BigRedX

It probably is. The distance between the top and bottom strap anchoring points is over 600mm on the bass version of this bag. I suspect that the bag is like many items designed primarily for the guitar and repurposed for larger instruments that repurposing doesn't always turn out to be very successful. It would be trivial to move the top anchor points lower down which would eliminate the leg slapping on shorter people and also allow the anchor points to more widely spaced which would also help with the comfort. However that would mean when worn, the top of the bag would be about another 200mm higher which will have implications for getting through doorways without taking the bag off your back.

That's a nicer looking burst than most Fender basses, and I particularly like the matching burst on the back of the neck, which IMO is far more classy than a mis-matched natural neck. However the shape of the black in the body burst would suggest a fancy veneer over a plywood or butcher block body core - not that there's anything wrong with that. You'll need to neck and/or pick guard off to check the actual construction.

I've played in a couple of bands whose drummers have used electronic kits. Depending on how organised they are it isn't always quicker to set up. The last one, although he had all the pads on a "scaffolding" stand still had to wire everything up and ended up taking about the same length of time to set up as he had when he was still using a conventional kit.

Hurtsfall last night at Underworld at Via Fossa in Nottingham opening for Medea Project and Chaos Bleak. Quieter in audience terms than the last few gigs, but for some strange reason from a technical PoV we played one of our best yet. There was a party going on in the room upstairs playing banging dance pop tunes all night which was somewhat disconcerting to be able to hear very clearly in-between songs, and on a couple numbers we had to listen very carefully for the count-in click. Just as well we had decided to drop one of our songs with a very quiet intro for this gig, as it may have proved to be unplayable... Obligatory gig photo:

How good new year's gigs are depends very much on what sort of band you are playing. I can imaging that for a typical pub covers band with their typical audience turned up past 11, it has the possibility of being pretty horrendous. I've done one new year's gig. The line up was a goth band, The Terrortones, and Vince Ripper & The Rodent Show who do weird psychobilly-ish sci-fi/horror music complete with back projections some of which are in 3D for which they hand out those old-school red and green glasses. As you can imagine this is about as far from churning out standard covers to out of control drunks as you can get. The gig was absolutely fantastic even if some of more serious goths in the audience were a little taken aback by Mr Venom's antics. Given a similar opportunity I wouldn't hesitate to do NYE again.

I believe there is some reorganisation going on that will save the company so probably no bargains to be had.

It actually looks as though the temporary closure of Sheffield O2 Academy is real. It's a pity it's taken the venue almost 24 hours to put this information on their web site. the HRH Goth festival has been rescheduled for 16 and 17 February 2024. Hopefully they will still want us to play.

If you haven't already check out the Vintage Hofner website. Numerous solid bodied guitars and basses on there and not all Fender copies.

And just to show that there are two sides to every company I have had very poor service from both Ashdown and Warwick. As a result of my customer interactions with Ashdown I would never use another of their products ever again.

My string choices are directly linked to the basses I am using at any given time. I'm not using the same strings that I was when I bought my first bass in 1981 because I'm now playing completely different basses.

Register the songs as soon as you preform them in public. If the open mic venue is PRS licensed (it should be) then you'll be able to claim some royalties for your own performances too. You need to fill in a pubs and clubs set list for all the songs you preform including any covers. I believe the money available for this scheme is currently £10 per event divided between all the songs performed and submitted. The submission of the set lists is the important bit, because those performers who don't submit one don't get paid and money gets divided between those that do. 10 years ago, I found that despite the fact my band were playing gigs with 2-4 others on the same bill, often we would be the only band to submit a set list and consequently we got all the available performance royalties.

If you're already a PRS member registering any music your write that is "performed" in public whether that be at a gig or a video on-line should be a no-brainer. Especially since it only involves entering the title of the piece, the writers and details of any known public performance(s). Be thankful that you no longer have to provide written musical notation of main musical themes (essentially the vocal tune and any other important melodic parts) and all the lyrics, as I had to do in the early 80s when I was first registering songs. Technically the act of performing the song is enough to establish copyright (especially in the UK), but having a verifiable on-line source like a video uploaded to YouTube definitely helps. PRS will want some evidence of the song actually being performed, so if you're not playing it at gigs, wait until the video is ready to upload and then register the song with the PRS at the same time, using the YouTube source as your evidence of public performance.

Since all the synth models are virtual and in theory you can load the Jupiter 8 model into the Juno X, sound-wise there should be no difference. However the user interface of the Jupiter X is better since it already has all the controls for the extra oscillators and envelope generators, while on the Juno X they'll be hidden away on "shift" or "page 2" buttons. Also you'll have to pay extra for the Jupiter 8 model. The Jupiter X also has a semi-weighted keyboard which may or may not be a selling point depending on your playing technique. I'm not a fan of the Juno at all. Back in the 80s no-one I knew bought any of the Juno models out of choice, they bought them because they were the cheapest polyphonic synths available. The only good thing about the Juno synth was the chorus which was a absolute necessity as the sounds were thin and weedy without it. What we all wanted was a decent polyphonic synth with 2 oscillations and at least 2 envelope generators per voice. However they were all at least twice the price of the Juno hence its popularity. To me £1400 sounds like a lot of money to pay for a single oscillator and envelope generator per voice synth, especially and virtual one, and if you can get a mint second hand Jupiter X for only £50 more it should be a no-brianer.

If it's simply for on-stage monitoring, IMO your current FRFR cabs are fine. When I ditched my traditional bass rig and went for a Helix and FRFR I bought the RCF745 as it was being recommended as the best VfM and would also be suitable to use for the bass without PA support. In retrospect it is overkill for my needs - one band has ditched on-stage amplification completely and in the other it gets used for rehearsals and as a personal monitor on smaller stages where the quality of the in-house foldback is unknown. In the 5 years I've been using it, I only need to use it twice as a conventional bass rig so the audience could hear me, and it coped brilliantly. In fact the improved dispersion over my previous rigs meant that I only needed to be slightly louder than normal on stage as opposed to being so loud I could barely hear the rest of the band. What I am trying to say is if I needed to replace the 745, I would do so with something smaller, lighter and cheaper (like the cab you have) and it would still be perfectly adequate for me.

Hurtsfall have just been told that tonight's gig at the O2 Academy in Sheffield has been cancelled. The explanation we have been given is supposedly due to RAAC Concrete at the venue and all gigs have been postponed while investigations are carried out. However there is nothing on the venue's website about this. I smell BS from the promotor (HRH). Anyone have any definite info about the situation?

Looks like tonight's gig at O2 Academy in Sheffield has been cancelled... However we have a free gig in Nottingham on Saturday with Chaos Bleak and The Medea Project at Via Fossa:

Looks like tonight's gig at O2 Academy in Sheffield has been cancelled... However we have a free gig in Nottingham on Saturday with Chaos Bleak and The Medea Project at Via Fossa:

Thank you!

@TheGreek That looks interesting. However could you please edit it to put spaces between paragraphs so it is easier to read? Or alternatively provide a link to the original source where I suspect it will have been presented in a more readable format. Thanks!

@Beedster Your second point is easily answered. You can set the support threads to be ordered by date or post popularity (the idea being that posts that actually solve the problem are voted up to the top of the thread. If you change the view to date (go to the first post in the thread and just below it there is are two buttons that allow you to change the post sorting) then the posts will stop moving.

I found most of the time that "guitar" amp models suited my sound better than the supposed bass ones. That's the great thing about the Helix and other modellers you can try all sorts of (virtual) devices that you wouldn't dare use in real life with a bass at gigging volumes. The worst that can happen is that you won't like the sound.

I have no idea how to do it on a tablet or if it is even possible as I believe some apps on mobile devices will share data anyway as a way to keep their memory footprint as small as possible. I used to do quite a bit of on-line design and therefore I have every single common browser installed on my Mac for testing purposes. All I have done is use Opera which was otherwise doing nothing at the moment and set it up so that Basschat is the home page. I already had it set to delete all cookies on quit, as well as blocking ads and trackers. All I do in this browser is to view Basschat pages. I haven't wanted to check any links on Basschat in the last 24 hours but should I want to I'll be copying and pasting them into a text editor first to ensure that they aren't bringing any tracking information with them before editing (if necessary) and pasting them into my normal browser.

If you use a blocker to remove the tab all you are doing removing the ability to user edit the settings. It doesn't prevent Ezoic or even Basschat from changing the default settings behind your back. The current use of the tab is poor coding. If it must be there it should be a link at the bottom of the page next to the (now out of date) Cookies one. I currently have Basschat sandboxed in its own browser which is only used to view Basschat and nothing else. It is also set to delete all cookies on exit, which has the added advantage that I'll get the privacy menu pop up when I log in and check if any settings have changed. I've removed the Basschat bookmark from usual browser so I don't inadvertently click on it while doing my other browsing. This also means that the Basschat bookmark has been removed from both my phone and tablet, so I won't be viewing it on either of these devices. I notice that neither @Kiwi or @dewww have seen fit to comment since this all kicked off.

Safari on MacOS had them all deselected apart from the ones that you can't deselect. The same with Opera which I'm now using to sandbox Basschat.

The problem with deleting all cookies is that some of them are actually useful, like the one that keeps you logged in here. Also you will have to reconfirm your cookies choices for every site your visit each time you start a new browser session. That's going to get very tedious very quickly.