BigRedX

That looks great. On the headstock I'd have gone with all gold except for the ferrules, so as it is in the latest photo but with gold posts. Everything else looks spot-on to me.

The only recommendation I would take seriously is from someone who has made a successful claim on their instrument insurance policy. I would hope that policies have improved from the one my band applied for in the 80s, which when we read the small print exclusions, only appeared to cover our gear whilst we were actually on stage using it! Needless to say it was swiftly returned for a full refund.

[quote name='fiatcoupe432' timestamp='1488974107' post='3253350'] i do agree with bigredx , i m a bass player geek , i love seeing bass player coming up with new techniques , playing at 7000bpm, slapping and all that kind of stuff . the difference is that i ve tried many times to listen to ( example ) Hadrian Feraud full album , and as much as i appriciate is ability as bass player i was bored of listening after the second song . i also try to work on songwriting and even if i do study bass and try to become a better bass player my main focus is to wright a beautiful peace of music even if the bassline is simple and and contain only a handful of notes the hard part is trying to make "That Notes" count . [/quote] I have admit I quite like Hadrian Feraud, but mostly because of the musical ideas his keyboard player comes up with which remind me of Greenslade, a band I was very much into in the 70s. The bass playing itself leaves me cold. Actually if there is an area where technique does interest me at least as much as composition, it's in the more obscure elements of electronic music where I can get very geeky about sound design and synthesis methods.

For me "musicianship" has always been a means to an end rather than the end itself. As regards technical ability in playing guitar/bass/keyboards, my ambition has been little above zero ever since I managed to string a handful of chords together on the guitar without having to pause between changes to get my fingers into position, some time in 1974. That isn't to say I haven't improved since then. I have, but I don't specifically work at it. I don't think I've ever practiced a scale in my life, and I certainly don't work on technique for it's own sake. Where I am ambitious, is in my songwriting. I work on this just about every day. This is the end to which my "musicianship" is working towards. So if I am working on technique it's because I have come up with a musical idea that my fingers can't currently execute flawlessly. To this end, today I will be working on refining the bass line for the new songs we were working on at rehearsal last night. One in particular has some tricky timing with regards to where the chord changes fall and that timing changes from the verses to the choruses and is different again in the final chorus, so I will be aiming to be able to play this without needing to consciously count the beats in my head for the changes and instead be able to listen to the tune of the bass line to know I have it right.

Do any of these apps allow you to create "crib sheets" directly from the iPad. I'm looking for something to help me remember new bass parts I'm writing at rehearsals rather than scrawling loads of hand-written notes on paper, and trying to recall which set of corrections are the most recent when I come to run through the song ideas between band practices in order to refine them.

Fantastic. That's a proper answer. I'm now off the go and investigate all of those. For the compressor, simply because sometimes I want something subtle to add a bit of punch, sometimes I want to use it as a noticeable effect, and sometimes I need to turn it off, and I want to be able to do all of those things in conjunction with program changes for the other effects. And the parameters will all need altering to fit in with what the other effects are doing. Does that make sense?

Really? Apologies, but I don't always get the subtleties of on-line conversations. So please can you explain to me why this was a lubricous response, because I was being perfectly serious and if there are suitable individual pedals available I'd really like to take a look and listen to them.

So what would you recommend as individual pedals for the following: Compressor, distortion, octaver, delay, chorus/flanger, filter/gate. All must be programmable and MIDI controllable. 128 user memory locations without program mapping (I'll take less if there is full program mapping that allows me to assign the same user program to multiple MIDI programs). The delay needs to have a delay time read out in milliseconds, have tap tempo and MIDI clock sync. The chorus flanger also needs tap tempo and MIDI clock sync. The filter gate needs to be controllable from MIDI note on and off commands.

30th anniversary of what?

Has anything happened with this? Has the gig recording been made available to buy and download? Did the MU ever get back to you?

But are you comparing like-for-like with regards price? Assuming that the average multi-effects pedal can do at leat 4 different effects simultaneously, then you need to looking at a multi-effects unit that cost at leat 4 times the price of the individual effect pedal. And then when you add on all the extra features that generally get thrown in for free like programability, tap tempo and MIDI sync of time-based effects, multi-effects nearly always come out better value. Sonics are completely subjective anyway.

Where are the interesting Japanese manufacturers? Atlansia, ESP Japan Custom Shop, Fernandes, Jersey Girl? You know there's only so many takes on the "Super-J" bass that anyone needs.

I switched form bass to guitar in a previous band, after almost a year of unsuccessfully looking for a suitable replacement for our original guitarist. By that time I had learnt all the guitar parts and was up to the standard required to actually be the band's guitarist. We advertised with separate ads for both a bassist and guitarist and got a great bassist (who was actually a lot better than me) within a couple of weeks. However when the band split I pretty much went straight back to playing bass as my main instrument.

[quote name='Downdown' timestamp='1488541217' post='3249784'] Would it actually be technically as good as modern consoles anyway, I wonder? [/quote] There's a studio in Nottingham with a "vintage" analogue recording desk that used to belong to Iron Maiden. It sounds good (although I'm sure a modern console that costs the same in real terms as this would have cost when new would be at least as good). What isn't so good is that parts of it keep breaking down. Every time we've used it, there are always a couple of channels that aren't working properly for various reasons, and recently it had to have nearly all the electrolytic capacitors replaced which apparently was not cheap. Buying a recording console like the one in the OP isn't cheap even without the provenance and it will continue to need serious investment if the new owner wants to actually use it, as the electronics wear out and need to be replaced.

[url=http://stashstainlessbass.com]Stash Stainless Steel Bass[/url] Still no 5-string version though...

I have to agree that you are being too hard on Peavey and Carlsbro. On of my bass heroes from the early 80s used a Carlsbro 1x15 bass combo (the green version) and got a fantastic sound out of his Aria Pro II SB1000 through it. My rig for the whole of the 90s was a mixture of Carlsbro (1 x 15 cab and 350 + 350 stereo power amp), Peavey (BassFex and Spectrum Filter) combined with a home made 2 x 8 cab, and was totally reliable and great sounding. IMO the 70s was far worse if you couldn't afford anything with a well-know name as not only did it sound rubbish but was completely unreliable with it.

Which is why I suggested using the powers of the DMCA take down notice. Not only does it cost you nothing, but it is normally acted upon with 24 hours - especially if you send it to the company hosting the web site rather than the owner of the site.

Unfortunately you are mistaken. If that was the case recording studios wouldn't need lots of expensive acoustic treatment in their control rooms, they could simply slap a 31-band graphic equaliser across the monitor output and everything would be fine! Room acoustics are both a time domain problem and a frequency domain problem - in that they are caused by standing and reflected waveforms creating peaks and troughs in the sound at different frequencies, but also just as importantly at different positions in the room. Because of this, while it might be possible to make things sound better in one part of the room by adjusting the EQ, you are just as likely to make it much worse in others at the same time. You also are just as likely to improve matters by repositioning your speakers or at least changing the direction in which they are pointing. As you can see and hear trying to fix it with a frequency domain only solution is not going to be completely successful. One venue I've played in is shaped in such a way that the sound (particularly the bottom end) is focused away from the stage and into the audience area. On stage everything sounds weedy and lifeless with no real bass, but if we were to EQ to compensate we would be subjecting the audience to a very nasty bass-heavy mush of sound, which wouldn't be very pleasant for them at all. No amount of EQ adjustment alone is going make the room sound good for both the performers on the stage and the audience in the main part of the room. In another venue, the biggest improvement we can make to the overall sound is to draw the curtains over the large windows that occupies nearly all of one wall. Immediately everything sounds much better and there has been no need to adjust the EQ at all! Remember that the sound in nearly every venue improves vastly as soon as a reasonably sized audience is present. These people haven't been sneakily adjusting your EQ to achieve this! They do it because their bodies break up the reflection patterns in the room that have been causing problems.

[quote name='Grangur' timestamp='1488309412' post='3247808'] Have you tried speaking to the other acts from that night? After all, you're not the only act in that same boat. If you need to take action you could possibly share the legal costs. [/quote] Which is why I suggested the DMCA take down route as there are no costs involved.

Those of you that follow Basschat's composition competition will already have heard [url=https://soundcloud.com/bigredx/bigredx-september]this piece that I created[/url] which was built entirely out of sounds generated by interpreting the data from the JPEG image, that was supposed to inspire the piece, as a wave form. Nothing even vaguely resembling a musical instrument was used in the production of this track.

Peterson StroboRack of course. But the built-in tuner on my BassPod XT copes with the low B with ease too.

[quote name='Hobbayne' timestamp='1488284354' post='3247483'] This was a big hit some 44 years ago. All done on a Moog I believe. Not a 'real instrument' to be heard. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX_lnmb1Moo[/media] [/quote] Don't drums count as "real"?

[quote name='Muppet' timestamp='1488275808' post='3247398'] No not yet, which is why we thought we'd try a more friendly approach. If he ends up publishing and charging then we're in to a different phase. [/quote] Does the promoter already have previous live gigs up on his web site? IME although they eventually come up with the goods, the MU's legal advice runs at comparatively glacial speeds, especially when you are dealing with the immediacy of the on-line world. So if possible I'd be finding out now who runs his web hosting and his payments and be ready to hit them with DMCA takes down notices just in case the friendly approach doesn't work or is ignored. However as more time goes by and the recordings haven't appeared anywhere, I'd be slightly less worried. If he doesn't have them up before the end of the week I would have thought anyone in the audience who was interested in buying them will have forgotten all about it.

[quote name='HengistPod' timestamp='1488208933' post='3246793'] As a final note, I like the 3-point bridge. It's part of what a Thunderbird is all about. I tried the Hipshot bridge but found it to be an enormous slab of metal which made very little difference to my sound. So it lives in a box now. I like to feel the 3-pointer under the edge of my hand, which is now suitably calloused on the fleshy bit at the base of my pinky. [/quote] Technically it's not. The 3-point bridge was only introduced with the 1976 re-issue model. An original 60s Thunderbirds will have the separate 2-point bridge and tail-piece.

Is the gig recording actually available to buy at the moment?