Jack

Hey all, I've been using a Mono 'Betty' Strap for a bit and tbh we're not getting along. I find that it's starting to look very tatty very quickly and the adjustment slips quite a bit, to the point that my bass gets noticeably lower during a set. What other straps do people recommend? Just looking at Bass Direct I'm rather tempted by the Neotech Mega and the Comfort Strapp. What do people recommend out there that's nicer than an EBMM seatbelt and not a billion pounds' worth of handmade leather? I like mine about 125cm long Grippy or smooth is fine, but the one thing I don't like are the super-grippy suede backs you get on some leather ones. Preference for black Input and ideas appreciated 🙂

Well when you play with modelling andd FRFR it's not really playing is it? You'll notice that's in my living room, I just didn't see the point in actually taking it to the gig, rock and roll is dead anyway.

I killed rock and roll a little last night.

There's plenty of really good stuff happening now. It's the same as old basses, old cars, old actors and old novelists: there's always a high ratio of dross:great but over time we discard the dross and only keep listening to the greats. I'm sorry, but old cars were rubbish. It's easy to look back on classic Astons and Jags and think old cars were great, but the truth is just that those are the only ones worth remembering. Very few people bothered to preserve the Datsun, Austin, British Leyland, etc misery mobiles. Says the man with a vintage Land Rover. Walk Off The Earth Red Fang Dorje Vulfpeck

Sorry man, I just googled an image so you knew what I was talking about. That's an LDS cab that sold second hand on the american forum. I've had an LDS cab before, but mine was the standard 2x12" (2460) and not that airhead pictured. There are plenty of custom cab builders in the UK, but I'm afraid I've never commissioned one. Zilla, PCH Audio, Tricky Audio and I'm sure others may be able to accommodate you.

It's a more expensive option (well, not always) but if you can't find what you want most small cab builders will be happy to build you what's commonly called an 'airhead'.

Thanks everyone! With regards to the above comments especially, it looks as though there may be better options in that kind of budget. This would all be easier if I hadn't sold my BC Nanyo....

Cheers man. What actually 'sets' the impedance then? I'm aware the transformer is a passive step down device, so what sets the impedance in the system? The output of the bass? The input of the console? Yes, I tried to keep everything low impedance on the testing. I have tried playing the DI with a passive bass and it sounds ok with two caveats. Firslty, both of my passive basses have flats, so there's already a reduction in HF content. Secondly, I've only got a couple of short XLR cables in my music room. I don't have anything longer than 10m up here so I can't really fairly say how the DI would react on a normal passive bass driving hundreds of metres of cable.

Up until the Evo IV models I completely agreed with you but the new models are so much tighter and less woolly. I always thought the MAGs were great amps for the price. I had one and loved it, and I get them as backline all the time. I never quite thought the ABMs were in that top-flight category with GK, Mesa, Aguilar etc but this new Evo IV generation really are among the best IME.

I keep tropical fish, in the hobby most species are known by a common name but many are only really known by their latin name. Barbus Nigrofasciatus has adopted the new common name of 'Black Ruby Fish' as 'Nigger Barb' started to fall out of favour. I even have a proper text book that lists the old common name, it seems odd to me that it used to be a word with insulting characteristics, before it was specifically an insult. I'm a youth worker and adult teacher. A big part of my work is politics and citizenship, thanks for the material in this thread!

You have no idea. I'm ampless but Ive had a few lol. They're ALL great, but the RBs are in another league.

I'm totally onboard with the above suggestions, a smaller, higher quality rig will undoubtedly be louder (when required), easier to move, etc etc. But... The Ampeg combo has an extension speaker out. If you really just want more volume, and a very swanky looking stand to get your combo up higher then why not look at an 8R extension cab to sit under the combo? You like the combo, it's familiar, and it works. It occurs to me that you could get an older, heavier extension cab now for very cheap and under your combo that would be a very formidable rig. Then, when and if you feel like it, you can get a discreet head and build a 'proper' rig piecemeal and as budget allows. I'd go for an Ashdown 4x10" if I was you. It's perhaps not ideal to go under your combo this second (although it'll work just fine) but you seem to like Ashdown, and you can buy a matching head when you want to. They're also SUPER cheap.

You could use either the effects send or the line out. The advantage of putting the tuner in front is that it will mute whilst tuning.

And yet that's the same kind of price as AER, Schertler and GSS.

Hello all, In an effort to curb my gear addiction I recently sold a few things off. (The clearout is ongoing if anyone fancies a couple of guitars or a White of Sunderland 4x12”!!) Anyway, one of the things that got the chop was my Triton Audio BigAmp. It was a great DI, small enough to keep around at all times, great sound, etc etc. The problem was, I find phantom power quite hard to come by in some situations. It’s no problem when it’s our PA system but sometimes other engineers get weird about it. The two most common excuses are that the desk is all or nothing with phantom power and that other devices won’t like it, or that the snake from FOH won’t pass it. Both strike me as various degrees of excuse, but the fact remains that passive DIs seem to suit my situation better. Besides, I have a Countryman Type 85 so other active DIs are sort of unnecessary anyway. This leads me on to our subject. Whilst browsing Thomann for new cables I stumbled across the Cordial CIW1. Like the BigAmp it’s a DI in something not much bigger than a jack to XLR adaptor. Unlike the BigAmp it’s passive, so it should suit me better. I was (and still am) very sceptical about the quality of the transformer that you can fit into a device this size, but I couldn’t not buy one for less than £50. The unit is TINY. TINY. Like, really small. In terms of features: none. There’s an input, a transformer and an output. No pad, no through jack, no nothing. It's good to know that the jacks that are there are Neitrik and locking. It's a solid little thing. Input impedance is roughly 50kR so it’s really not designed for passive instruments but it should work great with pretty much any buffered or active source. It works well with my Stingrays and after me pedal boards, but it does round off the top end of the passive P-bass quite noticeably. It’s a difficult thing to test objectively and properly. I tried just playing into it (with a Stingray) but then any kind of comparison has to deal with the vagaries of my playing. In the end I came up with quite a good test platform. I played a bassline into my Helix and set that on an indefinite loop using the looper. I then fed one 1/4" output into the Cordial and the other to either my Countryman or my Radial SB-2. I could then use my XR18 mixer to match levels and solo/mute channels to hear the difference between boxes. Please note, this setup obviously has 2 AD/DA stages (helix and mixer) and a few too many cables to be a perfect testing platform. I don’t have the technical nouse to properly scope it out, Cordial say it’s flat across its frequency range and I believe them. I’d be interested (if anyone was more technical than me) to compare its distortion and clipping characteristics compared to something more industry standard. My brain tells me that a transformer that small has to have limits. In terms of sounds, it sounds fine. I mean, actually it sounds really good. You do have to be careful not to clip the input as it doesn’t like really hot signals (and there’s no pad) but other than that it’s pretty honest representation of what the bass sounds like. Sometimes, I think the lower frequencies are ever so slightly blurred or smeared compared to the Countryman but I wonder if it’s psychosomatic because I know that the Cordial is less 25% of the size and price of the other box. It’s also quite a lot quieter than the (active) Countryman, and ever so slightly quieter than the (passive) Radial. I still believe that if you can only have one DI box it has to be 1. Able to handle any input, which really means an active box 2. Not reliant on phantom power, so it has to have the option of being ran from a battery or external PSU 3. As ‘clear’ and flat as possible. There are so many ‘character’ DI boxes, but you don’t always want the same character all of the time. In short, you really have to have something like the Countryman as your only DI box. Or the nicer, active Radials. Or even the Orchid DI box if you’re on a budget. But realistically the Cordial won’t be your only DI box, it won’t be an integral part of your main gig rig and you won’t take it into the studio to record with. You’ll buy it to chuck in the bottom of your gig bag and have it there to save your behind when something else breaks. And for that it’s absolutely perfect.

I don't have any inside knowledge at all, so please don't let this start any rumours or anything but it occurs to me that if a manufacturer HAD to change a bridge for some reason (the old one is no longer made, cut costs, aesthetic reasons, supplier problems, import restrictions, a million other reasons) then a press release that says " we have new bridges because they sound better than the old ones!" is a lot more marketable than "Stephen from accounts forgot to pay our old supplier so we had to get different bridges. Don't worry, they sound fine!".

I'd love to see that on a scope. 🙄

I've had the 2x12" (and 1x12") Neo, that's definitely the way I'd go over the RBH. The RBH sounds monstrous too, so either way!

Which cabs are they specifically? I'd pick any Neo or RBX over a Goldline for instance, regardless of speaker choice.

More importantly, he's changed to nitro lip gloss. The poly was so thick and it didn't really wear right. Poly looks much more authentic and it wears in nicely.

Here I was making an effort to debate, refute, be cogent and explain when in truth says it so much better.