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BigRedX
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More drive and more considered note choices. IME it's as much what you play as how you sound.
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Best pots and capacitor to get the most tonal range
BigRedX replied to Brian D's topic in Bass Guitars
In a way it's great having all these tonal options on the instrument but in a another way it's a liability because there are more possibilities for things to go wrong. I once played the first few songs of a gig with the tone control wound nearly all the way off as it had been knocked when putting the bass in its gig bag after sound checking. The E and A strings sounded fine but I was wondering why the higher notes weren't cutting through as they had an hour ago. When I discovered what had happened I was mentally kicking myself. And this was on a bass that only has three controls - volume, tone and series parallel for the pickup. I find having all these options useful for working out what I like, but invariably there will be one setting that sounds (to me) much better than all the others, and once I have found it I'll probably never touch the controls again. I'd have my favourite setting hard wired into the bass and no controls at all. -
I suppose everyone has different requirements when it comes to "radio". If I'm listening to music I don't want a lot (if any) chat between tracks. All I need to know is what the song was called and who it's by, so if it's something I like that I've not heard before that I like I can explore further. On a 3rd party curated playlist that information is all in the play list plus I can skip over anything I'm not interested in. Unfortunately most radio has a very low ratio between what I like and what I don't, so I have to endure a lot of music that isn't to my taste before they play something I've not heard before that I like. Also I've found that 6 Music is fine for a few weeks and then I start to realise that they are playing the same limited selection of songs over and over, and I have to take a break for a couple months. If I want to listen to people talking I'll pick a podcast.
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IMO dismantling pots to replace parts of them, unless done in near clean room conditions, is not going be very useful terms of ensuring their reliability. I'm not really into vintage instruments, but I think that replacing the entire wiring loom, and keeping the original parts safe and in one piece would have been better for both having a usable and reliable bass and preserving the authenticity should the owner need to sell it. Part of the problem with the video in the OP is that there is no explanation about why some items have been replaced, others just cleaned, and some left seemingly untouched.
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The XLR output from my Helix is used to connect to an FRFR cab for those gigs that require me to have "backline", and I have the Helix set up so that the front panel volume control only affects this output. The DI connects to the main jack out which is always at full volume for the PA, so I can adjust my volume on stage without affecting the PA send. This setup means that I don't have to change the volume control assignments between gigs, rehearsals and home recording/practice, and is one less thing to worry about getting right. It also means that I am transformer isolated from the PA just in case something nasty comes down the cables. One of my bands does this for all our PA feeds.
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I ruled out the rack version because of Line6's insistence of using cat5e cables to connect their foot controllers. Before I got the Helix I had a BassPod and a Longboard foot controller. Standard cat5e cables lasted less than a month before either the retaining clip on the plug broke, or one of the conductors in the cable failed. Eventually I bought two very expensive leads with heavy duty shrouded connectors and "coilable" Van Damme cable. These were better but the cable stopped being coilable after about a year and failed shortly afterwards. The problem is that my gear is set up broken down multiple times in the week. I play in two bands which means a minimum of 2 rehearsals a week plus anything up to 3 gigs. And in between the gear is set up at home for writing and recording. Often at gigs I often have to clear the stage and pack everything away in under 15 minutes, usually in less than ideal conditions, and I can't always be as careful with coiling the leads as I would like. Jack and XLR leads are perfectly capable of taking this kind of abuse - I'm using cables that I made up over 25 years ago that are still working perfectly. Consumer grade computer cables simple can't cope, so I avoid them as far as possible for gig use.
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I have the Line6 Helix gig bag which is prefect for my needs. All the associated leads, and my passive EMO DI box, go in the front pocket so everything I need apart form my bass is contained within this one case. Also by doing it this way it doesn't matter which bass I'm using I won't have left anything at home. If I had a device like the QC, with it's external power supply and separate expression pedal they would all need to be mounted on a pedal board for reliability and suddenly the smaller form factor is no longer an advantage. I have found that depending on the size of the device having it mounted on a board or in case base, can make the foot switches too high to be comfortable. Because of this, with one of my bands I now have all my Preset and Snapshot changes automated as part of the backing track, which is our drummer and second synth player. All I need the pedals for is to access the tuner and as an automated set list using the Preset names. I'm aiming to do the same with the other main band I play with. I do the bulk of my programming at home using the HX Edit application. The front panel interface is only used for fine tuning at rehearsals.
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For me the larger size of the Helix Floor was one of the main selling points. On the smaller models the foot switches are just a bit too close together to hit accurately in the middle of a performance, and I find that only the front row of switches are useable mid-song, as trying to access anything further up the device will also result in me pressing something I didn't intend to with my heel. I have my Helix set up so that I only need to use the front row of switches while I'm playing.
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I found that the Helix could be quite picky about what it shared its USB bus with. For it to work reliably as an audio interface it was best on its own USB bus although before I moved it, I hadn't noticed any slowness with the HX Edit application. However if I was sending it a lot of MIDI data from Logic, HX Edit would loose the connection, and I would have to click the reconnect button before doing further editing. Remember also that on a Mac each USB socket is not necessarily on its own bus and some of them share one of the internal buses for things like WiFi and Bluetooth. The System Profiler Utility is your friend for troubleshooting these situations. Unfortunately I could never consider the QC, it just doesn't look robust enough for some of gigging environments I encounter. Because of the external PSU without a locking connector, and lack of expression pedal it would have to be mounted with those on a pedal board which makes it a lot bulkier and cumbersome. One of the great things about the Helix Floor is that it is effectively its own pedal board. Can the QC be programmed from the "front panel" without using the touch screen? Touch screens do not like my fingers. Often my iPad and phone fail to recognise that I am using them and for me, supermarket self-checkouts are almost useless.
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Depending on which model you want it might be worth looking for a second hand MiK model. My MiK StarBass was superior in pretty much every way to all the MiG versions I had tried.
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Surely curated streaming playlists have taken over from radio? Not only can they be a lot more focussed but there will be plenty for you even if your taste in music isn't mainstream enough to make it onto radio. Plus you can skip anything you're not enjoying.
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For the one time I have had a dead spot on a neck, the Fat Finger worked very well as the dead spot was gone and didn't seem to re-appear anywhere noticeable. You can experiment with different sized G-clamps first to see if it makes a usable difference before shelling out on something more expensive and aesthetically pleasing.
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The code button only allows you to display code in your post. In the past it could be used to explain to other forum users how to do things like link to images etc, as it would display the code rather than execute it. Since all coding is done automatically from the formatting bar in the current versions and nothing else is permitted, it has little relevance these days.
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There used to be a neat BBCode trick you could do where you could fool the forum software into thinking that a script was a PNG image file. I saw it in action on another forum where one of the members used it to show a different image at random as his avatar every time you loaded a thread in which he had posted. However it also required you to have your own web server to host the back-end code and image files for it to work. I also suspect that the recent versions of forum software will have clamped down on this as it could potentially be used to inject something more nasty into the page code.
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Silent stages - a soul-less gigging experience?
BigRedX replied to Al Krow's topic in PA set up and use
IME not being able to "feel it" when playing live, normally means that either the songs aren't very good or that they are simply not to the musicians' tastes. Everything is a lot more exciting when played loud. I found in the past that I have been a lot more forgiving about the material I have been playing in rehearsal and at gigs simply because of the volume it's being played. With the band I played with in the 90s and with one of the bands I play with currently we rehearse at what I would term "slightly louder than normal hifi volume". This way the songs have to feel good/exciting at a bit louder than our audience would listen to them from the CD or record at home. My thinking was always if we can enjoy playing the songs at reduced volume then they are going to sound awesome at a gig. I don't know if that helps or not, but from my experiences of playing covers, I found a lot of the material tedious and the excitement that comes with the band being loud was the only way to keep me interested. Of course once I had realised that, it was became another reason to stop playing covers.
