BigRedX

My next gig with In Isolation on Saturday 29th April at The Chameleon in Nottingham.

From our "friends" in Essex. Now you don't need to click that link.

I'm similarly phone adverse. In my case I don't need to deal with agents promotors etc for getting gigs as there is someone else in the band (our singer) who is much better at this than I would ever be. All inter-band communication between gigs and rehearsals is done by group text and email. Works very well.

For me it's been completely the opposite. Mains leads and XLRs just go on and on while all the exotic cables - especially any skinny ones with tiny connectors - fail all the time. In the days when I was using a Bass Pod and Floorboard with The Terrortones I was getting through ethernet cables at the rate of one a month, until I was recommended some very expensive ones from Van Damme which were supposedly coilable. I bought 2 which each lasted about a year before failing, and also stopping being coilable just before they did.

No good if they're not answering the phone though. If BD don't want to sell stuff from their web site, then they shouldn't have an "Add to Cart" button next to any of the items. I wonder what the legal situation would be if someone had bought and paid for a bass through their website, but because that hadn't been checked BD then sold it to someone else actually in the shop. Since for the instruments you are supposedly buying the actual example shown and not just one of several in stock it might be a tricky issue for BD.

Personally I don't like adaptors - it's yet another potential point of failure. And then the problem with all these tiny connectors is that you have to use equally skinny cables with them. There's no way I can get the chunky 2-core and screen cable that I use for my MIDI cables into a 3.5mm jack socket. For all these kinds of connectors I have an additional tested cable for every instance in my spares bag, because I simply don't expect them to be as durable as normal XLR or 1/4 jack leads. Some of the XLR leads I'm currently using were made up almost 30 years ago and are still going strong.

IIRC the specification was originally going to be XLRs when MIDI was first announced to the general public in 1982. By the time the first actual devices with MIDI interfaces had been released the following year along with the V1.0 spec that had been changed due to pressure from the Japanese Manufacturers to 5-Pin DIN for reasons of cost. Only Octave Plateau stuck with XLRs. Also IIRC once the 5-pin DIN had been standardised, any manufacturer not using them was supposed to supply suitable adaptors. Certainly my Tenori-On which has a single multi-way socket for MIDI came complete with the appropriate cable terminating in 5-Pin DIN female plugs. I wonder how manufacturers like Mod devices get away with using 3.5mm jacks and no adaptor cables?

The thing with large multi-effects pedals is that no pedal board should be necessary. They are the replacement for a board full of pedals. You just plonk them down on stage and plug in, which is why consumer-grade connectors don't work on anything that is designed to be a "one-stop" solution to a traditional pedal board. I suppose the "pro" version would be to have everything securely rack mounted and just use a MIDI floor controller, but even then you generally end up with DIN sockets and external PSUs (or cat5 cables in the case of Line6 - I still haven't found a gig-proof cat5/5e/6 cable that I can rely on). I've always replaced my MIDI cables with XLRs as far as possible. The original MIDI standard connector was supposed to be XLR but then everyone including Dave Smith who came up with the idea ignored it and went with DIN instead.

I know more than few guitarists with OCD tuning habits between songs who would benefit from one of these fitted to all their guitars. However... like so many devices that rely on modifying or replacing the existing bridge on your instrument it only works with standard designs and in the EverTune case not even all of those. There also appear to be a number of compromises for guitar techniques to do with string bending and of course you can't have a vibrato unit. Also you are tied to specific string gauges to keep within the operating parameters of the bridge. The website is very coy about how this actually works and finding out any information required some serious digging. I wouldn't mind having one on a bass but due to design, string numbers and string spacing at the bridge of the basses I currently use I can't see one being available to suit me any time soon.

Why not make your own from scratch as shown by Stephen Delft in his series of articles on building a solid electric guitar in International Musician in the late 70s?

The internal PSU and IEC mains connector was one of the things that made me choose the Helix Floor over other similar multi-effects. The two guitarists in one of my bands also use floor-mounted multi-effects (one has a POD and other something by Boss) and both are on at least their third PSU because the cable or connector on the low voltage side has become damaged to the point where it has failed or has become so unreliable as to be useless. That's just through normal wear and tear from rehearsals and gigs. In the past when I have had equipment with external PSUs it's always been rack mounted where the PSU could also be secured in the rack case and the cables tied up in place and if necessary (it normally was) the connectors hot glued into place, as the last thing you want is for a difficult to reach connector becoming disconnected. I've said this so many times that everyone is probably bored of it now, but IME consumer-grade computer cables and connections have no place in a gigging environment. I realise that they make the equipment cheaper to produce and easier to connect because it uses standard cables and connectors, but that does matter at all if it also makes the equipment unreliable. Personally I'd like to have the option of a "pro" version with good quality connectors - that's PowerCon for mains and XLRs for everything else (although I'll settle for 1/4" jacks for unbalanced audio, 5-pin DIN for MIDI and IEC for mains if I really have to).

Behringer XR18 and a new rack case to put it in.

@Smanth Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. I'm not sure if we are taking about all the same thing when it come to MIDI control. I need to ability to be able the alter parameters using MIDI CCs but I also need to ability to "trigger" effects from MIDI notes. For instance your compressor example, have that activated not by the incoming audio signal but by a MIDI note on/off command, so that the compressor acts according to what the MIDI note information is doing and not the audio that it is processing - sort of using MIDI as the side-chain controller. Is that possible? Unfortunately I'm even less likely to want to use Bluetooth to send MIDI commands. Some of what I would want to do using MIDI is timing critical and Bluetooth simply isn't dependable enough. Wires are always IME more reliable but they also need equally reliable plugs/sockets at the ends of them and IME mini-jacks, USB, and those funny pedal power plugs are not those things. The photo of your pedal board with one of the leads connected via an adaptor gives me anxiety just looking at it... It's a smart idea, and when they see fit to make a proper "pro" version with a built-in PSU and standard mains lead to power it, good quality locking DIN connectors for MIDI and XRLs for audio, and a decent sized display (While I don't do a lot of editing from the front panel on my Helix the big display is essential on stage as it acts as a digital set list) I'll have another look.

I keep seeing people raving about the Mod Duo and Mod Dwarf, but their web site seems light on actual information for the casual browser. I tried to look at the Quick Start Guide but it's just broken links. My understanding is that it is "plug-in" based, does that mean any VST compatible plug-in or do they need to be written specifically for the Mod? How many do you get free when you buy the device? I saw plenty of paid for additions but little information as to what comes bundled. Most importantly for me will be how good the MIDI integration is. Can I control any parameter of any "pedal" using MIDI CCs? Can I map any MIDI CC to any parameter? More importantly are there any "pedals" that respond to MIDI note on and off commands? One of the few things that the Helix can't currently do without a lot of lateral thinking is sequenced filters and gates. The ability to have something like this and then trigger them from MIDI notes would be ideal for some of the things I'd like to do. Unfortunately the big turn off for me is the lack of suitably robust connections for anything other than the audio inputs and outputs. MIDI on 3.5mm jacks and PSU input with no locking mechanism? No thank you. IME these make it unsuitable for real-world gigs. And where could I buy one from? Looking at their international distribution page, UK is highlighted on the map but no UK distributor listed... very poor.

It would be interesting to know what people who have selected "Other" are using. All the multi-effects I've owned other than those by Line6 would come under that category - Roland GP8, Peavey BassFex, Linn Adrenalinn.

You know, I'd never considered that anyone might mistake these screws for pickup height adjustment, but you could well be right. On my Kramer the wood of the surrounds had split once on each surround. Of course whatever the reason for the split occurring it wasn't helped by the fact that the wood for the surrounds is very thin and at the point where the splits happen there is more hole than wood. Here's a photo of mine where you can quite clearly see the wood has split on the neck pickup surround (its on the other one too but not as obvious):

Action looks high, including at the nut. Interestingly no photos of the back of the bass....

Pity the photo in the OP doesn't show the top of the headstock...

As Frank Black said the ideal environment for an acoustic bass is playing on your own at home. As soon as you need to accompany anything more than a single gently strummed guitar you will need amplification. The good news is that the majority of acoustic bass guitars come with pickups fitted already, however tone and feedback issues may mean that you would be better off with a hollow-bodied/semi acoustic bass for "acoustic" ensemble playing, being the best compromise between image and sound.

For me current bands I have a separate patch (with up to 4 snapshots) for every song. The other instruments in both bands use lots of different sounds (synthesisers or two guitarists both with multiple-effects pedals) for the various songs and the bass sound needs to change (even if it's only a slight variation in volume/drive/EQ) to balance the overall mix. And trying to to do what I do with Hurtsfall where I am playing Bass VI and switching between "bass", "guitar" and "synthesiser" sounds would be completely impossible without programmable multi-effects. However even when I was playing with The Terrortones and essentially used a single sound (with a variation for more drive during the guitar solos) I still used my standard multiple-effects set up because I knew that I'd always have the right sound as soon as I powered up my rig.

Probably broken off a long time ago. More seriously, I bought one of these about 15 years ago with the pickup surrounds still attached but only just. The problem is that they are made out of very thin pieces of wood and the two holes for the fixing screws removed over half the width of wood! Unsurprisingly over the years they would snap around these holes and then the surround would fall off. They looked great (and IMO the bass looks wrong without them), but they are completely impractical in terms of durability. Out of interest what are you intending to make the replacements out of?

When you said fancy materials I thought it was going to be aluminium or carbon fibre. Not boring old wood.

Yes, but it’s one of their “less authentic” copies. Looks nothing like the bass in the OP.

This is the problem with accurate reproductions of instruments they have all the limitations of the originals and since most organs don't have a sustain pedal, neither do the plug-in equivalents. Are you running the organ as a stand alone application or inside a DAW? If it's inside a DAW you may find that one of the other MIDI CCs can be mapped onto a function that mimics having a sustain pedal. You'll need to do a bit of digging in the MIDI implementation chart for the Organ plug-in and maybe some lateral thinking about MIDI functions within your DAW.

IMO the slightly aged burst looks nicer than what should be the original colour under the pick guard.