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Just a quick update. I’ve decided to the keep the GP-5. Now that I’ve actually looked in the manual i can see i can use it like a small board. Each block has a midi on/off number. And the fact that the Chocolate can also power it makes for a very small back up.

First hearing, apparently. Perhaps others on basschat will be better able to explain what this means?

Your analysis is good @Misdee, but you forgot that those playing guitars or basses nowadays are, by 80%, old people like us (what's the average age here on BassChat, 50 to 55, I guess, or even 55 to 60) and have decided that older is better, so went back to the Fenders they couldn't afford when they were younger and skint...

To be fair, at the Stadium announcement event, Line 6 confirmed that they would continue to develop the current hardware for the foreseeable future - they're still going to manufacture and sell them. Obviously, their main focus is launching the Stadium and adding promised features, but I don't think it will be too long before the current devices are shown some love.

I remember a time when the relevant question would have been are Fender-style basses dead? When it comes to trends in bass design, it's a classic example of that old adage about swings and roundabouts. There was a general consensus that Fenders had become outmoded by such "useful" innovations as active electronics, graphite necks and neck-thru-body construction. I know it's hard to believe nowadays, but it's true. In the mid to late 1980's if you went shopping for a nice new bass (and by nice I mean pretty expensive) in the UK then the shops had plenty of boutique basses but a scant selection of Fender-derived designs. You could go into mainstream retail shops and buy a Wal, Status, a proper German-made Warwick, Jaydee, Overwater Music Man ect but the plethora of fancy Precision and Jazz-style basses that proliferate now just weren't there. The basses Fender were making weren't very appealing to most discerning players, and it was harder to find vintage examples than it is now, for various reasons. At some point in the 1990's someone must have plugged a Fender bass into an amp ( probably an Ampeg), tried playing some songs with a band, and said "Hang on a minute, this actually sounds quite good!" and we've all ended up where we are now.

My Marshall 412 was rated at 50 watts, that's 12 1/2watts per driver. Most cabs were 30" square because that was the smallest size that would fit 4 x 12 drivers. The bottom cab in a stack was sometimes larger, but I didn't like those because they were much heavier. There was no science in our sound in the 70's. I think bass and guitar worked together because we didn't have "bass". The best we could hope for was low mids, and lots of bass lines were also played up the neck.

I had the same xl2 that @three owned. I gigged it a few times in my Police tribute Amazing tone. Very fundamental. Thick sound. Unique. It was a transitional one, plug in leg rest etc. It felt heavy but that was because it looked small Didn't like the strap hanger plate. The strap made me feel all trussed up

From the 2012 Hiromi Trio Project album, 'Move', this is the complete Anthony Jackson performance of the tune 'Fantasy'. Exquisite but you will probably need a six string for this one to get the high notes. https://bilbosbassbites.co.uk/fantasy-hiromi-trio-project/

I have a dep gig on Saturday which has seen me spending the last two weeks learning a 32 song set list pretty much from scratch. I've played 8 of the songs before in bands, albeit in different keys and with different arrangements. Of the rest, there were 9 I heard for the first time when going through the list and the other 15 I am familiar with to a greater or lesser extent, having heard them on the radio over the years but never played. I was only given the keys; no charts or equivalent. I almost turned the gig down as it meant so much work and at a time when my main band was coming back to life after our summer break. But it was a favour for a mate and he's seen me right in the past with dep gigs and stepping in for me when asked. Last night was the first (and only) rehearsal. I was nervous as the band has a high standard. It's one thing to play along to the recordings but a completely different thing to play the songs in a band setting. I'm happy to say that it went really well and all those little bits I was unsure of seemed to go well. All the parts I'd worked out fitted and true to their word, the arrangements were almost identical to the originals. Where there were differences, I was able to read the BL's cues and come in/stop/slow down as required. Highlights for me were Oliver's Army, Pump It Up and Born to Run which, once I'd got the bass parts nailed, were great fun to play. There were a couple of songs in the set which, if I never play them again it will be too soon, but that's personal preference and I understand they go down well with the target audience. As an aside, we rehearsed in a local village hall. Just over 30 years ago, I rehearsed in the same hall with a band doing Britpop covers. I was the rhythm guitarist but as we worked up the band it became clear that I would be better suited to bass (the 'bassist' was a better guitarist than me - as were most people 🙂) and I moved over to bass duties. It was the first time I'd been a bassist rather than a person who occasionally played bass. Good memories. This was the debut of my Hohner 'The Jack' through the Peavey Minimax and TE 1x10 pair in a band scenario and it sounded great. I was complimented on the tone several times and there was plenty of volume left in the amp. It's a big gig so I'll be DI'd into the PA on the day, but I'll have the stack behind me for monitoring and a little extra 'oomph' as the band is generally very loud. I'm also working on a personal IEM mix so I can guarantee to hear my bass, and manage the on stage volumes of the others. If nothing else, the earbuds will act as ear plugs. Last night's kit. The pedal board has an HPF set to about 50hz, MS60b providing noisegate and tuning, NUX compressor, EHX Bass Clone, NUX Voodoo Vibe (currently my favourite modulation effect) going in to the Ampeg SCRDI.

Well, I pulled the trigger - ordered the Dimarzios from Thomann and my bass is with my local guitar technician. I've a couple of studio sessions coming up, so I'm looking forward to how they sound!

At the moment I can't get enough of Sometimes I feel like screaming, I repeatedly play the guitar melody/solo and the riff daily. Such a brilliant song, so relaxing to listen to and play too.

Drowning By Numbers - Placebo

E=mc² - Big Audio Dynamite

What happened? Hopefully they chopped off his hands.

Einstein a go-go - Landscape

No help in getting his tone other than understanding where it was coming from. Go back to the 1950's and there were no proper musical instrument speakers in the UK though Fender and others were building guitar combos inthe States. Materials used in building loudspeakers were still primitive, magnets were weaker, speaker coil often wound on paper formers and glued on with domestic adhesives. Amps were all valve jobs and usually limited in power. the first Fender amp was 7W and drove an 8" speaker. PA's were designed for public address rather than music, usually column speakers and adopted by bands. The real problem was volume, just being loud enough to be heard at all. The vox AC30 was a revolution followed very quickly by other companies including Marshall. You'll notice tha 30W was seen as a powerful amp and the AC30 needed two 12" speakers to handle the power. 25W was the handling of the typical 12" speaker in the sixties because the heat in the coil literally burned the paper formers andbroke down the glue. Because of the magnets lack of power the cones were made lighter to get more volume and the magnet gap was limited to increase the efficiency, meaning excursion was limited and there was little bass output. If you used a single 4x12 Marshall you'd need to pair it with a 50W amp if you wanted it to last very long. We suffered many blown speakers then and re-coning was pretty common. 1970 was a bit of a turning point, ceramic magnets came into wide use, heat resistant adhesives and formers increased power handling and the money generated by bands meant specialist music speakers were being designed. The first 100W solid state amps were recently introduced and though unreliable they were a bit cheaper and a lot lighter than the old valve amps. Power available was about to take off. The USA was a way ahead of the UK but both knowledge and physical imports were trickling in. Just as importantly Thiele and Small published their papers on speakers and we finally had some solid mathematical theory to bring to cab design. Free would have known nothing of this. Most UK companies were still building gear using 25-30W 12" speakers with a few 15's and 18's used for bass. Celestion, Goodmans and Fane dominated the British market. That's waht you are hearing in the Andy Fraser sound, bass is limited by excursion and lightweight cones, the lower mids are boosted to give a semblance of bass and to bring out the bass and make it sit just below the guitars. Those thin paper cones would be breaking up and giving a boost in the mids but very little output at high frequencies and they wouldn't have been using horns at this stage. Few bassists would have been using ported cabs in the UK as the theory for designing them just wasn't there, we could tune a cab but not match it to the physical and electrical characteristics of the speaker. One of the things that struck me last night listening to the live recordings is how well the bass works with the guitars in the mix, musicians in those days used their ears to work within the limits of their gear to create a great sound. Now that is creativity They were so young too!

For the above two threads there is a line 6 bug forum and an ‘ideascape’ might be worth posting in. Again I reckon they will be concentrating on Stadium but who knows 🤷‍♀️.