paul_5

RME (when I used them years ago) were absolutely rock solid as regards drivers and performance. Their drivers and software work so well together because they made their own ICs, instead of using 'off the shelf' components. I never had any issues with mine, and I was regularly pulling 24 tracks of music into cubase simultaneously. Shame legacy drivers don't work on newer OSs. That's progress I guess.

[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1465845515' post='3071566'] I'm of the opinion you've got it wrong if you have a pre amp patched in 'on' full time. [/quote] It's no different to having the preamp stage of an amplifier on all of the time, and nearly everyone does that.

Holding my hand up - played a local fete this weekend, and the sound engineer plugged the bass directly into his DI box, then I took a feed from the parallel output into my pedalboard, then to my amp. Turns out that as soon as I turned on my recently finished modded FX25 envelope filter I overloaded his system. I was playing about with a trimpot on the input stage of the pedal (to set the 'sensitivity' sweep of the knob properly) and only used a 25kΩ pot - I suspect that the input impedance wasn't enough, and that's where the problem was. Time to strap a 1MΩ across the input to ground then.

There is no absolute right way to do this - whatever sounds the best to you is the right way to do it. That said, if you're using the Sadowsky pre as a DI feed to the PA then your sound engineer (if you have one) might be fussy about whether it gets compressed before their feed, or after it.

Just put a set of Jim Dunlop 45 - 105s on my fretless Jazz and they're lovely. Really warm sound, but still very snappy when you 'dig in'. Wide range of sounds available at my fingers, so to speak!

I have no idea what any of the above means, but I'd like to take this opportunity to say a big THANK YOU to all the folks who DO understand it, and keep the forum running. You're all lovely, lovely people.

[quote name='Phil Starr' timestamp='1465428387' post='3068230'] They can give you a nasty shock even with the amp unplugged/switched off. [/quote] This - their job is to store charge until called upon to discharge it. All at once, right up your arm. Not pleasant.

Crazy Horses? If ever there was a need for 2 kazoos in 'unison' that's it…

Dunno. A quick glance at the manual reveals that the input impedance is 1MΩ, output (1/4") is 1kΩ and the balanced out (DI) is 200Ω, so I would imagine so, depends on the impedance of the DB pickup though, but I can't see it being greater than 1MΩ.

[quote name='Muzz' timestamp='1465235104' post='3066390'] That's the same thing I've done a couple of times with different setups. You don't have any interest in finding an amp that sounds like the VT1? [/quote] Nah. Most of what I play I need the grit for, but it's nice to have a clean amp that I can 'dirty up' as opposed to a dirty amp that I can't make clean. I've tried running the VT1 into a plain old power amp too with good results.

My DHA VT1 EQ is an 'always on' preamp. My SWR is really loud, but clean. 'My sound' comes from the VT1 (DI'ed sometimes), and I use the EQ on the SWR head to make corrections for the room/stage sound.

Future proof? I don't think it exists in the world of computer based recording. I'm quite happily ticking away on Pro Tools 10 with an MBOX 2 on a Mac with OSX 10.8.5 Until any of the above breaks I see no need to update anything and lose functionality. If you need to update your OS for other software then I'd look at partitioning your drive/installing a second and then having a dual boot system.

Yup, Dave Hall stuff has my vote too. http://www.davehallamps.co.uk/page42.html This one's a simple 3 band preamp with DI out, but he also does valve drive pedals with the same options which are amazing.

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1464975975' post='3064371'] What is the big fuss over Pino. Who is he? Blue [/quote] You're not from round these parts, are you…? Seriously though, he's an amazing bassist hailing from Wales in the UK. His fretless playing on Paul Young records from the 1980s is simply sublime. If that was the only thing he'd done then he would still deserve the accolades he gets, but the truth is, he's a very, very talented session player and has toured and recorded with The Who, Paul Simon, John Mayer, NIN etc...

Gah, there's nothing worse than mass semiconductor loss. You have my condolences.

No, but I wish I did. I've been getting away with a square wave trem (Earthquaker Devices Hummingbird clone) and a cheap Wah pedal, but the Seek Wah is a triumph of modern engineering!

I'd still play. I love music, and my chosen outlet for that is the bass guitar. That said, it's loads more fun if you can find like-minded idiots to do it with; that's when it's at its best. I'd consider myself as secret option 'c' - musician.

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1464706163' post='3061617'] Yes, and don't have the bass and treble up full or you will lose your mids. For more mids back off the bass and treble. The unit works best (for me at least) with quite subtle settings. Just having the thing in the signal path makes a big difference. [/quote] Yup, especially as the 2 band EQ is applied to the clean signal as well as the dirty signal, so if you crank the bass and treble then ALL of your mids disappear, not just the overdriven part of it.

Yup. The blend control is your best friend, but they perform brilliantly as DI boxes for live or recording work.

it's not an impedance issue, is it?

After shielding cavities I like to run a length of insulation tape around the pots to ensure that there aren't any shorts. It's very easy to turn a loose pot halfway through a gig and lose all output...

"Buy cheap, buy twice" as my old gaffer used to say.