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I was already playing bass, with a pretty generic tone, when I heard Geddy Lee on Permanent Waves and then Moving Pictures, that tone set the standard for me and I've played variations of that bright, distorted sound for 45 years. Lee's aggressive playing style also influenced my own very hard-hitting finger-style, which compliments the sound very well. I blame Geddy, however, I don't play Ricky's or Jazz basses, so it's not all a carbon copy.

This would be a big loss, Reaktor and Kontakt are both great, Reaktor in particular is pretty unique and the user library is full of amazing stuff going back decades. I have a feeling that this will keep happening to similar companies and we are seeing the early stages of the death of electronic music, or at least software based electronic music. As AI eats everything digital, people are slowly losing interest in this stuff and values are beginning to shift. If AI can crap out a generic house tune which is indistinguishable from a human-made one, it’s game over. When people can’t tell the difference between digital and AI, they will just lose faith in the whole thing and move on. Same thing is beginning to happen to digital art too. Interesting times.

Amazing band !

There's also the M-Vave Blackbox/ANNBlackbox or Lekato ME-01. I've just got one which I've started describing in

I've had a bit of a play, after updating the firmware and PC and Android software to the latest. Nice solid piece of kit. One conventional pot as master volume, one rotary transducer to set parameter values, with a click to select. There are two Bluetooth channels, one full Bluetooth and the other Bluetooth BLE, one for control and the other for audio interface. Limited effects - there's a chain of up to six, which, just like the old days, are one of each type. However, they can be reordered if required 1) FX Noise gate Boost Compressor AI Gate MS - I have no idea what this is, it's a recent addition that's not in the manual 2) AMP 1-15 for guitar 16-20 for bass (the models are AgDb750, ApSVT, PJBuddy, DgXu, MarkLm - four of them seem obvious, I assume the Dg one is DarkGlass but not sure what Xu signifies) Same controls for all: Gain, Level, Bass, Mid, Treble 3) MOD Chorus Phaser Tremolo Flanger Vibrato Univibe (combines chorus and phaser) 4) DLY Analog Ducking dTape (I want to have a play with this as it emulates tape saturation, my favourite bass distortion) Dual Lofi 5) REV Room Hall Swell Spring Shimmer Cloud 6) CAB 1-15 for guitar 16-20 for bass (models Agula410, AgSVT410, DgDG212N, MbSway210, Tace412) Same controls for all - Level, Lowcut, Highcut There's also a tuner which can be put in either Mute or Bypass mode, and the reference can be changed from 440Hz. It responds quickly and is easy to use and accurate (I put it in series with my Zoom MS-70CDR+ and it was as responsive and easy to use, and very visible). The Android software is easy to use too. It also allows you to load cab IRs and AMx files (AM2, AM3, and AM4 AFAIK) which are equivalent to NAM files - NAM files can be converted to them. That's something for me to try to see if I can get an octaver and a pitch shift emulated.

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Probably my still favourite album of all time.

I bought some strings from Paddy. Hassle free, lots of communication, everything on time and well packaged. Couldn’t ask for more.

I don't know who it is, but that's not Emile Castillo on sax. Great band though.

Sounds like a great bass!😍

snap!

The Summit. Sly and Robbie. If this doesn't get you bouncing nothing will

Nice! Haven't checked for spoilers but the 4th is comfortably my favourite, really nice with the flats and rounds, a real rubbery tone. Least favourite is 3, seems a bit odd and unbalanced in the mids and woolly by comparison. 1 & 2 are very nice, 1 probably edges it, but 4 is a bit special.

Hi Harry, you've chose one of the best luthiers in the country! Chris will generally run everything past you stage by stage, you'll choose all the wood blanks (he let me choose directly from the supplier, not just stock he had), the exact hardware you want etc. You'll get photos every time he works on it and isn't precious about changing spec during the build (provided he hasn't already done the work!) I can't give any recommendations on what spec your bass will be, but whatever you ask for Chris and Alex will deliver, and their communication is terrific.

Thank you @NancyJohnson, Ill be sure to do this

Interesting! Without giving anything away. No.3 which I disliked I kinda guessed right what that would be. It just sounded like there's a mid scooped to it to my ears. I personally would not want this one. No. 1 - When it started and when from 1st to 2nd on the P bass my first thought was "sound like 1 has higher input impedance than 2" which I think it does - I enjoyed it on the Sandberg, and less so on the P. This was ok. Number 2: Big sounding, colourful mids. This is a nice sounding preamp/DI. But I like this style of thing. I'ld use one. Number 4: was not expecting to like this one. It's clean, with 1 seemed to have the widest freq range- has that balanced warm unhyped sound that is good unless you're going to go for a colour. Enjoyed it on the P bass, less so on the jazz - which is possibly the higher freq of the rounds. (for reference, my dream sound is the old Warwick hellebore preamp, and the last 2-3 years the v2 Colourbox has been at the end of my pedalboard, so I like things with transformers in!)

Stand. REM

interesting 🤔 ... the stage I'm talking about is a particularly wobbly one that the drummer REALLY hates... but it didn't seem to get the collective synchronization millennium bridge wobble going! I will look out for it on other gigs though. so far I've tested it on that gigs / stage I know well and a new venue with a concrete floor that I'm unsure if the iso mat did anything at all to improve tone

I've completed the basic cabinet and since the picture was taken have fitted the driver. I've posted elsewhere that I'm considering a box/slot port rather than a tube, I have enough ply left to make the box and as I don't have a hole cutter or pipe the correct size for a tubular port thought this might work. I've checked a number of online port calculators, many of which give different answers, however the one that looks most correct, if that is such a phrase, gives dimensions as 4cm x 4cm and a depth of 5cm. Could I ask if this sounds correct. If I get it wrong I can just cut another baffle. Thanks for any help David

I had Mike Lull build me an NRT5 (see below) with Bass Direct having to handle the logistics. I'd gave preferred to have gone direct, but Bass Direct were the business handling UK distribution, so I pushed to go through them. By way of advice, check your build specs several times and contact the builder directly for confirmation of these. From memory, I specced out everything in finite detail; woods, pickups, hardware, colour etc. but what was confirmed back was littered with errors. I was forking over more than £5k for this and I wanted it to be right, so I was a bit frantic. Eventually, I just went to Lull direct to firm things up.