BigRedX

That's a lot of money for a mono synth with only a single VCO and envelope generator and no programmable patch memories. Back in the day when the Roland SH101 was new, there were three reasons why you bought one: 1. You wanted a decent 2 VCO, 2 EG synth but the SH101 was all you could afford. 2. You wanted a keytar and this (with the modulation grip) was all you could afford. 3. You wanted an arpeggiator and/or sequencer, and this was all you could afford. No-one I knew back then bought one as a first choice. It was bought because it was about the cheapest new synth available. I had one back in the early 80s. It was fine for the less important synth sounds (like background sequencer parts, sound effects and percussion) but not for any of our bass or lead sounds without external help. These days there are far better sounding synths with programmable patch memories for that kind of money.

Construction and the fact that pickups (especially mass-produced ones) are not exactly the same.

I have say, that despite having owned a lot of synths with analogue VCOs since the early 80s I've never found any of them to have tuning instabilities and all have come up to tune within a couple of minutes of being powered on. On the other hand, having owned an EDP Wasp, while I would hope that touch capacitance keyboards have become more reliable in the last 40 years, I wouldn't have another synth with one for live use.

If you are going to want to program your own sounds, then something with as many dedicated controls on the front panel is a must, or one with an excellent computer-based programming app. A few things you will want to consider: 1. The two octave keyboard on both the Bass Station and the Monologue might be too limiting for some bass lines (especially 80s ones with lots of octaves unless you are prepared to transpose the keyboard to bring all the notes you want within the range of the available keys (if so check that the synth has a transpose function). 2. The envelope generator on the Monologue doesn't appear to be a standard ADSR one and there's only one (unless there are more hidden away in parameter access). For duplicating as many 80s synth sounds as possible you will really want two full ADSR envelope generators so that you can assign one to the filter (tone) and another to the amplifier (volume). 3. They are both mono synths. That means they can only play one note at a time, and no chords at all. For bass lines this probably won't be a problem, but you may occasionally struggle to replicate the feel of a baseline that has been played on a polysynth where the release of one note overlaps the attack of the next.

Except on the Focusrite interfaces with balanced jack outputs, if you use standard TS jacks the earthing method used by the interface will induce cross talk between the outputs.

I'm not particularly fussed what colour the body is, but both sides of the body need to be the same colour and the neck should also be the same colour as the body. If I'm going to be pushed on an actual colour then either Black or Candy Apple Red.

The best way to package a guitar or bass for sipping is first to put it in its hard case. If you don't have a hard case for it, then get one. Wrap the hard case completely in several layers of bubble wrap. Then put this in a box made from a cut down bicycle box. Most bicycle shops are only too glad to off load boxes onto members of the public as it usually saves them having to pay to dispose of them. A typical bicycle box is made of much thicker and tougher cardboard than the typical guitar shipping box. Make sure that the bubble wrapped case fits securely inside the outer box. The only thing to watch is that the shipping price is often dictate by the length of the parcel so check with your courier before making this outer box too massive. Unfortunately when it comes to courier services you will find horror stories about all of them. Each one is only as good as the weakest link in the chain from your house to your customer's. What has worked well for me so far (and I have sent guitars and basses all over the world) is to use a service that is the same company at both ends of the delivery chain such as UPS or FedEx.

Also be aware that US customs are a lot more strict when it comes to CITES. Despite the fact that for musical instruments CITES should only apply to the top tier woods like Brazilian Rosewood, it will help greatly should there be a problem if you know exactly what woods have been used in the construction of your bass. Also CITES covers more than just wood as someone who sold a bass with real Mother of Pearl inlays recently discovered.

The basic setlist construction and song playback functions are great, and a massive improvement (for me) over what is available in MainStage which for Mac users is it's main competitor. So it allows you to select what happens after a song finishes playing, whether it will automatically start the next one (and how long a pause there is before this happens) or stop with the next song loaded and ready to start when you tell it to. Also because the playback in Show mode is essentially a cut down version of the full Studio One sequencer, it's easy to add things you need just for live performance such as program changes for hardware MIDI units etc. Doing this in MainStage was a lot more complicated, and doubly so because it wouldn't allow you to load elements from a Logic song as your starting point, whereas Show Page will let you import parts from the full Studio One arrangement automatically (although this does require you to do all your main programming in Studio One). However if you are using a Windows computer for live playback you should also look at Cantibile.

When we've got this thread up to 94 pages you have to post the rest of your reply. I like Eurovision. It's fun bit of nonsense that occasionally throws up some interesting music.

Unfortunately I haven't had enough time to iron out all the issues I had with the Show page of Studio One, the most important of which is being able to change the levels of individual tracks from one song to the next. I'm sure I'm missing something really obvious, but at the moment when you change the level of a track it changes on that track for all the songs. I got around this for the one instance where we used Studio One by simply having a separate track for every part in the set, but it made using it somewhat unwieldy. I might have another look at it for Hurtsfall who have much simpler backing - drums and the occasional synth parts and will get away with a much smaller track count for a full set. However I'd rather work out how to program in track level changes per song.

Believe me, If I could afford right now for Simon Farmer to make me a Gus G3 to the Eastwood scale length and string spacing I would. I discussed the possibility with him a couple of years ago and with the extras that I wanted regarding pickup switching and a piezo bridge to drive a Roland V system, we were looking at approximately £6.5k...

Done, but you don't consider any materials other than wood for the construction. There are a significant number of us who use basses made with carbon fibre or aluminium as well as other alternatives to wood.

With regard to comparing the sound of a Bass VI to more "conventional" instruments I couldn't really comment since I've never spent any serious time with the ones mentioned in @Joe Nation's post. Standard tuning of a Bass VI is E-E a octave below that of a standard guitar. Baritone Guitars tend to be B-B for 28" scale or A-A for 30" scale, although just like any guitar you can actually tune them any way you want. My Bass VIs are tuned EADGCB because the open C string is more useful to me than B for for drone parts in our songs in C and Am. Most Bass VIs have three single-coil pickups in roughly Stratocaster positions, but the tuning will mean that you don't automatically get Stratocaster-like sounds out of them. Baritone Guitars tend to have two pickups in the typical guitar bridge and neck configuration (either humbuckers or P90 type), and from my experience with a 28" scale baritone tuned B-B it was pretty much like a typical guitar but lower in pitch. Bass VIs are very different beast. You can get guitar-like tones out of them, but they are also a "proper" short-scale bass guitar albeit one with two extra high string and closer string spacing. Have a listen to this live clip of my band Hurtsfall where I'm using the Eastwood Hooky Bass VI and get both guitar and bass type sounds out of it. The Hooky is a bit of an oddity in the Bass VI world as it is based on the Shergold Marathon Six-String Bass and appears to be aimed more at bassists rather than guitarists. It also has a single humbucking pickup mounted somewhere between where the bridge and middle pickups would be on a typical three-pickup Bass VI. Having said that the majority of the tone is courtesy of the Line6 Helix I play through, and my "back-up" instrument a Burns Baracuda with three single coil pickups (normally using the middle one) sounds much the same through this set up.

In the days when I was still using a conventional bass rig I found that using the Gramma Pad actually made the bass stack more unstable on some stages especially one where the ideal location for the drum kit and bass speakers meant that the kick drum pedal and the bass rig were mechanically connected via some loose boards under the carpeting and resulted in some terrifying looking movements of the bass rig!

I don't think you'd need the computer for gigging. It's just for creating the sounds in the first place. If you did find yourself needing to tweak the oscillators and envelope generators as part of the performance you'd need to make sure that the switches were set to the right ones for each patch (which would need to be done manually) before you started playing. It's one of these things you'd won't know is a problem or not until you've spent some time with the synth. Personally I'd be more worried about the limitations of the two octave keyboard. At you price point there is very little in the way of alternative especially if you want a full compliment of sound editing controls on the front panel. Off the top of my head only the Korg Monologue comes close...

On both of my 3-pickup Bass VIs (Squier and Burns) I found that the middle pickup was best for "bass" sounds although neither suffer from the noise problems you describe despite having single coil pickups, so I'd investigate the the shielding and grounding on your bass before committing to the hassle and expense of a pickup change.

They appear to be aimed a guitar players rather than pick players per se. Having said that I found the string spacing on my Squier Bass VI tight even by guitar standards, and borderline unplayable with the thicker Bass VI strings.

IME as soon as you fit sensibly heavy strings in order to get decent sounding and feeling E and A string, the vibrato mechanism becomes completely inoperable to people with normal arm muscles.

I think having multiple sounds is of more about being able to please a larger number of potential users rather than supplying lots of different sounds to a single player. Certainly when I have owned guitars and basses that were capable of producing lots of different sounds from the on-board controls, I would only use more than one, if the alternatives were only a single switch push away. Even then I'd probably stick with the one overall sound that worked best with the band and use a programmable multi-effects to alter it as required.

In which case so long as you are OK with only being able to play a single note at a time, you should be OK. However don't under-estimate the desirability of having a dedicated front-panel control for every parameter. I used to own a Waldorf Microwave XT which has an impressive number of knobs and switched on the front panel (the XT rack version is an additional 3U bigger than the standard version to accommodate all of these). However, as soon as you needed to access any of the more interesting modulation functions including the additional envelope generators and LFOs, you were back to parameter access and a relatively small display. I know that the switch selection for the Oscillators and EGs would very quickly get on my nerves as I'd be forever adjusting the wrong one. I'd be looking for a computer-based editor that shows all the controls on a single screen for any serious programming.

In my first band (late 70s early 80s) all of us played everything (guitar/bass/keyboards/percussion/any other instruments we could get hold of), and who played what on any particular song was down to a mixture of who wrote the music and who could play which part the best. By the end of the band we had become more settled into individual rolls with me playing bass most of the time. Since then my musical "career" by band has gone as follows: 2. Bass 3. Synth 4. Guitar & Synth 5. Bass 6. Synth 7. Bass eventually swapping to guitar 8. Bass 9. Bass 10. Bass 11 & 12 Bass and synth

What do you want to do with it? A few things to be aware of. It's a mono synth - only one note at a time so no chords. The two octave keyboard could be a limiting factor for playability. Some of the more interesting sound shaping functions do not have a dedicated front panel control which includes the fact that both the oscillators and both envelope generators share a single set of controls with switches to chose which one you are adjusting; so you can't just look at the controls and know what everything is doing in a quick glance. If you can live with all of those then it's a pretty good introduction to hardware synthesis.

Thanks. Unfortunately that's too narrow at the nut for me. I'm looking for a distance of at least 40mm from the centre of the lower sting to that of the highest. 35mm is the same as my Squier Bass VI which I find borderline unplayable. I'll most likely end up with a second Eastwood Hooky.

IIRC after a certain point (well below £70k) the fees are capped.