BigRedX

Then AFAICS you need to upgrade your MotU PCI card to the 424 PCIe and you should be fine. I did this on my (Mac) system when I moved from a Graphite Power Mac 400 to a MacPro about 10 years ago. The upgrade process was fairly painless and although it was pricy, not as much as buying a brand new card and I didn't even have to return my old one (which was an original PCI 324 card).

What PCI card does you interface use? And which versions of PCI (PCI, PCIe, PCIx) does your old PC and the proposed new one have?

Also, unlike the guitar where a "soapbar pickup" is a fat single coil based on the Gibson P90, on the bass there could be absolutely anything inside the housing so long as it will fit. So very different coil and magnet configurations all housed in identical looking covers.

IMO you need to stop thinking that the various effect and amp/cab modules are exact copies of various items and think of them all as "tone-shapers". Most of the time I don't use any amp or cab sims in my patches (and I'm going straight into the PA with an FRFR speaker for on-stage personal monitoring). When I do have an amp sim in the signal path it has been chosen because I like the drive sound it produces and therefore it is there as a distortion device rather than an "amp". Quite often it will be a guitar amp too! That's the great thing about the Helix modules. You're not going to break anything by using something that hasn't been designed for bass as could happen with the actual hardware, at the worst it simply won't sound very good. Therefore you can experiment without any worries.

Personally I think that Eastwood would be on dodgy ground trying to make an exact copy of an instrument that is still in production by company which has a reasonably strong link to the one that originally made it. Also given what the majority of the other Eastwood instruments are like, there is no guarantee that what they produce will have more than a passing resemblance to any of the previous versions, although I would have thought that they would be using the original late 70s version as starting point if any. Personally if I was after a specific specification of the Aria SB1000, I'd be looking for a second hand model that met my requirements. I seems to work fairly well. Only a small deposit is required to secure your instrument, which you will get back if the target amount isn't reached. The balance isn't required until Eastwood are ready to ship the finished items. If you are really unsure you could wait until the target amount has been reached before putting down your deposit.

That's interesting. AFAICS all the other instruments on the "Bring It Back" page have previously been made in limited edition Eastwood Custom Shop versions, so that would imply that there has been an Eastwood version of the SB1000 before.

If they are it will most likely appear on the Eastwood Customs site first. How close they get to the original version is very variable. As LeftyJ says they tend to use standard parts, so what you end up with is something with roughly the same body shape as the guitar or bass it is copying but not much else. The very worst example is their take on the Ovation Magnum bass which doesn't even manage to get the body shape right. Some would appear to be much better. I have a Hooky Bass 6 PRO on order and apparently both the bridge and pickup had to be custom made for this model as there was nothing even remotely right in the parts bin. I'll post in detail about my experience and how good (or not) the bass is when it actually arrives. However I can say that the delivery date for this instrument has continually slipped back from being late March when the bass was first announced, to at the moment late July when I expect to get mine. Whether that is due to the current pandemic or simply a symptom of over-ambitious deadlines I don't know.

If the measurements work out OK (I'm hoping for Burns Barracuda width at the nut and Squier Bass VI at the bridge) than I may well go for a red/black burst one.

Looks as though the people that own Andertons now also own Burns Guitars, so they probably can offer a cheaper price than the competition.

One of those popped up on an eBay search the other day. Considerably cheaper than the Barracuda which it seems to have replaced. Could you please measure the string spacing at the nut and the bridge for me when yours arrives. A single measurement from the centres of the two E strings in both locations will do, along with the width of the neck at the nut. I haven't been able to find this information on-line so far. Thanks!

Very much this. There is no denying that the selection of woods and construction of acoustic instruments has a massive effect on the way they sound. When the projection of the sound is produced by a carefully selected single piece of wood, braced as little as possible to withstand the tension in the strings and attached to the rest of the instrument (whose size and shape also have a significant bearing on the tone) with minimal contact points - again just enough for the body to withstand normal playing use and little more. Compare that with the typical solid electric instrument body. Great thick chunks of timber slavered in glue and cut and joined in a way to maximise the number of bodies obtainable from a single board. The shapes while harking back to acoustic designs are often more to do with what is now visually acceptable based on the original solid instrument designs, and have no bearing on what may or may not sound best.

Live video of "The Man Who Hides From Love" This was recorded/filmed at our last gig back in December 2019 at the The Lending Room in Leeds.

I'm completely sold on my 745 cab. I can't see myself going back to a traditional bass rig. Interesting none of the bassists who have been forced to use my set-up because of equipment sharing gigs have had anything bad to say either. Some have been pleasantly surprised.

Are you making bodies out of a single piece of wood? If so "resonance" might play a small part, although I think if a big lump of wood, like you would use for a solid bodied instrument, sounds dead there is probably something structurally wrong with it. If you are gluing two (or more) pieces of wood together to make a solid body how do you decide where the joins go. Do you test the body again after glueing? What would you do if once glued to another piece of wood the resonance is no longer right. Throw the whole lot away?

Exactly. Both Ritter and Baz Extravaganza (as well as a variety of far eastern bass makers in the 60s and 70s) have also used plywood for bass bodies. Ritter's was made of individually selected and coloured thin boards, while the Baz Extravaganza bass was from a sheet bought from his local DIY store. Both turned out to be perfectly good.

It looks at though the last festival gig I would be playing this year has just been postponed until 2021. It all very well being told that the gigs will go ahead the following year, but will the bands I play in still be wanted? I can understand promoters and audiences being happy to wait an extra year for the headliners and other top of the bill bands, but both of my bands arein the bottom half of any festival line-ups and one of them got the majority of this year's bookings because they would co-incide our second album coming out. By this time next year that album will no longer be brand new. As a promoter I'd be looking very hard at the bottom half of any festival I was putting together and having a re-think about whether I was going to keep to full original line-up or go for some newer, more current acts.

Eastwood Hooky Bass 6 PRO will be shipping within the next 3 weeks...

In that case anything you like the sound and feel of will do. Am I right in thinking you are looking at a 5-string Thunderbird? If so the options are options are considerably limited compared with the 4-string versions. The Epiphone is particularly nasty - I tried one when they first came out and hated it - also beware that some were fitted with the wrong pickups and consequently have very weak sounding B and G strings. Gibson have only made one model of Thunderbird with 5 strings and that's horrible too. I believe that Maruszczyk do a Thunderbird shaped bass so they might be worth looking at. Also if you want to go something with a slightly different shape, but still in the same ball-park have a look at the Spector Rex.

What exactly do you want from your Thunderbird? Is it the sound you are after, in which case which one because the newer Gibsons have very little in common with the 60s originals, or do you just want something with a Thunderbird shape?

This clip was brought up in the comments for a web comic I follow... Possibly the uncoolest and most inappropriate use of a Thunderbird:

Glad you got it sorted. I've seen several times people post about UPS (United Parcel Service of America, Inc. - the people with the brown vans) when they actually mean USPS (United States Postal Service - the US equivalent of Royal Mail/Parcel Force) so it's always best to clear that up first. USPS parcels always get delivered by either Royal Mail or Parcel Force (depending on the size) so once they reach the UK you can track their progress through the Royal Mail web site with the US tracking number.

Do you mean USPS or UPS? If it's USPS you can check the status on the Royal Mail website with your tracking number, but you'll have to wait until Royal mail send you a bill for VAT/customs duty and their handling fee. If it is UPS log onto their website and make sure you are on the UK portion before typing in the tracking number.

If the seller has been sensible and kept all the original packaging it should be fine.

If you are wanting to use the pedal as a splitter to send to both your amp and the PA you will need to check exactly what is being sent from each output. Many pedals output a clean sound from one and effect only from the other, others will have one output out of phase with the other, and almost all will sound wrong unless both outputs have the same EQ and volume when they reach the listener (that's both you and the band and the audience). That's why it's "stereo" and not "2-channel". Unless you bass normally goes through the PA and you can send both L&R channels to both the PA and the amp (usually as soon as you plug into the right channel output on the pedal it will go into stereo mode and unless you can send both channels to the amp it will sound weird on stage) it will be more trouble than it is worth.

Out of interest why do you want a cab with a 15" driver? IME you can't assign a given sound to just a particular size of speaker. I would say speaker construction, cab design, size and porting have far more impact on the "sound" of a cab than the diameter of the speaker cone. Certainly whenever I have had different cabs with the same speaker size(s) and configuration they have all sounded completely different. Also if your bass goes through the PA your choice of cabs is mostly irrelevant. Here's my 15" cab which I have for on-stage monitoring purposes only. For the bigger gigs where I know there is going to be excellent PA support I don't even bother bringing it.