BigRedX

But on the other hand consider this bass: Which I have taken to a couple of bass-bashes in the past. Pretty much everyone who has had a go on this says that it sounds just like a P-Bass (ignoring the fact most people who have played it also make it sound slightly different). Maybe that's because it has a P-Bass pickup in exactly the right spot rather than the wood it is made out of.

Too high can lead to weird overtones (somethings sounding out of tune with the fundamental note) and a "deadening" of the sound due to the magnetic forces dampening the string vibrations. If the pickup is a bit too low you can always turn up something in your signal chain to compensate.

One of the bands I play with ditched on-stage amplification last year, and although we haven't gone for IEM yet, simply getting rid of lots of conflicting sound sources on stage has done wonders for both what we and our audience hears. Admittedly with a line up of vocals, synths and bass VI live with drums and additional synths on the backing it's been easier for us than the typical band. We played a small "festival" (in a pub) last year where the foldback was a single tiny wedge monitor - no problem - we just angled the main PA cabs slightly back so we could hear them and ended up playing one of the best gigs we have done.

I realise that this statement has some humorous icon after it (which my computer has rendered invisible), but what I am saying is that nobody can pin-point the difference in sound between two solid electric instruments to a single piece of wood. You have absolutely no way of knowing how identical or different all the other components of two supposedly identical instruments are. It's the easiest thing in the world to make two different sounding instruments. You just build them and there they are. If the woods used made a quantifiable difference to the sound of an instrument it should be equally easy to mass produce instruments that all sound exactly the same, and there would be no need to go a try every P- or J- bass in the shop looking for "the one".

Certainly not in the past with record label funding. However if you look at the crowd funding proposal link in the OP you'll see that Stuart Hamm is only asking for $1,500 for a publicist for this project. Also these days the money's not in recording and releasing albums, but in tour and merchandise sales. The album is generally a promotional tool for the things that can generate an income. When the Terrortones released our first single we put up £2k (£500 each) plus 150 copies of the single for promotion. Some of it was money well spent and some pretty much useless, but what it did do was to get us was a foot in the door of the publicity machine, so that when we released our second single our promotion which much cheaper because we were able to target it so much more effectively. Also we made back our "investment" by playing gigs and selling T-shirts and CDs, so from that point onwards the band was pretty much self-funding. This is why I'm always so sceptical of crowd funding. The artists who need it most are those who are working on their first musical project and who are unlikely to have built up a sufficiently large enough audience to make it viable. Once you've made you first release the sales and other musical income of the back of that should fund the next, and so-on. If they don't then maybe you should be doing something different, or put up your own money and accept that it is simply a vanity project.

If I was making 70k a year out of music, I certainly wouldn't need to be crowd-funding my next album.

But as the OP points out you need to get the original money for a musical project from somewhere, and since very little is forthcoming from record labels these days where can it come from? Venture Capitalists? A Bank Loan? Crowd funding is all very well but you need a crowd in the first place to fund from, and unsurprisingly the majority of artists making crowd funding work for them got their crowd as a result of being signed to a "big bad" record label. For all their faults I can't see any other institutions taking over from record labels and taking the same financial risks that they used to. Can you imagine how you would word a business proposal to raise sufficient money to allow you and the rest of your band to take a year or two off work so that you could concentrate full-time on the music, at the same time providing the funding to make an album, a couple single and video to go with them, buying the band onto a couple of big-name tours in a support sort, plus all the other promotional activities needed to generate an audience big enough to make the venture self-funding by the time the original investment ran out? OoI has anyone on here successfully crowd funded an album release? I've been in bands that discussed it but my stance was - what if it failed - there's nothing sadder than a band who can't even raise the cash required to put out a album, and whose failure is there for everyone to see. The Billy No-Mates of the musical world.

The rug in the OP is the sort of crap my family would buy for me because I play "the guitar". Like all similar items it would go straight into the bin.

IMO the important thing about the original Peavey T60 guitar and the T40 bass was not the instruments themselves but how they were made, using copy lathes which allowed both consistency between instruments and for them to be offered at about half the price of their US-made competition. Many features of the design were done to facilitate this method of production. Of course these days with CNC machines which are capable of so much more than what was available in the mid 70s, the concept of the early Peavey instruments is mostly irrelevant. Once you are no longer constrained by what is easy and practical using mid 70 technology you end up with the Retrovibe version which is essentially a P-bass fitted with two MM style humbuckers.

Am I the only one who thinks that Australia's song is going to turn into "It's Alright" by East 17 every time they hit the chorus?

Unfortunately this looks less authentic than the average Eastwood "copy". No photos of the 5-string version. I wonder how they'll fit the extra machine head?

Ignoring the fact that both Steve Albini articles are so old as to be totally out of date (and first now totally irrelevant in todays musical environment), they also conveniently avoid pointing out that people like Steve Albini and Marillion are still able to exist as musicians today because they have built up suitably sized fan base under the old (bad) system. They may not have made a lot of money under this (or so they claim), but at the time they were relatively big fish (pun not intended) in a relatively small pond, they should have had the whole and very extensive weight of their record company publicity machines behind them; and that is what is now allowing them luxury of continuing the exist musically. Similarly for the album in the OP. The crowd-funding model only works because Stuart Hamm has already built up a reputation in the 80s and 90s. I do notice that his costs are relatively modest, although I wonder if he did look at getting any of the work done up front for free in exchange for a share of the profits? Especially that given his reputation he should be have no problem generating sufficient money from this venture. Nowadays when there are somewhere between 40k and 100k new tracks being uploaded to Spotify EVERY SINGLE DAY. How can a new artist ever hope to be noticed in order to be able to build up a large enough fan base to be able to make crowd-funding work for even the most modest of projects? I wonder how many of upon here playing music we have written ourselves would be able to raise the kind of money that Stuart Hamm is looking for through a similar system?

And weren't the original Charvels made from Mighty Mite (or similar) Fender compatible necks and bodies?

I use the XLR outs on my Helix Floor to send a balanced line output to my FRFR cab when I am using it. I always connect to the PA via a separate DI box, either one I have or one at the venue. Saves inadvertently getting phantom power pushed at my device - I know modern devices should be fine with unneeded phantom power, but IME it's better to be safe than sorry.

Certainly in the genres I currently play (post-punk/goth) our audience likes to buy physical media - whether that be CDs records or even cassettes. In Isolation have already sold out the Anthology double CD in less than 12 months. Hurtsfall have made the decision to release each song as we record it, as a stand-alone single on line, which works brilliantly for streaming and playlists and means that every song we consider good enough to be worth recording gets the same attention (unlike an album where unless you are very lucky only the first song or two will pick up any plays). However that works against us when we gig because we only have one single on CD to sell.

I found that even in the days when I wore my bass slightly below my chin, I would hold it at a different angle when I sat, so I would still have to rework stuff that I thought I had mastered once I stood up to play. Instead of a chair I've invested in a desk that can be raised to a suitable height to be comfortable to use when I am stood up, so that I can do programming and recording without the need to keep shifting from standing to sitting.

The rules say the lead vocal must be live and that there can be no more than six performers on stage. However it’s a competition, there is 60 seconds set up time between acts so the less you have that could go wrong the better. That means keep the live stuff to the minimum. THB it’s better now then when everyone had to use the Eurovision orchestra regardless of the recorded arrangement of the song.

For me practicing sitting down is pointless. I'm not Robert Fripp so I don't play sitting down when I gig. I found that anything I learned to play sitting down had to be re-learnt standing up. Therefore all my playing is done standing up. Having said that I rarely do more than 1 hour at a time these days.

Just bear in mind that what you are told the phone and what happens at check-in or at the gate can be entirely different things. Ultimately the final decision rests with the actual flight/check-in crew and what they say goes, irrespective of what the airline might have told you in advance.

Your amp should go down to 4Ω so another cab identical to the one you already have would be the best. For modern cabs - anything made in the last 25 years driver cone size is about the least important factor when it comes to tone (it will affect volume which is why another 4 x 12 cab may be better than a 1 x 15 or 1 x 12). If the bass goes through the PA your choice of cabs has practically no influence on what the audience hears. If your rig is required to project into the audience mixing different driver sizes without using a crossover to separate the frequencies being fed to each cab will lead to an inconsistent sound in the venue - whilst it might sound great to you standing next to it, it will sound completely different out in the audience which is where it really matters.

Or a guitar and an octave pedal.

And it's a lot easier on a short-scale bass as the original was played. Don't try and do it on a 36"scale Overwater like I did!

Are these your own songs or covers? If they are covers and you are having them professionally duplicated (CDRs) or replicated (proper glass-mastered CDs) you will need a MCPS licence whose cost is based on the number of covers and the production run of the CD and will need to be paid for up front. All the CD manufacturing brokers I've used in the past make you sign a form either stating that you own the copyright on the songs or that you have the relevant licences with details before going ahead with making the CDs. All the CDs I have produced have all been originals so I've always been able to tick the section that says I own the copyright, but a quick look at the MCPS web site reveals that 100 CDs with more than 25 minutes of non-original music will cost just over £70 with VAT for the relevant licence. One thing to watch for duplicated CDRs is that their life-span is considerably shorter than glass mastered CDs. Properly looked after about 15 years before they are unplayable if you are lucky, often a lot less. CDs are still relatively easy to make so if you want to sell them your presentation has to look professional. Single wallets are fine for "singles" but an album should really be in a gate-fold wallet or a jewel case - ideally with a 4-page booklet and a printed tray insert and with an eye-catching design. Anything less will look cheap and tacky. Also get your audio properly mastered and edited, a live performance will benefit even more from this. Whatever you decide to charge (personally for an "album" I'd suggest £10) get a Sumup (or similar) card reader. They are cheap to use and a couple of sales that you would have otherwise lost because you couldn't take card payments will more than make up for the up-front cost. I was at a gig on Friday and would have bought a CD from the headlining band but they only accepted cash which I didn't have, and it was chucking it down with rain so trying to find the nearest cash-point was out of the question. Also have someone who can "man" your merch table at all times because the time when your are most likely to be selling stuff is immediately after you have played when the band will be breaking down and packing away the gear. And finally if you just want to make some extra money for the band your are much better off producing a T-shirt where a 200% mark-up is perfectly acceptable and your punters then turn into walking advertisements for your band.

But as I said in my first post they left the protective plastic on the pick guard which makes it look messy. And which IMO looks horrible next to the plain wood of the sides and back. Yuck!

No-one in the entire history of bass guitars ever has. Every piece of wood is different.