BigRedX

[quote name='HowieBass' timestamp='1470176351' post='3103938'] The set of five videos with (presumably) experienced synth players (eg Neil Davidge) all seemed to indicate it sounded fantastic with comments such as it sounding like a cross between a Juno and an Oberheim. [/quote] Why do musicians now salivate over the Juno sound? Back in the early 80s when these were new no one would have bought a Juno if they could have afforded a Jupiter or a Prophet 5.

Fall in the value of the Pound due to the recent EU referendum vote.

Gus GAS!

Nothing shallow about wanting stuff that looks good as well as being functional.

[quote name='ikay' timestamp='1470126747' post='3103346'] Wonder how the battery-less version works? [/quote] In theory with an appropriately sensitive light source it could be possible to drive it directly from the voltage generated by the pickups. I would imagine that there would still be a power source needed at the receiving end to amplify these signals but that could be provided by a mains PSU.

Gibson did make a long-scale version of the EB3. Have a look at [url=http://www.flyguitars.com/gibson/bass/EB3.php]Fly Guitars[/url] for more details including models with two completely different pickup positions.

[quote name='AndyTravis' timestamp='1469881823' post='3101733'] Microfrets is my thought... [/quote] Even before the reveal I could have told you it's not a Microfrets as it doesn't have the adjustable intonation nut that all their instruments sported.

It's just a tool. Sometimes you need it. Sometimes you don't. The trick is to know when.

I'd quite like that if it didn't look so horribly fake.

[quote name='TrevorR' timestamp='1469736549' post='3100807'] I'd vote for the combination of a P bass and a band saw... [/quote] You're probably right, although I think they were probably inspired by the La Baye 4x2 guitar and bass.

[quote name='Twincam' timestamp='1469661123' post='3100218'] Why not just have a switch fitted you can flip and leave the jack in. That is what I would do. [/quote] My Sei has LED side dots that are activated by a switch. The pre-amp battery gets changed once a year whether it needs to or not. I have the change the LED battery far more often because I forget to turn them off even though it's a lot more obvious that they are switched on than the pre-amp.

It's a balalaika.

I've just done a quick count of mine as I've had a bit of tidy up and they are all in one place and I have the following: 4 Hiscox bass cases (one branded Fretking, the others plain) 1 Hiscox guitar case 1 SBK rectangular bass case (branded Warrior) 1 Warwick flight case (StarBass size) 1 5-star semi-flight case 1 Hallmark rectangular alligator skin effect hard case (For a Hallmark Wingbat guitar) 1 generic guitar-sized rectangular hard case 1 Burns hard case from the 1960s 1 home-made guitar-sized rectangular hard case 1 Mono M80 gig bag 1 Warwick gig bag (StarBass size) 1 generic bass sized padded gig bag 1 Tokai branded gig bag for a Talbo Jr guitar 1 Fernades branded gig bag for a Pie-zo bass And that's about half the number of cases I had a couple of years ago! IME the majority of branded gig bags that come with guitars and basses when you buy them are pretty much useless for protecting the instrument they were designed to hold. Out of all the ones I've had (and it's been a lot) the only half-way decent one was the one that came with my Lightwave Sabre bass. The rest offered little more protection than a bin-bag and some didn't even have good enough straps to be any use for carrying a bass or guitar on your back! The Mono gig bag offers a decent amount of protection but it's about the same size as a Hiscox case and almost as heavy.

Battery life very much depends on the circuit. Generally speaking the more modern the pre-amp the longer the battery will last. As an example when I was using my mid-80s Overwater as my main bass the battery would last just over a month for about an hours worth of playing time a day. Also the sound would noticeably degrade when the battery was near the end of its life. These days I don't play my more modern active bass as much - probably only 3-4 hours a week, but changing the batteries once a year means I never run out of power. Having said that I always unplug my basses when I'm not playing them.

[quote name='SubsonicSimpleton' timestamp='1469629389' post='3099875'] Ultimately what is more important, the notes you play(and the way you play them) or the instrument you play them on? [/quote] If you play live and put on a show, then both factors are equally important IMO.

You don't need to bounce the tracks once you've split them into separate regions in Logic. Somewhere in the Audio Bin window there is a command that will make a new file from a region and as it happens off-line it's faster than real-time. Simply select the region you want and apply the command. You do have to do it individually per region, otherwise it combines all your regions into a single file with silence in-between. There is also a box you can tick when you do this that replaces the region with the new individual file in the Audio Bin. Then when you've made all you new files which should only take a few seconds per region, you can select them all and convert them to MP3s. If you also create keyboard shortcuts for the 2 commands you should be able to breeze through the process. Sorry I can't be more specific about the exact commands but I've recently upgrade my Mac and haven't go around to re-installing Logic on it yet.

I don't really have a "beater bass". After lots of buying and selling my collection is down to 3 Gus basses, a Sei fretless and a Warwick StarBass. All instruments that get used because they look, play and sound right. Cost doesn't come into it at all. I do also have 3 relatively cheap basses - a Squier Bass VI, an early 60s Burns Sonic, and a Fernandes Pie-zo Hello Kitty travel bass, but they are all speciality basses with a particular use and none of them could really be considered as a sole gigging bass. Does that answer your question?

[quote name='4stringslow' timestamp='1469615616' post='3099699'] In fact, the music industry failed pretty abysmally in managing the implications of the digital age and it was down to Apple, with iTunes, to really take advantage of the new technologies and new possibilities. Too many fat cat music executives without a clue having grown rich from their monopoly control over artists, production and licensing. Power to the people eh? [/quote] I'm glad that you put a smilie at the end of that statement I might have thought that you were being serious. The "digital music revolution" has simply exchanged one set of "fat cats" for another. And i'm not entirely sure that it's a good thing. At least record companies had a vested interest in going out and finding new artists and depending on the budget doing some development and promotion - certainly far more than the average musician could do themselves. Apple and their like are simply distributers. They don't care what they are distributing so long as you are paying them (via an aggregator) your $50 or so for the privilege, and they certainly aren't going to be doing any developing or promoting of new artists. It might be easier than ever to record your album and for it to be available for the public to buy, but that alone doesn't mean that they are going to buy it or even know about it, when its up against 25 billion plus other tracks on ITMS...

[quote name='Spike Vincent' timestamp='1469608840' post='3099641'] [url="https://noiseresearchinstitute.bandcamp.com/"]Music | NOISE RESEARCH INSTITUTE[/url] It's nasty electronic stuff mostly [/quote] Thanks! Nasty electronic stuff was the mainstay of the original DIY cassette scene back in the late 70s and early 80s. I think that the fact my bands recordings were different, having guitars and "songs" certainly helped us to get noticed back then. Do you sell many cassettes these days? The Terrortones cassette does reasonably well, but I think a lot of that is due to the fact that it comes with a download code and you get 5 tracks for less than the price of a 3 track vinyl single.

[quote name='Spike Vincent' timestamp='1469569427' post='3099516'] I run my own cassette label and I don't want these bloody hipsters making cassettes fashionable again. [/quote] You are already too late.... On a more serious note: What's the label? and do you have a link for the tapes for sale? I ran a cassette label for a couple of years in the early 80s.

[quote name='EliasMooseblaster' timestamp='1469542199' post='3099203'] That said, what would it cost you to achieve good-sounding tapes from scratch now? This chap's holding up his 21-year-old tape player, which must have been a rare find and he seems to pooh-pooh a lot of modern builds. On the other hand, what's "inferior" to him could likely be "perfectly fine" for the rest of us. Given he insists that "EVERYTHING" we knew about cassettes was a "LIE," shortly before admitting that FeO tapes were a bit crap, I expect he may be exaggerating a little! [/quote] Actually that cassette deck he's proudly holding up is a rubbish modern build. It might sport Dolby S and three heads, but IME a solid transport mechanism and a rigid cassette compartment that keeps the tape as close to perfectly aligned over the heads as possible given the format, is far more important in getting a decent sound off the tape. Any dual capstan, 3 head machine from the 80s sporting an Aiwa or Nakamichi logo will vastly outperform his deck despite being supposedly less well specified electronically, and he certainly wouldn't be able to wield it with such ease, due to its considerably more substantial weight!

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1469549566' post='3099293'] Reality check.... Where do you see SVT 810 rigs being used? That's where they belong. Not down the Dog and Duck. 'Fraid so! [/quote] Of course in those circumstances the FoH sound for 99% of the audience will be from the PA, and the onstage sound for the musicians will be mostly from the foldback and IEMs.

Yet another bollocks video full of lies and misinformation. As someone who started off their musical career by releasing music on DIY cassette and then put out as mini album on cassette a couple of years ago here are some facts that the video glosses over. 1. Although noise reduction improved massively by the 90s in the form of Dolby S, the physical build quality of cassette decks had significantly fallen from the high-end machines of the mid 80s. I had top of the range models from both Sony and Aiwa from the 90s and both have been binned due to failed transport mechanisms that ate cassettes as they died. However my Aiwa desk that I bought in 1984 is still going strong mainly because the whole transport and cassette loading mechanism is so robustly engineered with most of it being metal rather than the flimsy plastic of the 90s models. That makes it a weighty beast, and certainly not as easy to hold up as the example in the video. 2. What these analogue purists don't tell you is the reason that they like the sound so much is (just like vinyl) tape distorts in a way that the human ear finds musically pleasing. However it is changing the audio. Just because the distortion is one that most people like the sound doesn't stop it being distortion and and change in the sound that the producers of the music didn't really intend. It's not "HiFi". 3. While there are plenty of bands putting their music out on cassette, don't expect any of them to have a 100% analogue path from instruments to final final cassette. When we made our cassette mini album this was the initial intent as we did the recording live to 24-track analogue tape and mixed it down through an analogue desk with all analogue outboard processing to 15ips stereo tape, every other stage of the production process was digital. We could have gone analogue for the mastering, but it would have significantly increased the cost (about double), but when it came to the cassette duplication, none of the manufacturers in the UK we contacted could accept tape and all wanted either a CD or digital files. 4. While there is an undeniable retro charm for those discovering cassettes for the first time, for those of us who used the technology the first time around, MP3 does everything the cassette used to do but quicker and better. When my first band released their music on DIY cassette (send us a blank cassette and an SAE and we'll send it back with our music recorded on it), it was only because we couldn't afford make a vinyl single. While there were some bands in the late 70s/early 80s who were strictly cassette only, all the "big" names in the DIY cassette scene were putting out vinyl just as soon as they could. These days all the idealism of the scene can be achieved with a Soundcloud account and a Facebook page. And when my band were lucky enough to have a retrospective completion album released it came out on CD! Me, I'm getting all my 70s and 80s demo cassettes transferred onto my computer as CD quality digital files as fast as possible before the tapes degrade so much that they will no longer play.

Practice in the same way as you are going to play. Therefore if it's a standing up gig, practice standing up. If it''s a sitting down gig practice sitting down. Setting your strap length so that bass is at the same height sitting or standing only works if you find that height comfortable for playing. I certainly don't, plus I'm so short that if I practiced that way the bass would be just under my chin! IME for rock music playing sitting down for most people sucks all the life out of the performance whether it's on stage or in the studio.

Make your own?