BigRedX

At the two O2 Arena gigs I have done they had a single PoS location for festival and band merchandise with someone employed by the festival to sell all the merch, so IMO it was worth the 10 or 15% that they took.

I've only come across this twice in the last 15 years (both times at O2 Arenas).

Another thing to consider if you veneer the whole fingerboard, is that the side position markers will then be in the wrong place for an unlined fretless. In my fretless playing days I could only get on with them being in the fretted positions if the fingerboard was very obviously lined. Otherwise I found myself continually playing slightly flat which isn't very good.

Loads of experience with band T-shirts for many different bands. This is what I have discovered. 1. Unless you have a strong visual image that always features a particular 2-3 colour palette stick to black T-Shirts with a white or light coloured print. Everyone likes a black T-Shirt. When I've done white or coloured T-shirts (I was once in a band that had a very strong visual identity based around yellow with red and black, so we had yellow shirts with red and black print) they have never sold as well as black ones. 2. No matter how many young skinny hipsters there are in your audience, IME the people who buy band T-Shirts are mostly L and bigger. The number of unsold Terrortones T-Shirts in S, M and ladies fit sizes will attest to that. By all means have a range of sizes but make at least 2/3 of them L and XL or bigger. 3. If you want to make money out of selling T-shirts, screen printing is the way to go. 100 T-shirts with a single colour print on one side should still work out at under £5 per shirt which means you should be able to make at least 100% profit on every shirt you sell for £10. IMO 100 T-shirts is a minimum order to make it worth while. The more you can get printed in an order the cheaper the unit price becomes. 4. It might sound boring, but T-shirts that obviously feature the band logo always sell well, and have the advantage of turning your audience into walking advertisements for your band. If you want to do something clever, think about printing back and front with the band logo on one side and the clever bit on the other. IME clever T-shirts look great but don't sell as well as ones that are obviously for the band. 5. Store them neatly with the size (and the design if you have multiple designs) clearly labeled. No-one will buy a T-shirt that looks like it's been used to clean the floor of the band van. 6. As others have said have someone working your merch table who isn't involved in having to pack the gear away. Your peak sales will be immediately after you have played and again just before kicking out time, so don't pack your merch away until the last punter has left the venue. 7. Get a card reader. Very few people carry cash to gigs these days. One of my bands has a Sumup machine and the other is still cash only and consequently doesn't sell much merch anymore. If you are taking cash make sure you have plenty of the right kind of change, because you can guarantee that first round of sales of a £10 T-Shirt will all be made with £20 notes.

Song: 12 Long Years (this has been the closing song in the set since the band started in 2018) Band: Hurtsfall Venue: The Bodega, Nottingham Bass: Eastwood Hooky Pro 6 > Line6 Helix > PA

That will make it a bit harder to fit veneers in the slots as you have to cut the width accurately first.

Actually now I know where to look I think the output jack is visible in the first photo (the one of it hanging on the wall).

Definitely not my experience with the FRFR (RCF 745) that I have. Because of the nature of a lot of the gigs I do where there is a great PA and excellent monitoring it only gets used for rehearsals and about half the gigs that one of my bands does. However for those it is perfect. I've needed to use it twice in venues where the PA was strictly vocals only, and due to the better dispersal characteristics of the FRFR it was far better than the traditional bass rig it replaced in that I only had to be slightly louder on stage than I would normally choose, as opposed to so loud I could barely hear the rest of the band. Plus it's about a quarter the size of my previous rig, and will fit in a lot of places on stage where there wouldn't be room for traditional bass cabs. I can't see myself ever going back to a conventional bass amp and cabs.

Next gig for Hurtsfall will be in Leeds at Wharf Chambers on 13th July as part of the Leodis Requiem Festival: Edit: we don't have the full running order for our day yet, but unless something changes in the next couple of weeks Hurtsfall are on at 7.30.

As I said back in May on the other AI thread:

How easy it is will very much depend on what sort of noise you are trying to remove. Constant uniform noise is generally the easiest. There is a noise reducer in Logic already, so have a go with that first. Otherwise if there is a section of the recording with just noise you could try copying that onto a new track and then setting it to be out of phase with the original audio and mixing it back in which should remove most constant uniform background noise. Otherwise if you are happy to pay there are plenty of noise removal plugins at various price points. Watch some YouTube tutorials on them before parting with any cash so you can see and hear how they work so you know which one(s) are going to be the most useful for the type of noise you want to remove. After this is is worth thinking about how you are making the original recordings and take steps to ensure that any new ones are as noise-free as possible. If you aren't recording as much unwanted background noise in the first place removing it will be a lot easier. Also if the you are able to make the phase cancellation method work for you, if in future you find yourself having to record in a very noisy environment, you should spend a few extra minutes recording just the background noise so you have plenty of samples to use for removing it from the speech recordings later on.

What sorts of bands are you talking about? Could be anything from genre, there are plenty of genres where the bass is deliberately placed in a different sonic space in the mix compared with where it would normally be, to the fact that the bass player simply wants to be able to hear what notes they are playing and having too much bottom end in the sound gets in the way of this.

Am I missing something, but I can't see any pickups or mention of them in the description

I'm obviously approaching it from a completely different direction to the typical user. Firstly I have no idea if any of the models on any of these devices are accurate to the originals, and TBH I don't really care. For me amps and speakers were always seen as devices that would get my instrument/line-level signal from whatever instrument I was playing, and effects I was using, to a level where it could be heard by the audience, and any colouration they added to the sound were unintentional and unwanted. In the days when I did own individual pedals or rack processors, none of them were conventional and most were chosen first and foremost for practicality - for instance when I bought my first delay device (some time in the mid-80s) the most important thing to me was the fact that it had a display showing the delay time in Ms so I could get my echoes in time with the music; MIDI sync and tap-tempo weren't even a thing back then, or I would have probably picked one of those as the must-have feature. So as long as I have access to all the typical effects I need - compression, distortion, EQ, chorus/flanger and delay - which perform in a way that I am expecting and produce sounds that work in the context of the overall band mix, I am happy. For me programmable memories, MIDI control, a nice big display, a built-in PSU connected by a standard IEC mains lead and the fact that I only need a single device are absolutely essential. At a gig I can plonk the device down on stage, connect the leads and I'm ready to go. When we sometimes have 10 minutes max to get set up and line checked at a multi-band gig where there is often barely enough room to stand let alone move about on stage, I want something that I can get connected and working in the shortest time possible.

For me the point of the large format multi-effects is that they are self-contained units that are essentially their own pedalboard. In this respect the Helix Floor trumps all the other devices I have seen because it has a built-in PSU which for me is an absolute must in a gigging situation. I worked with musicians in the past that have similar devices with external PSUs and in every case at some point the low voltage side lead has failed rendering it useless. I accept that some of the effects in a multi-effects unit may not deliver quite the sounds that are wanted, but my philosophy is that live I'll take the convenience of having everything in a single device which is MIDI controllable over having a slightly "better" sound that may be not be noticeable to my audience. I don't use filter or synth sounds for guitar or bass because IMO a keyboard/MIDI synth will always do them better and we already have two synth players in the band - one human and one computer. In the studio I'll use whatever I need to get the sound that is right for the final mix.

The way I have read how the processing power of the more cost-effective Helix/HX units works is that you simply can't have as many modules in a Preset as you would in the full Helix and not that what you do have sounds less good. The processing assignment is dynamic so the number of modules available on a given device depends on the processing needs of each module. And as I have said before, one of the ways that Line 6 improves their devices is by firmware upgrades, which have included rewriting a lot of the modules to give the same sound whilst using less processing power. I haven't yet run out of processing power on my Helix, but then again I'm very frugal with what I put in the signal path, and only include things that actually make a noticeable difference to the sound and wherever possible use Snapshot parameter changes to change the sound, which allows me me to use the smallest amount of modules in a Preset. I made a conscious decision to go for the top of the range Helix when I bought mine working on the assumption that if I bought a cheaper model I would regret it later. TBH the things that only the Helix Floor does that I have found invaluable are things that I hadn't really considered until I started using it. And in a way the answer to the problems of anyone finding the cheaper models limiting would be to upgrade to the full Helix Floor or Rack model. It will also have the advantage that your sounds can be transported over too, whereas if you go for something from a different manufacturer you'll be starting from scratch and with a completely different user-interface. And for anyone who considers the Helix Floor expensive, bear in mind that compared that until recently you'd have paid the same amount of money (around £1k) for something with a fraction of the facilities and user-friendliness, which means that in real terms IMO it is a complete bargain.

But in music there are still plenty of people using valve amps which have barely changed since the 1940s, and new technology does not automatically equal a better sound. Can you actually hear anything wrong with the sounds of the Helix that aren't subjective? Besides in the IT world it is my experience that increased processing power leads to sloppy coding and bloat-ware because the programmers no longer have to try and eke out every last bit of performance from limited hardware. I have to say that getting a good sound straight out of the Helix was actually far easier than any of the other multi-effects devices I have ever used starting with the Roland GP8 I got back in the 1989. When I got my Helix, I spent an hour working my way through the presets, and while there was nothing that really grabbed me, that's hardly surprising, as there have been very few presets from either effects units or synths that I have ever found useful straight out of the box. I then spent half a day putting together a "core sound" for my bass, working in the same way that I would had I been given a selection of individual pedals, which after a few tweaks at the next band practice would be used to create individual patches for each song we did. By the end of the following practice I was 90% happy with all the Presets and Snapshot variations I had put together for the whole set. Like any other complex device you just need to methodical and approach it one module at a time. Most of the issues I see with any multi-defects unit tend to be user problems like option paralysis or feeling guilty about not using the full potential of the complex device. TBH I doubt anyone does use every feature. The great thing about all these devices is that the massive amount of options allows you to be able use the ones you need and ignore the ones you don't. I'd rather have more options than I could ever use than find a lack of them put limits on what I could do with it.

You keep saying this but what exactly do you want that the Helix can't already do? There are a few things I would like but they could easily be covered in a firmware update if it wasn't for the fact that they are so esoteric that I'm probably the only person who would want them, and I can't see any of the other major multi-effects manufacturers offering them on their products either.

Got to agree with @Chezz55 to me it sounds like someone's early attempts to make music using sampled loops and haven't quite got the hang of making sure that the various parts are properly in tune with each other. It's also repetitive in the worst possible way, and has only become popular because it's by people who are already well-known. If this had been assembled by an unknown bedroom DJ it would never have got a second listen. I suppose that if you are planning to do it live with a band you can fix the more questionable harmonies and add a bit more variation to the parts.

I bought a cheap bass that had been de-fretted and fret lines added for £60 off eBay. It was perfectly adequate to get me started with fretless bass playing and actually IMO out-performed every other fretless bass I bought until I spent £1k on a Pedulla Buzz.

Having said that I was just making adjustments to one of my more complex Presets with that has 4 Snapshots in it, and in order to replicate it with individual pedals I would need the following: One volume pedal Two 10-band graphic EQ pedals for the two different EQ settings I use. Two chorus pedals as I have two significantly different chorus settings within the Snapshots One Flanger pedal Three distortion/drive pedals for the different amounts of distortion and character of the distortion Two delay pedals for different delay times and feedback settings used in the Snapshots I have simplified this down as there are essentially different chorus, drive and delay settings for each of the 4 Snapshots, but I could get away with the above if I had to for live use. However it is still more than 9 pedals of the challenge and I would probably need 4 feet to be able to switch everything on and off at the required times and 2 of the Snapshots alternate every two bars of the song during the verse and chorus, which would make it very challenging to do with individual pedals.

Just done the latest firmware update and one thing is starting to annoy me about the Helix. Each update resets a lot of things to their factory defaults. Once agin I have had to reassign the following: 1. Volume control to affect the XLR output only. 2. Sample rate to 44.1 kHz. 3. Expression 1 Pedal position to be global. 4. Footswitch assignments to be 4 Presets on the top row and 4 Snapshots on the bottom row 5. Tuner display to Strobe. 6. Re-instate my Global EQ settings. After I lost these the first time I made sure to write them down as they are less easily remembered than the others. Luckily my preferences coincide with the defaults some of the other important global settings like MIDI and clock/tempo assignments. I would have thought by now that there would be some way to save all of these so they would be restored to the user settings following a firmware upgrade but either there isn't or I have something that would allow this disabled, although if that is the case, I can't see it.

Unless you are planning to use some sort of protective finish on your veneered fingerboard or use the smoothest of smooth flat or tape wound strings, you'll probably find yourself wearing through the thin veneer in no time. Also you will still need to fill the slots and any other chips in the fingerboard left by the removal of the frets.

In that case a solution that allows you to point the speaker at your ears rather than your legs is the most sensible one.

Is the problem for musicians on stage being able to hear you, or projecting out into the audience?