Dood

Picking up on @lonestar's post, for those using IEMs with their bands, just bring along your headphones and wired "pack" - which makes a super way of auditioning basses with the necessary amount of ambient noise rejection to hear what you are doing! I had mine out on my desk ready to put on before I left. (which is what I will do next time, IF I can get there gahhhhh!!!!!) For reference I have @64 Audio IEMs and I am using the Fischer Stick wired headphone pack that can accept mono or stereo signals across 1/4" or XLR input types. Behringer have created a virtual copy of this known as the P2, albeit on a huge budget cut.

"What I really need is a way to promote my videos in an almost veiled way that looks like I am saying something else.. oh, here's one of my videos."

More pictures please! I couldn't make it and I'm feeling really rubbish. Thats the third year in a row I've not been able to hang out at the show and I'm having SERIOUS withdrawal symptoms.

It passed away in 2014, but necromancy is alive and well 🤣

P.S I think it makes sense to have cabinets facing your ears for monitoring!!

Ahhh that was easy, here it is! https://www.pmtonline.co.uk/stagg-gas-4-2-guitar-amplifier-stand

I have two Berg 112's and have, I think it might be a Stagg Amplifer Stand that sits nicely on top of one and angles up as per your picture. If I can find out what it is (as I don't use backline that often these days at all) I will spot a link

My view is to treat it like just another fretted note. Thus, I look at the height between the string and the second or third fret when I am holding down the string against the first fret (on each string) and then compare the height against the non-fretted string on the first and second frets. Or to put it another, to imagine that the nut is a zero fret. On a fretless neck, of course the nut height will be down to the fretboard.

Is why I love this sort of set up! - Especially with a lot of desks having on board effects which includes the kinda things us bassists need. Maybe Eq, Compression and in some cases amp simulations too.

Hey Alex, Yeah, I guess what I am expecting at the price point is a nice little machine to bash about on and be a gigging spare or something like that. Though with that in mind, someone I know who has been playing them a lot has high praise for the higher spec models. I'm also looking forward to seeing if I am going to be pleasantly surprised too. All of the specifications point toward the sort of thing I would look for, so it's looking positive. You know what one of the most impressive things about the bass is for me? It's silly, but a sweepable mid that goes down to 80hz! Finally! At last!! I immediately want a circuit that will do that in my usual basses! Doooood

Right, one incoming, will report back in a few days.

My “Amp” is my Line 6 Helix btw. My settings and levels never change and we don’t have problems with miking up amps in difficult spaces. Oh and less gear for me to carry ha ha!!

Ah yes I should have said! That is what happens in my case. “Everything” goes in to the PA, each band member is able to have their own specific mix of what they hear coming back to their IEMs or floor monitors. The FOH mix is completely independent of each member mix. It has become so good for me now I haven’t used backline with this band since, well, shortly after getting my IEMs. we saved up and bought a decent PA from gig money.

A note on the ZS IEMs. I have small ear canals and found that like all other buds, they keep falling out, even with premium tips. They are pretty good for the money though. Will give you an idea of what can be achieved. There is a world of difference if you spend the same amount of money that you would on an active monitor or bass cabinet on IEMs though! If you get moulded IEMs that really suit you, there's nothing like it. Mine (and mix) sounds like listening to music in a cinema! (Sorry, this will do your GAS no good whatsoever! But I blame @EBS_freak and @tonyf for helping me empty my wallet!)

As i don't use a wireless for my bass, then wireless IEMs would not gain anything, so I go wired and have done solidly with a busy band for over two years now. It meant that I could sink more money in to moulded IEMs rather than coughing up for a top spec wireless system. Like above posts I have a headphone amp - the one that Behringer used as a basis for their P2, known as the Fischer Stick. I use this for gigs when i'm not with my usual band. However, we the band do have a Behringer XR18 mixer, which allows me to use a Behringer P16m, which I love and is a dead easy way to get a stereo mix to my ears that I can adjust whilst I'm playing. All sounds complicated, but when set up, no one has been able to give me a better sounding mix than our own (yet)! Yup, we don't need a monitor mix engineer and now we have everything set up, we don't need a seperate FOH engineer either!

To be fair, they are in Poland, maybe something was lost in translation! - I can confirm that the basses I have reviewed from them have all had "really rounded edges" if we weren't to call it "rolled"! Very nicely finished too without being able to feel the fret edge.

That looks great, especially as this way you can add a little more width if needed as well as hiding the pickups to some extent!

Just a quick beware when using say UPS or DHL via third parties like Parcel2Go. Be careful which set of T&C's take precedent. You might find the the courier covers but the third party doesn't. I'm not saying that this is the case with the mentioned couriers above as I've not looked but I know that some have fallen foul using third parties in the past.

They say that the best teachers are the ones that never stop being students.

Off the shelf basses include Maruszczyk and Sire basses. Some Ibanez basses offer a "premium fretboard treatment" but its is less pronounced than some rolled F/B's I've tried. I've also found that pretty much any premium Fender Japan bass I have played has always had a really excellent fretboard treatment, whereas some, such as the Nate Mendal (Mimsy) bass doesn't (Which is odd as the Steve Harris P bass does have a great feeling "edge") There are of course many more, but they are the ones that came to mind immediately!

Thank you for the information Geoff, that's brilliant.

Off the back of the post about the Sire M2, I started looking at the M series with some sort of interest. Anyone playing these? What do you think? Maybe I need to review some!

First of all make sure the bass is in active mode, or the three band will do nothing. - in massive mode not only will the treble control do nothing, neither will the mid and bass - you won't hear them change. The master tone control works in both active or passive mode and when advanced in an anti-clockwise direction will progressively roll the top end treble frequencies off. If you are hearing no difference whatsoever, then there's a few answers - one being that your amp you are listening through cant reproduce those frequencies clearly enough to register a difference - I can only think of one bass to date that through a cheap amplifier it wasn't possible to hear the differences clearly though. Other reasons why you may struggle - If the bass is in active mode and you have the treble turned down, you might not hear a difference in the master tone. Vice versa also applies. If you have the master tone all the way down the the treble control might not make any difference either. Here's the starting point: Bass in active mode. set the active EQ so that each control is in the centre of its travel. (You may find that these basses have a 'click' when the knob passes through that position to tell you where it is.) The master tone, start all the way clockwise - not in the central position - it's a passive tone control (which will need explaining if you are unfamiliar with the terms active and passive.) Then, from that position, roll the master tone all the way off whilst playing. Go back to fully clockwise then roll the treble control off (anti-clockwise too) whilst playing. If you still cant hear a single difference then you either have something seriously up with the bass, an amplifier that isn't up to the job.. or, in the case of one of my students, it just so happened that an illness as a child meant he had no top end to his hearing - he didn't know what a bass should sound like!

I had a GVB36 for ages and mine was rock solid. Great bass - you'll know it if you see it in the wilds as i have three EMG's installed in it. Yum!

Yup and its also possible to buy (Bill knows this already) external calibrated reference microphones for smart phones too. Selecting an app that allows insertion of the calibration file included with the device results in a super little set up that is, going by test reviews, accurate enough for this application.