BigRedX

My second band recorded both our demos (including the one that had CBS records interested in signing us) in the music and drama studios at Trent Poly where both myself and our singer were studying. The "music studio" was a tiny room with a 4-track reel-to-reel machine, 4-channel mixer and a Mini-Moog synth. We failed to get any decent sounds out of the Mini-Moog either because it was broken due to years of abuse at the hands of uninterested students, or because I simply didn't know how to work it compared to the Wasp. In the end I think we managed to coax some white noise percussive sounds out of it that were used on one track. The studio was only available during normal teaching hours which meant that people kept knocking on the door and telling us to keep the noise down. We managed to record and mix two songs in the course of an afternoon session. By contrast the Drama Studio was a massive hall with the recording equipment (1" 8-track reel-to-reel and 16 channel desk) in a raised booth at one end. This time we were able to record over a weekend so there were no problems with noise complaints. However we did have problems getting a suitably hot signal from the drum machine and synthesisers onto tape, and ended up having to put them through amps and mic them up. Unfortunately this meant we didn't have enough amps to play and record live so everything had to be built up one or two instruments at a time. We did the drum machine and bass first, with me standing as far from the amp as my leads would allow and the singer singing at me very quietly so I knew where in the song we were but she wouldn't be picked up by the mics! It took us the whole weekend to record and mix 4 songs that way.

Did that originally have a cover over the bridge?

In fact the whole history of my DIY cassette band could be viewed as an exercise in making do with what you have. For the first 3 years of the band's existence at the end of the 70s our instrumentation was: two acoustic guitars fitted with magnetic pickups, a solid electric balalaika that I had made in woodwork classes at school, two reed organs that were not in tune with each other so only one could be used at a time. Our "drum kit" was a home-made affair composed of anything that made a suitable noise when hit, fitted to stands made out of broomsticks using retort clamps "acquired" from the school chemistry lab. Our singer also played a plastic toy trumpet and sometimes managed to almost get tune from it. The only amplification we owned was a Carlsbro Wasp 10W guitar amp. For recording purposes we were able to borrow a bass guitar, but because none of us had spent much time thinking about bass parts, it was only used on the occasional song. We would also hire a mixer amp, microphone and speaker from our local musical instrument store each time we did any recording. This was the set-up we used to make the first album and most of the second one. By the time we came to record our contribution to "Angst In My Pants" we also had two "proper" electric guitars - a no-name Stratocaster copy and one I had made in the woodwork shop at school whilst I should have been studying for my A Levels. After that we added a Boss Dr Rhythm drum machine, Casio VL-Tone and I bought my first bass guitar and later a Wasp synth out of my student grant money.

Which band were you in? There's a good chance that I have your record!

Yes right at the end of the year. We were the last of the 8 bands to submit our recordings which were done late June/early July when we were all back from university and then sent straight off to Deleted Records for the cutting session (done by Porky). I got my copies of the EP just before Christmas, and about a week after John Peel had played it for the first time. That was the kind of lead time you were looking at for vinyl back then, and since it was our first proper release it seemed to take forever. My next release on vinyl in 2013 took less than 8 weeks from sending off the master recordings to receiving our records and that included over a week's break while we approved the test pressings.

IMO the frets are more likely to wear the strings than the other way around. If I ever leave the strings on my basses for too long when I come to change them I find that they have slight indentations at the most commonly used fret positions. The only time in 50 years of playing guitars and basses have I ever worn any frets to the point of needing replacement, was one position on a guitar. A band I used to be in (playing guitar) had a song that required me to produce a note by hammering onto the string using my plucking hand and then "bow" the string against the fret to produce a sustained note for close to 30 seconds. Given that I played this song roughly 10 times a week (either practicing or gigging) for almost 3 years (that's about 30 hours of wear in total), it's not surprising that after all that time I had produced a significant indentation at that particular fret position to the point that normally fretting the sting no longer produced a consistently clean note. If you are subjecting your instruments to this level of abuse then my all means consider trying a less abrasive string, but otherwise you shouldn't have anything to worry about.

The Midnight Circus (named after The Pretty Things song). Off the back of a glowing review by Johan Kugelberg in Ugly Things magazine of our contribution to "Angst In My Pants" we were asked to produce a retrospective CD for Chicago's Hyped To Death records which is still available even though the cassettes and vinyl are long gone...

Just remember that a lot of bass amps from the 60s and 70s were essentially guitar amps with the name/badge changed. The great thing about modelling amps and effects is that you don't run the risk of damaging a "guitar orientated" one by putting your bass through it. The worst that can happen is that you won't like the sound. I'd run through ALL the amp and effects models before making a decision. I have a Helix and the amp/cab model I use the most is the Roland Jazz Chorus combo. A device that in real life would be totally useless for bass guitar at anything above home practice levels, but for the sound I want with one of my bands works perfectly.

My first experience in a "commercial" recording studio (i.e one we had paid for the privilege of using), was in 1980 at a 4-track facility in some "out-buildings" behind one of the music shops in Leicester. It was a fairly basic set up with a TEAC/Tascam 4-track reel-to-reel machine and an HH 4-bus mixing desk. The only effect available was some delay/reverb produced by running the signal out to a spare stereo reel-to-reel machine. At the time were still doing our home recording in the percussionist's parent's lounge and were used to all the high frequencies being absorbed by the soft furnishings and the fact that we were recording on compact cassette, so we didn't think to compensate for the fact that we were now playing in a far better acoustic environment and being capture by much better microphone (and that the results wouldn't have to go through two further generations of cassette tape before they reached our listeners). Therefore the results were a rather thin and overtly bright sound. That didn't stop John Peel from playing our songs when they were released as part of the "Angst In My Pants" double EP on Deleted Records.

We were only using analog synths live from 1983 until mid-way through 1985, by which time we had upgraded to a Yamaha DX7 and Casio CZ500 each controlled by a Yamaha KX5 keytar. However the idea that analog synths went out of tune a lot was mostly down to poor designed US-made models from the 70s. Once the Japanese had got involved, tuning stability was much improved. We hardly ever had problems with the Roland SH09 or SH101. The only one that generally needed tuning before a gig was the Korg MS20 and that was probably more down to the location of the tuning control than any inherent stability.

In some ways because of the types of music I was interested in playing, I was sometimes ahead of the curve. I bought my first electronic tuner in 1983 when they had just become relatively affordable (although it was still a lot of money at the time compared with something like an effects pedal), because in my synth band we were fed up of spending a minute before we played tuning the keyboards to a test tone off our backing tape (which the whole audience could hear too). In bands before that we tuned to whatever we had that was the most difficult or impossible to change the tuning of. For the DIY cassette band it would be one of our two reed organs. They had slightly different sounds and a different selection of chords, but were also tuned differently so the band's overall tuning would depend on which of the two we needed for the song in question.

If the click has already been recorded, then there should be a track for it that we should be able to see, and we shouldn't have to rely on a room recording of it for a timing reference. As I said there's something not right about the whole situation.

My first band who were part of the DIY cassette scene of the late 70s and early 80s recorded their first 3 "albums" live (one song at a time) directly onto a stereo cassette recorder. The mix was achieved by moving the mics and amps around the room until we were happy with the balance and the overall sound. Then everything would be left as it was until we had finished recording all the songs for that "session". The first album was done in the percussionist's (we didn't have a proper drummer) lounge whilst his parents were away on holiday. The next two were in the singer's garage. If we required more instruments for a song than we could play in one go, we'd record some of them onto an ancient mono reel-to-reel machine, stick the output through a spare channel on one of our amps, and play along with the results. For the last two albums we were able to borrow a "stereo" reel-to-reel tape recorder that allowed us to bounce one channel to the other whilst adding another set of instruments. Generally could only do this process twice before the hiss and hum had built up to unacceptable levels.

When you are actually recording are you playing to the click or the drums? You should be playing to the drums, because when the final mix is being made that is what your listeners will be hearing, not the click. As I said previously, when I have used a click only the drummer hears and plays to it. All the other musicians follow the drummer. That way the click sets the tempo and the band plays to the drummer just as though the click wasn't there. It's also weird that the click appears to fade in and is very long in duration (for a click). The click my band use doesn't look anything like that. Here's a bar and a beat of it to a similar scale: To me there is something very wrong going on with the whole recording process... BTW what genre of music is it? Im wondering if Abelton is the correct choice of DAW for what you are doing?

That's a nice looking instrument let down by Warwick's instance on having their ugly paddle headstock on it.

I see, so you are going to use a stacked pot for the volume and balance. Have you checked that one with the appropriate values (and a centre dent for the balance) is available?

Both my bands play mostly songs that they have written themselves. However we do a few covers: In Isolation play "She's In Parties" which we have very much made our own and more conventional versions of "Alice" and "Just Like Heaven" Hurtsfall currently have "Enola Gay" in our set list which is played relatively straight apart from the Peter Hook style bass solo during the instrumental verse and a cheeky drop of the "Da Da Da" Casio VL-Tone rhythm in the break down.

If you are only going to have 3 pots what are you going to do about the missing control?

Isn't the fact that you have a separate filter for each pickup and then blend between the two an essential part of the Wal sound?

As you'll find, 3rd party 8-string bridges are hard to come by. The two piece solution that Dean and Schecter use probably won't fit on this bass. Schaller used to make an 8-string version of their 3D Bridge which would IMO be the best replacement, but any still in in the retail chain are commanding ridiculously high prices.

Depends on how your recording system is set up. In the days when I had my own full-blown home studio, all recording and monitoring was done via the desk. Since none of the audio was making the complete round trip to the computer and back out again, there were no latency issues to contend with. IME it's simply a question of finding the right thing to play to, and then practice. When working with live drums and a click you need to have something that the drummer is comfortable playing along to. That might be a click or it might be a loop or rhythm pattern with some element of "groove" to it. Most of the drummers I've worked with prefer a regular click so they can create their own "groove" around that. The problem that most drummers have is that when they are exactly on the click they can't hear it because the drums obscure the sound, which is why a regular click with the drums woven around it works best. The rest of the band play to the drums and should never listen to the click unless there are sections without drums that they need timing information for, in which case I would provide a click for those sections only (and I would try both a regular click and one "quantised" to the main drum "groove" to see which produces the best performance). If I'm doing a song with programmed drums, I'll always get at least a basic drum pattern going first before I try recording any other instruments.

Just because the drums were recorded with the drummer listening to the click track does not mean that they will be exactly on the beat unless they have been edited afterwards to make them so. Unless you are planning to lots of editing and moving of song sections as part of the production process it really doesn't matter where the actual notes land so long as all the different instruments are in time with each other. I have a sneaking suspicion that this problem may be down to "listening with your eyes and not with your ears", in which case you probably don't need to worry.

You say the timing isn't "overtly wrong", so would you have noticed anything if you hadn't looked at the waveforms in your DAW? If it sounds fine then it is fine and stop worrying. However if you want to change this and you are playing consistently ahead of the beat you could simply pull the bass part back until you are happy with the synchronisation between the bass and the other instruments. TBH it can't be that far out or surely one of the other band members would have said something by now. And remember that there is a big difference in what works live and what makes a great recording. IMO the is nothing inherently wrong or right about playing to a click track, provided that you use the right type of click and you also know when it's not appropriate. With the Terrortones before we went into the studio we'd try all the songs we intended to record with and without a click. Some benefited from the extra tightness that a constant tempo brought, some needed a variable tempo click so that each section has the right feel, and some just sounded best without. No overall right answer just a matter of picking the right solution for each song. Also the type of music being played/recorded will have an influence on how tight the all the parts should be. And this IMO is where home recording tends to fall down, because we spend too much time being over-analytical about individual aspects of the performance and not look at the whole recoding/arrangement/production, which ultimately is what counts. Having an objective 3rd party (a producer) is always a good idea.

Didn't the Danelectro bass he tried to use for the solo on "My Generation" come fitted with round wound strings? Which is why Entwistle wanted to used it on the solo and why he eventually got Rotosound to produce round wounds commercially.

As you might have guessed I really like the look of that. One word of warning to anyone considering buying this, if any of those white marks on the body are paint chips rather than lighting reflections you'll either have to live with them or have the whole bass refinished. Unfortunately flip paint can't be retouched as there is no guarantee that the new paint will flip in the same way as the existing finish.