BigRedX

Almost no bass cabs (despite what the manufacturers figures may claim) will produce fundamentals under 50Hz at any significant volume.

First off I take it you have read this article on the two Notes web site? Pretty much every device designed to go between amplifiers and speakers has been made with guitarists using relatively low-powered amps in mind (generally 100W max) and the captor is no exception. Remember that for bass guitar the amp power required is not all about overall volume but also the reproduction of significantly lower frequencies than the typical guitar produces, so you might need to turn down even more to avoid damaging the circuitry. Line level will not be sufficient to drive this device. The whole point of it is to process and attenuate speaker level signals. I've not owned a Captor, but I used to have a Marshall PowerBreak in conjunction with a 50W all-valve guitar combo. The PowerBreak also features fan cooling, but has a significantly larger fan than the Captor. I would run the power stage of this amp at about three quarters maximum (this was an acceptable compromise between hearing the power amp valves working and not wearing them out too quickly) and many of the guitar sounds I used would cause the fan to go into overdrive. Using the PowerBreak to set the speaker volume to home practice levels, the fan noise was often audible over the sound of the guitar and the draft of air produced could easily be felt if I was standing in its path. Remember that this fan is driven entirely by the current produced by the speaker outputs of the amplifier (no external PSU required). At gigs after a 50 minute set the PowerBreak would often be close on being too hot to touch and would need to be given time cool down before it was safe to pack away. That's using it with a amp of half the recommended maximum power (and one tenth of the power of the amp you want to use it with)... Finally as a device designed for guitarists are there suitable bass cab sims available for this unit? Or are you after the sound of your bass going through a virtual guitar cab?

Mick Karn? (although the vast majority of his best known work with Japan was recorded with him playing a Travis Bean bass). The thing with Wal basses is that although they are still being made, the current build times are being measured in years rather than months, and if you want the "Wal Sound" there really is no alternative (some ACG basses will get you close though). The price reflects the fact that you will be able to take this bass home right now rather than wait for Paul Herman to build you one (that's if Wal are actually taking new orders at the moment).

Is there any good technical reason for the truss rod to work in the opposite direction to most other guitars and basses? IIRC Maruszczyk aren't the only manufacturer to do this.

I've always tried to open to all sorts of music. True, I don't like most of it, but I like to listen to everything I come across or that is recommended to me, at least once so I can make a proper decision. There's nothing wrong with not liking anything made since the mid 70s, but at least be aware of music produced later on, rather than being totally ignorant. Conversely I also don't like musicians who claim to like "everything". Firstly IME they don't like everything. It's just that they are once again unaware of anything outside of their preferred genres, and secondly if they really did like everything all it shows is that they have no musical filter. IMO the best musicians and composers are the ones who are properly focussed on the kind of music they want to play/create, but are aware of as much other music as possible.

Whatever looks good and goes well with the look of the rest of the bass. Probably something very dark (or painted black).

I'm only a few years younger than you and IMO that opinion is nothing to be proud of if you call yourself a musician.

I've completely given up on cab sims when using my Helix. IME all bass cabs are a compromise that muck up your sound and in a conventional rig a good bit of your amp EQ settings are there to overcome the limitations of the cabs. Most of the time the cabs are basically low pass filters so simply rolling off the very high frequencies will do the trick. The best thing about this method is that you can use your ears to get the sound you want and you are not fighting against ancient "technology". I've also ditched most of my amp sims too, as again an amp is simply a set of EQ controls with a baked-in sound when they are set "flat". The only amp sims I use now are there for their distortion sounds. Edit: as has been said many of the great recorded bass sounds are simply studio EQ and compression and no amps or cabs were used in the process.

That why what we want from guitar synths is different. For me effects and swell are far better and more easily triggered from a proper keyboard. I'd want to use a guitar or bass to play lead and sequencer-style parts - the sorts of things that are less easy to do from a synth keyboard. Unfortunately the laws of physics for this are against me.

There will be quite a bit of latency. The GM70 is only one generation ahead of the pitch detection system that was designed to go with the bass we're discussing in this thread, so it's still relatively primitive. The very best systems (which unfortunately does not include your GM70) require at least one and half cycles of the fundamental to detect the correct pitch which for low E on a bass is a minimum of 37ms, and approximately twice the delay of a typical slap-back echo. And that's before you factor in the the additional latency generated by the MIDI conversion and processing, since the GM70 has no built-in sounds of its own. To give yourself an idea of what it will feel like, get a delay pedal and set it to 40-45ms delay with no feedback and with the direct signal turned off so you're only hearing the echo. Then try and play along with something...

Or the band whose guitarist showed up with an enormous pedal board that covered half the available floor space on the stage. He then went back to the car and brought out a second one that covered the rest of the area...

But where do you stop? And do you regularly test your backup equipment to make sure it is in good working order. When The Terrortones were gigging at least once a week I had a spare amp that lived permanently in the band van. I never had the need to use it. However, when we had to stop doing gigs and I got it back, I discovered that a some point over the 2 years since I had last tried it out, it had stopped working. These days I have a spare of any non-standard lead I need (i.e. anything that isn't jack-to-jack or XLR -to-XLR) and a new set of strings. I'll take a second bass to any important gigs but that is it.

What are you intending to use it with? A Roland V-system unit? Or are you going to try it with a pitch to MIDI (or even CV) system?

AFAICS the Terror isn't that big an amp. Why not just get another one?

What actual pickup type do you want in your "soapbars"? Unlike on guitars where the "Soapbar" is a particular type of pickup - a fat single coil epitomised by the Gibson P90, in the bass world a soapbar cover can house anything that will fit inside. Knowing what type of pickup you want under than cover will help you to narrow down the choices.

Excellent. Have you tried out the room with some music through the PA speakers at band practice volumes to hear how it sounds? And also to hear how much can be heard outside?

IMO "tone" in a speaker cab is an unwanted artefact. It should be as neutral as it is possible to make.

Shops are fine provided you have mainstream tastes or there are suitable specialised shops in your area. Otherwise not even giants like Thomann can compete with the variety of stuff available once you venture on line. Personally I like to buy direct from the individual manufacturers wherever possible.

MIDI foot switch cover a lot of possible options from simple MIDI program change commands to a full 2 Octave pedal board and lots between. What exactly do you need this footswitch to do?

I've played in two bands that just did covers and one band where half the set was covers and the rest songs we'd written ourselves. One of the covers bands was very much play it like it is is on the recordings. In the other two bands all we really took from the original were the lyrics and the vocal melody, the rest was based on our instrumentation, technical ability and what we thought sounded good. It helped that much of the time I was relatively unfamiliar with the songs we were covering, so I just treated them in the same way as any new song written by other members of the band, when it came to working out what I was going to play. However the bottom line is that as far as our audiences were concerned, no one was upset that we hadn't stuck religiously to the recorded versions, and it didn't appear to prevent us filling the dance floor with enthusiastic punters.

I'm sure that on the recordings it was all sequencer, because even in 1986 it would have been trivial to do and would have taken a fraction of the time compared with trying to get a decent take using the guitar controller. When I saw them live (some time in the 90s) he was most definitely using the GR707 to play the synth sounds.

Play only songs that you have written yourself. If you end up writing an anthem taken up by stupid drunken punters, then at least you can take comfort in the amount of royalties pouring in!

One of the problems for me when it comes to adjusting truss rods is that because I'm mildly dyslexic, one of the side effects of this is that "Righty-Tighty" makes absolutely no sense. After all when I'm adjusting the truss rod with an allen key I'm only turning to the right for 180° of the turn. The other 180° I'm turning to the left. For me clockwise/anticlockwise when looking directly along the axis of the object I'm turning from the adjustment end. That way there's no confusion. On the few occasions when I have need to adjust the truss rod of a guitar or bass I've always tried turning slightly in each direction to feel which is stiffest and use that as my guide. So far it hasn't resulted in any broken truss rods. BTW the only guitars or basses that I have owned that came with any kind of truss-rod adjustment guide, were those using the mechanism that is adjusted from the side of the heel with a geared mechanism.

Fixed.

Bad news... Even if you don't play them, most strings will eventually go off. I speak from experience.