Minininjarob

In smaller rooms it’s amazing what an iPhone can do, it’s difficult to spend more when then work so well. We make a lot of our church videos from iPhone footage.

I am a relative beginner bassist and I would really love to play in our church band, we are a bit short on bassists so I need to put a lot of practice in! We have been really blessed to be able to put in an amazing PA in our new building. We have a couple of pro audio engineers in our congregation who have been so invaluable to making the most of our system, teaching people how to use a system which I would never stand a chance of understanding. Info here if you are interested, I don’t understand what most of the set up is! I just know there’s a lot of flashy lights. https://www.sseaudio.com/Installations/Churches-Cathedrals/Cathedral-House-Huddersfield

At our church we started with nice consumer level digital video cameras which had to be manned and did take a lot of setup - we had an analogue vision mixer which was pretty limited but we were chuffed to have it as it was more than a lot of churches have. When we moved to our new built for us building they soon started to struggle to get a decent image from the back of the auditorium (we won’t have cameras at the front as it would be distracting) but we persevered until they eventually broke and we have to buy something new. We now have couple of Black Magic design studio 4k cameras for the camera operators and another smaller static BM camera (don’t know the model). It’s all controlled from our vision desk with a touch screen PC controller (and various other complex boxes I don’t understand). We use long zoom lenses to get to the stage which isn’t perfect and is t cheap but it works for us. The only negatives they have don’t really make a difference to us and I’ve been impressed with their quality, we’ve had them 4 years now and they are rock solid. Worth a look I think. Pic shows control desk. Right hand side is Mac which controls all the words/PowerPoints/backgrounds etc. left hand side is mixer side, one screen for inputs, other screen is outputs and screen at bottom is controller. Run off a Mac Mini. Little screen in the centre is a Black Magic mobile recording thing which we put in SD cards to record each service live, hopefully good enough so it doesn’t need much editing (maybe not when I do the mixing!)

I have a fender downtown express which I like but might replace with separate pedals as I don’t use the overdrive section at all. It is good as a preamp as it has a switchable DI and so is useful as a one box solution and it does look gorgeous. I’ll probably keep it for that reason… 😂

Cos it’s what I wanted. I tried a few basses, don’t really like Yamaha/Ibanez modern basses, didn’t want an active bass either. My other choice might have been a stingray but I preferred the p bass sound in the end. And it’s a nice colour.

That’s good to know, thanks all. I have a Fender Player PB so nothing weird. That means I can turn the treble up on the instrument and use an EQ to shape the tone to be a bit more subtle when I need it.

Newbie here and I was wondering what exactly does the tone control do? When you turn the tone control up so you get more treble does that reduce the bass level. My novice ears can’t tell. I was thinking that I would like a brighter tone most of the time but the music I play would sometimes benefit from the treble being rolled off in some sections which I could do with EQ on the preamp. But if the bass is reduced when the tone control is used then that might not be a good thing.

What did you like about it? I have a GK combo and am considering a GK head but not sure what to go with. Not many opportunities to try them out before buying.

Not sure what sort of t-bird this is but was surprised to see the bassist in the Levellers playing one - I thought it sounded great in this video.

Not sure what sort of t-bird this is but was surprised to see the bassist in the Levellers playing one - I thought it sounded great in this video.

Not sure what sort of t-bird this is but was surprised to see the bassist in the Levellers playing one - I thought it sounded great in this video.

Not sure what sort of t-bird this is but was surprised to see the bassist in the Levellers playing one - I thought it sounded great in this video.

Not sure what sort of t-bird this is but was surprised to see the bassist in the Levellers playing one - I thought it sounded great in this video.

That looked awesome. It’s my dream to play something in front of people one day.

He can’t. He’s got his IEMs on.

Exactly.

I’m a newcomer to bass playing and if any of the IEM evangelists hate their big amps so much send them my way. Seems people want to get rid of them but won’t sell them cheaply. Hmmmm. Anyway, I’ve had my fair share of manual jobs over the years and the weight doesn’t bother me if someone wants to give me a valve SVT head and matching 8x10. I’ll give it a good home. 😂😂

To be honest if they had the money easily available I would say yes, but maybe steer them towards a slightly cheaper bike and the rest of the money on clothes and accessories. £2k isn’t expensive at all in bike land anymore.

After picking up a bass for the first time ever (never played any other instrument either) that I borrowed I went and bought a brand new Fender Precision then a week later a really nice GK amp. I figured buying some nice gear would make me want to practise and it worked, I love my P-bass and I get excited every time I pick it up (although I suck playing it) and the nice powerful amp sounds awesome turned up. Makes me excited to just play one note! In every hobby there’s people that spend a lot of money on their first set of gear, some stick with it, some don’t. One important consideration is that different hobbies or skills have different costs and to be honest I think playing the bass is relatively cheap so you may get more people getting nice gear to start off with. It’s all relative. I have ridden MTB bikes for pretty much 30 years and I sold half of a bike to buy my Precision. I would have not hesitated to spend £2k on a mountain bike so £700 on my first bass didn’t seem so bad and I figured if I looked after it I’d get a lot of my money back if I got a Fender (and that’s what I wanted after demoing them - wow that can be a bit embarrassing when you can’t play anything!). I’ve been looking at a bigger amp and found a nice GK setup on eBay which is £650 - I’ve spent that in the past on a set of forks for my bike! I don’t need it but wow I’m tempted! (Need to pay gas bill first though 😂😂) I reckon most people don’t mind people who have all the gear and have no idea as long as they are honest with it. Every bass player I have met has been more than nice to me and helped me along. It’s the people who have all the gear and think they have an idea, or think that expensive kit someone makes them more important.

The Spectadrive looks great for me, but do they still make it? Doesn’t seem to be in stock anywhere. I do prefer to buy new but will look out for one 2nd hand.

Hi All. I have a Fender Downtown Express which had EQ, overdrive and compression sections on it. I thought I needed the overdrive for the sound I wanted but I can’t seem to use it in a way I’m happy with. I like the EQ section I can use it. The sound I really like is when I put a little bit of compression on and turn up the drive in the compression section a lot. Thinking about it I want to explore this more but I’m not sure what I need if I go for seperate pedals. Would a separate compression pedal allow changes in the drive section or is there a separate drive pedal I can buy which would allow a fine tuning of the drive separate to the compression? I play with a pick mainly fast punk stuff. I think I want to sound of an overdriven tube preamp, is that what the drive on the compression section of my fender pedal is emulating? My GK amp really growls when I turn it up which is almost the sound I want but that extra drive turned up is perfect.

Anker cables are some of the best you can buy, I would recommend. And they don’t cost too much either.