BigRedX

I'm assuming that the Fralin J5 pickups which you like are smaller than the soap bars which you don't like? Could you not just buy another set of Fralins and make wooden or plastic surrounds to fill the extra space?

For me the fact that's a single unit was the main selling feature. Replacing mine with individual pedals plus a board/case, PSU(s), and all the leads to wire it up would probably be in the same ballpark cost-wise. And that's just assuming I can get away with just one pedal for each effect type that I use (I can't), don't need instantly recallable user programs with the ability to change settings and effect order for different songs (I do), and some of the time based effects won't have tap tempo let alone MIDI clock synchronisation (a must for both my bands).

There are no hard and fast rules about what bass sounds will work with any given band. It will depend very much on the line-up of the band and the arrangement of the songs. Generally the mids are your friend if you want to be heard among the other instruments, but even that isn't 100% true. I used to play in a band where my usual driving pick attack bass sound disappeared almost completely the moment one of the guitarists switched to a clean Stratocaster. Use your ears listen to what the other band members are doing both in terms of note choices and sounds and adjust your sound and note choices accordingly.

Just out of interest, for my Bass VI patches on the Helix where I am using an amp/cab sim it's for guitar amp rather than a bass amp.

To the OP - have you had your refund yet?

Really? IMO in real terms it's never been cheaper. My first multi-effects was a Roland GP8 plus the foot controller and expression pedal which I picked up for a few hundred pounds in the early 90s. However I'm pretty sure that original new price when it was originally released was closer to £1k. That's for a unit which was essentially 8 Boss pedals in a pre-set order fitted into a 1U rack with a terrible parameter access user interface. By comparison the Helix Floor which when released was about the same price of around £1k is streets ahead in terms of sounds, configuration, and user friendliness and overall versatility.

Or any verse again. Mr Venom was terrible at remembering the words to his own songs. I doubt anyone ever noticed including most the band. I only spotted these mistakes once the songs had been properly recorded and finally knew what he was supposed to be singing and when.

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Just a thought. Some aggregation services place restrictions on how your tracks are named. I think this is in order to make sure that there is a consistency to capitalisation etc. If your band uses non-alpha-numeric characters in your song titles or weird capitalisations (The Terrortones had a lot of song titles with run-on words that had capital letters in the middle of them) you may find that the aggregator doesn't allow you to render the titles as you want them. CD Baby were particularly bad/strict for this last time I looked. That may influence your choice of service.

Because I use my Bass VIs to play both "bass" and "guitar" parts I discovered that having the Helix and FRFR absolutely essential in getting a balanced sound between the two. When I first switched from playing my "normal" bass after the guitarist left one of the bands I'm in and we decided not to replace him, I was using the rehearsal room's bass rig as before, in order to save on the amount of gear I took to practice, and found myself turning up all the Helix patches to compensate for the loss of top end on the "guitar" parts. However at the first few gigs with this band when I was using the FRFR for monitoring they were now all too loud. Now I always use the FRFR and I have been able to achieve a balanced sound for all the strings.

These days yes (5): Gus G3 5-string passive (black) Gus G3 5-string active (red) Eastwood Hooky 6-string bass Burns Baracuda Squier Bass VI Soon it will probably be four when I get around to selling the Squier and Burns and replacing them with a second Eastwood Hooky. I also have 4 guitars. At one time (around 2014) I had almost 50 guitars and basses, as well as a number of synths, samplers and other high-tech musical instruments.

Ned's Atomic Dustbin Some line-ups of Talking Heads from the early 80s have both Busta Jones and Tina Weymouth on bass.

That's interesting. Can you follow where the different wires go in the amp - especially those connected to the mains side?

Any aggregation service will offer this, and most will let you pick and choose which services your music is then available on, although I really can't see any advantage for independent artists to deliberately opt out of any. Aggregators tend to work in one of two ways, and most will require an initial payment to "release" your recordings. After that they either take a relatively large percentage of your earnings, but your recordings will be continually available for no additional cost; or they take a smaller percentage but charge you a yearly fee to ensure that your recording continue to be available. Stop paying and your music will disappear from all the services. Other than that they are pretty much all the same. If you have a sizeable following who will all be downloading and/or streaming your music (or you only want the music to be available for a limited time) then a yearly subscription service may well be best. Otherwise pick whichever has the the lowest setup cost and takes the smallest percentage of your earnings. Bands I have been involved with have used CD Baby, Catapult and Distrokid.

Is anyone still making cassette decks? IME the most important thing any cassette deck can have is for it to be solidly built, especially around the tape transport area. I still have an Aiwa F660 deck that is close on 40 years old new and has performed pretty much flawlessly throughout this time (it did need to have the "rubber" parts replaced about 15 years ago). The whole area around where the cassette goes is full of clunky metalwork and built like a tank. It was used for playing back the backing tape of my synth band, and also an essential pat of my home studio for most of the 80s, so it has had a lot of use and some abuse. The top of the range Sony deck I bought in the late 90s to replace it failed within about 10 years, and unsurprisingly it appears to be mostly made of weedy plastic. It has also outlasted 2 Nakamichi decks (owned by musician friends) which cost a lot more but to me didn't sound any better and were considerably less reliable.

What amp/cabs are you running this through? All of my Bass VIs were slightly quiet on the higher strings when used with a typical bass amp. As soon as I dispensed with this and went for a Helix and FRFR cab, it immediately sounded much more balanced. It may be that you need a different rig for this instrument, not different pickups.

They are. The unit top right in the photo is the power amp and is totally self-contained. Everything else in the case is for the pre-amp valves and controls.

Always difficult to tell from a photo because you don't know how accurately the camera has been positioned in relation to the object being photographed, but is the problem more that the pickups aren't centred under the strings? Everything looks like it lines up with the low E so the pole-pieces get further away from the higher strings the closer the pickup are to the neck.

OoI what are the three valves? That might help work out what spec transformer is needed. IIRC they are not all the same. Also is it just my eyes or is there a nut missing from the pre-amp board mountings - top right?

Unfortunately it may well be custom wound as I think I can spot the words "Tech Bass" on the side and none of the codes appear to correspond with any of those on the 12V 0.8A standard transformer spec sheet. I wonder if the two secondaries are different for the pre-amp circuit and the valve heaters?

AFAIK none of the Bass VI style instruments have pickups with different pole-piece spacing to compensate for the string convergence between the bridge and the neck. IMO the aesthetics are more of an issue than the relationship between the pole-pieces and the strings. If you have a look under the pick guard I would suspect that you'll find the pickups have a single bar magnet connecting all the pole-pieces together so the contribution of the poles themselves is fairly minimal. And if you can hear the difference between aligned and non-aligned pole-pieces you'll also be able to hear the difference between individual pole-pieces and a blade. Personally having the pickups angled so the pole-pieces align with the strings would bother me more than than the current arrangement. Your OCD may vary. Also if the string spacing is similar to a actual Fender Bass VI at the bridge your typical Strat pickup won't be wide enough which will probably be worse. If it really bothers you, you'll need to get custom-wound pickups, in custom covers either of varying sizes or with the holes cut individually for the 3 different pole-piece spacings (any maybe a new pickguard too). IRRC this is a sub £200 instrument. Is it worth it?

Yes, yes they do.

Even electric drums aren't particularly silent. Especially if you have eliminated all the other amps and speakers from the stage. If your PA is pumping out the band at a decent volume then it's fine FoH, but you still need a certain overall band level in order for the drums to sound like drums, so it's not always a solution at venues where you need to keep the band volume down.

Glad you go it sorted. Sorry that I wasn't able to check the settings on my similar system, but the mobile rack has been in storage since our last rehearsal and I probably won't have it out again until just before the next one in a couple of weeks time.

It's not the angle that's a problem, but the fact that the neck and head are a single piece of wood with a minimal volute. If the head was a separate piece (still cut from the same blank as the neck) and scarf-jointed to the neck it would be far stronger.