paul_c2

I agree with post #2. Despite the large number of words, it seems very short on the actual detail of what you'll be doing day-to-day. For example, "must be comfortable with solving problems in a practical and healthy manner". I am trying to think of an example of someone who is comfortable solving problems in an unhealthy and impractical way. My dog can tick off half of the skills listed on the advert.

There's plenty of situations where there is no PA, and it not needed. A lot of the above seems to assume its omnipresence (and that it will have a free channel, decent monitors, someone can do the necessary setting of levels, etc etc). If this is not a given, then the "dinosaur" technique of actually having an amplifier makes a lot of sense. If you yourself or someone in the band has/brings/is running the PA then it starts making sense to have bass thru the PA + monitor but its still not really a net saving in complexity or number of bits of kit. If its a situation where the FoH power required is so great that you need the PA, then that's the point at which its worth foregoing the amp. Don't forget, in a gig situation, if it can go wrong, it will. And everything can fail, at the worst time. That's another situation an amp is useful....if the PA blows up, or the monitor (or one of the many wires involved in the signal path....) goes faulty, its there and at least it becomes useful and with a bass, a wire and an amp its fairly little to additionally go wrong.

Better to have brought the spare kit, than it be sitting pretty at home. Better to have the spare kit in the venue rather than in the back of the car. Better to have the spare kit on stage, powered up and ready to go, than sitting in the corner.

Google "gain staging" - it explains what to do when you have several (volume) controls, how to adjust them optimally. The wikipedia article is a good start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gain_stage

Doing CITES declaration properly is not cost effective - I think its about £150 or so. The way to do it seems to be to ignore the regulations and cross your fingers - lots of items make it through anyway. And we all know that it was kinda never the intention of the regulations to affect guitar sales etc anyway...so no real issue here. But if you do that, you'd want to buy it from a place who would refund you if it never made it.

As above, really. I don't have a speaker with a DSP and LED display on the back, but it appears what this can show, is the instantaneous level coming into the speaker. Now whether that "0dB" label is simply an arbitrary level someone has chosen (and the speaker would happily accept a much stronger signal until it distorts/clips) or whether it is the max level beyond it clips, I don't know (I did have a quick look and couldn't find a manual for it online). You did get a manual or instructions with this thing? You have read it, right? And as above, the actual "volume" level - its 2 things really. For an overall basic "how loud am I going to play the concert" you'd use the knob at the back of the speaker to set that - you might do a much smaller venue where its appropriate to set it well below full volume. For fine adjustments of the volume you'd use the main slider on a mixing desk as you go along.

The labels are meaningful only if you know (technically) what a dB actually is - its a measure of ratio or proportion - and that a line level signal is typically something like 1000x stronger (in voltage) than a mic level signal. The inputs have a wide-ranging level control so its able to accept both a mic and line level, just that the knob needs setting as appropriate - set it wrong and you'll either have silence, or huge amounts of distortion/feedback/clipping (it probably clips the signals so while it would sound god-awful, is unlikely to physically damage anything). https://www.thebroadcastbridge.com/content/entry/7578/the-difference-between-line-and-mic-level-audio explains it a bit better. Having said that, for simplicity, you don't really need to worry too much about the actual numbers, just turn the level controls to zero before plugging anything in and gradually turn it up.

LOL I was thinking that too. That's quite a sophisticated speaker, its its own little mixer, amazing what you get for the money you paid. I suspect its all a bit of a gimmick though and a lot of the settings are going to be pretty much unusable. Unfortunately.......it probably has a Chinglish manual too.

What's the deal then? Report to eBay and if enough report it, it gets pulled off? Do Gumtree pull fakes if/when reported too? Or do we just ignore this one and if anyone is looking for a genuine Fender, they do their due diligence as always?

Yes there's a valid debate to be had. Would it help the OP? I don't know.......Let's put it another way: there's 2 ways to learn a musical instrument: 1. Have someone teach you 2. Try to learn yourself. Only with method 1, with a proper teacher, you'll know, because its obviously different when someone is asking/obliging you to do something (or not do something) compared to self-motivation. Or, "you don't know what you don't know". Without actually seeing you and knowing what level or experience or skill you are, I don't know whether exploring beyond "1 finger per fret" or "124" will actually benefit, or just confuse you, or isn't actually relevant anyway. A teacher would be able to identify the key area(s) to focus on, and not worry or mention other aspects which might be irrelevant at this stage. Of course, its another topic entirely, being able to find a decent teacher.......

ETA eventually you'll get into what fingerings are best for what keys, or phrases; and know that some phrases are impossible without a shift of some kind or another. Regarding right hand, its worth knowing that there's lots of variations so initially, no need to worry overly; but eventually you'd learn to know and use all the variations to best effect

Definitely "start off" with one-finger-per-fret BUT make sure you're comfortable and not stretching too much. You might find a comfortable range - for example frets 3 to 12 - where this is good for you. And for someone with smaller hands, that range might be eg 5-14, or whatever. Be aware there is a big "debate" on whether one-finger-per-fret is the right thing or not. My opinion is that it is, but be aware there's the "1-2-4" school of thought, and also other more stretchy fingerings (such as "diatonic" - ie 2st finger plays, then 2nd plays 2 frets up, third plays 4 frets up, little finger plays 5 frets up - this is only really possible much higher up the neck though). And I'd definitely recommend not overstretching. I didn't learn properly, I just did one-finger-per-fret and suffered discomfort until I kinda got it and adapted.

Much respect if you've done New Born live and pulled it off - did the same guy do the piano and guitar? Its kinda technical to achieve the same (and distinctive) sounds on the guitar, due to the effect(s) - pitch shifter/harmoniser of some kind?? I found the sheet music to Hysteria and its coming along nicely, obviously will need a little more practice but I'm not too far off up to tempo already so no worries there. I have a Boss GT-1B so will probably use that; although the amp has switchable gain too.

Where is the play, when they wobble? The pole is a standard size (35mm) so I'd expect the pole to slide in quite a lot, and engage positively. If its wobbling there, then one or other isn't right. If its just the stand being made out of drinking straws and being really cheap/rubbish..... Have you tightened everything up once the speaker is on the stand?

Anyone any experience with (trying to) cover this tune, by Muse? Did you want to do it, then found it never quite worked out in rehearsal so ditched it? Or did you perform it, did it go well or any regrets etc? I guess if not "Hysteria" which is obviously quite a well-known Muse song, then the others to do which everyone will recognise are either Knights of Cydonia or Uprising, I guess? - I've discounted "Plug in Baby" already because its too dependent on the guitar riff.

Apologies for veering slightly off-topic, but it leads to a further (general) enquiry: For a band with n members, how many monitor mixes are needed/wanted? For example, I'd imagine a vocalist might want something of their own; does everyone else need their own or just want their own (and a 2nd general mix is perfectly adequate)? And does this still apply if certain players go ampless? I am just getting into live sound and maybe buying a mixer soon. The temptation is to buy something with a bit of future expansion in mind. And of course these days, one could "go digital" and benefit from more (pre-fader) aux outs, perhaps. (But I like the simplicity of quickly going up to it and turning something down).

Its better than a lot though, as least there was a backing track. I've lost count of the number of guitar review/tutorial/feature youtube videos where its the guitar on its own, ie no context of how it fits around other instruments, etc, when its desparately needed. Heck, even when "That Pedal Show" did a feature on 2 guitars playing together, it was only the last 1/4 of the video at the end where they actually played with a bass/drum backing track.

Aaaah I see. I was wondering, without the bass amp, whether you'd need your own monitor mix (thus, 2 or more pre-fade aux outputs on the desk). Or in other words, on the one hand you've eliminated the bass amp, on the other hand you're tied to a monitor a bit more. I guess if you had the monitor too anyway.....(because everyone has also eliminated their amp) then you're kinda back full circle to where you started from?

Slightly off-topic but out of curiousity....what mixing desk do you use and how many pre-fade aux's does it have?

Personally in your situation I'd see how it goes with the Behringer DI box. They aren't so much about "imparting a tone" as "being reliable". To that end, might be worth buying a more robust one and keeping the Behringer as a backup. I'd not worry too much about amp sims etc unless you really need it (do you need overdrive/distortion?? Or any other effects? What bass is it coming from? What genre of music? etc). Regarding the guitarist, I believe you can buy (excuse me if I don't get the terminology exactly right) a "load box" which takes the full-fat speaker output from a head working hard, and provides a much lower speaker output and/or a DI output suitable for the PA. Might be worth trying one of these together with a mic'd up cabinet anyway, and seeing if the load box can get near to the tone of the amp/cabinet (of course, the speaker itself will create some amount of the 'tone' which the load box might struggle to simulate well.

Forced myself to watch it and here's my conclusions: 1. Don't be "that guy" who brings 34 basses to a gig 2. All basses sound a bit different 3. (Almost) all basses can "do the job" 4. Some, clearly, have such a distinctive tone that its going to suit a very limited kind of music, and stick out like a sore thumb in others 5. Some basses look horrible

I've bought cars "sight unseen" but they've always been fairly cheap cars, so I might expect one or two issues; and if the worst happens I'd lose a relatively low amount. I'd not buy a more expensive car this way. Similarly, I have an instinct not to even buy (or sell) a high-value other item such as a bass or an amp, sight unseen, its just too risky and no amount of IDs or social media friend requests (or other more sensible steps) are the same as actually going to see it. I wouldn't even do it for an established retailer with a returns policy - yes I could return it, but there's still the hassle of paying the money, it arriving, sending it back then awaiting the refund. Why not just invest that time in going to see it before parting with the money and saving the potential hassle?

There's still mileage in buying/selling face-to-face, be that in a shop or having first found something online, going and physically seeing/trying it out before doing the transaction. Especially with things like guitars. Some people just prefer to do trade like this, which is fair enough.

TBH the equipment you already have, together with the stuff you've just ordered, should do you good for a little while yet. Don't get buyer's remorse! Once you have it, and have a few months experience with using it and pros/cons in your particular situation, you'll have a much better idea of what you might need to upgrade/replace/expand. The stuff you have (or have ordered) isn't massively expensive so you could keep it and put it to use elsewhere, I'm sure.

The mixer is outputting an unbalanced signal so if he wanted to use balanced line cables, he would need to also buy another mixer, for example Q802USB, Q1002USB or more expensive. Or a trick could be, to send them straight into DI boxes - but then its more wires and boxes to worry about etc. Personally, I'm not sure if balanced vs unbalanced would make much of a difference.