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Messages - Vurbal [ switch to compact view ]

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1
Living Room / Re: Best forums for consumers and online buyers ?
« on: June 15, 2022, 08:03 PM »
In most cases it seems like online communities related to a particular product are usually the best resources. Review sites are great in theory, but they don’t really have much appeal to most consumers. Most people don’t want to report their feelings to the great unknown. They want to have a conversation about their experiences.

2
Living Room / Re: Like a bad penny...
« on: June 04, 2022, 05:50 AM »
Looks like it’s back on the merry go-round for me. Despite agreeing with me that multiple system atrophy is the only condition that explains all my symptoms, and also that it’s far more likely that I have one rare condition than two, my neurologist still refuses to officially diagnosed me with even possible or probable MSA.

Instead, I have to go back to the University of Iowa, where I can see a movement disorder specialist, you can then refer me back to Mayo. I actually suggested a couple of tests that I have uncovered that would help with the diagnosis, but he pointed out that they’re only available at Mayo.

Is it really too much to ask for a Doctor who understand science?

On a completely unrelated subject, Apple spellcheck apparently knows to capitalize Doctor Who. I’ve also noticed in recent years that Motorhead seems to be a pretty standard proper name for spellcheck libraries as well. I notice Apple doesn’t include the unnecessary umlaut, but I think Samsung does, or at least used to. Come to think of it, Apple used to have it to. I wonder if using the umlaut causes problems in some cases.

3
Living Room / Re: Like a bad penny...
« on: May 13, 2022, 11:52 AM »
Now I’m really pissed!

I just found an article, which mentions a local doctor who was treating a patient with MSA.

https://www.desmoine...me-atrophy/25439089/

It turns out she works in the same office as my neurologist. I sent him a message through their app asking if he had consulted with her, or anyone else for that matter, about my case.

In any case I’m demanding a referral to see her. I haven’t decided whether I’m going to file a complaint with their bosses about the piss poor treatment I’ve received so far.

I also have my family doctor, who is amazing BTW, sending a referral to an outside clinic. I’ll need a second opinion in any case, so there’s no reason to wait.

4
Living Room / Re: Like a bad penny...
« on: May 12, 2022, 08:23 PM »
Hey Vurbal!

Been awhile since I last dropped by. Sorry to see this news first thing.

Wow! That’s a lot to have to deal with, huh?

No advice. And no idea what  to say either, other than good wishes and hope this all gets worked out for you.
Thank you! I’m still fighting, and still playing bass. In fact, I’ve got a wonderful Kiesel JB5 that I’ve barely gotten to play out.

I go to a nearby jam on Sundays, where I at least get to play with some really good musicians, but I’m still hoping to get together with some friends who are putting a band together.

Do you post under the same name on TalkBass? I figured you did, but I just never got around to asking if it was you. I post under my real name (Rich Fiscus) there.

5
Living Room / Re: Like a bad penny...
« on: May 12, 2022, 08:15 PM »
What you are experiencing sounds familiar. My wife is a former ICU critical care nurse who now works as a Nurse Practitioner. In her view, most physicians practice within a framework of what they were taught in medical school. Too often she finds physicians are stuck because of this, that it leads to an attitude that there isn't anything new to try. Thus, different generations of physicians practice differently, as do physicians from different medical schools. She offers no solution other than what you are doing, and that is to find a physician who is familiar with your symptoms, or who is willing to think outside the box. Here's hoping you find the right one soon!
I’m working on getting a new neurologist now, but I think I may have figured out what it is. It’s extremely rare, and there’s no cure. After watching a couple of presentations about it on YouTube, one for patients and one for doctors, it turns out most people are misdiagnosed for years.

If I’m right, my only hope of living another decade is getting into a drug trial. Otherwise, I’m likely to die from respiratory or cardiac problems within the next 5 years or so.

6
Living Room / Re: Like a bad penny...
« on: April 06, 2022, 06:44 AM »
About 2 weeks ago I was practicing my bass in the living room. Over the last few months it's felt like I was learning to play all over again, and I've developed a bad habit of staring at my fretboard, so I decided to start practicing in front of a mirror. That way I can eyeball position changes without looking down. After about 20 minutes I had to stop. My head was spinning like never before, my balance and coordination were even further off than usual, and I felt incredibly weak. The only thing that helped was reading on my phone in a brightly lit environment.

That was actually a big breakthrough for me, because now I realize that my symptoms at least aren't as complicated as they seem. There are actually 2 groups of symptoms. The first is the loss of information from literally every sense except sight and hearing. The others are caused by the motion sickness resulting from my vision sensing motion my body can't feel. I have the equivalent of VR sickness or space sickness, except worse, because I've almost entirely lost sensation in my internal organs.

This doesn't exactly get me closer to a diagnosis, but it does clarify the problem significantly. Since I won't be seeing my neurologist for almost 3 weeks, I did some testing on my own, hoping to verify my motion sickness hypothesis, and I'm sure of it now. I'm also really sick (pun intended) of motion sickness testing.

7
Living Room / Re: Favourite youtube channels
« on: March 09, 2022, 06:50 AM »
Time Team is a British show that ran for almost 20 years, and is back in production now, thanks to Patreon.
I didn't know that (thanks). They must have made a fair bit of money on patreon, cause that show can only be expensive to make. I watch the odd episode, will be interesting to see what the new ones are like. (There's some great English accents to be heard on the show as well.)
I'm sure you're right. Just the heavy equipment for some of those episodes must have been incredibly expensive. And then there's all the high tech geophysics gear. The pub bills were probably enormous too.  :) 

It will be odd without the real stars of the original - Phil Harding and Mick Aston's hideous sweater.

8
Living Room / Re: Like a bad penny...
« on: March 09, 2022, 06:31 AM »
My EEG results came back normal, which will surprise anyone who's known me for very long.  :tellme:

On one hand it's disappointing not to find anything out, but on the other hand, I actually did. The EEG tells me that my brain isn't aware there's anything screwy with my senses. It didn't even register when I felt the pulsing of a strobe light in my fingers and toes. My previous tests eliminated the long nerves spreading out from the spinal cord and the short nerves that create muscle groups.

That basically leaves my spinal cord, which is where I've believed the problem to be all along. Because my nerves in my head are affected, I can further narrow it down to the topmost part of my spinal cord. Beyond that, it still doesn't make any sense.

I've got a month and a half to educate myself on the spinal cord and brainstem before my next appointment. I found a neuroscience study guide for medical students on Audible, which I listen to when my eyes are too worn out to read or watch videos. Other than that, I'm still scouring the Internet for anything useful.

9
Living Room / Re: Favourite youtube channels
« on: March 03, 2022, 09:40 AM »
If you like archeology, I highly recommend the Time Team Classics channel. Time Team is a British show that ran for almost 20 years, and is back in production now, thanks to Patreon. Each episode revolves around a 3 day dig, generally in a site that's not considered significant enough for a major, publicly funded, operation. Among other things, they were pioneers in the use of various geophysical surveying tools and methods, which have since become the industry wide standard.

If you aren't already familiar with the ridiculous wealth of archeology underneath Britain, that alone is eye opening. Whatever period of history you're interested in (as well as much of prehistory), they've probably dug it up. From Paleolothic caves, to Mesolithic hunter gatherer camps, to neolithic settlements, to Roman towns, villas, forts, and industrial complexes. Then there are the Saxons and Vikings, who left little behind besides graves and voids in the ground where wood has long since rotted away.

Ironically, some of the haziest history is much more recent. During Henry VIII's reorganization of the Church of England, the institutional memories of numerous major churches almost disappeared, practically overnight. There are apparently dozens of sites in England, where a church, or series of churches, stood for hundreds of years, before being shut down, and disappearing completely. The most famous of these would be where Richard III's remains were found several years ago, but they really are all over the country.

There are also very cool demonstrations of ancient technology. For starters, their head digger is an expert flint napper. Give him 5 minutes and he can make a scraper. An hour or 2 will get you a shockingly effective axe, and give him some mortar and a board and he'll build you a bench from the stuff in an afternoon.

If you prefer Roman history, they also build a section of Roman road in one episode, and cobble some hobnail boots to walk on it with. In another episode they make charcoal, like what was used to fire iron furnaces before coal.

This show actually made me a lot more interested in the local archeology. Here in the US, pre-European archeology is almost criminally ignored. Given the length of human habitation in North America, how many civilizations and local/regional powers must have risen and fallen, leaving no stone monuments or writing? It must be dozens at least, maybe just in my little part of the continent, in between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers.

Fair warning, the host gets pretty annoying. He was apparently the driving force in funding the series, and kudos to him for that, but sometimes he reminds me of something I read on Despair.com. There are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.

10
Living Room / Re: Tips for failing eyesight? PC use
« on: March 03, 2022, 07:08 AM »
No advice, but I'm interested as well. My eyesight is reaching the point where everyday tasks are challenging. I'm mostly okay with a decent size computer monitor today, but I'm not so sure I'll be able to say that in 6 months.

OTOH looking at a 7 segment LCD display, ie a digital clock, is like waterboarding my eyes.

11
Living Room / Re: Like a bad penny...
« on: February 25, 2022, 10:08 AM »
After letting my local neurologist know about Mayo's decision, and that my symptoms continue to get worse, he managed to squeeze me in this morning. After a nudge in the right direction from me, he agreed that it's a good idea to do an brain scan (EEG) at this point. It seems insane to me that I would have to suggest that myself, but that's the state of neurological diagnostics today apparently. The reason nobody thought to do this before is simply that it's normally only used to diagnose seizures, which I don't appear to have.

The flip side of that is that you can't always identify seizures from external symptoms. Several years ago I read about a study, at Harvard IIRC, where they were performing brain scans on a group of autistic individuals. Along the way, they discovered that one of the subjects wasn't actually on the spectrum. The scan showed regular seizures occurring in his prefrontal cortex.

12
Living Room / Re: Like a bad penny...
« on: February 17, 2022, 05:37 AM »
Good to see you, Vurbal  :Thmbsup: :Thmbsup: :Thmbsup:  And know that you are always welcome here.
-jesse
It's great to be back! And I've always felt welcome here.  :)

13
Living Room / Re: Like a bad penny...
« on: February 12, 2022, 04:42 AM »
So I jumped through hoops with Mayo for a month. The neurologists, for some reason, decided to kick the referral to Internal Medicine, where they, predictably, did exactly what every non-neurologist does when faced with neurological symptoms, and declined to see me as well.

I'm getting really tired of dealing with neurologists. Most of them seem to have the diagnostic skills of your average tech support phone monkey. They have a diagnostics flow chart, based on your symptoms, and don't know what to do when they get to the end without a diagnosis. God help you if you have symptoms that aren't even on their list, like I do.

The problem now is that I have to find a way to get through the screening process. I'm guessing it will be similar no matter where I go, which means they'll look at my symptoms, throw up their hands, and tell me to go somewhere else.

14
Living Room / Re: Like a bad penny...
« on: January 24, 2022, 09:21 AM »
That was anticlimactic. I called this morning and found out they're still waiting on a letter from my doctor. Due to their name recognition, they have to weed out the people who should be able to get good care closer to home. Since they don't have time to read through every pile of records that comes in (mine might take a weekend by themselves), they request a 1 page summary letter from the referring doctor, explaining why they're sending the patient to Mayo. This is separate from the referral, which is really mostly about meeting insurance requirements.

Now I have to wait for them to fax that letter to Mayo, after which the 2 week clock for evaluating the referral starts. Very frustrating.

Maintaining a positive attitude is a full time job some days.

15
You can use Windows to set up a permanent link to GoogleDrive or any other similar services, as long as you have drive letters free?

And then you can use your file manager of choice? Look up how to use the command 'NET' in Windows. It is pretty versatile (and part of the tools that come standard with any version of Windows).
The current Google Drive for Windows adds a drive letter (G: by default) to your computer. Any file manager should work from there. I certainly have no problems with XYplorer.

16
Living Room / Re: Like a bad penny...
« on: January 23, 2022, 07:34 AM »
Thanks for the kind wishes!

Tomorrow I'll find out if Mayo wants to take me as a patient. Because it's hard to sit around and not obsess over it, I've been researching what my next option would be if they can't help. As I expected, it looks like all the next options are in Chicago. Actually, I was pleasantly surprised to find even more good neurology departments there than I had expected.

17
Living Room / Re: Like a bad penny...
« on: January 22, 2022, 05:10 AM »
Believe it or not, I (mostly) see myself as lucky. Having spent a lot of time reading about both spinal bifida and other Agent Orange related birth defects, I realize how much worse my life could have been. I was born with all my limbs, and without any physical or mental impairments.

When I put things into perspective, it could be a lot worse. I have financial stability, a supportive family around me, and at least a delusion of future goals. When I'm stuck at home, I have my music to keep me occupied. Lots of people don't have that much. I haven't always had that much.

At this point I figure every day on the right side of the dirt is a good one.

18
Living Room / Like a bad penny...
« on: January 21, 2022, 10:42 AM »
...the prodigal redheaded stepchild has returned.  :-\

Now that I've got a real computer on my desk for the first time in years, I thought it was time to check in here, and vent a little about my ongoing medical problems while I'm at it.

After spending most of my time and money on musical pursuits over the last few years, I've been sidelined with a mysterious neurological condition. The current diagnosis, from 2 different neurologists, is an acute case of "That's Strange." I've been tested for the standard range of degenerative and autoimmune conditions - all negative. There's no sign of myelin damage, and no loss of muscle mass.

Despite that, I have significant neurological symptoms, ranging from numbness, tingling, weakness, and pain throughout my body, to loss of balance and loss of muscle control. These symptoms appear to be originating in my spinal cord, and most likely originating all the way up at my brain stem. In fact, one of the symptoms which has doctor's scratching their heads is that my symptoms all get worse as my neck is straightened to hold my head up in the proper position. If I drop my head, which I've been doing for years (more on that in a moment), my symptoms lessen. Fix my posture, and they come back with a vengeance.

Having been to a local neurologist, followed by a neuromuscular specialist at the University of Iowa, I'm now waiting to find out if the Mayo Clinic will see me. I'm not sure where I'm going to go if they don't, but while I'm waiting I thought I'd see if the inmates smart people here have any thoughts.

Where I think the doctors have gone wrong so far is ignoring what I consider the likely source of my problems. My parents were both exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. In fact, from what my mom has learned in recent years, she was probably exposed to massive amounts due to serving at the 24th Evac Hospital, which was a few miles down the road from Bien Hoa Air Base. Bien Hoa was where the Agent Orange operation was based, and remains the worst dioxin hotspot in the world. Apparently there was a standing order that any excess chemicals were to be sprayed on the hospital - a great idea if it weren't both inherently toxic in the heat and mixed at an insanely high concentration.

Mom left Vietnam in early 1968, just before the Tet Offensive. She was pregnant with my sister at the time. I was born in 1970. Fast forward about 45 years, and I started experiencing a variety of what turned out to be common neurological symptoms, connected to a variety of completely unrelated conditions. This was complicated by an existing shoulder problem, which was (and is) causing some minor symptoms.

Thanks to an excellent medical team, starting with my family doctor, and including a couple top notch physical therapists, I ended up putting shoulder surgery on indefinite hold because of what appeared to be a possible herniated disc. In fact, I did have a herniated disc, but it was exacerbated by another problem. My spinal canal, the tube that holds my spinal cord, is severely undersized.

Instead of being around an inch in diameter, it's around 3/8 of an inch. As a result, the herniated disc was pushing dangerously close to my spinal cord. I ended up having a near total cervical fusion (C3-T1). That took care of the worst symptom I had at the time (excruciating pain in my left arm). However, during recovery, I began experiencing new symptoms, spread throughout my body now.

In retrospect, this coincided with my rehab, and my efforts to address years of posture problems. By posture problems, I mean when I first went to physical therapy, there were several shoulder exercises I couldn't do at all because my shoulders were rolled so far forward. By years, I mean probably from the time my chronic knee problems started in my early 20s. I had my knee replaced when I was 42, but I never completely addressed what decades with a limp did to my posture.

As my symptoms worsened, and my physical therapist suspected a herniated disc in my back, my orthopedic surgeon ordered a full MRI of my back and neck. When it showed nothing, he referred me to a local neurologist. Although I was already convinced I would need more specialization than anyone local could offer, I knew the first step would be a basic neurological exam, followed by a battery of tests to rule out a standard range of rare diseases and disorders.

The closest to a positive result was 1 of 2 enzymes that could indicate Myasthenia Gravis being slightly elevated. The problem is it wouldn't explain most of my symptoms, and it's contraindicated my successful, if slow progressing, neck and shoulder rehab. The neuromuscular specialist I eventually saw at the university confirmed this.

When my local neurologist made the referral to Mayo, I made sure he asked for a specialist in neorodevelopmental disorders. The most common birth defects definitively tied to Agent Orange exposure in women are prenatal neural tube defects, mostly spinal bifida, which is also what I would expect such a doctor to specialize in. The question is whether I'll get someone ready to diagnose something they've never seen, and probably never heard of. At least I hopefully won't get the usual blank stare when I mention Agent Orange, so that's a step forward.

Other than complaining online, the only thing I have to do is play my bass, which is the only thing I can really do these days anyway. I'm not allowed to chop vegetables, because my wife doesn't trust me with the knife - and rightly so. I can't drive because my eyes don't focus correctly, and I'm not even allowed to walk up the steep stairs to the second floor because my balance is so bad.

It turns out, though, that I can still play, albeit with some physical adjustments for my fingers' habit of suddenly refusing to do what I want. My goal is to be out gigging again in a few months. It's entirely unrealistic, given my current symptoms, and lack of any treatment in the foreseeable future. Until reality actually steps in and stops me, though, it's my plan.

On the bright side, I now have access to the best parking spaces.


19
Living Room / Re: Cross-utilization?
« on: November 06, 2016, 12:02 PM »
Defragging only makes sense on a physical drive because of the moving parts, ie the time it takes to move from one physical location on the platter to another. On a flash drive the problem is not physical movement, but rather the limited number of reads and writes before it wears out. A properly designed flash drive intentionally fragments data to avoid using the same addresses over and over.

In fact, I wouldn't expect the physical locations of the addresses, nor would I assume they were physically contiguous.

20
Living Room / Re: Do we have any musical people on DC?
« on: October 10, 2016, 02:37 PM »
Hmmm... I typed this out the other day, and apparently forgot to hit send. Damn ADD. Let's give it another try.

A week ago I went to an open jam and a friend of mine I hadn't seen in several years was sitting in on drums. He's not around town too much because he does a lot of touring with various artists. I was asking him about a couple of his recent gigs - playing in Paul Rodgers' touring band, followed by a Bad Company tour where he worked as Simon Kirke's drum tech. It turns out he's getting ready to go down to Florida to work with Paul's son Steve.

That's cool, but this was the really cool bit for me. One day he asked Simon if he still had the drum kit he played with Free at the Isle of Wight, and Simon said Paul had it, last he knew. The next time he saw Paul, he asked him about the kit, and Paul said he thought it was in his basement. At this point he's getting excited, so he calls Steve in Florida (at Paul's house) and asks him to check for a gold drum kit in the basement. Sure enough, it's sitting down there, looking like it hasn't been played since the Free days. It even still has the kick drum head with 'Free' hand painted on it.

Simon and Paul don't really care much about it. To them it's just some old drums, but my friend is planning to get it cleaned up while he's in Florida, so it can be preserved, and maybe put on display somewhere further down the road.

He couldn't show me the pictures of the kit, since he didn't have his phone with him, but with any luck he (and his phone) will show up at the jam tonight.

21
Living Room / Re: Do we have any musical people on DC?
« on: July 31, 2016, 10:35 AM »
That Stormy Weather rendition, while I love the vocals, so missed that, is definitely excellent from an instrumental standpoint.  It brought to memory one of my regrets.  My father was very big into Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and many more performers of that era.  And he was really into musicals- Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, etc.  In fact, I remember my proudest moment was giving him the complete selection of Rodgers and Hammerstein on DVD when they first came out.  A pretty penny, but the look on his face...

Now that he's gone, and I've started to appreciate that music, I kick myself, and it makes me sad.  I never took the time to cross to his side of the street until it was too late, and I find myself wondering what he thought/would think about certain renditions, or composers, or dancers that I was never interested enough to ask him about.

sigh
That sounds so much like my dad, except add in old country music, or as he called it, having grown up in the Alleghany Mountains, hillbilly music.

Sharing that music with me is no small part of what made us so close, although being his first son certainly had something to do with it. I was 16 when he died, and that's one of the few things I had left to hang on to. I'm not sure that helps, but maybe it would have, had he lived longer. My big regret is how our relationship was in the last year or 2 he was alive. It was probably better than most teenagers have with their parents, but it still hurts to think about how I left things with him.

22
Living Room / Re: Do we have any musical people on DC?
« on: July 30, 2016, 07:45 AM »
@Vurbal - that sounds pretty awesome. And your wife reminds of my own lady a little. Sounds like a keeper.

She certainly is! And I'm not saying that because she just bought me a set of Sadowsky Black Label flatwounds for my birthday... well not just that.  :D

Unfortunately, that band doesn't look like it's ever going to completely come together, but, as it happens, I've got opportunities coming out of the woodwork now. A couple weeks ago, a guitarist I've played with quite a bit got me an invite to a private get together with a local drummer who's looking to put together a 60s and early 70s R&B/Soul group. It was a great afternoon, and I apparently impressed everybody there by blowing through a bunch of songs I didn't know (all but like 2 songs we played) by just picking up on the groove and running with it.

The R&B project doesn't have a timeline yet, since the drummer is recuperating from a health scare he had a couple months back, but he would like to be playing out by the end of September. But another drummer who was there invited me to possibly do some recording with him on an originals project he's doing with a guitarist. They call it prog, which it really isn't. Mostly, it just has slightly oddball time signatures, like 9/8. However, it's interesting enough for me to spend a couple hours every weekend working on bass lines, and recording is another mountain I was looking to conquer eventually anyway.

The most exciting one for me, though, is this. Since my wife and I started going to the Sunday night jam, I've gotten a lot more stage time, since very few bass players show up. By the end of the night, the host band's bassist and I usually end up taking 3-4 songs at a time. After a lot of playing time together, a very good guitarist who's been sitting in with them, mostly just to fill up his musical calendar, wants me to work with him on an originals project - sort of a late 60s style power trio. He's apparently been looking for a bassist for months, but couldn't find anybody who played melodically enough. He also invited me to come sit in with him at an open mic night he hosts about 15 minutes away from my house.

Of course, the downside, as any musician (or music lover period) who has sat through enough open jams can tell you, is listening to the same handful of standards being butchered almost weekly. There are only so many times you can hear They Call It Stormy Monday played without feeling before you snap. Don't get me started on Cissy Strut or Shakey Ground. Let's just say that some people should not be allowed to play funk in public.

Not that I'm claiming to be perfect. A friend of mine showed up one night and wanted to sing Me and Bobby McGee, which she does very well, even when both the guitar and bass are off key, as it turns out. Since the guitarist and I had both played it in the past, we just looked up the chords as a refresher before hand. Unfortunately, we didn't look closely enough to remember the key change after the first verse. :o We spent most of the rest of the song giving each other funny looks, since neither one of us could figure out exactly what was wrong. Fortunately, the singer is a real pro, so we only made ourselves look stupid.

23
Living Room / Re: Do we have any musical people on DC?
« on: May 04, 2016, 03:49 PM »
For the last month I've been going to a Tuesday night jam, which got me authorization from the wife to buy my Ampeg 2x10 a twin brother. A guitarist I've played with each of the 3 times I got up is putting together a band, and asked me to play bass. I've enjoyed playing with him, and he has the seal of approval from my friend Kenny. He knows (or knows about) all the live music in the area, and he's as good a judge of character as I've ever met.

The best part is now that I'm going to these things as a player, my wife suddenly decided she wanted to go with me. I wasn't expecting that to last, since she gets up crazy early in the morning and, frankly, had never shown much interest in checking out local musicians. That changed last night, when I made her wait for 1 more group of musicians to play.

The reason I insisted on staying was the guy who had walked in about 20 minutes before I got up. Hopefully he couldn't hear me any better than I could. He's a hero in the local blues scene named Bob Pace. The kind of guy you find in little markets all over. He's better than all his peers, at the level of the top session guys, but lacking the extra little something that vaults you from top pro to all time great. In fact, I saw him open for Johnny Winter back in 2000, and his band (as headliners) would have been worth the extremely modest ticket price. Then Johnny took the stage, and that was a whole other level of playing.

My wife agreed that Bob's performance was worth the wait, and I think she really paid attention to the music in a way she almost never does. She even suggested we check out the Sunday night jam, hosted by some of the players who show up every Tuesday, starting on Mother's Day. Yes, I do have the world's most awesome wife!

24
Living Room / Re: Do we have any musical people on DC?
« on: March 30, 2016, 09:38 AM »
So I've been playing my re-engineered bass for almost a week and it's like a whole new instrument. I ended up turning the preamp gain almost all the way up - to about 5db. Initially that was just to compensate for output level differences when switching from mid focused (bass/treble cut technically) to mid cut tones. As it turns out, it also makes fine tuning the amount of dirt I'm getting from the overdrive pedal.

The difference with the buffer is so significant that my wife, who does not at all have the ear of a musician, immediately noticed it sounded clearer - before I actually got a good tone dialed in BTW. At rehearsal last week, it cut through the mix at a significantly lower volume. Just as importantly, the volume and tone from one string/note to the next is relatively balanced for the first time ever.

On the good side, struggling to tame those problems for nearly a year has done wonders for my technique. Even better, the guys I've been regularly playing with for the last few months, are actually sounding like a real band. If that doesn't work out, now I've got everything I need to look elsewhere.

25
Living Room / Re: Do we have any musical people on DC?
« on: March 30, 2016, 09:04 AM »
So I have a question that I've not really found a reliable answer to.

First, I was using a Korg GA-40 for a tuner.

I moved on from that to a TMR50BK, mostly for the dual use of recording and a metronome.

As of late, I've switched to a Snark SN-5 after seeing it in use in one of my local shops.

I just saw a GoGo Pedal Tuner on massdrop.  The lowest drop price is 39.99, and I'm thinking about joining.

Is there any real discernible functional difference between different tuners that any of you have noticed?  The Snark is convenient, and doesn't actually plug in, but I don't hear any difference between that and a plug-in tuner.  I can hear the difference on lower end tuners for sure.  But once you get past a certain price point, it doesn't seem that the difference is anything but form.

Thoughts?
Personally, I wouldn't want to be without a pedal tuner. At the very least I'd want something I can plug into. Fortunately, a friend (with more money than sense) gave me a Pitchblack+ he decided he didn't like, but I don't recommend that for you, or most people in fact. I'm damn happy to have it, but I certainly wouldn't pay $150 for it.

You want something that's accurate to +/-1 cent, which the more recent models of clip-ons from Snark and TC also are, if I'm not mistaken. The Monoprice knockoff of the regular Pitchblack is supposed to be quite nice, and only costs $20. Some people claim it's the actual Pitchblack, which it might be, but I've never seen any proof of that. In any case it's supposed to be an excellent pedal.

The Pitchblack+ is accurate to 0.1 cents, which mostly just makes it suitable for setting intonation. In my case, it also has a couple additional benefits. Unlike most people, my perception is a lot more accurate than +/-1 cent, and I have perfect pitch. Even in a mix, extremely small intonation issues can bug me.

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