51m0n

Love Cats - The Cure Blister In The Sun - Violent Femmes John The Fisherman - Primus (but you'll need a wang bar)

Actually, the VLE is a -20dB shelf where the knob controls the frequency of the cut point. The more you roll it on the lower the cutoff frequency is. When its 'off' (all the way counterclockwise) the cutoff frequency is 20KHz, when its all the way on (fully clockwise) the cutoff is 250Hz

Do they do a relic-ed version though?

Reaper is the best bang for the buck DAW on windows and Mac IMO.

A very good tele is my favourite, but it has to be very very good (ie have mellowed to a certain extent) and used in conjunction with an amp that is very tele friendly. Recently got tones in the studio with a tele into a Cornford that have been making me smile for days. Big sounds, lots of bite, but never ever remotely harsh.

Wow, mismatched speakers in the soffits - all the rage in the best turned out studios these days..... Oh dear!

Spent the weekend introducing Plux's band (Slow Motion Sickness) to the joys of multitracking. I rarely get to do much tracking these days, and I tend to forget how much I enjoy the challenges that are specific to this side of the recording art. These guys have never (with the exception of Plux) been multi-tracked, hell they've never used decent kit before. Their appreciation of what they were offered, and their sense of real joy at the results they have captured made my weekend really fantastic. An excellent weekend, full of genuine teamwork and talent from the band. Looking foward to getting to mix the results as soon as possible! For those who cant be bothered to scroll, here's the linky:- [url="http://soundcloud.com/51m0n-1/sets/slow-motion-sickness-e-p-1/s-u42Wa"]Slow Motion Sickness E.P[/url]

Search on the forum and you'll find me constantly banging on at people about the limitations that the space for metering on pedals gives. They're really hard to use for any but the most seasoned compressor hack. Hope it goes well in the rehearsal!

That couch looks very lonely!

Oh yeah, gritted teeth/clenched jaw, I get that if I haven't played for a while and I find myelf 'in at the deep end' a bit. Also accompanied by, "Oh sh**! I need to remember to breath!" Oh, and dont thank me for the above, its taking ideas from Michael Manring's old VHS video to their logical conclusion. Completely changed how I play (from a technical hand position/strength/damage perspective), for the better....

Oh one more thing, the less hard you pluck the lower you can get your action (within reason), which makes holding down the string even easier. This is a [i][b]'very good thing'[/b][/i].

First question, what is your eq like? If you are boosting in an area that those upper strings have no output (ie frequencies below their fundamental) then you are using eq to make your lower strings louder (sometimes by a lot louder) than the upper strings. A compressor is going to struggle to help there. Just a thought. Given that your EQ isnt going to make this an impossible balancing act however, try this. Set:- Slope (ratio in common terminology) to 2:1 Attack to between 12 O'clock and 3 O'clock (you dont want to crush the transients) Level (makeup gain) to 12 O;'clock (we can refine this in a bit) Threshold to fully anti-clockwise Now, play your low E, then your G, just keep alternating and as you do roll the threshold clockwise. When you hear the compressor start to grab on the E roll back a smidge anti-clockwise. The G will probably not be affected by the compressor yet, as far as you can hear it anyway, although in all likelihood it will still be giving some GR. Then turn play 8ths on the E and engage and disengage the comp, adjust the level to make the comp equally as loud engaged as disengaged. Once you are there thats about as good as you can get. The compressor is as unobtrusively compressing the signal as possible but for as much of the time as possible (ie low ratio & very low threshold). However this compressor is not able to allow you to adjust the key listen frequencies, so the likelihood is that your bass end is what is going to cause the compressor to engage the most, somewhat defeating the objective. Nevertheless this kind of setting will get you somewhere close to what you would ideally want. You can tweak the attack time a bit now if you like, to fine tune it to remain as unobtrusive as possible. Too fast an attack will result in the transients being caught to early, the compression will sound very obvious, the tone wil become less bright, and the feel will be that your dynamics are struggling. Too long an attack and it will feel like the compressor isnt really helping at all, or you can get noticeable pumping with extreme settings. Even if you cant hear the upper strings being levelled out, until you are in a mix you can't judge this, the human ear is not a very good dB meter at all!

But that is properly properly nice though...... Oh dear, just saw myself in the mirror, and I appear to have gone directly between blue and yellow

A well set up compressor can make the bass be heard with far more clarity in the mix against the real evil that we compete with, the kick drum On this forum there is so much guitar hate, and yes in certain genres the guitar is a real frequency pig in the mix, but in more live mixes than not the real centre piece of the sound guy's world is the kick, it is usually mixed to be insanely loud, totally drowning out the bass. It is not uncommon on a really big rig to duck the bass around the kick, to help it stand out (happens a lot in recording to, but you get to be extrememly scientific with it). So how can a compressor help you? Well for one thing it can help to even out the level between the attack stage and the sustain stage of every note you play, by boosting the sustain stage in comparison with the attack level. This helps because it gives the part of the note after the transient more volume for longer, so the bass can be heard better after the kick, and is stronger for longer on every note. You can also use a limiter to control extreme peaks in the attack phase as well, allowing you to get more gain out of your rig, which in turn means you hear yourself better on stage, and present the engineer with a more controlled signal, far less likely to cause his precious 20K rig an issue. In which case he is more likely to turn you up louder in the mix, if he believes your signal to be better/easier to handle. Finally if you are a player who tends to change timbre, either with pickup selection, playing style, or effects, a compressor can help you to achieve a more even output in each case, again giving you the best chance to be there in the mix. Its not the be all and end all, and by set up well I mean its doing its job, but you cant feel it, or hear it working [i][u][b]until its in the mix[/b][/u][/i], butin the mix suddenly you can hear the bass 'properly' all through the set. Very hard to do without metering and a fully featured comrpessor, but not impossible if you really know what you are doing. If you dont know how to listen for compression I would recommend a cheaper rack unit (Alesis 3630 or a dbx unit) and learn to use that properly in context. It ownt matter that its a rack unit in your fx loop, because we are talking about always on compression. And lastly a well set up compressor will not, in any way, prevent you from playing with dynamics. That is just not the case. A poorly set up compressor may do to a certain extent, but it would have to be fairly extreme settings (more than 6dB of gain reduction, with a highish ratio, and you start to achieve compression as effect rather than just an aid to being heard in the mix). It is quite possible that the bassist you saw really knew his beans about setting up a compressor, and that helped you really hear his playing so well, even in a club, even with sound bouncing off walls, and I dare say, the ceiling too.....

How you doing for time though? Its all looking spiffy as, but will it be complete in time for the upcoming album, or do you have a plan B?

Insured, yes Fastidious about looking after and keeping an eye on the kit, yes Never had an issue yet, fingers crossed I dont take my eye off the ball now. However if the Roscoe has anything going for it to allay my fears its the fact that noone knows what the hell it is, and it doesnt look nearly as xpensive as it actually is.

Low and high eqs will be shelving eqs, the middle will be a bandpass eq. As for the frequency centers and Q's of each. Couldnt know without doing some measurements, or at least knowing the make and model of amp. Typically on a smaller practice amp you are looking at sometyhing like 100Hz for the low, 700Hz to 1KHz for the mid, and 3KHz for the highs, all with nice wide Q (or steepness of eq slope). Typically you can boost or cut upto 12dB in any of those ranges. Which is a huge amount. If you use too much low end, you will disappear in a mix, the human ear doesnt hear the pitches very well below the midrange, we take most of our pitch info from the midrange, so for all it sounds great solo'ed to cut those mids, when you get into a band try and cut them less. Gain on an amp like yours is just volume, on more fully featured amps you will often find an input gain and a master or output volume. This allows you to set the volume going into the front of the amp to an optimum level before distortion or clipping occurs. Since different basses have different electronics there is a very wide range of input levels that amps must cope with. There is a correct procedure for setting the input gain, requireing a clip light of some kind which will indicate that you are pushing too much signal into the amp.

All the soundguy wants is good strong even level in the bass. If you use a compression pedal or a dustbin to help, he doesnt care, he may well add more compression (or not), and he will almost certainly eq your bass to fit it into the mix better. The only time he will be upset by use of a compressor before the sound gets to him is if it adds a lot of noise. And yes whatever you add/remove with fx, if they are before the DI or the mic on the cab then they will change the signal that he gets.

I would talk to our own OBBM at http://bassic-bits.co.uk/ and ask him to turn you out an insert cable the right size for your board. That way you know it will be quality bale (Klotz is his favourite) using quality (Neutriks) jacks, made right.

Holy walls Batman!

Thats pretty cool, have you heard the JesusFist Tapes by Ruiner Severhead (aka Jeff Schmidt)? That would be right up your street....

Cracking groove there sir! Meeting BH must have been very cool.

+1 for the Zoom kit, I have the H4n (yes I do actually use a lot of the 'extra features' otherwise I would have got an H2) and its truly superb. The next thing you will find is you need some way foediting the huge amounts of stuff you will generate in rehearsal (by far the best bet is to just leave them recording in the room for the entire session). I'd recommend Reaper for that, its superb.

Totally taken the wind out of my sails today. R.I.P Bob, thanks, for everything, you couldn't know how much you will be missed....

Haha yeah, how many inputs do you need (1 per instrumetn at the same time) and two outputs, plus headphone out as a minimum. I'd say get an RME Babyface if you have the cash (not cheap!), simply because the drivers are rock steady, and the kit is very very good. Reaper gets a huge +1 from me. You can try [url="http://www.bluenoiseplugins.com/plugins/drummix/beta-edition/"]MyDrumSet[/url] for drums, its free, and simple, nut you need to know drum processing to get the most out of it...