Witch Hazel

4 minutes ago, Lfalex v1.1 said:

Never seen that before. For speakers, yes. But not for mains power. 

powerCon.  i've never seen it for an amp either - i think it's mostly used for lighting? 

16 minutes ago, Cliff Edge said:

The only thing a Fender P Bass needs to be more or less perfect, is a Jazz bass neck.  

i've never owned a Fender P bass but i played a friend's one a few years back and that neck convinced me that i will never own a Fender P bass.  is the Jazz neck better?

On 19/07/2021 at 09:52, Cat Burrito said:

For those of us who are married or in long term relationships, how important is it to have a partner who supports your music?

i'm not married, but i suppose my current relationship counts as at least medium term.  i'd never consider any sort of serious relationship with someone who wasn't interested in music - it's something so important to me that i can't imagine ever having a connection with someone who only 'tolerated' me playing an instrument.  my ex-girlfriend was the owner/editor of a heavy metal magazine, and my current partner (who i live with) is learning piano himself.  i'm trying to convince him to play the Hammond organ for that old blues sound, but he's more interested in classical music right now, so i may need to transcribe some cello pieces...

i know life can be weird and often requires compromise, so i don't judge other people for ending up in a relationship where they have to sacrifice their interests to please their partner - especially if that interest developed after they already have financial entanglement, or even kids, and can't easily just break up.  but, personally, i would never compromise a part of myself for someone else; it's not that i wouldn't give up something for love, but rather i couldn't love someone who was so different from me.

i've got the Hyper Luminal and i really like it (which is good, given what i paid for it!).  yes, the compressor sidechain is digital - which is handy since you can connect it to a computer with a USB cable and adjust some of the parameters, like the behaviour of the 'time' knob (which is a combined attack+release control).  you can also switch it to 'guitar' mode if you play one of those.

i haven't used the Cali 76, so i can't compare it to that, but i find all three modes have a different and interesting character.  FET sounds most transparent to my ear, so i normally use it in that mode, and sometimes switch to SYM for the nice dark tone.

5 minutes ago, andy67 said:

It is 👍 but it doesn’t take away from the fact that it is an awesome hybrid amplifier 🥰

for sure, i've had a couple of Behringer products and never had any complaints about the sound.  and even that TC amp that caused all the fuss a few years back was apparently a pretty good amp.  i just wish they'd market them on their merits and not tell fibs.

i'd like an LED input level meter, preferably blue LEDs, with some extra LEDs in a different colour at the end of scale to indicate clipping.

i wouldn't buy an amp just for that, but if i had an amp that did that, i'd smile every time i turned it on and set the gain.

8 minutes ago, carlitos71 said:

2000 Watts? Wot??? 

Bugera is a brand name of Behringer (like TC) who have a history of lying about their amp power.  according to this thread it's more like 500-800W.

i bought the TC Spark recently and i'm really liking it as an always-on mild overdrive pedal.  i've also got the Microtubes X7 for a more modern hifi distortion, but i'd like something that's somewhere between the two, like a high gain tube sound.  the Spark will do that if i turn the gain up a bit, but i'm looking at the Mojomojo and Vintage Microtubes as well, which seem to be more designed for that kind of sound.  it's difficult to get a real sense of how they feel from Youtube videos though, so... has anyone tried either of those and could compare them to the Spark?  or maybe there's another overdrive pedal i should be looking at?

6 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

Its just the Dog and Ducks near Ubits area, all the other ones are fine!

i used to live near a pub called the Duck, but they didn't have any live music at all.  i guess it's the dog that owns the PA.

i just bought a Microtubes X7 off John.  really easy to deal with, good communication, and the pedal was shipped quickly, well packed and exactly as described.  i couldn't be happier, highly recommended.

4 hours ago, Al Krow said:

Good question about whether TE has really disappeared without a trace? Some owners are better at letting their acquisitions thrive whilst others simply gut them private-equity style.

i'm happy to be wrong here, but my understanding is that Peavey didn't acquire TE, they just bought the name "Trace Elliot" (i.e., the trademark) after Gibson effectively wound up the company, laid off the workers and liquidated the assets.  so it's a really different situation to, say, Yamaha buying Ampeg or Korg buying Aguilar (or Gibson buying Mesa, which hopefully won't end the same way TE did...).

i'm sure the people inside Peavey working on the TE-branded products are good people and i'm sure everyone wants them to produce good products.  it's just a shame those products are tarred with the fake TE branding instead of being sold as Peavey, or some new Peavey bass brand - which was almost certainly the decision of some exec or marketing team, not the design/manufacturing side.

3 minutes ago, Downunderwonder said:

It took them so long because it really is a very small Trace Elliot team within Peavey.

that might have come off harsher than i intended - i just meant that with the huge popularity of small class D heads around that size, mating the Elf preamp with a larger power section seemed like an obvious thing to do sooner rather than later.  but apparently (or so i read just now) they're designing their own power sections rather than using off the shelf ones, which would explain why it took a bit longer.

squinting a bit closer at the pic, the smaller one seems to say "TE-1200" on it. 

£5 says it's a 500W or 800W version of the Elf.  the only question is why it took them so long to do that.

but i wish they'd ditch the TE branding and just sell them as Peavey gear.  buying the name of a dead company to market your products under just feels tacky.

i like the body.  it's a bit different without being needlessly edgy. 

the fake headstock is awful though.  according to the eBay description they make them with normal headless necks as well, and i can't imagine why someone wouldn't go with that option - maybe if they like the rest of it but really hate the headless look...

3 hours ago, andy67 said:

The huge gain in quality control will ultimately mean a loss in character. Yamaha are so precise in their quality control and are second to no one! However, Yamaha manufacture their equipment to the nth degree of perfection and unfortunately for Ampeg in my opinion, will lose that ingrained character Ampeg has so readily on offer when you switch on an amp.

the new Ampeg Rocket Bass combos launched under Yamaha ownership and (at least over on TB) seem to be fairly well received, with "the Ampeg sound" intact.   Yamaha must surely be aware that that's a big part of why people buy their gear and wouldn't want to mess with that. 

also, please may i join your club!

and in the spirit of the thread, here's my rather meagre pedalboard (with EBS cables):

as you can probably tell it's a bit of a work in progress!  i've got a fair number of things planned to add, hence the oversized board.  (i bought the board, a Pedaltrain Classic 1, with the "soft case" option thinking it would be some sort of padded gig bag type thing - imagine my surprise when the case turned out to be an actual suitcase.  no complaints though, i'm pretty sure it'll keep everything safe.)

2 minutes ago, pantherairsoft said:

These are notoriously bad for your jack sockets as it forces pedals to bend and flex against each other and the weight of the plug.

oh, that makes a lot of sense.  i'll give those a miss then, thanks!

talking about cables, has anyone tried the fixed "coupler" type pedal connectors like these?  i'm imagining they're probably really annoying when the connectors don't quite line up properly (which a couple of the reviews mentioned), but i'm tempted to get some to try.

i think i really like that headstock, but it looks sharp enough to cut yourself on.  does it come with a safety cover for when you're not playing it?

i'm not sure about the fingerboard dots though.  the brand is "Three Dots", and then every other fret has three dots in it... it feels like it's trying a bit too hard.  normal dots and three dots at the octave might alright though.

a Fender bass multi-fx / DI box with many knobs on:

• compressor: blend, gain, threshold, LED showing 'compression active' (white) / peak (red)
• overdrive: output level, tone, drive
• 3-band eq (bass, mid, treble)
• fully analogue signal path
• switchable fx order: compressor -> overdrive or overdrive -> compressor
• master volume control
• 4 footswitches: one mute and one each for comp, drive and eq
• tuner output
• DI output (XLR), switchable pre-fx, fx only, or fx+eq, and switchable ground lift
• requires 9V centre-negative power, 400mA.  no PSU included since it doesn't come with one.

it's in excellent condition and has never left the house since i bought it.  box and manual not included, but you can download the manual as a PDF.

i'd prefer collection from Cheltenham (you're welcome to come and try it first) but i'll consider posting it within the UK.

:wumpscut: - All Cried Out

the original is by No Angels - some German pop group i've never heard of, but apparently they're quite famous!

one of the first albums i owned was Fairport Convention's "Heyday", which (i didn't realise at the time) had quite a few covers on: Reno, Nevada, Bird on a Wire, I Still Miss Someone... even after hearing the originals, i still prefer Fairport's version of most of those.

oh, this is my first post!  hi!

so anyway, a couple of months ago i decided to start playing some bass again. i played a little bit a few years back, but never really got into it properly, but i decided to try again and take it more seriously this time around.  i bought an Ibanez SR300E, which i've been pretty happy with: it has strings on it and makes bass noises when you pluck them, which is really the main thing i look for in a bass.  but then i started looking around at other people's basses, and i thought: hmm... i'd sort of like to try having a fifth string.  and then i thought (because this is the kind of thing you think after playing fiddle for 15 years): hmm, i'd also like to try something fretless.

obviously, the only possible outcome of all that thinking was "why not both?", so i threw some money at Mr. Thomann, and yesterday this turned up at my door:

it's an LTD B-205SM FL.  we're still on our honeymoon right now, but i'm pretty sure this is my new favourite bass, and i'm already wondering how much i can sell the Ibby for.  the extra string feels so right that i don't think i could ever go back to only having four of them, and being able to do proper slides and vibrato without the frets getting in the way is wonderful.  i'm having to readjust a bit - it's easy to get lost on the fingerboard with so many strings, and shifting without staring intently at my hand is a bit of a crapshoot as far as ending up on the right note goes - but hopefully a bit of practice will sort that out.

now i'm just thinking: hmm, i'd kind of like something with an unlined fingerboard...