BigRedX

The 4 cable method is for guitarists who like the sound of their amp and use their Helix simply as a multi-effects unit. If all your amp is doing is making your instrument loud, you don't need 4 cables. However almost all bass guitar cabs are extremely coloured in their sound, so even if you are bypassing the preamp on your amplifier, so are still going to be fighting the colouration of the cab and not getting the best out of the Helix.

It doesn't take a lot of keyboard technique to be able to play most synth bass lines with more accuracy and reliability on a keyboard synth than you can using a bass guitar and pedals. Most of the bassists I see doing this sort of stuff have some serious bass guitar chops and a massive pedal board to hold all the effects they require, but I know I can do a much better job, in terms of accuracy of playing, and consistency of sound, with something like a Nord Lead and my decidedly 3rd rate keyboard technique.

Pretty much any MIDI module with drum sounds should do the job. However, having had a look at your foot controller, it appears to send MIDI program change messages only. You need something that will send MIDI note on and offs to trigger drum sounds.

When I set the bass player up with my "emergency" patch I showed him how to make any adjustments if required, but I played a couple of riffs and then said "no that sounds great, leave it as it is". It really did sound good too, both on stage and out front.

Here are two photos of bass guitars that I post every time the topic of the suitability of plywood as a "tone wood" crops up. The first is by Jens Ritter who knows a thing or two about making bass guitars. And this one is by Baz Extravaganza. Unfortunately his site full of his interesting and sometimes very eccentric bass guitars has gone, I was able to save the images of the basses that interested me. IIRC this particular bass was made entirely out of plywood bought from his local DIY superstore. Other than to fill any of the voids revealed by the shaping process, and apply a very basic finish I don't think anything further was done to the wood. The result was an excellent sounding and playing bass.

How hard are you pressing on the strings to get them to touch the fingerboard? I'm a pretty ham-fisted player but even I can't manage that feat!

And to myself in the late 70s. Don't bother with University (or even finishing your A levels). Scape the money together and buy and bass guitar and an amp and join a band that actually gets out there and gigs before the whole punk/new wave bubble bursts.

Don't spend 10 years and many tens of thousands of pounds building a studio in your house and filling it with expensive recording equipment. You'll never make a recording that your are really happy with and that sounds as good your favourite records, and you'll end up selling all the recording equipment for a fraction of what you spent on it. If you really want to make a great sounding album, save your money and hire a producer with a proven track record in your band's genre and 3-4 weeks lock in at a decent recording studio and concentrate on the performance not the technical details.

TBH most published figures for bass cabs are at best economical with the truth and at worst simply fantasies. And unless your bass guitar or synth is pumping out pure sine waves, the fundamental is the least important (and many would say the least desirable when it comes to low frequencies) harmonic to reproduce. Stop reading the fiction in the spec sheets and start using your ears. My Helix + FRFR (RCF745) sounds far better than any of my previous bass rigs including the very expensive high-end ones.

There's fine line between plywood and some high-end multi-laminates.

I think the feasibility of being in more than one band depends on how busy the bands are, and their willingness to entertain the use of deps. I currently play in 2 bands, but neither is particularly prolific when it comes to gigs so up to now there hasn't been a problem. I'm not really replaceable in either band, since I own the technology that plays the backing for one band, and my BassVI plus all the effects I use is an integral part of the sound of the other. The first in the diary solution is all very well, but sometimes it can be a problem. I used to play in an originals band that was out gigging most weekends (but rarely had anything booked more than 8 weeks in advance) and a covers band that gigged about 6 times a year and all of its gigs were booked months (in one case years) in advance of them happening. Case in point, the originals band get a last minute gig offer at a big venue supporting a very popular local band for their album launch gig. It's a gig we cannot afford to miss. Covers band already had one of their regular gigs booked months ago and insist that I play it, since I had already agreed to do it and won't accept my offer of finding a dep. Consequently one of the biggest gigs the Terrortones ever played was done without me on bass. Eventually led to me quitting the covers band to avoid a repeat of that situation. In fact I find it difficult to see how anyone can play in more than one band that is gigging regularly since the vast majority of decent gigs occur on Friday and Saturday nights there are always going to be clashes. If you are constantly having to find replacements for one of your bands, I would question your point of being in the band in the first place. The Terrortones had two guitarist who thought that they could play in multiple bands. The first we had to sack after he regularly turned down gigs because of prior musical commitments, and he was holding back the band. When it came to his replacement we insisted that if they wanted to be in the band we were their number one musical priority. We then made sure that we were out gigging at least one night every weekend for the next 3 months, by which time he was no longer in any other bands.

I'm a musician. What instrument I use doesn't matter so long as it is the right one for getting the sound(s) I want with the minimum of fuss and the maximum ability to get consistent results. Especially live.

I have a Line6 Helix (floor version) and an RCF745. Both bought new so total cost approximately £2000. That might sound a lot but my small rig mostly bought second hand was almost £1500, and my big rig (again mostly second hand) was well over £2000. When you consider the Helix/FRFR option is considerably smaller than even the small rig and sounds better and is far more versatile than either the big or the small rig, and will also replaces my complete guitar rig, you can see it's a no-brainer for me. By the time I've sold both bass rigs and the guitar stuff I expect to come out with a profit! At a recent gig I got a last minute request from the headlining band who were travelling from Newcastle to ask if they can use my bass rig. After explaining to them what it was they said that anything would be most welcome, so I quickly set them up with a patch comprising one of the bass amps and 4x10 cab model. I adjusted all the EQ settings to 5 (mid point) and added a compressor module (switched off) in case they needed it. The bass player plugged in and had a great sound without needing any further adjustment.

This! And this. As much as the equipment geek in me would love to be able to create these synth sounds on the bass guitar, the reality is that even after 40 years of technology development the typical bass player still needs to refine their technique massively to get the best out of doing it with a bass guitar and pedals. I'm not much of a keyboard player, but I can get the sounds I need out of an average keyboard synth quicker and play them with more accuracy then I will ever be able to manage on the bass.

Which is why the ACG Filter Pre-Amp is one of the few on-board active circuits worth bothering with as it allows you to EQ each pickup separately. Which on a multiple pickup bass is exactly what you need.

I think that there are two problems for anyone looking for new music whatever their age (I'm in my late 50s if that is important). Firstly there is almost nothing that is genuinely new. No matter what aficionados of the latest sub-sub-genre of rap/metal/EDM or whatever would have us believe, it is still essentially rap/metal/EDM or whatever, and as such not really new at all. That said there is plenty of newly released music that still appeals to me, but I have to confess that most of the "new" music I buy these days very much has its roots in what I was listening to in the 70s and 80s, and nothing that sounds to me as radically new and different as what I was hearing back then. The last really different genre I discovered was Pico-Pop back in the early 2000s and even that could be dismissed as simply a Japanese mash-up of Chip-tune and Punk Rock. Secondly long gone are the days when you could tune into a music programme on national radio such as John Peel and hear a record he had received in the post that morning from a band of new musicians who had formed 6 months ago and had done their first ever gig only 3 months ago. For instance by the time the first Royal Blood were getting noticed with their first album the band had already been going for about 2 years, and before that both members had been playing together in other bands. Even when the band itself is brand new, you can almost guarantee that one or more of the musicians will have already have a serious back catalogue of works from previous musical projects. I'm constantly finding what I think are new bands only to discover on further investigation that they have an extensive back catalogue available on the download sites and a comprehensive Wikipedia entry listing many years of previous musical activity. For instance of the 3 "new" bands I discovered in the last year only one - Prayers - had been going for less than 5 years and the other two - I Am X and Grimes - had already serious back catalogue of music available plus the fact that I Am X is the latest project of Chris Corner formerly of Sneaker Pimps who has been around since the mid 90s. So... NEW music? I don't think there is any. Newly released music that I like and has the potential to become as cherished as the tunes I grew up with? Plenty being produced every week!

Used to own a Rumblefish 5-string which was one of the few bolt-on neck 5-strings I've ever liked. However IMO the Rumblefish is a completely different beast from the current crop of Reverend basses, and AFAICS the body shape is about the most interesting thing about the one shown. If the OP isn't keen on the styling they would probably be better off buying a decent Squier P and adding a MM pick to it.

Weird that. The only time I can ever remember a Straplock coming undone was when I could find a second adjustable spanner to hold the lock part in place while I tightened the nut the first time I fitted it.

I never got what the problem was with the old design, and I've never needed any of the "hacks" described above. As soon as you see the strap locks it is obvious that they are not going to fit through the standard strap button hole. However once the hole in the strap has been suitably enlarged and the the nut has been done up tightly with tools that are able to properly grip both the nut and the strap lock body, I've never needed to touch them again, and some of mine have been in use for over 30 years!

I'm pretty sure I bought my last set of SITs from Alan at ACG.

Thanks! Just seen some videos from the gig and it sounded pretty good too.

That's because it's based on the Klira (as the thread title says) and not on a Hofner.

And a photo of the burns Barracuda in action...

And here's some photos of the gig:

I did my first gig with the Barracuda last night. On the whole it went very well. However a couple of the songs exposed the problems I'm still having with the narrow string spacing at the bridge end of the bass, and actually being able to play the correct string which mostly happens when I change picking style from all down strokes to alternating up and down. The bass (and for some reason my playing) came in for quite a bit of praise, which was very gratifying. Having had this bass for a couple of months now, I'm now a lot closer to knowing what I want from my ideal Bass VI: The nut width on the Barracuda would be fine if the strings utilised the whole width better. The current width is more comfortable for me than the Squier, but a few more millimetres between the high and low E strings wouldn't go amiss and there would actually be room for this on the Barracuda with a new nut. The string spacing at the bridge is definitely too tight. I'd be looking for Squier width as a minimum but again a little more space would be more comfortable. Not a lot I can do here. While it might be possible to get a new bridge plate made with wider spacing, that would put the high and low E strings well outside the range of their pickups pole pieces. For the music I'm currently playing with this bass I'm definitely going to need more flexible pickup routing. At the moment I'm considering dual outputs and a ability to route each pickup to either output (or turn it off). However my favourite selections are bridge or bridge and middle for "guitar" sounds and middle or bridge and neck for "bass" sounds which means I might need two pickups at the bridge... Anyway the specifications for a custom build are slowly coming together.