BigRedX

Not all Hondo Aliens have aluminium necks, although it looks as though the one in the Facebook link does.

So what counts as a "pub" gig? Here in Nottingham originals bands play at The Jam Café, The Chameleon, The Angel Microbrewery, The Golden Fleece, Rough Trade. IMO they all count as "pubs". There's also The Old Cold Store which is a venue behind a pub. The Chameleon and The Angel Microbrewery have separate upstairs rooms where the bands play, but you still have to go down to the main part of the pub to get your drinks. All of these venues have in-house PA systems. TBH no-one would play at the Chameleon if they had to bring their own PA system as it's almost impossible to park nearby even for loading, and then down a narrow alleyway and up two flights of steep stairs. The venue makes up for it by having the most ridiculously large 80s style rig that goes all the way up to the ceiling and the venue capacity could probably be increased by 25% if it was replaced with something more modern. I'm sure that if I looked hard enough I could find pubs here that were prepared to put on an originals band and would require the band to bring their own PA system. But why bother when there's plenty of places to play that don't require that extra effort?

You must be deliberately playing some strange places. For the past 30 years I have played 100s of venues all over the UK and the only times (less than 5) there was no in-house PA and lights was when we deliberately chose to play somewhere that didn't normally put on live music, and in these cases we knew in advance and hired in PA and lights along with a crew to load, set them up and work them and that was factored in to the economics of doing the gig.

Absolutely this. Being able to own almost 50 guitars and basses at the same time allowed me directly compare them all and decide which ones I would keep and use and which I was just owning because I could. The six that I have kept are: Gus G3 5-String (red). This is my main bass for one band Gus G3 5-String (black). This is the back-up bass. Eastwood Hooky 6-String Bass. This is my main bass for the other band Burns Barracuda. This is the back-up bass for the Eastwood. When I have the cash it will be replaced by another Eastwood. Gus G1 Guitar. For writing and recording Fretking Esprit V Custom. For writing and recording. And that's all I need.

According to page 43 of the quick start manual it is for MIDI over USB.

No chorus and delay at the same time?

Before I got the Helix I had a BassPod XT Pro. For the band I was in at the time I used 4 sounds as follows: 1. Basic sound 2. As 1 but a bit brighter 3. As 1 but with a bit more drive 4. As 1 but with a bit more drive and brighter I could have got away with using sound #1 for the whole gig, and I did on a few occasions when there was no room for the Floor board due to limited floor space on-stage or the cable connecting it the Pod was playing up. With the Helix now I have a separate Preset for each song often with multiple Snapshots for variations within that song. Each has been tweaked so my volume and EQ balance complements the changing sounds of the other instruments. Even if I was in a band that required one bass sound for everything, I'd still be using the Helix because I could dial in my one perfect sound.

It's got a USB socket on the back already. Doesn't that provide "MIDI over USB"?

I've just spent about 15 minutes scrolling through the Quad Cortex page and I have to say that as a Helix user I'm not particularly impressed. 1. Touch Screen. Guaranteed to go wrong at the worst possible moment. Sometimes I have problems getting my phone or iPad to recognise my fingers; and touch screens at supermarket checkouts? Forget it. Unless all the touch screen functions can be duplicated with the front panel controls this is a non-starter. 2. They dedicate far more time and space to amp and cab models than they do to effects. IMO amp and cab models are red herrings. They are things that get in the way of your sound, especially if you are using effects. Ever since I got my first multi-effects unit 35 years ago I have been fighting against the additional colourations produced by my amplification. Now I rarely use any amp or cab models on my Helix. They don't do anything I can't already do with EQ and drive modules. On the few occasions that I have used amp and cab models they tend to be ones that should be aimed at guitarists but happen to produce a sound that I want. As I have said many times before there are no rules when it comes to modelling devices, you can't break anything like you could with the actual amps and cabs. Also remember that many classic bass amps are the same as the guitar amps but with a different badge on and maybe the EQ frequencies slightly tweaked. 3. External PSU without a locking connection. For me on stage this is a disaster waiting to happen. For individual pedals on a pedal board it doesn't matter since everything is fixed in place and if you've built it properly nothing can become disconnected. However devices like Quad Cortex and the Helix Floor are the pedal board. I'm thankful every time I set up, that the power for the Helix is supplied by a proper IEC mains connecter on a chunky cable, and which can be easily replaced should it go wrong. Both the guitarists in one of my bands use multi-effects pedal boards with external PSUs and both are on their 3rd PSU since I've been in the band due to the weedy cables becoming irreparably damaged.

At one point I had over 50 guitars and basses, as well as a very well equipped home studio in its own dedicated decent-sized room. These days I'm down to 9 basses and guitars and 3 of those are only still here because I haven't got around to selling them. My studio is Logic running on my Mac that I also use for my day job. It was nice to have lots of instruments and studio toys, but many of them never got any real use, and TBH these days I feel I would be better off saving up the money and getting a decent amount of studio time with a good producer for my band instead.

It's a completely different situation if you are running your own PA and it's strictly vocals only. Having said that in the 6 years I have owned it, I've needed to use my RCF745 twice as both backline and to fill the venue with suitably load bass guitar. Both times it coped without a problem and due to its improved dispersion characteristics compared with a typical bass rig I was able to be much quieter on stage - only a little bit louder than I would normally be comfortable with and certainly nothing like the time I had to use my conventional rig as FoH bass where I needed to be so loud I could barely hear the rest of the band on stage. The PA and lighting issue is one of the many reasons why I quit doing covers and have stuck to originals bands. The additional hassle of having to carry, set up and later take down a PA and lighting rig makes the gig less good VfM when you consider how much longer it takes overall.

One of the (for me many) advantages of playing in an originals band. No investment in, or need to carry and set up PA and lights. They are ready-installed in the venue along with people to run them. The band that I play with that doesn't use any backline has 8 items of equipment (and two of them are stands) which are an easy carry between car and venue for the 3 bands members and our occasional roadie/merch seller.

And as I have said many times before, selling my old (big and heavy) bass and guitar rigs paid for me to buy a Helix Floor and RCF745 FRFR cab new and come away with a slight profit. And on hindsight I could have got away with a lesser (cheaper) FRFR as it only gets used for rehearsals with one band and the occasional smaller gigs where the quality of the foldback is unknown.

In the days when I was using a full backline, for local gigs it was cheaper and convenient to get a taxi. Taxi drivers have no qualms about "parking" in the middle of the road directly outside the venue for me to load in and out. The fare both ways was only slightly more than the cost of parking and definitely less if load out was after midnight, and the overall convenience of not having to carry the gear great distances or messing about looking for free or cheap parking outweighed any additional cost.

There's plenty of undiscovered electronic music gems from the 80s. That record isn't one of them.

The thing with the current Line6 HX/Helix range is that all the upgrades are done in software. Not only that but they are all free. So although my Helix Floor looks the same as it did when I bought it six years ago, inside it's is very different. I'm currently on V3.7 of the firmware and I believe that there is at least one update that I haven't yet got around to installing. There was a major update a while back that improved most of the amp and cab models so that they used less processing power, which allowed you to have even more modules in a preset (not that I have ever come close to running out of processing power yet). I'm sure at some point there will be some major improvement which will technically render the current range "obsolete". But so what? As long as the devices still work they are still relevant. After all there's musicians using amps, cabs and pedals with technology that is at least 40 years old and they seem to be perfectly happy. My Helix does 99% of the things that I want and does all of those things perfectly. The 1% it doesn't do are highly specialised to my needs (MIDI-triggered gates and filters) and although I have a request in, I suspect my requirements are a long way down the list of priorities. However I've found work-arounds for what is missing. I've been using programmable multi-effects for 35 years now and the Helix is by far the best in absolutely every respect.

After all that, it's a pity that the song in question is so mediocre and uninspiring, and considering that it came out in 1987, was on the cusp of being totally eclipsed by acid house, so not really surprising that it was totally ignored at the time.

I played in a band where the drummer would commute twice a week between Coventry where he lived and Nottingham where the rest of the band were and where we practiced.

This is why I'm enjoying playing in an originals band that has no backline. PA and lights plus someone to operate then is supplied by the venue. We get the whole band, our gear plus our roadie/merch seller in the synth player's estate car, and the 8 pieces of gear we have (two of which are stands) are easily carried by the four of us between the car and the venue.

So long as any visible wood looks attractive, I don't care what it is. And TBH I'd rather it didn't say "Gibson" on the headstock as they are currently of no interest to me and by the looks of things rapidly going downhill. Hopefully they won't take Epiphone with them.

I was just about to say exactly the same thing. My girlfriend does the WGW market and despite there being a dedicated WiFi access point for stall holders there are always problems when it's very busy and everyone is using their card readers. At the October weekend she discovered there was a new SumUp update that allowed her to bypass the card reader entirely and use her phone as a contactless reader. This system turned out to be much more reliable maybe because it removes one level of wireless connectivity - between the phone and SumUp machine?

Gibsons are a lot more expensive these days. Besides these are far more authentic. Gibson "Thunderbirds" these days are little more than basses with a similar body shape to the original model.

Is this supposed to be a good price? (Facebook is done on a different device so I can't view links). I've seen a Alembic in Sam Ash Music in NYC that was barely worth a couple of hundred $ due to the terrible condition it was in.

Music is not competition. It really shouldn't matter who is being inducted into the "Rock n Roll Hall of Fame" and who is not. Ask yourself this... If you had been a moderately successful musician some time in the previous century, and now mostly forgotten, mostly known for a hit or two from 40 years ago, would you not take the opportunity for the publicity and the possibility of reviving your musical career?

Try it one way. If the sound with both pickups on is thin and weedy then swap the wires. Easy.