BigRedX

1. Because it looks ugly. 2. Because it's just as easy to put the truss rod adjustment behind the nut. 3. Because not every bass has a bolt-on neck.

I have yet to come across a sound engineer who has asked me to do this in almost 40 years of gigging.

No it screws onto the arm of a boom stand in the same way.

If Luminlays are bright enough for you, then that's what you need. Otherwise it's going to have to go off to Sims Custom for the full LED treatment. I know from experience that anything drawn or stuck on will wear off at the most inconvenient moment.

So it does. I'd never noticed that. Weird I can't see any reason for the plug only not to include an earth contact unless the two versions are deliberately engineered that way so you have an easy way of choosing whether or not to have an earth connection to the PSU. In which case I would have thought it would be mentioned somewhere in the literature that accompanies the macBooks.

Problem #1 the volume control. Using a volume pedal most likely designed for instrument level signals on a line-level output is probably never going to be great. What you should be using is a pedal that sends MIDI messages directly to MainStage. CC#07 is the controller number for MIDI volume. Problem #2 Earthing. Are you actually getting earth hum? It should be the same with either plug/cable as with the cable version while the lead itself has an earth connection the PSU that it plugs in to only has live and neutral contacts. How are you connecting the Mac to the stage box? I use an ART DTI box between the audio interface and the PA which completely isolates it and kills any earth hum.

Probably because the profanity filter ruined your search terms.

Very nice!

I'm not a Dingwall over but when I tried one a few years ago it took me less than 30 seconds to get used to the fans-frets. Unless your technique includes lots of chords high up on the neck I can't see it being a problem.

We've already done this in Off Topic There are plenty of other pedals with sexually suggestive names (in fact it seems almost to be a prerequisite for any "boutique" pedal maker to have at least one in their range) so are the complainants going after those too? Or are those manufacturers too obscure to be worth the publicity to the bands in question?

Unless the case is always going to be carried and stored in the same orientation as it sits on the cab you are also going to need to attach a block of wood to the top of the amp bracing against the top of the rack case.

But he's gone to all the trouble of staining the fingerboard blue, so why not the back of the neck and the body as well?

Is that the front and back of the same bass? If so why are they different colours? It just looks wrong.

I make it easy for everyone by simply having a rig that allows no access to the signal path until it is post everything.

They screw into the top of the stand in place of the usual microphone clip.

I know things have moved on somewhat since the 70s but back then one of the main selling points for the Shure SM58 was that it would take a much higher level of abuse without breaking compared to its competition. IME the cheap alternatives are fine if it is your personal microphone and you are going to look after it, otherwise it is likely to last a fraction of the time a proper SM58 will. Of course that doesn't help you if it gets stolen. If you are able to minimise the chances of the good microphone getting nicked, then in the long run they will be a better bet financially. Otherwise buy the cheapest decent sounding mics you can find and allow for the fact that you are going to have to replace them regularly.

If you just want 2D any vector-based Illustration program will be fine. If you are already an Adobe Creative Cloud subscriber, then Illustrator will be included in your package. Otherwise have a look at Affinity Designer which is currently on offer for £33.99

For me the pinnacle of Mick Karn's fretless sound is on "Quiet Life". It's a got a restraint about the tone that went missing after he changed from the Travis Bean to the Wal. Plus it's got all the best songs IMO.

You might want to re-think that time frame. I have it on good authority that the Barracudas currently in the shops are the only ones available until Burns get a new batch made next year at which point the price is likely to go up by £100...

Right it all makes sense now. Sorry for being so dense!

The shape and design of the casing on the Super 55 puts the microphone capsule further away from the outside compared with an SM58. That will be why they sound quieter.

It's actually cheaper than the Shure which is now over £200...

Leaving aside the fact that there was never much "it" to be made, and even less nowadays, this is the same lame excuse trotted out by musicians who never had anything interesting to say in the first place.

Let's face it Dad, you are never going to like anything I post. All the things that you dislike about the Scissor Sisters are exactly the reasons why I prefer their version over the original. And it has the advantage of having stripped out all the po-faced pretentious muso twaddle of that Pink Floyd infuse into all their songs.

Well it has taken a while, but I've finally had time to give my Burns Barracuda Bass a proper work out including a rehearsal with the band. First the obligatory photos: While it shares a lot in common with the Squier being a Bass VI, in many ways it is a very different instrument, especially when it comes to the pickups and electrics. The wider neck is much more comfortable for me than the narrow Squier. However it is not as wide as the specifications would lead you to believe. Nut width is 45mm, but the actual string spacing between the two E strings is only 38mm, a mere 3mm more than the Squier, and the strings are very obviously set in from the fingerboard edges. The difference is enough to make the neck feel more comfortable overall, but if the string spacing made full use of the available nut width, it would be even more useful to me. The fingerboard is bound in fake MoP which looks great, but doesn't make the dots particularly easy to see in subdued lighting conditions - as I discovered the first time I took this bass into the rehearsal room. At the other end things are less good. The overall string spacing at the bridge is only 52mm compared with 55mm on the Squier, so while it is easier to form chord shapes on the neck without inadvertently muting strings with my fingers, picking the correct string cleanly is a lot harder. For the first week I was constantly missing strings or playing the wrong one. This is one of the problems when the hardware for a Bass VI has been appropriated from a guitar design. The Squier Bass VI might look like it's been cobbled together from bits left over from the Fender Jaguar, but all the important parts have been suitably altered to suit the nature of the instrument. The bridge on the Barracuda appears to be exactly the same as that on the Marvin Guitar and consequently the spacing here is really a bit too narrow for a Bass VI. The relatively narrow bridge also means that the outer string get further way from the edge of the fingerboard as you move up the neck. On the other hand the vibrato mechanism is a lot more useful than the one on the Squier. It's smoother feeling has a noticeable effect on all the strings and has less of a tendency to put the instrument out of tune. Overall the Barracuda is (for me) easier to play than the Squier, but it really needs to have a correspondingly wider string spacing at the bridge to match that of the nut for optimum comfort. The other interesting thing is that despite looking bigger and chunkier than the Squier Bass VI, both basses weigh the same (4.3kg on my scales) the Barracuda feels lighter on the strap and is definitely more comfortable to wear for a 2-3 hour rehearsal. When it come to the pickups and electronics there's a lot more variation between the Barracuda and the Squier Bass VI. The Barracuda has a standard Strat-type pickup selector with the conventional 5 options. However pulling up the tone control nearest the jack socket automatically activates the neck pick up irrespective of the position of the 5-way switch. I was a bit worried that the "in-between" pickup positions might sound a bit weedy, put while there is some thinning of tone, it's all very usable and all the positions work well in a band mix. At the moment I'm favouring either the bridge or middle pickup solo'd or the bridge and neck pickups together depending on the band mix. What is much better than the Squier is that the instrument has a lot of clarity without it being at the expense of the bottom end. To that end if you want to be playing surf-style bass this could well be the bass for you. There's plenty of twang and oomph available, and at the same time should it be required. As you can probably tell, while the Burns Barracuda still isn't ideal for me it's a lot more suitable than the Squier Bass VI. It is usable straight out of the case (it comes with a rather nice Burns branded hard case) without needing to shim the neck or replace the strings, and the bridge/vibrato unit while not being as wide as would be ideal is overall a lot more suitable for a bass instrument than the Squier. I think this bass will be fine for me at the moment, until I can afford to have something mode more specifically for my needs.