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Merton

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Posts posted by Merton

    what's this hole for?

    in Repairs and Technical

    Posted

    [quote name='alexclaber' post='65919' date='Sep 26 2007, 03:23 PM']Pickguards can hide a multitude of sins!

    Alex[/quote]
    Aye, my Vester's bridge PU is in a mahoosive rectangular hole, not at all J-PU-shaped.

    That's partly why I insisted on my Status Retroactive being scratchplate-less, coz I'd like to have done that to my Vester ages ago....

    Your own basslines that you think flick people's switches

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Some nice playing on here, I'm not posting links of anything I've done coz I always get the final mix back and hate everything I've done, mostly coz it's awful (in my opinion). Hopefully the new EP will fix that coz I've calmed down a lot of lines. But you'll have to wait for that coz we're nowhere near having it finished!!

    Actually, with my old band InSoFar, I am happy with the basslines in "The Fall" and "Drowning". But you can't find em easily online, sigh.

    Back-up Bass ?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    [quote name='alexclaber' post='65336' date='Sep 25 2007, 02:13 PM']How many strings do you need to play your basslines? Can you not do without one of them until the song finishes?

    Alex[/quote]
    +1, that's what I do. Then fix it PDQ and get on with it. Well, I say that's what I do, I haven't had reason to do it for years...

    As much as anything else, it's good for your fretboard knowledge and theory :)

    Ashdown ABM 500

    in Amps and Cabs

    Posted

    [quote name='outsider70' post='64829' date='Sep 24 2007, 04:10 PM']I'm on the lookout to buy above amp used.
    Having heard mixed reports on reliability, particulaly from China, I am keen to pick up a UK made version.

    Can anyone tell me what year they ceased production in UK? Or any easy way of distinguishing between them?

    I currently use a Gallien Krueger combo + ext cab but it's breaking my back to lift the bugger, hence the move to seperate amp/cabs. However so far the GK has never missed a beat, and given I do about 150 gigs a year without backup, reliability is paramount.

    Cheers
    Tony[/quote]
    Why not get a GK head and cab and save the worry of Ashdown reliability?


    I think the early Chinese-made Ashdown units suffered a lot from poor QC and potentially poor component selection - if the subby was given free reign to purchase anything they liked then the quality of components would go downhill incredibly fast for cost reasons. Same happened to Trace when Gibson purchasing took over ("Why should I buy this £3 capacitor when I can get one for £0.50?"). So component quality drops and as will always happen on a new facility manufacturing a new product, unless proper pre-production runs occur (like a few hunderd or a few thousand units depending on overall volume), then there will be teething troubles. Not sure if they're all ironed out yet, but they really should have been and MG @ Ashdown says in interviews he thinks they have been. Hopefully that means their subby factory now meets stricter (i.e. Ashdown UK) QA regs and purchasing principles, so hopefully a Chinese made amp should now be OK....

    WITHDRAWN

    in Completed Items

    Posted · Edited by Merton

    What with my imminent flat purchase my uncle has very kindly offered me his old 3pc suite, so my old sofa and chair with matching poofe thing (no......) are free for anyone to collect from Redhill in Surrey!

    They're green, very comfortable but not necessarily the best condition or the nicest things to look at (I always had a throw over them), so probably would suit a student type needing some furniture. Anyone who can collect them is welcome to them!

    I'll try to find some pics somewhere.

    EDIT: Withdrawn sadly due to an almighty cock up :)

    How much is this stuff worth

    in Accessories & Other Musically Related Items For Sale

    Posted

    [quote name='odub' post='58466' date='Sep 10 2007, 10:13 PM']A trace Elliot GP7 1x15 amp (green carpet era)[/quote]


    [quote name='WalMan' post='58487' date='Sep 10 2007, 10:50 PM']Not sure about the basses, but the amps seem to have been going at around £250-300 on eBay. Have you tried sticking it/them on Gumtree near you. That was how my TE 122H went in the end.

    Don't pay too much attention to the BIN prices quoted by [url="http://stores.ebay.co.uk/sms-pro-music"]THIS[/url] guy. He tends to snaffle Trace stuff that turns up on eBay and then shortly thereafter ramp the price up and list it in his eBay store. Of course there is [u][i]NOTHING[/i][/u] wrong with that, it's just business, but having been watching a lot of Trace stuff to try and gauge a price for the 122H I do not think they are really indicative of the true value for a non "trade" sale[/quote]


    Depends whther it's 150W or 300W, SM, or SMC or even the early GP7 of the Gibson era...? Can you shed a little more light?

    And +1 for WalMan's assertion about ignoring that dude on fleabay.

    just a thought.

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    No.

    The quality of woods affects the stabilty and tone, the quality of the hardware also plays a part, and most of all teh qualit yof the workmanship on the frets will have a massive effect. I've played a gorgeous Wal with the lowest action ever with zero buzz, yet my cheap J copy could never be as low even if I threw hundreds of pounds at it. Conversely, I've just had my Groove 5 set up and is now an equal to that Wal, but that was a far better built bass in the first place....

    Weddings

    in Gigs

    Posted

    [quote name='OldGit' post='58917' date='Sep 11 2007, 07:32 PM']If you are planning a lot of wedding and function work the better known your stuff the better you will go down.
    In the above set you might find it works better to truncate Superstition.. Fabbo tune, outstanding epoch making record but ... in general audiences get bored by verse two .. I've watched this happened a lot of times. The stat brings a huge whoop of recognition followed by a floor full of people but they start glazing over pretty fast so ... do two verses and the middle bit and then morph it into something else like Play that Funky Music and it will work a lot better...
    OG[/quote]
    Interesting observation. We do the full thing, with a silly drum solo bit at the beginning, but I think the way we have arranged it seems to go down really well with the audiences. Nothing clever, just using the full dynamic between quiet and loud. Famous last words, we'll probably have an empty dancefloor on Friday now....

    Weddings

    in Gigs

    Posted

    [quote name='OldGit' post='58506' date='Sep 10 2007, 11:36 PM']"Anyhoo, turns out the Mac crashed"

    Yeah sure ... haha I believed you up to that point :)[/quote]
    You're right, it was all a big lie :huh:

    Our male singer did a good one ealier this year, as the first dance faded out:

    [size=3]"Ladies and gentlemen - nows it's yours turns!"[/size]


    (Nows it's yours turns? Mike, that makes no sense at all....)

    He now refuses to announce the first dance or even talk to the audience until at least three songs in

    Weddings

    in Gigs

    Posted

    Lots of interesting reading here and I agree with it all, but it's good to tell the most embarrassing story of this year's weddings:

    Isle of Wight, June 2007
    We normally provide full band and DJ sets but this particular couple had a friend who is DJ so they got him to DJ. His PA was smaller than our monitors. But that's not the bad thing. We suddently realised that, despite him being the DJ, we were supposed to play the first dance (recording) thru our PA. So we search the interweb for Andy Williams, you all know the song... Buggered if we can get it anywhere, not even i-Tunes. This being the middle of nowhere in the IoW (admittedly only about 5 miles from any one bit of sea, but that's not the point) we couldn't go and BUY the CD. So we wait for the DJ to turn up and fortunately he has it on CD. So, what do we do? Rip it to our Mac and hand the CD back. He buggers off to enjoy the wedding and we don't see him again til halfway thru our first set. Too late.

    Of course, the first dance happens at the BEGINNING of our first set.

    "Ladies and gentlemen, the bride and groom!"

    Wild applause slowly dies away, bride and groom looking slightly nervous on dancefloor, 200 pairs of eyes on them. Then 202 pairs of eyes slowly moves to the stage, where we are standing. Our eyes are all on our soundman, who is frantically hitting the keyboard and playing with the desk. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Not even a faint hum.

    "C'mon!" shouts one of the crowd.

    "Er, ladies and gentlemen, we seem to have a technical hitch. Erm, please bear with us while we sort this out" says our embarrased frontwoman. Our soundman is now rushing to the DJ's box to find the CD, no luck.

    Then someone in the crowd starts singing the song, and within a line or two the whole room is singing. The bride and groom dance. Everyone loves it (except us, we're naturally mortified).

    As the voices drift off (too much "I love you baaaabbbyyy" gets a bit boring, thank god it's over) we check with Mr Soundcalamity that the PA is hunky dory and kick into a Beatles classic. The dancefloor doesn't empty the whole night. Hooray! When we eventually speak to the B+G, they were so relieved. The fact that we'd f**ked up took the pressure off them and they loved it. Any other wedding this year I think we would have been crucified, we were just lucky it happened at the one where there we'd been drinking with them all the night before!

    Anyhoo, turns out the Mac crashed, for the first, and so far only, time ever. And our soundman still hasn't heard the last of it.

    Moral? Have a back up. Have 2 back-ups. Or in the case of us, have 5. The wedding we did two weeks later (the next one with a DJ'd first dance) had the mp3 on i-tunes, an i-pod, 2 CDs, the mp3 on a memory stick AND an old cassette walkman with a tape. Just in case :)

    Wall hangers

    in Accessories and Misc

    Posted

    [quote name='Alien' post='55040' date='Sep 3 2007, 11:35 PM']Another + for the Hercules, but bear in mind that it'll only hold 4-strings and narrow 5's. If you have a wide spaced 5-string or a 6/7/8 etc. then you'll need to look elsewhere.

    Andy[/quote]
    Aye, good point. All mine are 4's except the one Groove 5er, and that fits in the "normal" Hercules stand I have so I figure it'll be OK. Bought 5 of 'em from Thomann yesterday, they shipped this morning!

    Wall hangers

    in Accessories and Misc

    Posted

    [quote name='bass_ferret' post='54217' date='Sep 2 2007, 03:35 PM']I use the Hercules ones myself.[/quote]


    [quote name='Lee-Man' post='54237' date='Sep 2 2007, 04:05 PM']+1 for the Hercules ones, I have three of them.[/quote]

    Aha, didn't think of them, I have a stand of theirs so will give em a shot. Thomann have 'em bloody cheap too:

    [url="http://www.thomann.de/gb/hercules_stands_gsp39wb_guitar_wallmount.htm"]hooray![/url]

    Which bass?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Yeah, 3 gigs this week:

    Thurs - Originals band at the Halfmoon in Putney
    Fri - Covers band in East Grinstead club
    Sat - Wedding

    So, for the covers band on Friday I'm giving my Groove 5 an outing coz it's just had a nice set up by Paul Herman. And Saturday will always be the Retroactive. Therefore I figure I should play a third bass on Thursday's gig, the fretless Groove. Just for a giggle. But, whichever bass wins this poll is the one I will use. Get voting please!

    Wall hangers

    in Accessories and Misc

    Posted

    So I know a fair few of you guys use wall hangers at home for your basses - are Qwik Lok the ones to go for? My cunning plan is that my new flat (which I'm hoping to buy v soon!) will have all my basses proudly hanging in the living room. So I want the best wall hangers out there please, don't really fancy the Retroactive falling.....

    Cheers peeps :)

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