BigRedX

What do the different colours mean?

I have exactly the right number of amps for my needs. None. I go direct from my multi-effects (Helix) into the PA. That way I can choose the right EQ for each song without having to have multiple EQs all potentially conflicting or cancelling each other out. At the moment I am mostly using the model of the Dark Glass pre-amp, but there are songs where those EQ centres don't work as well as they could and then I'll have something else in the signal chain. I have a couple of songs where the amp model has been picked solely because the mids EQ frequency is in the right place to sit the bass in amongst all the synth sounds we use. I rarely use the EQ on any bass whether active or passive and if I could be bothered to do the soldering I'd bypass them entirely.

Come and see my current band Hurtsfall play live if you can. Our next gig is at The Mist Rolling Inn in Nottingham on 28th November. I'm currently using it with a Bass VI so I'm alternating between "bass" and "guitar" sounds throughout the songs all done using the Helix to process the signal. Or have a listen to our music on-line. "Tilting" or "Lost Souls" shows these changes the best.

This is the problem with streaming services in that there lots of music, mostly from the late 70s and early 80s that hasn't made it on to any of them. Major labels are normally well represented, but where the recordings didn't make it to a CD release there is a good chance they won't be available to stream. I can't help you with Screams, but the Zones album (I was a big fan too) is available to download from at least one music blog which should be easy to find. I'm not normally a fan of getting my music from these sources, but in the absence of an official release or stream I think it is just about acceptable.

Not only are they the large size reels but they also run at 15ips, which means a proper professional tape machine and not a consumer model Revox. Adaptors should have been supplied with the tape machine not the tapes. I briefly owned a professional model Studer tape machine that had come from a BBC local radio station where it had been used for tape editing. This meant that as well as the small built-in splicing block, a more serious version had also been bolted to the front. The whole top panel was criss-crossed with razor-blade scratches, including the padded arm rest at the front. And there was no input recording circuitry so the machine could only be used for playback. Apparently this was deliberate on the part of Studer so they could sell these machines as playback/editing only where there was no chance of user error pressing record and wiping the tape. Mine was bought for digitising a number of reel-to-reel tapes of recordings made by the first band I was in during the late 70s/early 80s. The magnetic parts of the tapes were luckily still intact. However some of the splices hadn't fared as well and I was presented with a mixture of tapes where most the splices had failed and others where the glue had oozed out of the joints and spread to the rest of the tape causing the spooled tape to stick together. In the end I had to run each splice separately through the machine (after cleaning off any excess glue), and where the splices had been used to do mid-track edits join them back up in my DAW.

And here are all the rack units also in chronological order: Single Rack effects: Unknown make digital delay bought because it had an LED display for the delay time. However due to being made for the US market the readings were out by a factor of 20% caused by the difference in mains frequency. Amdek Chorus and Flanger rebuilt into a single 19" rack case Korg VCF Pedal rebuilt into a single 19" rack case Boss RCL-10 Half Rack Compressor Limiter Boss RPS-10 Half Rack Digital Pitch Shifter / Delay Akai EX65D Half Rack Digital Delay Peavey Spectrum Filter Multi-effects: Roland GP8 Boss SE50 Peavey BassFex Electrix MO-FX Linn Addrenalinn Line6 BassPod XT Pro Line6 BassPod XT Line6 Helix Floor There was some overlap between these two categories as the Peavey BassFex and Spectrum Filter were used together. Of all of these I still own the Helix, which is my current do-it-all effects unit and the Korg VCF Pedal which I haven't got around to selling yet.

If it's just pedals and not rack effects my list is as follows (in the order I bought them): Home-made Fuzz Box from a circuit published in Practical Electronics or some similar magazine from the mid 70s Korg VCF pedal Amdek Chorus Amdek Flanger Boss Super Distortion and Feedbacker These were replaced briefly by a set of dedicated rack units, until I bought my first multi-effects unit (Roland GP8) in the early 90s. I've been using multi-effects units ever since and currently own a Helix Floor. I have also owned a Linn Addrenalinn, but was never able to incorporate it into any rig. It was too complicated for live use, and in the studio the Step FX plug-in in Logic does the same thing but much better.

If you are getting noticeable signal loss due to your leads, then you need some better ones. And as I said in a previous post if the EQ centres on this are more suitable for your sound than those on your amp, then you have the wrong amp.

Is it? Please explain how. Unless the pre-amp has been badly designed the gain control should be the first thing the input signal passes through. Whether you boost the signal before or after the input jack socket should make zero difference. And stop assuming that passive basses have a lower output than actives. This is not 100% true.

If you need this because it has better EQ centres than the tone controls on your amp then you have the wrong amp.

They should be exactly the same thing, unless you are using it to deliberately overload the input of the amp which is hardly likely to give you more clarity. You'll need to explain further because I am not convinced and think it's either marketing bullshit or listening with your eyes.

More grown up than a knob joke which is what most "boutique" pedal makes seem to go for.

In the days when I used to bi-amp my preferred crossover frequency was (IIRC) around 320Hz. Of course there is no "correct" answer use what your ears tell you sounds good. Mine was reached as being the optimum position where I could put a quite extreme chorus on the upper frequencies but still maintain enough low-end thump. It was also dictated by the cabs that I was using for each side of the signal - a 15" driver in a large cab for bass and 2x8" cab for the top end which was based on the dimensions of my favourite guitar amp of the time.

Or you could just set the gain and tone controls on your amp to get the same effect.

Probably better sound quality though…. And you can always tape over it if you get bored of the album you bought.

On Saturday Hurtsfall played at the OxJam festival in Beeston. Over 100 acts split across multiple venues, this is the 3rd year we've been asked to play. This time we were on at 3.30pm at The Berliner, the second band of the afternoon at that venue. Not the easiest of load-ins with the venue being very busy so there was nowhere really to leave our gear where it wasn't in someone way. However it turned out that lots of the people were there specifically to see us play which was very gratifying. Just about enough time between bands to get set up and line-checked. Technical problems of the previous weekend were behind us and we played well, and even felt brave enough to open with our newest song which most of our audience wouldn't have heard before. We're taking a break from gigging until the end of November to work on new material and for recording the album.

The handful of times I have been asked to play on someone else's recording, I have been chosen specifically for my sound and playing style. Therefore I turn up with the bass(es) required to replicate what they have heard me do previously. The most recent session I did was for Rodney Bakerr (Wax Trax! Records) where I used a 1960s Burns Sonic and a 5-string Gus G3.

All the members of The Terrortones had stage names and we used them from the moment we arrived at venue until we left. Also all our songs were registered with the PRS using our stage names. Mine was Wrex StClair

Which venue were you doing? We played The Berliner this year. We also brought our own passive DIs.

The pissed up people singing along to Wonderwall are not your audience and probably wouldn't have been Oasis' audience either before they became famous. Also most of them would be equally happy singing along with a playlist or DJ as they would with a covers band. That's just a fact of life. It's pointless worrying about them and the venues they congregate in. The fact that most musicians don't seem to have got, is that there is nothing extra special about live music per se. You are quite right that to typical pub goer wants something they know and if you are not going to supply that then if you want to be popular you have to be playing something reasonably catchy and give them something interesting to watch at the same time. Unsurprisingly that's not a bunch of middle-aged men staring at their instruments. You've also got to acknowledge that some genres are more popular at a grass-roots level than others and maybe decide if you want artistic integrity or popularity, and try a find a good compromise between the two. When I was starting out gigging, I deliberately moved from somewhere with an almost zero live music scene to somewhere that was far more healthy from both a band and an audience member's PoV. I know that other people have different priorities. As I said life is full of compromises.

My current band who are hardly a well-known Goth band manage an average of 2500 streams a month on Spotify alone. While that's split between 14 tracks about 75% of those streams come from our most popular 5 songs. I would suggest that we're not quite popular enough to headline without one or more other bands of at least an equivalent standing as support.

As I said before, if your band isn't based somewhere where there is an audience for your music then you need to go and play places where there is. And if you're a band going to play an unknown venue out of town do some research to make sure that it has an audience and one that is likely to be appreciative of what you do. If you are not based in at least a decent sized town then it would be naive to expect much of a local audience for any originals band. In the early days of The Terrortones after we'd called in a couple of favours due from Mr Venom's previous band, local gigs weren't that easy to come by. However there were plenty of venues and promotors in other parts of the country who wanted to put us on and were prepared to pay us enough to make the travelling worthwhile. It wasn't until we started putting on the monthly "Dick Venom Presents…" gigs where we would book someone better known in a compatible genre and play support that we started to build up a local following.

When they were still in Brooklyn I spent a couple of hours at the Sadowsky workshop trying all their demo models. IMO every single one sounded better with the pre-amp turned off.

I play the bass I'm going to be using with my band at the rehearsal and gig. IMO there's little point playing anything else. Once every 3 or 4 months I'll do a rehearsal with my backup bass to make sure that I can still play all the songs on it, and I haven't written anything new that can't be done on both basses.

Of course! You posted a stupid statement. Did you not expect to be taken to task for it?