BigRedX

I think it is very much down to your local UPS depot. I've been using them for larger parcels for about 10 years now and have sent several 100 packages during that time. I get to deal with the same driver every time (except when he is on holiday) and I have only once had a problem (caused by the depot at the delivery end of the chain) which was promptly sorted and compensated without fuss in full. IME UPS are no better or worse than any other courier service - with the exception of Yodel and Hermes who are uniformly terrible and I can't believe how they mange to stay in business, are they being propped up by profits from another company? Delivery services are only as good as the weakest link in the chain.

The thing is with Thunderbirds is that all the different models are all very different basses united only by the name and having roughly the same body shape, so they are not substitutes for each other. If you believe that woods, construction and pickups make a noticeable difference once the bass is in the overall band mix, then what you need to do is find out exactly which version of the Thunderbird is producing the sounds you like and get one of those. But be aware that both Gibson and Epiphone have a bewildering range of models with different specifications in their past and current ranges. A 2018 Gibson Thunderbird has very little in common with a 1960s one other than the approximate shape. There are also this who would argue that the best Thunderbirds are currently being made by Mike Lull. Choose wisely. You may regret it otherwise.

And that's why you are looking at the Helix all wrong. The only bass-specific module I am currently using in any of my patches is there as an "effect" because I like the distortion sound the drive control on one of bass amp models adds to the bass. Most of my patches don't have any amps or cabs at all, because after all an amp (as I keep saying) is just something to make your instrument loud with a baked in sound and some limited EQ adjustments to that baked-in sound. I normally just use one of the EQ modules instead. Same result and usually with more versatility. Where I am using an amp model it's a guitar one - based on the Roland Jazz Chorus combo. For me, this is the big strength of the Helix. You can do what you want. Because everything is digital there's no chance of breaking it, as you could if you used the actual device and expected it to reproduce bass guitar frequencies at gig volumes. The worst thing that will happen is that it simply won't sound very good, in which case simply try another module instead.

I'm a songwriter first, a producer second and a musician a very distant third. So for me the most important thing is to get the best possible production and arrangement of the recorded song, by whatever means necessary. The various parts of the song are still my ideas even if I didn't actually play them. If someone else can play it better than me that's great. If a sequencer can do a better job that's also great. I have nothing against anything from moving/replacing a few duff notes, chopping up the bass part into its constituent notes and groove quantising it to the drums, or replacing the bass completely with a synth played or sequenced (I've done them all). Whatever give me the right end result for the song and the recording.

I'm still not convinced by the semi-rigid gig bags like the Mono. As others have discovered many of them are as big and almost as heavy as a Hiscox Case. I have a Mono M80 and as a case for protecting the bass inside it is great, but as a gig bag not so good. I find it very uncomfortable to wear for more than a few minutes, and it's certainly not a pleasant experience wearing it on the 30 minute walk from where I live to the rehearsal rooms in town. I wouldn't buy another case of that type without trying it with my bass and everything else I wanted to put in it first.

TBH honest all those concepts are pretty alien to me including the one about reversing your car (I'm an appalling driver and consequently for mine and the safety of other road users, it's been over 20 years since I last got behind the wheel of a car) 😉 I don't think I've ever played a scale in my life. Sure I know where all the notes are on a keyboard or fretboard, but actually playing scales doesn't hold any musical interest for me. Similarly with "licks" and arpeggios. I see this "building block" approach to playing all the time usually from guitarists when they are "improvising" a solo. It looks impressive the first time you hear it, but by the third solo you realise that all they are doing is rearranging the same musical phrases in slightly different orders and in different keys depending on the underlying chord structure. When I'm writing I can normally hear what I want to play in my head, so I'm not being bound by patterns my fingers are comfortable with. If I do notice that I am reusing elements from something previous, I'll deliberately go out of my way to break the pattern to come up with something new. I does mean that as I'm writing a new part for whatever instrument I'm playing, it will take me a little longer to get up to speed while I'm searching for the perfect notes and training my fingers to play in patterns they are unaccustomed to. Ultimately I think it results in better songwriting.

Can we define what "reading" music actually means? There seems to be an implication from many of the replies that "reading" = sight reading. Is that the case? However if reading simply means being able to get a musical performance out of written notation no matter how long it takes, then pretty much anyone should be able to read music. Work your way through the notation for a simple bass line one note at a time and you'll quickly learn where the notes are on the stave and what all the timing values are. All the less common symbols can be looked up as and when required. You might not be able to play something the moment it is set in front of you, but at least it won't appear to be a load of incomprehensible gibberish. Does that count as "reading"? In 45 years of playing music I have never needed to be able to read to any standard - either sight reading or working my way through a score one note at a time. For music I'm composing myself I'm creating the parts I'm working out the composition and arrangement. For songs written by other people, I either learn the part by ear from a recording or compose my own part from scratch depending on what is required. While I know that many of the musicians I have worked with over the years could read (and probably sight read to a high standard) for the music that I have played with them, it has never been required, or even mentioned. My very limited abilities come not from needing it to get a gig or even from learning for my own interest or amusement. I had to learn to write because back in the early 80s when I joined the PRS the only way they would accept song registrations that had not been released on a record, was to score out the main musical themes - the vocal melody along with the lyrics and any important instrumental parts onto blank manuscript that they supplied for this purpose. It took me several days for each song working out the notes for the vocal melodies and tapping out the rhythms, so I could write the parts down. Sometimes when I was really stuck with the timing I'd cheat by tapping it into the drum machine and see where the notes appeared on the display. Because I learnt this way dealing with vocals and multiple instruments, my knowledge isn't tied to a single instrument, and so I am always a little surprised when I come across musicians who can sight read for one instrument (usually something they learnt at school playing classical music) but seemingly can't transfer that skill to being able to read for another instrument that they can play but haven't learnt by reading music. It makes me suspect that in order to be able to sight read competently you need to be able to bypass some of the information. So instead of looking at a part that has been scored out and thinking: that is a C, in order to play C I need to put my fingers here on the instrument. Instead you think: note on that position of the stave = put my fingers here.

Every on-line magazine I've seen has been terrible. They all seems to combine what for me are the worst aspects of the paper publication with the limitations of on-line. Stupid pointless page turning animations, and forever having to zoom in and out of the page to see things properly. Low resolution "photography" that doesn't have the sharpness or detail of print. Half the screen seems to be taken up by the "interface" and doesn't seem to matter which format you use to view it - wide screen monitor on a PC or 4:3 on a tablet the format still can't make the best use of any of them. Plus you can't safely read it in the bath.

I wonder what that will mean for Bass Player in the US? I can't see Future Publishing running two versions with localised advertising as that defeats the object of merging the titles, not to mention that US magazines are a completely different format (size) to UK ones. Do Future Publishing's other music titles sell in the US? If they do are they the same as the UK editions?

That's going to be interesting given that one is a UK publication and the other US... Are we sure this is genuine and not "fake news"?

IME embroidery and heat printing are all wrong for band T-Shirts. Embroidery says you are employed by a company trying too hard to be casual, and heat printing is "Lads on a Stag Weekend P!ss-up". Go for good old screen printing, bright colour(s) on decent quality (Gildan) black Tees. 100 T-Shirts with a single colour on one side will cost you around £3 per shirt. Price them at £10 each and you only need to sell 30 or so to get your money back. If you don't think you can do that, you probably shouldn't be bothering in the first place.

Ignore the numbers on the controls and use your ears, to tell you when it sounds good. Also bear in mind that when you are ready to play with other musicians what sounds good when you are playing the bass on its own won't necessarily sound good with other instruments in the mix.

Julian Cope. In his Teardrop Explodes days I remember reading an interview with him where he said he would try to make the bass lines as complicated as possible while he was singing.

That does work out more expensive as you will incur extra screen costs for each colour front and back as well as additional setup charges. I've done 3 different T-shirst where a single print size worked across the whole range of shirt sizes, but they were full shirt designs and the logo was only part of the whole design. If you make your design work on the medium and large shirts it should work for all sizes from Ladies Small up to 2XL. It always surprises me that people are prepared to spend £10 - £15 on a T-shirt with a unit cost of under £4, whereas they won't be so ready to buy your CD or Vinyl for the same price, where you are probably only just breaking even.

Awesome Merchandise or Shirtysomething. It doesn't matter how many skinny hipsters are in your audience, the people who buy band T-shirts are invariably size Large and bigger, so skew your size quantities towards these.

But is it? Jens might have hand picked all the sections that go to make up that body and glued each of them perfectly to the others, But that's essentially the only difference between that multi-laminate body and the one on the Baz Extravaganza Bass. Tone wood makes sense on an acoustic instrument where the vibrations of the strings are being amplified and enhanced by being transferred through the top back and sides, and where each is made up of a single piece of wood, optimally chosen and shaped, and glued to the others with just enough glue and contact to hold the instrument together. Compare that with the typical solid bodied electric instrument where huge slabs of wood are slathered in glue and assembled in way that priorities getting the largest number of bodies out of the fewest number of planks. "Tone Wood" in solid electric instruments is a myth, perpetuated by those with a vested interest in preserving the mystique.

The 4 cable method is for guitarists who like the sound of their amp and use their Helix simply as a multi-effects unit. If all your amp is doing is making your instrument loud, you don't need 4 cables. However almost all bass guitar cabs are extremely coloured in their sound, so even if you are bypassing the preamp on your amplifier, so are still going to be fighting the colouration of the cab and not getting the best out of the Helix.

It doesn't take a lot of keyboard technique to be able to play most synth bass lines with more accuracy and reliability on a keyboard synth than you can using a bass guitar and pedals. Most of the bassists I see doing this sort of stuff have some serious bass guitar chops and a massive pedal board to hold all the effects they require, but I know I can do a much better job, in terms of accuracy of playing, and consistency of sound, with something like a Nord Lead and my decidedly 3rd rate keyboard technique.

Pretty much any MIDI module with drum sounds should do the job. However, having had a look at your foot controller, it appears to send MIDI program change messages only. You need something that will send MIDI note on and offs to trigger drum sounds.

When I set the bass player up with my "emergency" patch I showed him how to make any adjustments if required, but I played a couple of riffs and then said "no that sounds great, leave it as it is". It really did sound good too, both on stage and out front.

Here are two photos of bass guitars that I post every time the topic of the suitability of plywood as a "tone wood" crops up. The first is by Jens Ritter who knows a thing or two about making bass guitars. And this one is by Baz Extravaganza. Unfortunately his site full of his interesting and sometimes very eccentric bass guitars has gone, I was able to save the images of the basses that interested me. IIRC this particular bass was made entirely out of plywood bought from his local DIY superstore. Other than to fill any of the voids revealed by the shaping process, and apply a very basic finish I don't think anything further was done to the wood. The result was an excellent sounding and playing bass.

How hard are you pressing on the strings to get them to touch the fingerboard? I'm a pretty ham-fisted player but even I can't manage that feat!

And to myself in the late 70s. Don't bother with University (or even finishing your A levels). Scape the money together and buy and bass guitar and an amp and join a band that actually gets out there and gigs before the whole punk/new wave bubble bursts.

Don't spend 10 years and many tens of thousands of pounds building a studio in your house and filling it with expensive recording equipment. You'll never make a recording that your are really happy with and that sounds as good your favourite records, and you'll end up selling all the recording equipment for a fraction of what you spent on it. If you really want to make a great sounding album, save your money and hire a producer with a proven track record in your band's genre and 3-4 weeks lock in at a decent recording studio and concentrate on the performance not the technical details.

TBH most published figures for bass cabs are at best economical with the truth and at worst simply fantasies. And unless your bass guitar or synth is pumping out pure sine waves, the fundamental is the least important (and many would say the least desirable when it comes to low frequencies) harmonic to reproduce. Stop reading the fiction in the spec sheets and start using your ears. My Helix + FRFR (RCF745) sounds far better than any of my previous bass rigs including the very expensive high-end ones.