jrixn1

Behringer UMC204HD. Plugged it in and it worked - didn't have to do anything.

The reason that reading about watts is a bit confusing is because watts don't correlate exactly with output volume; it depends on so many factors which can't be distilled down to that one metric. It's like asking if a 2L car is faster than a 1.6L. The safe bet is the Rumble 500 which is in the sweetspot of being generally highly recommended, definitely loud enough, not too heavy, and good sounding. Another combo in this category but not on your shortlist is the Markbass CMD 121P. Some people do gig with the smaller Rumble 100 - it's impossible to know until you try it with your particular bands and venues though if it will be loud enough.

@Bobb You already have a variable HPF and plenty of EQ options - I would do a few gigs with that gear first and see how you get on. No need to buy more gear preemptively. Good clip here of John Patitucci talking through how he sets up his amp: https://youtu.be/sNQclaAmyX8?t=85 What style of music is it (which requires grind and drive)?

This one? Can return if doesn't fit. https://www.armstrongmusic.co.uk/pickguards-c62/fender-basses-c111/precision-bass-50s-road-worn-series-c311/armstrong-music-fender-road-worn-series-50s-p-bass-b-w-b-p9947

It's very hard to find tort which actually looks vintage. I have in the past used and recommended Jack/Tiny Tone. E.g. I had this made up for a Yamaha BB (where you must go custom, as they are not sold off-the-shelf): That was £54 a few years ago. Last month, I got a quote for a tort precision pickguard: £77 + the cost of me sending him my existing pickguard as a template. One guy had quite a bad experience: https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/465816-p-bass-pickguards-uk/ . His was not a nice piece of tort - and he couldn't send it back for a refund like most internet shopping, because it's a custom-made item. I guess whether you get a nice piece or not is just luck of the draw. So for me even though I've used Jack before, I'm still undecided even after many weeks about pulling the trigger. You're paying for a premium service when you commission a custom-cut, which is fair enough - but is it worth it for a precision or jazz bass which is such a standard item? Someone like earlpilanz or a number of other eBay or online stores can sell you one for £10-£15 - and it's possibly even the same source of tort. And you can return it if you don't like it. I have an unused printed tort for a jazz bass - I don't think it looks that vintage but send me a private message if you want it (for free):

I've enlarged a bridge hole with a file.

What I do is play the C on the E string. Then it's two medium jumps instead of one large one.

Which mini cmd was it - they make a 1x10", a 1x12", and a 1x15"? No doubt the GS 212 will sound great but having lugged wide, 30+kg cabs around in the past, it gets heavy very quickly and you will never quite fit through doorways - so it's a bit of a pain overall. Two 1x12" cabinets would work a lot better. If your budget is I guess around £600(?) then how about these which just appeared in the marketplace: https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/483291-mark-bass-cmd-121h-traveller-121h/ (no affiliation with seller)?

If you are currently or previously a professional musician etc (there is an eligibility list - I don't know how/if they check...), you can get ACS Pro Series for £50: https://www.helpmusicians.org.uk/get-support/physical-health/protect-your-hearing

See also this thread: https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/480235-big-problem-with-thomann-returns/ It takes a while, which is annoying - but I think everyone does get refunded in the end. My recent return took 20 days from being dropped off at the corner shop to me being refunded - so that would be 24th Sept for you. The DHL tracking seems to be not very accurate, and presumably Thomann don't have any more information than what the DHL tracking tells them. So it's a case of waiting it out. Still, not a good end-to-end experience for the customer.

They serve different purposes. forScore is for displaying pdfs and making set lists. iReal Pro has all your jazz standards, and can transpose them. Btw Piascore is a free alternative to forScore. I have both and prefer Piascore.

Some good advice above. I would add: learn to play double bass (if you don’t already) as it will open up a lot of opportunities.

You have to register as a sole trader if you earn more than £1000 per year, before deductible expenses. Eg a £60 pub gig every three weeks. https://www.gov.uk/set-up-sole-trader

You've confused people here, and perhaps the engineer too, with your unconventional setup. Instead, use a single DI box in the usual fashion to send to FOH. Request a monitor mix containing no bass. Then mix that with the bass from the DI box's 'thru' output yourself, using a two-channel headphone amp e.g. https://www.thomann.de/gb/millenium_hpa_in_ear.htm Put your EQ pedal between the DI box and the headphone amp.

Yes, yes, and yes. This is usually the point where I recommend an RCF 732-A... However... a powered speaker isn't the lightest option. If the lowest weight is the priority, look at Barefaced cabs, GR Bass cabs and combos, and the latest Markbass MB58R combos. (Although none of them is cheap.) A powered speaker also isn't the simplest option. You'll need at least a preamp pedal, and so then you'll probably need a power supply - so now you've got a small pedalboard setup which is an additional thing to be brought and plugged in at each gig. How loud do you need to be at your gigs - what style of music and what type of venues? I think you double on upright, if I recall from your recent posts - do you need separate EQ channels or can you get away with sharing one channel? If minimum weight and maximum simplicity were my criteria (and I didn't want to spend over £1000), the MarkBass MB58R P is only 10.5kg, and around £695. Plug straight in with a cable and that's it - pretty simple. There is no powered speaker at that weight of comparable quality and volume that I know of.

I've had Dunlops and Adagio flats go dull after a couple of years (which is, hmm, I guess... 100 hours of playing?). But I also have some 10-year-old La Bella DTF which are going just fine. Ed Friedland mentions in one of his videos that he has some La Bella from the 1980s or whatever - but then again he also seems to have dozens or hundreds of basses, so I don't know how much playtime those strings have had. I'm assuming it's playing, and not just existing, which would dull them.

GR Bass make active cabs; e.g. here's their 2x10: https://www.grbass.com/portfolio/at-210v-350-800-act/ 10kg is crazy! £1,325 though for the 800W version, and not in stock in the UK as far as I can see.

Barefaced did have such a product: https://barefacedaudio.com/products/fr800, which was a Big Baby 2 with a built-in 800W power amp. It was discontinued in 2019. Very expensive for what you got vs if you'd gone for RCF or QSC (even more so if £1,279 was the 2019 price).

If you mean they are not marketed specifically towards bassists - then I agree. Bassists are a very tiny percentage of their target market. Otherwise, there is nothing functional or feature-wise about powered speakers which means a bassist can't or shouldn't be using them. If anything, with DSP for crossover and speaker protection, they are more featured. Many including me have moved to powered speakers and sold our traditional bass amps and cabs. A bass-specific company would have an uphill battle against a PA company since the latter have decades more experience and an absolutely massive economy of scale advantage in terms of research and production.

I've had one with my double bass with piezo pickup. It is well-built and sounds good, which is the main thing. Personally, I didn't like the feel of the knobs, and I had no use for the boost footswitch, compressor, or brilliance control. Additionally, since I was doubling, I already had a tuner. So for me it wasn't a match, as it's quite large and expensive but I had no need for half of its features.

I've had a previous Headway model, the EDB-1. It's more of a blender e.g. when you have a single instrument which has both a piezo and a mic. It is less useful for switching between two separate instruments, as there is no footswitch. It's large and sort of awkwardly shaped - it won't fit on a small pedal board due to how long it is. The EBS layout is a lot simpler (i.e. better): top row for channel #1, bottow rom for channel #2 - the Headway should have 'ch.1 gain' where 'master' is, and 'ch.2 gain' where 'Mute' is. I find a variable HPF essential for preventing rumbly feedback when loudly amplifying a double bass - the Headway doesn't have one. Design-wise, its dotted-line signal paths and 'Dymo' aesthetic makes it look too much like an engineering project 🤓 BTW have a look at the EBS MicroBass 3, if you haven't already. (I'm not sponsored by EBS, honest!)

It has some upright-specific features, but that doesn't mean you couldn't use it with other instruments. EBS explain it better than I could: https://ebssweden.com/content2/effects/ebs-stanley-clarke-signature-acoustic-preamp/

Modularity? It's a lot easier to swap out an external preamp than a built-in one.