Ziphoblat

Never been a big fan of The Police, but Stewart Copeland is an absolute genius.

[quote name='rOB' timestamp='1366661835' post='2055746'] Excuse my ignorance but please could you explain why that's a bad/dangerous thing to do? [/quote] Well for one thing the cab could have a lower impedance than your amp can handle. For instance, most amps are designed to run down to 4-ohms, if you were to plug it into a 2-ohm cabinet the result would be unhealthy.

[quote name='thisnameistaken' timestamp='1366549978' post='2053813'] I can imagine why some people get pissed off. It's mostly old people with very fixed ideas about things, like old people do, and they have plenty of other old people to reinforce their beliefs. I don't want to upset the smarter old people around here so I should point out I'm using 'old people' as a polite way to avoid saying 'thick people'. There are a handful of really great contributors who I think draw people in initially, but then they mostly bugger off again when they find out it's mostly thick people harping on about the same old bollocks for eternity. I can't comment on off-topic because I've been banned from there for years. Can't say I miss it much, it was like reading the Daily Mail. [/quote] I've been around here for couple of years or so, but I don't post all that often, mainly just reading and using the classifieds (which by the way, are great, and I won't hesitate to pay should I have anything bass-related to sell in future). I can definitely echo some of the sentiments in this post. There's a definite trend in certain areas to reinforce subjective approaches to things to the point where an entire group of people can persuade themselves that they are objectively correct in their opinions. For example, the [i]"thou shalt not scoop mids" [/i]crowd. It becomes a little irritating when people point-blank refuse to accept that something that didn't work out for them has absolutely no application anywhere else and that anyone who takes that approach is simply beneath them, when surely whether or not scooped mids will work is simply dependant upon the context. Another frustrating one is the notion that every piece of music you contribute to will be better if you play the absolute bare minimum of notes you can get away with. Yet again, it's simply time and place, but what grates on me is the minority who simply refuse to acknowledge that there are viable applications for approaches which differ from their own, and in this particular case often with the condescending "[i]you'll understand when you've got as much dust in your hair as I have[/i]" mantra. It's horses for courses, and there's no right or wrong, but it sometimes seems that certain members here have reinforced their own understanding of things so much that to attempt to open their eyes to alternatives is to piss in the wind. Anyway, moan over. This is a great forum and I think even with the slightly increased negatively recently it's still infinitely more friendly than the vast majority of other internet forums I've been on. Keep up the good work.

I don't have 20/20 vision, but it's not bad. I have one eye slightly short-sighted and one eye slightly long-sighted which results in me being able to see clearly, but I get a more comfortable experience wearing my glasses (less headache) even though my vision isn't discernibly better with them. Whether or not I wear them on stage is usually more based on appearance than anything, I've been told they make me "look intelligent" (an optical illusion) so if we're playing a gig where I fancy looking intelligent, I'll pop them on.

I've got a nice portable lightweight rig (GB Shuttle 6.0 + Barefaced S12T/V) and I can set that up and have it sounding good faster than I can get a usable sound out of an amp I've never encountered before in my life. If we've been to a rehearsal studio before and I know that they have an amp there that I find acceptable/usable then I won't bother bringing my own, but as it happens that's never occurred yet. Usually some farty Ashdown thing or a decrepit Peavey combo that isn't worth bothering with. In terms of gigs, I'll only gig with my own rig.

I've always found that backing off my neck pickup a little bit for solo sections gives me the extra push that I need personally, but that's only a viable option if you ordinarily play with both pickups up full.

He is the guitarist, I think the point was more about bassists who use effects in a similar way to Tom Morello does.

Doug Wimbish too.

Justin Chancellor.

The only difference is that the 2012 and beyond AM standard ones have the 60's custom shop pick-ups on where-as the previous ones had the standard single-coils. Every other aspect of the build/hardware/peripherals are the same. Personally I don't think that the 60's pick-ups are anything super-special compared to the standard pick-ups (I love the standard pick-ups in my 2011 model) especially considering that the unopened pre-2012 ones tend to retail considerably cheaper, usually enough to afford you a new set of pick-ups from most manufacturers of your choice should you decide it was a necessary change.

[quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1365671014' post='2042522'] Most of my gigs are backline only. For the others, if the bass in coming from front of house I just can't see the point in sending a signal that has been specifically sculpted for a particular speaker cabinet for on stage monitoring to a sound desk for the completely different response from the pa system.[/quote] Which isn't exactly the case if you use one of the many modern speaker cabinets (Barefaced etc) which are typically very neutral so effectively very similar to PA speakers anyway. [quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1365671014' post='2042522']By all means get the sound man to hear your rig and tell him you want it sounding like that but insist on throwing, for example, a bass heavy signal or a scooped one to the sound desk and expect him to get a clear and punchy sound from his pa is, frankly, unfair.[/quote] Sure. But very few people do that. Personally I use my amps EQ for [i]general tone shaping[/i]. Not compensating for a bump at 5723Hz in the frequency response of my cabinet, because that would be pointless with a simple 3-band EQ anyway. No drastic cuts or boosts at [i]specific[/i] frequencies, just nice smooth curve to adjust the [i]tone[/i] of my instrument. The same as you might do with an active bass, or whatever. EQ's on amps typically have a fairly broad Q-factor. [quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1365671014' post='2042522']There's nothing magical about the tone controls on your bass amp and they will be rudimentary compared to the eq on a decent desk. You won't be getting the sound you think you will.[/quote] Precisely (to the first point). Equalizers on amps are designed for tone shaping. 32-band graphic equalizers are designed for removing unwanted frequency content to suit a room etc. I EQ my sound lightly to get the sort of tone that I want, and if there are any troublesome frequencies, [i]then[/i] the engineer can sort that out at the desk. It's not his choice what sort of tone I want, that's mine.

Easy. Timmy C has both in spades. [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nxtPlvYBhM"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nxtPlvYBhM[/url]

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eynnYLXW3Fo"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eynnYLXW3Fo[/url]

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif][quote]i think sound engineers get a bad rep from a few unsympathetic unprofessional individuals i've found that most sound engineers are pretty competent musicians in their own right (i'd like to think myself included) and thus are very aware of the issues performers face[/quote][/font][/color] On the flip-side, there are plenty of musicians who are also knowledgeable and competent when it comes to signal processing and getting the most out of their equipment. Patronising sound engineers trying to explain why it's better to use their Behringer DI box than the studio-quality DI on a Genz Benz amp (or "genz what mate?" in their words) as if I don't know what a DI is equates pretty much to the same sort of thing. [quote name='wateroftyne' timestamp='1365368504' post='2038739'] There seems to be a trend amongst many (not by any means all) sound engineers to build the mix up from the drums - which MUST knock holes through walls - sprinkled liberally by dollops of bass guitar EQ'd to rearrange one's internal organs whilst managing to lack any definable note. Regardless of the genre. My bass doesn't sound like that. Really - it doesn't. WHY THE FRIG DOES IT SOUND LIKE THAT OUT FRONT? Great sound engineers should be wrapped in cotton wool. [/quote] This is the reality. I don't think anybody is here to criticize a great sound engineer, it's something I've dabbled in a lot myself and I have respect and understanding of what it takes to pull the job off. Unfortunately most amateurs simply can't cut it. What's the point in being overly generous as to the sound engineers abilities if you've never worked with him before and it's an amateur venue? I don't want my night ruined by not being able to hear a damn thing I was playing because I gave the sound engineer the benefit of the doubt. If the sound engineer knows what he's doing, and the band are competent, everything will sound great and everybody will be happy at the end of the day regardless of whether or not the bassist sent a pre-EQ signal on his DI. Unfortunately, many of the sound engineers an unsigned band will encounter (in my experience) will need a little bit of coaxing to find the right sound.

Post, every time. The sound engineer has a job to do. That job is to capture the sound of the band and present it to the audience. If (as is often the case) he's never heard the band before, he's never heard me play before, how is he supposed to know how I want to sound? Let's say hypothetically that the fat bottom-heavy sound he had for the previous band who played reggae and had a bass player using a P-bass strung up with flats might have worked great, but my aggressive clangy lightly driven roundwound J-bass tone is going to sound pretty awful if he treats it the same way. And more often than not, I find that engineers do. There's an irritating tendency among sound engineers (namely the bad ones) towards butchering the sound of the bass into a horrible indistinct rumble underneath the rest of the band, which aside from being sonically disturbing detracts largely from the musical performance because I may as well just be playing root notes for all anybody in the audience can actually hear. If it's a sound engineer that I know to be good, and I know to be aware of my band and the sound we go for, then I have no quarrels about giving them the choice (though having worked with us before they nearly always opt for the post-EQ signal anyway). But if it's one that I don't know, I'll listen to the other bands before I go on to see if any attention has been paid to tailoring a sound that is coherent with the playing style of the bassist (usually not), and if not I approach them and request that they take a post-EQ signal and try and keep the sound nice and lively, explain the sort of sound I'm going for etc. Making adjustments to suit the room by cutting or boosting certain frequencies on a 32-band graphic is fine, but there's absolutely nothing that prevents them from doing that just because I'm made some tweaks on the 3-band EQ on my amp.

Don't know if this is the type of thing you're talking about but I did this one a few months back, doing a comparison between a Warwick Corvette and a Fender Jazz (did it mainly for my own purposes, it's always interesting to hear these types of A/B's with your own basses, you often notice things you were't aware of previously). [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBkPc5PgkcY"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBkPc5PgkcY[/url]

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1363882306' post='2018889'] So you haven't [i]actually[/i] used a Behringer pedal at a gig, then? That's why you 'can't see Behringer's pedal casings being any better'... [i]because you haven't used them![/i] This is just the kind of groundless speculation I mentioned in [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/203033-behringer-is-crap-is-it-do-we-give-labels-too-much-weight/page__view__findpost__p__2018579"]post #13[/url]! You are associating the Behringer name with some pedals that failed. [i]But they weren't Behringer pedals[/i]. I'm no evangelist for their gear in particular, but it's very easy to see how they get a totally undeserved and unfair rep on forums! I actually have used a Behringer BDI-21 pedal at many and various gigs, it was thrown around and generally abused like most pedals are, and though certainly made of some kind of plastic, the case proved more than robust enough to gig with. I defy anyone to come on here and tell me they've [i]personally [/i]had a Behringer BDI-21 pedal break when they stomped on it! [/quote] It's speculation sure, but logical speculation. I've owned several Behringer pedals, just never taken one to a gig. The casing on them felt at least as bad/cheap (often more so) than the ones that I actually took to gigs that didn't survive. I don't know about their DI pedals or whatever, I've no experience with them, I'm talking particularly about the ones in the Boss-style enclosures. They don't feel to me like they'd last 5 minutes based on my experience with similar products.

I suppose it depends on what you're using it for. For home use their stuff is fine. For live use, I'd be a bit more cautious. My band has used a Behringer desk for a good few years now and while it's not the best sounding piece of kit, it doesn't get used at the best gigs, so that doesn't matter, and it's never given us any trouble. But that's just a desk, housed in a good case. I've had several cheaper pedals I've tried for a couple of gigs to gauge whether or not those types of effects were for me, and I've had a couple of those literally break down the middle after only a couple of gigs. Admittedly they weren't Behringer, but I can't see Behringers pedal casings being any better (one of the pedals I referred to actually had a (albeit thin) metal case, but was still cheap) given that they usually house their pedals in plastic. As for the amps, there's no denying they have a bad reputation. And that's probably for a reason. On another forum I visit, a couple of years back there was a guy who swore by his Behringer amp that he'd bought a few months ago and would turn up in every single thread where they were mentioned as a brand to be cautious of because of reliability issues. He eventually changed his tune after it went bang and the power amp melted after he'd owned it for just less than a year. Point being, you probably get a few that go bang fairly quickly and the vast majority that work fine for a long time. But could you fee comfortable gigging something that for all you know is more liable than most amps to become dysfunctional 5 minutes into the gig? I know I couldn't. And I suppose that's why they're often recommended against. That doesn't just apply to Behringer, but to any amp that has a reputation for that. For example, the Ampeg Portaflex series have a bit of a reputation for cutting out and developing problems. Most of them probably work fine, but again I'd be uncomfortable relying on one at a gig until it'd worked reliably for a period of time. I was going to buy an Ampeg PF500 head a few months back (ended up not doing) but after reading that decided I'd have to take my Genz Benz Shuttle along with me too in case I ran into trouble. With an amp like Behringer, it's unlikely the person using it doing so for the tone (unlike somebody with a portaflex) rather than that it's cheap. So they probably can't afford a back-up. And if they could, it'd be another Behringer. Why buy two Behringers instead of spending that money on amp that costs twice as much from a more reputable brand? So yeah, I think it just boils down to what the buyer hopes to get out of it. As for the headstock-crowd, they're a funny bunch. My guitarist used to have two guitars - a nice playing/sounding Epiphone (as Epiphones go it's a nice guitar, certainly performs well above the price tag) and a Gibson that was shot-to-hell (seriously pre-owned, he'd snapped the headstock off and had it repaired, it was just a studio model to begin with). All-in-all, the Epiphone was a vastly superior guitar, but he'd often turn up with the Gibson to gigs instead just because of the clueless audience members that would react with "wow, he's got a Gibson" (I actually heard that happen several times) unaware that the particular guitar in question would be lucky to fetch £200 on eBay. I'll never forget a gig I did when I was playing an EBMM Stingray and some fairly seasoned bassist (to put it politely) from one of the other bands wandered up and questioned what on earth that was in a sort of "you kids and your crazy modern things" way (not as if they'd been around for 35 years at this point) as if it was some crazy cheap physically challenged copy of a Fender. At least he complemented me on my playing afterwards (and then persisted to fawn over the Rickencrapper that the bassist from the next band pulled out). Makes me glad that having been through a lot of basses I've finally settled on just one that does everything I need (for now at least) and it's a good old USA Fender Jazz bass (not the first I've owned, but it's a particularly good specimen)... never run into any trouble with the headstock crowd anymore.

I think that's a fairly condescending and elitist way to look at this. Put it into context. He's playing for several hours consecutively, using a technique that requires a [i]lot[/i] of physical strength, there's no chance for a second take, he probably can't hear himself as perfectly well as he could in a studio, he's also singing at the same time (and activating foot pedals for the synth parts) where-as in the studio the bass part would be the sole focus of his attention. Under those circumstances I think it's a fantastic performance. I don't really notice any errors at all. There's a lot of string noise and the like, but that's the kind of stuff that actually sounds good in the context of a mix when you're going for such an aggressive sound. Ultimately, in the mix this performance is going to sound great (and I actually really enjoyed listening to it solo) and Geddy was listening to it in a mix. Perhaps his performance doesn't hold up quite as well when taken into a context that it wasn't intended for, but then surely that's to be expected? I think it would be naive to expect that a player is going to get studio-quality results in one live take, especially when playing something as technically challenging as Rush.

Sounds to me like the "agent" is the cock in this situation. He's screwing over the venue now, how long until he screws you? If you pull out on the venue that's going to tarnish your reputation with them (and consequently perhaps other venues). Just because the agent won't book you for any other venues he's associated with doesn't mean that those venues will think ill of you, so as soon as more of his antics have gone down and he's moved on from those venues too, you'll still be able to get the gigs. You need to keep your bands reputation as your priority.

Those drums sound great. I love how there's no real discernible difference between the kick and the toms. No but that was pretty bad. Almost as bad as the MSI cover of Tom Sawyer.

I insist upon using my own amp wherever I'm playing. Time is always cited as some sort of reason against doing that, but I can set my amp up and have it ready to go before my drummer is ready, even if he's just doing his snare/breakables. Equally, if somebody wants to use my amp it'll be a straight up no unless I know them and they've asked before-hand. At times we'll provide backline for a gig, when that happens I'll lug my old beat up Laney 150 head and nameless 15" PA bass bin for the other bands to use who haven't brought their own amps as well as my current set-up for myself.

That man is completely insufferable. I can't believe Warwick let him demo their products officially. It demonstrates how detached from reality some of the instrument manufacturers actually are that they think that's what's going to actually sell things to people. I suppose they expectation is that people will see someone playing seven hundred notes a second with their thumb in the most non-musical fashion possible and think that they'll be able to play like that if they buy the bass. Can't see that working at all though. A lot of these companies would do well to take a leaf out of Lakland's book when it comes to demoing the tonal capacity of their products.

I couldn't think of anything worse, personally. I guess it depends on the dynamics of your relationship. For me, my time with the band is my time to let my hair down a little bit. What happens if it turns out you just don't get along musically or there's a disparity with the rest of the band? It could harm your relationship with your partner and your band. Personally I won't even join a band with friends I already know (and pretty much all my friends are musicians) let alone with my girlfriend.