mike257

[quote name='steve-soar' post='598983' date='Sep 15 2009, 09:46 AM']Are we talking about Martin from Kappa?[/quote] Small world, eh!

Hey Lew, I'm a regular stage-botherer at the Liverpool Barfly - The Funk is right on the money with his recommendations, that kind of power will do you fine. If you're playing those kind of gigs, your amp is only really there for you to hear on stage anyway, the dirty great big PA does all the hard work I've used heads from 350w up to 600w in there, and never got my master volume even close to half way on stage, so you don't need anything earth-shattering. Who's your band then? Probably catch you around sooner or later if you're gigging round here, Barfly's only round the corner from my flat! Mike

No hands on exp with one myself, but a fellow bassist I know has one, and it sounds fantastic. He swears by it now, and it's left his (really tasty sounding) SVT2 out of service. I'm chuffed enough with my Shuttle, but those GBEs sound mega.

I gave away a bass, but by no means my best one! I donated a semi-hollow Tanglewood Warrior to my mates brother cos he wanted to learn to play. My friends muso Dad loaned me a bass back in my teens and that's what started me playing, so I figured I ought to keep the pattern going

I thought I was over it, there's more gone out than come in for the last couple of years. I'm now down to 5 basses, 2 eleccy guitars, one acoustic, a combo, two heads and a giant cab. And a triangle. I'm still gassing for Alex's cabs, and although I'm [i]almost[/i] convincing myself that I'm done buying basses, I can't stop getting all pie eyed every time a nice P appears in the for sale forum.

Looks the business mate, nice one

I guess it depends on the kind of gigs you're doing - if you're playing gigs where FOH is carrying your sound, and your amp is just on-stage monitoring, then a pre-amp means you've got some control over your tone before it hits the DI box and the audience's ears. If your backline is what the audience are hearing, then there's little reason to add yet another set of tone controls to the ones already present on your bass and your amp, unless the tone you want ain't in there.

If you can find one wide enough, just get yourself a big chunk of foam to go under the bass - it'll solve your slim body problem and be loads cheaper than a custom jobbie!!

I can't bad mouth God Gave Rock'n'Roll. In my head it's eternally associated with Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, and there's not a bad word you can say about Bill and Ted

[quote name='Linus27' post='586359' date='Sep 1 2009, 11:10 AM']Wow, hold ya horses. Are you telling me that the Ten album has been re-mixed and re-released?? Is there a big difference between the two? I love Ten but I did find some of the guitar very weedy and plinky plonky.[/quote] Hell yeah! They did a bunch of different re-releases, I think it was earlier this year. Brendan O'Brien had already remixed a track or two for the 'rearviewmirror' greatest hits thing, but the whole album got done. Sounds much more ballsy and like his stuff on Vs, I like it! See BigRedX's point about the production placing it in it's time though, it does have it's charm! I'm just a fan of his sound, I guess, I love the stuff he did with RATM and Incubus too.

[quote name='silverfoxnik' post='586147' date='Aug 31 2009, 10:57 PM']I've always thought that someone should go back and re-mix all the great songs from the 80s and bring them to life without all that dreaful over-worked, synthetic production..[/quote] +1 Imagine all the awesome songs that could be rescued. Brendan O'Brien did some cracking mixes of Pearl Jam's 'Ten' album for the reissue, took all those comedy drum sounds and massive guitar reverbs out and gave it a new set of balls, sounds great!!

[quote name='JPAC' post='582862' date='Aug 27 2009, 08:15 PM']It's when you catch your skin on the hot iron and it smells of roast pork! 20 years with BT here, I've done a bit of soldering. (Not recently).[/quote] There must be a few of us here, I'm only 3 and a half years in though, got a bit of catching up to do to you

Would it make sense sticking me next to Uncle B, since he's only a short hop over the Mersey from me?

No guilty guvnah, me and half my band were moonlighting in a hotel bar playing a hastily thrown together covers set. I've asked my Dad. Not only was it not him, but I've finally disproved his theory that he knows the answer to everything. So it wasn't all in vain.

I'd love a crack at one, especially next to my SVT610 to see how they compare. I don't have my own transport to move the thing about, but if one comes to Liverpool I'd love a go

[quote name='Tait' post='579275' date='Aug 24 2009, 05:17 PM']this speaker cabinet modelling, i dont think my dad's line 6 has got that on it, but if my guitarist's FX unit has, how would i go about using it? do i line out with cabinet modelling, or do i still mic up the cabinet?[/quote] I wouldn't use the cabinet modelling [i]and[/i] a real speaker together, just one or the other. The cabinet modelling is designed so you can use the line out to record, without the sonic drawbacks mentioned further back in the thread. It's simulating the effect a speaker would have on your tone with EQ jiggery-pokery and other such tricks. It's worth a try if your struggling with micing. [quote]i keep telling my guitarist to turn down the gain and turn up the volume to get a nicer tone, but he's always reluctant. i keep drilling it into him next recording session.[/quote] Definitely. Although it might sound like a big rock tone in the room when he's playing on his own, that little bit less gain will give loads more clarity to the parts being played, so it'll blend better with other instruments in the mix. I've recorded plenty of guitarists reluctant to believe this, but the proof is in the pudding. If you're tracking rhythm guitar parts, reducing the gain a bit but double tracking the part and panning it out left and right a bit is a nice way to fill the sound out. Don't fall for the shortcut of copy-pasting to another track instead of actually doubling the part though. It's the subtle differences from one take to the next that give the sound more depth. [quote]and jonny lad, i'll definatly only need to mic up one of the speakers? they're the same size so i would have thought so, but my amp only has 1 speaker so i can't mess around with a 2 speaker amp and i don't want to end up getting to recording my guitarist and only mic'ing up one speaker to find it sounds horrible, so i just want to check before hand [/quote] You only need to mic up one, whether it's a 2x12, a 4x12 or an 8x10! Of course, if you want to experiment, there's no rule against covering it with all kinds of mics, but for the simplest, quickest good result, one mic on one speaker is fine. If you start using multiple mics you have to worry about phasing and all sorts of nonsense, I prefer keeping it simple!

All good advice above! I'm not too familiar with the amp you're using, but I've always found that 'just breaking up nice' overdrive sound is really hard to acheive with solid-state amps. I'd work as hard as you can on the guitar sound itself before you come to recording it. Fresh strings was a cracking shout, makes a world of difference. I see that amp is a digital modelling jobbie, so try a few of the different models out, or listen to some samples of the real things and see which is closest to the sound you want. A mic on the cab will (IMO) always sound better than a line out for recording a driven guitar sound. Guitar speakers have a natural roll-off of high frequencies, so you don't hear some of the nastiness in the extra harmonics. A line-out signal won't give you this, and you'll get a lot more harsh and fuzzy top end from it. Experiment with micing the centre or the outside of the cone, as different mic positions will make a huge difference to your tone. In a perfect world, you'd go out and buy a valve amp, but with a bit of experimenting, you can get good results by making the best of what you've got! Have fun

I used my Stingray with the Shuttle 6 the first day I got it, threw it in at the deep end with a gig. I was running it with the EQ totally flat, none of the shape switches in, gain about 2 or 3 o'clock and pre-amp vol at 12 o'clock, and my Stingray jumped out of the speakers and nearly bit my head clean off, it sounded great. Might be to do with the cab though, my 610 is [i]real[/i] heavy on the bottom, with less emphasis on the mids, so that will have helped.

Amazingly, considering there's 6 of us, we come pretty close to managing it. There's three singers/writers in the band, one of whom was the driving force behind getting the band together in the first place, so he's the 'de facto' gaffer, but it rarely needs to come to one person to make the over-riding decision. The three of them all contribute songs, but if we aren't collectively happy with a song, regardless of it's origin, then it doesn't go in. My songwriting is miles away from the sound of the band, but I contribute heavily with arrangements, and do the textbook bass player jobs of running the web stuff, bookings, van hire, graphics etc. We all have a say and a creative input with the music, and the promotional end of things. Sometimes egos have to be massaged, and compromises have to be made, but we were all close friends who've played in various bands together before this one, so it all tends to work out in the end!

I seen some kid in a support band doing it at the Islington Bar Academy once, he pulled it off about 4 times in the 25 mins they were on stage!! I don't know how, because I went on after him, and almost took our singers head off with my bass, the stage is that small. I'd learn how to do it, but I'd be too scared of losing a bass, I've seen it go wrong enough times too.

I had to get in the back seat of an old 3-door Fiesta with a BC Rich Beast on my knee once, I think one corner of it was sticking out the window!! It's a miracle nobody impales themselves on those things!

+1 to all the comments about repeated listening. If I'm learning stuff for a gig, it goes on a CD, into my work van, and stays on repeat for a few days until I can hear it in my sleep. You'd be amazed the difference it makes.

[quote name='BigBeefChief' post='567815' date='Aug 13 2009, 11:46 AM']I once did a gig with a 5w practice guitar combo. What made it worse was the fact that the gig was an open-air festival on the Mir Space Station and was thus performed in the vacuum of Space.[/quote] I hate those gigs, there's no atmosphere. Sorry.

Justin Meldal-Johnson occasionally dabbles with one, seen a few shots of him rocking out on it with Nine Inch Nails recently!

I'm probably wildly off the mark here, but, if you like the feel of your Squier so much, but the tone sucks, surely the cost of some new hardware and electronics would be money well spent. It's easier to radically overhaul the sound of a bass that already feels great, than to change the feel of a bass that sounds great (without mucking up it's tone). It no doubt won't end your quest for the perfect bass, but with the right mods, it'll leave you with a perfectly good, giggable instrument you can feel at home with until you do find 'the one'.