paul_c2

At £90 you could buy one, see what its like, then buy 5 more?

What kind of band, what personnel, what is the size of "tiny spaces" venues? I ummm'd and aaaaah'd for a long time looking at the TX208 (partly because of comments on this forum) but bought one last week and used it for a monitor at a gig at the weekend. It was brilliant - a really nice combination of sound quality, power and compactness (and price). Obviously, be aware of its limitations but I'd recommend one dependin on your actual circumstances as asked above.

I can't say I've ever come across that specific issue - logic suggests it would occur the other way round (lower the action, and dead spots occur). So I'll do the same as you, await others' replies!!! Hope you get it sorted though. Just one final thought....how old are the strings?

So you had it professionally set up but you didn't like it, so decided to raise the action, but now it has dead spots? Something isn't quite right here. Nevertheless, there's 2 aspects (well, more if you include weirdness like its twisted, or a bass with 2 truss rods but they're not set properly with respect to each other etc) to the "straightness" of a neck. AND.....the conventional proper setup is for a neck to be ever-so-slightly curved upwards. The two aspects are the neck itself and the frets. The way to check this (the neck) yourself is to hold the bass up to your eyeline with the bridge nearest, then look along the neck and you can see the curve (or not). To check the frets, fret a string at eg 1st fret and 20th (or whatever your last) fret is, then measure the clearance at the other frets (obviously if its an even curve then it will be in the middle). If its certain notes but not others, it sounds like either a twisted neck or uneven frets. (If the action has been set high - if the action were set low, then it could simply be you've reached the 'limit' of how low it can go, due to the small/acceptable imperfections which are bound to occur).

How did you determine the neck is straight?

I have a metronome app on my phone, it has tap tempo. Also, I have (in the past) used a piece of software which would identify the tempo of a song opened on it eg WAV or MP3.

Its a bit like kids playing guitar in music shops on Saturday morning. If you don't own a guitar, then that prospect is filled with excitement and wonder. If you do own a guitar (and amp etc), then you can sit down and play it at any time at home, right? So the mystique is gone. Therefore, anyone who asks to play something at a gig, almost by definition, can't.

Good info! Given the results, I wonder what a pragmatic test of a DI box should be then? Put 5 into a rucksack, shake them thoroughly, then leave it outdoors for a month, retrieve the one at the bottom and see if it still works? (That's not too dissimilar to the situation I'm in - my handy little bag of extra wires, pedals, etc lives in the car; the basics of one 1/4" jack lead and a kettle lead live in the pouch of the bass soft case, which comes into the house in between rehearsals/gigs).

Do you measure the success of a band on the quantity, or the quality, of its followers?

(Now that Saffron's gone) the only reason I watch Strictly Come Dancing is for the music. Its amazing to see such professionalism and competence, even more so when you consider the pieces are arranged thru the week, then they have just one day of intensive rehearsal, then put on the show. I am guessing they have some decent resources behind the main musicians though - I know they have quite a big "address book" of eg woodwind players and other session musicians to call upon. Past highlights include "Naughty Girl"* (Beyonce), "Scooby Doo Theme Tune", "When Doves Cry" *This features Kimberley Walsh, in not much clothing, doing a very sexy dance. It is NSFW. It is also probably NSFH either, if your wife/girlfriend catches you watching it or goes through your browser history. No amount of saying "but its just for the music" will convince her. Trust me on that one.

That's interesting, it reminds me of a track I created to demonstrate that its entirely possible to have a bassline which never plays on the first beat of the bar (except....the very last note). Also, its an illustration of how much "phaser" effect you can apply to a guitar, so much so that it completely smothers the 16th notes out:

ETA a sneak preview video is now on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ChesterBigBand/

One again (we played there last Christmas too) Chester Big Band played in the foyer at Chester Storyhouse. It was very well received and the audience said we were tight! Of course, we know the little mistakes that occurred - they always do live, though - but generally it was good quality and fun music. We actually played it very safe with the setlist, and also we only played for an hour, which makes it easier since we can pick the best tunes. For interest, here is the setlist: Rock Around the Clock In the Mood Santa Baby A Little Blues Please Fever Blue Moon Big Bad Handsome Man The Christmas Song I loves you Porgy Birdland Valerie Ain't No Other Man Tequila Little Brown Jug Blue Suede Shoes (Reserve) Favourites of mine are "Aint no other man" - our wonderful singer Sam really gets into this one. And Birdland is always a lot of fun on the bass (Jazz bass of course....back pickup and turn it up a bit). Fever went really well with the bass+singer+fingerclicking at the start and end, gave me goosebumps! Needs a little bit of concentration to do it perfect, especially on fretless. The high-quality pics and video will take a little while to be made available, meantime here is a still captured from the 3rd camera which was videoing next to me.

Well no, they have an effect (eg distortion) and the relevant circuitry to output a balanced signal via an XLR socket. Thus, saving the need for another box (a DI box). Do you mean the amp's built in overdrive, which is switched by a pedal (which is a simple switch)? A lot of amps have a line out (mostly, but not always, as balanced XLR) after the pre-amp so that the overdrive tone is outputted to it. Also, you'd expect an effects send/return to be after this too - you could put a DI box into that, if your amp didn't have a suitable line output.

Personally for me there is a massive advantage in the simplicity of having no effects (not even a tuner pedal) in the chain, it means no 9V power supply (with a tiny wire and connector) or batteries to go flat. If you have the right bass, you can get a variety of usable sounds out of it (eg the "Jazz bass" twang by digging in, similar to distortion enhanced by setting up the amp appropriately). I've used in the past: distortion (for one song - BOSS Mega Distortion MD2 I think is the code), graphic eq (as a boost pedal for a solo), bass chorus (whatever the BOSS version is), compression. On a bass, IMHO, effects are not really necessary, but sometimes add a little sparkle or interest to the tone. For guitar, effects are much more appropriate in many circumstances but that's a different story.

I'm not sure this is a tongue-in-cheek post or not! On records, yes; and in live band situations where you want a consistent sound/noise/volume level, it certainly helps achieve that. But ALL genres (I'm not sure how you are qualified on this either).....no. Classical music would be a disaster if all the instruments went through compressors. And jazz - some bits of it - would be similarly spoilt. You produce a balanced sound by 1) knowing how to play your instrument 2) listening to others as you're playing and adapting to achieve the balance required. Not by electronics. Live music and records/broadcasting/YouTube etc are vastly different, the range of dynamics simply doesn't come across properly in a recording/etc situation. It could be recorded, and sometimes is, but it plays havoc with listeners and needs high quality (low noise) equipment to listen to it. Live, with an attentive audience, is a different kettle of fish.

Bit of an update - on Wednesday the Behringer B205 blew up (well, not spectacularly, but it has stopped outputting sound out of its speaker - it still mixes and sends it out the XLR though). So I'm progressing a warranty return/refund and I've bought the following: Behringer X1222USB (6 XLR inputs and a few more 1/4" jack ones too) Alto TX208 Storage space and money (fortunately not my own money) are limited, so I didn't 'stretch' to a bigger mixer, but with the foreseeable gigs coming up and the additional requirement to put the piano/keyboard through the PA, it will do the job. Now I have the 208 in the flesh, its a really handy size and can be pointed upwards as a wedge too. I know the X1222USB only has 1 pre-fade out (but has an additional post-fade too, if needs be) but with the limited amount of stuff going through, it should be okay.

I don't use a compressor in the signal chain - mine is very simple, bass --> amp. (BUT read on....) EVERYTHING is, or can be, a compressor. The pre-amp, the power amp, the speaker cone, the PA system, etc etc. You'd need to be fully aware of how loud/quiet you're playing (as in, how light or hard you're hitting the strings etc) and to control it, to avoid the unwanted compression that any piece of equipment might impose, if you wanted to avoid it. You probably want to avoid the PA's active speakers imposing it, for example....but that's someone else's job. Also, an important element of gain/overdrive/distortion IS the compression which is imposed onto the signal too - in a deliberate helpful way. Personally for me, the music I play has massively wide dynamics involved, so I need to be able to have that all come through so compression is not desired. But on a tiny fraction of occasions where I've wanted it, I use a BOSS CS3. Since I don't really use it, I can't really recommend it over others, especially since I haven't tried others (except some distortion/overdrive stuff).

One thing that helps massively is dominance - if you're the only forum/website on a particular subject area (and region) then people are going to naturally gravitate towards that one (network effect). The second thing which really helps is the admin/moderation team being long-standing and thus quite experienced - too often I've seen sites where mods come and go; and the new ones either don't know technically how to do things, or the 'power' goes to their head and it goes all a bit wonky, then they eventually make a fatal mistake or burn out and go crazy.

Yeah you can have multiple admins. I'd have thought the bare minimum criteria for being an admin on a band's page would be that, if you ever chose to stand down or leave the band, you'd do the necessary to hand over the admin to another.

Tom Tom Club - Genius of Love

Christmas is always a busy period. There's a 3 week period everything gets squished into. All the bands and groups play, social groups meet, etc etc. Too early if its before December, too late if its just a few days before. If you think your organisation is complicated, try doing it with a group of 25!

This is a classic case of what I call "volume wars". (I know its not the real 'volume wars' which occurred in the music industry in the 1980s). HOWEVER it appears as if you fell into the trap, by turning up yourselves. The correct thing to do is to recognise it and actually all turn down, to the point you can hear each other, then use the headroom in between that volume and your max achievable volume to either make the music dynamic; or to make it louder (more spl) but know that you're making it deliberately louder for the sake of it. This can't simply be something which is discovered at a venue, although some venues are better than others at damping down volume or producing annoying peaks at certain frequencies, etc. If the drummer - or any band member - isn't aware of this, then they need to learn (or be replaced). Drummers have a disadvantage that the playing of their instrument results in an inevitable acoustic volume; while electric bass/guitar can adjust the acoustic volume down and down.

Geddy Lee