BigRedX

When I was using an Etherwave Theremin at gigs we always had a problem with the Behringer active DI boxes in that they simply didn't work, whereas the passive EMO box that I used to take was always 100% reliable. IIRC we worked out that there was a mis-match between how the Theremin and Behringer DI box were earthed that meant the signal from the Theremin was essentially being shorted out when connected to the Behringer.

But they have to be the right related skills. As I mentioned in my previous post I work in another creative industry - graphics - and in the days when I was still working for advertising agencies, the graphic design graduates we employed would spend most of their first 6 months unlearning most of what they had been taught at university and learning the correct way to apply their artistic skills in a real-world environment. It's not good being able to produce cutting-edge creative design when most of the people paying you are going to be very mundane with mundane products and tastes.The same, from what I have seen, applies to every creative occupation. Interestingly of all the people I have worked with the ones who have the biggest artistic success are those with no formal arts or graphics education, but who were entirely self-taught, and had the required get up and go to make it happen by themselves.

All the people I know who have made a career in music have done it one of two ways. The first group didn't bother with education beyond the sixth form college and often beyond GCSEs. They simply went out and got on with playing, writing or producing music and the most important bit which is building up contacts and general networking and making the most of any and every opportunity that came their way. In order to make this work, you'll need to be living and breathing music non-stop while you do this. The other group who did go and get a music-related degree have ended up teaching the very same subject that they studied. Although there are plenty of other people I know who also studied something to do with music at university and now have jobs that have nothing to do with their degree course and do very little musical with the rest of their lives. What I have found for those who make a living out of any creative endeavour (I include myself in this since my main source of income is graphics), is that for a long time you have to say yes to absolutely everything that come your way, work just about every hour that your not sleeping, and unless you are extremely lucky for every job you do that is artistically and creatively satisfying, there are a whole load of others that you will need to take on just to be able to keep paying the bills. Good luck. You'll need it.

IMO scale length makes no difference for low B until you get to 36" scale or longer. The best low B I've ever had was from a 34" scale bass and two 35" scales basses I owned were both very poor when it came to the sound and feel of the low B string. For me the most important factors were a stiff neck either set neck or neck through construction combined with the right choice of string. I found that most "B" strings are far to low tension and for standard tuning 135 was the absolute minimum. I also found that a taper-wound B string gave better results. Of course this only suits the bases I play and my playing technique. You may have to do you own experimentation to find what works for you.

I have a separate presets with up to 4 snapshots for each song. For the band where I play bass VI, I alternate between "bass" and "melody" parts with the synth player, and TBH with the amount of processing I'm using, the choice of bass makes little difference. When I switched from using a Burns Barracuda to the Eastwood Hooky I only had to tweak some of the "guitar" snapshots slightly to get the right sound. For the other band where I play a more conventional bass role the difference between the presets I use for each song are more subtle, but have still been arranged so as to give the correct bass sound in the other all band mix.

For me it makes no difference. I use an active 5-string with one band and a passive bass VI with the other both go through a Line6 Helix and a good quality passive DI box which feeds the PA. All the "tone shaping" is done by the Helix. I never touch the controls on either bass.

What sort of music is she interested in? This will make a big difference for what you should do next career-wise.

There seem to have been a few furniture companies that also made guitars as a side-line. My ex-boss claims to have worked for one here in Nottingham in the early 60s, but I can't find any hard evidence for any having been made here.

That's what I was trying to say - the joins are normally offset, as can be seen on Paul Simon's bass, so that they don't go through the neck pocket. That's why taking the neck off will be an important check.

Have you checked that the Zoom devices in question actually respond to MIDI commands? When I was looking at them for another thread, I was surprised by just how many didn't. The presence of a USB socket does not mean that they accept MIDI via USB as it appears to just be for programming the devices via the Zoom app. I didn't have time to look at every Zoom pedal, but after 10-15 minutes on the site AFAICS only those with actual DIN MIDI sockets will respond to MIDI commands.

Next time you change the strings, take the neck off and have a look at the join in the neck pocket and see if there is any sign of it coming apart. TBH I thought even two-piece bodies the joins were off-set so that all of the neck pocket was in the same piece of wood. Can someone prove me wrong?

Without seeing the mixing desk channel settings and fader positions for all the DI feeds from that rig you really can't say how important any of those elements actually are.

So what's in the OP video then?

And WIDI is via WiFi not Bluetooth. We're talking about Bluetooth latency. And while latency won't matter in situations like this, in most other MIDI applications the timing needs to be just as tight as it would for audio streaming. I use MIDI live to control the patch and parameter changes in my Helix, many of which occur mid-song and on occasions I have spent considerable time ensuring they are placed in exactly the right location so as not to cause glitches because the sounds change mid-note. That means placing them as close to the start of the first note with the new sound so as not to loose the attack, while still maintaining as much of the tail of the last note as possible with the previous sound.

How does that work then? Latency is latency and if there's too much delay for audio there'll also be too much delay for MIDI data.

The problem with iLok is that it is brilliant idea very poorly executed. The idea being that your paid-for software is entirely portable. You can put it and the licenses on the iLok pen drive and plug them into any computer and use the software immediately where ever you go without worrying about transferring authorisations. and so on. Unfortunately a lot of the time it simply doesn't work as advertised and there appears to be too many instances of the iLok wanting to "phone home" and when it can't that's when problems arise. I had decided that if I couldn't do what I want with the plug-ins that come free with Logic then I don't need to do it. I have broken that rule twice but both are for non-mission-critical plugins so if they decide to stop working I won't have lost anything.

I think I would want silence. IMO music has become so ubiquitous that it is now under-valued, and besides people are going to talk over it anyway.

No resistors in the wiring diagram that you posted. Just four switches one capacitor and two potentiometers.

Interesting that one of the DI feeds is essentially immediately after the bass, and the cabs make no contribution to the FoH sound.

If all it is doing is turning an unbalanced line-level signal into a balanced line or mic level signal it really shouldn't matter what you choose as I would expect them all to be as transparent as the transformers or circuitry will allow. If you want the minimum of fuss I would choose something passive with separate inputs for the different levels of attenuation required. I've been using EMO DI boxes for the last 35 years. They are completely reliable and bomb-proof, and I've only ever had to replace one in all the time I've been using them, and that is because it got "lost" at a gig.

According to the Vox Showroom web site is it a Vox Symphonic Bass and was made some time between 1962 and 1967. Apart from the knobs and missing headstock logos it looks like it's in orginal condition.

They must have made some since, as I can remember seeing a band in Sheffield in either '82 or '83 whose bassist had a single neck Shergold 8-string

Personally I won't buy anything that requires an iLok account, as I've seen far too many horror stories about what happens when it goes wrong, with people being looked out of their account and unable to use any iLok software for days and sometimes weeks at a time. Anything I have needs to be available all the time whether I have a working internet connection or not (one of the rehearsal spaces I use has no internet and no usable phone signal so you can even tether a phone to the computer to get authorisations), and some venues are almost as bad. This is one reason why I have abandoned my exploration of PreSonus Studio One as a possible solution to my bands' live requirements.

And both songs in the OP owe not a little bit to "Hellraiser" by The Sweet.