BigRedX

It's weird how those of us who are fixated on string spacing only ever talk about the measurement at the bridge, but since hardly anyone plays right next to the bridge that measurement tells us almost nothing. Without knowing also the string spacing at the nut and the scale length you simply don't know what the spacing is going to be like at either the position your plucking hand does most of the plucking (most likely around the point where the pickup would be on a P-bass), or at the point where your fretting hand does most of the fretting (mainly around the 1st and 2nd positions). And to assume that neck taper is always the same, and that the other measurements can be extrapolated from the bridge measurement, is simply wrong. For instance the bass I had with the widest string spacing at the bridge also had the narrowest string spacing at the nut, so those who like a wide string spacing would have found plucking fine, but the neck would have felt comparatively cramped. I've played a lot of different basses with very different bridge string spacings, but what I found for the 5-string basses at least was that the point at which I most commonly plucked the strings on each bass had very similar distance between the B and G strings (less than ±1mm over all the basses). For me therefore the important measurements (if I was going to look at those rather than just play the bass to see if it was comfortable or not) would be at the 5th fret and approximately 7/8 of the string length from the nut, as these are the points where my left and right hands will be most of the time when I am playing.

String spacing is traditionally measured at the bridge but you really also need to know the spacing at the nut as well as the scale length to get an accurate picture from the numbers. In the end the best thing to do is to play the instrument in question. You’ll either like it or you won’t and you’ll find out much quicker than you would be looking at the specifications.

Just my personal experience. I have yet to play a 5-string wth a new sub £1k price tag that I liked the feel and sound of. To the OP you should try 5-string basses at all price points to work out what you like and don't like about them.

Yes, I used to find playing patterns across the neck difficult for those that used low E on the 4-string, but once I changed to 5-string they were much easier. I think it is mostly to do with where the string lies in relation to the profile of the neck.

As someone who mostly plays 5-string basses (and plays Bass VIs the rest of the time) one of the most comfortable things for me is that the 5-string moves the low E string away from the edge of the neck. This is far more important than any neck profile IMO.

As I always say don't buy a cheap 5-string unless it's a bargain second-hand bass. There is a lot more to making a good 5-string then simply taking the standard 4-string model and adding a wider neck to accommodate the extra string. The most important thing is the stability/rigidity of the neck and neck joint. Unfortunately most of the budget models don't take this in account. Also don't be tempted by 35" scale length unless you like the extra space between frets. The additional inch does nothing and you are always better off with improved neck/neck joint construction. Any manufacturer capable a making a good 35" scale 5-string bass is also callable of making a good 34" one. This leads to bassists trying a cheap 5-string and hating it, and so they should because invariably it won't be any good. As someone who has mostly played 5-string bases for the past 30 years (the other basses were either fretless or short-scale bass VIs) I can honestly say that IME the entry level for a decent 5-string bass is at least £1k new. Unless you are lucky anything cheaper will be a disappointment.

When I was a teenager being a Tufty Club member was shorthand for being a NF skinhead.

Isn't it just one note, to compliment the one chord guitar part? 😉

But given that the cheapest ESP Japan 5-string bass is ¥370,000 which equates to £2500 it's a valid comparison.

And everyone can hear you in General Discussion.

In Isolation do "I Believe In Father Christmas". The bassline is nice and easy being mostly D not starting until the second verse.

What do the sides and back look like?

It's not a "proper" ESP though is it? It's a LTD, the ESP equivalent of a low-budget Squier.

Could be "digital zipper noise" although that should really be a thing of the past (its not the 1990s any more). How many blocks does this patch use? Maybe you are nearing the limit of the FX processing power?

When I left my covers band a few years ago, they had no gigs booked, but I mentioned that if they were really desperate and it didn't conflict with a Terrortones gig I would be happy to fill in for them. Fast forward a few months and although they had found a replacement bass player, he had managed to injure himself just before a gig, so I got a call asking if I could help them out. I said yes provided that there was nothing new in the set that I didn't know. What they hadn't told me was that as well as the bass player being unavailable, their usual singer had lost her voice and was being replaced for that gig by one of their previous vocalists. While they hadn't included any new songs in the set, because he didn't have the vocal range for some of the newer numbers we had been doing just before I left, there were quite a few songs back in the set that I hadn't played for some years, and to all intents and purposes they might as well have been new songs in that I had to learn them all over again. To say I wasn't happy was an understatement, and after the gig I let them know that I wouldn't be interested in doing any more.

Right now I doubt anyone, including those who work in Customs, knows. Hopefully over the course of the next 12 months we might get a better idea. Personally, unless you have an official customs form that states otherwise, I would list every single item individually and specifically. That way there is no room for error or misinterpretation.

Exactly! I don't bother with printed set lists any more. My patches are arranged (one per song) in the order that we are going to play them. I simply select the next patch to see what the next song is. Changing the set list order on the Helix takes about 30 seconds with the computer (I haven't tried it without). Even if we change the running order at the last minute at the gig, all the sounds I need are in the same consecutive block of 25 or so patches, and therefore only a few footswitch taps away.

I use about 40, but that's one patch per song for all the songs for 2 different bands. Including Snapshot variations I have about 100 sounds that I have programmed myself. I also suspect (although I haven't tried it yet) that if you require the same patch in different set lists you will have to duplicate it each set list where it is needed.

Snapshots are more versatile (provided that they aren't so complex that you run out of DSP power) in that they allow you to switch on and off multiple blocks simultaneously while altering the values of up to 64 parameters within those blocks. So for instance I have a song patch where I have two basic sounds on two snapshots - one with a flanger and one without, but as well as turning the flanger block on and off the different snapshots also alter the compression, drive, EQ, and overall level settings to optimise each sound with the overall mix.

The Helix Floor manual is a bit coy on the subject but AFAICS there are 8 Setlists each containing 128 Patches. That's a total of 1024 Patches.

One thing to consider is that if you need to switch seamlessly between sounds mid-song then you really need to use snapshots rather than patches. You can't add or delete and blocks in a snapshot, only turn them on and off, or change the parameters. Therefore you need to make sure that your chosen Helix supports enough blocks within a patch for all the sound variations you need in a single song. Several of my patches use more than 9 blocks (the Helix Floor supports 2x16 Blocks) in order to get all the sound variations required in a single song - although these are on the songs where I play Bass VI and have variations on both the "bass" sounds and the "guitar" sounds. My Helix is organised so that each song has its own patch and all the sound variations within each song are handled by snapshots. I have patches arranged across the top set of foot switches and snapshots across the bottom set (which are easier to reach mid-song) and the up/down switches set to step through the patches.

Can't be getting a decent recording on that cassette without the meters being stuck in the red most of the time 😉

What MIDI interface are you using?

Probably these: Although having said that the fretless 4-string is currently for sale so may not be mine for much longer.

The problem that you are having is that all these file transfer/sharing sites and systems are designed first and foremost for devices where you can actually download the file(s) onto the devices local storage. Phone and Tablets tend not to do this as their storage is design mostly for the OS and and the apps that they run. Your data for these apps is usually stored "in the cloud" and to access it you connect to the relevant cloud server and stream the dat as you need it. Nothing is downloaded so if you need the data again you have to stream it again. Fine if you always have a connection, the data allowance and the bandwidth to do it, but generally not as convenient as having a locally stored version. From my experience of using both WeTransfer and DropBox on the iPad you are always accessing a remote version of the file(s) and when you close the apps you also lose the connection to the data. For one-time access this isn't a problem, but if you need to access a file at lots of different time it tends not to be as convenient. As I said in my previous post, phone and tablets are great for browsing data, but not so good for actually storing it locally, which is sometimes what is best.