Dankology

For me, the lack of certainty about the diagnosis, your (presumably) young age and your risk factors (the bass playing) would point me towards nerve conduction testing to firmly rule CTS in or out.

Depending in how your local services are set up access to nerve conduction studies can be through Neurology, Physiotherapy or even Rheumatology. Current national guidance would suggest referral to Physio/Musculoskeletal clinic in the first instance (especially as they usually have the access to splinting and injections). Any surgery required would usually be carried out by an Orthopaedic surgeon so I'm not sure how keen I'd be to join the waiting list for a Neurology review - many now measured in months....

If it is indeed carpal tunnel syndrome, "muscle strengthening exercises" are not a recognized treatment. CTS should be straightforward enough to diagnose from your symptoms plus some simple tests +/- formal nerve condition studies if there is any doubt. I'd go back to your GP to discuss the Physio's opinion and would be wary of anyone who tells you that you have CTS and then sends you off to figure out some hand exercises...

Townshend pre-dates the NHS. Unless, of course, he was indeed back-dated.

I think Changes is a bit of a turd and Laguna Sunrise a bit of an under-developed doodle but the rest of it is my favourite Sabbath by a country mile. Picked it up for £1.99 on the shoddy NEMS vinyl issue when I was 15 and spent many happy hours figuring out Supernaut, Under the Sun et al. Never quite copped FX though.

Thanks for the further thoughts - I hadn't really clocked the Shortbass before but your samples certainly sound in the right ballpark. Sadly I'm nowhere near London or Bristol but it's definitely more food for thought... I'm not under any illusions about making a £200 electro sound like a true double bass (let alone one played by Danny Thompson!) but if it I can find something that might approximate some of the attack I'd be pretty happy. Especially as it'll only be getting mushed up through crappy PAs for the most part.

Thanks for that. I think the sound I'd most like to approximate is the one I hear on John Martyn's Solid Air. I saw someone playing a guitarron live a few years ago and that seemed to be close enough for me so I wondered if the Aria might do the trick. Because I'm certainly not going to start lugging a guitarron around... I do like the sound on the Alain Caron video but I'm sure that's more to do with a far more expensive bass and far more talented fingers than mine. I'm already a big fan of muted flats on my electric - but it's just not the same is it? Maybe I should just bite the bullet and get the next battered old upright that comes up on Gumtree. Really appreciate you reply - thanks.

I'm sorely tempted to pick one of these up as I'd like to have something approaching an upright sound on a couple of songs but cannot really see me going for the real thing (for any number of practical reasons). I have a few reservations though. No one locally seems to carry any stock and the only online demos I can find are a bit compromised in terms of the sound quality. I'm also barely 5'7 and a bit concerned about how big these things are - I can imagine looking more than faintly ridiculous if they're as boxy as I fear. So, I guess my questions boil down to: will this give enough of an "upright sound" to be worth the effort of lugging an extra instrument (and honing my fretless skills), are they prone to feedback on stage and are they as enormous as they appear in the photos? There's a long thread on TB about them but the signal to noise ratio isn't great...

Does anyone have an idea of how long G4M price reductions generally last for - got my eye on something that's currently discounted but wondering if I should hold out until my birthday in a few weeks...

[quote name='EBS_freak' timestamp='1503590354' post='3359487'] If you aren't using phantom, standard XLR splitters will do you. If you are using phantom, you'll need isolated splitters. [/quote] Isolated splits also help avoid hums and other unpleasantness - but if it's your own gig I definitely give it a punt with simple splitters first. The more I think about it, the more I seem to remember someone like Zoom putting out a sort of in-line 8 track device a year or two ago - I think the idea was that you placed it between the instruments and the desk, hit record and it recorded directly to as SD card. btw - don't forget to budget for a pair of mics (and a way of mounting them) to capture the rapturous audience response...

If you really keep an eye out you can sometimes get an 8-channel splitter on Ebay for around £100. I bet you could get an older interface for £100 too so you'd still be in budget and would have a rock-solid set-up. But if it's only a couple of channels you need to split, the Behringer DI-20 DI boxes can be used as single channel splitters: a couple of those second hand wouldn't be too costly. You could even just wire up some passive splits for pennies - worst case scenario is that they could introduce noise but if that happens you could just pull them and forfeit the recording? I think my Tascam is a generation older than the one you mention above but the latency (certainly using my laptop) is such that I wouldn't want to trust it to pass signal to the PA. Or you could do that thing you always see on old concert broadcasts where all the singers have two mics gaffa'd together Have fun whatever you do - I love recording gigs and have had to bodge my way through any number of jobs complicated by "eccentric" venue installations. And eccentric engineers, for that matter.

If your mixer has insert points on each channel (that aren't being used) you can wire a stereo jack to a mono one (or an XLR or phono or whatever you need) to "tap" the signal without breaking the signal chain. You can even do the same thing by inserting an instrument lead part way in but if anyone knocks it you could lose that instrument in the main mix... If you Google "insert point" + "direct out" I'm sure you'll find the (very simple) wiring diagram. Even simpler if you're lucky enough to have proper direct outs on your mixer. Or something that delivers all the audio to a memory stick or laptop ) I've got a Tascam 16 track interface that was great for recording gigs - can't remember the exact model and am not at home to check but I think it has 8 phantom-equipped XLRs another 6 jack inputs plus a stereo digital input. We now use 3 x 8-channel splitters plus an Alesis HD24 - which works great apart from in places where they use a digital snake... Depending on the circumstances we also occasionally use a 4-track Tascam recorder with the board signal going into two channels and a pair of stereo mics going into the other two - not really what you're asking about but can give very satisfying results.