BigRedX

In the days when I used to do graphics for on-line use, the company I worked for employed someone whose job was specifically to break whatever the devs had produced, so that they knew what need fixing in order for the site to work both as they intended and as end-users expected.

Unless you only use Amazon very occasionally or manage to find products that ready have "free" delivery Prime should be a no-brainer. I have to admit I was sceptical the first time it was pushed in my direction, but later went back and added up what my additional postage charges had been for the previous 12 months, and for me Prime more than pays for itself to the extent that all the other services that come with it are effectively free. Plus because it's used primarily for business purchases I can claim my Prime membership as a business expense.

So long as the new site is actively linked to the stock inventory, then it is a massive improvement.

Personally, I can't see any aesthetic reason for not having the neck the same colour as the rest of the bass.

Why would you even want to do that? Serious question, as IMO it looks horrible. I like the stain, but it doesn't go with the natural wood colour.

Why would you need two EQs? Just one as you are no longer fighting against the baked-in sound of the cab(s).

Of course it's simpler to ditch the on-board pre-amp completely, not have to worry about batteries and use the tone controls on your amp that will be running off the voltage supply they were designed for.

Zoom are weird though. They don't even include MIDI on many of the multi-effects units.

When you do scan it, include rulers on both the horizontal and vertical sides, as IME almost all scanners are not exact enough to produce a template that will fit without some adjustment, and not only that but they will out by different amounts vertically and horizontally.

IME Rotosound are completely and utterly incapable of making consistently decent strings other than 34" standard gauge 4-string sets. I went through four 36" scale low B strings before I got one that wasn't dead on fitting, and for years I thought there was something wrong with my 30" scale Burns Sonic as I couldn't get a proper note out of the E string. As soon as I switched to Newtone strings, the E string was fine.

Absolutely. And IME it's even more important on basses then it is on guitars. I have 4 basses and each is strung with a different brand or gauge of string to get the best out of it.

That's what the channel fader in the desk is for. Give him plenty of vocals in his IEMs and mute him FoH.

Just buy the correct length strings for your bass. Newtone here in the UK will produce exactly what you want (if they don't already), and especially for short scale strings they are far better than the mainstream competition in tone and price.

No. Play harder, form some blisters, pop them, and when they heal you'll have much harder skin. You do need to keep this up otherwise you'll have to go through the process all over again.

If backing tracks are unsuitable for FoH it is because they haven't been mixed on a PA, but just on home studio monitors which rarely show the true extent of the bottom end. We do all our initial mixes at home, but the final levels and EQ setting are done in the rehearsal room running through a decent medium-sized PA.

And it's not always the sound engineer's fault if you don't sound like you think you should. At multi-band gigs they may well be presented with a completely different musical style for each band which ideally requires EQ adjustments for all the instruments, so it's hardly surprising if they try to save time by trying to use some common sounds for some. As I said previously most of the time they will be hearing your band for the first time when you do the sound check. If you're sound is different from the norm, either bring your own engineer or give the FoH a pre-mixed and EQ's output. Bands with backing tracks can be a nightmare for FoH because it's not always obvious what's on the backing and what is being played live. And many bands don't help themselves by trying to replicate their recorded sound exactly on stage and have far too much on the backing to the detriment of the overall live sound. I'm in charge of the backing for both bands I play with, and have started turning down instruments that I don't think are making a significant contribution to the overall live sound, to the point where either someone else complains that something is missing from the mix in which case I turn them up very slightly, or until they are entirely silent. However, even then there it is still possible for the FoH to muck things up. With one band the set up is simple. Vocals, synth player with two keyboards, Bass VI and backing that has drums and some very minimal additional keyboards. Ideally once the sound balance is right FoH there should be little reason the change it because we have already got all our relative volumes programmed into the synths and bass VI effects (we've spent a good deal of time in rehearsal fine tuning this), but we've done several gigs where we can hear the balance changing as we play for no apparent reason.

Thanks for the recommendation. I bought a slightly cheaper (£16) version and while it works most of the time, eventually if I try and pass a lot of MIDI data through it will lock up and needs unplugging to reset (as well as power cycling the MIDI device it's attached to). If I decide to try running my Linn Adrenalinn again I'll try this instead.

In fact the sorts of gigs my bands do, sound engineers will love this, because there's less for them to do (we play gigs with several bands who already do this). We even supply DI boxes and XLR leads (usually better quality than the ones at the venue) so all they need to do is supply the correct number of inputs at the stage box. EQ'ing the backing track is no different to EQ'ing whatever music is being played between bands at a gig. There'll be no balance problems because we'll have spent several rehearsals working on the mix through a PA. IME bands with traditional backline only have balance problems from one gig to the next because they fiddle with the settings of their amps etc. Whether that is down to the fact that you can rarely set up in exactly the same relative locations in every venue, or some in-built desire to fiddle even when there is no need to do so. I do know one guitarist who used to zero all the controls on his amp at the end of a gig or rehearsal and spend ages getting them to the right place next time. In the days when I was still using a conventional rig I never found the need to muck about with the controls. I'd plug in and there was my sound.

My interest in Rush lasted all of 4 days from seeing the gear-porn cover of "All The World's A Stage" in the new releases section of my local record shop on the Saturday to hearing the first few minutes of the copy of "2112" I borrowed from a friend at school on the Tuesday. I couldn't get past the voice. I tried a couple of other tracks at random just in case it had been done as an effect on the first song, but unfortunately that wasn't the case. By the time I had become more used to that style of singing via bands such as Placebo, I was no longer interested in the prog-rock noodling music.

Why are there two drummers?

I've never understood the logic behind using your amp but someone else's cabs. Firstly if you are still using a traditional amp and cabs rig, using different cabs will change your sound. You've probably spend good time and money working out the best amp and cab(s) combination, so why change it? If it's for convenience you're better of not using any amp or cabs. In the days when I was still using a conventional backline the idea of putting my amp through some unknown cab(s) used to fill me with dread. I did it once at a festival where we were told that we would have to use the cabs supplied. I had to buy some additional speakon to jack leads in case the cabs only had jacks and it was just as well that I did. The cabs supplied were terrible, I had to turn my amp up considerably to compensate for low sensitivity compared with what I normally used, and spent a good part of the gig hoping that neither the cabs or my amp would fail as a result. I vowed never again to use someone else's cabs, and IMO anyone still doing this is a braver bassist than me.

Yes. We may run the vocals out of a separate output so they can be balanced up separately, but everything else (drum machine, Bass VI and synths) will be run in a very narrow stereo field.

IME the problem with getting the live sound you want is not the gear but the fact that you are being mixed by someone who probably has no idea about how you should sound, and at best might have checked out a couple of your songs on Spotify in the afternoon before the gig. The biggest improvement I have ever made to any of my bands' live sound was for us to have our own sound engineer. He was essentially a 5th member of the band, came to all the rehearsals and often to the programming and writing sessions so he had a complete understanding of what all the instruments were doing in every song. So when the mix wasn't quite right he could tell instantly which instrument was missing or causing the problem and immediately adjust it accordingly. One of my current bands has ditched using backline and everything goes straight into the PA. However we have discovered that the moment you give someone who doesn't know how the band should sound control over EQ and levels you also give them the ability the completely mess it up. Even if we were using backline, for most of the gigs we do this would be for on-stage monitoring only and would have little impact on what is heard FoH. Our next move will be either to look for our own sound engineer or to invest in a digital mixer and give the PA a complete mix that they can't mess up.

The important thing is can anyone tell the difference between a real cab properly mic'd, an IR and a decent EQ when the bass is placed in the context of an overall band mix either live or in the recording studio?

Close mic'ing a single driver in a cab is not the same as the sound of all the drivers in your cab(s) from a couple of feet away (which is the sound most of us are used to hearing).