JPJ

The epoxy idea isn’t as daft as it first sounds, but I’d use an epoxy putty rather than liquid. The obvious alternative is to drill the smaller hole diameter and then file the flats using a square needle file.

Not a fan of Marcus's style but boy he can play. Really enjoyed that, what a lovely down to earth guy.

Small update, the correct height desktop speaker stands arrived yesterday and I've installed them this morning. Now bearing in mind the mix was tremendous with the speakers sitting on my desk (on foam isolation pads) but now they're up where they are supposed to be there is a noticeable improvement. How would I describe this? Well clarity springs to mind - the ability to mentally separate out the individual instruments, the way the vocals sit on top of the mix and not buried in it. I've always looked at the audio community with 'emperor's new clothes' suspicions but after this experience I think I might have to adjust my position. Now has anyone got any links to those gold plated cables? 🤣

Funnily enough, this just came up on an SWR lovers Facebook group earlier today - why someone hasn’t done this with the SWR Grand Prix preamp. I know I’d buy one if somebody did 😎

That’s what I bought mine for. Obviously you have to be mindful of the limitations of the speakers, but as i am running a preamp, compressor, and Micro Thumpinator before the bass hits the DAW, and setting the levels correctly to avoid unwanted clipping I see no difference to playing a track through them that contains recorded bass?

So I've finally got the last of the Christmas house guests away and had some time to set up and play with the KRK's and I think I have become an instant audiophile. Please bear in mind that I've only been listening to mp3's (so heavily compressed) tracks but the stereo image is so good you would swear the sound source was directly in front of you. In fact, I had to check my GarageBand settings as at first I thought they had weirdly set themselves to use my screen speakers and not the KRK's. Playing bass through these is a joy. No loss of bottom end and as loud as I need them to be (and considerably more in reserve) and they are not vibrating the room to bits while I am playing. At the moment they are sat on my desk so about 8" lower than recommended, but I will rectify that tomorrow when my desk stands arrive. I've had a play with the handy free KRK app to 'tune' the speakers to the room and for me it did make a noticeable improvement. In summary, I only wish I had done this a lot earlier. If you are considering going down the studio monitor route, I can happily recommend the KRK RP5 Gen 4's for a small home studio setup.

I see your argument and I’ll be the last person to get between GAS and your wallet, but the QSC still has you making on-the-fly adjustments using a touch screen rather than physical faders. I’ve got my XR18 racked up along with the DBX drive rack and a handy rack drawer in an 8U flight case that has a patch panel on the back for the main outs from the DBX and a power strip. My X-Touch is in an old pedal board flight case that sits neatly on top of the rack case which is normally on my side of the ‘stage’. My iPad or Surface Go sits neatly in the X-Touch flight case lid from where I can monitor the meters screen whilst playing.

A fellow XR18 user here, mixing on stage whilst playing bass. As Smanth says, edit your iPad screen settings to not go to sleep but this still leaves you trying to make on the fly adjustments on an iPad screen. After searching for a long time I managed to get hold of a Behringer X-Touch controller secondhand for a reasonable price and using that, along with DCA’s mean I can tweak the mix on the fly easily, even mid-song if necessary.

@Phil Starrso the Rokits arrived on Christmas Eve, but with a house full of guests I haven’t had chance to even unbox them yet. Looking like tomorrow or Wednesday before I’ll get a chance to play with them.

You’ll be missing so much with the silver, I much prefer the detail you get with platinum 😂

45 mins to play one ‘flyer’ - we can do nine or ten songs in that time 😂

Bass corner from tonight’s gig. First time I’ve played a “social club” in years, I’d forgotten about the 45 minute break between sets!

So, thanks to this thread I have today pulled the trigger on a pair of KRK Rokit RP5 G4 monitors. I’ve gone for these based on the published frequency range, the front ports, and the relative shallow depth. My desk is pushed up against the wall so depth is my enemy and these seemed to be the best compromise.

I’ve refinished a few guitars and basses in nitro from a rattle can and my experience is its always best starting from clean wood to avoid the type of reaction I got with the telecaster body below. Nitro is very temperature sensitive so if you are thinking about spraying out doors at this time of year I’d recommend you don’t. The black telecaster was sprayed from bare wood using rattle cans from Rothko & Frost. The secret to a good finish is preparation of the body, and finishing of the paint by wet sanding and buffing. Don’t forget nitro is a carcinogenic so invest in a good filter mask (not one of the FP Covid jobbies either) before spraying. When you take into account the cost of all the materials (primer, grain filler, undercoat, top coat, wet’n’dry from 400 grit through to 2000 grit, corse medium and fine buffing compounds) not to mention the hours and hours of work and potential for pink torpedo-ups along the way, you understand why the pro’s charge what they charge to refinish a body - and believe me, it can be money (and time) better spent.

Just to close out on this thread, I sent the Micro Thumpinator back to Max at SFX and he identified the problem as something fried in the power supply. I flipped my meagre pedal board over and to my horror realised that the micro switches for the output used to power the Thumpinator were set to 18v and not 9v. It’s most likely been like this for a while so I think we can chalk this one down to ‘user error’. Anyway, Max repaired my unit for a very reasonable sum and returned it to me promptly. Case closed.

It’s actually the stand that attracts me! I used to find that with my KK the weight of the instrument was resting in my left hand which made it awkward to play standing up. The weight plus poor left hand technique on my part caused me issues with my thumb which stemmed from a dislocation in a motorcycle accident thirty years ago.

Colour me interested. I am in a similar position but I am looking for the holy grail of small form factor (particularly depth as my desk is up against a wall) and a good low end response without the need for a separate sub. I’m wanting to be able to play bass through mine via my interface/GarageBand setup. I’ve been tempted a few times by the Rokit 5 but they are quite deep.

Thanks, I’ve only recently returned to playing fretless (believe it or not my first ‘proper’ bass was a fretless Ibanez back in 1980 which I still own today) and I will be playing fretless exclusively on a new gig I have kicking off in the new year. I’ve been using the Nathan East patch for the Chorus in the Plethora which adds a nice shimmer of chorus without getting ‘boomy’. I’ll have a play about with the Hall of Fame at the weekend when I have some time.

Seems I’m going to be experimenting with the Hall of Fame reverb on my Plethora X3. I always thought the sparkle was somewhere in the mid-range area hence the original post but I am happy to be wrong if I already have what I need 😎

Congratulations - I am still considering/pondering/procrastinating over buying a WAV myself so I will be particularly interested to hear how you get on.

Cheers Paulo, Interesting feedback - guess I am back to the drawing board 😎

Do we have any Darkglass harmonic booster users who could enlighten me as to the suitability of this pedal to add sparkle to fretless bass in a live setting? Don’t want to make an expensive purchase if it isn’t going to hit the spot sonically.

The standouts for me were the B7K, the humble Sansamp, the Doug, and surprisingly the TE Transit

So after an evening deep diving into multi-band compression and much experimentation I think I have come up with two patches for the Hypergravity compressor in my Plethora X3 that support both my fretted and fretless playing. The Sansamp turned out to just need a tweak of additional mid to work alongside the new compression settings. Next gig isn’t for a few weeks but I will get a chance to test the new patches in rehearsal this Saturday. Got to say the TonePrint editor is massively tweakable and its possible to go down the rabbit hole if you are not careful.