BottomEndian

[quote name='Bassassin' post='1187909' date='Apr 4 2011, 04:03 PM']Who exactly is PoodleBoy, anyway?[/quote] Check out [url="http://www.myspace.com/video/vid/9174697"]Maestro Alex Gregory[/url] (yes, he genuinely puts the word "Maestro" in front of his own name). Sounds like some sort of space-dragonfly vomiting scrappy arpeggios. He's a classy fella too:

[quote name='waynepunkdude' post='1187845' date='Apr 4 2011, 03:06 PM']It's hard to tell where the hair ends and the smoke begins.[/quote] There's [i]smoke[/i]? Disappointed now.

If it comes with a signed (and preferably laminated) copy of this picture... ...then yeah, screw it, I'll scrape together £9.5k.

[quote name='thisnameistaken' post='1185733' date='Apr 2 2011, 12:52 PM']...bits of it either don't work properly (Finder in particular) or are inconsistent...[/quote] Oooh, tell me more. No, seriously, I'm intrigued. I've been using OS X since 10.1, and I've never come across any weirdnesses. The only problem I've ever had with Finder is the bloody name. Makes me feel like a child.

Pete bought my bass. Absolute pleasure to deal with. Good communications throughout and a thoroughly nice bloke. Top dog!

Blimey, they're lovely! I can really see the influence that Overwater's builds and Haydn's builds clearly have on each other.

[quote name='51m0n' post='1184835' date='Apr 1 2011, 02:58 PM']He has a beautiful Yamha Maple Custom[/quote] Ooh, I've got one of those too! [url="http://www.fxpansion.com/index.php?page=125"]Have a look[/url].

[quote name='51m0n' post='1184868' date='Apr 1 2011, 03:15 PM']I need a new machine, that sounds fantastic![/quote] It's absolutely glorious. The first time I switched it on (after the initial setup boot), it booted so fast I thought something must be wrong! Looking forward to seeing what they do with the Thunderbolt interface too.

[quote name='51m0n' post='1184843' date='Apr 1 2011, 03:03 PM']I'd disagree with that if you have a remotely modern PC.[/quote] Yeah, I think I should be fine. Just picked up one of the new MacBook Pro quad-core line (hence the lack of money for outboard ). I saw someone on Gearslutz post that they'd tested one by having over 100 tracks running in Logic, with heavy processing on nearly all of them and several instances of big NI instruments (Kontakt, Battery, that sort of thing)... and the machine was quite happy.

[quote name='Beedster' post='1184785' date='Apr 1 2011, 02:33 PM']Ah, sorry. What 51m0n said then![/quote] No worries! I think "What 51m0n said" should become the motto of the Recording sub-forum.

[quote name='51m0n' post='1184760' date='Apr 1 2011, 02:23 PM']With 24 bit there is no need to compress to tape, you can happily record with 6-12dB of head room, which pretty much guarantees there will be no transient lost. However that doesnt mean that you might not like to use some analogue (real) compression on the way into the digita domain, it may be a unit that you like the osund of even if the compression is very very light, or whatever. Whatever sounds better to you really. I routinely compress bass on the way in for instance, and use limiters when tracking drums to ensure that clipping wont occur, even with 6-12dB of headroom (especially hard to guarantee you wont get overs on drums, just ask Cheddatom!). <snip>[/quote] Thanks for that. Much as I expected... and kind of good to hear, because I've got no spare wedge for any outboard now! I'd be tempted to stick a smidgeon of my TC Nova Dynamics pedal on my bass if I was desperate to capture "full" bass notes along with high harmonics (something it seems to do really nicely in multiband mode). It doesn't have the flexibility I'd really like it to... but it sounds class. Another thing I've noticed, coming back to the recording end of things after a while away... I've been playing with BFD to generate drums (and bloody great it is too). The thing is, I'm so used to hearing bleed on drum tracks that I'm mixing it in from BFD, only to gate it out again in the mix, just like I used to. Talk about making it hard for myself...

Closest I've heard a standard BG come to a DB sound was Howard the Bass Doc, soloing a bridge Jazz pickup, tone rolled off, flatwounds, plucked over the fretboard... around the 12th fret, I think. Close-ish... but no real cigar, obviously.

Ah, I think we're talking at cross-purposes here. Indeed, I'd almost always compress stuff for the mix... but while recording? So the compression's permanently part of that recorded take? I get the impression that in the digital domain, there's little point. On tape, I would have lightly compressed a vocal while recording (so there's compression on the recorded signal), and then usually added some more in the mix... not to mention compression across the master bus. It seems that I could get the same effect digitally by just applying two compressors on the vocal track, one after the other.

Even though it was less than a decade ago that I was at college, I learned how to record using good ol' 2" magnetic tape. So I got into the habit of lightly compressing to tape, especially on vocals and bass, to keep the signal comfortably above the tape noise. Now I'm getting back into the recording thang, but this time with (at the moment) a purely ITB, Logic-and-plugins setup. Given that I've got 24 bits of (largely noiseless) dynamic range to play with, is there any point compressing to tape any more? Is it even possible in Logic without an outboard compressor? Is everyone doing dynamic control in the mix now? I feel way behind the times all of a sudden.

[quote name='Truckstop' post='1184541' date='Apr 1 2011, 12:10 PM']Speaking of which; Doesn't Jens Ritter sound like a Bond baddie name?[/quote] Speaking of which... it's nice to see Hank Scorpio on the back of that bass. One of my favourite "bit-part" characters.

[quote name='cheddatom' post='1183405' date='Mar 31 2011, 03:03 PM']A quick question... Why would you not use a USB drive to record multitracks to? I recently ran out of HD space and desperately needed more for a project. I couldn't fit in any more IDE drives and I have no SATA on the board, so I bought the cheapest 1TB USB drive I could find. It seems to work fine recording 15 channels 24bit 48Khz with almost 0 latency.[/quote] I think USB's fine for many, many applications (especially USB 2.0), but IIRC the USB bus is controlled by the CPU, so if the CPU's busy with other stuff (plugins, automation, stuff like that), it can end up dropping the USB ball. USB also tends to transmit in bursts of data; again, it's usually fine, but if the CPU's having a tough time, a data burst can be held back and you get pops and clicks and all sorts. Can you get all 15 channels to play back through the DAW with heavy processing on every channel? FireWire, as I understand it, is largely independent of whatever else is going on (CPU-wise), and can handle high rates of [i]constant[/i] data throughput.

[quote name='BigRedX' post='923633' date='Aug 13 2010, 11:23 AM']An external Hard Drive that connects via FireWire (don't use USB for multi-track audio) for your audio files ONLY is an excellent idea - you'll get much better performance. However TimeMachine will not back up data on external hard drives so you'll need to look at alternative backup strategies and TBH I'd be vary about letting TM run while you're actually recording from a performance PoV.[/quote] Just had a read through this whole thread. Brilliant stuff! But I just thought I'd pick up on the one thing here I actually know anything about (albeit 7 months late, so everyone may have figured this out for themselves by now)... Time Machine [b]will[/b] back up your external drives. You just have to make sure you take them off the "do not back this up" list. It's a slightly counter-intuitive way to present things; I'd prefer it if drives were automatically included to back up rather than automatically opted-out. But it definitely works. My Time Machine drive backs up my internal drive and my external audio-projects FireWire drive.

[quote name='sime17' post='1182608' date='Mar 30 2011, 07:14 PM']Is it ending then? Dammit I bought my Markbass gear on that! That's a fact to concentrate the mind (in particular the GAS receptors on the frontal lobe).[/quote] Sorry, I should have been a bit less poetic. As of 1st April 2011, it'll only be available for those aged 18-25... which I'm very much not. So I got in while I still could. Yep, the Classic J is sitting here with me. [quote name='Wiseoldfrog' post='1182651' date='Mar 30 2011, 07:59 PM']Thanks for the review BottomEndian...I've just paid for my Overwater Aspiration Artist and should have it (hopefully) on Friday. I'll be gutted if there are build quality issues on it; I've got a PRS SE guitar that I paid £500 for and the build quality on that is fantastic - I certainly would expect the same from Overwater. Anyway, as soon as I've got the bass I'll post an initial review and then update it in a month or so when I've had a bit of a blast on it.[/quote] Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to go on such a downer. As I said, no one else appears to have had any problems with build quality (indeed, most have been raving), so I'm hoping my local ones are the wild exception to the norm. The J basses are absolutely sublime though. For under £400, I couldn't be happier with it.

Just been down to the local music shop on my lunch break to have a good bash on the Tanglewaters. To cut a long story short, I may well be back down there at the end of the day to see if I can get me a Classic J in CAR on the dying breaths of the Take It Away scheme. The slightly longer version... They had: Classic J (CAR); Contemporary J (trans black); Aspiration Artist (red trans); Aspiration Deluxe 5-string (trans black); Aspiration Elite 4-string (dunno what the top was... zebrawood?). I gave each one a good 4 or 5 minutes of playing, and had a good look over them in terms of build quality and finish and all that. First of all, from a distance, these basses look superb. The Aspiration series shape is lovely and just screams Overwater. Notice that I said "from a distance". Up close, the Classic J and Contemporary J still looked fabulous, but I have to admit being a little disappointed by some aspects of the Aspiration basses. The main culprit was the neck pockets. A couple of the Aspirations had whacking great gaps around the extended neck pocket. I'm not talking Rizla gaps. Easily business-card size, often with bare wood visible in the crevices. Also, the Elite with the lovely-looking top had an area on the top (about the area of a 5p and a few mm deep) where there'd either been a void in the wood or a machining problem, so there was a sort of hole in the top-wood that looked like it had just been flooded with finish (or possibly filled with something translucent-white before finishing... I'm no expert). Completely smooth on the surface, but not attractive. Everything else looks brilliant, by the way, especially for the money at the lower end of the range. And at the end of the day, of course, if I'd wanted an Elite I'd have asked the shop to get in another one for me. Seeing as there haven't been any other reports of such issues elsewhere, it may be that my local shop just happened to get a couple of not-so-greats. Sounds-wise, the 3-band-equipped models with soapbars sounded wonderfully refined, but with a lot of power in the EQ to bring through some really aggressive tones. Lovely mids. The Artist (J/MM setup with 2-band EQ) was naturally pretty honky, but again the power of the EQ tamed it nicely. Loads of tones from the J/MM pups. (Oh, and to reiterate the previous post, the 5-string was [i]very[/i] much 35". Too long for me.) The Contemporary J was [b]beautiful[/b]. Trans black, maple and blocks. Yum. A little polite-sounding for my tastes, but if you're after smooth sounds, it's got them in spades. The 2-band EQ gives A LOT of bass; in fact, it's a naturally very bassy-sounding instrument. I found the most sensible position for the bass knob was backed off a bit from the (presumably neutral) centre detent. That stopped it getting too boomy. The Contemporary J responded nicely to a bit of aggressive pick playing too. Lots of growl and attack. And then the Classic J. Oh my. I'm a bit of a sucker for CAR with matching headstock, so I hope I wasn't listening with my eyes. Fit and finish lovely; balance on the strap good. Plug it in, turn it on. Lovely. Classic passive P/J tones. Thumping, driving P pup, bright, honky (in a good way) J pup. Pan to the middle for some (shoddy, in my case) slapping. Pure class. Tonally, it's up there with a rather lovely 2008 Fender P I had for a while, with Nordstrand P and added J... and the Tanglewater is under £400. It made me realise how much I miss having a passive P/J (or indeed a passive bass of any description), and I haven't played a better one at that price-point... so yes, it may well be mine by the end of the day. Hats off to Overwater for bringing these lovely instruments to the market at such good prices.

Side note: IIRC, with the Zoom H/M/L switch for mic gain (at least on the H2), the H and M settings are identical in terms of the analogue signal coming from the mic; the difference is that the H position gets an internal boost in the digital domain, pushing the noise level up with it. The Zoom forums are littered with people doing sample-by-sample comparisons of the same signal recorded at H and M settings, and finding no difference once the M version has been brought up to the same level as the H. As I say... IIRC. As you were.

Dunno if it's just me, but I haven't seen [url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180645000460"]many of these[/url] on this side of the Atlantic. It's just a few miles from me, but not really my cup o' tea (4 strings, frets, ugliest headstock known to man or beast). Seems a tad high for an opening price, and collection only is surely just shooting himself in the foot.

Cheers Dave! Do you know the impedance of the Burmans, by any chance? Ta for the PM too... I'll have a chat to Tim, but I'm about to be away for a few days.