BigRedX

Adding a MIDI merge will add more latency to your MIDI signals. Get a proper multi-port MIDI interface from someone like Mark of The Unicorn.

Then my work here would be done!

I always wanted to release an album that not only was it not recorded at A=440 but each individual track was off by a different amount. And then to mess with people's minds even more the tunings of the individual tracks would also be different depending on the format - CD, Vinyl, iTunes download, Amazon download, Spotify stream etc.

But if you were going to complain about the effect, would it not have been a good idea to do some research on the band behind it before kicking up a fuss? And had a look at the general boutique pedal market where this sort of thing is fairly common place? Also I can't help but wonder what an electronic band like Braids are doing looking into an effect primarily aimed at guitarists? It all makes me think they must have tried fairly hard in order to get offended in the first place. None of this IMO does the anti-sexism cause any favours. EDIT: I've never heard any music by Steel Panther and I'm hardly a metal fan, but I have heard of the band and know that they are a complete parody of that genre.

Less than 30 seconds with Google will enlighten you. The first search result is their Wikipedia entry which starts: There is absolutely zero excuse for being uninformed these days.

Sibob is completely right... But what worries me about this situation is why now and why this particular pedal, a pedal with a parody name from a parody band, when there are plenty of pedals from other manufacturers who appear to be far more serious about their sexism when it comes to naming their products. And while many of these companies are far too small to have generated this level of attention for their inappropriately named products, the "grandaddy" of them all Electro Harmonix are hardly insignificant in the musical equipment business and have been "offending" since their Muff Fuzz pedal in the late 60s. I can't help but think that this is more about publicity for a rather dull and anonymous band and ultimately will do the cause of fighting sexism in the music industry more harm than good.

Many thanks for taking the time to reply to this thread Christine! So do you have a preference for the positioning of the truss rod adjustment or does it depend on the overall design of the instrument? Regarding the brass nut, when I first became interested in guitar construction there was nothing like the wealth of resources available now, and my information was mostly gleaned from Stephen Delft's excellent series on how to build an electric guitar which was published monthly in International Musician magazine and included a whole section on making your own truss rod from scratch. His philosophy was that you made the most easily accessible part from the softest metal, so that if the mechanism was abused, the nut would fail before the rest of the truss rod and could be unscrewed and replaced with a new one. At the time that made a lot of sense to me. Is that still the case with modern construction methods where it seems that the whole truss rod can be easily removed and replaced if necessary?

I'm a great believer in good design and good ergonomics, and while having all the working parts on show might have been interesting in the 80s for post-modern architecture, I 'm not so sure that it has as much relevance in 21st century guitar and bass design. Besides IME truss rod adjustment shouldn't be something you need to do on a regular basis so it makes sense to me, to hide the mechanism away so that it is only accessible if you really need to use it. The only times I have needed to adjust the truss rod has been when I have changed to strings with a radically different tension, or when I have bought a guitar from somewhere that has a significantly different climate to that of the UK. In these cases the adjustment has always been best made in several increments over a period of days. I would never want to adjust the truss rod while wearing the bass, mostly because I find that I also need to encourage the neck to bend in the correct place which can only be done by placing the the bass with the relevant area on my leg and pushing down either side. If you don't do this I find the neck will bend either at the weakest point or mid-way along the truss rod length which is not always where you want it. I think musicians are too prone to fiddle unnecessarily with their instruments and making the truss rod adjustment easily accessible only facilitates this behaviour. I don't have a problem with the volute, and besides the volutes on most modern instruments are so tiny to be almost negligible. Most angled headstocks are either multi-laminated layers or scarf-jointed which makes them far stronger than that of a single-piece neck, so the absence of a conventional large volute is less important than it use to be. There is no longer the requirement to build everything big and clunky as it was in the 50s. And the reason I asked "a random selection of bass makers" is that I suspect that they will know a lot more about the process and the various pros and cons of where to have the truss rod adjustment., than a random selection of bass players. Besides I am interested in the process and hopefully I'll learn something from them.

Is that based on replacing the bridge on one of your basses, or two different basses with different bridges?

We argue this forever, but my personal experience both with my own bands and working on recordings for other people is that the bass guitar and drums are the first to be augmented or replaced if the end result requires it. One of the bands I'm currently playing with recorded their last album with Gavin Monahagn (Editors, Goldblade etc.) producing. The "bass guitar" parts were written and recorded by the two guitarists, and because they had all the stems from the album they were able to give me the individual bass tracks to help me learn the songs. At the first rehearsal I had with them it became obvious that their producer had done a lot of extra work on the bass parts since they were originally tracked. Many of them had significant changes to both the timing and the notes being played and I kept being asked what I was playing, to which my reply was "What is on the recordings you gave me". I don't know exactly what had been done between the tracking and the final mix but a lot of the time what I learnt from the recording was not what the rest of the band was expecting to hear in the rehearsal room where the bass guitar was more obvious than on the album.

1. But as the owner of a bass close-up is where I'll mostly be looking at it, and I don't like the look. 2. A volute is not at all necessary for necks with the truss rod adjustment at the headstock. None of my Gus Basses or Guitar have a volute. Even Fender don't shape their necks any differently to accommodate a headstock end truss rod adjustment. 3. I'm sure you could but why would you want to? Does having the truss-rod adjustment point at the body end of the neck have any real advantage ergonomically, allow a better range of adjustment, or is it easier to fit? In fact would the luthiers/manufacturers on here care to comment? So: @skelf @Andyjr1515 @Manton Customs @Chownybass @Dolando @RIM Basses @paulflan0151 @Christine @Jabba_the_gut @blablas Which method of adjusting the truss rod do you favour and why? Thanks!

The compressor is one of those devices that you shouldn't be able to hear having an effect until you turn it off.

The last time I played around with Touch Tracks, Logic was on V4, so this might not be completely accurate anymore... It's best for creating new arrangements from pre- programmed or recorded parts rather than creating something completely from scratch live. IIRC you simply assign a MIDI note or key on your QWERTY keyboard to a region (MIDI or audio data) and pressing that key will cause the region to play. If you need multiple regions to play simultaneously from a single command then you need to put them all into a folder and assign the command to the folder. If you are intending to build up your performance from scratch live then you will probably be better off using a looper.

That may well be but it's well documented that The Sweet didn't play on the A sides of any of their singles until they were fairly well established. I would have thought it was much the same with the other Chinnichap and Mickey Most acts.

True. But when the goal of making a commercial record (i.e. one paid for by a record label) is to make it sound as good as possible for the least financial outlay, why bother with a bass guitarist (or drummer) when they can be easily and cheaply replaced by electronics, and the vast majority of people listening to the recording will never know?

And most likely played by some session player rather than the person seen wearing the bass guitar on TotP.

No. It's speculation. But.. given the nature of Bruno Mars' music I doubt I'm wrong.

Is this Punk Rock enough for you? All recorded and played live using a variety of 5-string basses. EDIT: I made more use of the extended range and position possibilities of the 5-string bass in The Terrortones than I did in any of my previous bands, despite the relatively more "conventional" nature of the music.

There's a very good reason why you need a 5-string bass to re-create all these bass lines live. In the studio they were originally payed by keyboards and sequencers where the limitations of the bass guitar were not an issue.

Because the bass part was made with synths and samples in ProTools.

Anyone who has ever done any serious recording (i.e. anything that hasn't been wholly financed by the band themselves) will know that what was recorded in the studio during tracking and what is actually audible on the final release of those recordings are two entirely different things. Lets face it, when a large number of people on here couldn't even tell that a prominent, high in the mix, bass line like "Black Velvet" by Alannah Myles was produced by synthesisers, what chance have you got with average low in the mix rumble of the typical modern (by which I mean anything recorded this century) bass part? The job of a producer on a recording is to make the artist sound as good as possible (that's what they are being paid for after all), and in oder to do that, they will use everything they can within the budget. In the 50, 60s and 70s that generally meant replacing the band with the best season players they could afford. Since the mid-80s the technology has allowed them to do the same but much more cost-effectively by substituting or augmenting the bass guitar part with synthesised or sampled sounds. Why hire in lots a session musicians to play all the different instruments, when a single good programmer can cover drums, bass, keyboards, and synthesisers as well as comp'ing together the definitive performances for the vocals and guitars? When the song is played live there may well be a musician on stage with a bass guitar, but on the definitive version - the one made in the studio - synthesis, sampling and digital editing will have played just as much as part (and frequently much more) as any bass guitar (with any number of strings). IMO the only way anybody can categorically state that a recorded bass line on a commercial recording was 100% created by a bass guitar, would be if they were present for every minute of the tracking, mixing an mastering of the recording and knew exactly what had and what had not been used from the first guide tracks to to the final production master.

I have not been able to detect a significant difference between Warwick Red Label Strings and Warwick Black Label Strings. However getting a 5-string Red Label set with a taper-wound low-B string is almost impossible, so I find it easier to buy Black Labels sets which all seem to come with taper-wound Bs. If I was playing a 4-sting bass Red Label would be fine.

While changing the bridge could make a difference to the sound of the bass (although like all these things is it possible to state 100% that it is the new bridge that has made the difference and not one of the other things that may have been intentionally or unintentionally changed at the same time?), IME it's never pronounced enough to be noticeable in the context of a band mix. For me so long as the bridge doesn't move during playing, yet is easy to adjust when needed, that's all that is required.

You can do similar things to Ableton Live in Logic using Touch Tracks.

The standard ESP Viper bass has a bolt-on neck. However if you go through all the Signature Models you'll probably find someone who has a neck through version.