fretmeister

I'm a big fan. You can find amazing bits of his playing on his "Shockazooloo" album and on most things by Stevie Salas. What a groove!!!!!!

I've been thinking about my big band rig a bit. It's usually Bass Pedal board with Tuner / Filter / Octave / Compressor / wireless (in that order....) Wireless Receiver Amp head Cab. It's a simple rig. There is never any PA support. It's old school - if the drums are too loud then either he plays more quietly or we add more players of the instruments we can't hear. However - the places we play tend to be severely lacking in power supplies, or they are far away etc. I have the wireless because sometimes I'm quite far away from my rig because of small stages and being surrounded by 25 other people. I have a cable into the board, then the wireless at the end sending the signal to the amp, wherever that is. What I'm thinking is binning the amp head and looking at a pedal board mount amp so I've only got 1 power cable and the amp controls are next to me and not 10 feet away with 5 people in the way. The cab can go anywhere it needs to be then. In a corner at an angle often works well so the band hear it as much as the audience. I keep telling them that ideally I want to be with my amp and be next to the drummer, but sometimes the room / stage just won't be the right shape. I can then just run a long speaker cable to the cab and not worry about needing to get to it during a show. I am aware of the Ashdown Ant and it would seem to be pretty good (I think 200W would be enough for this) but would be even better if they had included an output for powering pedals as well. Are there any other options? Ideally in a way I can combine power supplies to power both the amp and the pedals? Is there an amp that will power pedals like this as well? Or maybe is there a pedal power supply that can also power a pedal board amplifier? Batteries aren't really an option due to the compressor and the wireless. Any ideas would be welcome.

Under 8lb????? Wow! Loving that sparkle in the white.

No fan noise is my favourite thing. Good gassing sir!

I had a V1 so no internal compression, but the drive circuits were very good - I had a B3K at the same time and never needed it. Only downside is that the EQ you are likely to want to use for B3K sounds will be very different to VMT EQ settings. Just changing channel might not work for you if you swap between them a lot as you'll need to re-EQ it. I tended to keep the B3K on all the time at a low level just to bring in a bit of warmth and then use other pedals as needed. If there's ever a V3 that also adds an onboard tuner then I'll probably have that. B3K, Compressor, and a tuner all in 1 box would mean I could leave everything else at home for 99% of the stuff I do.

My luthier is under 15 mins away in the car so it's not a problem really. And I wouldn't do the nut myself. Widening slots - no problem. Lowering them... I hate to think how long it would take to order a replacement nut from ibanez! I think each time I tried to start with I might have twisted it another rotation. I'm such an idiot!

AAARRRRGGGHHHHHH I followed Mr @Woodinblack instructions and that went perfectly... and then while twisting the socket unit back into the hole I tore a wire off the socket connector. Does my soldering iron work? No. FFS! Ah well, at least this way I'll drop it into my favourite luthier and at the same time get the nut lowered just a tiny bit and get a quote for replacing the not-even-luminay side dots with some nice bright white markers. They really are crap!

If you want a lighter weight then the 2012 American Specials are very nice. Slightly thinner neck front to back. Tuners are from the Mexican line, but easy enough to swap. I swapped mine for Ultralites and now it only weighs 7 3/4 lb.

I wonder why the cabs sounded different in direct or daisy chain? Really both options are daisy chain as the amp sockets are in parallel. @Bill Fitzmaurice any ideas?

Correct. It's down only. Presumably you have enough frets to go upwards though?

The single biggest problem is the same on every app. Humans. Every app works - up until the point where a band member doesn't use it properly. As soon as those japanese sex robots can be programmed to play guitar and drums I'm putting a band together.

I didn't realise that was you. I've been sub'd for a while. Great videos!

Why are Warwick Black Labels so hard to get in the UK? Gear4music have some occasionally but never in the right gauges. Do they not have proper distribution here? I have ordered from Germany in the past, but shipping charges are steep for small items.

If you go used you could find a 900 head. They do seem to have less reliability issues than the smaller ones. Or you could go a different way completely and get a Line 6 HX Stomp. Loads of bass amps and drives, IR / Cab sims and some useful FX like EQ and compressors even if you don't use any of the other FX. Dead easy to use.

I've just had a look at the cab specs. Switchable 4 or 12 ohms. The Mesa WD800 will run at 2 ohms - there's a little switch on the back. So just use the cabs in 4ohm mode giving a total of 2ohms and make sure the amp switch is set correctly. Full power and headroom available. Job done. If the amp fails then use the Mark Bass and flick the cabs to 12 ohms each giving 6 ohms total. Impedance is not a static thing anyway so you really won't notice that much difference between 4ohms and 6 ohms. Just turn it up a little if you need to and get to the end of the gig.

Lovely bass. Still, by the rules of this place - now you need to get a spare....

I am a big fan of a split rig when it suits the tonal needs. I reckon it is only needed in 1 situation - where the FX and drives are extensive and it's easier to EQ a separate clean amp underneath rather than have 1 cab do it all. So 2 outputs from the bass, or a splitter box then into different paths. 1: The drives and FX into an amp with some of the low end rolled off. Loads of mids and high end clank. 2: Into a different amp & cab with the treble and some of the mids rolled off. Like a reggae dub sort of thing. The important bit is compression. Different amps and using drives means the note decay in each rig will be very different. The clean low amp will decay far more quickly than the other. So compressors on each to make sure the note delays at the same time is important to make it sound like 1 rig and not 2 bassists. It takes a lot of experimentation to get the note decays to match. When it does, it's lovely. All the FX / drives etc stand out well and they never affect the low end at all. No cross-overs needed, just EQ each amp separately. They will sound terrible in isolation and awesome when combined. However, after using a rig like that for 20 years my overall conclusion is that unless you need that variety of FX and drives it is just unnecessary. Modern bass drives have very good clean blends for a start, the bass drive market is now saturated with options. Unless you are duplicating Billy Sheehan's sound or playing a load of Muse songs in your set then you don't need it and it's a waste of time. I say that as a massive fan of that sound.

You star! I will do that after work. thank you!

Just share a google calendar with the band members.

I’ve done this many times. Sometimes with a stereo FX pedal to start with or a dedicated transformer isolated splitter box. I’ll dig out my pics when I get a mo.

Very kind of you.

In that case I cannot figure it out at all. When I take the little screw out (with the red collar) nothing comes out apart from that contact and I can't see anything else at all. I think I'll just order a regular one and swap it.

Sorry for the stupid question Is the spring the bit the screw goes through - looks more like a contact for the jack plug and is actually connected to a wire? Doesn't it need that to active the active electronic when plugged in? Like on EMGs?

I’ve taken out the star shaped screw but I can’t figure out how to disassemble further. I haven’t got a lot of wire to work with. Is there another screw somewhere?