escholl

how many tracks do you need recording at once?

[quote name='Jamesemt' post='456050' date='Apr 7 2009, 07:35 AM']Cheers - I'm currently using a zoom h2. Got a £500 budget What about a presonus firestudio?[/quote] 500 pound budget, definitely go for a MOTU 8Pre. 8 inputs should be enough unless you've got an unusually large band -- we've gotten some good results using one and recording live at rehearsal, there's some clips over in another thread in the recording section. The MOTU as ADAT i/o as well, with the option to add other MOTUs in as converters should you ever need more inputs.

1200 watts, 4 ohms, I think.

[quote name='AM1' post='455403' date='Apr 6 2009, 01:28 PM']You can take several approaches - one is to learn all the theory/harmony and that's the mathematical approach, i.e. using 3ths and 5ths etc. Another approach is to just use your ears and jam til you find basslines that fit and playing with chromatic/various scales up and down the bass will help you to understand which notes/scales work over which chords. The name of a chord i.e. Cm7 indicates a start point but only a start point. A chord does not become a chord until you decide what "root" note to play. As long as you hit the right notes to give emphasis to the chords harmonically when chords change, you can get away with a lot inbetween.[/quote] +1 as i'm not really up on music theory, i tend to use the "by ear" approach...but then again my basslines also aren't anything special ^_^

[quote name='cheddatom' post='455135' date='Apr 6 2009, 08:47 AM']I don't think it will feed any voltage down your input jack lead.[/quote] actually, i think that's what it does, doesn't it? if you connect EBS pedals via a TRS cable, it will power the pedals remotely. i think.

first gig last night for the band at the white hart in haverhill, it was also the first real gig the drummer and i had ever done. we couldn't turn up that loud, but the drummer is very loud...so i spent the night hearing a few bits of vocals and guitar and a LOT of snare drum ^_^ apparently it sounded balanced out front though so that's really all that matters. luckily we're pretty well rehearsed though so didn't have any problems at all, the whole thing went down really well -- i can't really imagine how it could have gone better. everyone there seemed to agree, so i suppose that's good ^_^ i hadn't planned on it but i ended up letting the bassist of the other band use my amp -- he didn't ask to, but he'd showed up with a fairly little 30W amp, which probably would have worked at the volumes we were playing at, but i was just thinking "no, i can't have that....i'll feel bad having my massive rig (which was a bit overkill...but i didn't know what to bring! >.<) and letting him have to play though that little one." Besides, the other band was really nice, our guitarist let them use his amp as well -- the other bassist had some really good lines, and have i mentioned how AMAZING my rig was sounding all night seriously could not be happier.

Recorded the instruments live at a rehearsal one day, just a quick thing, recorded the vocals separately last week. In fact, it was the only the second time we'd ever played "Translations" together, believe it or not. ^_^ Been working on these here and there, still in progress. The tracks are up on our myspace, at [url="http://www.myspace.com/aeternaofficial"]http://www.myspace.com/aeternaofficial[/url] Would love to know what you guys think

very nice! the L2000 is one of the few basses i actually GAS for.

[quote name='Crazykiwi' post='454432' date='Apr 5 2009, 12:00 AM']You can define for yourself what constitutes art of course. But I think anyone who diamond encrusted and pickled their SX and then went on to ask for a few million quid because it was art would find themselves coming up a bit short on covering their costs of production. You can certainly turn a bass into a piece of art but so long as a bass is originally created with the primary purpose of being played then its not a piece of art, its a piece of craft. And if its created as a piece of art in the first place and as a piece of craft in the second then I'd suggest its value would be highly undermined to a bass player. Thats why I don't find the justification of high price tags on basses because they're pieces of "art" at all plausible. I think such claims by the makers are pretentious, to say the least, however we've all seen examples of accessibly priced basses whose makers have had artistic intentions and these instruments tend to blur the boundary a little more authentically (for me at least). But back on topic I think the points made about cars being plentiful and costing money to own is probably as good an explanation I can think of myself. Certainly if someone is looking to buy a used car there is a tremendous variety and range of conditions to choose from and I guess that is what drives the depreciation. And the point about the role of craftsmanship in adding value shouldn't be underestimated as well. Cars such as the one I own are very much a product of a manufacturing process rather than craftsmanship and are priced to take advantage of scales of economy and highly sophisticated, automated manufacturing process that gets cheaper to fund the more cars it produces.[/quote] Sorry, i guess i should have said "craft" then. I consider good luthiers to be artists in their own right, maybe craftsmen is a better word. But looking at some basses, such as the Bas Extravaganza stuff, I would say it probably bridges the gap. But if you define art as something which has no practical purpose other than to be art, then i suppose you've got a point. I think we pretty much agree on the same point anyways ^_^

if sound and reliability are what matters, and not price, then why not just get the original, instead of the cheap copy? fwiw, i've had the programmable version of the original for over a year now, so far no issues -- i suppose it is an industry standard for a reason though. never tried the behringer however, so couldn't comment. not too keen on some of their stuff....but some of it is ok. (edit for spelling )

to be honest, i can't say i'm impressed. looks like a mix of high-spec engineering and half-a**ed engineering.

just came across this, i like it quite a bit! your sense of humor alone makes this thread a good read >.< can't wait to see how the bass turns out! ^_^

[quote name='JPAC' post='453556' date='Apr 3 2009, 05:47 PM']Update. As of today I'm still without my bass. Of the six weeks of ownership, three weeks it has been away for repair. Called Yamaha today and they said it hadn't been 'assessed' because staff had been off sick, despite putting it on the urgent list. Called the shop, they won't do anything until they hear from Yamaha. Called Consumer Direct and they said write a letter asking for a refund as the reasonable amount of time for repair had expired. I never agreed to a repair in the first place as I wanted a direct replacement. Not a happy (Easter) bunny. [/quote] That's unfortunate, I quite like yamaha basses so i'm sorry to hear you've had a issue with one Really though, it's the fault of the shop, they should have replaced it for you outright. Hope it works out for you.

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' post='453696' date='Apr 3 2009, 09:26 PM']Alex is closer to the fact of the matter. In reality there's no such thing as an 8 ohm or 4 ohm or 16 ohm cab, as every cab's impedance varies with frequency. An average 8 ohm cab actually measures anywhere from 5 to 50 ohms, depending on frequency. SS Amps are designed to operate into the minimum load that they might see, valves into the maximum load that they might see. So a 6 ohm rated cab would pose no problems for an 8 ohm transformer tap. It probably wouldn't bother a 4 ohm tap either, though.[/quote] See the next line of my post where it says "well, ideally." And where i mention that very fact about speaker impedance ^_^ To be honest, odds are the impedance of the transformer isn't perfectly uniform across the frequency range either.

Valve amps shouldn't really be run at too high or too low of an impedance -- for maximum power transfer, and to minimize other problems, the impedance should match exactly. Well, ideally. The tolerance is pretty generous -- amps with 8 ohm outputs, i've run 4 ohm and 16 ohms cabs on, without issues. And as Alex mentions, it's not like the impedance of the drivers remains constant anyways, and the 8 ohm out should be fine.

[quote name='alexclaber' post='453418' date='Apr 3 2009, 03:16 PM']Cars wear out, basses don't. Alex[/quote] Agreed. Also, a car is not, generally, a piece of art in its own right. A bass, an expensive bass, can be -- thus it's more. Think about if you bought the car equivalent of an expensive bass, it would probably set you back over 250K...comparing a very high end bass to a cheapish car is not very fair. Compare the 3K car to my bass, then the scale is about right. But I get the OP's point.

i find regular heatshrink tubing works perfect for insulating the ends, stays on and doesn't leave a sticky mess like tape does when you remove it.

[quote name='Absolute-beginner' post='452931' date='Apr 3 2009, 07:41 AM']ouch...headache![/quote] :lol:

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' post='452008' date='Apr 1 2009, 10:32 PM']Definitely customer service; the only reason for so doing is to minimize costs. No engineer would ever try to get away with that statement.[/quote] Yea, i was thinking the same thing there. Glad it wasn't just me wondering why they gave the voice coil size and magnet weight ^_^

how low of a budget are we talking here? [url="http://www.dv247.com/invt/20338/"]This[/url] should cover the preamp needs, about the best cheap preamp there is. No idea what mic to suggest though without knowing a price range. Financially, and from a tone point of view, it may actually make more sense to get a new preamp for the piezo element -- although that's up to you. But if you're playing at any sort of volume, then it may be tricky to get a good tone out of a cheap mic live, or even at all.

i was having a bad day saturday and may have gotten in a bit of a tussle with the guitarist over a...well, over a chair. i was a bit on edge that day. the only thing injured, i think, was his pride...and his foot. and my hand. but that's what he gets for not liking a single f**king song or idea i ever write, ever, and for spending an hour getting me to sing on the last EP (i don't normally sing - i'm not very good ^_^) only to decide behind my back that it wasn't good enough and that he could do better, and for constantly shoving the bass down on the mix, and for not realizing that no, he doesn't actually get to take up the whole mix from 80Hz to 10kHz, and that the bass control on HIS eq is there for a reason -- turn it down! Also, believe it or not, not EVERY thing that goes wrong is the drummer's fault -- and being unnecessarily harsh on the drummer is not going to solve anything! and for once, don't put your psycho-b***h of an ex girlfriend who only ever hurts you ahead of the band, and for once get off your *** and actually do something, and for just bl**dy once don't decide to listen to other people and start thinking that you're just going to ditch the band! he's lucky i love him, or else i think i'd deck him just about every practice. rant over. how's that for band politics? ^_^

[quote name='niceguyhomer' post='450475' date='Mar 31 2009, 01:13 PM']Yeh - but it must have its ups and downs. [i]Groans and beheads himself.. [/i][/quote] palm-->face

[quote name='alexclaber' post='450415' date='Mar 31 2009, 12:00 PM']That's exactly what the baffle step is. With the speaker on the floor below the baffle step it radiates into half space and above the baffle step it radiates into quarter space. Linearly double the size of the baffle (i.e. use four cabs) and you lower the frequency where you shift from half space to quarter space radiation by an octave. Alex[/quote] ah, ok, it makes sense now. thanks! edit: i just read another thread where you link [url="http://barefacedbass.com/technical.html"]here[/url] on your own site in the technical bit, and have realized that the acoustic coupling bit is exactly what i was thinking of! doh! at least we're on the same...erm...wavelength but is the benefit of 4 cabs still only 6dB over one cab?

[quote name='tombboy' post='450131' date='Mar 30 2009, 11:53 PM']all recorded on the one mic...We only had an hour too so not a lot of time to set the room up.[/quote] haha i hadn't realized...in that case, pretty good!

[quote name='alexclaber' post='450401' date='Mar 31 2009, 11:40 AM']It is really complicated, I've spent years puzzling over this and still so much to learn. The benefit from doubling the number of cabs is 3dB wattage sensitivity or 6dB voltage sensitivity (for parallel wiring) or 6dB maximum output (3dB sensitivity plus doubled power handling). I believe the reason for this improvement in sensitivity (and thus efficiency) is due to increasing the radiation impedance by increasing the radiating area - I'm not 100% sure on this though. There is a change due to the space they're firing into but it's only within a small frequency range - basically it's like lowering the baffle step frequency slightly (that's the frequency where output shifts from just forwards (180 deg) to wrapping around the whole cab. If you go from one cab to four in this arrangement you'll lower the baffle step frequency by an octave, in this case from ~220Hz down to ~110Hz. If you stack two cabs vertically there won't be much change in baffle step. [url="http://www.t-linespeakers.org/tech/bafflestep/index.html"]http://www.t-linespeakers.org/tech/bafflestep/index.html[/url] Alex[/quote] The first part makes sense, that would be my guess too. The second part, I wasn't referring to the baffle step, but rather the "space" the speaker is in as defined by the acoustic boundaries, or something like that. I've read about it in a few books recently, although I can't really explain it without an image, and i can't find an image on the net. fail. but it's the same thing as when speakers are defined as being measured in either half space or free air (whole space), and why some studio monitors have adjustments for half, quarter, or eighth space. this probably isn't explaining it any better -- but it's basically what causes the acoustic coupling effect you were talking about, i think.