BigRedX

The Jack Casady is weird because it as actually a signature version of a signature bass (Les Paul). Does anyone know what makes the Jack Casady version different from the original Les Paul Signature Bass, other than one has a Gibson logo and the other has an Epiphone one on the headstock?

A Bass VI derived from the Gus Guitars G3 30" Baritone design, but with a wider neck (closer to classical guitar neck measurements than standard electric guitar width as found on most bass VIs). Three single coil pickups each routable to one of two outputs. Master volume control for each output.

IMO the ugliness and lack of stage presence of the male members of the band was far more offensive than the music.

I've owned one signature bass and was interested in buying another. However in neither case was I even remotely interested in the players for whom these bases were originally designed, but rather I liked the specifications of the basses themselves. The bass I owned was the Yamaha BJ5B, which was the signature bass for Terry And The Blue Jeans - a Japanese surf band of whom I was vaguely aware as at the time I was playing in band that had surf music among our various influences. What attracted me to the bass though was the fact that it was the only way of getting a Yamaha SBV shaped bass in a 5-string variant. The bass itself was incredibly rare being made in a limited edition of only 50 but luckily one came up for sale second hand on the Ishibashi web site. When the bass arrived it turned out to be essentially a Yamaha TRB5 with an SBV shape. It was massive and heavy, and too big to use on most of the stages we played without being a danger to both the other band members and any audience down the front. I used it at a handful of gigs we played on bigger and higher stages and then sold it on to someone in Sweden at a small loss. The bass I was interested in buying was the Reverend Rumblefish Brad Houser. I had no idea who Brad House was before I saw this bass, and having listened to some of his music I can honestly say I am not particularly impressed by it. However it was a Rumblefish 5-string bass with humbucking pickups, based on what I liked and what I didn't like about my Rumblefish 5L bass, it should have been a marked improvement. Unfortunately they only made a few more of these (79) than the Yamaha and combined with Rumblefish basses having a massively enthusiastic following in the US I was never able to track one down to actually own.

Saturday with In Isolation supporting Toyah at The Rescue Rooms in Nottingham. Nice big stage and great sound both on stage and FoH, and other than having to go on at 7.15 in order for Toyah's set to be over for the 10.00pm live music curfew it couldn't be faulted. Interesting to see that Toyah's band were all in-ears and no backline. The guitarist was using a Axe-FX, and the bassist a Kemper rack unit, although I have to say that I wan't massively impressed with the bass guitar sound FoH - there was a lot of synth bass on the backing and the keyboards that he had to compete with. Proper dressing room back-stage complete with snacks and a fridge full of drinks. Also interesting to see that Toyah's backing band all turned up individually in their own cars with their gear and apart from having their own sound engineer didn't have any road crew.

IME at any one time you've either got the inspiration or you haven't. Also IME if you don't have the inspiration, there's no point in forcing it and it's probably a sign that you should move on to something new musically.

Unless you have basses that are completely identical in every way, your basses will feel different to play.

They are on offer in the UK because they have failed a German broadcast compliance test, and despite assurances from Line6 that a compliant update is on its way, 12 months on nothing has appeared. So long as you don't mind that this device has been essentially discontinued and you may run into problems if you intend to use it outside of the Uk, you will be fine.

Not exactly a supergroup but certainly far in excess of the sum of their parts: The Postal Service. Death Cab For Cutie have written and recorded a fair number of great songs, but when compared with their overall back catalogue the proportion of decent songs to filler is depressingly low. DNTEL have yet to create anything memorable apart from "(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan" which is The Postal Service in all but name.

Actually 4 if you count Tune Japan and Tune Korea as separate companies (which they are).

Or Tune

Not active until sometime in November IIRC. until then you will still need the relevant paperwork for travelling with it importing/exporting instruments with any kind of Rosewood in them.

Until maple gets added to the CITES list.

I don't either (legally I can, but I'm not very good at it so I don't), and it's never stopped me being in a band over the last 40 years. IME if you have plenty of other skills useful to the band, the other members will make allowances for the lack of driving. Although nearly all the bands I've been in that have had regular gigs that couldn't be reached easily and inexpensively by public transport or taxi have had dedicated band transport with a driver/roadie.

Given what I now know, I would have concentrated on the bass much earlier in my musical "career". I didn't buy my first bass guitar until 1980 when I had been playing various instruments for almost 6 years. Or gone straight to playing synths.

For the two bands I currently play in: I got into one through placing an ad on JMB. I was pretty specific about what I was looking for and my ad was answered by a band that exactly met those requirements. If you want to be bit broader in your musical approach then maybe place several ads each one tailor to a specific musical style? From the perspective of a band looking for a musician to complete a line-up it is my experience that musicians who claim to have a broad musical palette generally don't have a suitably in-depth understanding of specific genres unless they happen to be blues or dad-rock. For other band, I was a fan and was following them on Facebook, and so when they posted that they were looking for a replacement bassist, I sent them a message and the following weekend I had an audition. Before that it was answering ads in record shops, but then that was over 10 years ago!

But only if the music you want to play is written down.

IMO close mic'ing mostly defeats the object of mic'ing the cab in the first place; and if you are going to use a mic you need to make sure that you place it as far away from any cab ports as possible. Also unless your monitoring environment has been acoustically treated you won't be able to make any meaningful decisions about mic placement and EQ anyway. IME unless the band are playing live all together in the same room, you want to capture each instrument with as "pure" as sound as possible, so you are not then spending ages when mixing trying to EQ out poor decisions about the sound made at the tracking stage.

Thanks!

You'd get more useful and usable suggestions if you were able to give us more details about the space and it's location, neighbours and actual usage. "A Studio" even in the musical sense is pretty vague and can encompass lots of different things all of which will have different requirements and compromises.

Where did you get that flight case from?

Unless you have a good acoustic space in which to record you bass I would avoid using mics, and if you can't guarantee phase alignment of multiple signals go for a single DI. If you already have a DI sound that you like and that sits comfortably in the band mix as is that would be great, but otherwise I would go with DI'ing directly from the bass with as little processing as possible on the recorded sound. That way you don't end up with a baked-in tone that you are struggling to change as the mix progresses. Get a really good performance with full-range tone recorded and then tweak it in the mix to sit properly with the rest of the band instruments. I would also seriously consider booking some time at a decent studio to do the final mixing. You will be surprised how much quicker and better even a half-way decent engineer is at getting a good sound compared with the majority of home recordings. I have 40 experience of home recording, but I've sold up all my "studio" because I have come to the realisation that I will never be as good as anyone who can actually make a living at running a recording studio. Unless the band is after vastly different sounds on each song, once your mix engineer has got one track right the rest pretty much fall into place with just minor tweaks.

@TheGreek Do you have a space already set aside for this project? If so what size is it, where in the building is it located and who are your neighbours?

You should also post this in the "DIY Electronics & Studio Design" section of the SOS forums. However as has been said here already there is a difference between sound proofing and acoustic treatment. If you need to stop sounds getting out of the studio (as well as preventing unwanted external noises getting in) you need mass and isolation. This generally means building a room within the existing structure and physically isolating from the walls ceiling and floor as far as possible. You also need to seal all the air gaps but still have some way of ventilating the space. Generally it's a whole set of compromises. Start by telling us exactly what the studio is going to be used for. Recording? Rehearsing? Full bands with drum kits? Electronic sources only? How noisy is the outside environment around this studio building/space?

In that situation, so long as both your bases fit in the case it really doesn't matter which one you get. The cheapest will do the job just as well.