BigRedX

Being able to play a number of different instruments - albeit mostly badly - and the fact that I have in the past spent considerable time trying to make synths sound like other instruments and using other instruments to try and control synths or produce synth-like sounds, means that now I can see that the easiest and most efficient way of producing various sounds is to use the instrument that produces them in the easiest and most efficient way. Also in a live situation being able to reproduce those sounds exactly every time becomes very important. Back in the 80s when I first started seriously dabbling with controlling synths from my guitar or bass or trying to make my guitar and bass produce more synth-like sounds I quickly discovered that for me the learning curve for developing enough keyboard technique to be able to play the parts I wanted was far shallower than the one required to modify my playing technique to get the synth sounds to trigger accurately and more importantly in a way that could be replicated every time I plugged in my instruments. I've also found that for all the good guitar and bass synth demos that are on YouTube, if you couldn't see that a guitar or bass is being used to trigger the sounds you wouldn't know that they weren't being produced by a keyboard player. Notwithstanding the fact that most of these demos require a huge number of takes in order to get a performance that is suitably glitch-free for public consumption. That for me completely negates the point of using a guitar or bass to control a synth or produce synth-like sounds. It's not easy/good enough to be repeatable, and for me the things that make plucked stringed instruments so expressive are all the things that simply don't translate when trying to do pitch to synth and instead produce unwanted glitches in the sound or pitch instability. I would definitely be using a keyboard synth for some songs in my current band were it not for the fact that at the moment we are concentrating on keeping the equipment we use at gigs as simple and easy/quick to set up as possible. Until we regularly get more than 30 minutes for setup and sound check those songs that will have to wait and the songs we play live will be those that we can do with the existing instrumentation.

It's the one that used to belong to me. It's from 1985 according to Chris May. Does that make it "late"? The other Original I used to own was from 1983 and had the pickups in the same place. The battery box is on the back under where the bridge is on the front.

If I'm putting a bass or anything else up for sale, it's because I don't need it anymore. What happens to it after it has gone is no longer my business and TBH I really don't care.

The position of the controls in the photo above is probably very close to my standard setting when I used to own that bass. Volume on full, neck filter to bassy, bridge filter to trebly, balance slightly toward the bridge pickup.

Everyone's string preferences are different, so a thread like this can only be a series of recommendations, and unfortunately the OP will have to work their way (expensively) through them until them find a set that suits them. IME Rotosound are incapable of consistently making good string sets that aren't standard gauge for 4-string 34" basses, so even if you've been getting on fine with their sets on your Jazz they probably won't suit your 5-string. Plenty of people on here like DR strings. I've not been able to get on with any of the ones I tried. My recommendations for good 5-string sets would be Warwick Red Label, Warwick Black Label if you want a taper-wound Low-B or LaBella Steels although I believe they are changed the design since I last tried some. I stopped using the LaBellas because while the last set I had were better than the Warwick Black labels they weren't twice as good despite the fact they cost twice as much.

@Al Krow I think what you want out of "synth bass" and what I want are two very different things which is why I wouldn't have bothered with anything synthy for the example you posted in another thread and why I am not satisfied with any of the synth bass pedals because none of them will give the control, evenness and consistency of sound that I can get from using a keyboard synth, or even better by programming it in my DAW. And I am a bass player. I just haven't limited myself to solely the bass guitar for producing bass sounds. I'm "lucky" in that I have enough technical ability to be able to choose the most appropriate tool for the job, and from experience a plucked stringed instrument is not always the best choice. And having said that my technical ability on all the instruments I play is pretty limited, so IMO if I can do it anyone can!

Most of the time my band book a small rehearsal room and set up facing each other. However from time to time, and before any really important gigs we book the big room and set up as we would on stage all facing where the audience would be. From experience it is important to do this so we break any unconscious visual cues that we might have been using when playing the songs and can work on how we are going to project to the audience. What we actually practice: Generally we will work out a set order for the next gig and run through it to make sure that the flow is right. If we plan on changing the order from this we'll either do the whole set again in its new format if there are a lot of changes, or just the short section that has changed if we've just moved one or two songs. Then we'll work on any new songs that we have on the go, and after that if there is still time go through the set again. Often we don't use our full 3 hour booking because we would prefer to go when everything is sounding good and there is no more work to be done, rather than carrying on just because we have time that we have paid for.

IME buffers are only useful if you have a very long lead to your amp, and nowadays most people in this situation will be using a wireless system which essentially acts as a buffer.

And an actual keyboard synth will do the job even better.

IMO most on board electronic don't offer anything that couldn't be done better, and more electrically efficiently elsewhere in the signal chain.

Both of mine had pickups that looked like those in the basses on the right of your photo. Control layout was the same as that on the far right. I think it was volume, neck filter, bridge filter in line with the pickup balance control underneath.

They were both active, it's just that the earlier one had the filter pre-amp replaced by a more conventional one. The DI output was still in place it but the XLR wasn't connected to anything inside the bass. No idea who made to pickups. They were "soap bars" (for what that's worth, as there could be anything under the cover) under wooden covers. According to Chris May the basses dated from 1983 and 1985 so that makes them reasonably "early" in the grand scheme of things. IIRC the 1983 one was the first 5-string bass that Overwater had ever made. I sold the 1985 model to someone here who might be able to add further info if they still have it.

Anyone moaning about what eBay fees should have a look at what a standard auction house charges buyers and sellers. I've recently been looking at vintage furniture from my local auction house, who add between 27% and 30.3% to the hammer price depending on whether you are bidding in person or on-line (as well as VAT on some items) and then deduct 15% from the hammer price plus an additional £2.25 for an internet listing (AFAICS you can't not have an internet listing). That means for an item that has a hammer price of £100, the buyer pays £127 if they attend the sale in person, and the seller gets £82.75. The auction house makes about 45% per listing sold. The photos for the on-line auctions are generally one per item which has been taken at an angle to show it in the best possible way. When you attend the viewing many of the furniture items are significantly damaged in the parts that can't be seen the photograph. There are also no weights or measurements given in the on-line listing, and the only way to work out if a piece is suitable for you needs to go and look at anything you are interested in person.

I used to own two Overwater Originals. The older of the two had the filter pre-amp replaced with something more modern, conventional and IMO boring. The other still had the filter preamp fitted. The filter pre-amp is active and like most 80s electronics eats it's way through batteries, leaving the bass plugged in over-night by mistake would almost always drain the battery and under normal usage I would be replacing it every 2-3 months. Controls 4 single pots for volume, pickup balance and a then a single filter for each pickup. As far as I could tell the filter added a peak which could be swept using the control. I would set the bridge pickup to a slight top-end boost and the neck to a more bassier sound and then use the balance control to change the overall sound of the bass. Most of the time it was set to favour the neck pickup slightly. The filter preamp also included a DI output on an XLR next to the standard jack socket.

It would be interesting to see how much merch and licensed items these bands sell generally on line compared with how much they sell when they are on tour. Certainly for smaller bands it has been my experience that the vast majority of merch sales happen at gigs and what little gets sold on-line nearly all of it can be directly linked to recent gigging activity.

Agreed. There is an inverse correlation between how well whatever band I'm in is doing and how many CDs/records I buy and how many gigs I go to solely as a punter. My band at the moment are doing rather well and we've been busy playing gigs, writing new songs and recording our debut album. I don't think I've bought a single CD this year and the only gigs I've been to as a punter were two that were occurred at Whitby Goth Weekend in April when I wasn't actually on stage myself.

Conversely my band's next gig which is still over a month away is already sold out. Admittedly the venue is small (under 100 capacity) there's 5 bands playing, and the headlining band - Social Youth Cult - are the hot new post punk/goth band and could have probably sold it out on their own...

I had contemplated buying tickets for Kraftwerk when they play Nottingham Royal Concert Hall next year. However my only other experience of going to a gig there was seeing The Cocteau Twins in the mid 80s and it was decidedly underwhelming being all seated with sitting down being rigidly enforced. They far more enjoyable and had a more appropriate atmosphere when I saw them some years later at Rock City. Anyway I just had a look and the only tickets available were now over £170.00! That's sitting down for a band that are all about dance music. Even if I did think that much was worth paying I can guarantee the gig won't be a patch on when I saw them in 1981 when I was down at the front and perfect positioned to "play a little melody" on one of their hand-held synths during Pocket Calculator. It probably won't even be as exciting as when I saw them again in 1991 at some seated hall in Sheffield. So that's a miss from me. At any price.

IME the age of the audience also depends on the genre of the music. Whilst a good proportion of the audiences I play to are in their 50s and 60s there are plenty much younger who come and see us. At the next gig we're playing, AFAIK, the rest of the bands are all in their 20s.

This is why I'm glad that most of the bands I want to see are still playing smaller venues, and are relatively cheap to see. The biggest gig I have been contemplating going to as a punter this year is The Birthday Massacre at The Rescue Rooms here in Nottingham. Tickets are under £25 including booking fee. The venue is a 25 minute walk from where I live and I'll probably only buy one drink to enjoy whilst the support band are on. Total of around £30 for an evening's entertainment. Most of the other gigs I want to go to are free because my band is also on the bill.

You are quite right in that both drop-off and home collection need to be options. However, overall I think the current situation is marginally better, as I had numerous problems trying to use the Simple Delivery drop off points for larger items. The closest Yodel one would take anything even remotely big and while my current local Post Office is very good and efficient, some of the ones I have had to use before are terrible and I wouldn't trust them with anything that didn't go straight into a collection bag behind the counter.

Which is fine for me. I work from home and therefore I'm in all day, and having my item collected from home means I don't have to lug it to the "nearest" drop-off point.

Could that be done using MIDI program changes or controlled via running the project itself? This seems to be a problem for almost all hardware solutions that I might want to use in a live situation. So far I've not come across anything that does the job as painlessly or quickly as a Mac running Logic and Keyboard Maestro. I have an AirTurn with two footswitches, one which starts/pauses Logic and the other which runs a Keyboard Maestro macro which closes the current Logic project switches to the Finder scrolls down one file and opens that. This process takes less than 5 seconds even on an ancient 2012 MacBook Pro. All I have to do is add a number to beginning of each Logic file in order I want to have the songs in the set and I'm ready to go.

How easy is it to change sounds using this method? Any glitches if you were to change as you are playing?

Width-wise the neck is very much in skinny 70s Strat territory.