BigRedX

9. IMO there is very little point of going for anything other than standard weight vinyl for your pressing. These days the quality of the vinyl used and the pressings themselves are excellent compared with the terrible pressings evident in the late 70s and early 80s. Heavy weight vinyl only impresses the vinyl snobs and does next to nothing to audio quality of the music on it. 10. When deciding on production quantities and final sales price, don't forget to factor in the cost of review copies, designing and printing your press release material, and the packaging and postage to send them out. You can send a CD in a Jiffy bag for under £2. To get a 12" album safely to its destination expect to pay at least £6 a copy for packaging and postage. If you are releasing you music on vinyl, reviewers and broadcasters are going to expect you to send them a copy on vinyl (as well as a copy on CD so they can actually listen to it!) The Terrortones were a fairly niche band and we did a highly targeted campaign of review copies (sending mostly to people who had given us favourable reviews in the past), and it was still getting on for 100 copies. For a band playing more mainstream music you might need to consider even more.

IIRC The Terrortones LP cost about £5000 for everything: That was 7 days in the studio - 3 for tracking, 4 for mixing. Separate mastering for vinyl, CD and downloads. 10 x Illustrations and a title "logo" for the packaging. Test pressings. 500 copies on standard weight 12" vinyl with full colour labels in black paper sleeves. 500 copies of packaging - clear plastic sleeves with the name of the band and the title of the album printed on it in a single colour. Five x 305mm square sheets printed full colour both sides which are arranged as 7 alternative front covers, a back cover and a double-sided lyric sheet. We saved quite a bit of money because we got a deal on the studio time, and because graphic design for print is my day job, I did all technical aspects of the design for free, and I was able to get a better price for the printing through my contacts that the bundle price the vinyl production brokers could offer. Also we did all the assembly of the various component items - records packaging, download code stickers/CDR versions ourselves. If we'd had to pay for all of that it would probably have added another £1000 to the overall price. On the other hand we could have saved money by having simpler packaging, but IMO that defeats a lot of the point of getting your music put on vinyl rather than just releasing it on CD or as a download.

8. On top of all the other compromises you have to make when cutting to vinyl, there is a trade off between audio quality and running time. IIRC it's about 3 minutes per side of a 7" single running at 45RPM and 12-13 minutes a side for a 12" LP at 33RPM. Once you go over these running times the cutting engineer will have to reduce the level of the audio which in turn increases the noise to signal ratio of the delivery medium. The decreased cutting/playing speed of 33RPM will also reduce the audio bandwidth. For ideal reproduction quality an LP should be delivered as 2 x 12" 45RPM discs with a running time of under 10 minutes per side.

I think for solid electric instruments too much emphasis is placed on the qualities of wood, when at best it is unquantifiable and most likely has negligible impact on the overall sound of the instrument compared with the electronics. IME what a solid electric instrument is made out of is irrelevant so lang as it plays, feels, looks and sounds like you want it.

Last time I looked Mobineko were doing the best deals for short runs of vinyl. However there are a whole load of things you should be aware of when releasing your music on vinyl. 1. The lead times are getting stupidly long. CDs can be manufactured in less than a couple of weeks from receipt of master recordings and artwork. For vinyl unless you want to pay a premium your are generally looking at 8 weeks minimum (and that's on top of the time it takes to produce and approve test pressings). Luckily Record Store Day is just over, as the run up to that generally shuts out any small run releases as the majors book up all the pressing plants. 2. It's expensive. For the cost of pressing 500 copies of the Terrortones LP we could have had at least 2000 CDs. Although Mobineko will do runs of 100, to be able to sell you finished product at a sensible price you really need to be looking at 300 as a minimum and ideally 500 copies. 3. You will need to offer an alternative format alongside the vinyl. Either a free download code or include a CD copy in with the record. If you distribute your records through Bandcamp you can get free download codes at a rate of 100 a month. If you go for CD copies that's added expense. Burning and printing CDR copies yourself will spread the load of the additional cost, but will ultimately be more expensive that getting the CD versions properly manufactured in the first place. 4. You will need to get your music mastered specifically for vinyl. And if you are also doing downloads and/or CDs you will need a separate master for those formats too. Each delivery format has it's own specific requirements and IME they are not really interchangeable. There are lots of fancy production tricks that are fine for digital formats, but on vinyl at best will render it unplayable on many systems and at worst will prevent the music from being cut to disc in the first place. 5. GET A TEST PRESSING DONE. And listen to it on as many systems as you can before approving it. The cutting requirements for vinyl may require additional processing to your masters. It's best to find out about them at the test pressing stage when things can still be altered relatively cheaply and not once you have received 500 production copies. It will be an added expense and probably add 2 weeks onto the production time, but it is indispensable IMO. 6. For me, the main attraction of vinyl is increased size of the cover for the graphics. So make sure that your packaging design is stunning. Because the music won't sound as good as the CD or uncompressed download version, you need to presentation to look fantastic to make up for that. Unless one of your band (or one of your friends) is a graphic designer who knows about designing for print, pay someone to make the cover of your record look awesome. As a minimum for an LP I'd be looking at a full colour sleeve with either a double-sided insert or printed inner sleeve. Ideally I'd probably want to have a gatefold sleeve. 7. Once you've sold initial copies to your family and friends, 95% of your sales will be at gigs. Make sure that you have an attractive display to use at your merch stand and someone who is not a band member be there all the time at the gig. Also make sure that your records are properly protected for transportation to and from gigs. The cardboard shipping boxes that they come in from the pressing plant are completely inadequate for this job - intactIME they barely survive the journey from the pressing plant to initial delivery address. That's it for now. I'm sure I'll think of more later on.

They love it, since it's far smaller than my previous rigs and takes up less space in the band van. It sounded great at the first rehearsal and the sound has been getting even better with every tweak I make to the various patches. These days I'm playing what could be best described as post-punk/gothic music which is a modern take on 80s influences, so unconventional is the order of the day. TBH (apart from short stint playing covers) The Terrortones are by far the most conventional band I've ever been in and they would have probably been OK with this too. I got a few worried looks from the bass player of the band that supported us at the last gig, but I plugged him into the Helix and was about to run through some of my patches to find a suitable sound, but he thought the first patch was fantastic and that was that.

Certainly on the originals circuit there are very few venues where you are reliant on your bass rig having to provide the FoH bass sound. My experience of using the RCF745 is that the dispersion characteristic are far superior to any of my previous bass rigs. That means I can run it quieter on stage, and not have any of the band ask for extra bass guitar in the monitors in order for them to get a balanced sound.

Bass cabs add a massive amount of colour to your sound. Try running your amp into different cabs and you'll find it sounds different each time. Cabs from different manufacturers will sound different to each other even though they might have the same number and size of drivers inside. Which is why I'm always surprised when people ask for cab recommendations based on driver size and numbers, because IME these are the least important factors in how a cab is going to sound. And guitar cabs take this to a completely different level. Unless you are a fan of super-clean guitar sounds the whole point of a guitar speaker is to colour the sound in a way that guitarists have come to find pleasing through familiarity.

The RCF745 is lighter than the 735, although it does cost more. My Helix and RCF745 is replacing BassPod XT Pro, Peterson Stroborack, SFX MicroThumpinator, Tech SoundSystems Black Cat Amp, EBS Proline 210 and 410 cabs all of which combined cost me a lot more even taking into account that some of it was at second-hand prices. In fact when I factor in my guitar rig unless I'm very unlucky, I should make back enough money from selling my old gear to more than cover the cost of the new rig. I can't see myself going back to a "conventional" bass rig. At a push a could carry everything plus one bass in a single short journey. I can't even lift the EBS 410 cab on my own!

The great thing with using an electronically generated click is that you can have any sound you want. While we mostly use a standard click sound with an accent on the ONE, there are occasional other audio cues on the click track for things like time signature changes which use different sounds.

What in your opinion makes the use of a metronome different to the use of a click track? One of my current bands uses a click track. Only the drummer gets the click (in his headphones) and the rest of the band play to to the drummer. We use it to keep in sync with the pre-recorded keyboards, sound effects and backing vocals. As part of The Terrortones preparation for going into the studio to record we would practice all the tracks with and without a click. Those that required a constant steady tempo would be recorded to a click track, those that sounded wrong when regimented in this way and relied on tempo fluctuations to maintain the correct feel would be done without.

I know your comment wasn't completely serious, but in 40+ years of playing in bands I've never once come across this attitude outside of this forum (i.e. in real life).

The great thing about the Helix > FRFR set up is that it can be as much or as little as the band/song requires. Because of the way the Helix works only those modules that are in the signal chain and actually switched on have any effect on the sound. I have one patch that is essentially just a volume control and nothing else. On that one apart from the A to D and D to A conversion at the input and output, there is no signal processing going on at all - not even the baked in sound that all bass amps have. And price isn't everything. The list price of the amp it replaced in my old rig was double that of the Helix.

Absolutely not. Apart form Public Image it's been the best track on this playlist so far.

Actually I'm only using an amp sim on two of my patches and then it's as an "effect". I haven't found the need for any of the cab sims yet.

A Sad Lovers And Giants track came up on my Spotify recommended for me playlist today!

I've gone for a simple setup too. Bass > Line6 Helix > RCF745 FRFR. Job done.

Does a bass cab really go lower than a good quality FRFR? It might look like it on paper, but you have to remember that most of what we perceive below 40Hz is implied by the harmonics being generated and not by the fundamental itself because most cabs simply aren't cable of reproducing these frequencies at any great volume. My Line6 Helix into a single RCF745 has replaced the huge Tech Soundsystems and EBS rig that I was previously using. With the RCF745 set up as a wedge the opportunities for positioning and dispersion on stage are superior to what I was getting previously which means lower on-stage volumes; and the new set up occupies about a quarter of the van space.

I must be lucky as I've never experienced anything remotely like the scenarios described here. I played with some "interesting" people in my early bands, but back then I was barely competent on any of the instruments I played, so I wasn't really in a position to criticise anyone else's shortcomings in terms of musicality or personality. Besides it was era of punk and post-punk and having characters in your band was almost a requirement. It certainly didn't hurt the chances of my first two bands both of which managed to do pretty well with limited ability and to a certain extent limited ambition. Since then I've been careful about which ads I answer and how I describe myself when advertising, and have only had positive experiences. The Terrortones had a couple of less than appropriate drummers audition but that was mostly due to our original drummer being one of those extremely talented musicians who made everything he played look easy even when it wasn't, and the fact that we thought the auditioning drummers were just being overly modest about their abilities (they weren't).

I wouldn't touch any software that needs iLok with a bargepole.

But did deleting the quote box require me to click the "+" sign first or had the panel that allowed me to remove my saved post just not loaded the first time?

If I was playing in a band like that I'd have light-weight fold-flat Ampeg SVT and Fridge façade to go in front of my FRFR.

LaBella Steels have black silk wraps.

"Better" tone is always subjective. "Fuller" tone might well not be appropriate in a band mix as it will likely be fighting with other instruments for sonic space. Also how long did you spend experimenting with the various parameter on the Helix before deciding the "real" amp sounded better? IME it takes at least a couple of rehearsals to get the sounds dialled in so that they work in the context of the band. What sounds as though it is going to work when played on its own at home at practice volumes is going to need more editing when you play it at rehearsal/gig volumes with the other instruments in the mix. I'm still tweaking some of my sounds. They get better each time. And very few of my Helix patches have an amp sim in the signal chain and none so far have a cab sim. After all an amplifier is just some tone controls in front of circuitry that can drive a loud speaker to the required volume, and all bass amps and cabs are colouring your sound in one way or another. So on the Helix all you need is some tone shaping that works in a pleasing way to your ears and allows the bass to sound the way you want it and you are set. Whether this is a stand-alone tone module or the tone shaping within an amp sim is irrelevant.

About a week ago I was in the middle of answering a post in a thread, when I had to do something else and never got around to finishing my answer. By the time I got back to the thread the conversation had moved on and my answer was no longer relevant, so I left it. Today I wanted to reply to a new post in the thread. When I try to do this I find that my unfinished answer from last time has been helpfully saved at the point I left off, and is displayed ready finish. As I don't need this anymore I try to delete my old unfinished post. All the text from both my new post and the post I was quoting can be deleted without any problem. However the "Quote box" is left in place without any obvious way of getting rid of it. It can't be highlighted. I've tried pretty much every combination of Control, Command, Option and Shift while clicking on it without success. Under the old version of the forum this would have been easy. I could have activated "plain text mode" from the switch above the post field and all the quote code would have been revealed and simple to delete. Since this function is not available in the new version of the forum, there appears to be no way of removing all the quote information. Any ideas? EDIT: Sorted. When I went back to the thread for another look, after clicking on the "+" symbol above the empty quote, a panel appeared beneath the post entry field giving me the option of clearing my previous post. This had definitely not be there the first time I looked. Whether that is just a glitch or that is how the forum software works I don't know.