BigRedX

I would agree. It's also a rubbish bit of design to leave any part of the valves exposed. It might look cool but it's not in the slightest bit practical.

I find it incredible the number of people who put their faith in streaming services when AFAICS none of them are actually making any money and are either being propped up by the profitable parts of their parent company or through 3rd party investment. The only service who were turning a profit - Soundcloud - were only doing so because they weren't paying any artist or publisher royalties. Streaming services are fine for checking out new (to me) music although if your tastes run to non-US/UK artists or back catalogue for bands that are now defunct, you are likely to be disappointed in their offerings. Neither AppleMusic or Spotify can manage better than 70% of my CD and vinyl collection, and many of the missing artists or albums are ones that I would consider indispensable. So for me it is CDs first and foremost for audio quality, durability and general convenience. Secondly vinyl - ideally with a download code. After that the music has to absolutely brilliant for me to consider investing in a download only version. When it is possible to do a limited edition run of 100 glass mastered CDs (no crappy CDRs) with full colour sleeves for under £350 and 500 CDs for only £150 more, there is absolutely no excuse for not having a physical version of your single/EP/album available.

Here's my early 60s Burns Sonic, which was my first bass bought in 1981. It had already been heavily modified when I bought it, and I had to make further replacements (the bridge, machine heads and all the electronics bar the pickups) to keep it in a playable condition. And here is my newest bass a Burns Barracuda Bass VI bought earlier this year. Out of all the easily obtainable Bass VIs this is the one that suits me the best, although it still has several short-comings notably the string spacing at the bridge due to using an unmodified version of guitar vibrato system. It will probably end up being replaced by something custom made to my specifications.

Buy the pedal that you like the sound of. Strip it down and spray the case the correct shade of brown. Get a five year old kid to scribble all over it in crayon and clear coat over the top. When you reassemble it, if possible arrange the controls in a less obvious order and perhaps swap one of them with either the input or output jack. Give it a sexually suggestive name that would appeal to average 14 year old boy. Then you can tell everyone that it some ultra-rare boutique pedal that was made in a limited edition of 50.

Yes. There was one in the Bass Gallery in Camden many years ago. It was one of the many basses I tried on my journey to find my ideal fretless bass. Unfortunately my main memories of it were rather underwhelming. IIRC Ped has played this instrument as well. I'm pretty certain that there is also at least one Ritter made from a single piece of wood.

I think a lot of the time Basschat members have an over-protective feeling towards instruments and also that the value of an instrument matters to others. IME if an instrument is going to get stolen, it will happen whether it is a sub £100 Fender copy or a high end bass costing several thousands. The value is almost certainly irrelevant to the person stealing it. They simply won't know what it is worth. 10-15 years ago when I was buying a lot of instruments and was the musician who seemingly had a different bass at every gig, the one that caught all the punter's eyes was not the Gus or the Pedulla or the Overwater or the Sei - each worth several thousand pounds - but a Traben Phoenix with it's bling fingerboard inlays and over the top flame shape chrome bridge which had cost me the grand total of £300 including shipping and import from the US. Also in 40 years of gigging I've never seen a guitar or bass receive anything worse than surface damage at a gig unless it was being deliberately being abused by the person playing it. Guitars and basses are resilient things. It takes a lot to damage one.

As a measure of just how subjective high end basses can be here is a little story: When I first discovered Basschat's predecessor (Bassworld), Dood was in the middle of having his first custom Shuker built, and was documenting the process in a build thread. It all looked mighty impressive, and as I was at the time looking for someone to build me my perfect fretless bass, I went and checked out the Shuker web site. There were some great looking basses on there and as he was reasonably local I fired off an email enquiry. Pretty soon I was trading emails with Jon regarding my own custom build based on a couple of the basses on his site that I liked the look of. Then I went to the Manchester Bass day and actually got some hands-on time with a whole load of Shuker basses. Unfortunately the whole experience was just one big anti-climax. There was nothing in the feel of any of the Shuker basses, that I tried, that spoke to me at all. They all looked fantastic, but in my hands they might as well be averagely set-up Squiers. So I crossed Shuker off my list and went on looking. Eventually I chose Martin Petersen of Sei Bass to build my fretless. When it was finished I travelled down to London to pick it up and while I was waiting for Martin to make some final set-up adjustments I got to try another Sei fretless that he had recently completed. Like my bass it was a beautiful looking instrument, but in my hands it simply didn't speak to me the way the bass built to my specifications did. Side by side they were two exceptional basses built to the highest standard by one of the best bass luthiers in the country. However to me one was the perfect fretless bass bass, the other just a very nice well made instrument. You simply can't remove subjectivity from the equation.

Strings from Newtone arrived yesterday. Having some free time, I was going to fit them this morning until I noticed a warning on the back of the packet telling me not the cut the strings to length until they have been fitted. Why is this? Now since the Barracuda has bass guitar style machine head posts with a slot and the hole down the centre of the slot, rather than guitar style posts with a hole, I have to cut the strings to length before they can be fitted. I'm waiting to hear back from Newtone about why I shouldn't cut the strings first, but is there any proper scientific reason for it?

But at the kind of level I hope you are talking about, it really is all about the subjectivity. Most of what you are paying for at the top end of the market are not features that make the bass any better sounding or playing to the average musician. Because when it comes down to it the majority of bass guitars are merely some bits of wood and metal glued and screwed together. They are essentially fairly simple things. After all the classic Fender designs were all about being able to make them with a relatively unskilled workforce to a budget that undercut their competitors. A modern cheap bass with a decent fret job, new nut and a suitable set up for the player who owns it will be very, very close the most expensive of expensive custom jobs in terms of producing a good sound in the context of a band mix live or recorded. There are luthiers who make (or have made) the majority of the parts on their basses specifically for their basses and are not put together from standard off the self parts. Have a look at Atlansia, Gus, Overwater and Wal to name but four. However that alone doesn't make them any better than a Squier that's had a bit of extra attention from a decent luthier.

There is no "best bass builder", just the luthier who can make the bass that suits the individual musician. At the level that the OP is taking about, a feature that is must-have for one musician, might make the instrument completely unsuitable for another. Also at this level aesthetics will have a lot to do with it and that is completely subjective.

Can you please explain how you can read for one instrument and not another that you can also play?

Personally I wish high tech gear still came with half-inch thick manuals. The helix comes with a double-sided A3 sheet and a PDF of an out of date version of the manual on a USB memory stick. Quite how anyone with just a phone or a tablet as their "computing" device is supposed to get the best out of it I don't know. As for modelling stop using your eyes and start using your ears. Currently my favourite amp and cab model on the Helix for the bass is the one of the Roland Jazz Chorus combo. In real life the puny 12" guitar speakers and open-backed cab design would make this totally unsuitable for bass guitar frequencies at any decent volume. However because it's just a digital representation of the real thing there is no risk of damaging anything, and as a result it sounds glorious!

TBH I never practice anything just for the sake of practicing.

I'm assuming that this is a sealed unit? There are two types, one which is centre on, and one which is centre off. You probably have the centre off variety. If you you look carefully at the side it should be marked.

IME venues come and go. There's no point in clinging to the past, and trying to save a venue just because that was the place that has previously had live music. If there is a genuine audience for live music then then another venue will start putting it on.

IME if you have to set yourself a regime you'll never stick to it. It will become a chore and you'll soon loose interest. People learn best when they want to learn and make time to learn because it is fun, not because they think that that they ought to.

When I first started using multi-effects units in my bass rig in the early 90s there weren't any dedicated bass ones so after trying all the available models I bought a Roland GP8. It did't sound thin in the slightest. After all several of the effects were based on Boss pedals that I and many other bassists of the time were using. These days I use a Line6 Helix. Very few of the effects or amp models that I have in my many patches are bass specificc. In fact I think the only dedicated bass module I have is one of the amp models that I am using on 2 patches solely for the distortion sound the drive control gives me. For me that's the beauty of modern multi-effects units. Because they are digital there's no danger of damaging them as you might be able to do with the actual effects/amps/cabs by expecting them to reproduce bass frequencies at gig volumes. The worst that can happen is that your patch won't sound very good, in which case you can replace the crap sounding module with something else and try again.

Chris Watson is one of the outstanding field recordists of all time. Cabaret Voltaire were never quite as good after he left.

That looks truly brilliant! Is it even remotely playable?

It may have been, but both the Ultracure and the Hellcat VI have been discontinued, and the strings are nowhere to be found on the Ernie Ball web site.

Well, my plan was to get another set of LaBella Round Would Bass VI strings and then send the old Burns strings to Newtone to see if they could make a similar set, when I discovered Axion Custom Works Bass VI Strings on the Newtone site. At £18 plus postage for a set, that seems like a really good deal, and the gauges look pretty good too (quite how anyone can think that a low E string lighter than a 95 is going to be anything other than a floppy mess I don't know). Certainly cheap enough I'll let you all know what I think when they arrive and I've fitted them on the bass.

I'm now after my first set of replacement strings for the Barracuda. Easy I thought. I'll contact Burns and ask them what they fit as standard, because they are exactly what I want, and where I can buy another set? Unfortunately the prompt reply back from Burns was that they didn't know, the supplied strings were fitted on the bass when it was made in China, but could offer me a set of Picato flat wound strings for are more "authentic" sound at £35 a set. When I pointed out that the "authentic" sound I was after was that of New Order and The Cure, they weren't able to help any further. A quick on-line search reveals that there are not very many options for Bass VI owners. Apart from the Picatos, LaBella do both flats and round-wounds for the Bass VI, and D'Addario do a set but for some inexplicable reason they are the ridiculously light gauges that Fender/Squier fit to their Bass VI models and everyone with any sense replaces immediately (perhaps @D'Addario UK would care to comment on this). Before I get another set of LaBella Round Wounds are there any other manufacturers offering round wound Bass VI strings with suitably heavy low E and A strings?

Not as good as their Sleepify album. 😉

Two gigs on Thursday and Friday with my other band Hurtsfall. First supporting Strange Circuits from Chicago at the Chameleon in Nottingham. As happened last time, Rodney Bakerr who is Strange Circuits didn't want to play last so we were promoted from being a late addition to the bill to "headlining" status. Not bad for a band on only it's second gig. Not the greatest of performances and one of the new songs was performed at a pace considerably slower than usual. However most of the audience stayed to watch us and we got plenty of appreciative comments. Mr Bakerr even said he preferred this band to the other one I play with who supported him last time he played in Nottingham. The following night we were in Manchester to open for TicNotToc, who are friends of our drummer, on their EP launch night. This was a much better gig in front of a crowd who knew nothing about us and despite being very much at odds musically with the other bands on the bill went down really well. I was staying the weekend with friends in Manchester, so I didn't have to endure the lengthy roadworks delayed return trip of the rest of the band. Edit: Just found these two photos of the Manchester gig on Facebook

And once again you have totally missed the point.