WILD FROG SHOT

Thanks for the replies. Working on something with @BassAdder60

Hello! I have been out in the wilderness not playing bass for a few years and sold all of my gear as I was primarily playing guitar, or not playing at all (boo!). I'm getting back into the saddle and have just joined a new band on bass so I need to get some of my own gear to play (yay!). My wife and I were in a band together from 2017-2020 where she played bass and I played guitar, so for now I have temporarily been borrowing her Jazz bass, GK MB800 head and Barefaced Compact setup. This is working well in the new band setup as we obviously did our research right when buying the rig a few years back. Now it's looking like she will also be joining a new band, so demand for the gear is increasing with upcoming gigs and rehearsals for both of us. I've decided to buy my own gear to avoid any sharing stresses. I've looked at a lot of different options, both combos and head/cabs and I'm a bit overwhelmed by the sheer amount of choice, so I'm looking for some help. I think my criteria are: Output - somewhere around 500W+. I will be playing in a post-rock band with a reasonably hard hitting drummer and two guitarists with valve amps i.e. one has a Fender Twin Lightweight - about 20 years ago, I used to lug around an Ampeg SS head and 4x10 cab up and down stairs of venues in Bristol. I really don't want to be doing that again! Minimalist with few bells and whistles - I don't really want digital amp simulators or a million different eq options. I just want bass, a tuner, an amp, maybe with an overdrive option, but not a deal breaker. Solid state - again for minimal maintenance, things that can break, weight. Cost - total up to around £1,500, but I realise I might not need to spend that much. Venues - generally small to medium, will usually be playing the local circuit in and around Oxford, for those that know it places like the Jericho Tavern, Bullingdon, maybe upstairs at the O2. These will have a range of monitoring capabilities from 3 primarily vocal monitors to all instruments coming back at you. I've been looking at the standard Fender Rumble 800 combo as I think it ticks all of my boxes, so do I need to look any further? Appreciate it's 400W as is, but could I add another 2x10 cab in future if necessary to make it 800W. Then I've looked at things like Darkglass Microtubes 900 v2 or Mesa Boogie Subway D-800 combined with a Barefaced Compact or Super Twin, but appreciate some of these combinations could end up costing around £2,500 and be complete overkill. Any advice would be much appreciated! (obviously I will go out to music shops and try some things out)

Hi all, After a few years in the musical wilderness, I started writing a few songs in 2017, one of which (Innocents) was conceived via Basschat's very own composition challenge. I moved over to playing guitar, recruited a vocalist, got my wife on bass, poached the drummer from her previous band, and sweet-talked my mate into covering my guitar ineptitude with another guitar. The result is here: https://open.spotify.com/album/5B777B5ymrlXlOCGbiPJCs We recorded this in April last year, released it at the start of this month, and are going back into the studio this weekend to record EP2. Feels great to be learning new things all the time and being back into the swing of things!

Thanks! Hopefully much more to come in the next few months.

Hello, I actually play guitar in this band, with my good lady wife on bass duties. Here is a live video from our 4th Ciphers gig at the Wheatsheaf in Oxford on 6th April 2018:

I'm not going to make the deadline; unfortunately preparing to rehearse with my new band has taken up most of my writing time this month. I have something started, but the post-rock tango is unlikely to be fit for human ears until after the voting has finished.

[quote name='Chiliwailer' timestamp='1497986089' post='3321839'] I was hearing some Mogwai there, nice one [/quote] Thanks! That is always partially the goal!

[quote name='Dad3353' timestamp='1497945496' post='3321436'] Echoes of 'Genesis play Pink Floyd' in there. Good Stuff; will do well. [/quote] Thank you very much! Have been listening to a fair amount of Floyd recently. [quote name='MoonBassAlpha' timestamp='1497957929' post='3321583'] "I managed to turn my already very warm music room into a sauna recording the guitar for this." Gotta love class-A valve amps, eh? [/quote] I was thinking I could go for an acoustic outside in the garden right about now. The sun must have really started to get to me!

I managed to turn my already very warm music room into a sauna recording the guitar for this. [url="https://soundcloud.com/kieran-spriggs/dominion"]https://soundcloud.com/kieran-spriggs/dominion[/url]

Thanks of the votes everyone! Photo for June selected and on its way.

[quote name='Dad3353' timestamp='1494782320' post='3298494'] Excellent; a fine representation of the picture. Hiss..? With my cloth ears and whistling tinnitus, I've no hope of suffering from that..! Sounds good to me (but then again, with what little hearing I have left, it'd have to be [i]monstrous [/i]to trouble me..! ). Good work, well done. [/quote] Thanks! The 'reverse engineering' was a 'fortunate accident' whereby I accidentally stood on the wrong foot switch whilst still recording.

Here is mine: [url="https://soundcloud.com/kieran-spriggs/strata"]https://soundcloud.com/kieran-spriggs/strata[/url] I'd definitely like to improve my production. I always suffer from hiss on my mic'd guitar tracks. I think this is probably from having my amp output quiet and sound interface gain relatively high.

[quote name='SH73' timestamp='1494532736' post='3296837'] No one else composes? [/quote] I'm just adding finishing touches to mine. The photos really help with getting initial ideas moving, which is usually where I have the most trouble.

Does anyone use a TC ditto x4? I would be interested to hear how the MIDI sync works on that.

Great stuff - just listened to all of the tracks. Very high quality indeed. Really enjoyed the use of samples on quite a few of them. Some of you are making some incredible synth sounds that I don't have the first idea how to make!

Lapsed forum member here. First time composition challenge entrant. [url="https://soundcloud.com/kieran-spriggs/innocents"]https://soundcloud.com/kieran-spriggs/innocents[/url] This has been very fun to put together and a motivational kick up the backside. Thanks to MoonBassAlpha for the encouragement!

Thanks both for the suggestions. I think the SoftStep2 looks good, as i think i'd be able to assign the bottom row to software looper operations i.e. record/overdub, play, stop, clear etc, then use the top row for triggering samples. In my simple mind lots of switches in front of me is better than having to change between banks and remember which set of commands is on which bank.

Hello! I'm moving towards playing live with a guitar, looper (either hardware or software), and Ableton/launch key setup. In short, I want to play all guitar loops live over midi drum and sampled synth loops using Ableton live. I have a ditto x2 looper which I am pretty good with and I like how it operates. The problem I have is that it has no quantization, or midi in/out, so i'm totally reliant on getting the timing right with the midi loops once they're triggered. I can achieve this successfully about 3/4 of the time; but it's a risk i'd rather not take. I have looked into quantizing hardware loopers such as the jamman, but this would appear to be just as risky as my current setup as I presumably still have to start and stop the loop/overdub bang on time, which is more of an issue than playing in time. I have started experimenting with the Ableton software looper which seems like it would work, but I don't have a midi foot switch to control it. Most midi foot switches that I've seen seem to require some programming knowledge before they will be properly recognised and function correctly with the software, which i'm not too keen on. I have seen this [url="http://looptimus.com/"]http://looptimus.com/[/url], which I think would do the job, but it's pretty pricey and i'd need to import it from the US. I'm interested to know if anyone else performs in this way and what your setup is, if you have any advice, or recommendations for midi foot switches that work well with Ableton.

Would anyone be interested in buying a Jaguar Baritone Special HH like this one: [url="http://www.soundslive.co.uk/product~name~Fender-Jaguar-Baritone-Special-HH~ID~6774.asp"]http://www.soundslive.co.uk/product~name~Fender-Jaguar-Baritone-Special-HH~ID~6774.asp[/url] Mine doesn't get much use as i'm a crappy guitar player (as in I play badly, rather than prefer to play crappy guitars). Thinking of selling it.