BigRedX

So you might as well leave out the playing with putting your bass through pedals and being disappointed and go straight for a keyboard synth. If you can use a computer keyboard or a phone with a touch screen you already have all the rudiments for playing a keyboard synth. I've got close to zero keyboard technique, and need to use both hands to play lots of thing that any competent keys player could do with a single hand, put the end result is still vastly superior compared with trying to do the same thing with a bass and pedals.

An attenuator is essentially a volume control for your speakers. They work fine on guitar rigs where you are unlikely to find amps rated over 100W and pushing the output valves hard is part of the guitar sound. However all the ones I have seen are rated for use with amps of 100W or less and use 1/4" jack connections which rules them out for use with most serious bass rigs. On top of that the good ones are big and heavy as they are full of high-powered resistors, with heat sinks and fans to cool said resistors. As other have said a device with a volume control in the effects loop (provided that it comes after the pre-amp valves) should be a more suitable solution.

While this will work perfectly well it relies on the fact that you have special custom cables, and therefore you are going to need extra spares just in case one or both of them go wrong. Using something like the ART DTI box allows you to use standard XLR or 1/4" Jack leads which any band running its own PA system will have plenty of already. Mount the DTI box in the rack along with XR18 so that it can't get mislaid, and since its a few sockets and two audio transformers there's nothing in it to go wrong. By far the safest option IMO.

IMO there is little point in active basses unless the electronics do something that can't already be done by the tone controls on your amp or they allow individual tonal adjustments for each pickup. If that was my bass I'd take out all the electronics and replace them with a simple passive volume and tone control for each pickup.

The problem I have found with converting balanced line to unbalanced simply by connecting the ground and cold pins together, is that you can end up with both noise and cross talk issues. I'm now using an ART DTI box for a very similar situation. It has XLR, 1/4" Jack and Phone connections on both sides and the inputs and outputs are transformer isolated from each other. Connect the balanced outputs of your XR18 to balanced ins of the DTI and then use whichever outputs are appropriate to connect to the in-house system.

IME motorised faders are not cheap, and also not particularly robust. I'd worry about them on mixing desk, let alone on a pedal where they are likely to get trodden on. I can't help but think that continuous rotary encoders with a digital display for the values would be more durable and no more expensive.

IMO if I wanted synth sounds I'd go out and buy a keyboard synth. In the past when I have dabbled with making my bass sound like a synth, the only set up that worked adequately for me was using a rack mounted VCF/VCA with full ADSR envelopes which were triggered by MIDI events from the sequenced backing track. Everything else required too much modification in my bass playing technique to get consistent results. Even with my very basic keyboard playing I can get far better and most importantly consistent results out of a keyboard synth then I have ever been able to get from trying to make my bass produce synth-like sounds.

Pickups with a significant (noticeable) lower output will tend to have a preamp built in to allow level and/or impedance matching with a standard amplifier input.

Because IMO it doesn't give you any advantage. There's a whole thread on this already.

I play lots of different stringed instruments with different numbers and types of strings, different scales lengths, different neck profiles, different string spacing at the nut and the bridge, and I can adapt to nearly all of them. If I was a one instrument player then I might be a bit more picky, but I'm not so the vast majority of the time these things don't really matter. Wat I do find strange is the people who fixate on particular specification of an instrument without taking in the instrument as a whole. String spacing at the bridge is one of those very peculiar specifications where it tells only a small part of the overall picture. IMO without also knowing the string spacing at the nut and the scale length it tells you very little about the bass an its playability. Personally I've pretty much stopped looking at the numbers in specifications and just focus on the important things. Do I like how it looks? Do I like how it feels to play? Do I like how it sounds through my rig when I play with my band? If the answer to those three questions is "yes" then the numbers themselves don't matter.

This isn't a guitar synth, but a modelling unit which processes the actual sounds from the bass (fitted with a suitable pickup) rather than replacing them with synth sounds. Unfortunately in the last few years, Roland appear to have given up on their V-system instruments except for drums, so the usefulness of this device is ultimately limited.

I've always found that these top load bridges make it harder to restring especially if you are in a hurry as the string will pop out of the slot before you've got it up to tension. No dimensions given on the Thomann page, and although the description says any string spacing, you will be limited by the width of the bridge for the closest string spacing available.

Smaller shaves do exist - they are often designed to hold a specific piece of equipment and therefore may be more expensive than a standard universal shelf. Otherwise the standard version can be cut down. I've done it in the past to make special shelves to go in particular places in the rack and fit around other equipment. Any metal work saw will do the job.

As Monkey Steve says it's more likely to be to allow the subject of the photograph to use the photo for their own purposes FoC, which IMO is as it should be.

Espedair Street by Iain Banks

Hurtsfall will be supporting Strange Circuits (aka Rodney Bakerr) at Rough Trade in Nottingham on Sunday 10th March 2019. Facebook event page is here.

But how much of what you hear from your TV is down to the Ampeg? You simply can't tell.

It might be worth finding out who the photographer is and asking them if they have given permission for the photograph to be used. IME promoters of this kind of event have zero idea of the ins and outs of copyright or IP. BTW the notion that just the photographer owns the copyright to a photograph and the subjects of said photo have no rights at all is likely to be challenged and overturned within the next few years.

I wouldn't fancy that considering the amount of heat my Marshall Powerbreak generates with just a 50W amp driving it.

Why would you want to have a switchable impedance speaker anyway? You can't get anything (more volume) for nothing. Guitarists use power soaks in order to get the sound of the power amp valves working hard without having to play at ear-splitting volumes. In the OP's case the power soak (if it was feasible) will simply dissipate all the extra power being delivered by the amp as heat not volume. Putting a coil tap on the speaker will halve its power handling when in low impedance mode which again defeats the object. A dual coil speaker might work, but it seems a rather over-engineered solution, when the easiest way the get more volume out of your rig is to add a second identical speaker.

I really wouldn't recommend a dummy load with the sort of power the typical modern bass amp puts out. I use a Marshal Power Break as part of my guitar rig which sits between a 50 watt valve amp and the speaker. It's a large and heavy device full of chunky resistors, heatsinks plus a fan for extra cooling. Running the amp at full power with 50% or more attenuation from the Power Break on overdriven sounds will cause the fan to kick in almost continually. I wouldn't like to think what sort of device and cooling would be required dissipate half the power from a 300 Watt plus bass amp.

But they do sell themselves as anyone who has played an Atlantis guitar or bass will know.

You are never going to get close to the sound with a chorus pedal. The clarinet has built-in phaser and was generally played through Wah pedals into valve amps. So he is going to need a 70s style phaser, a distortion pedal which can give a hint of valve style dirt and a filter pedal with a built-in envelope follower. Listening to the track you can hear slight amounts of all three effects. Also the clarinet has a very sharp attack and decay which will require some precise plucking and muting to get the same definition of notes.

Definitely a keyboard of some sort. Could be a Hohner Clavinet.

The bridge pickups on both those basses are much closer to the bridge than normal.