BigRedX

For me the main advantage of a 5 string is that the E string is no longer at the edge of the neck, which makes it easier to play with my less than brilliant technique.

Logic is free for upgrades within a major version number. So all upgrades to Logic X (10), and we're currently on 10.7.something IIRC, are included in the price. And there have been some pretty significant improvements and additional features added between the first version of Logic X and the current one. When Logic 11 comes out it, if you want to get it, you will have to pay the full price for the new version. However at £199 it is IMO a complete steal. In the early days (I've been a user since V1.x) it cost about £400 just for the MIDI sequencing version. The Audio addition was an extra £300-400 and if you wanted the next paid upgrade (some of the x.5 versions were paid upgrades) that was another £200-300 for each of the MIDI and Audio sections.

Reaper is fine and very cost effective if you are just wanting to use your DAW as a digital multi-track recorder. As soon as you need to use any plug-in instruments, you will quickly outgrow what comes with Reaper and find yourself pending a lot of extra money, to get what you need. Most other DAWs come with plenty of good quality virtual instruments as standard. Also if your doing a lot of MIDI manipulation a DAW that has it roots in MIDI sequencing (such as Cubase) is a lot more versatile. Unfortunately MIDI in Reaper is still very much an afterthought.

TBH unless your screen is properly colour calibrated trying to make a choice based on a photo posted on a web site is pointless and even then your choice of browser can make a difference depending on how (and if) it recognises any embedded colour profiles. I've just pulled up the OP in both Safari and Firefox on the same screen and there is a noticeable difference in how the colours in the photos appear which is confirmed with the Digital Colour Meter utility.

I've played 5 string basses almost exclusively since 1989. I bought my first because I'd previously been playing synths and I thought that access to the lower notes would be useful. Most of the time I never use the low B string at all. And TBH much of what I play could be done on a 2-string bass strung E and A. When I was playing in my Dad Rock Covers band I once took my single string Atlansia Solitaire Fretless Bass (tuned to E) to a practice. I found the fact that it was fretless was more of a hinderance than the fact it only had one string. The most use I have got out of the low B string was when I was playing in The Terrortones which is probably the most musically "conventional" band I have ever been in. In my current bands I use low B for the chorus of one song and for the very last note of another. And personally I don't care what anyone else thinks.

I'm doing a gig tonight. The gear I'm bringing adds up to considerably more than £2000, but it does include the devices that allow us to play without a drummer or second synth player. I don't own a car at all. Our actual keyboard player provides the band transport for gigs. We will be getting quite a bit more than £50. Thinking about it apart from my very first gigs in the early 80s when I had no money and my gear was worth in total less than a couple of hundred pounds, I don't think I've ever gigged with gear worth as little as £2000...

But you still need a computer to download the files in the first place.

Are this mechanical royalties (from record/CD sales, downloads, streaming etc.) or performance royalties or both? Why the ability to write a good song is far more important financially, than being able the play technical complex stuff on your instrument of choice. And yes, I'm currently involved in writing a "Christmas" song.

Looks great as usual. I just had a quick scan through the thread to see what the controls do, and I couldn't see anything about pickup selection. IIRC the slide switch is a coil tap, so are the two knobs volumes for each pickup, or are they always both on?

You don't need to VPN. Your best option is Ishibashi's U-Box where they list all their second-hand stock. Here's a handy link to the bass guitar section. The other option is Digimart, which is appears to show the stock from all the Japanese musical instrument stores with an on-line presence. And here's a Jupiter Bass for sale that is very similar to the one in your OP Be aware that some Japanese shops simply will not deal with sales outside of Japan even on-line ones, and the only way I have found to get around this is to have someone in Japan who is willing to buy the instrument for you and then organise the shipping. This is why Ishibashi are your best bet because they are one of the few music stores prepared to deal with foreign sales. The only downside is the time difference between Japan and wherever you are combined with the fact that all the instruments sold are also on display in one of their shops, that by the time you have made your initial enquiry the instrument in question may well have already been sold. Good luck.

TBH this is the simplest and IMO best approach. It's an all in one solution, getting your MIDI files into the DAW will be easy and you'll get more options for drum sounds that way. I wouldn't chose a laptop unless the portability is required, as you get far better value for money when your computer isn't being built with being small and light as the primary design criterion.

What tuning at you using? B-C or something else? Do you like the feel of the extra space between the frets?

What MIDI file player are you looking at? I have to admit it's been 25 years since I last owned one, but it was the most useless and unreliable piece of music technology that I have ever had the misfortune to own and try and use.

Interesting, if brief, and rather tactfully doesn't come out and say that the real problem with the lack of streaming royalty is two-fold: 1. There are simply too many artists all competing for tiny individual shares of the pie. It's all very well that it's easier than ever to make your music available to anyone who has an internet connection, but of course the downside is then that everyone does it, therefore the streaming royalties pot is divided up in ever diminishing chunks to ever increasing numbers of artists. 2. All the artists who are getting their music streamed a lot but aren't receiving very much money for it do so because of the contracts they have signed with their record labels. They only have themselves and/or their legal advice to blame. It's no longer the 50s and 60s and any artist who doesn't get proper legal advice before signing anything to do with they music is a fool. So what can the UK Government do? Nothing. You can't stop musicians from uploading their music to the streaming services, you can't make record labels (most of whom aren't even based in the UK any more) go against contracts already signed just because they might not be entirely "fair" to the artists involved. You can't legislate against stupidity.

OoI other than music what will your computer be used for? It might just be worth looking at a second hand refurbished Mac from a reputable dealer. My main computer (and the one I also use to earn my living doing graphic design) is a 12 year old MacPro that cost £650 (with 64GB RAM) a couple years ago. Apart form a couple of marks on the casing and the fact it didn't come with the original Apple packaging, it was in excellent condition when I bought it. It won't run the latest Mac OS (or the latest Adobe CC for that matter), but so far that hasn't been a problem. It has yet to run out of steam on any of my musical projects. I also have a 10 year old MacBook Pro that is used to run the backing for my bands' live set (that's up to 4 plugin instruments and 10 audio tracks simultaneously plus some external MIDI) which was £700 EoL from John Lewis 7 or 8 years ago. I've seen newer and better models for much less than this second hand.

If your interface and keyboard connect via USB the important phrase to look for is "class compliant". This means that they work with the USB drivers built in to the OS and therefore should be fine. However if they rely on having to install separate drivers you might be out of luck.

Very much this. To me the "front" pickup would be the one closest to the bridge.

I was under the impression that Alembic kept very good records of where their various materials came from - especially those subject to restrictions, and IIRC have helped out at least one other member here who was having problems authenticating the provenance of MoP inlays on their bass when they were selling it. Have you been in touch with Alembic regarding this yet?

Paging @Bassassin

Just a reminder that Hurtsfall will be playing The Lending Room in Leeds on Saturday 3rd December supporting Skeletal Family:

What is the external drive for? Audio or archival/backup? Going wireless for the keyboard and mouse doesn't spare you any USB bandwidth as the Bluetooth adaptor for them will be on one of the USB buses. And yes USB 2 and 3 should be on separate buses.

I don't see this as a problem. Coming from synth playing background, I have never found any presets much use to me, and also I have my own ideas about how my bass should sound. Consequently, when I got my Helix I started with a blank patch with just the volume pedal enabled and then started adding modules one at a time. I found having one of the EQ modules far more versatile than any of the Amp sims, so I only really use them on a couple of patches where they have been chosen specifically for the drive sounds rather than any particular EQ (but that's just my preference). I then added a compressor and chorus and got a basic sound I like, which I then tweaked at the next band rehearsal until I (and the rest of the band) was happy that I had the right sound for our instrumentation. Only then did I start to add specific effects and EQ tweaks for each individual song. I rarely take any notice of what specific devices the various modules are supposed to emulating and simply ask myself is this giving me the (EQ/chorus/delay/filter) sound that I want? If it is then good, if not then try another of the modules from the same range until I get something I like and that fits with the rest of the band sound. This whole process took about 4 rehearsals for about 12 songs, building up patches between practices and then tweaking them with the whole band playing. Now when we start work on a new song I already have a few "core sounds" one of which will be the correct starting point for the song depending on the overall feel.

Last time I looked at Windows machine specs, laptops, all-in-ones and the small desktops were all pretty much the same inside the cases for a given processor. A desktop machine might have room for more RAM and a PCI slot or two but that's it. Also unless you are running multiple instances of huge sample library instruments along with a convolution reverb on every channel any modern PC should be able to cope with the demands the typical DAW throws at it. Also don't assume that just because a particular model sports more USB sockets, it actually has more USB buses and therefore won't have any benefits (and may actually be worse than a good quality powered USB hub). Also remember that both the laptop and the all-in-one will have lots of "hidden" built-in devices already on the USB bus(es). Mac OS has a handy utility built in which allows you to see exactly how the hardware is configured, the spec of each USB bus and which sockets are on which bus (and what built-in devices are also on the bus). Is there something similar for Windows? I personally wouldn't buy a laptop unless portability is essential, as you generally get more performance for the same price when the manufacturer is not concentrating on fitting everything into the smallest and lightest form factor. Remember also that All-in-ones are essentially laptops with a bigger screen and limited portability.

The only bass I've owned with neck LEDs had a separate battery for their operation.

Two different cabs might sound fine to you on stage or in the rehearsal room, where you are probably only really hearing the one closest to your ears, but unless your FoH sound is from the PA they will sound very different out front and different in different locations in the venue.