivity about this issue. What also didn't help was that after the gig, when the van was being loaded up this idiot also let off a couple of blanks in the car park of the venue. When we ready to leave my mate said that the venue had asked him to hang on for half an hour whilst they cashed up so that they could be paid. So instead, we piled in to the van and went off to find something to eat. When we arrived back at the venue to collect payment, there were police vehicles everywhere. There were floodlights erected in the car park and a line of police officers on their hands and knees looking for spent cartridges. Needless to say we were all detained and taken off to the local nick. It was quickly established who the main culprit was and he was taken away for questioning. There were around 8 or 9 of us left sitting on the floor making the custody suite look untidy. Looking back I think the Police were remarkably easy going with us and it didn't feel very serious. They even made us a cup of tea but when we'd finished one of the lads put his cup on the floor and pushed it away with his foot - it fell over and broke, which was really embarrassing but it still didn't elicit any adverse response. After a couple of hours of questioning the lad managed to convince them that it was just an ill-advised prank. He received a warning and we were allowed to leave without any further action. We were then escorted to the county border by a couple of police cars complete with blue lights! We breathed a sigh of relief 😳

Awesome tale 😂😂😂

Thanks, it’s great. As you can imagine with a Japanese Fender, the construction and build quality is excellent. The the neck feels slim and everything you’d expect of a Jazz neck. I’ve got Dunlop super-bright round wounds on it and it’s got plenty of mwah, and sounds lovely. The only thing I didn’t like with it as stock was that the tone control was pretty ineffective and there was no noticeable roll-off of the highs. So, I replaced the wiring loom with a KiOgon VVT with series/parallel push-pull tone pot. Plenty of tonal options. I’m not thinking of parting with it at the moment but you never know. If I do decide to move it on I’ll certainly let you know.