BigRedX

It's our "German friend" Music Outlet Shop once again. Nothing new to see here, move along.

Mac OS has a very handy utility that will show which devices are on which USB bus. If there is something similar in Widows I suggest you use it to find which USB ports are attached to which USB bus, and use the port(s) which aren't being shared by other devices. Otherwise use SATA for your external hard drive.

@Happy Jack @Silvia Bluejay That might be why you can't get the ethernet connection to work. It looks as though you have to turn off the internal WiFi on the mixer to enable the ethernet connection. I have found several sources on the internet that appeared to imply this also. Time to get a good quality external router to allow simultaneous wired and wireless connections.

Thank you. If we were able to find a synth player with fantastic technical ability, who can also double up on guitar, percussion, backing vocals, is happy to sit out those songs that don't require anything extra, and willing do it all for occasional expense money, then we would have no need of the backing track.

@Stub Mandrel When it comes to string gauge and tension either your maths is flawed or you are not taking into account the construction of the string (solid core and several top windings on the thicker strings like low B). Looking at the D'Addario string tension charts a 34" 130 gauge low B will have a tension of 30.78lbs. Increasing the gauge to 135 will increase the tension to 33.32lbs which I make as a 8% increase. Also as I have said previously IME neck construction and the neck joint make the biggest contribution to getting a good low B. The longer you make the neck the more likely it is to flex and dissipate string energy leading to a bad sounding low B, hence the proliferation of cheap 35" scale 5-string basses which don't sound as good as a well made 34" scale 5-string bass. This is also why your maths doesn't work for short scale basses as the shorter neck is going to tend to be more rigid. Also it doesn't take string compliance into account, i.e. factors other than the tension which affect how stiff a string feels. Like string construction, as well as string break angles at the nut and bridge.

What is your laptop and what ports does it have other than USB?

Or you could just turn your amp up a little bit more.

As someone who plays both baritone guitar and bass VI I would say that the two are very different instruments and it mostly down to the voicing. For me the difference between a long scale baritone and a bass VI is more to do with the type and placement of the pickups then the scale length. A bass VI will have 3 single coil pickups, while a baritone has two P90 types or humbuckers. The middle pickup is important in getting the a decent bass sound, while a baritone guitar being played more like a conventional guitar but lower in pitch tends to benefit from the pickups in the conventional guitar positions.

If this is the drive that you are recording your audio files to, you will ideally want to connect it to your computer by some other method than USB. If you must use USB make sure it's on a bus without too many other peripherals. And remember that if your computer is a laptop many of those USB peripherals will be built in like the keyboard, trackpad, web cam, WIFI, Bluetooth etc...

But it doesn't need to since when set up as a wedge the speaker is pointing at my ears rather than at my knees like the 410.

I run a guitar amp SIM (Roland Jazz Chorus which in real life would be completely inappropriate at gig volumes for bass) for my Bass VI patches and no amp or cab SIM at all for the 5-string bass patches except where I am using a bass amp SIM for the overdrive sound instead of a distortion pedal.

Not in my experience. My conventional "big rig" that has now been replaced by a Line6 Helix and an RCF745 FRFR at a cost of just over £2k originally set me back quite a bit more even though most of it was bought second hand 10 years ago. I've just looked up the price of one of the cabs I was previously using (EBS Proline 410) and new it costs more than the RCF!

IME you don't want to be hearing the fundamental of very low notes anyway, they sap too much energy away from the frequencies you do want to hear, which is why devices like the Thumpinator which attenuates everything under 35Hz are proving popular. Also IME adding 1 extra inch to the scale length of a bass does little to improve the low B. Its all down to neck construction and the neck joint. Laklands tend to be better made than Fenders which is why the B string sounds better. If you are after a better B simply through scale length alone you need to go to 36" or longer, although again the manufacturers making extra long scale basses tend to be low volume hand crafted, rather than mass-produced which means they will be better made anyway.

Try either 10.0.1.2 or 192.168.1.2 on the laptop and see if either of these work. If it's a peer-to-peer network with no router and just two devices you might possibly need a cross-over ethernet cable, but I thought that these day most devices were auto-sensing and this was a thing of the past.

I have one strap for every guitar or bass that use regularly, each one adjusted for length so that each bass hangs at the correct height (not always the same height depending on how I play it). Most are black, but I have a red one for the Burns Barracuda.

Sunday gig at Rough Trade in Nottingham with Hurtsfall supporting Rodney Bakerr/ Strange Circuits. No the best organised event. Four bands (with completely different equipment requirements) playing in the space of 3 hours. We were told to be there for a 4.30 soundcheck, only to find no-one else there and the PA engineer didn't turn up until just after 5.00. In the end everything went surprising smoothly. Playing second, just before Strange Circuits, meant that we had the biggest audience of the evening and went down really well. Strange Circuits were as usual fantastic, even though it was a set full of brand new songs that I had't heard before. I felt a bit sorry for Video Tape Machine who "headlined" and would have played to almost no-one if we hadn't stayed to see them. We weren't allowed to use our smoke machine as it might have set off the fire alarm so the ambience isn't as "gothy" as usual!

Unless they are Fenders where the finish seems to get damaged just by looking at it 😉

And this. Or fit underneath the keyboard stand holding the computer that is running the backing track. I can place a wedge FRFR almost anywhere in stage as it's footprint is minimal.

It's one extra thing to bring to the gig (or leave behind afterwards). And arriving 3 minutes earlier is no use when you have 10-15 minutes between the end of the previous band's set and the start of yours in which to set up. Like the gig I played last night where there were 4 bands playing (all with completely different equipment requirements) and the whole gig was only 3 hours long from doors opening at 7.00 to the music curfew at 10.00.

IME unless your band is massively loud on stage and you have FoH support for the bass pretty much any FRFR is going to be fine. I've never needed to run my RCF745 and anything like full tilt. With the angled cab, the speaker is pointing at my ears rather than my knees which does more for audibility than the power available from the built-in amp.

Remember that all the budget digital wireless systems work in the WiFi frequencies, so anything that affects WiFi will also affect your wireless devices. (Including too many people in the audience with mobile phones looking for a WiFi signal).

Personally I don't like detuners as the change in string tension puts me off. If the string is the right tension for E it's too floppy for D. I actually have a separate guitar for playing in drop D with the 52 E replaced with a 56 for tuning to D.

Which is why I've done it. Personally the only reason I can see for not getting a worn bass (or guitar) refinished is because you can't afford it. You don't see drum kits, keyboards or brass instruments that have been relic'd so why guitars and basses?

For me it depends on whether I need to follow the guitar riff exactly or not. Personally, given the chance I would prefer to play something different, so in that case the tuning doesn't matter, and in fact using a different tuning to the guitarist is likely to force my into doing something more creative than simply aping the guitar part an octave lower.

IME most hacks are a complete faff when you are trying to set up in a hurry. Best to have something that is properly designed to the the job you need. Plus for some of the bands I've played with in the past those 3 minutes saved are an extra song we can play in the set.