BigRedX

But how many differences are there between these two basses other than their weight? This is why the question IMO is mostly meaningless. The heaviest bass I have owned (Yamaha) sounded good, but I own lighter basses that I think sound better. The lightest bass I have owned (Lightwave) sounded great but I suspect that was down almost entirely to the pickup and electronics than anything to do with the weight. Also there is very little point in comparing the two as about the only things they had in common was that they were mostly made out of wood.

Full of cracks and no strings fitted (probably because it will disintegrate under string tension). Will need a lot of work doing if you actually want to play it.

NAMM isn't open to the public.

As others have said the laws of physics are against pitch to MIDI conversion for bass guitars, because you need a MINIMUM of one and half cycles of a CLEANLY played note in order to accurately detect the pitch of the note being played which will already introduce too much latency for the typical bass line before you figure in additional delays for MIDI conversion etc. Tony James of Sigue Sigue Sputnik who has been doing this for decades uses a guitar controller which halves the latency (being an octave higher) and still has had to learn to play slightly in front of the beat for his bass lines to be in time. There are alternatives such as the Industrial Radio MIDI Bass that uses fret sensing to deprive pitch information and guitar-like controllers from Starr Labs etc. but they all remove much of the immediacy of playing a stringed instrument. One of the things I quickly discovered when trying various guitar and bass synth controllers over the years is how much almost every player relies on things like ghost notes, full and partial muting, harmonics and tonal nuances from altering the plucking position, all of which cause havoc with pitch sensing and are completely meaningless on other controllers. In the end I founded it simpler, quicker, cheaper and far more reliable to develop some rudimentary keyboard "chops" and buy a decent keyboard synth than to try and force my guitars and basses to produce synth sounds with any degree or reliability and repeatability.

I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating. I paid just over £2k for my Helix and RCF745. My previous big bass rig which was mostly bought second hand over 10 years ago cost me more, and while it looks impressive on stage the Helix RCF combination is far more versatile. One thing did occur to me recently; a lot of the gigs I play are supports to well-established goth/post punk bands where the headliner will have brought an Ampeg stack or similar. I set up my RCF in wedge mode just in front, and still looks as though I'm using a big impressive bass rig while sounding infinitely better!

Sleepify is still their best IMO 😉

IMO it's far better that they are in London, as there's a ton of other things you can there do if the show turns out to be boring. You can't say the same if it's out at the NEC or somewhere similar. In the 90s I used to go to the annual MacUser Show at Earls Court which kept me occupied for a morning while I checked out the exhibitors, signed up for beta testing programs and perhaps got a show deal on some hardware or software I was after. Then in the afternoon, I could go shopping and/or visit one of the museums in London. I also used to go the IPEX - the big printing exhibition at the NEC, where there was nothing to do once I had checked out all the various exhibitors I was interested in except go back home (or if was really unlucky and in the company of my office manger, go back to work).

For most situations a business card about 1/4 the length of the neck pocket is sufficient to give a big enough change of angle of the neck to sort out most problems. The average business card is between 0.333mm and 0.5mm thick (and will compress slightly when the neck screws are tightened up). The only bass I have with a bolt-on neck has a pocket 90mm long. My back of an envelope calculations give an angle of between 0.2° and 0.3°. IME there is far more play in the holes going through the body than that so I wouldn't worry about changing the neck angle with a shim.

You would need to buy a double bass. There's a reason why the DB body is so big.

That opening note of the solo is just fantastic. As is the little reprise at the end.

Bass Direct in Warwick are the only listed Spector USA Series Dealers in the UK. However distribution for Spector is by Barnes & Mullins so they should be able to let you know which London shops carry stock.

It looks as though the prices have gone up quite a lot since I sold mine a couple of years ago. Having said that a quick scan through the sold listings only brings up a couple of original Nord Leads and one of those sold for more than a Nord Lead 2 which is a better synth with more features, so there is no real pattern to the prices. I still think that you could get one for £250 max if you were prepared to wait for the right deal to come along.

What you need to go is go to an old-school music shop (the sort of establishment that is termed "Mom & Pop" in the US) and ask if they have one in the box of random guitar bits. If they have it will probably be a bargain as well.

Last time I looked they were under £250 second hand if you were prepared to wait for one to come up on eBay for collection only in your area.

I used to run a true bi-amp set up when it was part of my multi effects (Peavey Bassfex). It allowed me to put all the effects that suck the presence out of the bottom end on the just on the high part of the signal. This fed into a 350 + 350 watt power amp with the upper frequencies going to a home made 2 x 8 cab (based on my favourite guitar combo) and the low frequencies to a standard 1 x 15 bass cab. I did however mean that in order to get proper FoH representation of my sound I needed to have two DIs on the bass rig.

Takes about 10 seconds to get used to fan-frets when you actually play one.

Basses (or any other instrument for that matter) only sound good on a recording in the context of the arrangement and production of the music. Take a listen to any of the many isolated bass tracks available on YouTube if you want to hear how different (and generally not very good) the bass sounds once you strip away all the other instrumentation.

For I beginner I couldn't recommend a synth that doesn't have a dedicated control for at least 90% of the parameters. Menu access if if you have a page with 5 or 6 parameters at a time gets very tedious very quickly, and will get in the way of seeing properly how the various parameters affect the sound. Analog or digital doesn't really matter. It's all about whether you like the sound or not. However beware of big impressive sounds when trying out synths in the shop. You quickly find that you have to thin them down in a band situation to allow sonic space for the other musicians. I'll recommend my personal favourite the Nord Lead. A second hand MK1 version should around the price you want to pay.

I've never been able to get into REM's music. In the late 80s/early 90s my friends all loved them, but I could never hear what all the fuss was about. I'm sure if I heard everything they have ever recorded I could find a handful of their songs that I could stand listening to again, but that's it.

Talk to Newtone Strings about a suitable custom set.

Buy the headphones you want and then get OBBM to maker you up a suitable extension lead.

A lot of the more modern reggae (mid 80s onwards) is horrendously homophobic. I wonder how that's going to sit with it's protected by the UN status?

There was an Epiphone one as well which came out around 2010... However it is a Thunderbird in approximate body shape only.

They did in the 90s IIRC. I tried one and was throughly underwhelmed.

Possibly for the increased business at this time of the year?