All Activity

Thanks for confirming @Hellzero that was also my understanding from the manual, however a thread on Talkbass from a few years ago seemed to throw up some confusion involving old versions of the manual. But good to have it confirmed. Thanks @Dood re teaching and using plugins. My audio interface (and older RME babyface) does not support running plugins directly on interface so I’d have to use my DAW for plugins which (for me) adds latency etc. I also use OBS for teaching but have no issues with routing mics, bass, DAW, videos etc to remote students using RME’s excellent TotalMix software which lets you route pretty much anything to anything.

No real update, but my guy is sending the scratchplate now. I've actually never seen one like it. 0ba2f294-a3b3-41f2-b34d-cc31d1eabb0c.mp4

I owe virtually all of my (limited) ability to my years as a dep. One August (2016 I think) I depped with 13 different bands in one month. 100% the best way to develop your ear and also interpersonal skills with other musicians. Great for making contacts. The variety too keeps things super interesting.

Last weekend I did a dep job on bass guitar for a 16-piece amateur big band. This is not my normal bag. The only regular reading gig I have is with the brass band, which is in treble clef. I did it as a favour to help out the Musical Director and also out of curiousity, to see what big bands are about and whether I could hack it. The set list was 25 pieces, none of which I'd played before, encompassing Glenn Miller, some jazz standards, soul, show tunes, pop songs from the last century, some oddballs like Birdland, You Can't Stop the Beat, The MD sent me a link to a Google drive with 75 pieces in it, so I decided to wait for the set list which gave me about a month to look at it. 80% of it I was able to sight-read in one take. There were six pieces which were more challenging, mostly fast walking lines in unfamiliar keys or timing issues (Birdland!), so I was lucky to have some time to work these up. Finding YouTube vids of bands playing the same arrangement was very helpful to get the sense of these pieces. There were no rehearsals. The gig went pretty smoothly, I got lost a couple of times but found my way back. The MD and the band manager were happy with the outcome and have asked me if I would dep for them again if the need arises. Important points for me: Stick with the arrangement and don't go off-piste. The arrangement is the arrangement, the MD will point out any exceptions before you start playing. In particular, look first for key-changes and geography (repeats, DS/Coda) before you worry about the notes. Be confident, and do as much preparation to help you build confidence. For me this includes bringing enough spare equipment so that you can cope with any kind of failure. Dress code - this is always important and as long as you have black shoes and trousers and a white shirt, bands will provide you with what you need (in this case, polo shirts, but in the brass band world uniform jackets and ties too). Pay? Dream on. No pay, no expenses, and a 40-minute drive both ways. I got the same as everyone else!

Cheers mate! I do alot of this at work so I thought of branding up my vid content 😃

I've never had a problem with them so far, he says waiting for his most expensive purchase to date to arrive..

Another good test for the Monza last weekend. I did a dep gig with a 16-piece big band - drums, keys, trumpets, trombones and saxes. No PA. Outdoors. I was just about loud enough at Fortissimo, with the iAmp Doubler running pretty much flat out. It's notionally 450W into 8 Ohms. The Monza handled that quite happily. To get a little more headroom and move a bit more air, I DI-d the signal from the amp into a TecAmp Puma 10 combo. A more powerful amp would have been a better option, but since I'm not planning to make a habit of doing this gig I'll stick with what I've got for now.

Very different, split coils compared to single coils for a start 🤟🏻 Alembic’s have a cleaner tone in general, while the Jaydee’s out the box have more of a mid range character the best way is to get your bass side by side with one and make the comparison

I've only really zoomed through the thread, so you'll have to forgive me if I have missed some pertinent details. I thought I'd just chime in regarding the teaching aspect: As yet, I've never needed an additional 'bass preamp' before my interface. However, if I felt the urge I do have a few on my "shelves of pleasure". I just made that up, on reflection it sounds way more dodgy that it's supposed to. I digress. A decent interface with a higher enough inout inpedeance isnt really that different from the input of a "transparent" bass preamplifer. So, rather than worry about getting my tone with extra boxes, I have always shaped the sound with a really good plugin. My teaching favourite for absolute clean (and totally dry) to mildly driven sounds is the Neural DSP Cory Wong X - in the DI/Channel strip setting. No amp sim, no cabinet. It is bonkers good when you get it dialled in and I'd highly recommend that over messing about with additional hardware. *unless the interface being used can not accomodate the output needs of the instrument. (Which I am yet to find on anything with more than two inputs). Just a thought! Oh, if you're on a Mac and you are using OBS or similar for online lessons you'll have no doubt come up against the issue of getting "computer audio (plugins/DAW/usic palyer) and microphone out to the other party" and this is also fixable.

Hello all, I've recently (last saturday...) seen Mark King in Pisa - Italy, and noticed he uses two Supernaturals onstage a red one and a brown one. Having a 1980 Alembic Series I, I'm guessing how the tone of those is comparing to my ol' pal...