BigRedX

Synth bass in "pop hits" goes back much further than the DX7. How about Giorgio Moroder or Kraftwerk both from the early 70s almost a decade before the DX7 made it's debut...

We've had this all before. One of the things that makes the bass guitar to way it is is how you play it. Playing bass from a keyboard rather than plucking and fretting strings gives a completely different feel. Of course you could spend the time honing your keyboard technique to emulate the way a musician with an electric bass guitar would play, but what's the point? As someone who plays both bass and keyboards (and guitar) a good part of the skill of the musician is picking the right instrument to give the right feel and sound for the piece of music in question.

[quote name='cheddatom' timestamp='1476804537' post='3157417'] yeh, that's what I'll do in the meantime I've never bothered much with outboard. I do have a couple of multi-effects racks I use for reverb occasionally, but because the reverbs on the PC are so much better I always go back to them. Right, time to research some reverb units! [/quote] Names to check out are: Eventide, Lexicon and TC Electronic.

[quote name='rushbo' timestamp='1476807196' post='3157451'] I've always had a soft spot for ABC....top quality Pop. I even like the "Beauty Stab" album.... [/quote] "Beauty Stab" and "How To Be A Zillionaire" are my favourites. Not all that keen on the new album, to me it sounds mainly like tracks that weren't quite good enough to make the original "Lexicon Of Love" and I'm surprised that Gary Kemp hasn't sued over the most recent single... For those of you who are interested, Vice Versa, band who became ABC, have a [url=http://www.vinyl-on-demand.com/-1-18-507.htm]Retrospective Compilation[/url] which includes all the official releases as well as unreleased demos and a selection of live recordings. There's also new material on the way from Mark White and Steve Singleton. All well worth a listen.

What do you want to hear through it in bypass mode? Edit: [url=http://sfxsound.com]SFX[/url]

[quote name='cheddatom' timestamp='1476778396' post='3157071'] We found a reverb for the vocal, which we both liked, but it was pretty CPU intensive. This coupled with reverbs on other tracks, plus drum triggers, some VSTs, and a lot of audio, meant the CPU load was quite high. This was fine with a large buffer size, but unusable with a small buffer The artist wanted to re-do his vocal, and listen to his mic monitored through the actual channel in the project with all the effect on it. I think I'll save up for some nice outboard reverb, that'll solve it [/quote] You should be able to get something fairly tasty for a decent price second hand if you don't mind it not being the very latest and best. The only way you'd get the latency down to acceptable levels would be by mixing down all the other tracks to stereo and just running the plug-ins on the track being recorded. Of course that don't make things easy if the artist wants to tweak the mix they are listening to...

[quote name='ash' timestamp='1476784062' post='3157133'] Here is a picture of the back and control cavity now it's stripped of parts and the giant back plate. Unlike some JB basses the cavity is quite small. [/quote] That's positively tiny compared to the J1 guitar control cavity!

[quote name='Garth' timestamp='1476786395' post='3157163'] HI all, I'm trying to arrange collection for a bass in a hiscox case. It will be bubble wrapped also. 1, Which way do you measure it? Is the thickness the height or width? 2, The dimensions are L -1175mm W - 349mm H - 65mm 65mm seems very small??? Any help would be fantastic Thanks [/quote] It looks as though you've got those dimensions off the Hiscox site. The 65mm measurement is the maximum depth of the instrument that will fit inside the case. The dimensions you want are: Length 1175mm, Width 410mm, Depth 135mm. That is the rectangular space the case will occupy. Remember that if you do not box the case, the carrier company will treat it as packaging and you will not be able the claim for any damage caused to the case itself. The case should always be boxed up for maximum protection.

[quote name='police squad' timestamp='1476782273' post='3157112'] yep it's only martin Fry, has been for ages. Most of the current band have been there since 2008/9. It's a very good band. Great drummer [/quote] What songs are they doing? Anything from "How To Be A Zillionaire"?

If it's anything like the J1 guitar that I saw reviewed in International Musician back in the 70s, then the control cavity needs to be that big because about a third of the body is hollow to accommodate all the electrics!

It's just samples. Granted they are probably very good samples (it's a bit difficult to tell from a YouTube video) and lots of them, but still just samples.

Is it really ABC though with only Martin Fry from the original line-up left? Interesting to note that the other two original members - Mark White and Steve Singleton - have gone back to being Vice-Versa who were the electronic band that morphed into ABC and IMO were far more interesting musically.

[quote name='Bigwan' timestamp='1476728339' post='3156748'] Just double what I'd like to spend! [/quote] Be thankful though that you can get something that will do the job relatively cheaply these days (even if it's more than you would like to spend). Back in the early 80s when I was buying my first synth, something that could do what the Nord Lead can cost about the the same as a terraced house here in Nottingham!

[quote name='Woodinblack' timestamp='1476564278' post='3155321'] Carlsbro stingray! [/quote] My first guitar amp was a Carlsbro Wasp. 10W of transistor power into a 10" speaker, all for £20 second hand in 1975. Two inputs marked bright and normal, Volume, Tone and Tremolo speed and depth. With a home-made fuzz pedal and the tremolo depth set to maximum I got some fantastic synth-like sounds out of it. I even used to amplify my bass on the recordings that nearly got my second band signed to a major record label. Can't really fault it at all.

[quote name='Bigwan' timestamp='1476725091' post='3156687'] Any examples you can think of? Not well up on this stuff and that's quite a shopping list! [/quote] My favourite is still the Clavia Nord Lead. Although I pretty much stopped looking at new synths after I got mine, because it does just about everything I want from a synth. A second-hand MK1 will be somewhere around the £400 mark for the keyboard version and a bit less for the rack.

What value choke are you using? IIRC the Gibson circuit diagrams only give a Gibson part number rather than the actual value of the choke. When I built my first electric guitar in 1979, I fitted a varitone that used every version I could find circuits for because I wanted to use all 11 positions on the speed knob I had. TBH most of them sounded crap and there was a significant volume loss on all but the most subtle variations.

Is this reverb on the vocal or instrument that is being recorded or just the reverb that they intend to use on the tracks already recorded?

[quote name='Bigwan' timestamp='1476699250' post='3156316'] But while we're on the subject, what budget synth could do the Michael Jackson, Chaka Khan and Mr. Mars' bass sounds? Around a couple of ton, so no Minitaur type suggestions! The Bass Station sounds wicked in Si's link! [/quote] Any analogue or virtual analogue synth with dual oscillators, cross-mod and oscillator sync, a filter that will go into self-oscillation and a separate envelope generator for the filter and the amplifier.

[quote name='ped' timestamp='1476558955' post='3155253'] Not sure what "alter the amplitude envelope of outgoing sound" means but you can hold notes and play over them if you like. I reckon I could get close to the sound in the vid... I'll have to spend a day or so trying. [/quote] Hopefully this will make what I was asking a bit clearer: A bass guitar note has a very distinct amplitude envelope - fast attack, and then a slowish decay during the sustain portion of the envelope until it has decayed to an audible level, you play another note on the same string, or you stop the note with your hands. There is very little you can do to alter this decay/sustain portion of the envelope. A compressor will help to boost the volume so that the decay portion happens later and more slowly, but even that cannot make the note sound beyond the point at which the string vibration has decayed to nothing. On a synth a note will sustain forever so long as you hold down the key and the volume will remain constant at whatever value the sustain level is set. Also the release portion of the envelope will allow the note to continue sounding after you have stopped holding down the key. So to what extent can the VB99 over-ride the amplitude envelope of the incoming bass signal? Can it make the note sustain at full volume for as long as there is still string vibration to be detected? I could probably nail the sound in that song in under 5 minutes given any decent analogue synth with a full set of parameter controls.

Nearly all the guitars and basses I've bought over the last 20 years have been without trying them. If like me you like unconventional instruments the possibilities for trying them out first are very limited. In fact the last bass I was able to try first got sold on within 3 months of it's purchase because it didn't hang comfortably on the strap (something I wasn't able to try in the shop).

But if you never need to adjust the height or pack them down for transport, then the sticky grips aren't really a problem. On the other hand you could have had a brand new non-sticky replacement for free.

[quote name='ped' timestamp='1476453566' post='3154479'] Or a Roland VB99 - no latency, no pitch conversion. With patience and skill you can cook up anything on that thing. [/quote] AFAICS the VB99 system is essentially signal processing the audio signal from your instrument on a string-by-string basis. Can it do anything to massively alter the amplitude envelope of outgoing sound compared with the source signal? and can you get it to sustain for longer than the original note?

[quote name='uk_lefty' timestamp='1476452382' post='3154460'] I'm not renewing my subscription this time round because I find it a bit weak really. I think it used to be every second month instead of monthly and the content was better. But now I find the interviews with the most random players at the front of the mag annoying "I don't slap cos it sucks" "I play with my heart man, I don't even know where E is!" And other such nonsense really annoying. The main interview is usually good, but the reviews are pretty much copy pasted, but there's a lot of repetition. Some of the features like showing a bass that was on eBay for a good price are just weird. Will probably get the odd copy for a long train journey but sadly I don't find it engaging enough to commit to buying for a whole year. [/quote] As one of those "Random Players" I can confirm that the "interview" is simply a set of questions that they email to you and you send them back the replies, hence the cut-and-paste nature of the section and the somewhat silted replies. I thought carefully about what I was going to say and then got Mr Venom to spice my answers up a bit before sending them back, but it still came out somewhat stilted.

I'm always slightly suspicious of musicians who say they can't find a suitable band or other musicians for them to play with. Unless you live out in the middle of nowhere it should be fairly straight forward? Certainly from my perspective, as a bassist of below average ability, who has very strict rules about what types of music I want to play and who lives in a place that while being a decent size has never really had a serious music scene of the likes of Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Birmingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh etc. I have never had a problem finding bands or other musicians who want to play music that I like to standard worth bothering with and then get out and gig.

[quote name='hen barn' timestamp='1476449898' post='3154427'] Wow thanks for that reply, but I still just want a pedal that make a donk sound. As I never want to stand behind a keyboard!! I'm a bass player!! [/quote] Well good luck with that. Let me know how you intend to do all those pitch bends including the octave ones and how you are going to get your bass to sustain at full attack amplitude for at least a whole bar. The good news is that pretty much any analogue-style synth will do that sound plus all the performance tricks with ease.