Recent content by Lelander

I'm thinking that makes sense when you take the genre into consideration. I think that different priorities are in play when you start talking about blues, or even most rock. I am going to guess that a band like Sunn O))) is producing more volume in the 80 - 150 Hz range than many house PAs are...

The last band I was in finally ended up building a plexiglass wall between the drummer and the rest of the band in our rehearsal space. It wasn't so much that the guy was an especially loud player, it was just a very small space. The approach was born of compromise; we never liked being...

I think it's important to distinguish between the volume that the audience hears and the volume that the band hears on stage and in rehearsal. I am absolutely of the opinion that genre, style, and the type of room should determine the appropriate volume for the front of the house, and that...

EBMM was using the OLP licensing as a way to make profits by selling a down-market EBMM-like product. They cancelled the agreement when the powers that be at EBMM finally decided that the OLP gear wasn't being built to the required standards, among other things. Sterling Ball has discussed his...

There seem to be 2 general approaches that manufacturers commonly use to add a down-market option. The first is to maintain a single brand marquis and produce product at many price points. Ibanez and Spector come to mind as two examples of bass manufacturers that do things this way, and...

It does sound like rather than expanding they are focusing more on reducing demand to deal with their current backlog with existing resources. It really does seem like a non-routine price increase, though, which makes one suspect that some big things are afoot at Ric...

Even if there have been large increases in material cost over the last 3 years the point is that incremental increases in material costs for a product that uses a ton of labor is unlikely to be major factor in a large price increase. If anything labor in the good old USA may be become cheaper...

To make matters worse, the issue is really half financial and half logistical. Expanding seamlessly is pretty rough, especially in an industry where shipping substandard product on even a short production run can land your reputation in the toilet for years. It's funny, I've never really...

Ric's inadiquate production facilities also seem to be propagating the notion that the company is purposefully limiting production to fix an abnormally high price. I don't think this is the case (and it would likely backfire if it is) but it seems that Ric is having some trouble figuring out how...

By what margin, would you say, has the retail price of paint and plastic increased over the last year? The Ric price hike was ~35%, I believe? The weak dollar may be a valid issue, but honestly I'd stake my bets that a fair amount of the cost to build a bass is coming from labor. If this were...

And once again taxes and a trip to Las Vegas come together to prevent me from buying exactly the instrument I have been GASing for!

I've heard of people splitting the signal from the bass into various frequency bandwidths and using different delay/gate/envelope processing on each to try to simulate the bloom and decay of a DB just as you suggest. I've never heard a sound sample, so I can't say how well it works. Invalid...

They just look large to me. Honestly, I have never seen one come through any of the music stores I frequent (which is a testament to how badly these stores are understocked) so I've never had a chance to play one. I have always really liked Gibson's guitars very playable, but I do find the Les...

This is interesting. There seems to be a widespread belief among the masses that manufacturers typically use some sort of a cost + margin formula to price their product. This is simply not the case. Manufacturers use many, many different methods to determine what it costs them to build a...

I've become pretty well convinced that the only way to insure reasonable consistency on the showroom floor is to design gear that is inherently consistent and perform precise and repeatable factory setups. This is never going to happen with a wooden instrument, and carbon fiber doesn't seem to...