WinterMute

The locking jack socket on my ACG Krell 5 string fretless custom build is a bit stiff, hurts my fingers to get the jack out... Pity my horrible life.

Thats a good shout, I have an ACG fretless thats out of this world, but it's well above your budget. I'd be wary of the filter pre-amp though, takes some getting used to. I think it's a versatile pre in many ways, but the East standard semi-parametric pre is a good option. Alan's Standard builds may be in reach of your budget.

Anything with a good pre-amp and twin pups should work fine, for the cash you have you're surely looking at mid to high range high volume manufacturers, Fender, Sadowski, Lakland, Sandberg, Yamaha... If the Jazz bass look is important they'll all have something for you. Warwick, MusicMan SR5 or Bongo, or the like if you'd like something with a different look. You'd need to decide what bass ergonomics suit you, scale length, neck profile etc. The marketplace is your friend here, some great all-rounders on there right now well within your budget.

So I've never played a Darkray as they are very rare, but it's a Stingray 4 or 5 string, which are great basses in their own right, plenty of punch and clarity, always good in any mix. I play SR5's and Bongos. Plus it has the omega and alpha distortion circuits from Darkglass, which are great tone and distortion units. Wether they are better than buying a Stingray and a O/A pedal? Who knows, you'd need to try them. Bottom line is that it'll be a great bass in either case.

I think it's very interesting how little kit you need for a pro setup these days, that's the outcome of technology, but as you say, you do need the chops to do it. I've been a pro engineer for many years and the results I get out of my little man-cave studio are as good as anything I used to get from pro studios except for the drum sounds, because, like you I don't have the space to record acoustic drums. Decent drum programming is ok for some genres, but a properly recorded skin-smacker still sound the dogs on rock and the like. I can record, programme, edit and mix to pro standards in a system that is a fraction of the cost of a major console and multi-track set up. Songwriting becomes easier too, my guitarist writes in Logic, chucks it into the cloud, I arrange his work and add bass and synth parts, throw it back, he sods around with it and back and forth we go till we have something we're happy with, then I'll string some vaguely coherent words together and chuck those on. We'll use the Drummer plug-in in Logic generally, or a loop for drums. Then we'll get our drummer into a rehearsal room for a few days, and see what his input does to arrangement, groove, tempo etc, often his input will result in rewrites, which is a good point to assess where a song is. Once we have a version of the backing track we're all happy with, I'll extract guitar, bass and keys to stems, and we'll head up to Monkey Puzzle for a few days to lay drum tracks into Protools. I'll bring the resultant tracks back and we'll track guitars, bass and vocals, re-programme the synth parts and run a final edit/re-arrangement of the songs with the live drum parts. That then gets cleaned up and prepped for mix, which I'll do over the course of many days as it's all essentially in the box and has 100% recall. This process keeps the input of all 3 musicians, allows for variation in performance and the ability to track to live drums for feel and groove (I have extracted groove templates from live drums to lock loops down many times, which works very well), and results in songs that retain feel and spontaneity whilst allowing for the raft of technique us engineers love so much. Sure, I've put money into the studio, but no more than many people put into serious hobbies, and a lot less than some, and the results are excellent, but I've 30 years of experience behind me that ensures I get those results. No DAW or plug-in or synth is going to give you those results without the skills sadly.

Well, he can play, that's for certain, love seeing people who can do that sh*t, would I watch it twice? No. Can I remember a single thing he played? No. Can I play like that? No. Virtuoso playing for it's own sake is a bit of a dead end for me, I can't stand a lot of the stuff Jaco did solo, but his ensemble work with other artists is stunning. You take your joy where you find it I suppose.

If only there was, it's a single garage conversion that's got a floating room construction to keep the noise out of the house, and there's a lot of kit in it anyway... I could probably lose the sofa for enough room for a 6 bass rack though, so there's always hope.

Wall hangers are essential kit in small rooms, provided you have the wall space for your massive collection... Here's my 4, I now have a reason not to buy more basses, as I don't have any more wall space between the acoustic treatment, so it's going g to be 1 in, one out from now on.

Here's my ACG Krell 34/5 fretless and my SR5 Frankenstein with their fretted brethren.

Never really thought of this as a sunburst finished bass, but it really is...

Loaner safety returned to it's owner, this turned up today...

He'd do the lot for the vinyl master, as that's a different set of skills than CD mastering and this was before streaming, I used Abbey Road for CD mastering, different approach.

I've still got a few pressing plates from promos in the loft with the same inscription, George was a proper character.

I remember watching Porky at Porky's Prime Cuts mastering and cutting plates on that beautiful old Neumann valve lathe he had, he managed to get so much bass in his cuts it was miracle the damn discs didn't just fall into huge black spirals. There's an art to mastering for vinyl.

I think I'm starting to get the hang of this amazing little box, I have to send this one back to it's owner on Sunday, so it's probably put up or shut up time. The Pros: Sounds as good or better than the HX Stomp/Pod XT level kit I've known. Excellent "playability" of the models and patches, they respond really well to dynamic playing, it is just like playing the amp/cab. Sooo easy to work with, the touch screen and rotary switches make the lack of a desktop editor almost redundant. Excellent use of IR integration. Neural capture works very well for some things (really like to see where they go with this). The Cons: The price (same as a Helix rack etc but none second hand). Limited "community" although quite active. Overall I'm talking myself into this aren't I?

QSC K12.2 and subs make a fine noise, if you want something a bit more exotic the FBT small systems are excellent. https://www.fbtaudio.co.uk/fbt-audio/portable-sound/full-systems/

The OLP I had was natural, lovely bit of maple on the top, I'm not generally for an odd colour (wood or black is about my limit) but I think I'd make an exception for a Barbie Flesh TLMM.

I've listened to a lot of 5.1/7.1/atmos mixes, I design rooms with these formats for Universities in the UK, Steven Wilson's stuff is amongst the best, but I always find it a distracting presentation on material I previously know. I find it distracts me from listening to the song and that annoys me. However, new material is a much easier listen once I get over the "look how clever I'm mixing ma" aspect of surround. I think music composed specifically for the format works much better, film soundtracks are spectacularly good in Atmos (check out the apocalyptic "holy sh*t-b*lls" chorus in the end fight of Deadpool 2 for maximum chuckles). I may simply be too old to learn this specific new trick.

I had an OLP Tony Levin and a fine, cheap instrument it was, I'd be very interested in a full blood TL SR5, I think a lot of people would.

Alan's work is first class, thats going to be a corker.