BigRedX

Getting vinyl to sound good (if that isn't an oxymoron) is mostly down to mastering and cutting. When vinyl was the only delivery medium (compact cassettes very never really taken seriously) all the mastering and cutting engineers knew exactly what they could and couldn't get aways with to the best quality signal onto the records. Remember also that in order to press records the cut acetate goes through at least another process to create the stamper(s) and often two more for high volume runs. Because it is a mechanical process there will be a slight loss of quality with each process, so the cutting of the acetate has to be done with these losses in mind. While there are some new good cutting engineers about these days, they don't handle the sheer volume of work that was being done in the 60s and 70s (backlogs are mostly in the pressing plants rather than the cutting rooms) and there are no well-known names like Porky (George Peckham) and Bilbo (Dennis Blackham) who back in the day were probably as important as the musicians and the producer of the records that they cut. When I looked at my record collection in the early 80s nearly every disc was either a "Porky Prime Cut" or a "Bilbo Bopper". There is also the problem that masters for vinyl, CD and digital downloads (and cassette should you be hipster enough) all require different techniques, and there is no "one size fits all" master that will make the best of each delivery medium. I think also that for a lot of consumers vinyl is an artefact rather than a music delivery medium, and will never get played. I have on a couple of occasions toyed with the idea of releasing an album on vinyl, which would simply be cheap second hand records with new sleeves and labels. I wonder how long it would be before someone complained that the record didn't contain the music it was supposed to?

Specialised CD transport mechanisms are a complete con. All the data off the CD gets read into a buffer first to allow for the error correction, so any talk of minimising digital jitter and the like is bollox. So long as the drive spins at approximately the correct speed and the DACs are decent you won't hear any difference between a cheap CD player and an expensive one.

These days the only reason that a CD sounds inferior to the same music on vinyl is that the wrong master has been used to produce the CD. Vinyl, because it is a mechanical medium, has lots of built-in problems with what it can and cannot reproduce compared with digital formats. Anything with excessive bass or stereo phase differences will be impossible to cut, and if by some miracle you can cut it most people's record decks simply won't be able to play it no matter how many 2p coins you put on the tone arm. On top of that, both the bandwidth and signal to noise ratio but decrease the closer you get to the middle of the record, so the audio fidelity of a record decreases with every revolution. When I last had any of my music pressed on vinyl the advice from the cutting engineer was that for the best audio fidelity the record should be cut at 45rpm and the running time per side should not exceed 10 minutes (for a 12" record) anything beyond that would be compromised. I wonder how many albums meet these specifications? IIRC, Genesis in particular used to boast about the long running times of their albums.

Putting aside our withdrawal from the EU, the problem is that the UK is not physically connected to the rest of mainland Europe and therefore the transportation and distribution costs will always be higher.

As a consumer: A nicely designed 12" album sleeve and all the other associated packaging is a thing of beauty. Unfortunately the lump of plastic inside which contains the important part (the music) is more fragile and sonically inferior to a properly mastered CD. Vinyl is a lot better quality these days than than the crap we were being sold from the mid 70s onwards, but I'd still rather have a CD from a musical PoV. As a musician: I will make my music available in whatever format my audience wants. Last time I looked (about 5 years ago), for an album, vinyl wasn't significantly more to produce than CDs (for quantities of 500+) but the lead times were fairly horrific, and from what I have seen they have only got worse.

Didn't you get any guitar amp plug-ins with your DAW?

The place of the bass guitar in a band mix depends very much on genre and the personal preferences of the musicians. There are no rules but there are conventions. Even then there is no definite reason to follow them, and anyway it's all subjective. If the band thinks the mix sounds good then it is good.

I'm confused! What's leather and what should be gold foil?

If I had the money and liked any of these enough to want to buy one (I don't) I would most certainly play it and gig it (again providing that when I received it I thought it was good enough as an actual musical instrument).

If the exact shape essential? The Herco nylon picks look similar although not identical.

This. You may need to make up a special XLR lead if your audio interface has XLR outs as you are essentially joining two "outputs" to each other, but otherwise it works fine. This is the method I have used on those occasions when I have tried re-amping.

Depends on the pick and depends on the fingers. In my case the tonal difference between the two is minimal (I have hardened finger tips on my plucking had and favour soft-ish nylon picks) and in a band mix essentially zero. For me the reason for picking one playing style over another is mostly down to rhythmic feel.

On the few occasions that I have tried re-amping it never offered me anything tonally over what I could already get out of the plug-ins I was using. IMO the most important thing (especially with overdriven guitar sounds) is to record the parts while playing through an amp (but not recording the amp sound) so that you get the interaction between the guitar and amp/speaker. No amount of emulation or re-amping can simulate this.

The Harmonised Commodity Code requirement for individuals sending things out of the UK appears to have become a requirement post January 1st 2021. I'd certainly never needed it it before. However it doesn't appear to have stopped Belgian Customs from holding up the parcel I was sending (it sailed straight through UK customs) and then managing to loose it. Also for some items can be tricky to assign and don't always fall into the sub-category you would expect. In my case printed self-adhesive labels were a sub category of Labels - Textile, Leather and Others, rather than Printed Papers.

I've bought instruments (and other stuff) from all over the world and sold them to pretty much all the major continents too. Until the UK left the EU I'd only had two problems and they both happened while the item was still in the UK. However since the beginning of 2020 the situation has become for more complicated, I had one parcel disappear c in customs in Belgium and another returned after several months in limbo for no apparent reason. Therefore I will no longer ship outside of the UK, as it is just too unpredictable. As a result I've lost some sales and what was previously a fairly lucrative print contract for my business because the additional time, effort and therefore cost I now have to put in to shipping things outside of the UK negates any price savings I was getting my customers. The OP is a braver man than me!

IMO there are only three reasons for swapping guitars or bass on stage: 1. You broke a string or something else failed on the instrument rendering it useless. In this case my preferred spare would be exactly the same as my main guitar or bass 2. You use different tunings for different songs (and the songs really can't be played on one instrument with a single tuning). You might be able to get away with on-stage retuning for switching between standard and drop-D if you are well practiced and don't mind the change in tension and feel of the string. Otherwise you need a separate instrument for every different tuning. 3. On the bass you need to play some songs on fretted bass and some on fretless. Everything else is IMO for show only. Fine if you have a large stage/off-stage are for all your spare guitars and a roadie to help you swap over instruments. Otherwise you risk breaking the flow of the set and boring the audience. I've seen it many times from bands who really ought to know better.

And as promised... I currently own three Bass VIs (Squier, Burns and Eastwood Shergold copy) and used to own a HB Mosrite-influenced 28" scale baritone guitar tuned B-B). My take on it is, that while most Bass VIs tend to be positioned as bass guitars for guitarists, the baritone guitar is very much a guitar with a lower range. A lot of this is down to the type and positioning of the picks on the two different instruments. Baritone guitars usually have the pickups in the standard guitar bridge and neck positions and they will either be P90 types or humbuckers. Most Bass VIs will have 3 single coil pickups with the middle one roughly in the P-bass position in relation to the string length. However what I have found to be the most important difference is down to what you can play on them. IME anything you can play on a normal guitar can be played on a baritone guitar, it will just be either a 4th or 5th lower (depending whether it is tuned B-B or A-A). All the standard guitar chord shapes work across all the strings and you should be able to get a clear and articulate tone even with full first position chords. On the Bass VI, while you can play it like a guitar, chord voicing are pretty awful until you venture up the neck or stick to the highest three strings. Play a first position E chord and it will just be an un-defined mush. Baritone guitars only go down to B or A so you won't get the full range of bass notes that you will out of a Bass VI. What I have found with both instruments though is that the supplied strings in every nearly case are much too light to get a decent tone out of the lower 2-3 strings. Baritone guitars suddenly sound much better with the heaviest standard baritone set from D'Addario, and Bass VIs are a completely different instrument once you fit either the LaBella Bass VI strings or the Newtone Axions. The only downside to putting heavier strings on the Bass VI is that the vibrato mechanism (if there is one) becomes almost impossible to use due to the increase in string tension.

Any bass that suits your playing style will make you play better. Because you can no longer claim that your bad bass playing is due to a poor quality instrument holding you back and because a bass you enjoy playing should encourage you to play more. Certainly when I got my first really good bass (a second hand Overwater) after having owned 3 very cheap and at best very average basses, my playing improved massively.

The most important ingredient to sounding like Jaco Pastorius is being Jaco Pastorius.

Having owned both they are too entirely different instruments. Will explain in full when I’m on a proper computer and can type properly.

Fantastic looking instrument. Be aware that the string spacing is tight at both the nut and the bridge.

Those "cool shades" are all standard automobile colours. It's not like Fender are in the paint shop formulating their own.

They certainly show off the fact that someone at Fodera has some serious carpentry skills, but in every other respect these three instruments epitomise what is (IMO) wrong with aesthetics in the boutique instrument market. Showing off technical skill over integrated and ergonomic design. And the decoration is applied to just the top with no thought as to how best to integrate it with the rest of the design and construction. And what is with those nasty plastic pickup covers and mis-matched knobs on the second a third photos? And the arrangement of them? It's boutique pedal syndrome all over again. Must try harder and go for some lessons in design and ergonomics.

Please explain using proper science how the plastic components will affect the tone of a pickup.

I bought a Squier Bass VIs many years ago when one of the European retailers was selling them at bargain bin (<£300 inc shipping) prices. I liked the concept but wasn't that impressed with the actual bass mostly because of what I considered to be a very narrow neck even by normal guitar standards (it is certainly narrower than any of the guitars I own). It was fun but a bit of a novelty item, and it would have stayed that way and probably been sold when I did my last big clearcut, but then the guitarist in one of my bands quite rather than replace him, we tried a couple of rehearsals with me playing the Squier, and rearranging the songs so that the synth player took over the bass parts when I was doing the "guitar" lines. It turned out to be quite effective, but I really couldn't get on with the neck on the Squier so I started a search to find something more suitable. For a while I was using a Burns Barracuda which had a wider neck but closer string spacing at the bridge compared with the Squier, but overall was easier to play. The Eastwood announced that they were going to be producing a Peter Hook signature version of the old Shergold Marathon 6 Bass. This is the Bass VI for me. A wider neck and string spacing at the bridge compared with all the other Bass VIs I had tried/owned. I'll almost definitely be selling the Squier and the Burns and buying another Eastwood to use as a backup at gigs. Here I am with my band "Hurtsfall" at last year's Leeds Goth City event playing the Eastwood: