BigRedX

Not really. Playing live is what I live for. I do however tend to get bored at gigs when I'm not doing anything, so I find it very difficult to appreciate other bands on the bill, because all I really want to do is get up there and play my music with my band.

Go to your nearest decent musical instrument retailer and try out every bass that they have. Where about are you? Then we can make some recommendations for shops to go to.

Used the Helix and RCF745 for my first gig on Friday. And it all went very well. I set up the RCF in a wedge configuration aiming across the front of the stage, and got a great on-stage mix which everyone could hear without needing to put any bass in the foldback. The only thing that I need to address was that I was using the XLR outputs on the Helix to drive the RCF from the left output and as a DI to the FoH from the right. However that mean that the level of both outputs was dependent on the Helix master volume control, which obviously isn't ideal when sending a signal to the PA. Therefore is there any way of only having one output dependent upon the position of the master volume control and the other output at a pre-set global volume to send to the PA and won't change if I need to change the volume of the bass on-stage?

Friday with In Isolation supporting Scant Regard (ex-Rachel Stamp) at The Maze in Nottingham. First gig with my Helix > FRFR powered speaker set up. And very well it went too! A couple of the patches will require a bit more tweaking, but it was a lot simpler to set up and seemed to be easier to get a good balance on stage between the bass and the other instruments. I set up the FRFR as a wedge pointing sideways across the stage and got a great on-stage mix, without being too loud. I think all my conventional bass and guitar amplification will be up for sale vey soon.

@Ashdown Engineering Thank you for taking the time to reply. As you may have guessed I don't agree with everything that you've said, but right now I'm off to play a gig and then have a load of other stuff to do over the weekend. I'll be replying in full to your post next week as soon as I have the time to do it properly.

Are they being sold as "new"? AFAIAA the only place that you can buy a new Harley Benton Instrument from is Thomas as it is their in-house brand. Therefore I would assume that any HB instruments on eBay are not new and should not be described as such.

Every time you buy a deko instrument from Thomann you take a gamble on whether or not it is actually going to be usable. And while a lot of people have been very happy with their bargain purchases there have also been some instruments that really were for decoration only. If this eBay seller is taking the risk and effort out of buying a deko instrument then what is the problem? If there was something wrong with anything you bought from them then it could be returned for a refund under eBay's "not as described" policy, so there is not risk to anyone buying one of these other than a little wasted time. Since the seller is taking all the risk is it not right that they should also make some money at the same time? I own two deko instruments. One has a design fault with the bridge that means it is less adjustable than it should be, but it does't render it unplayable, and in fact it's been used on a commercially released recording. Also there are plenty of guitars and basses out there with far worse design faults that are sold as perfect new instruments. The only thing wrong with the other deko is the fact that someone has stamped a "D" into the back! To me the whole thing smacks of sour grapes on the part of the OP who seemingly can't be bothered to take the time and effort to grab themselves a bargain directly from Thomann, and want to have a bit of a moan on the internet about someone who is making the required effort and also making some money out of it. Besides we don't know how many of those instruments being sold as dekos are actually only suitable for decoration. It might be that the eBay sellers prices reflect the extra time and money they have to put into making some of the instruments playable and covering their losses on buying instruments that simply aren't worth fixing.

Better is entirely subjective. Remember most guitars amps from a purist electrical engineering PoV are terrible, but it's those originally unwanted side effects of amplifying using valves that make them so desirable now.

Money probably. Lets face it whatever amp and cabs he uses it's only for show. In the studio the bass will be DI'd and tracked via some esoteric vintage valve pre-amp and live the sound will be completely FoH PA for the audience and in-ears for the musicians. The choice of amp and cabs makes zero contribution to the sound either recorded or live, so he might as well go for a brand that's going to give him the best deal and keep his name in the eye of other bass players. While I'm sure that Barefaced would love the publicity that a big name player like Nate Mandel would bring, from what I can see they are already selling cabs as quickly as they can make them and probably don't have the resources to support the extra demands a player like NM will require.

Absolutely! My first very cheap and nasty coily lead bought in 1975 had a flat jack plug just like that at one end.

Not only that but a decent cassette to record it on was going to cost you about half what the album would have cost in the first place.

Every serious originals band that I have been a member of, has had a band van (or similar) normally with a driver/roadie. For local city centre gigs I usually get a taxi. It drops me and my gear off directly outside the venue (and if I know when the gig is going to be over I can pre-book it to pick me up again at the end of the evening). The cost both ways is about the same as parking a car for the evening and overall it's more convenient and a lot less stressful.

10 songs at a time I'd tend to agree that I'd probably be able to learn 10 new covers in less time then it would take to come up with 10 new original songs that were similarly varied. But one song at a time IME there is no difference in length of time from coming up with a new song idea or picking a song to cover and getting it to a suitable stage to be ready to gig. Maybe I'm more creative/productive/prolific than the average musician songwriter and have surrounded myself with equally creative/productive/prolific band members, but I generally come up with 2-3 new song ideas every week, which in conjunction with one songwriting rehearsal every two weeks and normal band rehearsals each week, translates into - at the very least - 1 new completed gig-ready song a month. For me it's probably harder work learning cover - working out what the notes in the part that I am supposed to be playing are, learning how to play them and the overall song structure, and then modifying what I have learnt to fit an arrangement that suits the line up of the band that is going to be performing the cover - compared with writing a new song from scratch where I am learning my part at the same time as I'm developing the structure and arrangement with my fellow band members. And if you think that playing a cover is simply a question of copying what is on the recording then IMO you're being completely naive. I've always found that if you want to do the song justice rather than simply bashing your way through it, you have to consider an arrangement that suits the instruments at your disposal, what to do about the numerous overdubs on the studio version that you'll never be able to replicate with your 4-5 piece band, if the key or the original suits the singer, and what to do about songs that have been written in non-standard tunings. IME there is just as much work involved in doing a good cover version as there is in writing a song from scratch.

In that case the simplest thing would be to switch stations. If it was me I'd be quite happy with Radio 1, Radio 2, 6 Music and Planet Rock, with a couple of days to a week on each before moving on. I'm sure everyone here can find a handful of stations they like and can swap between to stop over-familiarity creating in.

IMO while a 3.5mm mini jack might be better than the average computer connector, it is still pretty flimsy to be of much use in a serious gigging environment. I make all my removable connections with XLRs as far as possible, and hide all the delicate mini and computer connectors away inside racks where they can't be got at.

I know almost nothing about Fenders, but even I can say with 100% certainty that that is not a Fender bass.

Yes it is. Simply write some more songs. IME writing a new song is no more complicated than learning a cover.

One of the problems is that all streaming services are losing money even when they are only paying peanuts in royalties. Until someone can work out a way of making streaming profitable without it being propped up by VC investments or other parts of the parent company's business that do actually make money, royalty payments are going to continue being low.

Maybe? I suspect that most of these devices are merely doing some reverse envelope shaping to the effected sound. After all, it does't matter how low your processing latency is, it still can't predict the future, so you'll never get that classic reverse reverb into your opening note in real time.

Doesn't Ableton come with a drum plug-in?

So what about all those pop acts that have a load of scantily dressed women (and men) dancing behind them? Perhaps while pretending to do backing vocals. Is that any different?

How can you do backwards reverb in a pedal? On recordings this effect is created by reversing the audio file/tape, passing it through a reverb unit, recording the results and then playing everything back in the correct direction, giving the effect of the reverb fading up into the sound. This can't be done in real time without first having invented time-travel (even if it's only on a scale of seconds) as you can't produce reverb for a sound that has yet to happen.

TBH almost every broadcast radio station tends to repeat itself. Stick with 6 Music for a couple of weeks and you'll be just as fed up with hearing the same songs over and over.

But it is easy to break your ramblings up into bite-size chunks, with a RETURN. Also here on an internet forum there is no need to use weird abbreviations that often only lose one letter in a 5+ letter word or TXT talk where you are (not) being charged by the character. Still the OP is not quite as bad as a character on another forum I frequent, who insists on typing everything in a geezer/mockney dialect. It must take him about twice as long to compose his posts as he battles with his device's auto-correct trying to turn his phonetics into proper words, unless of course he has already spent several hours programming everything into custom dictionaries! Needless to say I've had to block all of his posts too.

But in face to face spoken communication no one would be allowed to ramble on like the OP. It would be broken up into more digestible/intelligible chunks by questions and other interruptions. And informal shouldn't also mean incomprehensible.