BigRedX

There is just so much rubbish written about "tone wood" for solid bodied instruments with zero scientific proof to back it up. Simply opinion dressed up as facts. I don't deny that the choice of woods can make a difference to the tone of a solid instrument, although IMO when you factor in all the other things that define the sound of the instrument, their contribution is fairly negligible. What I do dispute is that their properties can be absolutely defined as a constant characteristic. And here is why. Just looking at "Ash" as a body wood. For starters there are over 40 different species of Ash, and the density of the wood can vary from 540kg/m3 to 710kg/m3 which is a lot of variation. The distribution of the trees covers much of the northern hemisphere and soil types, climatic conditions and growing season day length will all contribute to different growth characteristics of the trees and consequently the characteristics of the wood produced from those trees. Do we know exactly which species of Ash is used for guitar bodies? Is it always the same species of Ash? Is a guitar made in the US made from the same species sourced from the same geographical location as one made in Europe, or Asia? I can't see any information from the big manufacturers, and without that information I can only assume that while the manufacturers will have certain specifications for the wood they buy, there is still going to be significant variation from one batch to another. So having added in a lot of variables, here are a lot more. Construction. If solid bodied instruments were made of a single piece of wood for the body, a single piece for the neck and headstock and a single piece for the fingerboard, we might have some consistency between instruments to start making some useful observations about the woods used and the tone of the instrument. But they are not. Most bodies are made from 2 or 3 separate pieces of wood glued together. Glue is not the same as wood. It adds in another variable. If the body is made of 2 equally sized pieces of wood there are 8 different ways they can be glued together, each of which is going to give a potentially different tonal result. As soon as you glue two or more pieces of wood together you change the way the wood behaves compare with a single piece of the same total size. If it didn't there would be no point in multi-laminate necks. And for a two-piece body on a Fender bass is the join always in the same place? From what I have seen the answer is a resounding "no". And on a 3-piece body it is even less consistent. More unaccounted for variables. And of course a Fender style neck with a maple board will sound different to one with a rosewood board, but not because of the board material, but because they are constructed in completely different ways. The neck with the maple board is a single piece of maple with the truss rod inserted from the back of neck and held in place with the "skunk stripe", while the rosewood board is a separate piece of wood glued onto the maple neck, with the truss rod fitted either from behind or underneath the fingerboard. IMO it is these differences in construction and lamination of woods that is going to have an effect on the tone not the actual wood used for the fingerboard. And there's the electrics. Even on passive bass there is lots of potential for variation. Pickups. Do they have the same DC resistance? Have they been wound with the same gauge of wire with the same number of turns in the same way (scatter winding or even winding)? Are the magnets of the same material and magnetic strength? All these factors can change the characteristic of the pickup and the sound it produces. Even the humble potentiometers and capacitors in a passive circuit have lots of potential for variation. A good quality potentiometer like CTS will still have ±20% tolerance which means that a pot specified at 500kΩ can be anywhere between 400 and 600kΩ. The same with capacitors. And these components always have an impact on the sound of the instrument, even at maximum settings - full volume, full tone; as can be demonstrated by connecting the pickup directly to the output jack as opposed to going through the passive volume and tone circuit. With all these variables in play, trying to pin-point tonal characteristics of an instrument to the type of wood used for the body, neck or fingerboard is completely and utterly futile. When people try and do comparisons their methodology is so poor and their sample sizes so small that the results have no means whatsoever.

What's wrong with the current pre-amp? What are you looking for sound-wise that can't be achieved with the controls on your amp?

How to you get on with fitting the Newtone round core strings since you are not supposed to cut them before winding them onto the machine head posts?

No, but I rarely see any criticism of DR strings (other than the price), so I felt it was only fair to point out that not everyone who tried them had a positive result, and maybe save the OP from a potential expensive mistake.

What is that you want to alter? Sounds? Rhythm patterns? And when do you want to do it? In the rehearsal room as part of the fine tuning for a perfect sound/pattern that will be left alone once you find it? Or as part of the performance. Bear in mind that many of the drum machines sporting lots of knobs actually have very little control over the sounds. Generally for each drum you find one you like and leave the controls alone after that.

The problem is that tension only tells part of the picture. Compliance which is governed by factors both in the string and the way it is fitted to the instrument is equally important.

And they felt too floppy to me compared with LaBella Steels or Warwick Black Labels.

LaBella Steels and Warwick Black Labels for my 5-string basses. Newtone Axion Custom Works for my Bass VIs.

A voice of dissent. I haven't found a set of DR bass strings that I like, and I've tried pretty much all of them. Lo-Riders which from the descriptions and the reviews of people on here should have been the ones for me were underwhelming to say the least, and the others I tried were even worse. Just to say that DR despite the hype are not to solution for everyone.

From personal experience the biggest factor in being able to make changes in the rehearsal room is persuading your other band members to shut the flip up while you are doing them. TBH the rehearsal room isn't the place to make any but the simplest of changes. Bands that I've played that use lots of programmable equipment (of any kind) do all their programming at home and only do fine tuning in the rehearsal room.

If the programming of the SR16 is anything like the HR16 then it is fairly straight forward - there's real time input where you tap the drum pads while a metronome sound plays or step time using the LCD display. At the time this was a perfectly easy and acceptable way of doing things However if you are used to the modern DAW interface on a computer, I can see that the interface of the Alesis drum machines might well be a step backwards in user-friendliness. If you want something easy to program with a clear graphical interface then you really need to be looking at one of the DAW-based drum programming plug-ins. If you want stand-alone hardware be prepared to have to learn a new set of skills in order to get the best out of it.

I hope the buttons are better than its predecessor, the HR16. Mine had started sticking after only a couple of years of use.

I'd forgotten that the original TR808 only had a single song memory, because we only used one at a time, and recorded the result. The only band I have ever seen using one live used some creative pattern writing and real-time pattern changing (along with the fill and auto fill functions) to get around this limitation. Looks like Behringer have doubled the pattern memory, and added another 15 songs. However when a typical song can use up 16+ patterns quite easily, so the expanded song memory isn't that useful.

That something else is Compliance.

My band in the 80s had an actual Roland TR808 (when it was one of the best drum machines available and cost a serious amount of money), and if the Behringer is an exact clone, you'll be disappointed at the lack of pattern memory available. With only 32 16-step patterns (or 16 32-step patterns) available we would struggle to get more than a single song in memory at a time. These days I'd go with a DAW based solution every time.

Which is why I've ditched my traditional bass rig for an RCF745 FRFR. This and minimal colouration to the sound compared with a bass amp and cab(s). The RCF and the PA both get feeds directly from my Line6 Helix, with the PA at full volume and the RCF via the Helix volume control so I can set my on-stage level without affecting the level I'm sending to the PA. Tone-wise both get the same sounds. After all I've fine tuned my sounds to fit in with the rest of the band mix, so that's what I want to hear FoH from the PA - but louder.

I spend most of the 80s playing synths and programming sequencers.

But cheaper than the one in the OP when you factor in shipping, import duty, VAT, and CITES certification..

As a comparison I can't help you, as I've never even seen a Zoom B3n let alone used one. I suggest you get down to your Line6 dealer and spend some time trying one out and editing some of the presets to something that suits your requirements, to see if you like it. What I will say is keep your signal path simple. My default path is compressor, EQ, distortion/drive. However I try and avoid duplication of function, so if I'm using an amp Sim for my drive sound I'll also use the EQ on the amp and remove the dedicated EQ module from the signal path. If you have too many modules with overlapping functions it makes tweaking the sound to get it just right so much more difficult.

Big, full screen ads work against the advertisers far more than they work for them. Every time when of these pops up, more users install an ad blocker that blocks all ads on all sites. As someone who used to produce on-line ads for a living I can't see any advantages to them. Does anyone ever click on them other than to try and remove them from the screen. @charic maybe you should ask the company serving the ads on Basschat what the click-through and completion percentages are for full-screen ads. I suspect they are going to be very low and negligible, respectively.

Pointless clickbait non-information with personal preference dressed up as fact. The secret to a great bass tone is to listen to the arrangement of the song and then find a sound that enhances that arrangement further.

For VAT and duty you need to allow an extra 25% on top of the DECLARED value of the item and postage. This will include the courier handling fee for sorting out the payment of VAT and import duty. The important point here is that the VAT and duty are calculated on what the sender has DECLARED on the customs form and there is a good chance that they will declare the initial value of £441.21 rather than the discount value of £378.18. They might even declare a higher value if they want to cover themselves in the event of needing make an insurance claim. Finally and most importantly there is CITES. That looks like a Rosewood board that will be subject to CITES regulations and requires licences at both export (to be paid by the seller who will most likely pass on the cost to you) and import (to be paid by the buyer - you). AFAICS the import licence cost £74 and I would expect to export licence to be much the same. You MUST have both licences, without them the instrument will be seized at customs and probably destroyed. For this reason alone I would be very reluctant to buy any wooden musical instrument from a country outside of the EU. So allowing a worst case scenario expect the import and VAT to be calculated on the original full price of £441.21 plus the shipping cost, and budget for having to pay for both CITES licences. A quick and dirty round up calculation makes that £850 all together. I would allow £1000 in total to cover any unexpected over-valuations by the seller when shipping and whatever the costs of the CITES export licence in Mexico is. That way you shouldn't have any nasty surprises, and with a bit of luck you'll end up paying closer to £850.

I don't like non-angled headstock because IME anything that impedes the string path between and nut and the machine head post leads to tuning problems.

I went and tried an Ibanez SR306 that was in the local PMT, and which I assume has the same 54mm nut as your bass. For me that neck was much too wide, which has helped me to set an upper limit on the neck width as being closer to 47mm that utilises the whole width of the neck rather than the 45mm Burns Barracuda which has the strings set in quite a way from the edges of the neck.

It's a situation that has arisen from cost saving choices made back in the late 40s when the first Fender instruments were being designed. To have angled headstock required either a larger piece of wood for the neck blank or a joint between the neck and headstock, both of which went against Leo Fender's design ethos of making his instruments cost effectively and without requiring specialist luthier skills from his workers. In these days of CNC machining, when even the crappiest Chinese guitar factory is capable of making an angled headstock with a scarf joint that will be stronger than a single piece of wood, the cost and labour saving aspects of the non-angled headstock has been completely negated.