razze06

On 26/03/2024 at 17:14, BigRedX said:

IME it's only worth buying from abroad if the item in question is something that has no official UK importer/distributor.

It's a 1978 copy of a well know and very litigious american make. No distributors of that have been around for a long time

I think i will leave it here with a friend until my next visit. Hopefully next time i will have less luggage and will manage to put it on the plane. 

Would you use a guitar/bass shipping box over a hard case?

Hi,

I'm in Japan on a long business trip, and i've "accidentally" bought a lovely old MIJ bass that I want to take back to the UK with me. I've managed to get an old hard case for it, but it is not the original one and the fit is ok. Unfortuantely it is a neck-through construction bass,otherwise i would have detached the eck and made my life simpler...

I think I have two options, really:

* take it with me on the flight back, pay the excess baggage charge, and hope it is handled sufficiently delicately in transit

* send it over as a parcel before i go back

Does anyone have any recommendation for shipping services they've used from Japan? I'm looking at good old Japan Post and Yamato Transport right now.

Cheers,

Marco

I'm a mediocre drummer and i've been getting advice and kit (sticks and a kick drum pedal) from DrumCentral in Edinburgh. They're local to me, so i enjoy the popping in to look at some of the stuff they've got when i buy a new drum key or sticks etc

On 04/01/2023 at 19:53, TerriQ said:

Hi, After reading this thread, I signed up to Basschat in the hope that one of you might lend a hand?. I'm a semi-retired jazz singer/pianist and would like to explore virtual playing. Because I'm semi-retired, I'm not on the scene as frequently, although last year I played a major Jazz Festival on piano with double bass and drums). Because I've recently relocated,  I'd now like to see if I can get my digital set-up to work, so that I don't become isolated. My set-up is: MacBook Pro 10.13.6., Presonus Studio 24c, Roland 64 keyboard, AKG condenser mic. Jamulus 3.9.1 and yes - ethernet directly connected to modem! I've gone as far as I can on my own, now I need help for the last bit. I'd like to find a 'Buddy' or Buddies' for advice and to play with to see if this works.  Any offers would be really appreciated.  

Thanks for reading.

What kind of help would you need? Technical, setup, anything else?

I've just returned from where the bass is kept, and managed to get a few pictures with a tape measure (cms not inches). As you can see the original bridge is a mess to work with, also because the long screws that lengthen and shorten strings are so long that with anything other than high action the screw touches the string... 

Any suggestion for a suitable replacement bridge?

16 hours ago, neepheid said:

 

Show us some pics of the current bridge and that might help us help you...

Quite right. Unfortunately I'll have to wait until next time i go back to italy. Haven't manage to take it over to sunny scotland yet, courtesy of Brexit and restrictive airline carry on luggage policies

In case anyone is interested, i did manage to get the pickup rewound. It took nearly a year and a half, despite identifying a local electronics specialist who was apparently keen to do the job. I'll spare you the gory details of how much effort it took to get the person to actually do the job, so i'll just say that it now plays very well on both pickups and i'm very happy with it electronics wise.

Newtone strings went on it, as recommended. Also happy with that.

Unfortunately, the bridge is proving really difficult to adjust, so I'm considering swapping it out for another one, and keep the original. Any recommendation for something that keeps with the vibe of the thing? 

On 27/02/2021 at 22:25, PatrickJ said:

Impressive figures!

I can't get my buffers anywhere near those levels, with current setup 9 / 8 is the lowest I can get to.  Maybe moving from the Powerlines to Ethernet will let me drop them a bit more. 

 

Powerline adaptors are really bad for jitter. You can expect to see a huge drop in jitter and therefore in overall delay by using ethernet. You will be able to keep the buufer on auto and get low numbers still.

I also found that using small network buffers and 2.67ms buffer delay made a huge difference. My normal overall latency from Edinburgh to AWS servers in London is around 27ms. 

On 17/01/2021 at 15:10, Lucky Luck said:

Razze06 do you know how the WHD portable busker stands against the Pearl Compact traveler un terms of sound quality? I am thinking about buying one of these but haven't seen ANY review on the WHD one, there's loads on the Pearl but it's doubel the price for what seems to be the same thing...

Thanks!

We only used the WHD kit for one gig, and it worked perfectly well for that. Our drummer replaced the kick drum head with a better quality one, and he said that that made a lot of difference. Of course the volume and depth of sound of a kick drum with no shell will always be lower, but it is totally adequate for small gigs. The entire kit fits in a large backpack cymbal carrier and a small gym bag, and the stability is probably better than the pearl's.

At the time of buying it was the drummer who insisted we bought the cheaper WHD kit, as he thought the setup looked more stable, and the quality of the drumsheads was probably what made the pearl kit more expensive. As he was going to change them anyway, he recommended we bought that one from Gear4Music. I think he was right

On 09/01/2021 at 10:00, PatrickJ said:

Interesting to know about the server - fortunately I work for a cloud compute company so running one on AWS or Azure isn't a problem and I had already considered doing that.

Yeah WiFi a big know.  He's going to try some Powerline adaptors first.

my experience is that powerline adapters add around 5ms to the ping time, and a significant amount of jitter, but they're better than wifi. Nowhere near as good as ethernet though.

Excellent transaction as usual - quick and simple negotiations, frequent and clear communication, high quality shipping and perfect packaging.  And extra strings  

my normal overall latency to cloud servers in the UK is around 30ms, which i find pefectly adequate for my playing.

I'v found that playing with around 60ms latency gives my bass playing a good reggae/dub feel

On 29/08/2020 at 07:11, Willie said:

I’m a drummer whose been using Jamulus weekly for a couple months. I recommend that everyone (singers & instruments) click the MUTE button on their own channel so that you don’t hear the latency echo of your own playing/singing. It will just mess up your timing if you hear a delayed echo of yourself. Another tip is to be ready to pull off your headphones if someone joins who is blasting feedback. It won’t happen if everyone is wearing headphones, but you might run into that on rare occasions. Or you can have everyone in your group click the SOLO button to isolate your group from drop-in musicians (if you are on a public server).

Interesting point. I would recommend the opposite, which is to only turn off direct monitoring and only hear the return signal from your instrument. In that way you can adjust your playing to compensate for latency. Of course that doesn't work for singing or acoustic instruments    

I really enjoy the random jams on the public servers, and makes me think that my knowledge of standards is pathetic at best  

Yep, lots of bass players on the public servers. Perhaps bassists are more inclined to try new things, and more persistent in getting things to work?

Personally only have good things to say about using jamulus. Sound quality is sometimes not great, but I found the overall experience is great.

I've also been using a heavily padded fishing rod case. Bit too long, but well cushioned and lots of pockets!

Stagg makes a EUB hard case. My current Aria Eub came with one, and it works just fine. A quick search for Stagg EDB case will bring up soem options

On 01/04/2020 at 11:07, knirirr said:

Having been practicing with this a bit I found that in order to get it at the correct height simply using the end pin on its maximum stop was not enough - I had to rest it upon a bucket-style giant plant pot as well, this being the only thing I could find of the correct height (I am 6'3"). Unfortunately, this bodge is a bit unstable. The tripod conversion above would fix this, but I'm not a fan of these and would rather the instrument could move around a bit whilst playing (I used to have an EUB on a stand and didn't much like it). Sitting down might have to be the solution - I can't think of an easy way to extend the end pin.

 

My Aria EUB also had a problem with a too short endpin. I ended up replacing it with a longer steel rod of the correct calibre (10mm) with a rubber cap at one end. Simplistic, but effective. 

In an attempt to reduce my band's footprint and volume without losing the drive and presence of drums, we bought one of these: https://www.gear4music.com/Drums-and-Percussion/WHD-Portable-Busker-Shell-Kit/2Z2D

Of course it needs hi hat and a cymbal and a stool and a kick drum pedal, but the main component folds onto itself, and everything now fits in a backpack and a large cymbal bag instead of several bags.

The sound is pretty good, especially once you've swapped out the stock skins with your (or our drummer's) favourite ones.

Of course, Pearl's offer would be good too:

https://www.gear4music.com/Drums-and-Percussion/Pearl-Compact-Traveler-Shell-Pack/1WTH

I'm using the Aria SWB EUB a lot more than I used to, and I am beginning to feel uncomfortable with the original bit of bent steel rod that serves as a body brace.

Does anybody know of any replacement braces? Has anyone tried to fit something more ergonomic to it? Perhaps using a brace from a different bass? 

15 hours ago, paul_c2 said:

What kind of band, what personnel, what is the size of "tiny spaces" venues?

I ummm'd and aaaaah'd for a long time looking at the TX208 (partly because of comments on this forum) but bought one last week and used it for a monitor at a gig at the weekend. It was brilliant - a really nice combination of sound quality, power and compactness (and price). Obviously, be aware of its limitations but I'd recommend one dependin on your actual circumstances as asked above.

Six piece with two singers, guitar, bass, sax, drums. Soul, funk, swing, ska, whatever else captures our fancy - no hard rock or metal. We like to try and gig in small pubs with no designated stage, so the smaller the better 

Sounds like I should just go for it. I was worried that the small box factor meant just distortion on the low frequencies if slightly pushed, but maybe not.

I am considering using a pair something like the Alto TX208 Active PA Speaker as small wedge monitors for the whole band. Do you think they would take handle bass and DB ok for monitoring purposes? We are not superloud, but we often gig in tiny spaces. We find it tricky to position bass and guitar amps so they can serve as main source of sound for both monitoring and audience. Vocals and sax go through PA, drums are acoustic only.

For a long time I used a PJB Briefcase on double bass. At 100w of hifi sound it won't work in a loud band, but i've successfully used it for both DB and EB in a full band setting with no PA support. Strategic positioning and tilting helped, as well as sympathetic volume setting from the rest of the band. I changed to a bigger PJB rig because too often I didn't have the chance to set up as I needed to to be heard.

I miss the portability and form factor, so I bought a second hand Markbass minimark 602, which is louder and lighter than the PJB briefcase.