BigRedX

Also a lot of the time even if the session was recorded on multitrack tape, these tapes would be eventually re-used if the record company or artist didn't buy them. Back in the days of multi-track tape recording a reel of 2" tape was a lot of money, and often could be a significant proportion of the overall recording cost. Certainly I've never paid to keep any of the multi-track tapes of anything I've recorded in a commercial studio. The usual deal was that the tapes would be kept for a month or so just in case we wanted to go back, book some more studio time, and make changes to the mix, but after that they would be erased and re-used for another session. In my situation it was always the case that by the time we had finished mixing the last track, we had run out of money, and besides AFAIWC the stereo mix was the important tape, not the multitrack. The only multi-track sessions I actually own are the ones I recorded in my home studio, and these days none of them are accessible to me as the I no longer have the tape machines for those on tape, and the digital ones are the wrong format to load into the current version of my DAW.

And the fact that it says "Dean" rather than "Gibson" on the headstock.

Of course. It will be in the contracts.

Charging who? AFAICS most of the tapes stored and audio recorded onto them were the property of Universal Music and unless their contracts with the individual artists state otherwise, UM can do what they want with them. There might be a case for UM share holders to sue the company on the grounds of failing to adequately protect company assets, but IMO that's as far as it goes.

As an artist I think it is somewhat presumptuous and disrespectful to your (potential) audience to expect them to crowd fund your recording. It is my experience as a artist that if your music is worth releasing you will find a way to do it without resorting to begging. It is also my experience as a fan of bands who have used crowd funding to release their music that the incentives being offered aren't really that special. What I am primarily interested in is the music. I'll be able to buy that for £10 when the album comes out. Nearly all of the other stuff is irrelevant to me. And in this particular case $50,000 just seems to be far to much money to ask for with no explanation of exactly how it will be spent. Is it just for recording costs? Getting your music on-line with all the major download and streaming sites only costs $50 for an album, so unless he's going for a large volume physical release that seems like an awful lot of money. For that kind of money just for recording plus mixing and mastering I'd be looking at a couple of weeks lock in with a name producer and mixing engineer with the aim of producing a fantastic sounding album and turning at least one of my band's songs into a potential hit single. Getting your music recorded and released has never been cheaper. My last studio recording (made earlier this year) was charged at the same hourly rate (£6/h) as my first back in 1980 and while both were made in similar locations (converted garages) the quality and range of the equipment (as well as the acoustic treatment in the studio and control room) used for this year's session was vastly superior to 1980's semi-professional 4-track tape machine fed from a modified 12 channel PA desk and the sole effect available being reverb and echo from a spare 2-track tape machine. Maybe the way forward for crowd funding recordings would be instead of offering useless "special" incentives would be to give everyone funding the album a cut of the sales? I might be tempted to throw a couple of hundred pounds at my favourite bands in return for 1% of the sales of their next album.

Very much this. If the tapes stored were still the property of Universal Music, as they would have been in vast majority of their artist's contracts, they can do what they want with them. While not adequately protecting what has now become a valuable business asset is pretty stupid, I don't see what comeback any of the artists have since the items lost in the fire are not their property. And any artist that does own their master tapes and allowed Universal Music to store them without making adequate back-ups only has themselves to blame.

See my previous post about string tensions. Check that you're happy with the changes in tension that come with the different tunings you want to use. Personally I can't get on with strings at different tensions to the ones I am used to.

I suppose it depends what you are after if you want a Rickenbacker-shaped instrument. None of the copies I've played have felt or sounded like an actual Rickenbacker.

If you're using an E-C set then you will have to slacken off the truss rod for Bb F Bb F Bb. IME you have to tune more than 3 semitones up and play fairly hard in order to be concerned about breaking strings. OtOH I'm quite picky about my string tensions, so if I was going to use an alternative tuning once I'd found one I liked I'd look at changing the string gauges to get the tensions back in line with my preferred tensions for a standard set. I'm the person who has a separate guitar for drop D tuning with a 56 gauge lowest string for D because I find my normal 52 E doesn't feel right tuned down a tone.

To have the same tension with the same gauge strings you would need to add another 5 frets worth of neck. That would put the octave at B on what was the E string. The distance from the 7th fret to the bridge on a 34" scale bass is 22.5". Therefore your B-D bass with the same gauge string at the same tension would need a scale length of 45"

The whole point of the truss rod is the counter-act the pull on the neck created by the strings. If you change the tuning you change the amount of pull therefore you will probably also have to change the tension of the truss rod. However your alternative tuning appears to be mostly higher than standard 5-string tuning (unless your low Bb is an octave and a semitone below B rather than just a semitone) and therefore unless you have also changed your string gauges for a lighter than normal set I would have expected you to have had to tighten the truss rod rather than loosen it. Piccolo strings are designed to be tuned up an octave from standard bass tunings, so unless you are after a very loose feel to your strings they won't be necessary. If you want to keep the feel of your strings the same as if it was standard 5-string tuning check out the D'Addario website for string gauges and their tensions.

Can't see it being a problem. If you are buying on line it doesn't matter where the shop is, and I would image that most people prepared to drop several thousand pounds on a vintage bass won't have a problem travelling to Leeds to try it out.

This is an alternative to standard 5-string tuning?

Personally I think the multitude of Fender and Squier ranges available are actually more confusing for potential customers, and while where in the world a musical instrument is actually made shouldn't make a difference, in practice it does, and the country of manufacture and the name on the headstock doesn't always equate to a given quality. Add to this the fact that pretty much every other manufacturer has their own take on the P and J designs, again at a whole variety of price points, makes it even more confusing. For all their faults, I admire the Rickenbacker approach. If you want a guitar or bass with Rickenbacker design, you need to buy a MIA Rickenbacker. There are no legal alternatives. It's nice and easy. If you want one and can't afford it, then you either make do with a different design that is cheaper, or you save until you can afford it.

Stems? Most recordings made before the mid-60s would have been live direct to mono so there wouldn't be any stems. I have several problems with the supposed loss of masters and multi-track tapes. 1. No matter how good an analogue tape recording is, it will never be as good as a high resolution digital recording. Analogue tape simply doesn't have the dynamic range or signal to noise ratio of a good digital recording. Any digital masters should have identical safety copies stored elsewhere. 2. There's a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth at the loss of unreleased recordings by various artists. IME, from hearing re-issue albums with "bonus" tracks on them, these recordings were unreleased at the time because they simply weren't as good as the music that was released, and maybe it is best that they stay that way. 3. I'm very much a believer in keeping the recordings the way they were from when they were originally released. By all means re-master them for any new delivery formats, as the whole point of mastering is to optimise the recording for the strengths and weaknesses of each individual delivery format - be it vinyl, cassette tape, CD, various compressed digital formats. Each should have its own mastered recording which should only be used for that particular format. However it is also my experience that for small volume vinyl releases the "mastered" version is produced at the cutting stage, which reduces the number of tape generations a recording goes through in order to preserve the dynamic range and signal to noise ratio. 3. None of the music that has been released has actually been lost. Some restoration work might be necessary for those recordings that now only exist on vinyl pressings, but the music is still there to be heard and salvaged. A good restoration engineer can work wonders with less than optimum source material to the point where it should be impossible to tell that any restoration work has been carried out.

Exactly! Which is why all the current "tone wood" "experiments" are completely meaningless, and irrelevant.

However you are not comparing like for like. A Squier bass is pretty much the same as a MIA Fender except made with cheaper labour, slightly cheaper materials and supposedly not quite as rigorous quality control. Most Epiphone basses share very little in common with their Gibson counterparts apart from the name and the basic body shape.

Back in the 70s and early 80s amps and bass cabs were very expensive compared to todays prices in real terms. Also while guitarists could easily make to with a small(-ish) combo, bassists needed a lot more gear to compete volume wise (especially if you weren't going through the PA). My first proper bass rig in 1982 consisted of a no-brand 100W transistor amp which I got as a straight swap for a Shaftesbury resonator guitar a 1x18" cab and 2 x12" cab both home made (although not by me) which I acquired for minimal outlay from their previous owners who were moving away from Nottingham and couldn't be bothered with the hassle of taking the cabs with them. I can't remember exactly how much the total cost was (including what I originally paid of the guitar I swapped) but I have a feeling it was about what I paid for my first bass (£60). Back then there wasn't a lot of science to building a cab unless you were going for a folding horn design. You simply went to your local musical instrument retailer and surreptitiously measured up a similar cab and cobbled one together at home out of whatever wood you could get for free.

Actually most of the better Japanese manufacturers had already abandoned the copies in favour of their own designs about a year before the Gibson "lawsuit" and the others simply stopped selling outside of japan.

IMO its even more important for a (unknown) pub band to put on a show then it is for someone with a back catalogue the audience is already familiar with. If you can't engage a 100 or so punters from the corner of a pub, what hope have you got of being able to entertain an audience of several thousand from a big stage? If all a band is going to do is play their songs the audience might as well stay at home where the drinks will be cheaper and toilets less offensive and stream them from Spotify or Apple Music. That goes for any band no mater how well-known (or not) they are.

@markdavid So you appear to be justifying IP theft just because you can't afford the real item. However in real terms guitars and basses from the big name manufacturers have never been cheaper. Looking at historical prices lists a Fender Precision in the mid 70s (when I started playing) would have cost between $350 and $400 depending on the specification. A Gibson EB3 was $499. To get the UK prices at this time you could simply replace the $ sign with a £. In today's money that works out at £2000 for a standard spec Precision and around £3000 for a Gibson EB3. TBH even though I think Gibsons actions are likely to be doomed to failure because of the number of years that they haven't properly defended their IP or trademarks, anything that forces other manufacturers to come up with their own designs for guitars and basses rather than boringly copying others has got to be good thing.

I wonder what Industrial Radio have to say about this system?

Did you get any more information about how the system works and what is involved in retro-fitting it to you guitar or bass?

The website is very low on information about how the system actually works. However a close read does reveal that it only works with fretted notes, so playing open strings AFAICS won't trigger a synth note.

I think the reason why there are more basses with dark colours fingerboards than light coloured ones is because there is a larger variety of dark coloured woods that make suitable fingerboard material. I have basses with Ebony, Cocobolo, Wenge, Indian Rosewood and Brazilian Rosewood boards - and those are just the basses where I know for sure what the fingerboard material is. Light coloured fingerboards tend to be limited to maple. Also a light coloured board will need some form of protective coating to prevent it from getting dirty and nasty looking which adds more processes and time to the construction of the instrument. All in all there are more wood choices available and less build time involved in producing a bass or guitar with a dark coloured fingerboard.