MichaelDean

Glow in the dark power itself is pretty cheap (you can find it on eBay). If you can find someone to make it into a shape you can quickly install as an inlay, I can't see the extra spend being enormous. Especially since they've dropped the Gotoh hardware for this incarnation.

Back at the basement at Exchange in Bristol, we (Hora) organised this gig with our guitarist's friend's band, Tüsk. We were a bit worried about tickets sales. This is our 6th gig, Tüsk haven't played in Bristol before, but we actually managed to almost fill the 50 capacity venue! Very pleased with that. Plus we sold a couple of t-shirts. I managed to snap my high C string on the first song so I was out of tune for the first couple of songs until I got a chance to retune 😅 I took along my Zilla cab because the stage is so tiny, and it delivered the thunder in spades, as it always does. Much better than their house cab, a beat up Ashdown 410. Love that thing. Signal chain was Combustion, GX-100, ABM-600, Zilla 212. VID_198270127_083805_925.mp4

A lot of the time, I'm not necessarily concentrating on the lyrics. I'm listening to the whole song and enjoying the vocal stylings, not necesarily the content. Like it's another instrument. I find I have to properly concentrate on the lyrics to hear the words. And I don't necesarily notice any story being told unless I read them. That was what the song book in a CD was good for I suppose...

I'd wondered about these for use on my backup bass for drop C. Good to hear some real world experience!

Just to add my two pennies... Lots of the Focusrite stuff also allows you to do direct, latency free, monitoring. You can also use a few XLR splitters for guitars, vocals & drums and run cables for everything you need, while leaving most stuff in place for the sound guy. In an old band, we used a laptop running Ableton looping the guitar live, then into a big Focusrite like this and a Behringer thing like this connected via ADAT, which also worked in the direct monitoring software (which I think was called Mix Control, but is now Focusrite Control) to give us more ins and outs. That then lets you save your individual mixes and also gives you the opportunity to group outputs for stereo mixes if you want it (and you do...). We were running: Guitar Bass Vocals Keys Kick Snare Stereo overheads Cello This set up allowed us to have 5 separate IEM mixes and the sound guy had everything as normal. You'll need lots of XLRs and set up is going to take longer. But the rewards are great. Consistent, accurate monitoring is amazing. We used to be able to get set up in standard changeover times, with the guitarist checking that his midi controller was working too. I like @BigRedX's patch bay too. Label it and make it idiot proof, so everyone knows exactly what to plug in and where. A detailed tech spec will also be useful for sound guys.

Good to hear you're on the mend, Phil!

Good run through before next weekend's gig. Tried using some samples to go between tracks and that worked nicely. Also managed to work out I can use the harmoniser for +/- 1 octaves for some extra filth if I downgrade the reverb from the "plus" option on my GX-100. That, with my always on OD, plus fuzz, reverb and delay sounds enormous. I've recently switched out to processing all of my dirts as parallel paths too, combining bass and guitar effects to make a thicker sound. I'm so pleased with my tone at the moment! I dread to think how much I'd have spent to get my current setup in a traditional pedalboard format. Especially once you add in a pedal switcher that can do parallel paths. It'd be massive and heavy to boot!

The P1 has a very rigid effects chain. You can move blocks about a bit, but you can't add new ones. If I was looking for a new practice tool, the Boss Katana Go would be at the very top of my list. I don't have one of them, but based on feedback here and my own GX-100, I have a lot of confidence in it. The P1 is my biggest gear regret to date. I couldn't coax a sound I liked enough out of it (for bass or guitar), which meant I didn't practice and spent my time tweaking and getting frustrated. I wish I had returned it, instead of thinking I could make it work.

We've organised a gig at Exchange with some friends on the bank holiday Sunday at the end of the month. Should be fun!

I installed the drivers for my GX on my work laptop so that when we have company wide briefings, I can route the teams audio out the headphone jack and noodle away 😅

I know it's a different range, but I've done it with my GX-100 which just does dry and effected (both in stereo). The ability to reamp without buying extra gear is super handy. On my MacBook, I created an aggregate audio device (not possible with Windows as far as I'm aware) with my audio interface and my GX-100, sent the dry back through some effects, then into my head, took the DI out into my audio interface, which I fed into a cab sim.

Even when they do go, take the head out of the wooden case, pull the old valve out, plug in the new. It's a preamp valve, so no biasing is required. It's really easy.

Not really. The preamp doesn't see massive voltages like power amp tubes. It should tick along happily for years.

Fender released the Musicmaster as a "beginner" or "student" model. For some reason, that's stuck in some people's minds and had short scale basses labelled as cheap/bad for the last X decades, despite some very prominent players using them. I think the tide is changing on that as more and more manufacturers are making them as more premium models. I love my Mustang. It sounds great and I've had loads of compliments on the tone too. Any excuse for a picture too...

Decided to take my Revelation PJ tonight in lieu of my Dingwall on account of running a bit late and this is the bass that lives in the case until I swap it out. It was surprisingly fun with this one. Even the 105-45 strings going down to drop C wasn't terrible. Less muting to worry about overall, but there are some phrases I find easier on the fan frets. I'm also starting to wonder if I prefer a gloss neck to a satin one... Seems like madness, but my EB3 was gloss, so is my Mustang and Revelation, and my recent Harley Benton LP is also gloss. Doesn't seem to hamper me in any way.

The Loui looks so much tidier than it used to! Not hard, but it's nice to see a bit of an effort has been made. Haven't played/been there in years now despite it being in walking distance. Ought to rectify that.

When you load it up in stomp mode, the DarkPre takes up two footswitches on the board. The one one the left engages/disengages the effect, the one on the right turns the boost on/off. I'd assume the boost is off by default. From the manual:

Not sure how well a mosh pit would go at a jazz gig 😅

Depends on the band you're playing with. I've had people sit on the beer stained carpet of a venue to intently listen in my old post rock band. That was cool. I've also had the whole place dancing in the hip hop covers band. Maybe trying to get a pit going should be my goal for the (doom) metal band I'm in now? Not sure that doom is really the one to get people going like that though...

Played at The Pit at McCann's Rock and Ale bar in Newport last night. Really good fun. Good setup with cabs and drum kit provided, so you just need to rock up with heads and breakables. We hit everything a bit too fast, which we haven't done previously. Need to work out a signal to slow it down a bit. I dropped my pick twice as well, which doesn't usually happen, so that was annoying. Still, good fun and people seemed to enjoy it! We played with a death metal band called Cremulation and a another doom band, Damek, who we're hoping we can arrange for them to come to Bristol at some point. This was the setup. We're Hora, and the gear I used was my Dingwall into my GX-100 and then my ABM-600.

I've cycled around with a bass on my back before. Wasn't overly comfortable. The neck kept bashing into my helmet. I didn't have to worry about an amp, as there was something decent to use at the studio. It didn't feel overly safe cycling through the middle of Bristol like that, but I never had any actual issues. Most pannier racks/eyelets are rated for 25kg, so a small combo might be ok bungeed on, but I wonder if the bass might hit it? A trailer seems like the safest option to my mind. Pop the combo in that and the bass on your back? There might be a cheapish second hand one you could buy and refurbish/sell and replace if you decide it is a good idea.

You may have guessed from the silence, but I've never seen a non-Hipshot one available to buy new. I think the answer is "no".

That is a super neat solution. Replace one end of the cable with a locking jack socket and I reckon the hairbands would be hold up to some jumping around.

I feel like the sales comms are a lot better with their new system. I ordered new strings yesterday, I had an email confirmation, email to say dispatched, another with tracking details and I received them about 40 minutes ago.

I broke a bass string. For the first time ever. They've been on for about 6/7 months and needed changing, but yeah. I've been playing 23 years, never broken one. To be fair, it was a high string that's tuned up from the optimal. Just snapped at the bridge! Good practice otherwise. I think we're ready for the next gig on Friday after I get some new strings.