BigRedX

Are you in a band? If not join one now. IME you learn more and at at a faster rate playing with other musicians than you ever can no matter how motivated you are sitting on your own at home.

Actually having watched the video all the way through now, I don't think he's actually using the pitch to voltage conversion, just running the bass sound through the filters and using a combination of the envelope follower and the trigger detection the modulate the VCFs and VCA.

A great bass tone is one that sounds great within the context of the song/track/band. It doesn't matter what it sounds like on its own.

I've never been convinced with out-of-phase settings on bass guitars, because they suck too much of the bottom end out of the sound, and bottom end is what the bass guitar is for.

If it's the same circuit as the original MS20 (and I would imagine it will be since Korg make a big deal about this being an authentic re-creation) then it is 40 year old technology and almost completely useless for turning pitch accurately and quickly into a stable voltage to use to drive the VCOs. I had an original MS20 in the early 80s, and I think I tried the built-in pitch to voltage module twice with little success before giving up on the idea of being able to use my guitar or bass to drive the synth. If you wanted random VCO glitches and warbling effects then it was great, but if you wanted to play an actual tune it wasn't up to much. However the trigger detection part of the circuit was excellent and allowed us to use any drum sound from our Roland 808 to trigger the synth without tying up the sounds that were also the built-in voltage triggers.

Sorry, I don't see what you point is in regard to my reply to mcnach - especially in the context of the whole conversation. Did you quote the wrong post? He said that string spacing at the bridge (for him) was an important measurement, and I replied that the string spacing at the bridge was only a part of the overall picture. This is because the spacing between strings is not constant along their length, and virtually no-one plucks right at the bridge, so unless you also know the scale length of the instrument and the spacing at the nut, the string spacing at the bridge tells us very little about what the strings do spacing wise between the bridge and the nut. I then pointed out that for me, it turns out that the important measurement (in so far as I have an important measurement - on the whole I'm very easy going about instrument specs) was the spacing at the point where I pluck the string and (hopefully) implied that this measurement could not be derived from the string spacing at the bridge alone. In fact I only discovered that this was the case for me when I wondered why I didn't seem to have a problem playing instruments with very different string spacings at the bridge, and that might be the reason.

Actually unless you pluck right next to the bridge, the other measurements are just as important. My standard plucking point is about 120mm away from the bridge when playing with a pick, and 140mm - 180mm if I'm playing finger style depending on where I'm anchoring my thumb. At those distances the taper of the string spacing from bridge to nut is a significant factor. The last time this subject came up, I wondered why I was so unconcerned with string spacing figures until I measured the spacing at the point where I was actually plucking the strings. This was when I discovered that on all my regularly-used basses, the distance from the low B to the G string was the same to within 1mm at this point (63 - 64mm), despite the fact that the string spacing at the bridge was quite a bit different on each bass.

I went from a decent spec Ritter to a Mono M80, because the Ritter simply wore out after being used to carry my bass for 4 years of weekly gigs and rehearsals. When I bought my Mono case I did a lot of research first and although things have moved on a bit since then most of what I discovered is still relevant. 1. What do you need your gig bag for? If it's simply something to cover your bass while you carry it to and from your car at gigs and rehearsals pretty much anything with some decent padding will do. There are plenty to chose from and you shouldn't need to pay more than about £40. If you are going to be using it on public transport then you should probably be looking at one of the semi-rigid cases like the Mono. 2. The semi-rigid cases are surprisingly big and heavy compared with something like a top of the range Ritter. My M80 is only a little smaller than a Hiscox Lite Flite. At the time when I bought it, it was the lightest of all the semi-rigid cases available, but it still weights quite a bit more than a more traditional gig bag. However the fact that they are semi-rigid means that they will squash into spaces in a tightly packed car that would not accommodate a hard case, whilst still properly protecting the instrument inside. 3. The semi-rigid case do offer a lot of protection, mine saved my bass from having a 2x10 cab dropped on it. I doubt it would have faired as well in something like the Ritter bag. 4. If you intend to use it to carry your bass any distance on your back, make sure you try it out first. For me the M80 is nowhere near as comfortable to wear as the Ritter was, and I no longer use it if I intend to make the 30 minute walk from my house to the rehearsal with my bass. In this respect it fails completely as gig bag. BTW to the OP the Mono bags come with a lifetime warranty which should have covered your friend's broken strap.

But the bridge spacing figure is only a part of the picture. It's pretty meaningless without the corresponding nut spacing and scale length.

That's got nothing to do with the strap adjustment, but where the bag sits in relation to the strap anchor points, which are not adjustable. If you're approaching 6 foot in height then the bag is fine, for smaller people like myself the whole bag hangs too low so the bottom edge is constantly banging and rubbing against the back of my legs. OK for the short journey from car into the venue, not so good for a 10-15 walk across town.

It will be me as soon as I have the cash for an FRFR.

Whatever you chose, if you are going use it for carrying your bass any distance make sure that it is comfortable to wear when fully loaded. IME a recommendation from another person is not sufficient, you need to try it for yourself with your bass and any other items you need to carry in it. I have a Mono M80 case and while it's a great case from a protection PoV, for me to use walking any distance it is very uncomfortable. I'd never buy another gig bag without trying it on first.

So long as the nut isn't stupidly narrow for the number and thickness of the strings (Squier Bass VI), I'm really not bothered. I think a lot of musicians get unnecessarily hung up over specifications on paper. I just ask myself "is this instrument comfortable to play?" I'm also the person who didn't notice that their Overwater Original bass was extra-long scale (36") until I bought some standard 34" scale strings and realised that they didn't fit!

Even if your dummy load did work as you wanted, there is more to consider... 1. Nearly all of them are designed to be used with guitar amps and are rated accordingly at 100W maximum. It's not going to very happy for long attached to a 300W + bass amp. 2. They are neither small or light. I own a Marshall PowerBreak for use with my 50W guitar amp. It's a chunky metal box 220 x 120 x 170 mm plus handles and feet and weighs in at just under 5kg! (A Barefaced One 10 is only 7kg). It also has a substantial fan in it to dissipate the heat generated by those resistors whose intake and output vents need to be free from obstructions, and which comes on as soon as you start driving it reasonably hard with a guitar amp. It's not the sort of thing that would fit on your pedal board - it's actually quite a bit bigger than most class D bass amps!

It should fit in the Warwick Rockbag designed for the StarBass.

What's your bass amp? Does it have valves in it?

What's your signal chain from bass to cab? You may well already have something doing the job of a compressor in there without knowing it. Definitely so if you have anything with valves in it.

You could have got proper Converse versions of these for not a lot more using the custom configurator.

It has 8 machine heads, because it's an 8-string bass. However the current owner has decided not to fit the octave strings which would be run from the holes in the headstock to the machine heads at the body end of the bass. Unfortunately because the bridge only has one saddle for each pair of strings it will be impossible to get this bass to play in tune above the 7th fret with both the main and octave strings fitted, which is probably why it's been strung as a standard 4-string bass. Some of the information in the listing is wrong. The scale length should be 30". All Kramer aluminium neck basses have the same length neck, but the fingerboards are slotted for either 20 frets (34" scale) or 24 frets (30" scale). Also the neck joint cover which includes the all-important serial number is missing.

Soapbars in the bass world are a bit of a misnomer since, unlike guitar soapbars that are nearly always P90 style fat single coil pickups, they tell you nothing about the actual pickup contained within the housing, just the size of the housing itself. Therefore depending on the size of the soapbar housing the pickup contained within can be anything from a J-style single coil to a MM style humbucker and any variation between that will fit. If you want a PJ type sound then buy soapbars that contain a P and J style pickup inside.

And that shows just how user unfriendly positioning the controls on the top is going to be.

Surely if the bass has been made properly the radius of the bridge will match the radius of the fingerboard, so not having each saddle individually adjustable for height is unnecessary?

120? That's pretty light gauge for a low B.

But unless it goes into shelving mode at very low frequencies it won't act in the same way as a HPF. If you have a look at the plot posted earlier on in this thread you'll see that for a typical parametric EQ, you get a dip in volume at the selected frequency, but then the volumes increase again a you get further away from this point in each direction, so although it will be cutting the low frequencies it won't be cutting all of them and lower you go from the selected frequency the louder the signal gets again. Compare this with a HPF which progressively cuts the low frequencies from the selected frequency - which is what you want to remove sub-audible bass. Having said that you might be able to achieve roughly what you want with the parametric EQ by setting the frequency considerably lower than you would a HPF and then applying a wide frequency range to that cut (Q control).

Have Blackstar told you what the sizes and weights are?