BigRedX

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.

First gig with using my Burns Barracuda Bass VI playing with post-punk influenced Hurtsfall. Very much a last minute booking and one that saw me frantically fine-tuning all my Helix patches two days before the gig. A couple of the songs could have done with another evening in the rehearsal room to finesse their structure but on the whole everything went really well. Loads of nice comments about both the band, my bass and my playing!

A note to anyone who uses the computer editor for their Helix and not the controls on the unit itself, at some point in the last year Line6 changed the name of the editor program from "Helix" to "HX Edit". So when you download the latest version, it doesn't over-write the differently named older one, and if like me you've made a shortcut to the editor, using it will continue to bring up the wrong version which is missing a lot of the new functionality including the ability to assign parameters to the Snapshot functions. I spent a very frustrating couple of hours at the weekend wondering why my version of the editor didn't correspond to the instructions in the "Pilot's Guide", and ended up downloading and applying all the components again (Updater, Firmware and Editor). This brought up the right (newer) version of the editor and suddenly everything seemed to make sense! However the next day when I called up the editor from my shortcut it had gone back to the old version! It wasn't until I spotted that I now had two versions of the editor and the shortcut was pointing at the old one that I realised what was going on. So check your Line6 folder in Applications and make sure you only have the most recent version of the editor program or you could be in for a nasty surprise!

It looks as though the sunburst hasn't discoloured in the same way under the clear portion of the sticker, so even if you could get it off without damaging the finish, it's previous presence will always be noticeable.

I'd only consider changing my pick if the alternative reduced the volume difference between pick and finger style and the tonal differences between the two picks was negligible in the overall band mix. For me choice of pick material and thickness is the biggest tonal difference I can get without changing the EQ on my multi-effects. I certainly wouldn't consider using compression to even out the volume difference between pick and finger style. I find that bass line played with a pick tend to be busier than those I play finger style and I normally need to back off my compression settings give each pick-played note the right amount of definition. If your pick playing is louder than your finger style, compression in this case isn't going to help you.

I've always found it strange that most bassist appear to play louder with a pick than finger style as my experience has always been the reverse, although TBH the difference for me isn't massive and is mostly down to the fact that my finger style tone is slightly more bassy which tends to make it appear slightly louder in the band mix. I've always used programmable multi-effects, because I find that I need to make tonal changes to go with the change in technique - for me the choice to use a pick or fingers is as much to do with "feel" as it is to with tone.

There are no transparent sounding bass guitar cabs.

But if they are successful then PayPal might become unduly interested in the transaction with consequences for both the buyer and the seller. After all we know PayPal don't like losing out on their fees.

You might find a problem with this if the Credit Card company does their due diligence, as PayPal Friends & Family is for sending money for friends and family not for buying goods and services. As far as the CC company are concerned the money arrived at its intended destination and that is the end of the transaction.

Thanks! It looks as though these can have the cable entry/exit point at any angle to the plug so that will be exactly what I need. And thanks again.

Ha, ha, ha! It's quite an interesting design bass, but it's nothing like an Ovation Magnum.

It's PayPal Friends & Family. That offers no protection at all.

There are so many things wrong with this transaction from both the buyers and seller's PoV that I hardly know where to begin. 1. Why did you wait 3 months before making a claim? IME irrespective of where in the world the item was posted, if it's not with you within a month from the posting date it's never going to arrive at all. 2. Why did you pay using PayPal Friends and Family for what is obviously a transaction to buy goods? F&F offers no protection to the buyer. 3. Why did the seller not insure the items for the full amount? As a seller I never send anything with getting it properly insured. That is factored into the selling price in the first place. All the prices you quote are in Euros, so I assume that the item has come from somewhere outside of the UK. Where? Unfortunately some European mainland countries have notoriously dodgy postal services. For those countries I would never buy or sell without knowing that the items was going to be delivered by a reputable courier service like FedEx or UPS. Personally I'd take what is being offered while it's still on the table and chalk it down to experience.