lemmywinks

Yeah I saw it and am aware of what the outputs do, that doesn't sort anything for me really as we have a ton of different XLR cables for varying sizes of stage, unless I got a short special cable and extended it with standard XLRs. Might as well just use a dongle adapter in that case which is the least inelegant solution, still a bit of a hack though especially if you need to use the effects send to output to your amp/monitor. It's not something I need either but the thing that interests me is the ability to model different preamps from across the entire equipment spectrum. Like there's probably some amazing models of mic preamps from high end desks that would sound better (to me anyway) than any bass specific preamp pedal you could pay £200+ for, I don't really need any of the bells and whistles or effects tbh although I can see how they come in handy.

I have a spare bass, DI preamp and cable lying next to my setup, tbh it's more about covering every eventuality and making sure any problems are sortable with minimal fuss. Having to trek across the stage trying to plug you DI into a mixer would be something I wouldn't want to do. Not a major concern, just one I would like to bypass easily should it happen. As it stands if my bass monitor failed then I would still be FoH, doing things your way I wouldn't with no quick fix (ie 5 seconds) remedy and that's all I need to know. I've also never had an amp failure, however I know people who have and it's a PITA. Like I said you gig how you like and use what equipment you want, it's honestly no concern of mine.

Not really, it's nothing to with regions or anything, just the type of gigs you're doing. If you're playing pubs and using your backline as FoH then you're not going to be using a DI in any form. If you have decent PA (either owned, provided or hired) then you will 100%, if it's a venue PA with an engineer then they will usually hand you a DI box as they'll probably have a varied experience of amp DIs and want something they know will work as expected. If you're going through a decent PA on every gig however then you're more likely to buy something like a Helix. I think Line 6 omit the XLR because they know can get away with it, because people will work around it same as they work around the lack of the headphone port on Apple phones and see it as an acceptable compromise. Again - form over function. Not for me, YMMV and you can spend your money how you like, as can I. Regarding the amp failing thing (wildly off topic but a quick point) - if it failed mid song then you would definitely have an issue. That's why it's generally a better idea to take the signal before your amp/monitor, so you don't look like a prat playing a silent bass while everybody else on stage stares at you! The engineer can put your bass through the monitors and nobody has to pause between songs to plug jacks into a mixing desk, the audience would never notice. Again if you're playing for beer at the Dog and Duck then it's less of an issue than if it's at someone's wedding and they're paying you a decent wedge for it.

🤣 I'm in Lancashire, hardly London! We own our own PA, I currently DI off my Fishman pedal and am only looking at Helix units because of the preamp models available (and the ease/cost of adding any required effects for future song picks) and the fact I could replicate the feature set of my current preamp pedal while keeping it to a single piece of equipment. I never DI out from amps (the FRFR I use actually has a very nice DI out though, XLR would you believe!) as if the amp fails you have nothing going to FoH which would spell disaster at someone's wedding or whatever. I could count the amount of times I have used an amp's DI on one hand. That's how I gig and I don't think it's as uncommon as you think, I always kind of assumed most working bands gigged like this. Most of the ones I know who regularly play functions etc do.

The Fishman was £230+ at the time of purchase, I think they are under £200 now. I don't think a great whack of that went into the DI portion though as it's a fully featured preamp box which just happens to have a nice DI on it, better than the MXR M80 DI and definitely better than a cheapo DI box. It isn't "focusing on being an excellent DI" in any way shape or form - it's a tuner, compressor, eq with semi parametric mids, notch filter, switchable signal booster, HPF, brilliance control, impedance switch....... it doesn't really focus on anything. Have a look at it: https://www.fishman.com/products/series/platinum/platinum-pro-eq-analog-preamp/ I'm not sure what you mean when you say the Helix won't have a decent DI signal, it would be exactly the same as the 1/4" output (which is a DI) only with the wires soldered to a different type of connector (the industry standard one that everybody uses). If that signal wouldn't be good enough there would be no point using the Helix at all, which we know to be false. My bass setup comprises of a Gator bass gigbag with all my kit in and an FRFR cab, literally I go bass>Fishman>FRFR which is why I don't want to be adding equipment or carrying dongles. I don't carry anything else and I can get set up ready to play in a couple of minutes, pretty much exactly the same as our dep guitarist who just takes a guitar gigbag and his Helix floor unit to gigs. There seems to be a bit of confusion here, I'm not saying it's the end of the world - just a silly omission. Like I said form over function, unfortunately sacrificing connectivity and buying dongles in order to make products smaller seems to be a trend people put up with nowadays, personally I don't like it but each to their own. Your equipment and preferences might be different to mine, I need an XLR DI out full stop so the lack of this puts me right off this particular unit. That's all I was trying to say, I have no idea why posters are so keen to convince me otherwise!

I find it a bit weird that comprehensive bass players' tools like the Boss and Zoom units don't have what I would consider an essential part of a live bass player's arsenal and it definitely puts me off them, they're "do everything" boxes that should do everything. Maybe it's just me? Our cables are exclusively XLR and I don't always use the same one (different stage sizes = different cables) so I just think that for the working musician an XLR DI is essential. Every time I've been presented with an engineers DI box I've offered the use of my Fishman unit instead which engineers usually prefer as it's a great sounding DI and better than the one the have, I have a generic DI box I can use but the one built into my preamp unit is much better and this level of usability is something I would expect when upgrading to a Helix. Maybe I'm being old fashioned here? Tbh I don't think so and I don't think XLR cables are going anywhere. I'm not particularly keen on manufacturers cutting usability for no good reason. Having to carry around a different cable or dongle isn't something I want to be doing in all honesty, horses for courses and all that.

A 1/4" jack (surface mount or otherwise) takes up a surprising amount of space, not looked at any diagrams but although it is slimmer than an XLR it would go deeper into the case. I stand by my original thought that the difference in diameter would be several mm rather than several cm and that's probably a design compromise they could/should have made. I see this as an entry point into Helix use for working/gigging musicians so in that regard I think it would be worth viewing it as a standalone unit with all the features it should have, I still think it should have an XLR DI - despite being told multiple times otherwise! I always find it frustrating when you see a piece of equipment which is almost perfect, it has everything you want but missing a small key feature and (for me at least) this is one of those things which is a shame because I want one.

Plenty of bass players all over the world are using them though. There's a ton of guitarists who run a Helix on it's own with in ears or a powered cab, our main dep being one of them and he uses the XLR out (he has the floor unit with the expression pedal) so it's not something just for us.

Surely a few mm extra wouldn't have killed them though? To me that's missing a key bit of functionality (something that a unit with this purpose should 100% have) to keep the size down by a tiny amount, just seems like a thoughtless trade-off to me. Form over function.

I've skimmed through the thread and am aware of how the 1/4" jacks are configured, it just seems a bit silly to omit the exact type of DI connection that everybody uses meaning you have to use a different cable, carry an adapter with you or use an external box, all of which aren't something I want to have to do after spending a decent wedge. I bet at least one of those could have been an XLR/1/4" combi jack without increasing the overall size, as we'll probably find out when they do a revision.

Stunning bass, is that a USA Cirrus?

Saw this the other day and earmarked it as a future purchase, however it doesn't have an XLR DI out. Why? Seems like such a silly omission for what looks like a teriffic product, hopefully they do a MkII and rectify this.

Our guitarist does most of the sound engineering so if he's busy I tune his guitars up for him and set his amp up, last gig I plugged them into my setup (Fishman Pro Platinum EQ > QSC K10.2), switched to guitar eq mode and played it at decent volume - sounded amazing, much better clean sound than his amp. Nice to know if I ever need to play acoustic guitar live I have a fantastic rig ready and waiting! Can imagine it would sound incredible with proper amp modelling.

Like the above poster says rather than carting all that around you could just use a modelling unit and a powered cab, that's what I'd do.

Just for comparison there's two unmolested Peavey Grind/Zephyr 5ers on eBay in much better condition for £250 and £285 which remain unsold, the last one to sell went for £191 (the market value) and had some attractive timber on it: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Peavey-5-String-Bass-Guitar-/223150114233?hash=item33f4c885b9%3Ag%3Ak8MAAOSwr1Fbn4La&nma=true&si=ti6zvM5%2FcFms5S4QvWcmVDLZgN8%3D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557 Alarmingly it looks like MDP's butchered one has sold for £311, looks like P T Barnum was right and the bogus sales patter is working.

He definitely does like to give the impression that he builds guitars and when called out on it he either doesn't respond or comes out with some rubbish that CNC means nobody builds guitars any more. Needless to say if he had a block of wood he would have no way of making an instrument out of it so luthier he aint - the end results are bad enough when he starts off with a fully functional guitar........ Also that PCGC has "Clusson style tuners" 😂

I don't think so, in the first pic I posted the strings are obviously high - there is daylight between the E string and the edge of the fretboard. The shadow of the strings is in fact the optical illusion due to the light source being behind the camera. The worst possible way to measure things is by shadows - they change with the light! The only way to tell is by looking at the distance of the E and G strings from the edge of the fretboard and comparing them with the angle of the bass in the picture, this one has a high action.

You would expect any bass in that price range (or even a tenth of it) to at least have a realistic setup, you could drive a bus under those strings: The listing says "the play condition has maintained a good condition, and it has been set up by a repairman and it is in a condition that you can use with confidence" but that doesn't exactly ring true when you look at the pics, not something I'd be keen to splash £2.5k on.

That's the one, I tried to link to the live show from the DVD but they've all been copyrighted on YT so the live recording will have to do. Joni is fantastic all the time (was a huge fan as a kid before I'd even picked up a bass) but that particular lineup is a bit special IMO. Still have the DVD somewhere.

Imagine the Joni version (which I like) but replace the tasteful phrasing, relaxed feel and bass/vocal interplay with low rent jazz guitar meandering that sounds like it's a series of exercises from a beginners' guitar book.

I quite like it and I have no idea why, it's horrible.

It's a Charles Mingus tune, if you're band leader is suggesting the soulless Jeff Beck version then he needs his head reading. Here you go, learn this one instead:

Glad to hear you're enjoying it, to me it just sounded right from the get go and didn't take any faffing to get the sound I wanted - it's nice when you find a pedal like that! It also takes up very little board space. Of course someone looking for a different fuzz sound might think it sounds awful which I guess is half the fun, although prices on everything seem to be creeping up. I remember buying and selling Bogdan Helter Skelters and Owen Gremlins for between £30 and £50 a few years ago on here, wish I'd held onto them now!

The Mastotron plays nice with every bass I've thrown at it thanks to the impedance control, IIRC it was one of the things Wooly Mammoth fans with active basses were looking forward to when it launched. I can only agree that prices have gone a bit silly for a basic factory built pedal, I paid in the region of £65 when they came out.

Great bargain that, well done cetera! I love the colour personally, looks great.