BigRedX

The strings are two years old. Unless they are flat wounds or the bass has been barely played, they will be knackered and more than ready for replacement.

I take it you used the circuit diagrams on Fly Guitars to get the wiring right? When I added a varitone circuit to my guitar IIRC it worked as a bass cut control (my circuit was based on those in the Gibson 345 and LS6 guitars). Does it work in the same way on the EB3 to take a bit of "mud" out of the mudbucker?

£1400 for a bolt-on neck and slab body with parts bin hardware? I don't think so.

However unless you are using PA equipment for you bass rig, there is no "flat" setting. All bass amps and speakers have a noticeable baked-in sound, that why you pick one over the others, you go with something that has a basic sound you like.

It would be fine. 🙂 You'd need a ridiculously loud bass rig for it to make any noticeable contribution to FoH sound at this sort of venue, and as I said previously if that was the case, the sound engineer would be asking you to turn down. They'd just put a DI on the bass and feed you through the FoH and foldback, so that you, the rest of your band and the audience could hear you.

Because I see myself as composer first rather than a "musician", I'd always prefer it for one of my bands playing my songs to be successful. However saying that, the only band I have ever REALLY wanted to be in was a Nottingham band in the early 80s called "None So Blind". They had great songs and a brilliant bass player, whose bass parts I really admired. I settled for being a fan and going to see them play as often as possible. A couple years later when their drummer, and subsequently their bass player left, I really hoped that I would be asked to be their new bassist. Unfortunately they picked someone else and TBH I simply wasn't a good enough player at the time have done the songs justice (even now there are some songs of theirs I'd struggle to play properly), and no matter how much I'd have enjoyed being in the band, the real magic of the music was in the interaction of the original band members and with two of them gone, it was never the same. I got my "revenge" for not being offered the bass player role by nicking their keyboard player for my synth band.

I think they are arranged like that so when you switch them on in the down position the sound is more like the unaffected one, so the change in tone is minimised?

Except that back in the late 70s it would have been a lot more expensive to release. Even if you had gone the ultra-budget Desperate Bicycles route, it would have still cost you at least £150 to record and press 500 copies (the minimum a pressing plant would consider) and back then that was a significant amount of money. And unless John Peel had picked it up for radio play and Rough Trade had distributed them you'd probably still be left with 450.

Buy some new strings. That'll almost definitely be the problem with the tuning stability. The truss rod has nothing to do with tuning so leave it alone.

Depends what your pedal board is for. For most of the last 35 years my amp has simply been a means of getting my bass guitar signal loud enough for the audience to hear and therefore the only control on it has been volume. All my tone shaping is done from my effects.

Brilliant! When I made my guitar in the late 70s I was "lucky" enough to have diagrams for several of the Gibson Varitone circuits complete with values rather than part numbers, courtesy of the book "Guitars: From the Renaissance to Rock" by Tom Evans. Unfortunately in at least one case the decimal point was in completely the wrong place, as I discovered when I tried to buy the part and was told it would be larger than a typical amplifier transformer!

I play powerful music too. I also used to have a very big and impressive looking bass rig (not to mention expensive), that was sold when I realised that for almost all the gigs I was playing, it was offering zero sonic benefit to either myself or the audience. On big stages I couldn't hear anything from it if I wasn't standing directly in front of it, and on small stages I was being asked to turn down so much, so as not to ruin the FoH sound that I could hear more of me from the guitarist's wedge on the opposite side of the stage, than I could from my own rig behind me. Going directly into the PA, I've never had a problem with monitoring that hadn't been sorted out by the end of the first song, and on multi-band gigs with quick turn-around times the stage crew love me, because my setup is simple to deal with. The rest of one of my bands can be quite picky about the on-stage sound, but we've always been able to sort it out quickly in the setup time available. Personally I'm happy if I can hear enough of me to be able to tell that I am in time and in tune with the rest of the band, and anything beyond this is a bonus. I've also always been of the opinion that if it has to be loud to feel/sound good, then the songs I've written aren't good enough and I need to go an write some better ones.

You don't need to explain wetware to me, it's on my business card! 😉

From experience at these size venues having a bass rig on stage for anything other than show is a complete waste of time. By all means set one up if your band image warrants having lots of impressive looking backline, but in that case you'd be better off with empty cabs that weigh less and look just as good. All these venues have excellent in-house PA systems with first-class monitors that will fill the stage with full-frequency sound. The moment you step away from being directly in front of your rig, you'll be able to hear more of yourself from the foldback for your other band members. And if you are so loud as to be able to fill the whole stage with clearly audible bass guitar from your rig, you'll be getting less than subtle requests from the FoH engineer to turn down because you are messing up the sound for the audience (and after all they are the people you are trying to impress). And you don't even have to go up to O2 Academy sized venues for this to be the case. Places like Camden Underworld, and Notthingham Rescue Rooms have good enough FoH and monitors to render your bass rig redundant. I'd even think twice about taking my personal FRFR monitor to somewhere as small as The Bodega, because I just won't need it. These days big bass rigs are for pub bands with vocal only PA systems, and for show. Nothing else.

Helix straight into the PA. Monitoring by the venue's foldback system. That's what I did last time I played the Leeds O2.

After a couple more emails back and forth with the Novation technical specialist, it was suggested that the problem might be down to the fact that the Launchkey wasn't getting enough power from the USB port on my Mac and maybe a powered USB hub would be worth trying. Therefore I gave it one more go plugged into the USB port on the back of one of my Apple Cinema Displays which in theory is a powered hub, although with other devices I often get a warning that there is insufficient power for them to work... and it works! The Control Surface Setup window popped up when I launched Logic, and all the functions I want to use so far work. I've just used it to add a simply synth lead part to the song I am currently working on. Panic over...

Thanks. The Glastonbury set list looks marginally better and he even did one of his novelty songs!

Here's the thing. I'm very much the target customer for this bass. I play in a post-punk/goth band with no guitarist and my bass lines are somewhat influenced by those of Mr Hook, plus the Shergold/Eastwood is the only bass VI with a suitably wide neck for me to play comfortably. I currently own an Eastwood and I'm the market for a second instrument (so I have a spare for gigs) to replace the now redundant Squier Bass VI and Burns Barracuda which both have string spacing too narrow for me to put up with any more. So do I buy another Eastwood for £1300 new, or do I buy a worn 40 year old Shergold that from a playing and sound PoV is not really any different and potentially has an inflated price, mostly due to the fact that it is old, and before the Eastwood appeared was a rarity?

So what does Sir Paul play at a pub gig (or on the main stage at Glastonbury for that matter) these days? Mostly Beatles songs? Mostly Wings songs? Post Wings songs (are there any good ones?)? Or is it all Rock 'n' Roll classics from the Hamburg days? Does he play any of his novelty songs? Mary Had A Little Lamb? We All Stand Together? Mull Of Kintyre? Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time? Does he do any of The Firemen stuff? Enquiring minds want to know...

Everyone should have a really good pre-amp in the input section of their amplifier.

Actually having played an original Shergold Marathon 6 sting bass back in the day and owning one of the Eastwood models I can say that unlike most of what Eastwood produce, this version is very accurate, and Peter Hook appears to agree with me. That means unfortunately you can also spin the value the other way and ask why you would pay a premium for an old battered bass when you can buy a very accurate brand new version of it for £1300.

More likely to be a Marathon 6 string bass. It will only be a baritone guitar if the neck is standard guitar width.

Depends on the strap and the case you put it it. Straps with hard parts (especially metal) have a tendency to damage the instrument. Ironically straps fitted with Schaller Straplocks will sometimes make the instrument too long to fit in a hard case necessitating their removal!

The only way you'll know if they are any for you is to try them. A 1 x 15" cab has no specific sound per se. The overall sound of a cab is made up of a number attributes, of which the diameter of the driver cone is one of the least important. If there was a "1 x 15 sound" there would be no need for multiple manufacturers to be trying to selling us their particular version.

IIRC the MU PL insurance only covers a band if everyone is a member.