BigRedX

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.

Thanks! That looks about the same spacing as the Shure. A modern Neutrik plug should fit, some of the older more bulbous XLR designs probably won't - especially with a vintage style chunky microphone stand.

It is almost impossible to get a 100% analogue signal path from original sound source(s) to final delivery medium. Having tried this myself for one of The Terrortones releases, maintaining pure analogue processing all the way down the chain is expensive and TBH unless I had actually been there at every stage of the mixing, mastering, and manufacturing process and was sufficiently knowledgable about how all the processing equipment worked I could not have 100% guaranteed that the signal hadn't undergone a digital conversion at some point in the process.

But a lot of the time the mix was a result of the recording technology and practices of the time and not down to what the artists or their producer intended. Anything recorded on tape machines with less than 16 tracks will have had all sorts of mix decisions made long before all the instruments and vocals had been laid down, all of which would ultimately compromise the final sound of the recordings. If you find that several bounces down the line instruments recorded on the first or second pass were no longer in the right place in the mix you could either live with it or go back to the point when they were recorded and redo the track form there. The second option was only really available to artists with the recording time and budget of The Beatles. Most other bands who had just a couple of weeks to track and mix their album would have to carry on with what they had already done. Also on most studio-created albums from before the mid 80s a good part of the sound is dictated by the delivery medium - what can and cannot be cut to vinyl and will play properly on the average record player. Many of them won't sound the same on record as they did in the studio, because too much is lost/compromised in the transfer to vinyl.

I think a lot of dissatisfaction with remasters is down to familiarity of the original mix/mastering sound rather than any actual shortcomings of the new versions. I'm sure if you played both versions of remastered albums to an audience that was unfamiliar with either version, there would be no consensus that the "original" version was better. For most of the 70s I listened to my records on a Dansette that played one channel of the stereo mix much louder than the other. And this mix was what I became accustomed to. When I did final upgrade to something that played both sides of the stereo image at the same volume, I can remember in several cases being unpleasantly surprised by all the extra instruments that were revealed once their side of the mix was the correct volume.

If you read any of the books on the Beatles' recording methods you'll find as PaulWarning has said they mono mixes were where the time was spent, so it's not great surprise that that they sound superior to the original stereo mixes. For example the mono mixes of Sgt Pepper took the best part of a week to complete. The stereo mix of the whole album was dashed off in an afternoon at the end of the mixing session.

Absolutely!

I went back and re-read your OP several more times and sorry but I'm still none the wiser...

It is of absolutely no importance to me what other bass players do. Besides the best bass lines on most albums released since the early 80s were synthesised or sampled and played by a sequencer.

One final thing to be aware of with these style of microphones is that due to the design of the base where it screws into the microphone stand and the fact that the XLR socket is very close, not every make of XLR plug will fit when the microphone is on a stand. Modern slim-line Neutrik plugs are OK but some older Cannon designs are too bulky. I notice that Heil don't even show a photo of the underside of the base on their website.

While the Fearless might not be as supper-efficient as something from Barefaced, it's a modern cab design housing a modern driver so it should be plenty efficient enough. IME with just a Puma 300 amp the only times I've stubbled to hear myself on stage is when I've done equipment sharing gigs and have had to use another bassist's very old and inefficient cabs.

Is there any reason why you can't to go back to the studio where you did the recordings and redo the bass parts there? After all you are going to need someone to mix the songs again after the new bass has been tracked. IME while transferring a project from one studio to another should be fairly straight forward so long as they both use the same DAW in practice it is usually much more complicated than that. I've had a go (in Logic as it happens) trying to transfer a project recorded in a commercial studio to my home setup so we could continue working on the tracks for free. Unfortunately it wasn't quite so simple. The studio had used a lot of 3rd party plug-ins which I didn't own. and after spending the best part of a day trying to identify and track down all the missing plug-ins I had to admit defeat. For starters I was looking at having to spend at least £500 on plug-ins which were essential to getting the project sounding like the last rough mix we had, but more importantly there were a few plug-ins that were not available at all because the company(s) producing them had stopped trading and hadn't made them available for free before going out of business. I the end we went back into the studio with a budget cap of 50% of the cost of buying all the missing plug-ins and got the job done properly long before we had spent all the money.

I should also add that having had first hand experience of Shure Super 55 as it was Mr Venom's microphone of choice for the Terrortones, I can say that underneath that supposedly rugged exterior, they are quite flimsy. In particular, the wires that run from the XLR socket in the base to the capsule in the body of the mic are very thin and weedy and if your singer makes a lot of use of the pivot between the two, the wires will eventually break and need replacing. I had to do this 3 times over 6 years with Mr Venom's mic and they continued to wear out with use, even after I replaced the wires with something a bit more heavy duty. Admittedly Mr Venom, gave his mic some serious abuse, but after 6 years I had replaced almost every part, so they are not as robust as their looks would have you believe.

IME having a decent cab with a high efficiency is far more important than your choice of amp. After that from a power output PoV all the small lightweight amps are pretty much the same since they nearly all use the same power amp module, so it's finding one with a pre-amp voicing that you like which can only be done by you auditioning the amp in question.

There are two versions of the Shure 55. One is essentially an SM58 in a vintage style casing, and the other has a more “vintage” voice. You should really try both, but IMO the SM58 model generally sounds better.

There are several rockabilly/psychobilly upright bass players who play left handed, most notably the bass player with Vince Ray & The Boneshakers. Whether any of them play with the strings swapped around for left handed I don't know. However you are very unlikely find any playing left handed in orchestras, as their bowing will clash with the double bass players seated next to them.

Unfortunately that's bollocks. The reason you tune down and then back up is because the windings on the string catch at various points along their travel - at the nut, over the bridge saddles, as they pass under string retainers... Tuning down lets the windings drop past any "obstructions" and then you tune back up to pitch. It's got nothing to to do with how good the machine head mechanism is. Hipshot machine heads might be better made than the competition, but they still won't help when your string is caught on the nut or string retainer.

All instrument amps are voiced to some degree, otherwise there would be nothing to choose between them. Before I ditched my Puma in favour of a Line6 Helix and RCF745, I was using it in two different bands, and kept all the tone controls at 12 o'clock, using just the "Taste" control on either slightly "Dry" for one band and slightly "Rich" for the other.

That is minging. And it only appears to be on the front of the body and so looks completely fake.

I'd say the same for Pink Floyd. Back in the 70s when my friends were all raving about Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall, I completely failed to see what all the fuss was about. To me it was just some simple chord sequences, endless guitar solos and some oh so clever studio trickery. However when someone else covers the same songs and throw away all the proggy, pretentious muso nonsense, the actual songs suddenly shine through. Consequently I have a lot of time for Scissor Sisters version of Comfortably Numb and Rasputina's take on Wish You Were Here. However the originals still leave me cold.

If you really are going to go the DIY route there are a number of things to consider. 1. Make sure that your band are behaving in a photogenic way when you do the shoot. Get them all to dress appropriately and actually put on a performance. It is a video after all. If you can't look entertaining then your video is going to do more harm than good. Make sure there's nothing distracting happening off-stage, in the audience, or in the background. It's about your band not anything else. 2. You'll need several camera angles that you can cut between in order to make the video interesting. That means either more than one camera person filming the gig; playing the song more than once to capture a few different angles; or knowing that you can cut in bits from other songs with a different angle. On the actual song concentrate on the singer, and get the rest of the shots from other songs. Trust me no-one will notice that the musicians aren't actually playing what is on the soundtrack. Good hand-held moving shots always add interest. 3. You'll need good quality audio to go with your visuals. That means something better than what the camera mic is capturing. Personally I'd go into a recording studio and get a good live take of your band so that it sounds like it would a gig but a proper mix and no mistakes, and then cut the video to match this. If you are going add some audience reaction make sure that it is all very enthusiastic but in relation to size of the gig. 4. Keep it short and snappy. No-one is going to spend ages watching your video. Unless it is brilliantly put together and entertaining most bookers will give it a minute, tops. Either pick your best short snappy song, or if you are going for a compilation to show your range, then a great intro followed by the just the choruses of 4 or so exceptionally catchy songs. As you can see, a single static camera in the corner isn't really going to cut it. And unless you have a friend with a good eye for visual composition who will act as your camera person, you are probably going to have to hire someone to film your band you might as well get them to edit it too. But if you really want to edit it yourself, then you'll need some decent software. If you have a Mac then you already have iMovie. If you are a Creative Cloud subscriber access to Premier and After Effects is included in your plan. DaVinci Resolve is cross platform, there's a free version, and it's pretty good, but you may find that you'll need to upgrade to the paid for version in order to get some of the more interesting features.

It looks like the first fret line is a quarter tone up from the nut but all the others are spaced at the regular semitone intervals from that.

What's going on with the fret lines on that bass?