BigRedX

You should go and post this question on the Mac Music section of the SOS Forum. I believe that there are some people running this configuration on there who will be able to give you some real world experiences. AFAICS the problem with the M1 MacBook Air's, isn't the processing power (my ancient 2012 MacBook Pro has plenty of processing power for Logic provided I don't go mad with the plug-ins), but the fact that RAM is capped at 8GB which may be a problem if you are running sampler plug-ins with memory intensive samples (like orchestras).

I've just realised that my Eastwood copy of the Marathon 6-string bass is essentially a signature instrument, as it's branded as the Eastwood Hooky Bass 6 PRO. It's a strange one because although it is supposed to be based on Peter Hook's favourite Shergold Bass, there's nothing really about it that's any different from the other 90 or so Marathon 6-string basses that Shergold produced in late 70 and early 80s. Even the colours it's available in are the same (or very close) to the colours available from Shergold.

I think the most I have ever paid to see a band was £40-ish for The Human League in London about 5 years ago. THB I don't like big venues (anything bigger than Rock City size) as they have for me very little atmosphere. It would have to be someone very, very special to tempt me back to Nottingham Arena for a gig. And to re-enforce how over-priced a lot of gigs tickets are, I have just paid £35.00 for Saturday night at WGW next weekend to see Peter Hook and the Light, The Last Cry, and two other bands. That's good value IMO.

It completely depends on the bass. If it's a standard model with a few (imperceptible to me) tweaks and a "custom" colour and graphics, then probably not. On the other hand if it's something very different from the standard model it is based on or something completely unique then so long as the bass fits requirements, maybe, and in that case the "name" attached to the bass is almost completely irrelevant. I've owned one signature instrument - Yamaha BJ5B - which is the Terry and the Blue Jeans signature bass made in a limited edition of 50 along with a matching guitar. The bass is the only way of getting an SVB shape in 5-string configuration, I liked the look of the SVB re-issue basses but at the time I was only playing 5-strings, so when one turned up on Ishibashi I jumped at the chance to buy it. I'm not really fan of the music of Terry and the Blue Jeans but the bass looks cool. Unfortunately when I actually got it, I discovered that it was essentially a TRB5 with the SVB body shape and ridiculously narrow neck. It was also the heaviest bass I have ever owned. Kept it for a couple of years and used it at a handful of gigs and then move it on when I had my big instrument clear out. And don't forget if you also play guitar, every "Les Paul" is technically a signature instrument.

What do you expect with a new originals band? The most successful originals band I have ever been in, had nothing but a handful of lyrics written by the singer and a vague idea about musical direction when we got together for the first time. We wrote all the songs that would be our initial set (8 in total) in the first 3 practices and then spent the following month tightening them up for our debut gig. The singer and the drummer had played together previously (in a band that had nothing musically in common with this new one) and I had been very briefly in the final line up of that band (a handful of rehearsals and one gig) but none of us had played together for almost a year. The guitarist was new. We essentially went from nothing to a cracking debut gig in 2 months.

It really depends what you want from a set of bass strings. Also just because a set give me a sound I like, suit my playing style, and work with the basses that I use them on doesn't mean they will be right for anyone else and the bass(es) they want to fit them to. I've discovered the following about Rotosound strings: 1. They go off really quickly. Even in the packets. The only way to guarantee that you'll get a decent life out of them is to buy them off the Rotosound stand at a guitar show and fit them to your bass as soon as you get home. From any other source you have absolutely no idea how old they are when you buy them, and they may well be well past their prime before you even get around to stringing a bass with them. 2. If you want 34" scale length round-wounds in gauges between 110 and 35 they are fine. Everything else is completely hit or miss. Great if your basses are all long-scale 4 strings and you don't down-tune too far. I've spent most of my bass playing life with short-scales, extra-long scales, 5-strings and Bass VIs. I've struggled to get consistently good stings from Rotosound for anything other than ordinary 34" 4-string basses (I have owned a couple). IMO it doesn't matter how cheap a set of strings are if I am constantly finding duff strings in a set. So far (about 5 years of using them) the Warwick Black labels haven't let me down. I also picked them because the low B-string is taper-wound at the ball end which suits the basses I am fitting these too, and which I don't think Rotosound offer as an option. If money was no object I'd be using LaBella Steels but they are twice the price of the Warwicks, and only marginally better.

No. It's when you try a bass out in the shop. Think you like it enough to buy it, but once you've spent a couple of days with it really playing it, you realise that there things about it that you simply can't get on with. It's happened to me the last time I bought a bass from a shop (about 16 years ago). Once I got it home I found that it didn't hang on the strap in a way I found comfortable and that when on the strap the G-string machine head was out of easy reach. The output was very low compared to all my other basses and the sound a bit on the thin side. These were all things that it would have been almost impossible to discover in the shop, but were very apparent after a couple of days of really putting the bass through it's passes. Had I got this bass from an on-line retailer I could have sent it straight back once I knew it wasn't for me. Instead I tried living with it's short-comings for a month or two, decided that I couldn't and then spent another 3 months dealing with tyre-kickers on Basschat before I was finally able to sell it on. It's replacement bought on the strength a couple of recommendations and some nice photos was exactly what I needed.

That's why it's better to go and see some young up-and-coming bands, rather than a bunch of has beens. Having said that I like The Stranglers, but their current incarnation is hardly the classic line up and I'd much rather remember them via those great early recordings.

It's not always about having lots of different sounds. Sometime it can be about finding the right sound for the band/music and being about to get it every time you set your gear up. It's all very well having a "great sounding" conventional bass rig, but if it doesn't produce the right sound for your particular musical endeavour then it's worthless. I currently play in two bands. The core sound I use for each band is entirely different because of the songs, the arrangements and overall feel needed for each band. Even if I just decided to play with one band and a single bass sound was completely appropriate for all the songs in the set, I'd still use the same Helix and FRFR set up because it gives me enough options to get that one right sound without having to think about swapping amps and/or cabs and getting into that endless buying and selling spiral of looking for "the tone".

Completely and utterly this. Having a powered FRFR cab removes two more variables from your sound, and means that the sound produced by you, your bass and the Helix are what both the audience FoH and the band on-stage hears. When you are using a conventional bass rig at best the feed from the PA is taken post-EQ from the amp which means that "character" of both the power section of the amp and your cabs is completely by-passed. When was the last time you saw a bass cab mic'd up on stage and knew for a fact that the mic'd sound was what you were hearing through the PA?

Distance selling regs allow you to return it for a refund within 28 days of purchase. Besides you'll get a much better idea of whether it's going to suit you then 30 minutes playing in a music shop will.

"Is there any such thing as music that doesn't date?" No. To believe otherwise is delusional. Everything about a piece of music will date it from the chord sequences to the song structure, the lyrical (if there are any) subject matter, the arrangement and instrumentation. And that's before you consider the recording and production.

The 5-string version of it is extremely rare (only 50 were made) and extremely big and heavy. It does look cool though...

It's either fake, or he's signed a really crap deal that means some other organisation (probably his record label or publisher) is taking most of his Spotify royalties, in which case he's got no-one but himself (and his legal advice) to blame. I've just had a look at mine for the last 6 months and the mechanicals only work out at just over 0.4¢ per play. Therefore if I'd received 1,000,000 plays that would be over $4k. Add my share of the publishing royalties to that, and it would be more than enough to get my band into a decent studio with a good producer to record our next album.

It depends what kinds of venues you are playing. It is my experience that most pub gig and covers band musicians don't really understand how bands on the originals circuit work (if they did they might consider it a more attractive proposition). We don't need to worry about things like monitoring because that's supplied by the venue, and while there are some venues where the PA can be a bit ropy they (IME) are few and and getting fewer all the time. Certainly in the last 20 years of playing in originals bands (probably around 500 gigs) there have been only a handful where the bass guitar wasn't in the PA and the on-stage monitors were strictly vocals only. They all tend to be tiny venues where the FRFR was more than capable of being my "back line" and providing a audible bass for both the rest of the band and the FoH sound. For most gigs I tend to treat my FRFR as a cross between backline and flexible monitoring. It's size and shape means that it can be placed in places where a conventional bass rig wouldn't fit. A lot of the time it goes under the stand which holds the computer for the band's backing tracks, and quite often it will be directed across the stage so that it's impact on the FoH sound is minimal, but still providing adequate stage coverage for the rest of the band to hear me. I don't see the FRFR and IME issues as being in any way related. If the band was to go for IEMs we'd ditch all the backline including my FRFR, The only reason for me to go for IEMs and keep the FRFR would be so I could also get the click on some songs where the drum patterns can be a little off-putting with regards to what I am playing. TL:DR 1. For small gigs with vocal only PAs the FRFR is more than capable of acting as my backline for band and audience to hear me. 2. For medium gigs (most of the ones I play ATM and where the bass is in the PA for FoH) the FRFR acts in exactly the same way as a conventional bass rig, but with more versatile on-stage placement options. 3. For big gigs, I don't bother with the FRFR, as the venue's monitoring system is more than adequate for me and the rest of the band to hear the bass.

Most humbuckers only use a single magnet orientated so that the pole-pieces for one coil are N and for the others are S. Therefore if you want to physically separate the the two halves of the humbucker you may well need to buy a second magnet of equal type and strength for one of the coils.

Streaming pays perfectly well so long as you haven't signed a contract which assigns the majority of that income to your record company and/or publisher.

Nice bass 😉

Does it specifically have to be pointy? Or will just unusual do? If so: Gus G3-5

The patches on my Helix are carefully crafted so that when the guitars or synths change in either of my bands the bass changes with it to still sit properly in the mix. It takes a fair bit of time and several rehearsals to work all the nuances out. I look at in in the same way as that old cliché that no no-one notices the bass until it isn't there. Unless my sound has been specifically picked to stand out in the mix (there are a few songs where this is needed) the patch changes are there to keep the overall instrumental balance right. Most of the time the average audience member won't notice that anything has changed. However if I didn't have different patches for each song (or section of the song) they probably would notice that the bass is suddenly too loud/quiet/bright/muddy.

What I enjoy playing and what I enjoy listening to don't have to be the same. Certainly for my brief(ish) stint in a covers band there were some songs that I wouldn't normally give the time of day to from a listening PoV that I really enjoyed playing. Unfortunately there are several songs that I used to like, but can now no longer stand listening to, as a result of having to over-analyse them in order to learn how to play them.

Just remember that the Smooth Hound is relatively high latency compared with similar devices. If you also have digital effects on the your pedal board, it may become noticeable especially if you use IEM.

That's poor design. I still have a Puma 300 and IMO it's not that flat/transparent.

I have a patch on my Helix with just an amp and speaker sim on it (the EBS one IIRC), with the tone controls for the amp up on the display so that they can be altered if required. Anyone who wants to use my (currently) unconventional rig simply plugs their bass or pedal board into the main Helix input and uses this. Since it's not a patch I use myself, it really doesn't matter how much they fiddle about with the controls. The only thing I tell them is to make a note of the settings after soundchecking if more than one band is going to using this rig. TBH I feel far more comfortable about other bassists using this then I did when I had a conventional bass rig. I also had one bassist who used my rig who didn't bother with this default patch but simply asked to use the one I had soundchecked with for my band as it sounded so good.

RCF 745 FRFR. That's what I use. No conventional bass amp and cab is remotely flat despite what the marketing department might want you to believe. That all have their own unique baked-in sound. That's why you choose one brand over another - it's has a baked-in sound that you find pleasing.