BigRedX

I've seen all there versions - Freur in 1985, Underworld Mk1 in 1989 and Underworld Mk 2 in 1993. I haven't been to see them since Daren Emerson left and they got massive. For the Freur gig there was a lot of the music on the backing tape and they made no secret of the fact, but given the complexity of the album (and its follow up Get Us Out Of Here) and the state of music technology at the time it was a wonder that they were able to perform any of it live. The PPG Wave synth required constant rebooting during the gig I saw, and it was very obvious when it dropped out of the mix.

It's totally subjective. Stop worrying about it. Martin makes some very nice basses but they are not to everyone's taste.

It's a nice piece of wood. However someone has seen fit to use it make a very boring bass.

My experience of Rotosounds is that they are very good at making standard gauge (40-100) 34" scale 4-string sets, but anything else is completely hit and miss. I gave up using them when they consistently failed to be able to make a 36" low B or a 30" E that would produce a proper note that rang out like the other strings on my basses rather than a dull thud.

I have a policy of hiding any signature that occupies more vertical space their typical post.

I suppose it depends what you are comparing them to. I have quite eclectic string requirements, so Newtone Bass VI and taper-wound 5 string sets compare very well on price next to what I was using before from La Bella and Warwick.

IME the thing that fails is not the PSU but the unnecessary extra connection between the PSU and the device that it is powering on the low voltage side of the assembly, because these connections and cables are simply not rugged enough to take the kind of abuse that gigging a device that by its very nature is going to be kicked about on stage, especially if you are plugging and unplugging the PSU every time you set up and break down your equipment. From experience I have found that any connector that isn't either an XLR or a 1/4" jack is going to fail eventually in a gigging environment unless it is a make once and never disconnect as well as being securely attached to either a pedal board or hidden away inside a rack case.

While having the same type of strap locking mechanism is a great idea in theory, in practice it doesn't really work because, unless all your basses have the same body shape and you play all of them at the same height, you still need a separate strap for each bass. A bass with the strap button at the back of the heal will require the strap lock to be on the opposite side of the strap to one with the button on the upper horn. Different body shapes require a different length strap to make them hang at the same height, and if like me you play different styles with the instrument at different heights you need different strap lengths for this too.

Because IME unless the unit has a cable retainer at the PSU in socket they can quite easily come out mid performance. And even if you do use the retainer it will eventually wear out the PSU cable causing it to fail (as happened recently with a guitarist I play with). If you mount the whole lot permanently on a pedal board then you are less likely to run into problems. Needless to say the Helix has a built in PSU and uses an IEC mains lead for its power like a proper professional piece of equipment should.

Other than strings I only bought one piece of bass gear in 2018, a Burns Barracuda Bass VI, and it really was both the best and worst thing I bought. It was the best because it was (for me) so much better than the Squier Bass VI that I had been using before. And it was the worst because it has made me realise that there are no "off-the-peg" bass VIs that first my requirements for feel and sound, and therefore I am on the cusp of ordering something custom that will suit me perfectly rather than being the compromise that the Burns and the Squier are. I did discover the best Bass VI strings - Axion Custom Works Bass VI strings from Newtone which are as good as the LaBellas but nowhere near as expensive.

IMO the Helix is only expensive because much of the competition is now in real terms stupidly cheap. My first multi-effects unit, a Roland GP8 plus foot controller and volume/expression pedal (which was a separate unit) cost as much as the Helix when it came out in the 80s and in real terms would have been considerably more expensive for something that does a fraction of what the Helix is capable of now. Also unless you are going to mount your multi-effects permanently in a proper pedal case, I would be very wary of getting anything that uses an external PSU to power it.

If you want to support a British firm making strings have a look at Newtone.

That is not an Adobe Flash alert. The Adobe ones are on a black background. As a stater, I suggest that you download and re-install Flash from the Adobe Website. If the problem persists and your IT guys can't find what is wrong on your Mac you might need to wipe the hard drive and reinstall everything to eradicate whatever is causing this.

Pretty much anything will work given the right arrangement and suitable musicians. If you are short on inspiration have a listen to the Nouvelle Vague and Susanna and the Magical Orchestra albums. BTW the 80s covers an awful lot of musical styles. It's not all post-punk synth pop. There were a load of dull guitar bands later on off the back of The Smiths and of course Acid House at the end of the decade.

Surely New Gold Dream and Sparkle in the Rain, were the stadium rock albums - they were the band's 5th and 6th and the Waterfront single was the one that broke them properly in the UK. They had most definitely left the experimental weirdness of their Arista albums behind them by then. Same with U2 by the time of War they were playing Red Rocks. At the time that certainly counted as overblown and stadium (U2 may well have gone on to even greater live excess later)

Line 6 Helix. It might be expensive, but you'll never need another multi-effects unit again. I run mine in Snapshot mode with one patch per song and then 4 variations on the patch assigned to the lower 4 footswitches. I've not needed more than 4 different sounds per song so far. Anything that the Helix can't do can be patched in via one of the effects loops and turned on and off for each patch/snapshot. There's two instrument level inputs, plus a mic input and with a bit of lateral thinking you can use the effects returns as inputs too (so long as you aren't actually using them for external effects), so there would be no need to even swap cables on when you switch basses. Finally changing the set order is done by drag and drop using the computer editor in under a minute.

But there was a lot of nurturing and development to get from the earliest Human League recordings to Reproduction as anyone who has heard "A Golden Hour Of The Future" will attest. And it wasn't plain sailing all the way - "Dignity Of Labour" anyone? Plus their first official release on Virgin Records "I Don't Depend On You" under the pseudonym The Men wasn't a million miles away in sound and arrangement from Dare.

U2. Saw them on the "Boy" tour and they were amazing. Went out and bought the album the next day and played it to death. The next time I saw them promoting the "October" album they were as boring as the record was. Vice-Versa were a brilliant combination of early Human League and Cabaret Voltaire. The band they turned into - ABC - were blander than a bland thing. Karl Hyde and Rick Smith of Underworld have yet to make an album better than Doot-Doot by Freur.

The sort of person who would want a CT bass with Wal electronics probably doesn't have a problem with the cost involved. Besides a Wal could have been picked up very cheaply 20 years ago.

I'd just like to say that the only strap locking mechanisms I've ever had fail on me were set of the Dunlop style ones fitted to a Warwick Starbass, and that happened within the first 6 months of me getting the bass (which was new). On the other hand I have Schaller Straplocks from the mid 80s that are still going strong. The ones on the Warwick were not the recessed versions so they were easily were changed for Schallers.

IMO you are over-thinking this. Each additional thickness of card will change the neck angle by approximately one quarter of a degree. That is not going to be enough to worry about the screws needing to cut new threads in the wood. I would add a second piece of card underneath the existing one but twice as "wide" - so it almost reaches the first set of neck sure holes and then re-assemble it.

Were the venues shabbily treated? IME venues will charge what it costs to cover their expenses to open for a gig, so none of them should have been out of pocket just because the audience was virtually none existent. Perhaps they could have booked a band that was more popular, but having been part of many tiny audiences for both local and touring bands there are very few bands playing the kind of venues that Threatin were playing that could 100% guarantee a decent crowd every time they play.

How do you know that you need a short scale bass? Have you actually tried any? As someone who also plays the guitar I've found that even a standard 30" short scale bass is a big jump up from a 25" scale guitar, so IME you might as well go for a full 34" scale bass. You'll certainly find it easier to find something decent in your price range then, as short scale basses tend to be specialist/niche instruments and the prices tend to be higher for the same level of quality to reflect this. What you need to do is to get down to your local musical instrument retailer and try as many basses as you can to see what suits you best. As others have said, scale length is only part of the picture, and the only way you'll get the right bass for you is to actually play it.

The "woodiest" sounding bass I've owned was a Born To Rock F4B, made mostly out of aluminium tubing.

Looks fake to me. His finger/fret positioning in a couple places should be resulting in choked notes, but they sound perfectly fine on the audio. Besides it's a video there's no guarantee that it is actually real.