BigRedX

Update on the DHL parcel. It turns out that the parcel hadn't been refused by me, but DHL have finally admitted to the supplier that the parcel had been damaged which is why it hadn't been delivered. Don't know why they think they had to lie about the delivery status? Maybe they thought if they said it had been refused the problem would go away? Idiots. Not massively impressed with the supplier, who had to be chased up on a daily basis in order to get this information and to get them to send out replacement items. I've insisted on a tracking number in advance this time.

For me that bass part - especially in the intro - is such an important part of the song that it really needs the correct sound otherwise the OP might as well use a plain bass guitar. And these days there are plenty of plug-in synths with the required features - 2 oscillators and two envelope generators per voice that you don't need to be using a crap emulation of a second-rate synth. If you really wanted hardware there's no need for a real Jupiter 8 - Roland's very own System 8 synth will nail the sounds you want.

All the options apart from series humbucking wiring will be significantly lower in output.

On the whole Power Conditioners are designed for countries with less than robust mains electricity supplies (like the US) and deal with voltage fluctuations and mains-borne noise. IIRC the interference generated by fluorescent lights and dimmers is as much RF as it is mains-borne, while the power conditioner might make some difference it won't eliminate everything. The people who would get the most benefit in the UK from using a power conditioner are those living out in the sticks with variable mains voltages and those who do a lot of gigs where the power is supplied by a generator, although IMO in both cases they would be better off with a good quality UPS. Personally I'd get rid of the fluorescent lights (is there really any need for them these days?) and the dimmers. That will be a far more effective solution.

Nicely played, but the sound is really weedy compared with the original. It shows that you really need an synth with 2 VCOs and separate ADSRs for the filter and the amp to get close to the original sound. I've never understood the value of having a Juno 6/60 clone or VST. Back in the day no-one bought these synths out of choice. We bought them because we wanted to be able to play chords but couldn't afford a JP8, Prophet 5 or OBXA. If you really want that weedy Juno 6 sound just turn off one of the oscillators.

You will never get the big fat analogue sounds of a JP8 out of a DX7 emulator.

As I suspected they are probably ancient Rotosound round-wounds. Yes, age will give them a much more mellow sound. Unfortunately as you have discovered it does also make them harder and harder to tune (and intonate). Another thing I discovered with Rotosounds is that before a certain point (some time in the late 90s) they were incapable of making a short-scale E string that would produce a decent note. Your strings most likely date from that period. The solution is going to be a tricky one. You could carry on with the current strings (avoiding using the E string like I used to) until one of them breaks; or you could start investigating modern alternatives. String construction and choice has come a long way since that was was last re-strung. I would look for some short-scale flat-wounds that have the same tension as a standard set of Rotosound round wounds - hopefully someone will be along to recommend something suitable, as I'm not really into flat-wounds. What I would say is don't get Rotosounds as they are extremely high tension. The other thing to consider is that the the tuning/note definition problems may simply be a character of the bass and not matter what string you use, it won't really be usable. After-all no-one ever wanted one of these "Woolies Specials". These basses are what we bought back in 70s because we simply couldn't afford anything better.

Are those really flat-wound strings or just ancient round-wounds? IIRC Rotosound short-scale round-wounds had that colour silks.

I'd be wary. The advice is 11 years old, and really by now Reaper should natively support non-windows audio and video formats, especially since iPhones are so ubiquitous. Personally I would contact the makers of Reaper direct and see what they say. If they are still recommending this solution they should point you at a legitimate download source like the one direct from https://www.ffmpeg.org

No idea what the eBay bass is, but now I want to try an Mi6 5-string bass.

Are you on Windows or Mac OS? The advice being given is for a Windows machine, but .mov is a Mac video file format. Confused.

The bass on the recording of "Don't You Want Me" is likely to be either Roland Jupiter 8 or Roland System 100. If you are looking for a plug-in the process your bass guitar sound rather than a simple synth (which would be easier) have a look for anything with a Roland 80s style filter on it. Does the Roland Cloud version of the JP8 allow an external sound source? You will need to add something before this to fatten up the sound of the bass as an alternative to the dual oscillators that would have been used. Try a bit of distortion and chorus and then the JP8 type LPF.

Straight. Having owned a Warwick bass, I couldn't see/feel any advantage to having the machine heads angled, and IMO it always looked wrong.

Really can't see the point of parallel only effects loops. Most of the time you are going to want series, and occasionally if you are running a load of studio quality rack effects parallel can be useful, so a series/parallel switch can be useful. But parallel only? Who does that. You should name and shame. As has been said, unless your amp has a valve power amp section, simply turning down the output should be fine. Of course as has also been said sometimes speaker breakup is part of the sound and sometimes it's just the fact that it's loud that makes it sound "right". Unfortunately there's no quiet solution for these.

Surely any decent synth plug-in with the correct oscillator footage settings and played in the appropriate octave will do the job? Depending on your DAW you should have something suitable already.

A lot of the time the choice of DAW can be completely arbitrary and its continued use is as much to do with inertia as it is with features. I've been a Logic user since version 1.something when it was a MIDI sequencer only and I only added the "Audio" extra sometime during version 3 when I finally had a computer with enough grunt for simple multi-track recording and playback. My choice was made by the fact that one of the people I was collocating with at the time was a Logic user too. Left to my own devices I would have probably bought Opcode's "Vision" just before Gibson bought them up and killed the product off, so in some ways it was a lucky escape. Recently I have been running it on my MacBook Pro for the live backing for one of my bands with all the resources for all the songs we play on a single arrange page. While it does the job, it's a bit clunky using it this way, changing the set order is a real pain, and last minute changes at the gig can be a bit seat-of-the-pants. Generally it's easier to stop playback between tracks on stage and manually change the the playback cursor position using markers than it is to re-order the tracks in the dressing room. I have looked at the latest version of PreSonus Studio One which has special features built-in for people who want to use it in a live situation that makes the above simple, but everything else works so differently to Logic that I have yet to take the plunge. Add to this inertia the fact that the keyboard player in my other band has just started using Logic for his songwriting and you can see why I'm probably going to stick with what I know, even if it isn't always the best solution for all my needs.

As I posted in the "Hermes" thread I've had all sorts of problems with deliveries to my address where I am in all day working, and can see the road (it's a cul-de-sac) from where I work and IME the standard of delivery from everyone except Amazon and Royal Mail/Parcel Force has just gone seriously downhill since the beginning of this year. They now appear to employing silent ninja drivers, because often the first I know about a delivery is when I get an email saying that my parcel has been delivered. If I'm lucky it's there on my doorstep when I go and investigate.

Well add DHL to the list of couriers that can't be bothered to deliver to the right address. Earlier today I had an email from a supplier saying that my order had been completed. When I emailed them back asking what that meant, because I hadn't received my items from them yet, I got a message saying that they had checked the tracking and apparently the "delivery was refused" yesterday. That's weird because I work from home and I am in all day. From where I work I can see pretty much every vehicle that comes down the street - it's a cul-de-sac - and there was no DHL van/lorry that I noticed yesterday, and no attempted delivery that I have "refused". I did have a parcel delivered by my trusty postman with no problem. What this means is that they have tried the wrong address - but which wrong address I don't know because all my neighbours know me and they know that I work from home and if I really hadn't been i would have taken the parcel for me. The tracking number that my supplier has given me doesn't work, and having phoned them up for more information they now can't get the tracking number to work for them so that delivery can be re-arranged for Monday. Oh joy!

But those 4 strings are perfectly aligned between the 5 pole-pieces. I get where you are coming from, but when you are recreating that "vintage vibe" where do you draw the line between recreating a specific feel/look and actually making an instrument which functions properly? Are we about to see the return of over-sized neck pockets, 3-bolt neck joints and micro-tilt adjustments with a mis-aligned string plate for that authentic late-70s wonky neck look?

I have no idea what that means.

At $3500 for what is essentially a P-Bass copy (something that was originally designed to be able to be made cheaply with relatively unskilled labour) I would expect the attention to detail to be flawless. Misaligned pickups while not necessarily a problem with the sound and playability of the bass are not acceptable on an expensive instrument IMO.

The main reason that Reaper gets so much love is that it has a very low entry cost (essentially free and only £60 if you really want to pay for it) compared with other DAWs. However for that price you don't get very much other than the actual program, and to reach the same level of plug-in functionality as Logic you would probably have to spend quite a bit of extra money and almost certainly more than the £199 that Logic costs. However if all your plug-ins that you are currently using with ProTools are in AU format then you should be able to continue using them with Reaper. The other big disadvantage with Reaper is that it's MIDI editing/manipulation facilities are much less comprehensive than those in DAWs that started out life as sequencing applications like Logic, Cubase and Performer. Again though if ProTools' MIDI capabilities have been sufficient, then Reaper's should be too. ProTools for all it's historic dominance is on it's way out. Since affordable computers now have the kind of processing power that mostly renders the ProTools hardware unnecessary, it's USP has become less and less relevant. Added to it's problems are the reliance on the less than robust iLok copy protection system (as Beedster has already discovered) and the fact that the parent company Avid has been on the brink of financial disaster for years now, IMO ProTools days are numbered and it is only historical inertia rather than actual functionality that keeps its user base sticking with it. Also bear in mind that the parent company Avid are first and foremost into video editing and their audio offerings are very much second-class products compared with their main business. A cynical person might also be unsurprised that ProTools isn't playing nicely with Adobe products when the company produces competing applications - Premier, After Effects and Audition (BTW if you are an Adobe CC Subscriber you should definitely have a look at Audition as you already have it for free).

I was just looking for that, and it's no longer on the Italia web site, so obviously not that popular.

Since you are using a Mac, you should really be looking at Logic as an alternative to ProTools rather than Reaper. Reaper looks very impressive for the price, but as soon as you need any serious plug-ins you'll need to to be paying out and pretty soon that cost advantage will have disappeared. Ultimately unless you are having very serious compatibility issues with your current DAW it is nearly always most effective to stick with what you know, rather than waste time trying to learn something else that does all the same things but in a slightly different way. BTW what's your audio hardware/interface that you are using? IME the massive advantage of ProTools is the integration of the software with the ProTools hardware. Most of the problems I see have happened since the platform was opened up to use 3rd party interfaces. Some work better than others.

While it's not as impressive as that of either of his band-mates, Frank Beard has been sporting a beard for a number of years now.