warwickhunt

Ditto! I have to say that my Creme Lionel VS4 (active/passive) is a superb bass and when I was exclusively playing shorties it ousted my Acinonyx, Longhorn, Hofner Club and JMJ Mustang basses. I'm finding however that I've reverted back to my long scale Streamer or regular Sandberg VS for gigs and none of my shorties are getting any use, so likely time to move some on... will I still keep the Lionel 'just in case'! LOL

...and no body so far has mentioned Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick?

For me it isn't so much the sustain in itself that matters but I have found that basses that lack sustain can also be muddy/indistinct in (over)tone.

My understanding was that it was the resonance of the whole instrument. HOWEVER... that is a whole can of worms explored on every guitar/bass forum ever! Does an amplified instrument need to have any particular properties to sound good/better than another. I certainly think that one of my 4 Sandbergs just feels intrinsically nicer to play (taking strings out of the equation and all set up similar by me) and it likely has the best amplified tone... but am I un/subconsciously playing it different because it 'feels' different? I do know that I've had dozens of vintage Warwick Streamer basses through my hands and some have been better than others; I have a 91 bass at present that I'll not sell on because the amplified tone is like no other.

I have 4 of them (2 long scale, 2 short scale Lionels) and they are superb BUT with 45 years of playing / owning a lot of basses I'd never assume that because 1 (or 4) were great, that they'd all be the equal. I have a vivid memory from maybe 30 years ago of talking to a friend who was the manager of a large retail store and he was describing how he assisted in the unboxing of instruments from a large manufacturer; of 20 USA guitars he might have played unamplified each time, there'd likely be one you felt was great, the rest ranged from 'Meh' to awful. He felt that if an instrument didn't work for you unamplified then there was no point plugging it in.

No I didn't win. The buyer was refunded despite the fact I had photographic evidence that the serial number of the returned item was different to that which I posted out; I ended up with his dead unit and he had a nice working one... mine. It was at that point I washed my hands of Paypal and decided that I'd never accept it as form of payment (regardless of F&F). Paypal is not infallible and where in the early days buyers could be scammed, it is as easy/easier for sellers to be on the losing end. Just noted @Beedster's response which is almost identical.

As I countered above. You say that you (a buyer) is protected, you say no difference from the seller's POV but I've personally posted items and had chargeback claims which favoured the buyer... and the buyer sent back to me a broken item with an alternative serial number! ...and I have an awful lot of people (inc many of the admins) who would vouch that I'm not dodgy! I'm not saying trust every seller but I likewise wouldn't trust every buyer.

Databases are notoriously glitchy especially when you are dealing with at least 3 countries of manufacture.

Therein lies the dilemma... I personally don't accept 'regular' Paypal even if the buyer is offering to pay the fees because the payment can be reversed by Paypal to the buyer. This isn't hypothetical for me; I sold a couple of items some years back and in one instance the buyer said the item was broken/dead and Paypal refunded without me having the option to dispute. In that instance I received the item back... and it was the same model but a different item (I had the serial number), sadly Paypal would hear none of it and I was stiffed. On this group I have feedback and a decent reputation so if a buyer didn't want to collect and wouldn't do a bank transfer then that's the deal ended but no hard feelings!

Good shout I might just try that!

Ditto. I find the Fishman Plat Pro exceptional. I ALWAYS use the HPF and though I'm not a fan of most pedal compressors, this weeks so well. The only downside is if you swap basses mid gig and they are vastly different outputs, it is difficult to quickly adjust/match the side mounted (recessed) trim control. This is not an issue if using one bass or if you have time between sets to adjust... it really is minor and despite using basses with massive differences, I manage.

Very comprehensive answer @mike257. I'll need to digest and relay some of that to the lads. Consideration in choices has got to be budget but we don't want to save £10's of pounds for the sake of quality but if the difference between set ups was heading toward 50% more than a budget system... On an absolute budget I could ask the lads to get their own DI/splitters for their instrument(s) and vocals and send one feed to a CQ12 desk that I already own (maybe a stereo drum feed supplied by the in-house engineer), that could be pre mixed by us and the second feed from individual DI/splitters goes to FOH. Not ideal BUT we own most of the gear (feeds could be sent from Helix or keys aux feeds etc so no need for individual splitters). However, the consensus is for a Behringer X32 with a pair of 8 ch splitters (16 x 0.5m interconnects with a 16 ch 'snake loom' out).

That was our thinking but re mic whole kit (6 mics as he has them) but we'd start to head toward where we'd need more than 16 inputs... which we don't really want.

Being debated as to how best to do this. If we mic and feed into our own mixer we'd need to be setting up all of the mics ourselves and it could take 6 channels for drums. Alternatively, could we leave the drums to be mic'd by a venue into their system and then feed our mixer with a stereo feed from them, which we then mix into our individual IEM mixes. How do others do it?

Yes understood.

Any experience with the Behringer X32 as the core of this set up?

@Kirky "tails for FOH" - what do you supply and do you always need to supply them?

@Acebassmusic yes re. channels/instruments. Drums we would expect the engineer to mic and put through FOH desk and give us a stereo feed back into our mixer for us to mix to our own needs; hence the 16 channels. Yes we connect ourselves to our interface/splitter. I see what you mean about the in-house engineer should be expected to connect us to an onstage box, so we shouldn't need to go to the expense of creating a loom!

Following on from a couple of gigs where we have arrived to find an engineer either hasn't the facility or time to give us a good IEM mix, we're going down the route of looking to buy/build a mixer system whereby we feed all our instrument and vocal sources in to 'our' digital mixer, to give us max control of our IEM mix/feed and then we take 16 thru/outs to give the engineer control for FOH... does that make sense? The idea is that we simply set and (almost) forget our individual IEM mixes and the setting is rolled out the same at each gig (small tweaks can be made by each member to their mix). What is the regular/usual way to do this? I've probably omitted to mention vital info but please fire away with questions/suggestions. The band is a 6 piece (inc x2 guitars, x2 keys, bass, sax and 5 vocals... one of the guitars is stereo and both are Helix) with no backline and everyone using IEM. We were probably looking at a rackmounted Soundcraft Ui24 with 2 x 8 channel splitters and 16 'tails' to feed the FOH. Initial thought was that the tails would just be x16 M/F XLR 10m leads but I'm thinking a custom made 16 xlr 10m loom makes more sense.

You can't switch backwards but it'd be very easy to just replicate a patch and switch forward. A (flat) > B (OD) > C (EQ for Dub) > D (Compression) If in a particular song you wanted to go from flat to OD and then 'back' to flat you could as easily be... A (flat) > B (OD) > C (flat same as A) > D (EQ for Dub) > E (Compression) It would get quite complicated if you did something different like that for every song in a set but easily done for the occasional song. Theoretically you've got 50 slots you could name each step in a song based on the song title... but it really isn't set up for that and a multi-pedal effects unit might be easier. I have my presets for a whole song and they tend to be an effect for the 'whole' song and at the end of each song a couple of taps is all that is required to get to my 'A' sound which is a basic amp EQ (I might have even put a compressor in that baseline setting but I'd need to check). You can even add different cab tones to certain amps (IIRC), so you can have an SVT with 810 or a 410 or 115 as your baseline setting (or bypass completely if you have a great amp tone that doesn't need 'extras').

I bought a Zoom 60B for this very reason. You can select something as simple as a basic EQ (variable/para or fixed) or even a fairly flat amp model that allows you to create the dub sound and you can switch on/off or better still the Zoom allows you to designate each patch/function as A, B, C etc and you can call them up (all or as few as you choose) and then a single click of the footswitch takes you from A > B > C etc. Make one of the options (A) a bypass (it gives that facility) and you are sorted. A = bypass B = distortion (many editable options available from slight OD to buzz... the latter I can't see the sense in ) C = compression (lots of classic compressors inc) D = EQ (basic to full parametric) E = Synth F = Phaser G = Chorus etc etc etc One thing I like is that I can have set 20 presets tweaked/edited by me, save them in the 50 available slots but then just select the 3 or 4 I'll use with any particular band... or bass, as you could select an EQ and tweak it for 2 or 3 different basses and name/save each individually. You then select the patches you want and they will be the only options that will be available with each click. Jazz: patch A - D (Bypass/OD/Comp/EQ) Precision: E - H (same as above but tweaked for P bass) Ray: I - L (see above) Of course this last bit is useless info if you only ever use one bass! Oh and I paid about £60-70 for mine 2nd hand.

I was responding to @rwillett's comment about having no reference to the tones that are in 'any' of these devices, no matter whether they are true IR captures/models or Lo-Fi stores in a pedal. Sometimes using your ears and deciding what you like/dislike is the best method for choosing your tones; an SVT might be an iconic amp and some users might assume that a capture in a Tonex is as good as you'll get, yet I didn't rate some of the bass captures at all and the Lo-Fi sounds in a Zoom were as good IMHO.