Dood

Ok, so the idea won’t go away, I just like the added height a scratchplate offers under the strings for slap and the like on my other basses, but obviously a standard P plate won’t fit or even suit this sculpted body shape or work around the existing controls. I’m not great a drawing, and I’m trying to figure out how to design a suitable guard / slap plate for my power jazz bass specials. The plates will either be black or clear and full pickguard thickness. Any ideas on how I might accomplish this? I think something akin to a jazz plate might suit better, or a “slap plate” that doesn’t look daft. I might venture adding a ramp too.

Yes! I was just reading about it as I checked my details!

https://www.andertons.co.uk/plek-machine Anderton's do make a good point about PLEK machines not being able to perform miracles if the instrument isn't great to begin with along with lots of other useful information. It's not going to remove a ski slope from a vintage bolt-on or a banana neck with a shot truss rod.

There are three "guitar shop" PLEK machines based in the UK. Charlie Chandler, Andertons and Peach Guitars have one. I don't know specifically about Andertons, but Charlie is already a well known Luthier and Peach Guitars have in-house techs. There seems to be an assumption that, like D Class amplifers, there's something up with machines assisting "analogue duties"? Peach have a very long video on YT about the processes that also includes manual labour pre and post PLEK set up, which is a useful watch - as the process isn't just a number crunching machine spitting out guitars willy-nilly. The techs ascertain what the end goal is as well as (just) a well playing instrument. I've no affiliation with any of the shops mentioned.

I forgot to mention that I'm reallly pelased to see the D'Addario string tension calculator is back online again as @franzbassist mentions above.

The @D'Addario UK 120-50 are also brilliant for those who like to play in Drop D, but will give a similar feel to a standard set in Drop D, when the 120's are tuned down to Drop C#. If you're lucky, and have a bass with a generally 'tight' feel, these will even do Drop C as well! Love 'em!

No gig, I had a cheap meal for one from Lidl and my cat walked sh*t through the house. So all in all, an upgrade on the last few valentines days.

I know that folk had complained about the original power supply, but I didn't know that Neural had upgraded it, that's brilliant actually. Good on ya Neural! I've been building a few new presets recently that, when done, I'll put up on the Cortex app.

It was so good, it was worth telling twice! 😊

The Gulf Of America describes the space between the giant Wotsit's ears.

The Fender Stage 800 combo, like the Boss Katana is laden with effects.

Wait, mine's a wall wart! Are you all saying you have a different power supply than I? I mean, my QC is an early one from the first batch of consumer models. (It might even be a pre-release model!)

{EDIT: See my reply to WinterMute} I agree, its one of the things I miss about Helix LT - straight in with an IEC, no messing about with extra boxes and nonsense. The included QC power supply I have to admit, doesn't fill me with confidence when I see how other poepole treat their gear. The wire alone appears thin, so, I leave it carefully coiled up and bring the mains to the QC rather than have the QC power wire loose. That said, the QC has done a lot of gigs now and the PSU hasn't failed.. so, maybe it's not so bad after all lol.. I wonder if Neural assumed that users would just opt to get the QC on a pedal board asap and use pedal power instead, the wall wart being a compromise?

I bought the MyVolts pile for not much over £20 new and, I knew it was only going to be used on my desk, so from a personal use point of view, it didn't warrant the extra for something stage-worthy. It's still a better build than the enclosed power supply.

Boss pedals are centre negative, Neural DSP followed suit. iIRC I read that somewhere. Generic non-music gear stuff is more often centre positive. The MyVolts power supplies appear to be non-music gear specific and thus come with polarity changers. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with the power supplies. I’m not sure how many in the various ranges are fully isolated though.

I'm using the supplied PSU 😂 - Frankly, I do agree with the comments that it doesn't appear that roadworthy. I've been meaning to use something decent. The only thing that lets down the MyVolts power supply, is that they don't mention they send a 'polarity changer adaptor' with the unit because the QC uses a centre negative connector and most generic (non-music gear) supplies are centre-positive. The latter making way more sense to me.

Yes, I have the MyVolts premium power supply threaded through my desk for when QC is in my studio space. I bought the premium version, though I think it was cheaper when I ordered, a long whiel back now. Seems absolutely fine, no digital noise or interference and plenty of current on tap.

I've been using DeepDish's GigBook for years now. It's a really simple app and doesn't "do" a lot of features that other apps have, but for dep gigs and the like, it's enough.

This set up is from a recent gig but the IEM stuff is on another stand out of view. Pretty lightweight, easy to move and covers pretty much any gig these days.

Oh, the Ampeg SVT 4 Pro model on the helix is excellent 👍

I’ve ran the stomp, HX and Helix LT. They’re all amazing. The Stomp is brilliant but I ran out of lanes / rows for parallel processing and I prefer more “stomp pedal” buttons for fast access to individual effects. I loved the LT, it had everything I needed at the time, but QC won me over with the form factor, touch screen, user interface and profiling. That said I still use Helix Native on my desktop and I might make up a mini rig with the Stomp.

Just a couple of items 😂 (Honestly this isn’t even half of the kit I’ve owned 😂)

I used to play in a band called, “Don’t Call Me Surely”. Of course we loved ‘Airplane!’ and all things Leslie Nielsen. We used to play “Bitch School” and “Majesty Of Rock” in our set, so I suppose that was Spinal Tap enough. Though our drummer died. Well, I say died, he pulled out of our first gig with just a couple of days warning, which at the time was enough to want to pummel him to death 😂

Hmmm, you’ve just got me thinking. I use a bunch of stuff to make up my custom in-ear mix and, I’ve never really thought about using QC as a glorified headphone amplifier as well as looking after my gig sounds. I think I’m going to try out some routing options and report back. i do know that there’s a chap on YouTube who created an IEM mixer for his Line 6 Helix guitar set up that he uses for worship gigs, so there’s probably an idea or two in there (sorry I forgot the channel name!) So, yes, off the top of my head, you could in theory receive a PA aux in to any of the 4 QC inputs (the main ins and the two fx returns) as they are all 1MΩ or greater. I am thinking that I’d set the master volume control to operate the headphone output alone and set aside one of the processing rows (there are 4) to the job of mixing the aux, instrument and one other feed. Of course this does mean I can EQ and limit what is being sent to my ears. More thoughts on that later. As for power supply, I do t have pedal board power, I bought a spare adapter, but I do have the new EBS power supply here, I’ll see if that can power QC. I think it might be able to!