Leaderboard

10 o'clock yesterday morning and I was just up and pottering around the flat when I received a phone call.. could I dep with a Rolling Stones trib band, performing that very afternoon? Load in time, 1pm!! I madly said yes. I depped with this band for a few gigs over the summer and really enjoyed it and I got to know the songs really well. However, I hadn't played any of them since the end of August and I didn't really feel 'match fit'. Still, it seems they were desperate. There had been some sort of falling out the night before, leading to the departure of both bass player and drummer. The gig was a 'Rock n Roll Circus' event, featuring a John Lennon trib, a Who trib and the Stones trib 'headlining'. I had in fact intended to go along to watch with a few friends, so I had to let them know I'd be going on ahead and actually playing!! The Who drummer agreed to be both Keith Moon and Charlie Watts for the night 🙂 It was a smashing afternoon. There was an MC all dressed up like a ring master and a very good magician doing conjouring tricks with balls (steady, discreet!) which all added to the rock on roll circus atmosphere. However, I felt very nervous as I was completely unrehearsed and was just hoping that it would all come flooding back. As we were last on, my nerves just grew throughout the afternoon. When I got up to play I decided not to do anything flashy, just concentrate on trying to remember it all, and to stay at the back and not to try to move around much. A pretty good Bill Wyman impression then, haha! 🙂 Afterwards everyone was very complimentary, especially the 'John Lennon' who I know slightly but who hadn't see me play rock n roll before. So I took that as the biggest compliment, as he made a point of coming up to speak to me. However I felt I had only just got through by the skin of my teeth and delivered quite an array of bum notes! Saw some vids of it on line today though, and I didn't sound as bad as I thought, so that was a relief. Looks like I'll be doing another one on Friday!! I'll be better prepared this time though 🙂 I love my life 🙂 🙂

Ibanez Talman or the Fender Squier Jaguar.

Well after over thirty years of should I buy or should I not I finally took the plunge and purchased a New Rickenbacker 4003. The Bass itself has a beautiful finish which was my main worry and plays great with no set up needed which I am obviously happy about. I intend to remove the talent inhibiting bridge pickup cover and install one of the Tube Ampology Cove Bezels to fill in the gaps caused by the removal of the cover. The Bridge as we all know is not the best design so I will probably change it for a Hipshot, but for the moment I am going to leave the original on and see how it goes. There was only one thing that was off with this Bass which seems to be quite common with the Bridge pickup being on a slight angle but that is easily fixed as I believe it is only glued onto the plate. Same as every other 4003 the neck pickup was around 20% lower than the bridge pickup which I rectified by raising the neck pickup to maximum and lowering the bridge pickup to suit. I changed the stock Nickel Roundwounds with Thomastik Infeld Flatwounds and the Bass sounds really good........Well it sounds like a Ric if that floats your boat. Happy Days!

is there any way the mods can block me from looking at the for sale forums? i think i have a problem

Or 'Lazarus points' as they're sometimes known.

Given the ease with which parts can be recorded remotely with todays modern technology, and that this is a forum populated by bass players, would it be worth considering asking if anyone would be interested in collaborating with you?

The guy is just wired very differently to most people, with his wife being complicit, there’s even some telling characteristics of psychopathy in there. He’ll never have a meaningful music career.....maybe a ‘viral entertainment’ career, but not much more. Si

EDIT 22/10/2019 As the new v3 firmware launched yesterday I will move the discussion to a new thread and lock this one as much of the information here has been superseded and/or incorporated into the new v3 manual. Thank you to everybody who contributed to discussion here as it helped get me involved in working with Panda and helped shape the manual for the new firmware. __________________________________________ Original post: At the behest of @Al Krow I’m going to start a page which should hopefully serve as a helpful resource for understanding and using the FI and for sharing patches. For the moment, I’ll include an explanation of some of the features in the editor, which I wrote as a PM to @GisserD, I’ll add to this in due course. There is a new editor due out after April so I’ll amend once I’ve had chance to familiarise myself with its enhanced features. If anyone would like me to explain a particular feature then please comment and I’ll do my best to add it below as quickly as possible. I’ll also include a link to patches I’ve created and will add to this as I create new ones. Likewise, if you have useful tips or patches to share then please do! Please give me a “like” or comment if you’ve found this useful. It’ll encourage me to do more! Thanks. __________________________________________ Editor tips: In the VCF/MODULATION section, “Freq Vintage” is the cutoff of the original Deep Impact filter (with its imperfect scaling). “Freq New” is the cutoff of the new, perfectly-scaled FI filter. You can only engage either one or the other. Switching has to be done by the Vintage one though. Set its slider to “off” and it will engage the New one; turn it up and it disables the new one. After reading the manual again, it appears that the number that “freq new” is set to corresponds to the MIDI note number of the same value. That is to say, each increase of 1 corresponds to a semitone. Note 36 (min) is C (65.4Hz), note 122 (max) is D (9397.27Hz). ”Freq 2nd” is the cutoff off a second (bandpass) filter running in parallel. Turning its slider up engages it. You can then space the two filters to create dual-peak, vocal formant- type sounds. An increment increase of 1 provides a one-semitone offset from the main filter. Oddly, this second filter still reacts to envelopes and LFO even if you turn off the main filter with the dial in the top right of the screen. This can yield some interesting results.  In the VCF/ENVELOPE section, “attack” sets how quickly the filter(s) open(s) from cutoff to maximum. “Decay” sets how quickly the filter(s) close(s) from maximum back to the cutoff point. Back to the VCF/MODULATION section, “AD” sets how much the VCF AD envelope will affect the filter cutoff - higher values will open the filter further. “Env. Follower” sets how much your plucking dynamics (bass’s volume envelope) will affect the filter cutoff - again higher values cause the filter to open further. You need to be judicious in balancing the “AD” and “Env. follower” sliders in the above section. If you want a regular, always-the-same-shape, keyboard-style envelope then only use the AD slider. Adding too much of the envelope follower can override the shape of the AD envelope you’ve chosen. A bass’s volume envelope has a reasonably quick rise to maximum and then a longish decay as the note dies out. If you’re trying to program a slow upward filter sweep on the AD, the envelope follower will swamp that. Likewise, if you’re trying to program a very snappy decay on the AD (like acid-type bass sounds), the long decay of the bass’s volume envelope will ruin that if you apply too much envelope follower. “Resonance” controls how much a portion of the signal is fed back into the filter. This boosts the frequencies around the selected cutoff point, thus creating a resonant peak. Turning the resonance to maximum on 24dB mode will cause the filter to self-oscillate, yielding a pure sine wave oscillator. When using a bass guitar, you’ll need to have “bass” turned up in the VCF INPUT section (it needs a trigger and pitch reference). It probably works better when plugging in a keyboard instead as you’ll probably be able to hear just the sine wave. It doesn’t seem to behave at all like it does on analogue synths - changing the cutoff didn’t really enable me to tune it very well. Weirdly it seems to be best in tune when the “freq. vintage” was set to 0. After reading the manual it looks like the new filter will behave correctly (see above under explanation of “freq new”). I’ll have another go and update this page accordingly. The “Slope” knob switches between a 2-pole (12dB per octave) slope and 4-pole (24dB per octave) slope. The latter cuts off the higher frequencies above the cutoff point more rapidly than the former. LFO can be used to control the filter, either on its own or in conjunction with the envelope(s). (LFO can also be used to modulate the oscillators’ pitch.) I like that it has a delay slider too so that the LFO fades in over time. I’ve used that on one of the patches I shared. The LFO can be controlled by MIDI CC #1 and so a foot pedal can be used to bring modulation in and out as desired. What is really cool is that the noise has its own AD envelope (next to the VCF AD envelope sliders). This means you can program a short burst of noise to create a percussive attack even when you’ve programmed a long decaying filter sweep. (Normally noise just goes through the same filter as the other sources so that if you program a long decaying filter sweep, you can hear the noise all the way through. On the FI, you can get the noise to just be present right at the moment of attack and quickly disappear, or conversely, have it silent at the start and then slowly fade in.) I’ve finally figured out how the harmoniser section works! It’s part of the distortion circuit. You need to turn up the “distortion” slider in the INPUT section and (at least one of) the voices in the MIXER section (next to HARMONIZER) in order to hear it. One oddity I’ve found with the FI is as follows: if you’ve edited and saved any of your patch parameters on the actual pedal and you subsequently load new patches into those slots, then the new patches will take on those tweaked values. If that’s not clear what I mean: on the pedal a parameter setting of 5 is the default, i.e. if all parameters are set to 5, the patch will sound exactly like it did when you created it in the editor. Say you make an edit to a patch on the pedal and set its resonance to 9 and save the change by clicking the edit knob; when you load a new patch into that slot, its resonance will be set to 9 also. I realised this quirk when my first patch sounded nothing like it should have sounded. Luckily, setting each parameter back to 5 sorts it out. You can do this for all patches at once from one of the power-on menu settings. EDIT - this was a bug and has been addressed. __________________________________________ Patch transferring Here’s a little pointer that is an answer to a query about how to actually load patches on to the pedal. I know a few people have struggled with this. This is a cut and paste of a reply I wrote on TB: You need to find out which patches you want to load onto the pedal and which slot number in the pedal you want to have it. If you just want to replace one individual patch with another then first find a patch on the pedal that you want to overwrite. Then find the file on your PC of the patch you wish to write to the pedal. Rename this file so that it starts with the two-digit prefix of the slot into which you wish to load it. Open the renamed file again via the editor then click “write single file to pedal” and it will get loaded into that slot. If you want to load multiple files at once onto the pedal then it’s best to create a folder, copy in the PC files you want to load onto the pedal. Then rename each file with the slot numbers you want them to go, choose that folder via the editor then click “write all”. Any blanks will be skipped over and left untouched in the pedal. I’ve gone a step further and have all patches I like in one folder (unnumbered). I then have a different folder into which I placed the 99 patches I want on my pedal at any given time and I number these with the two-digit prefix and write these all at once. If ever I swap any out, I delete the old file from this folder, add the new file and number it and then write all again. Or you could simply have one big folder with all patches you like and then just number the 99 that you want and click write all. Any unnumbered patches will be ignored in the write process. ______________________________________ Patch sharing: (I’ll see if I can create a shared drive like the one on Talkbass) My patches: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1C7ZYqsyXkyNuasuuwLrQlICboSsGfXMp TB shared patches (including mine): https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zto20lpne0dnent/AAC6W_8BHeYLrBTjkcoJBzCza?dl=0 __________________________________________ Latest firmware: http://pandamidi.com/support __________________________________________ My v3 sound clips: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1u2-dJaWdaAbPDnDdWkipu-P7IH_GHLQ2

It's coming!

I fear I have more chance of sorting out the woes of Westminster than I have of abstaining from bass related purchases for a whole year. 😟

Fender bass, had such an easy neck to play I guess I'll play the rick some more today Oh I believe in Fender bass.

I don't know - it wouldn't play. I did something wrong now its gone to lu-thi-aye-aye-aye-aye Yesterday. This assumes the French pronunciation to rhyme, of course.

Which assumes that your bandmates have the slightest idea of what a fretless bass normally sounds like

There’s that hofner taunting me...

Everyone posts positive reviews, goes out and buys the shiny new thing, post even more positive reviews - then there’s a lull and their for sale post has even more positive reviews “best amp I’ve ever played , but....”

I have pulled the triggered and order the black one. I'll keep note of the strings you mentioned and order some of those at some point. Thanks for the help. 👍

It's not half the bass it used to be...

I use Phosphor Bronze on my acoustic - I like the challenge of trying to play cleanly with them, it's good for the technique.

Bootsie played acoustic bass..? Who knew..?

Reading the articale it would be easy to come to the conclusion that the guy is some sort of genius, in the way he has manipulated everything in order to get publicity (and presumably he’s now made a pretty penny from YouTube). However, just remember that the musicians he hired for this have come out of it with nothing, and are probably considerably out of pocket. Personally I feel the idiot has had plenty of time now to weave a story that makes him look less like an loser, and more like some evil genius. I think his brother probably calls it right- trust nothing he says. Robbie

A 10 string bass.

Any setup/maintenance work comes under strings as an allowance I would say. But yes, preamp would be a stretch.....but that’s paid for so..... And with regards to having put down a deposit before committing to this, just whistle and look the other way when handing over the balance ......that doesn’t work for those who are aware/committed to this though lol. Si

Don't go custom order Warmoth, good necks 90% of the time but risky the other 10%, their customer service department are frankly a joke (can be summarised as "Hey, you're not from the USA so we don't give a f**k"). If you can buy one used, a much better bet (I picked one up for around £100 a few months back and it's glorious, one of the best necks I've ever played, would have cost well over £400 had I ordered and imported it direct from Warmoth however). You're also limited in that you can't really use roundwound strings on a maple board, at least not for very long. Add to that the fact that PUPs that sound great on fretted do not always sound equally great on fretless! So, you probably need to think about what sound you want, and also think about resale value if it doesn't work out; a TF will probably be easy to sell, a custom/hybrid less so.

Ahhhh I can’t pay the balance until it’s ready in feb.. paid more than half though..... I’m still in! 😃👍🏻

The new ones are apparently better with no lifting of the tail and a more stable neck. But if it was the comfort aspect that put you off, well nothing has changed there unfortunately. I guess it is a Marmite thing with them, but having had mine for a couple of days I quite like it and have got used to the body binding, but I had to take off the bridge pup cover which was just in the way for my fingerstyle.

The HB one could probably be useful enough to perform (if I were still competent enough to do so) assuming that the pickup volume issue could be fixed, though I don't know how to do that. Thanks for the comments on the other models. Perhaps one day I might buy a better one!

I think one odd thing is that people will waxlyrical about a bit of gear, but saying what they use it for is less mentioned - a once a month metal band is different to a cruise ship jazz band is different to a indie rock touring band is different to a ... and so on. If you were in a band where it was not that frequent but it was a very much enjoyed hobby to pull on the tight Lycra a play some great 80s rock classics you might justify the SVT and 810... whereas the wedding reception band probably want something quicker to load in and out

.

The great thing about the internet is that it enables us to research, try and then sell on gear very easily, and I LOVE it for that, as my Feedback Thread demonstrates What it took me too long to learn is the wisdom in YMMV, what works for other people - no matter how how expert, how experienced, how knowledgable and how authoritative in their statements - doesn't always work for me, or even apply to me. The downside of the web is that it made me very lazy; gone are the days when I would hit Denmark Street at 10.00am and stay until 6.00 A-Bing gear, now I just get the hots for something and push the button, knowing that I can probably sell it for what I paid for it if I don't like it (thanks BC). The web has also made us all impatient; an amp is released in the US and we want it here, now, and in the case of some of us, are prepared to take a huge risk that A) they like it and aren't about to throw the difference between new and used price down the drain, and 2) that it works fine and won't need to be sent back at huge expense. It's Mesa, it'll be OK, might even be great, but will also be expensive compared to similar units form other manufacturers, might have some early reliability issues, and will ultimately not be all that different from gear that can already be had elsewhere. Having said that, of course I'd love one. The Walkabout was a Gateway amp for me, in that like beer or weed, I soon habituated and wanted something that did the same but more. I tried pretty much every amp Mesa ever made, at least in the tubey space - M-PUlse 360 & 600, BB750, Bass 400 & 400+, Buster, D-180 - and never found it, which is why I've gone back to Ampeg, where I can't help thinking there is more of the WA on steroids to be found that at Mesa. So I'm just going to wait until the first used WD-800 comes up and pounce on that

Agree with all your changes but I’d hang fire on the bridge until you’ve got a few miles under the belt. I’d intended to make this change but after a few gigs with no issues with the standard I decided to keep it stock. Be aware that if it’s a new purchase and you remove the bridge you might have some warranty issues - it’s not unknown to have paint separation in this area.

I agree they need to be amplified, but a piezo powered acoustic bodied bass with phosphor bronze strings does sound different enough from my P bass to warrant using on the gig. Not forgetting the aesthetics that add to the acoustic vibe from the other players too of course 😄

Aye. Props to the guy for successfully gaming the system - except that he's just made it a wee bit harder for everyone else and the band he hired are all out of pocket. Manipulative wee shite.

F Em7 A7 Dm Yesterday..... Sold my p bass on e bay...

Ray, very much so! Thank you. Looking long term, when you get yours back, I am wondering whether to try and get myself another acoustic bass, or to go down the solid route. Have found a very nice 1992 Fender Jazz Bass (American) in need of some love and a good setup, so been working on that. Got the neck straightened and the intonation sorted, just need to get the pickups at the right night. But yeh, still loving playing acoustic. Robbie p.s meant to say found it at school, so not mine!

Yeah but I reckon he can work it out.

I play in a couple of different groups etc and this Christmas had 5 xmas gigs of various detail, some on French horn too. But the main one which I'd been planning for, any worrying over, was Chester Big Band's first appearance at Storyhouse. Organising ~25 people is a not insignificant task. A time-change late on and various other factors made the run up to the gig fairly stressful for me! The guy who was due to do the sound had to pull out at short notice and we actually ended up pretty much buying a PA a few days before the gig - and I had to do the PA setup as well as the bass stuff. But, we had the gig today and it went brilliantly, it was fairly busy and all positive feedback so far; and hopefully some more work to come off this one too. My personal highlight was doing the (famous) solo line in the James Bond theme. Without a thorough soundcheck I had to guess at the setting on my boost pedal, I overdid it and because of the way I hammer (literally) the strings to achieve the kind of twang tone, I ended up filling the Storyhouse with slightly overdriven bass/solo riff!

YouTube seems to be the viewing of choice for the younger generation. My kids (21 & 17) rarely watch tv, but will spend hour after hour watching videos on YouTube given the chance, and the more puerile the better as far as I can tell. The ability to add "witty" comments is a bonus. For a lot of people it seems to be that if you can't become famous, you can at least become notorious through trolling. YouTube comments and Twitter appear to be the main vehicles. As has been said, it's the online (and therefore much more public) equivalent of mindful vandalism. It's a sad part of human nature, so it would seem

Thanks! I tend to see it as a rather pitiful borderline obsessive-compulsive psychological disorder - but at least it doesn't hurt anyone...

I think that we make it hard for ourselves - we study great bass players on TV, YouTube, Spotify etc, we chat with other great bass players on this here site, and so as a result we can have a tendency to take a harsh view of our own abilities, because we set ourselves such difficult standards to meet up to. But then once you're up on stage, you have to remember that you're probably the best bass player in the room, and you're doing things that, to the majority of the crowd, is like witchcraft. I don't think that we should get too complacent though. I like being well prepared, I like knowing that I've done the best that I can do. But I also agree that some of my most memorable gigs were the ones where things went wrong, but the band held it together by sheer musical intuition. S.P.

And just for clarity - DI (direct injection/interface) comes from replacing a microphone in the signal chain (mic’ing an amp or instrument) with a direct connection

There’s quite a bit of confusion and mix up in this thread. Let’s separate out some points for clarity. TRS & XLR - different connectors, same job. TRS stands for tip/ring/shield and means there are two signal wires and one ground - this allows for a balanced connection which (keeping it simple) allows much longer cable runs that can have any noise picked up along the way cancelled out at the other end. XLR is the same - two signal, one ground and thus balanced. A standard bass cable is one signal one ground and thus unbalanced - long cable runs will pick up noise. Now, the key bit is the impedance & voltage of the signal you are trying to send. From lowest to highest - mic, instrument, line. Depending on the equipment you are plugging in to, you are trying to find an input that will deal with your signal properly. A mic input on a mixer will have a mic Preamp that deals with its low output levels - a line input may not work well, but some pro stuff will be able to. The desk may have a separate line input, either xlr or TRS. A DI box that a soundman asks you to plug in to will convert instrument level to mic level and will have a balanced output for a long cable length. The key bit here is that the Stomp has a balanced output for long cable runs - so long as the soundman knows its line level then they can do what they need to do at the other end and not worry about cable run length. If you present it as TRS or XLR it’s actally sort of irrelevant.