BigRedX

One of the things to consider if you are going for two tiers of footswitches would be to stagger them so that there is less chance of hitting one of the front switches whilst pressing one at the back. Have a look at the Roland FC100 Mk2 to see what I mean. For this very reason I don't use any of the top row of switches on my Helix whilst I'm actually playing and they are reserved for use between songs, which IMO reduces their effectiveness.

The thread about the Burns Sonic Bass in "Bass Guitars" seems to have disappeared. Why?

I suspect it's down to who gets a percentage of what in the ticket price, and having a booking fee allows the ticket agency to take a larger (relative) slice of the pie. It used to be possible to avoid having to pay the booking fee for gigs at Rock City by going to the venue in person and paying cash for your tickets.

As has been said the drum machine should do MIDI over USB. What's your computer and what DAW are you using? Some Windows configurations may not be happy about multiple USB sources communicating with the DAW.

I don't take my phone to gigs. It's too big and clumsy and gets in the way of me enjoying myself because I'll always be worried that it will get broken or stolen. Probably just as well I don't go to any big gigs where this is a requirement. Besides from what I've read here, the bands who play those venues are boring and the sound is rubbish. I notice that tickets I have for a gig next March at Rock City are still suitable to be printed, which is what I will do.

I suppose because I have mostly played in bands where the sounds the various musicians use are as important as the notes we play, a good proportion of any rehearsal can be given over to working on these aspects. With any sound - be it synthesiser, guitar or bass (or even the programmed drums) I expect to be able to get fairly close to the ideal at home and only have to do some fine tuning in the practice room once the rest of the band are there, but that is based on 40 or so years of working like this.

Well, having priced-up the parts and accounted for the hassle of having the build something myself, I have bought on the recommendation of someone on the SOS forums an Elgato Stream Deck Pedal. This has three foot switches and connects via a supplied decent quality 2.5mm USB cable. Together with the Keyboard Maestro utility, this has allowed me to set up two different pedal configuration for the slightly different requirements of the two bands I will be using this with. The first has Start/Pause (space bar) on the centre pedal and a trigger for a macro I have created which closes the currently open Logic project, selects the next song in the list and opens it on the right pedal. The other has Start/Pause on the centre and then using markers in Logic for each song, the left and right pedals move backwards and forwards to the beginning of the next marker in the time line, allowing me to move to the start point of each song. The pedals themselves are slightly different from the typical musical device footswitch in that they are hinged at the front (rather than the back) so you have to push down the whole pedal to get the action to register. This shows the pedal's intended design for working out of sight with streaming software as you can rest your feet on the front of the pedals without triggering anything. Other than that the unit appears to be sufficiently robust (USB connections not withstanding) for gig use. I've tested it out on my desktop Mac and everything appears to be working fine, and all I have to watch is that I have the correct Finder Window selected before I start, otherwise my Macro will open something other than the next song. This won't be a problem on the Laptop I use for gigs as I only ever have one Finder Window open at any one time. The big test will come at the next band rehearsal in 2 weeks time.

IMO Marine Biology is over-rated and it's not all Jacques Cousteau or battling giant squids in your midget submarine. I spent a year studying it at University and I have to say that most exciting Marine Biology orientated thing I did during that year was counting lugworm casts on a cold and windswept Swansea Beach. And at the time Swansea was one of the more exciting university locations that offered the course. To give you an idea of how less than riveting I thought it was, at the end of the year I switched to Town and Country Planning!

However "Grant" is just an importer brand. As Bassassin has already said these instruments were sold under 100s of different names depending on who they were being made for.

I'm sorry but IMO that's horrible (leaving aside whether or not I think the basic design of the bass ugly). To me that looks like a new bass that someone has attacked with a screwdriver. How does an instrument get into that kind of condition? (Assuming it hasn't been attacked with a screwdriver.) I've owned far older instruments that had regular use, and were gigged in some fairly rough places, but none of them ever looked as damaged as that. And TBH if I owned a bass that did look as battered as that I'd been looking at either getting the body refinished or replaced, whichever route was cheapest.

It was included at the end of the "Venus And Mars" album.

Part of the problem is that politicians are too stupid to be able to tell the difference between the actual charger (the plug bit that plugs into the mains socket) and the cable which has a load of other uses as well as that of suppling power to the device for the purposes of charging the battery. Some personal observations. 1. All my chargers (the plug bits) are already standardised with USB A sockets. In fact it's been a very long time (more than 10 years) since I bought any consumer device which, if it did come with a charger, came with a different connector. Even the last two desk lamps I bought from Ikea are powered from a plug with a USB A socket on it. 2. As I said in my previous post I'm already standardised for my cables, they are all USB A to Lightning (apart from the laptop which requires a chunkier PSU and cable anyway). 3. The lifespan of the cable used to connect these devices to the charger as well as other devices DOES NOT EQUAL the lifespan of the device. I'm very careful with my cables, but at best they still only last a couple of years. Most people I know have to replace their cables at least every 6 months either because they get lost or damaged. 4. I need a cable (and PSU) for every device that needs charging because usually they all need charging at the the same time. 5. It will be a long time before I need to replace every chargeable device I currently own that doesn't have a USB C cable for charging (or data transfer), and I suspect that by that time USB C will already be obsolete and have replaced by something else, so I doubt I will ever see the "benefits" of this policy.

Depends on your viewpoint. I'm already standardised on one charger cable and have been for over 5 years - USB A to Lightning.

I love all of Jens Ritters designs except for the very slightly angled pickups which always look wrong to me. Since they are under covers, surely it would be no big deal to make the covers slightly bigger so they could be straightened up (but still have angled pickups hidden underneath). Although does that very slight angle actually make any difference to the sound?

Please don't ruin this thread as well by posting quotes. If you have something to say, then say something that you have come up with yourself. Anyone can post a quote. It requires no real thought, and although it looks "intellectual" it's no better than posting a meme. So if you have an actual opinion of your own, then lets hear it.

I can't remember ever seeing a careers adviser whilst I was at school. That might have been because it was in the 70s and such people didn't yet exist; because I went to a posh school where it was assumed that you would go to university and your choice of subject there would dictate your career; or I did, but at the time I thought I knew what I wanted to do (be a marine biologist) and therefore my interview lasted 30 seconds and I have forgotten it ever took place. The reality was that I had absolutely no idea what I really wanted to do with my life, and even less so once I worked out that the direction that school, my parents, and society in general were trying to push me in was non-mandatory... TBH my academic progress was pretty much laid out for me by my teachers and parents, and by the time I was 14 I was far more interested in playing music and happy to coast through the subjects I was good at with the minimum of effort. IIRC my only choice of 'O' Levels boiled down to whether I wanted to take History or Geography as my 10th subject, and I chose History because I hated the teacher who would have taught me Geography. When It came to 'A' levels I picked the three subjects I thought would be best based on my 'O' Levels mostly because I wanted an easy life and more time to spend in the woodwork shop where I was making an electric guitar. The guitar took up more of my time than any one of my 'A' Level subjects and I only just scraped into University which I hated, and after 3 years and two different courses at two different universities I dropped out when it looked as though my band was going to get signed by a major record label. I got into my "career" of graphic design/artwork entirely by accident and entirely through my musical activities rather than any formal education.

I thought the Jack Casady Bass was essentially a rebadged Les Paul Signature Bass? The low impedance pickup was certainly something that Les Paul was championing - they are are in all the later guitars and basses that bear his name.

In that case give the Newtone strings a go. They're currently just under £20 a set and at the moment if you buy two sets you'll get 10% off. That's considerably cheaper than either the LaBella's or the GHS Hooky set.

The problem that compression has is that unlike other effects most of the time if you can hear it working then you haven't set it up right. But, like other aspects of the bass guitar sound it's one that really needs to be adjusted while playing with the rest of the band.

If you want heavier strings, then from lightest to heaviest there are: LaBella Bass VI (26-95), Newtone Axion (24-100), and GHS Eastwood Hooky (30-105). The Newtones are about half the price of the other two and from experience will fit just about any Bass VI, since they are designed with the Fender/Squier models and their vibrato systems in mind. Don't be fooled by the lighter high E, its the low A and E that normally need beefing up from the strings supplied with these basses. The Eastwood Hooky's might not fit on a Bass VI 6 in-line headstock as there is very little spare string to cut off when fitting these to the D and G machine heads of the Eastwood Hooky Bass. Next time I change stings on mine I'll measure the length, as it might be useful for others.

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There are two things working against you. Firstly the scale length. Unfortunately long scale basses have difficulty getting a decent tone out of the lighter gauge strings. Most 6 string basses tuned E-E are 30" scale and the tonal benefit is noticeable. I had a go with tuning E-C on one of my 5-string 34" scale basses and couldn't get a decent sound out of the high C - it always sounded to me like bad jazz guitar, and was eventually abandoned in favour of a more conventional B-G tuning. The other factor is that you string gauges appear to be quite light. On my 30" scale basses tuned E-E to the high E is either 24 or 30 and again the benefits from the heavier gauge strings is very noticeable. Can you get a decent tone for the notes you would normally play on the highest two string from the D and G played further up the neck? You haven't said what you bass is or what sort of a neck joints has. This can also be a factor, and it might simply be that your particular bass simply doesn't lend itself to getting a decent tone out of the highest strings.

Why isn't the guitarist doing this with a talkbox? This is such an integral part of the sound of the song that if you can't get it spot on right it you might as well not bother.

By whom? Anyone whose opinion actually matters?

I have a Music Area bag that came with my Eastwood Hooky Bass. It's a very nice bag, but nowhere near as well made or padded as the Mono M80. However it is much more comfortable to wear.