akabane

I tend to slightly change what I like in basses as the years go by. However, the few things I’ve never liked, and perhaps never will: -Maple/light fretboards -bad quality quilt/flame quilt on tops (I do own one like this though) -sunburst finishes -Fender body shapes and headstocks -Fender design copies -Lipstick pickups -Oval pickups Love seeing all the different opinions on here

Well done, I liked that a lot

You all keep throwing up rainbows about how horrid this is. On the other hand, a 6 string Contra fretless is what my dream fretless bass is like. It's BEAUTIFUL, masterfully done and sounds fantastic. Just wish I had the dough to order it. (for what it's worth, I think the Contra design only really works as a 6 strings in terms of proportions) You keep hating on it, so maybe someone who has one will feel guilty and sell it to me I keep drooling...

Hello! Pitching my 2 cents here: I was eyeing the boss 1000 (the new gigantic board one, the Helix Floor/LT competitor let's call it), the Helix LT, the Hotone Ampero and the Pod GO. Which one did I go with? The Helix Stomp. Reson is the size and weight. It's offensively small, it's got ALL the amps + cab sims + IR + effects of the full Helix unit, limitation being the number of slots in your signal chain available (6 on the Stomp) and the lack of a DIRECT XLR out. What it DOES have though, is BALANCED 1/4 jack out. So it will give the exact same signal for your PA - if you're worried that the sound guy will look at you weird handing him a 1/4 jack, literally just get a 1/4''->XLR cable - again, the signal is exactly the same, just the connector changed. Oh, it does NOT have an expression pedal BUILT IN, however you can add one (or two) via the exp slot. I would say that for bass use, 6 slots are more than enough. I've actually managed to have a parallel signal chain that gives clean bass + distorted octaved guitar heavy sound in one signal chain, and everybody knows how many fx one should use to get a heavy distorted tone if you're a guitarist (three thousand!) So you might just want to get creative with it. All in all, the reason I didn't go with the Pod GO (which I think it's an almost perfect size vs. buttons/pedal layout) is because it's not a full Helix product, meaning that the order of the fx/amps/etc...is mostly pre-defined for you - and from time to time, I do like doing weird things with my sound, and in that case, the full customisability of the HX Stomp gave me all I needed. (EDIT: I keep saying that the Pod GO should have been the Helix LT)

This is a very interesting discussion to me, as I pretty much never low cut my bass signal! (surely why I sound like crap! Or is it because I need to change the strings? Or was it a cold wrist? Can never remember! ) I start cutting around 30 if my B is booming in the specific acoustic setting, but that's all - I only use it for modeling the sound to work well in the current ambient I'm playing in, if needed. Only time I'm cutting <80hz is when I'm trying to simulate heavy distorted guitars (as it's the 'accepted' "will work within the mix" cut phase along with cutting high around >120khz) - and can feel the difference if I cut <50hz. Very interesting how you are using your low/hi cuts - what's the type of sounds you're using that require those cuts? Clean bass/compressed/driven/distorted/synthy? If on clean bass, do you use those cuts to 'tighten' up the sound?

Damn *flees back to talkbass* 🤣

I said your EXAMPLES were useless. Not your perspective. As I supported in the rest of my reply. Thin skin, from grown up people, weird. Also, I am not suggesting people should IMMERSE THEMSELVES IN MUSIC ALL THE TIMES...where have I been extreme in my view? This reply makes more sense than the original one I replied to. No, you are not a musician BECAUSE you hear nor listen to music. However, you do not even GET to become nor even THINK about becoming a bass player without being exposed to music or heard the instrument before. Jesus, what is hard to understand about this? You all are making it sound like I'm trying to do mental gymnastics here.

There, changed the salute at the end of the reply - hope it makes you happier My reply was aimed not generally at OP's question, rather at some of the other replies that came through in the thread. I obviously know what you mean by that - although an argument could be made that ANY music plays itself and gets put to your ears. So, again...of course it's a more rethorical discussion. What do you find rude about my reply? The fact I consider sad who finds listening to music unpleasant but keeps doing it because 'they have to learn it'? Because I said the reply someone made doesn't work in the context of their own reply? Why?

But...the moment you are playing music, you are also listening to it. You can't really use that argument in the more abstract sense: it would be like saying "I like to speak Finnish" when I not only do not know the language, but I do not even know that such language exists in the first place. It's just an impossibility.

As long as you're not the only sucker who's not getting paid, and the venue has historically been good to you, then of course. Obviously any help I can get (as in, if they put up their PA so I can just turn up with my instruments without having to lug around amps etc) is welcome - and no you shouldn't have drinks on the house either(since we are talking about a situation where the pub could close soon - you don't want to give them something for 'half-free'), since consistency would be key for me in this circumstance. That being said, careful when you say "This place could close down UNLESS I GO PLAY THERE FOR FREE". I hope it's not something the venue told you. Everywhere is full of musicians who're willing to play a night out for free, so if that were the case, you might be the only one who's actually considering it from the roster of people they asked from. That is, unless you are a big local name band who can turn up at least a hundred people or MORE by yourselves - in that case, the bigger your following is, the happier I would be to do the gig for free, as that would LITERALLY mean that by your only presence there, you are actively saving the place by overflowing it with money. If you're the guys who can bring 20 friends to a gig, well then, your contribution would not be anymore than your casual footfall, actually. So, again, if you genuinely think it will help AND you're not the only one being taken for this (meaning they actually are not paying promoter, PA, etc either), absolutely, go for it!

All your examples are useless, and you make them useless yourself in the very next sentence. Followers of football might not play the game nor even know its rules but they watch the games. F1 enthusiasts who own race cars might leave them in the garage for a lifetime, yet they enthusiastically watch racing videos. A 'music enthusiast' by the same parameters might not create music, nor play an instrument and just hang their beautiful Fodera on the wall to never be played, but will enthusiastically listen to music. It's how incidental development happens - you get exposed to things you're not necessarily always looking for even just by looking for what you like specifically. That being said, the only way the type of reasoning you want to put forward might be: "however, we are not on a music forum, we are on a bass instrument forum", which opens a whole another can of worms. Also, you then go on with the complete non-sequitur about the relation between what you like/listen to and other unrelated genres/styles (your Mozard and Schubert example) is, well...unrelated by definition. By the way, funny you should say that: most young people will never put Schuber nor Mozart in their 'sound systems', yet they will have heard or know their melodies. I wonder why, right? Doesn't mean everyone should actively go listen to Mozart. What they need to hear, the world will take care of. It's how popular music gets popular, it's how masterpiece become and stay masterpieces. Wheter you like it or not, you are going to get exposed to it. This naturally leaves out all the more niche genres, for which then we have all the smaller communities built around - and is where a lot of more interesting development can come from, like in everything else in life. If we stay within the realm of 'bass players and musicians', then a prerequisite would be enjoying listening to music. Here I read of people who not only do not listen to music at all(life is busy and I'm not talking about who doesn't listen to other people's music because they're composing their own - which is still a big mistake in my mind, and ask any good composer) , but who actively recognise that listening to music is not a pleasurable activity to them anymore. And it hasn't been for more than a decade. To me that's just stupid. Not that it happened, of course everyone has their own reasons for whatever happens, but the fact that someone stayed in a situation of unpleasantness for so many years without getting out of it. We're talking the music world. Not the mafia. The only other reason I can think of is that those people wouldn't be even good at flipping a burger at McDonald's instead, so they're forced to stay into playing music because it pays for their food and they don't have a choice, since the 'craft for life' they wanted to invest in was 'learning to play bass well enough to do covers'. Thus, as I said above, I feel sad for them in either case, not as a personal attack, as a genuinely sad feeling. Peace! War!

Absolutely agreed! And there shouldn't be any 'normal', we're all different people.

Must have been sad being you for the past 15 years

It depends; I'd say that if that young bass player definitely not you cares about going with weird, experimental sounds, the HX FX might be a better choice. Whereas, if they're looking for a still compact all-in-one solution to replace their (kind of...more common, perhaps?) chains, then the Pod GO would make sense. The limitation in order and paths you have on the Pod GO is going to serve you very well (and it also looks like what the actual Helix LT should have looked like, in my opinion ), looks better, and has integrated volume/exp pedal. If you're looking to be more experimental, then the complete freedom and the HX FX's 9 blocks will serve you greatly instead. Perhaps you might find a use for 2 return loops it has. The only thing I would be wary of is that I wonder if there's a reason for this not to be an official part of the Helix family - be it hardware or software architecture - it might require very specific updates instead. Whereas I would be kind of more confident in the HX FX to keep up with the whole Helix's family of updates/fx. All in all, I like both - I would probably get an HXFX + external pedal though. I do like doing weird stuff with my bass sounds though

This made me laugh much harder than it should have - well done, you! 🤣

Really curious to see how this pans out. I'll flip my lid if I see this content disappear

I'm really sorry to hear about all that. However, all those parts here is what really make my shoulders fall with defeat. Really incredibly bad customer relationship throughout the whole process - even now, after all this time, he's dismissive and thinking he's in the right. Someone really needs a metaphorical slap in the face here. Starting to think there were no pictures 'during process' because the process is done in a factory before rebranding the bass and selling it out, so he might rarely have access to 'in progress' photos himself. Every development of this makes me more sad.

This has been going on for way too long for me not to consider the fact he just doesn't care. He has been pointed at THIS specific thread. Additionally, if you look around on the net, you'll find plenty of people lamenting the bad QC of his instruments. Doesn't care. People should just put their money in somebody else's pockets. It's a shame, as I was eyeing an Elwood 6 build. Oh well. He's not the only one who makes mid-range super jazzes I'm just really bitter for the OP. If it were me, at this point I'd have flewn to his door and personally gave the bass back just out of principle

Different strokes and all that That being said, I've only ever only found a couple of Jens' basses "beautiful", and those include one of his pure white builds and one of his black matte ones (unfortunately not remembering the model names). I've never played one and definitely looking forward to. They are definitely out there, and Ritter seems like one of the few bass luthiers around that keeps making statements (whether we might like them or not ) and I can only applaud him for that! By the way, to whomever said they look like child drawings of a Carl Thompson...to me Thompson designs have always looked very, very bad (all the proportions feel wrong every time I've put my hands on one, or seen one). And I am a person who tends to like more 'baroque' design choices (which his designs are full of), so it's not even that I don't like the style. Just THOSE particular designs - almost never seen a CT I liked aesthetically. However, I did have a chance to play a CT and it was an absolutely impressive instrument! Which I reckon is the same experience I'd have playing a Ritter. So...who gives?

Wow, a lot of talk on how to achieve an awesome high gain dist sound, with people saying "yeah I achieved this amazing sound, it breaks boulders and retains bottom end and high gain highs its fantastic", and nobody posting even a 4 second clip of their sounds or reference sounds they'd like to get? Is it just me? 🤣