Dood

Seems a convoluted way to describe what the control does, compared to the excellent column about Compression in the January edition of Bass Guitar Magazine... /BlatantPlug

An update to my previous post: I have now recorded reviews of the Darkglass Ultra plug-in and Parallax. I don't think the Parallax review is live yet though. Both are excellent plug-ins!!!

Zombie threads, it seems, often have trouble coming to life again, but this one has kicked off its shoes and gone for a paddle in the crazy sea. I love it!

"Bra and Suspenders too sir?" "Multiband compression..."

IMHO, after factory set up, every instrument should be looked at once they have settled wherever they are going to be sold (shop etc). The "final" set up here should be, as FDC suggests a middle ground where the set up is as low as it can be but still allow for no buzzes, rattles and produce a good tone. Everyone then will know the action can go higher to suit them. Conversely, when taking an instrument off the hook whose action is sky high, well, the alarm bells start ringing. Why? well, just one example would be that a much higher action at the bridge could suggest a problem with the finish of the fretwork. Lifting the action higher can hide those poorly installed frets causing rattle like nobody's business. Buyer won't know this until they have got the bass home for a tweak. So, if a bass plays badly off the hook, there's a good chance I will leave it, unless a set up is offered for free. Like FDC says, if I want to buy a new car, there's a difference between just having to move the seat back/ adjust the mirrors, verses the clutch biting point being right at the top of the pedal travel, or the headlights facing the sky.

Hmm! Well, it's funny as it's something that crossed my mind many times over the years, but I never actually got round to doing anything about it (you know I tinker with bass gear!) I guess cost is one thing but maybe there power consumption overhead could be a factor? Nah, actually I don't really buy that. OpAmps are capable of low power consumption, so a simple circuit could be included. That said, I use "non-X" versions of EMG's active pickups. Whatever is going on with them, they definitely bring lower volume playing up in signal - and, they have a really high output which means you can play much more lightly for the same "kick". So, there's a form of "levelling" going on there I suppose.

Thank you for posting - I think that being able to add examples of a particular sound to a thread, well, I find it really helpful - hopefully others do too!

Something strange happened with the image I added to my OP. I've edited it. Who has read my first column? Anyone in the US seen it in Bass Player Magazine too?

Recently there was a thread on BassChat where the OP asked about switching from pick to fingers mid-song. I'd mentioned that I use a technique that I think I must have lifted from guitarist Paul Gilbert. I'd meant to find a picture or video demonstrating my technique. Well, whilst I am preparing lessons for students, I found this video that just happens to include a very similar technique, courtesy of Fretless Monster, Tony Franklin. The "pick hiding" technique is mentioned around 1.20 in the video: Hope it is of some use, as well as the rest of the video!

Over to you @Sibob..

It can do, but it can’t fix every problem. The features are very useful though.

Just like me! I was totally planning to play it safe, but ..well, I seem to suffer from IT G.A.S too lol. Glad I went for it in the end. Agree that it would be overkill for basic tasks. I’ll have to see if I can find the “walkthrough” that showed me that it was possible to keep both drives in. My 27” iMac had a DVD drive - there’s space under the drive to slip the SSD in and the cables I bought were able to feed through the casing to the mother board. Yes, once I did the clone, I formatted the original drive and used it as an “archive” drive to move data I didn’t need all the time, or when speed was less of an issue. Then, I bought a 2Tb external USB hard drive that I set up as a TimeMachine backup for both of the internal drives. Speaking of which, as my iMac is “business critical”, like above, I have a TimeMachine backup covering all of the connected drives. Again, I also use CarbonCopy as a belt and braces “zero downtime” backup. It is scheduled to do a clone of the system SSD every night automatically. Should the internal SSD fail, I can instantly switch to the cloned drive and carry on working like nothing happened. (Meanwhile I can get a new SSD, install and do a clone in the opposite direction.) I appreciate this has nothing to do with the above OP, but others may find it useful, especially for those running a studio etc.

You gotta check out some of @Sibob’s “P bass and flats” recording work. Sublime playing and that toooooone!

Brilliant suggestions already. I had a 2011 iMac (pretty sure it was 2011). I upgraded the 1TB standard hard drive to a 900Gb SSD. A super fast and quality offering (Samsung). I also updated the memory - and despite Apple’s suggestion it would max at 16Gb, a web search confirmed it would take much more and thus 32Gb is the minimum I would go for when it comes to studio work. The machine worked beautifully! interestingly as Ped has said, the upgrade was fairly easy and I was able to leave the existing drive in the iMac as well as installing the SSD. I know how to do that anyway, but there are some really good “walk through” guides online that are reliable. You ask about swapping drives: I used CarbonCopy - and amazing application that allows you to make an exact copy of a disc on to another. Then it’s just a case of setting the new SSD as the drive to boot from in the system settings menu. I’ve forgotten the name of the menu! If you can, eventually, I would back up all your data and format the drive, install everything from fresh with a “new” vanilla OS. Sometimes a machine slowing down is caused by a profile issue, corruption or similar. (Has happened to me). That said, CleanMyMacX is actually rather good and I expect it can do a lot to help. Finally, one last thing to try as well - Create yourself a new user account on the iMac to log in to and see if the machine seems to run quicker. This is related to the above as it was a profile issue that screwed up the running of my iMac.. but the upgrades ended up being the best thing I did for it. Ok, so I eventually sold the machine to go “mobile” with my MacBook Pro.. some years later, I have another iMac on my desk 😂😂😂😂 love it, it’s so ridiculously fun.

That particular example was stunning. Yeah, very nice!!

Hi, thank you! Looks brilliant but it’s Parallel mono rather than Stereo.

Oooh! Very interesting! Thank you!

Not that I need one, but does anyone know of any small form factor units that are stereo? (Other than being forced to buy two monoblocs)

I am pretty sure I asked the same question ages ago but this bass also had a close spacing? I feel that it was a bass I wanted to buy possibly!!

Not massively helpful as my own PJBS is heavily modified, but it does get used in many of my Bass gear reviews of which plenty are on YouTube as well. I’ll get you a playlist link later.

Love this!!! The PJBS is by far my favourite Fender ever (even though I dearly love my 76 P) - Also cemented my love also for Japanese Fenders at the same time. I would dearly love to find a Fretless PJBS to complete my set of Power Jazzes!!

I bought one to store a bass safely at home. It seems to be pretty good but it hasn’t left the house yet to see the rigours of the road. Nice and light and feels like the hard foam would provide protection from bashes and the like should it be regularly used for gigging. Often with cheaper cases I see stitching tearing away or zips breaking, so possibly something to look out for - but at £35, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if it only lasted a year, right?