BigRedX

Saturday in Leeds to see The Last Cry at Carpe Noctum at The Lending Room. It was their last ever gig and quite emotional... My head is just visible down the front at the far side of the stage!

The right position for the saddles is when the octave harmonic is exactly in tune with the note fretted at the 12th. Where the saddles actually end up will depend on the string gauge(s) and construction, the action, and the neck relief. Intonation adjustments are always done last (or in conjunction with setting the action) as all the other changes will affect the position the saddles need to be in for the harmonic and fretted note to be the same. Also always check that you are fretting the 12th fret note properly. IME there is a tendency to pull the note sharp when you fret it, so check by bending the string that you have the lowest pitch note and adjust to that. Also there is no technical reason why the differences between each pair of adjacent saddles should be the same.

For those of you complaining that you didn't like your recorded bass sound, were you simply sessions musicians providing a bass part for someone else's musical vision, or a creative part of the band. If it's the former then you need to suck it up. If you are there simply to play a bass line for someone else, then you don't really get a say. On the other hand if your contribution is part of the band's overall creative process, then did you attend the mix session(s)? If you did, did the bass sound OK while the mix was being done? If you didn't, then not why not? Personally I would never allow anyone other than my bandmates and the mix engineer to hear anything I wasn't 100% happy with. Any mix that isn't done with me personally in attendance, is done on the understanding that the mix engineer will continue to work on the track at the studio's expense until I (and the rest of the band) am 100% happy with the result.

This article was linked to another forum and makes interesting reading regarding why you shouldn't be using standby switches at all...

I was under the impression that "Stand By" kept the valve heaters on, which kind of defeats the object. However I've never owned a valve amp with fans.

Still can't get in. The email link just stalls on "loading". No response so far from Line 6....

In that case all you can say is that you like the sound of the two P-Basses you mentioned and you don't like the sound of that particular Jazz. There is absolutely no way of knowing what part the age of the wood on its own has played in the current sound of the instrument, and even less way of knowing if any of these other processes will be able to replicate the qualities of the sound that you like. My completely unscientific method is to treat every instrument individually and simply decide whether or not I like the sound of each one. That's the best that anyone can hope for.

The problem here is that you are trying to apply attributes to a single characteristic of an instrument, without considering all the other things that might be contributing. Even though you say the amplified and unamplified sounds of the instruments you have tried have similar characteristics you haven't considered all the other differences that may be present. First of all you are comparing two different body shapes. Can you say for sure that the shape of a body has zero influence on the tone? Secondly how many pieces of wood is each body made out of? So many variables here that unless all the bodies were made from the same number of pieces and joined in the someway and the same places (and then see point one). It may be (and more likely be) that your 80s Jazz simply isn't made out of pieces of wood suitable for a solid electric instrument. After all ever piece of wood is different. Even pieces from the same log can produce very different sounding instruments. Remember that at any age it was always recommended that you try multiple examples of an instrument before picking the one you like the best. That advice was just as true 50-60 years ago as it is today. Finally you don't know what these instruments sounded when they were new. In relative terms there's not that much age difference now between a 70s and 80s bass. I would suggest that the 70s basses sound good now, because they sounded good when they were new. Back then Basses that didn't sound good would have modified until they did, or they would have ended up donating the parts that were good to make other instruments. These days if an instrument doesn't sound good we simply replace it with one that does. Finally you sample size of three basses is scientifically meaningless.

Except all the discussions I found about using 3rd party expression pedals, said to use a standard TS cable with them. I'm hoping that the ring connection is for the switch under the pedal, but I won't get a chance to experiment for myself until next week.

Then it really depends on how portable a system you want. Unless you already have an iPad to use, I go for a Mac laptop, as you will less likely to outgrow it, and has been said you can always add a second screen if you need it (if you get reasonably serious about home recording you will soon discover you can never have too much screen real-estate). Have you decided on a DAW to use with this? If not start with Garageband which comes free with the Mac, and if you get serious then you can simply upgrade to Logic which will import all your old Garageband projects.

Having registered for a Line6 IdeaScale account, I have received my moderator approval and a link to "Complete My Profile". Except that it leads to a 404 page. When I try and log in from the Line6 IdeaScale home page I get a message telling that my verification failed and I might be a robot... There's not even a way to contact anyone on IdeaScale without being logged in :-((( The email comes from a "No Reply" address, and I have just tried to access the profile page from 2 other browsers without success, so I doubt it's my fault that I can't log in.

That definitely a "how long is a piece of string" type question. Ultimately it will depend what sort of recording you want to do with it. If it's basically just for capturing ideas for some writing then pretty much anything will do. However if you get more serious about recording you might want something with a bigger screen and more power, and you get much more power for your money from a desktop computer then you do from a mobile device where a lot of what you are paying for is getting it as small and light as possible. Also do you have any software to actually do your recording? Are you a Mac or Windows user? One word of warning; the Quartet is now discontinued, and probably near the end of it's product support life. The product page on the Apogee website makes a big deal about all the OS versions it supports but the last Mac/iOS versions are now all 3 years old. It may continue to work with newer OS versions, it may not. Apogee have made unpopular decisions in the past regarding abandoning support for their hardware. Personally I'd be wary, especially if you are doing to buy a computing device specifically to use with this interface. My already ancient iPad is running iPadOS 15.7 that's a long way from iOS13. I'd be asking some searching questions in the music technology forums regarding which OS and hardware still work with this interface.

Just remembered that somewhere I have a USB booster system that allowed me to run USB1 over a 15m cat5 ethernet cable. Just need to fit ethercon connectors to the pedal housing and the patch panel on the rack that holds the Mac. Now all I have to do is price up all the components and see how it stacks up against one of the ready-made systems that have been recommended.

The Last Cry's last ever gig at Carpe Noctum in Leeds on Saturday.

In the early days of USB I used to run MIDI data over a good quality 5m cable. I was hoping that it had only improved since then.

The more I think about this the better it sounds. Since I'll be using 3 foot switches I'll probably be best off putting the Arduino in the same box as them and then just running a single USB cable back to the Mac. It should also be easier for my LED status light - only the play/pause switch needs an indicator as the other two are going to be macro triggers. Will there be any power issues with using a long USB cable, or would I be better using a separate USB power adapter? There's always plenty of sockets stage front when we play.

Thanks!

Thank you! The "button pins" are the numbered pins that point down from the board?

I've just had an email from Line6 saying that I can't plug a simple momentary footswitch into the EXP sockets on the Helix. I'm still tempted to solder some cables onto a TRS jack plug and see what touching various combinations together does. Is anyone here using a Line6 branded external expression pedal with their Helix Floor? If so, what type of jack plug does it use to connect to the Helix TS or TRS? And @fretmeister Thanks!

Thanks. This might be my fall-back position if I can't find something that does exactly what I want out of the box. Since I posted my original question I have been doing further exploration and if I'm going to have an additional footswitch unit on stage I might as well be able to control all the main sequencer functions that I use live from it, so I'm looking for something that can activate three separate functions. How easy will it be to modify this device to accept three footswitch commands and output three different keypresses (or key combinations) one for each switch? Please bear in mind that I am marginally dyslexic and coding can be somewhat problematic because of this, so I would probably need everything spelled out for me.

Thanks. I'm looking at the full spec on the Hotone web site now. I'm not keen on the programming interface being mobile device only, especially since it will spend all of it's life plugged into a real computer, but apart from that (and the none locking PSU socket) it looks like a possibility.

There is a spare footswitch on my Helix - the one labelled "Preset/Stomp" which I never use. However it is "hard-wired" to this function (bizarre for a device that is essentially a computer), so even though I can overlay my stop/pause function on it, it still acts as the Preset/Stomp switch so when I activate the sequencer it also changes the functions of all the other foot switches on the Helix which is not what I want as I loose access to my snapshot switches. I had been investigating the possibility of using one of the external EXP sockets, but I have just had an email from Line6 saying this isn't possible. Still until it is possible to completely customise the function of each individual switch on the Helix, I will need to use a separate footswitch for my sequencer functions.

The difference is partly in design and partly in how the instrument is used. There are essentially three types: 1. 28" scale length, tuned B-B. Pickups in typical guitar bridge and neck positions, usually humbuckers or P90 style fat single coils. This is a baritone guitar. 2. 30" scale length, tuned A-A. Pickups in typical guitar bridge and neck positions, usually humbuckers or P90 style fat single coils. This is also a baritone guitar. 3. 30" scale length, tuned E-E. Three single coil pickups with the centre pickup roughly in P-Bass position in proportion to the shorter scale length. This is a Bass VI (or GuitarBass). Of course as you can see there is some potential overlap between types 2 and 3 as to what could be considered a baritone guitar and what could be a Bass VI, and much of the distinction will be down to how the instrument is played and what sorts of sounds it is capable of. Personally I find that the centre pickup is almost mandatory for getting a decent bass guitar sound out of one of these instruments. Players who favour bass like the Gibson EB0 with a single pickup at the neck may disagree and be perfectly happy with a set of Bass VI strings on a type 2 instrument. One thing that nearly all these instrument have in common though is that they are aimed primarily at guitarists and have guitar neck widths and string spacing at the bridge. Maybe the test for whether a 30" scale instrument is a baritone guitar or a Bass VI would be if you can fit a set of the heavier Bass VI strings (with either a 95 or 100 low E) without having the modify the bridge and/or tailpiece, tune it E-E and still be able to intonate it correctly. And of course then there are instruments that don't fit into any of the above categories like the Shergold Marathon 6-string bass (and the Eastwood copy) which has wider neck and bridge string spacing and a single pickup somewhere between the bridge and centre positions, but still a 30" scale length. With a bit of luck you are slightly less confused now.

It is Mac compatible for operation. It just requires a Windows machine to program it. I'd have though for something as simple as that they'd be able to write the programming app as a web page.

Yes, but like all Line6 Expression pedals It's quite hard to operate. However, I wonder if it is accessed separately via a TSR jack and therefore an appropriately wired footswitch might work. Is that what you were going to suggest? Edit: just had a look at AFAICS the pedal part of an external expression pedal uses a 10kΩ linear pot wired between the T and S connections on a jack plug. That MIGHT mean that the footswitch part goes between the ring and sleeve. May have to make up a lead and experiment... Unless of course you can confirm this via the Facebook group?