LawrenceH

One thing I've learn from my own tortuously slow musical development is that if I don't find anything at all worthwhile in a piece of music, it's because I either don't understand it or |I haven't found the right criteria to judge it on. Even the most seemingly mediocre piece of disposable pop normally has something in it if I bother to look hard enough. Doesn't mean I have to like it, of course

[quote name='silddx' post='1093273' date='Jan 17 2011, 11:02 PM']What they should do is licence this technology out. Then we don't have to play one of those horrible MusicMan basses. We can have any kind of bass we want, ANYTHING! A bass that looks COOL! Made out of anything, and dial in the sounds we want. No more pissing about, and no arguments about a P Bass sounding like Guinness and a Jass Bass like bloody lager and lime.[/quote] Yes, they should, it'd be good.

[quote name='51m0n' post='1092668' date='Jan 17 2011, 04:06 PM']Anyone suggesting the wood has a bigger part to play in the amplified sound has been eating the funny mushrooms IMO....[/quote] But your test wouldn't address this issue because a P and a J are made of the same woods so of course it's going to sound really similar! And the pickups aren't really all that different either...

Hi Alex these are very good articles, but going back to what I said to you before, I think they would be even better if it linked to (separate) graphs/figures illustrating some of the points! Teaching scientific/technical stuff I've found some people are very visual in their understanding and will find that easier no matter how clear the prose - it also gives a great solid point of reference for otherwise interminable internet discussions

Any chance you could just swap the components with the older GK with the intact casing?

[quote name='TomKent' post='1092042' date='Jan 17 2011, 12:14 AM']So it's like the Variax with more options? I'd really rather take three or four basses to a session than one of these, as revolutionary and technologically groundbreaking as it is.. I don't like the look of it haha.[/quote] Not really like the Variax, this is an electronic switching system for conventional pickups but still using the analogue output. The Variax uses individual piezo pickups on each string and from then on is fully digital, using modeling algorithms to mimic the behaviour of different pickup configurations basically like a very advanced FX unit. The Variax doesn't suffer the limitations of the Gamechanger, which although versatile will still ultimately be limited by pickup placement and construction. The limitations suffered by the Variax are instead that it's digital and a little bit s**t So the Gamechanger's not digital and may well not be s**t but ultimately, if you want a particular sound on a session/gig corresponding to this or that 'classic' bass I suspect you're going to be better off taking that bass as this isn't going to be able to replicate it unless it shares identical pickup placement/design.

Your Ibanez isn't nitro so don't worry about that. I went on a mission to buy an acoustic guitar stand for a friend's birthday recently, I found it's worth trying a few to get one that's sufficiently stable. A few tripod-only designs like the one above I found were a bit dicey stability-wise, it doesn't take much pushing for the instrument to topple diagonally back. Plus if they don't actually hold the neck then although slippage isn't normally a problem thanks to the rubber grips, it's very easy to balance the instruments on them at a bad angle so that they fall more easily. The I went for in the end was the acoustic version of this: [url="http://www.djmmusic.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=KWE51"]http://www.djmmusic.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=KWE51[/url] Very stable and portable though still lacking neck support

Another vote for a Yamaha. You can easily get an RBX170 for under £100 and they are very 'friendly' basses for a beginner. You won't lose any resale value if you get a good-priced s/h RBX170. The 374s with the big fat pickups are also brilliant budget basses IMO that punch well above their weight sound- and playability-wise given the low s/h prices they go for. Bear in mind that the price of the Squier CV series people are so keen on puts them up in the bracket of the Yamaha BB414, rather than RBX range. Ibanez also make similarly beginner-friendly instruments. I moved Yam-Ibby-Fender and am very glad I started on the Yamaha.

I don't think there will be many cabs on the bass side of the market, better off looking at PA cabs designed to give reasonable low-end performance and/or crossed to decent subs. For 'hi-fi' quality (bit of a dangerous term!)? Fohhn, and the top end of the HK Audio range, can't think of many 'big names' that'll do it. For a low-powered and small all-round solution then AER kit is good, something like their Compact. None of these options are cheap though!

If you find your current rig loud enough then you won't need to change amps - there's no way the Compact will be any less loud than the Ampeg cab. But if you want a lightweight option then Markbass are one of many.

[quote name='jimmyb625' post='1090926' date='Jan 15 2011, 10:14 PM']Even Behringer have changed the game apparently, although there are unconfirmed rumours that the game they've changed it to bears an uncanny resemblence to the old one....[/quote]

[quote name='stingrayPete1977' post='1090916' date='Jan 15 2011, 10:03 PM']I have never tried an S1 jazz but the strat one is rubbish! I have never met anyone who ever found a nice tone with it switched in, Muddy mush switch doesn't sound as appealing as S1 though does it, Marketing just the same.[/quote] Well that's the general effect of running pickups in series! But a low-end boost and HF attenuation can be quite useful to bassists looking for a very thick, thuddy tone.

[quote name='Musicman20' post='1090878' date='Jan 15 2011, 09:14 PM']No one has played it, so we can't be overly negative. I personally trust they've done a good job like the Bongo and Big Al.[/quote] I think the main negative is a response to the way the product is presented, which we can each judge according to our own tastes! EBMM's style there reminds me a lot of Mackie, if you've ever read any of their product manuals you'll probably know what I mean. Assuming I've understood what it does correctly then I think you can get quite a long way with conjecture since pickup phase and series-parallel switches are nothing new. If I was a guitarist then I'd be drooling over the idea of retrofitting this to an HSS strat! As a bass player though, I can't see it being a big success, especially given the utter lack of love for the old s1 switch which I felt added a really useful tonal option to the already versatile jazz bass.

[quote name='silddx' post='1090811' date='Jan 15 2011, 08:00 PM']If you could only be bothered watching it for 3 minutes, why should any of us bother wasting our own time explaining it to you, when the vids tell you all you need to know? Yes, you are missing something. You clearly have no idea what the GC does, so why do you bother expressing your opinion?[/quote] You've just quoted a message where I expressed no opinion other than frustration at the marketing - I didn't just watch 3 mins of the video I spent a fair while trawling the site for more precise technical info first before trying the video, which was devoid of any actual technical explanation up to 3 mins in and was pretty irritating. Below that someone was kind enough to summarise what it actually did. And then I commented on that, assuming it was a correct explanation. I didn't say I thought it was rubbish either.

[quote name='ikay' post='1090492' date='Jan 15 2011, 03:01 PM']Solid shaft and 0.47uF[/quote] I have jazzes with either split or solid - it depends on the model. Easiest way to be sure is to just pull the plastic knob off and see what's there currently, though if you have to uinscrew it to do that it's highly likely to be solid.

[quote name='silddx' post='1090791' date='Jan 15 2011, 07:44 PM']This GC eliminates almost all of that.[/quote] Not exactly true. It's still going to have limitations in its tonal palette down to the pickup positions and construction type. It's versatile, but I think you have to think of it as somewhat akin to greyscale-type colour palettes - eg you can have 4 bit, 8 bit or 16 bit with 16, 256 or 65000 odd different shades of grey but there is no way you can get pink out of the system. That's not to detract from the product as I'm sure it could prove very versatile if they implement it well, but it simply won't do a precise recreation of something like a basic p or jazz bass (or, if you used it on a Big Al, a Stingray).

[quote name='Johnston' post='1090623' date='Jan 15 2011, 04:50 PM']I was thinking it's probably something that guitarists will be all over thinking it's the best thing since since they last pleasured themselves. Where as being a more conservative lot bassist are more likely to go Mmne.h[/quote] It's more 'fundamental' than that though (geddit?! you will!), an equal number of coils in and out of phase is going to kill the fundamental and early series harmonics which is far more of a problem for bassists than guitarists - there's a reason most basses don't bother with phase reverse switches that goes beyond the extra 2p it'd add to manufacturing costs. Could be more interesting on the odd combinations though. I think my idea of a variable delay between pickups would be interesting, it would allow phase cancellations/reinforcements at higher order harmonics without necessarily being detrimental to the bottom end. Anyone ever does it? Should I rush to the patent office?!

[quote name='jimmyb625' post='1090522' date='Jan 15 2011, 03:27 PM']Did you look at the NAMM video, or the one from the EBMM website? The NAMM one is a bit pants. The coils of the pickup are treated separately, so 2 humbuckers gives 4 coils. If you take coil 1 for example, you can get the combinations 1, 12, 13, 14, 123, 124, 134, 1234, 142, 143. and you can have them in phase, out of phase, in series, or in parallel (I think Steve Morse says that 1&3 in series sounds different to 3&1 in series in one of the vids). The 8.5 million combinations stated come from having 6 coils in use and works on the assumption that the coils in series sound different. As far as I've been able to see, things like tone and volume controls are not a part of what it does, it just gives lots of switching options, but I can see it being possible to incorporate that within the future.[/quote] I looked at the EBMM vid actually, and thought it was rubbish! But as I said, I couldn't face going all the way through it. If it's essentially a (highly) glorified pickup selector then I can see it being very useful for guitars, but tbh far less so for bass where lots of the out-of-phase combinations aren't really going to be very conventionally useful, and lots of the series combinations will end up sounding very similar. Fair play to them for giving it a crack as there will be some good combos in there but it's not going to live up to their own hype and revolutionise the bass world!

OK so I got 3 minutes through that video before I lost the will to live and had to give up. American guitar/amp manufacturers seem to specialise in these extended commercials completely devoid of information content. So is there anywhere on their site that actually explains what this thing is doing that makes it so special? Because so far all I can gather is that it lets you combine pickups any way you want - but there aren't that many combinations possible with a 2-pickup system so I must be missing something. I was wondering if it used delay between pickups to give continuously variable phase shifts but since it's all analogue...or do the 8 million combinations include 'treble boost 3.1dB, treble boost 3.2dB'? I'd like to see a good explanation of what's actually going on but so far I've only seen meaningless hype.

Pickup type and as has been pointed out position are huge contributors to tone. But, my experience is definitely that different basses sound different unplugged. And swapping the same pickups between a couple of different J basses, each has their own character which reflects the unplugged sound. I don't know if there're construction differences between J and P basses that would give [b]consistent[/b] differences between the models, I guess neck mass would be the most likely consistent factor if there was one. But definitely there are going to be differences between particular examples of each bass that go beyond the pickup type/placement.

[quote name='Phil Starr' post='1088286' date='Jan 13 2011, 04:49 PM']I find Behringer the most frustrating company in music. They almost get it right and somehow end up missing the point. The EP1500 is a little gem. We've had one for years, does what it says on the tin and looks to be well made. They haven't spent a lot on designing the Nuke. It is just one of their PA amps in a case with their bass pre-amp. They've just combined two products they already make into a single case. Some of their design are quite good, when they work but they are let down with stupid cost cutting, crappy connectors a handful of cheap components in an otherwise good product combined with the same couldn't care less attitude to after sales that Apple show to their customers. Don't their people read the press they get on the internet. It would cost them pence to improve the quality of their critical components and they would still have huge economies of scale. 5% on their production costs would probably improve their reliability fourfold and their sales by 50%. If their stuff was 20% more expensive but was reliable and repairable we would all be looking at it seriously, it would still be cheap. I'd love it if there was someone making cheap reliable exotic gear. I can't afford the real thing. Behringer could potentially solve all my problems, but it doesn't.[/quote] +1, this sums up Behringer exactly. The good thing in the case of this one is that if it's just one of their PA amps then there's half a chance it'll work! The built-in crossover is actually a nice way of dealing with these stereo power amps for bass guitar IMO, cross to a decent sub at 100-ish Hz with a 4x10 above and it could be a monstrous rig. I'd let somone else do the product-testing first though

[quote name='KK Jale' post='1087862' date='Jan 13 2011, 12:40 PM']Re. the Compact… that's almost certainly the way I'm going. I just didn't want to get into it on this thread… First, wateroftyne… excellent YouTube clips. The RH450 sounds really impressive… tip top. The Promethean comes over as very acceptable. Bit less focus and detail, maybe that's the settings, but a nice enough sound. At the risk of sounding like a complete doughnut, I've got to be honest here… I cannot have flashy hi-tech lights. I just cannot. Not only am I spiritually allergic to blinking LEDs, but the piss-taking I would endure from my vintage Tele-playing, Hammond-organ stabbing, Selmer sax-sucking bandmates would be unbearable. So the TC is OUT. Sorry, TC. (Off-topic: Musicman20, my TC Polytune has let me down twice and the ****er ain't getting a chance to do it again). Musicman20, Thumperbob, bartelby - you're helping me make up my mind on the Little Mark. I'm not ruling it out yet but there's no way I'm putting a preamp or pedal in front of an amp to get extra EQ or make it sound generally interesting enough. If any bass amp needs that, it's a fail in my book. Burrito - you're definitely coming from the same place as me style-wise and if you're finding the Terror 500 does retro without being too rock, then that's an important recommendation. I will try one, that's a definite.[/quote] I'm surprised to see all the Compact recommendations in this case. I'd be inclined to make full use of the trial policy - the voicing of those Eminence neo drivers is pretty much the opposite of 'old school' with a full bandwidth, no lo-mid hump and a pronounced rising upper-mid response. If you find something like the VPF/VLE filters on the LMs compensate for this, then it's fine and will be very loud indeed, but run flat it won't give a 'vintage' tone at all. When I tried the Terror in Red Dog Edinburgh through the orange cabs, it coloured the tone a LOT! I didn't fiddle much with the drive so perhaps if you set it between 0 and 0.1 then it's a bit more subtle, but as it stood although it was a tone that a lot of people would like,I can't recall any tracks from the 60s that have anything like that amount of gub on them. Definitely give it a whirl but in your shoes I'd be inclined also to test something like the Little Mark Tube which is apparently much more gently warming, or if you don't mind the weight something like the Hartke LH500 which uses the old Fender Showman valve pre design and is fat but clean.

Ah, Behringer are a great company if you like comedy and lawsuits. Having said that, I worked my way through some of their kit as a student and every so often they come up with something rather good for the money. I believe (apart from the copying of other brands) that somewhere Behringer have updated an old concept and have a thousand monkeys chained to autocad...going by the number of products they release on a regular basis, they probably release the top 1% of the monkeys' output to market. And we all know, anyone who has a substantial amount of kit shamefully has a few Behringer products lurking at the bottom of their rack, hoping the 100s of LEDs they love to adorn their products with won't attract the attention of the gear police!

oh yeah, you really don't need much of the stuff - i'd find a way of holding the neck upright too so it all stays in the nut