fretmeister

Wasn't it the original bassist in Saxon who said open notes were vital to rock music... If there were no open notes he couldn't point while he was playing!!

Ease of playing is all. I don't care beyond that. Also my favourite bass (for today anyway) has a zero fret so there's no tonal difference.

Darkglass VMT does a great Ampeg impression.

No - is there much of a change?

I like it a lot. The tone control in particular is very useful - much like in the M900 amp I tried it with my Urge II (mainly because my P-Ray has proper old thuddy flats on it which sound crap with drive!) and it was thick, chunky and clear. As the Urge II is really a posh P bass it already has a loads of mids so the new Mid button was overkill and not in a good way. But I imagine that being very useful with a Jazz bass or other naturally mid scooped bass. The Grunt switch is excellent. If the blend is at 100% it might be a bit OTT depending on the amp settings, but when used with a bit of blended clean it gives some excellent..... heft..... to the low end drive. It's definitely more aggressive than the B7K too. The biggest problem I now have is that it won't fit on my Nano board unless I remove something. So over the holidays I might dig out my Pedaltrain Junior and load it with all the drive pedals I own for a proper comparison.

http://www.ovnilab.com/ and his top picks http://www.ovnilab.com/reviews/toppicks.shtml

Marshall ED-1. Very under-rated. I love it. Can be a little noisy at high settings, but for common use no problems. Despite having Cali / Empress / DG compressors I still use one a lot.

Version 2 is supposed to be more like the circuit in the M900 amp, so I'm very interested to see how close that is. Will give it a go this evening.

Just to clear up the Bernard Edwards thing - he swapped to rounds in the late 70s. Here is Nile confirming it.

I'm a singist too. I've got 2 TC Helicon boxes - the Harmony Singer and the Mic Mechanic. The HS is very good, but it gets all the harmony info from a guitar. If I'm just chugging R 5 R power chords then it doesn't know if I'm in major or minor - it needs more info to work. When it's done right it works very well. Singing a note and then just swapping between say A major and A minor makes a big difference. You can also give it a bit of a heads-up by playing the intro chord before you actually start the song. As always though - the more subtle in use the better it is. If the generated harmony is too loud then it's a bit crap. Subtle is the key. The MM is awesome. It doesn't do harmonies. It's just really a preamp but it has a preset de-esser, EQ, and compressor in it. There are 2 presets (notionally 1 male and 1 female but it's more about range than anything else) and the tighten up the vocal beautifully. Just set your PA flat and let the MM do the work. It also has verb and some gentle pitch correction. It's always in my gig bag.

What firmware did it have on it when you bought it?

My Sharona Nutbush City Limits Red House Sir Duke Big Bad Moon We’re not gonna take it The Real Me.

For small gigs and practice I use my main amp. It has a volume control.

The very moment the bass was sold the old owner doesn't get a say in what happens to it anymore. That could be if it was repainted, split for parts, used as a baseball bat or sold on for more money. It doesn't matter if that was the buyers intention or whether on the morning he got the bass he lost his job and needs some cash fast. To complain about what the new legitimate owner wants to do with his property is pathetic and infantile. A few years ago I sold a pair of Markbass cabs on here to a guy somewhere in europe. Might have been France. Can't remember. Anyway - after about 6 months he decided they weren't for him and put them up for sale. I didn't notice until a prospective buyer sent me a PM to demand to know what price I had sold them for (and it was really a "demand" and whether the current owner was ripping me off. Turned out that the prospective buyer didn't even think about shipping costs to another country (seller was doing an inclusive price) or market changes (the cabs had been discontinued and there was a bit more interest in them) or any other factor - like changing in shipping fees or even the use of a different speed of shipping service. He also seemed amazed that I genuinely did not give a flying flip at a rolling donut about the new price for the cabs, and he got quite upset that I wouldn't tell him the final sales price or the shipping cost to get them abroad in the first place. Apparently not divulging the content of private discussions is "against the community spirit" or some other bollocks. Absolute tool.

Nice. Looking forward to pics of the finished article.

It really is a cracking bit of kit. You can even decide to split each path again and have 1 sub path with a Cab model and 1 without. Or run your XLRs to the desk but then set the USB to do something different to record straight to a DAW.

What colour hardware are you having? Going to look lovely. Alas I reckon the chance of getting anything cleared by customs and delivered now before next weekend is exactly flip all.

You can run 2 instruments - use the main input for one and the Aux in (full fat) or a Loop return (LT) for the other. Then Just set Path A for 1 instrument, and Path B for the other and keep them completely separate. Just remember to also set the outputs separately as well so they go to different board channels. If neither path is stereo then just split left and right on the XLRs. If, for example the bass is mono but the guitar is stereo then use the 1/4 outputs for 1, and the XLRs for the other

Quite. My fingers don't have compressors and envelope filters in them. And for some strange reason my fingers can't make a set of rounds sound like flats.

There's always the Doug Wimbish model for a jazz neck option, and the Ian Hill is smaller front to back.

They both have their own sound and you'll probably like one more than the other. Great bass work has been recorded with both. That being said I don't think I could ever own a Ricky. I find the owner far too objectionable. If I did find one I really wanted I'd have to buy used to make sure he didn't get any money. And then I'd probably change the logo to make it look like a copy.

You need to remember that about half of them will be creationists and thus don't get an opinion on anything to do with maths.

'm using a Yamaha DXR10 for both and am finding it very good. As with most at that price point it has a fan which can be a little annoying if playing when watching the TV I'm halfway wondering whether to upgrade to the Barefaced FR800 but I want to try that with guitar first. At some point I'll have to arrange a trip to BF and take my Helix with me to find out.