BigRedX

The nitro finish will wear off - that's what it does. Hopefully as it wears away the poly coat below will polish up at the same time so it won't be massively noticeable. AFAICS overall it's just a marketing ploy. Although it's never stopped Fender in the past. Even in the days when both the colour and clear coats were all nitro, the grain fillers and primer were poly-based.

The stage is a massive improvement from when I was playing there with the Terrortones about 10 years ago. However it is still quite shallow' and there's a lot of house equipment lining the back that can't always be relocated elsewhere, so if your drummer isn't keen on being close to the back wall you may be short on room in front of the kit. We always have to persuade ours to set up as close to the wall has he can. As you can see they do put the wedges in front rather than on the stage which definitely helps!

Unfortunately there's lots of different FretKings and navigating your way through all the variations can be difficult. I've got an original "by Eggle" Esprit V Guitar, from the days when they were being made in a workshop behind Musical Exchanges in Birmingham. This is just before Trevor Wilkinson got involved with the company. It's a wonderful instrument, and even though I asked them to do something slightly different to their standard built it has turned out to be everything I wanted. At the time I was after a Firebird, but the current Gibson versions were all horrible and an original one was beyond my means; this was easily a suitable alternative. When I had by big musical instrument clear-out all my guitars were sold apart from this and my Gus G1. However I did also try the prototype version of the bass with the same body shape and it was an unmanageable lump - imagine all the worst aspects of a Thunderbird ramped up to 10. Gratuitous photo of the guitar:

Interesting that the seller didn't feel confident enough to post a photo that showed all of the bass.

Out of interest how did you find out that the bass had been replaced?

It might be worth posting this on the Sound On Sound forums in the "keyboards" section. There's quite a few Kurzweil users there and I'm sure one of them will be able to recommend a suitable PSU.

It's not always that simple. At the gig in question there was plenty of room on stage, and I spent so long trying to get something I could hear that wasn't going cook the voice coils of the supplied cabs that I might as well have brought and set up my own full rig. These days with the Helix and FRFR I don't have to worry. For those gigs where the foldback of the house PA isn't sufficient, I can fit the FRFR into places where a conventional bass rig wouldn't go. On stages where space is really tight it goes under the stand that holds the computer that supplies backing track (synth and sound effects for one band; drum machine and second synth for the other). Since we have to find room on stage for this anyway it means my "bass amp" doesn't take up any more space.

With my engineer's/producer's hat on, it seems a strange thing to do. The original signal would need to be very low with a noticeably high noise floor and the overall band mix would need to be very minimal for it to even begin to be necessary. On the other hand as a songwriter/band member, I'd have no problem having anything I recorded being removed replaced so long as it made a noticeable improvement to the overall sound and feel of the recording.

"Less than 12ms latency". Not ideal and may well be unusable once the cumulative effect of all the other latencies in your signal chain have been taken into account.

I'd start by asking Kurzweil. They have in the past been very helpful when it comes to supporting older equipment. Even if they don't actually provide a suitable supply anymore they should be able to supply the specifications for a suitable replacement.

Thanks. I'll download it before I do some programming tonight.

I suppose it depends on the sorts of gigs you do and whether your rig is expected to provide the bass guitar FoH as well as on stage. Since I ditched my conventional rig for a Helix and FRFR I've only had to do 2 gigs where the bass wasn't also in the PA. Although it coped perfectly well at these and improved dispersion of the FRFR meant that I wasn't as loud on stage I had been with my previous rig under similar circumstance.

I've always found the notion that it's OK to use your amp with whatever tat the venue have knocking about masquerading as a cab, very un-nerving. About 10 years ago my band played a festival where we were specifically told that we needed to bring amps but would have to use the venue supplied cabs - supposedly in order to minimise change over times. For me that meant specifically making up some Speakon to jack leads just in case the cabs supplied were jack only (I've never used jack leads for bass cabs) and it's just as well that I did because the cabs turned to need them. The cabs were terrible with very poor sensitivity compared to mine and were either inaudible or noticeably distorting, even though we weren't a band that played loud on stage. In the end I turned up as far as I dared and played "blind" hoping that it sounded OK FoH, and that the cabs and my amp would still be functioning afterwards. The experience left me vowing to never do that again, and in the future I would either use my full rig or expect an amp to also be supplied.

Hurtsfall will be playing at the Chameleon in Nottingham on Friday 7th April opening the Goth Friday event:

Last night (Saturday) we were in the somewhat misleadingly named Acoustic Couch in Bracknell for the final gig of this mini tour. Anyone expecting a small intimate venue showcasing sensitive souls with acoustic guitars will probably be disappointed. It's a massive space underneath a multi-story carpark, with a good sized stage and big PA and lighting rig. Probably the largest venue we played on the tour. Didn't really know what the expect and were very pleasantly surprised. Good sound on stage (and FoH so we were told) although our tour support band Gothzilla struggled to hear their backing and it was somewhat swamped by the guitars FoH on many of the songs. Still they managed to put on a good show. Like York there were people dancing from the first number even though it wasn't a predominantly goth audience, and apparently afterwards we sold all of Anthology CDs we had brought with us. Only photo I've found of the evening so far: In Isolation will be back in Nottingham on 29th April supporting Autobahn at The Chameleon, and my other band Hurtsfall are opening the Goth Friday event at the same venue this coming Friday.

First a photo from Friday night's gig at the Fulford Arms in York: There should be some better photos up soon. There's also some pretty good videos but unfortunately they are embedded into Facebook so I can't repost them here :-((

Have a look at EMS cases then. Their system comes in two depths and is modular in 3U units, so if you find you want to more stuff later, you can simply get the relevant extensions. The cases also have rack attachments back and front which is essential for securing heavy amps properly.

Yes, but it’s one of many I had for a previous band. Otherwise I probably be looking for something with a bit of tone shaping.

Has there been a firmware up date since 3.5? I’m in the middle of a load of gigs and rehearsals and don’t want to change anything until I have plenty of time to fix stuff should it all go a bit wrong (IIRC one of the firmware updates reset all my global settings). However if it’s just a new version of the editor I’ll download it.

Just cut the years of mucking out with “bass” amps and cabs and go straight for a modelling multi-effects and FRFR.

Love the way this thread as been derailed onto the topic of accordions (accordia?)

In Isolation, plus Gothzilla and Eyrx London in York last night at the Fulford Arms. The venue has completely changed since The Terrortones use play on the tiny stage crammed into one corner of the room. Big proper stage and a decent PA and lighting rig. Everything wass much more relaxed that Thursday's gig probably helped by the fact there were only 3 bands playing and everyone was sound-checked in plenty of time before the doors opened. And a decent sized crowd for a rainy Friday night. Played well, sounded good and got a proper encore too! There will be photos but no-one's posted any on Facebook yet. Last gig of the tour tonight at The Acoustic Couch in Bracknell.

The image probably has been AI generated, but that's all it is an image, nothing more. There's a whole site dedicated to AI generated synthesisers, which is interesting, but AI hasn't yet realised that the black and white keys on a "piano" style keyboard have to follow to particular pattern (unless you just want to make atonal "musique concrète"). In the same way you get "interesting frets" in the guitar image. It's a pity that on the whole the guitar image is rather too conventional.

You do know what the date is?

And the obligatory photo from Thursday: