Al Krow

Haha! Just spotted that I appear to have stolen someone else breaking story...

...but it turns out they weren't the brightest bass pedals on the board! Band's stolen equipment found in Cash Generator store Image copyrightTOM MORLEY Image captionDo Nothing are from Nottingham Do Nothing, from Nottingham, appealed for help after gear worth £1,000 was taken from an underground car park. The items were recovered a day later from a Cash Generator store. ...and the seamless link to this forum... "Bass is a massive part of what Do Nothing sound like. If you take that away they wouldn't sound like the same band." Now to check out what these guys sound like when they do have their equipment! ...So I guess this unfortunate experience was more than worth it for the £50,000 of free publicity they've just had? I'd never heard of these guys before (and may have gone to my grave not doing so) had it not been for the local good-for-nothings doing their thing.

You'd have thought, wouldn't you! Here's what Toontrack have to say on the matter: "EZdrummer 2 and its demo are built on an older plugin architecture, so they are not resizable. Superior Drummer 3 has a resizable interface." [Aug 2019] https://www.toontrack.com/forums/topic/is-there-a-limitation-in-ez-drummer-demo-that-prevents-it-from-using-full-screen/ With due respect, that's pants. I'll be going with Ableton Lite which comes free with Focusrite.

Slightly amusing that I'm ending up on this thread very much where I started it! Turns out that the Behringer RD-8 and Roland TR-08 are still the two leading contenders of physical drum machines. (I found the EZ drummer screen interface a bit tiny, if I'm honest, which was off putting). Both are 'tribute' acts to the original Roland TR-808 which was both apparently a commercial failure AND also subsequently became the iconic drum machine! The Behringer is bigger but, on balance, I think that's going to make it less fiddly to use, although compact design is usually something I'm a big fan of The Behringer has sought to keep the analogue circuitry of the original whilst improving on the workflow, and has some useful filtering thrown in e.g. hpf to cut out low end boominess The TR-08 has gone for digital emulation but kept the apparently very annoying quirkiness of the original 808 workflow, including needing to dive into sub menus; my least favourite pastime! They both have song mode which allows chaining of multiple patterns => can easily create sections for verse / chorus, specify repeats, insert fills & endings. (Song mode is not available on the Roland TR-8 or TR-8S, which are intended more as live use kit, rather than for use in the studio). Nice little short comparison review by Andertons. And I agree with their conclusion - one clear winner in my books.

Sympathise a lot with making the transition from 4 to 5! I remember my first gig with a 5er, 18 months or so back, and muscle memory kicking in the middle of a song, great...EXCEPT it was muscle memory for all the 4 string basses I'd ever played up till then, so I was at the right fret but wrong string! Aaargh!! Managed to limp through to the end of that number, but I could feel confidence ebbing. Fortunately no one really notices the bass player too much, right?! Anyway scroll forward, and I'm loving playing my 5s. The only 4 strings left in the herd are one that has 4 octave strings included and an EUB...

Well if you're asking, I use a DG AO900 with my BF SC 😁 Clean, modern, great EQ, with oodles of power and the ability to get dirty. ... but the point is well made. The SC is transparent / uncoloured, with excellent articulation and sound dispersion. It's effectively a blank canvas to add the bass and amp tone that you want.

That does look good! The Fearless F112 is an outstanding cab and drinks power to get the best out of it. The Handbox has a devout BC fan club too. My only hesitation is that the R-400 puts out 200W or so at 8 ohms, so ideally I'd use it with a 4 ohm cab so as not to have to drive it hard, or pair the Fearless with a higher output amp. But I'm guessing you're not finding that an issue? Must admit I would love it if Handbox released a R-750!

Great rig! Those Mesa PH cabs are some of the very best - I loved my PH212. Didn't quite follow the comment about ringing ears, was that due to the IEMs?

Two of the BC'ers most popular filter pedals with small footprints, seem to be the MXR BEF (band pass) and the Fwonkbeta (low pass). The MXR has more tonal variety via it's greater number of adjustable parameters; the Fwonk, to me, had a sweeter tone. The MXR is analogue whereas the Fwonk digital. I'd be happy to recommend either.

Cheers - I'm going to be using Ableton Lite as that comes free with the Focusrite kit I have and seems to be pretty decent. I did check out the trial EZ drummer and I found the interface tiny !! Which was a chore / off-putting. And I'm guessing that having an actual unit will be easier in any live situation than a laptop. I appreciate that the software route is going to be cheaper, but as I'm saving all this money on not getting any bass-gear... 😀

Seems to me that if you're using the footswitch then you need to increase the volume on your clean for balance, and then just use your footswitch and don't jump between switching on the amp and using the footswitch? But agree that's an annoying quirk and seems weird.

As this is a bass-gear only abstinence challenge, I think it could be the year of getting a decent drum machine for me! Very tempted by the Roland TR-08 and / or the Beat Buddy. Although some have said I'm only putting off the inevitable falling of the GAW! Thread derail: any of my fellow abstinence monks already got themselves a decent drum machine that they could recommend?

And there was me thinking that the pups were upside down when in fact that's exactly how they have to be on a left handed bass!

Wot no pedal crutches or stabilisers to stop you falling off? Careful you don't do yourself an injury 😁

Very much what I thought. In other words a bit of a gimmick?

Does the editor require Windows 10 to work, or will it work just fine on earlier versions eg Windows 7?

Spot on. Hard to disagree with ANY of that! (Or certainly at least the bit about Spectors) 😁

PJB gear is very jazzy isn't it? 😁

Clearly have too much time on my hands first thing this morning...I thought it might be useful to put what's ok / not in one place, after our recent debates on the matter. Here's how I've been approaching it (before I crash and burn in Feb 😁) (BASS) GEAR ABSTINENCE CHALLENGE 2020 – RULES OF THE GAME Why? To focus on making the most of the existing gear we have rather than get distracted by the next ‘shiny new thing’. What’s a fail? Any purchase or trade of new or used bass gear. 'Bass gear' = anything in your signal chain that you use to make or augment your bass sound /tone. basses, amps, cabs, pedals, PA gear (if your bass is DI’d into this) What’s ok? Anything to look after or organise your existing gear or wear & tear related. Any non-bass gear. strings, gig bags, leads, pedal boards, PSUs for pedal boards, repairs or identical replacement of existing kit, lessons, software related to existing kit non-bass musical gear (this came under a stricter Tier 2 for the completely hair shirted last year) e.g. music software not related to existing kit, keyboards, guitars, drum machines etc. By concession: unsolicited gifts of gear where you had no say in the matter! When? Any purchases between 1 Jan 2020 to 31 Dec 2020 If I've got that about right and we're all broadly in agreement, I can ask @bassfan to put it at the bottom of his OP for ease of reference.

Nice summary. I've been told that part of the reason my Mesa M6 is such a great amp (hybrid AB as it happens) and is for me, without question, the amp whose tone I like best when paired with any of the cabs I've had, is partly down to it being a very responsive amp. Which very much ties in with what you're saying. But what makes one amp responsive and another less so, is well above my pay grade!

Panic over - thank gawd for that! 😁 That is one seriously sexy chair. And it's a 5er to boot.

Useful thread discussed that very point - and confirms your thinking that the early LM3s were class AB Here's a relevant question: if you could compare the Class AB LM3 with a Class D LM3 (with the rest of the rig unchanged), would you hear any difference? If the answer is "no", then that must go a long way to validating @Phil Starr's very well put hypothesis.