thodrik

I think that he really needs to have another two cabs stacked on top for them to be of much practical use. The current cabs don't quite come up to ear level so he might not even hear them properly. Also, he definitely needs a couple of those Trace Elliot Bright Boxes as well for added sonic balance.

I have heard many worse songs recorded by the band. They have gotten on well enough to actually record something so good for them.

Not used them, but I would perhaps contact Noisy Hammer. https://www.noisyhammer.com/ Based in Norwich and although they mostly make cabinets I think that they would probably take an order for a custom grill cover. Though when using a 6x10, a mismatched grill doesn't bother me as much as the sheer difficulty in loading it in and out of a car and venue (I own a Mesa Powerhouse 6x10 which is just a silly weight). Just for practicality I would consider the 2x12 option before a 6x10.

Blues and folk music have a lot of non-standard and open tunings on guitar which can be replicated on bass (or you could just get a five string bass and transcribe). Albert Collins played in F standard (a half step up) at times.

A four ohm 4x10 or 2x12 cab to pair with my old Trace Elliot valve amp. A wanted advert might go up at some point. After that, usually it is five string basses or overdrive pedals I don’t need.

So I have three heads and one combo. I currently only own one cab. Trace V6. Owned about ten years. Bought because I always wanted one and at £600 or so and it was a good deal. Mesa Big Block. Owned about 4 years. Always wanted one and got a good deal on a used one. Love it. EBS Fafner. Owned about 14 years. My main ‘big amp’ for when I need more clean headroom than the Mesa Walkabout provides. Mesa Walkabout 1x15 combo. My main workhorse rig since 2009. So, two ‘always wanted them’ purchases. Two workhorse amps. Tonally I can pretty much get by with any of them though the Walkabout struggles for clean headroom, though most of time that is kinda what I’m going for. Might go the Helix route as I know the days of carrying big amps and cabs is fairly antiquated but frankly I still get a lot of enjoyment out of amps. I might get a small class D back up like the Elf but I probably would budget for another (lighter) cabinet instead.

Vintage Fenders can be incredibly varied in terms of quality and set up. My personal opinion is that a lot of it has to do with the set up, or lack thereof. A bass which has been poorly set up for a period of 40 years (after being delivered in a poorly set up condition and after being poorly put together) is going to be an absolute dog to play if you pick it up. When I started playing (late 90s), a seventies US Fender was seen as an alternative to buying a brand new American Standard Fender, as the prices were not that different. I went on a visit to Denmark Street in about 2000 and all of the 'vintage' shops had the late seventies Fender instruments in the £700-£1000 because they frankly weren't considered to be a good era. My first proper bass was late seventies Precision which I got for less than £400. The jack socket needed fixing and the neck was misaligned which was caused the bridge saddles to constantly collapse. Fair enough for a £400 bass and once the issues were sorted (which took literally years) it has been an absolutely cracking. However if I was buying the same bass now it would cost me the best part of £1800-£2000. There is no way I would buy a seventies Jazz for £3,000+. I would probably just buy a new Fender Professional model, as it would eventually become 'vintage' after thirty years and would probably be a bass that I would enjoy playing more for the next 30 odd years.

Exactly, I was gutted when I lost it because pretty much all of the white pain had been chipped away and the underlying finished had started to rust, so it just looked really cool and roadworn. I think another acceptable reason for getting rid of a Boss Tuner is 'I am fed up of looking at this thing and need to try something else'.

Boss TU2: 2000-2008 - it got lost/stolen Boss TU2: 2008 - 2018 - it got moved to my guitar board and I still own it. Boss TU3: 2018-now. I did have a Kork Pitchblack rack tuner but I thought it was a large and completely unnecessary bit of gear to lug around so it got sold (along with the Mesa M6 amp it was attached to).

I have tried a few amp sims (the old Line 6 Bass Pod is lying about somewhere), however in most cases I don't need loads of bass amp sims and in practice I have found that the Tech 21 Sansamp Bass Driver to be a great tool. The Helix is on the list for sure though, as conversely I like the idea of having a pedal that I can program in sounds for guitar and bass and run that straight into an interface for recording ideas.

Honestly, I watched a few live recordings of the 2012 line up and I thought that this line up is better. The 1992 Axl is gone but in 2023 I think he is as good as he was in 2008-2012. Whether that is a high bar of success however I’m not sure. it was raw, loose and unpolished, which I didn’t mind given that the core line up was always a bit like that. Still not a massive fan of the band, but I didn’t totally hate it.

It does a good Ampeg clean sound for sure, in the same way that I used to be able to dial in an SVT 450 or B2 heads to kinda sound like a clean SVT, but the lack of overdrive (or any kind of drive whatsoever) meant that I needed a pedal to get the sound I actually wanted. That is probably personal preference though, when I think Ampeg, I still tubes and valve-based overdrive and compression, which is why the SGT is very appealing to me.

A tech 21 VT Bass head might get you closer than an actual Ampeg. Or buy something like a Line 6 Helix Stomp.

Not played the pedal, but did a few gigs on PF800. A good amp but not something that really bore any relation to a valve SVT or Flip Top, which the pedal is really designed to achieve. I would keep the GK if I had to choice between the two. The GK is a classic tone in its own right.

I have had the Keeley Bassist for about 7-8 years. I honestly don't think about it too much. I think I use it 'wrong' but I generally work from left to right on the pedal: - first I set the compression level (i.e. how much do I want to compress the signal?) - then I set the threshold (i.e. when do I want the compression to kick in?). The LED will change when the compression kicks in so it is easy to tell when the compression is working; - then I set the gain (i.e. how loud the output signal is). So I kinda use the gain control as a master volume for the pedal as per the specs it is not an input gain but an output gain. https://robertkeeley.com/product/bassist-compressor/ If you turn the compression completely off you can use the pedal as volume boost by pushing the gain control. Since people associate 'gain' with input gain it probably would have been better if the 'gain' control on the pedal was called 'volume'. In the whole time I have had the pedal I don't think that the gain control has been lower than 11 o'clock or higher than 1 o'clock.

My nephew has one. I found that the best sounds involved having the gain pretty high and completely ignoring the input gain peak light. It is a strange amp in that the 'tube gain' actually works in a way where the dirtier, looser voicing is on the lowest settings and a faster, more traditionally solid state sound occurs with the gain turned up. For a cleaner sound run the master on full and use the gain as the volume knob. It is a pretty old design with a number of quirks, but there is great tone in there. It is just isn't a 'everything at 12 o'clock with master volume run low' amp.

My only 2 cents here would be that I think that this combo would have been in one of the earlier batches of the Peavey era Trace Elliot relaunch from 2006-2009 or so, where the products stated 'manufactured in Great Britain'. I think in about 2010 or so that label was changed to 'designed in Great Britain, manufactured in USA to Trace Elliot specifications' or similar. I bought 2x10 and 1x15 cabs in 2008/9 and they both had the manufactured in Great Britain. I haven't spent a lot of time with amps of that period, but I thought that the cabs were really good and much lighter than the old carpet covered TE cabs.

Yeah, I got my head around it by just thinking of the whole unit as an 'amp and cab' sim rather than an amp sim and the blend really determining how much of the amp and cab sim you want in the signal. The cab sim can't be separated from the amp sim, though it would good if it did! It is very much dated technology compared to the Helix and other modern amp sims when you can load different IRs etc. However, it is still a classic for a reason.

Yepp, it is clear but not clear. If you turn the blend off, the EQ (bass and treble) still work but the drive and presence don't have an effect. I owned a V1 for over a decade, but I really prefer the V2 with the added mid control. Both though are great options for an easy to use, essentially idiot-proof good DI tone.

From memory, the parallel output is a straight output of the input signal so no speaker sim or EQ. It think it was designed this way so that you could run the parallel out to your amplifier and the normal output/XLR output to a mixing desk. In terms of the other outputs, when then pedal is on (red light on) you can't turn the speaker sim off but you will reduce the added effect by reducing the blend. When you turn the pedal off (red light off) the speaker sim and EQ are turned off and the pedal is essentially bypassed. You can turn the speaker sim off in pedals like the Sansamp VT Bass DI but not the Bass Driver, either V1 or V2.

I really love the V2 Bass Driver. The mids feature just gives the sound so much more character than the old v1. However, I would highly recommend running a Darkglass overdrive into a Bass Driver with both pedals set to low gain and with the Darkglass upper end boosts turn to 'off' to reduce the clank. I run a v1 Alpha Omega into the Sansamp and it sounds great. In fact I have generally found that a Bass Driver improves the sound of most linear non-preamp overdrives. However, I totally get what the OP is getting at. I far prefer the sound of the Bass Driver or the VT Bass as an actual preamp compared to the B7K Ultra (though I haven't tried the Vintage Ultra which is probably more my thing). I still have a B3K which I have been using for 6/7 years but I have never been entirely sold on it. The old Aguilar Agro I had just had a lot more character, however the absence of a blend or EQ meant it needed an additional EQ. The Darkglass gear is good, however the marketing style is really off-putting to me, despite me running three Darkglass pedals on my board for the best part of 6-7 years!

Yepp, big heavy gear that used to cost a fortune new can be a bargain now owing to (a) how bloody impractical they are to move and (b) how little demand there is for them since portable modern gear came on the market. Case in point: I got a mint Mesa Powerhouse 6x10 for £400. A complete bargain because they were about £1600+ new or a waste of money given how it is overkill for most gigs (okay, all gigs) and is so damn heavy? Kinda both. I will never sell it, which is a good thing since I probably wouldn’t be able to if I wanted to. However as a cheap bucket list ‘I’ve always wanted that’ purchase I don’t regret it. I have a soundproof garage so I do use it multiple times a week, definitely wouldn’t have bought it if I was still living in an upstairs flat!

[inserts ‘my current in ears/amp sim/FRFR speaker set up is superior to any traditional amp and cab set up I have owned’ comment]… Seriously, I have been using a Mesa Walkabout 1x15 combo for 90% of my gigs since 2009. This was bought as my ‘portable’ rig when I joined a signed band. I also had a EBS Fafner (bought at the same time as the Mesa) and Peavey era Trace Elliot cabs (couldn’t afford the Mesa or EBS cabs..) as my big rig but really it was overkill for most gigs and I rarely used it. The Walkabout has pretty much handled most of my gigging needs, particularly with the development of modern PAs and tendency for guitarists to no longer use 100 watt Marshall half stacks. I still love big amps and cabs but more as ‘cool luxury things’ than something that I actually need. I still own the Fafner and it is great even after 14 years of use. I also have a Trace Elliot V6 which I bought in 2013 to fix my ‘I need a valve amp’ wish. I also finally bought my 2009 dream setup of a Mesa Big Block 750 and Powerhouse 6x10 over the course of 2017-2018. Utterly impractical in every sense but a tremendous piece of gear. This was essentially a ‘bucket list’ purchase and I only bought them because I found both items on the used market for a great price. Going back to my first paragraph my next amp purchase will probably be a Helix or something similar. I can’t see myself needing another amp unless one of my main three amps break down.

Had to go for Thunderball on discovering that Tom Jones at the time had no votes. I love the Bond films, so I find it very difficult to choose my favourite. Sam Smith's insipid effort is probably my least favourite. However if the original Bond theme is included, on reflection that kinda has to be number one.

Happy Gigging!