BigRedX

What's wrong with the bass sound in the context of your band mix?

I can't say I was a Numan fan back in 1979 as I thought he was completely ripping off my favourite bands of the time - The Human League, Vice-Versa and of course Ultravox, but I've mellowed since then and one to see him on this recent tour where the music was fantastic and didn't rely too much on the old hits.

Are there really no low-profile alternatives to the Fender-style 5-way switch? Personally I'd have asked about the feasibility of replacing it with a rotary switch. Not only lower profile but you could have added some extra switching alternatives.

In the 90s I was what superficially looked like a conventional rig, but closer inspection revealed that there were only 3 easily adjustable controls - the input gain on the Peavey bassfex at the start of the signal chain and the two output volumes on the power amp that fed the top and bottom of a bi-amped system. Many of the patches I used didn't make any sound at all on their own because they included MIDI-controlled gates and filters that only opened when the sequencer part for the correct song was run. I had a default patch that essentially connected the input to the output via the crossover that I made available to anyone who needed to use my bass rig at a gig. Needless to say few other bassists did.

Both the bands I am currently playing with were well-established when I joined so at the moment I don't really bring anything other someone to play bass. However in bands in the past I have been the main composer of the music, provider of the majority of the equipment, provider of the rehearsal room and place for other band members to store their equipment, owner of the equipment and location for the band to make their recordings, producer of all the printed and later on-line promotional material, organiser of pretty much everything to do with the band - rehearsals, gigs, recordings, photo-shoots and band image. In other words everything except sing and write the lyrics.

Like any good music nerd I have plenty of lists, including an all-time top-5 albums one, but only 3 of those albums have absolutely no duff tracks on them and they are: (in chronological order) 1. "Parachute" by The Pretty Things 2. "Doot-Doot" by Freur 3. "Fakevox" by Plus-Tech Squeezebox

I've managed to break every single string including low B at one point or another. Admittedly the low B was on a set that was several years old and back in the 90s when getting decent 36" scale B strings that were any good was a lot harder than it is nowadays. I always take a spare bass (and spare strings) when I'm gigging. I've not broken many strings actually at a gig (IIRC 3 in almost 40 years) but ever since I broke a string at one of my very first gigs on bass and didn't have either a spare bass or a replacement string, I've been prepared.

Thanks! As soon as I have the time I'll go and check both out. Having it look like a traditional bass amp is of little importance to me - after all I'm the bassist whose main bass is a Gus G3, The wedge profile should take up less room on shared gear stages and the weird setup will discourage more conventional bassists from wanting to borrow my rig at these gigs.

Having played one of these as well as several EB3s, I can categorically state that the Warwick has pretty much nothing in common with the Gibson models except that it may superficially look the same to someone who doesn't know much about bass guitars.

I posted a while back in thread about inconsistencies in the way the "Mark forum as read" works, but having has some time the play about with this function I have found even more, as follows: On Safari 11.0 (Mac OS 10.11.6) only clicking on the "Mark forum as read" link at the top of the list of topics within a forum will bring up the "Are You Sure?" dialogue box. Clicking the icon next to the forum heading will mark the forum as read without any warning. However on the iPad (iOS 11.1) Safari, the behaviour is somewhat different as follows: If I click the icon next to the forum heading will bring up the "Are You Sure?" dialogue box, but only if I do it from the Basschat "Home" page - the one that lists all of the individual forums. If I was to click the icon next to "Gear Porn" while in the "Gear" section rather than the "Home" page, I don't get a warning dialogue box and the page reloads taking me back to the top of the page. When I do get the warning dialogue the page doesn't reload and after clicking cancel or OK I remain at the same point on the page as I was before. Hopefully this will help track down what is going wrong with this function.

You still can link to individual posts. Click on the symbol next to “report post” for the post you want to link to.

There’s a switch at the bottom of the reply box to turn this off and on

EBS_freak, having recently upgraded my BassPod XT to a Helix, I'm seriously looking at this route and ditching all my "old school" amps and cabs. TBH from my perspective a good amp is just a device with some EQ and a baked-in sound that I find pleasing plus some extra circuitry to make my bass sound loud. In fact for most of the 90s I ran a Peavey Bassfex straight into a power amp and had a great sound, so "realism" of the amp/cab sims is of minimal interest to me, having lots of tonal options (which the Helix most definitely does) is far more important. Even when I was using the BassPod my preferred starting point was the SuDub preset which isn't even based on an amp! So to get to the point, until I'm at the stage where IEM makes practical sense for the bands I am currently playing what would you recommend for FRFR speaker for my bass? Is the RCF worth the extra money, or will one of the QSC K.2 Series be perfectly adequate? Your input would be welcomed.

Except for all the comedy records that George Matin made prior to The Beatles.

No. Not in the slightest.

Except that most of those innovative recording techniques were developed when George Martin was working on comedy records with the likes of Peter Sellers well before he got involved with The Beatles. And as for "STEREO" it was deemed so important for The Beatles records that the mixes were mostly dashed off in an afternoon, after the serious work spending a couple of days getting the mono mixes right had been completed.

I know someone who used a half-finished white Strat as his main guitar in the early 80s. He'd been able to pick it up at a stupidly cheap price due to the fact that it was considered to be a hideous colour. The last time I saw the guitar, it had been "refinished" by covering it in old postage stamps.

Sh!t Brown to be more precise. When I was working in a music shop in the late 70s I couldn't make my mind up whether this or the semi-transparent white that looked as though the finishers had knocked off early for the weekend without applying the correct number of coats of paint was more horrible.

Did you try the ground lift switch?

The problem I have with Eastwood instruments (and that includes the Custom Shop Offerings) is that essentially they are made up almost entirely of standard off-the-shelf parts and therefore often completely lose the vibe of the instruments that they are supposed to be re-creating. The EB1 does look cool, but apart from the violin-esque body shape it doesn't seem to have a lot in common with the Gibson model it is based on.

I'll just put this out here... Many fans of The Beatles on this thread are starting to sound much like my parents did when they went on about the "superiority" of classical music and how this new pop/rock wasn't proper music back in the early 70s.

Are you sure it’s the right foot switch for that particular model of amp?

I happy that everyone has their own opinions and tastes when it comes to their choice of instruments, it makes life interesting. What I am not so happy with is the fact that someone who's main creative output appears to be copies of other well-know designs is having bit of a rant on the internet about other manufacturers being able to produce something similar for a lot less money (especially in light of the fact that a lot of his output is based on instruments that were specifically designed to be mass-produced by relatively unskilled workers). Despite what he might think, he's not an artist. He's a craftsman. He might be a very good craftsman (I haven't played any of his guitars myself so I don't know), but to claim to be an artist is somewhat disingenuous.

Very noble, but remember that even if the products you are buying were made in the UK or Europe they are probably assembled from components mostly manufactured in China/Far East.

If there is already a digital version available, you are far better off buying it. From personal experience, the only analogue recordings that are worth the time and effort to do yourself are ones that cannot be obtained in legal digital format any other way.