BigRedX

Thanks! The two in the photos are now my main basses. I have second Gus 5-string in all black which is a back-up for the red and chrome one, and hope to be selling my other two Bass VIs in order to buy another Eastwood Hooky.

The barrel is a choke and it's normally only present on USB data leads.

Both Hurtsfall and In Isolation played the Goth At The Brewery Event on the 27th as part of WGW. This is a free gig at Whitby Brewery on the Saturday afternoon of the Goth Weekend organised by Dominique from the band Westenra and over the past 3 years has grown from being fairly low-key to one of the major events of the weekend, and for those who attend WGW for the music probably as important as the "main" event at the Pavilion as it showcases the current generation of Goth bands. It draws a massive audience made up of people who are there for the music rather than parading around town in their "costumes" and is now so well attended that the main doors of the room are opened to allow people outside in the courtyard to see and hear the bands too. This weekend was a "Nottingham takeover" with Chaos Bleak also playing. Hurtsfall were on first at 2.00pm. We probably had the best on-stage sound of the afternoon, but even so there were problems with the monitor in front of me which kept cutting out. However due to the nature of the band we are well used to playing under less than ideal conditions, so it wasn't really a problem, and everyone we spoke to afterwards (including several people whose opinions I trust) said the FoH sound was excellent. The audience appeared to enjoy it, and we sold a decent amount of merch afterwards. This photo was taken at the beginning of our set just before Sam, our singer, got everyone to move forward so that more people could get into the venue. Even after that there were still almost as many people outside enjoying the gig as there were inside (and yes that is Whitby Abbey you can see in the background): And two more general gig photos: Chaos Bleak probably pulled the best crowd of the afternoon due to both their time slot and their reputation. And then at 4.00pm I was back on stage with In Isolation. By this time it appeared that all the foldback had stopped working - There wasn't anything coming out of the wedge in front of me, and unlike during Hurtsfall's set I couldn't hear anything from the other two. Still we powered through our set even though it sounded weird on stage. Again we were told afterwards that FoH the mix was excellent, but it was unnerving playing some of the songs with longish intros on the backing tack where they were barely audible on stage, so having no clue when our drummer was going to count us in! Also we discovered that playing last in the afternoon isn't the ideal spot as people tend leave before the end so they can get ready for whatever night-time event they are going to. Still there were a decent number who stayed all the way through our set, and we even had to sign CDs at the end - something which always bemuses me... For some reason there are a distinct lack of photos from our set on Facebook and this one of me was the only one I could find.

Jean-Michel Jarre? Or at least it is the accepted abbreviation on another forum I frequent.

Personally I wouldn't mic up a bass rig for home recording unless you have an excellent acoustic space to put it in and can turn up to gig volumes without annoying anyone.

That looks really uncomfortable and impractical for wearing any distance other than the short trip between the car and the venue. On the last wearing option you can see the case slapping against the backs of his legs with every step. Nasty!

And no MIDI. It should be compulsory for programmable musical devices ti have MIDI - and proper MIDI on 5-pin din connectors.

Exactly. The Terrortones vinyl sold well, but that's because we had an audience for it. Had we had a full year's worth of gigs after the album came out I'd have none left. I'm seriously thinking of getting new labels printed for all the records I have left over and passing them off as the new album by one of my current bands. After all the sorts of poseurs who by "vinyls" never actually play them.

My bands' audiences appear to be made up of people like me who sold all their vinyl and replaced the albums they couldn't live without with the CD version. CDs still sell very well, vinyl form those bands that do offer it doesn't appear to do as well. The only vinyl I still have are albums and singles that have never been re-released in a digital format that I haven't yet got around to digitising myself.

The volume has been given as 90 litres earlier in the thread.

It really depends on what your audience wants. Originally one of my bands made decision to only release our songs as singles for download and streaming, and while this strategy has been successful for the most part, we've spent the last 2 years being bombarded by requests at gigs for a "proper" album release on CD which is what most post-punk/goth bands seem to sell. Therefore this is what we are working on. My other band sold out of our most recent album on CD during last year's mini tour. When the few copies that are left of the two previous albums are gone, our audience will have to wait until the next one is written, recorded and released - right now we have 4 songs complete. As for vinyl. I still have over 300 copies of The Terrortones album. Everything was selling really well (I have just a few copies of the 3 previous releases left) right up to the point where Mr Venom became too ill to do any more gigs, and since then we have sold almost nothing. As a result, I'm very reluctant to invest the kind of money required for vinyl again.

Even as an artist I'm conflicted about the advantages of vinyl. Part of me says that if this is the format that our audience wants to buy, then we should consider releasing out music on it. However it's massively expensive compared with putting out the album on CD. When I last looked I could get 2000 digipack plus 8-page booklet CDs for the same price as 500 12" albums in a single sleeve. And even if I looked at the price for 500 of each format, the savings made by putting the album out on CD would buy us a considerable amount of additional time in the studio, and that's where I'd rather be spending my money. And that's not taking the practicalities into account like the fact that no-one in either of my bands has anything to play the test pressings on and there is no way I could contemplate producing vinyl without hearing and approving test pressings. Additionally the compromises in the running order for vinyl would mean that the track we'd like to end the album on won't sound as good as it could if placed at the end of side 2, whereas there are no restrictions like that for digital formats.

I don't like vinyl. IMO it's an inferior format. I do like the bigger packaging, but only if the design actually makes proper use it. Personally, I would only buy something on vinyl if it was unavailable in any digital format, and I certainly wouldn't queue for the privilege.

TBH the best way to get exactly the bell sound you want is to sample it. What is this for? A recording or live use? Is it a free-form intro or does it need to be synchronised to certain points in the song and in time with the other instruments.

What sort of bell? There's a wide gap in sound between what's on a cat's collar and Big Ben.

No MIDI.

You need to paint it black though...

For me radio and 3rd party curated playlists are all about discovering new songs and bands. If I want to hear old favourites I can simply listen to my iTunes library via Apple Music.

I've always found that the key to getting a good bass sound from multi-effects is to keep it relatively simple. If you want to explore using amps and cab models, start by creating a new patch and remove everything except the amp and cab. Then go through each amp and cab model on your device in turn making a note of which ones you like and which ones you don't. Try all the models even the ones that are supposed to be for guitar, remember that a lot of vintage bass amps are simply guitar amps with a different name on the front panel and maybe the EQ frequencies dropped an octave. Unlike their real-life versions you can't damage anything by feeding bass guitar into it; the worst that will happen is that you won't like how it sounds, in which case you can discard it as an option and move on to the next model. Also I have found that the default setting for nearly every amp model on a lot of devices has far to much drive/distortion, so start by turning that right down before making any judgements. As I said previously I rarely use any amp or cab models, and have found that a combination of Compression, Distortion, and EQ modules far more effective as I can pick and choose each one separately for how they sound and not be tied into any specific combination with a single amp model. Also remember that what sounds good on it's own doesn't always work as well once the other instruments are present, so be prepared to do some tweaking in technical rehearsal once you think you have found your core bass sound.

More drive and more considered note choices. IME it's as much what you play as how you sound.

In a way it's great having all these tonal options on the instrument but in a another way it's a liability because there are more possibilities for things to go wrong. I once played the first few songs of a gig with the tone control wound nearly all the way off as it had been knocked when putting the bass in its gig bag after sound checking. The E and A strings sounded fine but I was wondering why the higher notes weren't cutting through as they had an hour ago. When I discovered what had happened I was mentally kicking myself. And this was on a bass that only has three controls - volume, tone and series parallel for the pickup. I find having all these options useful for working out what I like, but invariably there will be one setting that sounds (to me) much better than all the others, and once I have found it I'll probably never touch the controls again. I'd have my favourite setting hard wired into the bass and no controls at all.

I suppose everyone has different requirements when it comes to "radio". If I'm listening to music I don't want a lot (if any) chat between tracks. All I need to know is what the song was called and who it's by, so if it's something I like that I've not heard before that I like I can explore further. On a 3rd party curated playlist that information is all in the play list plus I can skip over anything I'm not interested in. Unfortunately most radio has a very low ratio between what I like and what I don't, so I have to endure a lot of music that isn't to my taste before they play something I've not heard before that I like. Also I've found that 6 Music is fine for a few weeks and then I start to realise that they are playing the same limited selection of songs over and over, and I have to take a break for a couple months. If I want to listen to people talking I'll pick a podcast.

IMO dismantling pots to replace parts of them, unless done in near clean room conditions, is not going be very useful terms of ensuring their reliability. I'm not really into vintage instruments, but I think that replacing the entire wiring loom, and keeping the original parts safe and in one piece would have been better for both having a usable and reliable bass and preserving the authenticity should the owner need to sell it. Part of the problem with the video in the OP is that there is no explanation about why some items have been replaced, others just cleaned, and some left seemingly untouched.

The XLR output from my Helix is used to connect to an FRFR cab for those gigs that require me to have "backline", and I have the Helix set up so that the front panel volume control only affects this output. The DI connects to the main jack out which is always at full volume for the PA, so I can adjust my volume on stage without affecting the PA send. This setup means that I don't have to change the volume control assignments between gigs, rehearsals and home recording/practice, and is one less thing to worry about getting right. It also means that I am transformer isolated from the PA just in case something nasty comes down the cables. One of my bands does this for all our PA feeds.

I ruled out the rack version because of Line6's insistence of using cat5e cables to connect their foot controllers. Before I got the Helix I had a BassPod and a Longboard foot controller. Standard cat5e cables lasted less than a month before either the retaining clip on the plug broke, or one of the conductors in the cable failed. Eventually I bought two very expensive leads with heavy duty shrouded connectors and "coilable" Van Damme cable. These were better but the cable stopped being coilable after about a year and failed shortly afterwards. The problem is that my gear is set up broken down multiple times in the week. I play in two bands which means a minimum of 2 rehearsals a week plus anything up to 3 gigs. And in between the gear is set up at home for writing and recording. Often at gigs I often have to clear the stage and pack everything away in under 15 minutes, usually in less than ideal conditions, and I can't always be as careful with coiling the leads as I would like. Jack and XLR leads are perfectly capable of taking this kind of abuse - I'm using cables that I made up over 25 years ago that are still working perfectly. Consumer grade computer cables simple can't cope, so I avoid them as far as possible for gig use.