Leaderboard

I knew a guy like that. He used to (annoyingly) put his cases behind him on stage for easy access too. Whilst I'm all for a reasonably smartish get out of a gig, I really don't get what the rush is to save a few minutes afterwards, and it can give the wrong impression to bookers if the band are rushing around as soon as the last note has died away. Our band used to call them 'Doris Day' gigs ( quick pack away, quick pack away etc.... apologies to younger BC ers.)

Got an Update..and thanks to all your advice which I passed on to him, he stuck to his guns and has got the dealer to agree (very reluctantly) to swap back the guitars on the proviso that he pays £60, 30 quid for setting up the chapman before he advertised it on his FB page and £30 to put back the strat to its origional set up when they re-swap guitars, seems a bit harsh but I told him probably best to bite the bullet on that one and just get your axe back. Thanks for all your advice folks, love this forum, helped me out so many times

TU-3 I typed that slightly tongue in cheek to begin with, but actually, thinking about it, it's truly the only pedal I would be uncomfortable performing without!

Just having some goofy fun here.

He he! No, it’s all good! There’s nothing like a good geek out Unfortunately yes it has been tried and tested. The possible solutions just had me moving away from my desired ‘base tone’ so the MS came off my board. Yes I could replace my EMGs.. but I’ve been using them in my basses solidly for about 20 odd years because of their (imho) tonal benefits.. one being a huge output level. Oh and yeah, a small thing with being an EMG Artist now *chuffed!* ok, so why isn’t it an issue? Well, your Nords aren’t active pickups and are likely to have a lower output level in comparison. So you could say that I am in the minority simply because I have that high(er) output than the average bassist. I use that level to drive my... err.. drive pedals! Although you could now argue that it’s less of a requirement if I am plugged directly in to Helix, but EMGs are just superb sounding pickups when set up properly and I don’t wanna change them out.

For my playing... I'd have to say an envelope filter. If you ask me today, I'm saying the MXR BEF. Tomorrow might be the robotalk 2 Day after that my mini mu..... Revolving doors.

I really wish they'd do a version with the possibility of changing/extending the bands.. maybe making them semi-parametric. That would be a killer pedal.

There was nothing happening to your left.

Find a Cort B4FL. Unlined fingerboard, Bartolini pickups and preamp and great build quality. Also very light and plays beautifully, great mwah.

This is why compact cabs for bass guitar are much more difficult to design than most people think. Not only do you have to get your sound to the audience (assuming no large PA), but you also have to get the sound to the player's ears when he's standing one to two metres in front of the cab. And the sound the audience hears should ideally be the same as the sound the player hears, for obvious reasons. Most players, I think, recognise the limitations of their cabs and live with them - and angling always helps the player to hear better (but not necessarily the audience). You can more or less tell by looking at the driver configuration whether a cab can pull this trick off - and most don't come anywhere near. So you have to stack a second cab on top of your first so that you can at least hear yourself. When you do that you get cancellation between the cabs at certain frequencies, which affects what the audience hears - and so on. No wonder people like in-ears!

Yes I think he has learned a lesson, don't swap a £350 chapman for a dodgy bitsa in the first place!

Can't speak from experience re the mechanical issues, but I have had Basses where there was a distinct 2 tone effect (not the music genre): the top half of the neck has been exposed to sunlight and the bottom end has not and 'shading' has occurred. From memory it was a poly finish and was the rear of the neck.

I think you are making it sound harder than what is, Scalpy. It’s actually very structured and disciplined. The arranger, Peter Newberry transcribed it down to a tee. His scrolling score is below. GM midi sounds, but the notes and time signatures are all there.

Nancyraygun are you still in the room? Anyway, here's the thing all other things being equal the efficiency of loudspeakers is proportional to their surface area, doubling the cone area gives the equivalent of doubling the amplifier power. There is nothing magic about modern speakers just a gradual improvement in materials and engineering which enable you to squeeze a little more sound out of a modern drive unit. The state of play at the moment IMO is that you can just about squeeze enough sound out of a single 12" cone to match a drummer, so long as you aren't demanding anything unusual in terms of boosting the bass. The Barefaced designs along with loads of others takes advantage of this and the ultralight cab helps a lot with portability too. If you are still reading this thread then I'd recommend you think in terms of buying a couple of 8 ohm, 1x12 cabs. a single one will do for rehearsals and small gigs and adding a second cab will double the efficiency and increase the power from your amp giving you a real boost in sound. It means a single journey for smaller gigs and a return trip for big gigs, though I do sometimes manage two light'ish 1x12's, amp and bass as one lift if the route from the car is straightforward. I think you should be fussed by tone though, compared to speakers amps add very little tone of their own and changing your speakers will change your tone more than changing your amp. I'd go out and try as many speakers as possible, preferably with your own amp.

It does until someone asks you to play it. Then it dawns on you.

From some of the conversations in the OT recently, I'm waiting for Tw@t Chat.

Yeah, those early YJ albums had some lovely, groove playing on them. Harmonically, the tunes were interesting & very rich sounding. BB5, I know you are into Piano playing as well, check out this short Russell Ferrante video on stacking/poly chords. It gives you an idea how they got those themes and chord structures.

Done

I don’t think any of those are ‘consensus’?! You’ll probably find that each of those points has a 50/50 split on here! Si

Thanks, will give them a look. I quite like the natural look in this but just because I am looking at it a lot. However, I have never liked a natural wood bass on the long term, I think it goes back to my original Pine Kay! And anyway, how can you have a fireman that isn't red?

I have to say I'm a lover of synth bass, groups like "Infected Mushroom" and "kalya scintilla" really speak to me because of the heavy neuro bass. Some of the sounds you can achieve with software like Native Instruments' Massive and Image-line's Harmor are out of this world! Like Dolby sub tests meets Michael Bay transformer noises!

I could probably be talked into losing the board, so long as I keep my Tech21 Sansamp VT. I've recorded with it, made studio practice amps sound good & generally just leave it on if I'm playing. This one pedal changed my whole viewpoint on bass effects.

Sorry @Happy Jack, you missed one. There's a big cockup stood to your left, wielding a Strat, a harmonica, and the ability to play almost nothing, and yet still be playing too much

Couple of East London/Essex covers bands I worked with - when they turned up at a venue and realised that either they were slightly unsuitable for the booking, or the place was a dive, they'd talk about doing a Go Go Fo.......... Get on, Get off, F*** off.....................

Just PMd you.

All down to heat-induced delirium, honest! (it is crazily hot here at the moment...).

If we are talking about which box on my board would stay, it would have to be my Line6 receiver, although its not an effect. Without that no one would hear me lol. Seeing as ive brought 3 BDDI's over the past 15 years, im going to go with that as far as pedals go. Nothing else ive owned has managed to stay the distance, and ive been quite happy using just this one pedal when im too lazy to take more (pre-board days though).

As a point of order, I think that the Manta counts as a multi-fx unit; after all, phasers can exist as a stand-alone filter pedal, as can the other variants in there. Plus it has a drive/dirt section. So, I think you need to either allow multi-fx units (after all, if one were forced to choose only one, why wouldn’t one choose one which covers many bases?) or you need to disallow the Manta. This is a difficult one for me. The thing is, my pedals function individually as part of a system so having only one part makes little sense on its own. I can safely say that the Mastotron is here to stay, but on its own it is less interesting to me. For sheer versatility it’d be the Manta for me (even though there are better-sounding filters out there). Honestly though, few things on my board are truly safe.

I’ll place my vote with the Source Audio Programmable EQ. Incredibly versatile and as the title suggests, it’s programmable, so you can easily save tweaked EQ curves for multiple basses and guitars. They can be had reasonably cheaply on the used market too.

Another thing I would always suggest is moving the bass around during the course of a gig so that it's not sitting on the same part of the shoulder for the entire night.

Thank you for your comments, it's always a pleasure to read your valuable contributions. Yes I did follow the Simple 12" thread and had it not been for some family matters that scuppered my plan to be at the Bass Bash I would have been able to see the assembly in the flesh. The video is excellent! After you & Stevie helped to sort out my early issues with chuffing & cab tuning I have fallen in love with my two Mk1s. They deliver exactly what I desire and used in different combinations with my other cabs cover all my venue needs.I don't think Mrs DaBass would allow anymore cabs in the house as the One10 had to be sneaked in while she was out shopping.(One10 is quite easy to hide under the bed next to last bass I bought without her knowing). While the idea of a more coloured smaller 12" cab is appealing I going to stick to what I have at the moment.The Mk1 is truly an excellent design and out performs many, many big brand offerings. Thanks to you and Stevie for improving the lives and sounds of many bass players. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!

Nah it was South Wales. Honestly, one of my favorite venues i've ever played

I might have to cheat a bit too. My favourite all time pedal (though it's not actually on my board, due to size, "unique" power supply requirements and bypass) is a vintage Mu-Tron III. Not sure if it's truly irreplaceable though as I have a couple of vintage ones, as well as the more modern Mu-Fx 3x version and the Micro Tron III (and yes I do like Mu-Tron's 😁). Of those pedals actually on my board, I'd have to say Chunk Systems Octavius Squeezer. Yes it's old, no longer made, and the UI is not very intuitive to say the least, but the range of sounds out of the Squeezer are so fat and versatile, and the 50 presets allow me to easily dial in pretty much most of what I need in a single pedal. If it packed up I'd have to try and track down another. I can vouch that those old big box Q-trons and Mini Q-trons that Dannybuoy is selling really are excellent filters too. 😀

The fact that it has an inny and an outy for power? I have actually needed to use that a few times, but I don't know how common a feature it is with non-Boss pedals... I see your point completely though - I rather just surprised myself with the selfdoublebluff of the joke suggestion turning out to be maybe the only must-have pedal I own! Edit - seems lots of tuners have ins and outs... Still, I won't be buying a different tuner until it breaks and then I probably buy another one, so it won't be leaving my board - I'm sticking to my answer!

A good compressor. At the moment it would be a Cali76 Compact Bass, but that could change. I would have picked the dUg pedal if the compressor could have been on without the rest of the pedal being activated. The compressor in it is nowhere near the Cali, but it would have been more versatile overall.

Yep, the Nik West one is one that jumped out at me when trying out various presets.

Had a bit of a recent cull due to needing funds for an upcoming family holiday! So as my EBS head has a decent compressor built in,ive moved on MXR comp. Ive also moved on the 3 leaf Doom which ive replaced with the cheaper and still great Zvex Mastatron. Moved on the Wonderful Cog T16,and will just have to adjust my T65 for diffrent sounds. Sold my block phase 90 and replaced it with the funky looking EVH phase 90 (has script/block tones) My board was pretty crowded before and now just nice! Liking Dannybouys idea of two different boards though.

How's about a forum for various parts of a curry menu ...chicken chat chat I'll get my coat then ....

My ‘right now’ pedal would be my Tech21 VTDI. I used to just use it as a separate EQ for slap work with advantage of a DI should I have an amp failure, but now it’s on all the time and is the base of my tone. Could I gig without it, yeah, for sure, but it sounds so much better when it’s there.

The most frustrating thing About TC tone print pedals right there!!

The stand I use is the one recommended by Dood https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stagg-14708-Short-Amplifier-Monitor/dp/B002MUGL2W It folds flat ( almost) and angles the cab up to my ears nicely. The Nifty DIY bracket is simply made from three pieces of 9mm or 12mm Plywood. The top piece is cut the same size as the amp and four holes are drilled for each of the feet. The second piece is 25mm wide by 140mm and third piece ( which acts like a Claw sitting under the cab handle) is 140mm by 90mm with the corners removed to act as a guide. The three pieces are glued and screwed to form a 'Claw' over the handle of the cab. Four large rubber feet are added and some Velcro to the top of the bracket and underside of the amp to provide added security. It works a treat for me! The angle of the cab and amp is directed up so I can hear myself and provide easy access to the Fender controls. The air shifted by the One10 really flaps my flares ( sorry being a Child of the 60's & 70's the flares still just fit but now have a neat elasticated waistband installed to compensate for the beer belly!!) So my Fender Rumble Combieeee is just right for me.

In the rear control caverty of my bass.

That sounds like a lame excuse. If he was told it was an alder body and the indication is that it is basswood or agathis, that has been misrepresented. He should turn up and tell the vendor he wants to reverse the trade for both that reason and that the strat is not fit for purpose as it cannot be set up properly.

Here's another hack edit I did for the band I was depping with last night. Q4n out front (also providing the audio), Q2HD covering the drummer (poorly placed - lack of a flip-out screen is a problem here). It's canny for a quick job.

As discussed in the other Helix thread, this is just for posting links to patches for the Helix or the HX unit. The official Custom Tone page doesn't let us search by instrument, which is a bit annoying, and searching using the word "Bass" doesn't help as many descriptions use parameter names. So to get round it we need an easy search system. How it works: 1: You create a cool sounding patch on your Helix or HX. 2: You give the patch a name that starts "BASSCHAT____________________" (You don't have to keep that name on your Helix, it's just for the upload, then change it on your machine). 3: You upload it to the Line 6 Customtone library here: https://uk.line6.com/customtone/browse/helix/ 4: In the description box you also start it with BASSCHAT to give a better chance of it showing up in searches 5: When it's uploaded you post the link here. 6: We can then find it by a link on here, or directly on the L6 page. That's it! You can also link to other good patches made by others, so we've all got a chance to try them out. I suggest we only have links to the official L6 Custom Tone to avoid getting riddled with nasty infections. I'm at home so I can't upload any right now but I will over the weekend. get stuck in! @dood @CameronJ @Muppet @Musashimonkey @intime-nick @LewisK1975 @dannybuoy