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BigRedX

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Everything posted by BigRedX

  1. BigRedX
    For a lot of smaller venues there is a conflict between having the bass sound that you want on stage and being able to hear yourself and the other instruments clearly enough to know that what you're playing is in tune and in time with the rest of the band. I learnt a long time ago (in the 90s) that I'd far rather be able to hear the notes I am playing rather than a powerful bass sound on stage and trust that the FoH was delivering the right sound to the audience. IME if you need it to be loud and/or bass heavy on stage in order to "feel the vibe" there is something wrong with the songwriting or the arrangements of the songs themselves. My less conventional band has just done our second gig with no backline at all, just relying on the foldback to be able to hear ourselves, and it was probably the best playing and sounding gig we have done since the end of lockdown. It might have been a little lacking in bottom end on stage, but we could hear everything clearly which certainly meant that I played better and it sounded as though the rest of the band felt that way too. The FoH sound must have been pretty decent because there were people up and dancing from the first song, and this is for a weird post-punk/goth band playing our own compositions.
  2. BigRedX
    In that case you'll be fine on all counts. I hope you're going that start a thread about this in the Build Diaries section.
  3. BigRedX
    Good luck with finding a suitable bridge for your project. The original Shergold and the Eastwood Hooky are the only instruments with this kind of string spacing and, last time I looked, individual string bridge units were too wide to get them close enough together for 13mm spacing. However if you've got the appropriate metalworking facilities it should be simple enough to make your own as it's essentially a Fender style BBOT with a wider base plate and narrower saddles. IMO you could also get the strings slightly closer to the edges of the fingerboard at the nut either by going for a narrow nut or spreading the strings out slightly more - there's space for an overall width of 43mm on a 50mm nut here. BTW if it helps, the neck width at the 24th fret is 64mm. These measurements should be fine for finger picking. I was looking at using standard classical guitar spacing (which is pretty close) for a custom build, until the Eastwood Hooky was announced. I'm not so sure for chordal work, IME unless you stick to two string chords or up in the guitar register it all gets a bit muddy and indistinct. I've found that B-B 28" scale baritone guitar is as low as I'd comfortably go for fuller chords.
  4. BigRedX
    You've simply found an amp that suits the sound in your head. However I know from your posts on here over the past 10+ years that you've been through quite a few rigs to get there.
  5. BigRedX
    Confession time, just in case you don't already know, I've been a user of multiple-effects for so long now that my bass rigs have really only been a way of making the sound coming out of the effects unit louder and nothing more. Anything in the way of additional colouration produced by the amp and speakers is, for me, completely unwanted. I've now bypassed this problem by going direct into the PA from my Helix and having an RCF powered cab to use for rehearsals and venues with big stages but small foldback systems. For the most recent gigs and rehearsals I've not even bothered with the RCF and TBH the sound in the practice room, on stage and FoH has benefitted massively from this, and has made the band much easier to mix. The problem is that even if your amp has got you into the ball park of your preferred basic sound with the settings as close to "flat" as possible, there's no guarantee that you be able the EQ it into perfection. For this you are completely reliant upon the designer of the amp and yourself having the same tonal goals. That means that the EQ centre frequencies, Q and amount of cut and boost available all need to be right for you to be able to dial in the sound you want. If they are not, you'll never get there no matter how close the "flat" setting is.
  6. BigRedX
    I thought that the Walkabout had a passive tone stack (or partly passive) which means that "flat" (or at least minimal EQ) would be with the passive controls at full.
  7. BigRedX
    I've got one of the very first batch. The nut width is 50mm and the distance between the centres of the two E strings (the really important measurement IMO) is 41.5mm. The distance between the the centres of the the two E strings at the bridge is 65mm which works out at 13mm between strings. IMO it is noticeably wider than all the other Bass VIs I have tried, and noticeably narrower than a conventional long scale B-C six string bass. Whether or not it suits you will depend on how you play. For the sort of music I'm playing, post-punk/goth, it's exactly right in feel in that it doesn't feel cramped like a Fender Bass VI or cumbersome like a "conventional" 6 string bass. HTH.
  8. BigRedX
    Far more likely to be a balanced line output. However if it's like the one on the Overwater I used to own, it may require the jack lead to be plugged in to turn on the power which kind of defeats the object.
  9. BigRedX
    How can you tell? That's a genuine question. If you could put an oscilloscope on the input and output signals and show that they were identical other than an increase in amplitude then you could say the amp was flat. I defy anyone to be able to prove that. What you probably mean is that with all the controls at 12 o'clock your amp gives you a sound you like. Nothing wrong with that, but I doubt that it's flat. Given all that the OP might as well turn off any tonal presets the amp may have, put all the controls to their centre position and then adjust them (ideally only using cut) until they arrive at their desired sound.
  10. BigRedX
    There is no true "flat" setting for any instrument amp. They all have some degree of baked-in sound. That's why you pick one brand/model over the others, because it has a baked-in sound that you find pleasing.
  11. BigRedX
    There's a 4-string version of the Hooky Bass, but it's essentially the same instrument with a narrower neck and a more conventionally sized BBOT bridge, so short scale. If they were going to revive one of the old 4-string bass designs I'd like to see an accurate copy (with maybe a slightly lighter body) of the Hayman 4040.
  12. BigRedX
    Unless your current DAW is not doing something specific that you need, it's always best to stick with what you know and are used to. And as has been said a modern PC should be more than capable of running most projects. Somethings things that you might need to be aware of if you are thinking of jumping ship. 1. If you have any favourite plug-ins that came as part of the your current DAW installation they may not work with another DAW. Obviously this doesn't include any third party plug-ins you may have downloaded separately. 2. If you do a lot of MIDI manipulation and given the problem you describe in your OP, it sounds like you do, you may find Pro-Tools lacking in features. Personally I couldn't recommend Pro-Tools to anyone unless you are in a lucrative songwriting partnership with other Pro-Tools users. The iLok copy protection is flakey, and their parent company, Avid, seem to career from one financial crisis to another. TBH Avid are mostly interested in video editing and the audio side these days is a very distant second. IMO the days of Pro-Tools dominance are over, now that every modern computer has more processing power than the Pro-Tools hardware, which used to be its USP. It's only user inertia that is keeping it going. 3. You mention that you are using Windows - just checking that you are aware that these days Logic is a Mac only DAW.
  13. BigRedX
    My Squier Bass VI is strung with a Newtone Axion Bass VI set which is 24-100. GHS do an even heavier set for the Eastwood Hooky which are 30-105, however the Hooky has a BBOT style bridge and not a lot of excess string at the headstock end so they may not be long enough for a Fender/Squier style Bass VI with a vibrato system. My Squier Bass VI can sound just like any other decent short-scale bass using the neck or middle pickups. The only thing you should be aware of, it that IMO the Fender/Squier neck is very narrow. Think 70s narrow Stratocaster widths. Just make sure that you are comfortable with this. I'm not, which is why I now use the Eastwood.
  14. BigRedX
    Here you go.... Eastwood Hooky Bass 6 PRO On the whole I'm not a massive fan of the Eastwood business model where they take classic weird guitars and basses of the 50s 60s and 70s and make very approximate copies of them using standard modern off-the-shelf parts. It might make for a more reliable playing experience, but they lose much of the quirkiness that made the originals special. Their "copy" of the Ovation Magnum Bass was particularly bad. However the Hooky Bass uses so many items that can't be replaced from the "parts bin", mostly due to the neck width, that all the important bits had to be created specially for this bass. This bass for me has replaced both of the previous Bass VIs (by Squier and Burns) that I had been struggling with due to their narrow necks, and it some point I'll be buying a second one as a back-up for live use.
  15. BigRedX
    As has been said, it's all about attitude and what looks right. When I was in The Terrortones - psychobilly/punk - I used a Gus G3 and a Warwick StarBass. They would have stood out far more than a typical P-Bass where unless you know there is no visible difference between an "off-the-peg" MiM and a Custom Shop model.
  16. BigRedX
    No, it's the modern Eastwood copy based on Peter Hook's actual Shergold Marathon 6 String bass. Having played the real thing briefly in the 80s (the bassist in a local band I was a big fan of had one) it is, as far as I can recall, almost identical. Peter Hook thinks so too, because last time I saw him play live he was only using the Eastwoods.
  17. BigRedX
    Hurtsfall at the (Old) Angel in Nottingham. The sound is always a bit hit and miss in a room that is taller than it is wide, but by ditching the backline entirely and putting everything straight into the PA made balancing everything up much easier. Also the fact that we use very little in the way of massively overdriven sounds gave us a much better definition to the mix than the other bands. New song went (almost) flawlessly - I did have to stop the intro after out singer started talking over it as it's quite subtle if we don't get the downbeat we're all over the place for the first verse. Otherwise form a performance PoV this could have been the best gig we have done post Covid. A couple of action shots:
  18. BigRedX
    Here's mine from last night's Hurtsfall gig: Line 6 Helix straight into the PA via an EMO passive DI box. No amps on stage made for a much more balanced band sound and no problems with drowning out the vocals. My RCF cab is now reserved solely for rehearsals with In Isolation, and large stages with minimalist foldback.
  19. BigRedX
    There are lots of different ways to play the Bass VI, and some them will require it to sound like a bass guitar at least some of the time. I use mine with minimalist post-punk/goth band Hurtsfall and some of what I play is "standard" bass guitar and other times it much more in the guitar range and tone. As someone who also plays guitar, I've found that the necks on most Bass VIs are far too narrow for me. I would consider them narrow on a standard guitar and the wider/heavier bass stings only compound this problem.
  20. BigRedX
    For Fender-style instruments the only reason that "budget" versions would be inferior is because there is slightly less time and attention to detail spent on final finishing and quality control. Remember that these instruments were designed to be made cheaply and easily using 1940s technology operated by (relatively) unskilled labour. With modern CNC machines and a little bit of care at the finishing stage any manufacturer should be able to churn out perfect examples every time. The question we should really be asking is why the "pro" versions are so expensive.
  21. BigRedX
    For me there is a very important distinction between albums that are great when listened to as a whole from start to finish, and albums where you can listen to each song individually and out of context and think every one of them is a brilliant song. This has been very much brought home to me when I do my annual compilation of my favourite songs of the year. Many times there are albums that I have really enjoyed when listening to them as albums, but when I come to pick an individual song from any of them, there are none that stand out enough to warrant inclusion on my "best of" compilation. Often the songs that make it through are those from albums that that I rarely enjoy listening to from start to finish, but once removed from the surrounding filler are recognisable as great tracks. Therefore, for me, the "perfect" album is one which is not only brilliant when listened to as an album, but also one where you can pick out any track at random and think it is great on it own. Very few albums meet this criteria.
  22. BigRedX
    That doesn't sound very 80s authentic.
  23. BigRedX
    As someone who also plays the guitar and has owned several all-valve guitar amps I would expect to use the gain control to set the amount of "drive" and the volume control for the output volume. For an amp that didn't follow this method I would hope that it would be mentioned, along with the best way to use it, in the accompanying manual. I appreciate that with an all-valve amp some of the characteristics of the sound are produced by the output valves working hard as well as the pre-amp valves, but I would also expect for an amp with both gain and volume controls to be able to get a decent sound out of it at home practice levels.
  24. BigRedX
    Not my experience at all. In the days when I was selling A LOT of stuff through eBay, Discogs, and band merch through Bandcamp, pretty much everything (several thousand parcels over 10+ years) was sent by Parcel Force or UPS using Interparcel, which was considerably cheaper than dealing with either company directly. In all that time I had 4 problems - 2 with damaged items and 2 with parcels that disappeared in transit. In every case I was refunded without quibbles in full (both the value of the item and the shipping including any insurance I had paid for). The only time there was a delay was at the beginning of 2021 after all the new customs rules kicked in and the pandemic had further slowed everything down, and Belgian Customs managed to lose my parcel, and that was really only due the various processing delays at the time and needing to make absolutely sure that the parcel had definitely been lost and was not still awaiting customs inspection. However once the delay could no longer be blamed on Customs processing I received my refund within the week. I always found Interparcel's customer services easy to deal with either by telephone or on-line chat. It was certainly far more painless than trying to get compensation for a new album sent to Germany by Royal Mail (dealing with them directly), that was returned several months after sending damaged beyond the point were I could consider even selling as a second-hand item. Having said that, since a significant portion of my sales were to places outside of the UK, I have stopped selling completely as the UK's exit from the EU and various customs changes have made it totally impractical and uneconomical for private individuals to sell to locations abroad. Therefore I haven't sent anything anywhere by any method for almost 18 months now, so my information may be somewhat out of date.
  25. BigRedX
    Even some of my all-time favourite albums have one duff track on them. However these three are perfect all the way through: 1. "Parachute" by The Pretty Things 2. "Fakevox" by PlusTech Squeeze Box 3. "Violet" by The Birthday Massacre
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