BigRedX

Looking at the short-scale basses that people are saying exhibit neck dive and my personal experiences, it appears to be mostly down to the design. One of the main problems I am am seeing here is the insistence of having large bass guitar machine heads arranged 4 in line. This means the overall neck is too long and there's too much weight at the end of it. Most of my short scales basses have either had guitar size machine heads, or had them arranged in a 2+2 configuration (or 3+3 for the Bass VIs), or even better are headless. The other issue is the placement of the strap button in relation to the neck position. Also many short scale basses don't sound like the OP's P-Bass. In order to get anywhere close in sound the short scale bass is going to have to have a P-Bass pickup somewhere close (in relative terms) to where it would be on the string length of a 34" scale bass. Basses with different types of pickups in different locations along the string length are simply not going to sound the same.

Does 5.1/surround add anything worthwhile? Especially for an album that was originally mixed for stereo? IME most domestic listening environments are not even set up for decent stereo imaging.

Over the past 45 years I have played basses with all sorts of scale lengths from 27" to 36" and have no problem switching. However I also play guitar, mandolin and balalaika so I'm used to stringed instruments with massively different scale lengths. My first bass was a short scale and my second was a 36" scale. At the moment I play a 34" scale 5-string bass in one band and a 30" Bass VI in another. I think it helps that I play different songs and slightly different styles of music on each type of bass so there is no confusion. If you are struggling with muscle memory, my advice would be, that if you really want to play short scale bass, put your other basses away and only play the short scale or at least don't play the songs that you are using the short scale bass for on basses with different scale lengths. Also I can't say I have noticed any problems with neck dive playing short scales basses apart from a Kramer with a V-shaped body. What basses have you tried that exhibited those problems?

For it's got to be Apple Music because it allows me to add the contents of my iTunes library to make up for the gaps in the woefully inadequate catalogue of all streaming services. Edit: the streaming audio quality isn't really important to me because it is only used in the car where its competing with all the other driving noises or for checking out new bands, and much of the time I do this on YouTube because I like to see what they look like as well hear what they sound like, and if I like them enough to warrant further listens I'll buy whatever physical product they have available.

The vintage synth market is over-priced and the actual instruments are failing because they were never designed to last this long. Custom ICs that were in a lot of synths are getting harder and harder to source. Working vintage synths have so many replaced parts that you might as well have bought a Behringer re-creation. As someone who owned a lot of these synths when they were new, I really can't see the attraction. None of the synths I owned (some are now extremely desirable for reasons that totally escape me) were irreplaceable from a sonic PoV. Each time I "upgraded" to something "better", I never bothered about trying to recreate the sounds of the old synth I had just sold. I created new ones with my new synth that worked equally well for the songs we were playing.

I found I got a better response and more listens by posting my bands' new releases in the General Discussion part of the Forum.

Updated: Wednesday 10th April at The Chapel above The Angel Microbrewery in Nottingham Supporting Empathy Test and Black Nail Cabaret Saturday 13th April, our first London gig at the New Cross Inn Supporting Ghost Dance Saturday 27th April at The Whitby Brewery, Whitby with In Isolation and Chaos Bleak This is part of the April WGW events and is on in the afternoon Hurtsfall are on first at 2.00pm Saturday 8th July BlaqkhOlesun Alternative Music Festival at The Alhambra, Morecambe Line up and running order still to be finalised Saturday 13th July Leodis Requiem at Wharf Chambers, Leeds Line up and running order still to be finalised

It's on our car play list. It only comes on rarely but we sing along when it does. I mean who doesn't like Potatoes and Molasses?

Currently re-watching "Over The Garden Wall" This is an earworm:

Yes.

Not for me. Just a drop down menu that would allow me to change the language.

When I try and view it in my usual browser (I have a separate browser just for looking at Facebook and nothing else). I get a massive pop-up covering the content asking me to log in and accept cookies.

I put together my first rack unit in the late 80s. I had built up a number of rack devices I was using for my bass and guitar sounds and had also modified some pedals so they fitted into rack cases. I added up all the spaces I needed plus 2U for future expansion and built myself a total impractical 14U case out of 1/2" plywood. Even with wheels on it was too big and heavy to easily get out of our rehearsal space where it spent nearly all its time. About a year later the majority of devices in the rack were replaced by a single 1U Roland GP8. which together with a power amp, tuner and a couple of devices which did things the GP8 couldn't and the whole lot fitted into a 7U rack with a spare space. During the 90s my rack rig consisted of a 2x300W power amp, Peavy Bassfex, Peavy Spectrum Filter, Peavy Rack Light/PSU and a Korg Tuner which completely filled the 7U rack case and was ideally a two person lift. The following decade I was able to reduce this down to 6U - Tech Soundsystems Black Cat Amp, Bass Pod XT Pro, Peterson Tuner and Sony Wireless. As others have said the great thing about having everything in a rack case was the set-up time was minimal. Take off the front and back lids, plug in the speakers, power and bass and I was ready to go. Most of the time the guitarists were still running their cables between their pedal boards and amps. The downside is that the weight of a rack case quickly builds up as you fill it, and is nearly always unevenly distributed towards the front which makes all but the smallest rigs a difficult carry. However this all changed when I decided to ditch the backline and the rack case and contents went with it. I've now got a Helix Floor and an FRFR cab, which at a push could be carried one in each hand, and setup time is even quicker.

You should have tried buying synthesisers back in the late 70s / early 80s. Back then around £300 would get you an entry-level mono synth (one note at a time) with a single VCO and envelope generator and no patch memories. Or you could buy a decent guitar or bass for the same money. A good mono synth would cost twice that and polyphony plus user memories were heading into terraced house in need of modernisation prices.

The vast majority of the time nothing terrible is going to happen and you are unlikely to damage any of the equipment. However depending on how the sockets are wired and how the cables are wired into the plugs at each end you might get unexpected audio side effects. If you have reached the stage where you have patch bays in your set up then you really should be also at the stage where you can solder up your own cables so that you are using the correct ones with the correct plugs attached.

The 4 extra strings do appear to have been a later addition.

I have an Eastwood Hooky Bass 6 Pro. I play in a post-punk/goth influenced band so it's fairly appropriate. However for me the only reason I have it is because it's only Bass VI with a neck wide enough to comfortably suit my playing style. If I could get on with the Squier Bass VI I'd probably still be using that. When I have the cash the Eastwood will most likely be replaced with something custom made with the same neck with but a more interesting looking design.

A former bandmate told me about his previous musical project where he and another musician would drive every Monday from Nottingham to Newcastle where they would stay all week (driving back on Friday night) rehearsing and recording with a singer from a reasonably well-known 90s band who was trying to relaunch his career. This went on for about a year and a handful of gigs before it all fell apart. However, given the nature of the project, I believe they were being paid for their time.

Which is more valuable/useful? A slightly non-original bass that works properly, or an all-original one that is unreliable?

Anyone who plugs a memory stick from an unknown source into their computer deserves everything they get.

It's a sad state of affairs when a band's audience is prepared to pay £10 for a T-shirt which will probably have at least a 100% mark up, but won't pay the same for an album on CD which is barely breaking even on pressing costs only.

The main problem is that the design in the OP is is not really suitable for printing onto cost-effective T-shirts, hence the prices that are being quoted which is for direct to garment, which is too expensive and not as hard wearing. IME a design like that in the OP is only worth producing directly when the band is at the stage where they can be looking at T-shirt sales of 1000+. At the level the OP's band appears to be they need T-shirts that can be printed for around £6 each or less (for 100 shirts) to be sold at £10-£15 a shirt. This means reducing the design to a single solid colour - generally white to be printed onto a black T-shirt. Depending on how the original design has been produced it may be possible to go back to the original artist and get them to do a new version that meets the requirements for single-colour screen printing. They will also need to simplify some of the fine line detail as that won't reproduce well. The other potential issue is that the design is specific to a particular EP which means that it will date. One of the bands I play with have generic band logo T-shirts and those based on the cover of our last album. The album design T-shirts sold well while the album was new, but now the album is a couple of years old they have dropped off in favour of the generic ones. If this was for one of my bands I would forget about the illustration and simply go for a big band logo. This will look impressive, be easy and cost-effective to print which means that there is a very good chance that the band will actually make money out of selling them. It also turns every single person wearing one into an easily readable walking advertisement for the band. Also IME for the print to be cost effective you need to produce at least 100 T-shirts and be able to sell them for at least twice what they cost. If you don't think you can sell 50 T-shirts in a year then it's probably not for your band. Don't worry too much about sizes - from experience no matter how much of your audience is made up of skinny hipsters the people who buy band T-shirts tend to be size L and bigger. So get mostly L and XL and a few S, M and 2XL. As has been said get a SumUp or similar card reader. Personally I wouldn't bother with cash any more, it will save you from having to have change, as you can guarantee that the first 5 people to buy one for cash will all want to pay with £20 notes. HTH.

This is a Yamaha Super-Strat that I used to own and let him use for a few gigs. Despite the fact that the guitar was thoroughly wiped down after each playing session this was the result after a month or so of him playing it with all the rusting and pitting of the black finish to the metal parts caused by the reaction of the metalwork to his sweat.

IME it completely depends on what's in your sweat and how much of it you leave on your strings (and the rest of the instrument). I'm seem to be lucky in that my sweat is fairly innocuous and TBH the Fast Fret applicator added more crap to the bass guitar strings than it appeared to remove. OtOH I used to play with a guitarist whose sweat was so corrosive that he would have to give the whole guitar a thorough clean immediately after the gig otherwise not only did the strings rot away but so did all the other metal parts of the instrument.

My synth-pop band covered this back in the 80s. Trying to get the drum machine programmed with the correct bar structure was a challenge. It's a clever song that sounds simple until you need to dissect it at which point you discover that it is most definitely rather complex.