richardjmorgan

I've never had anything less than great results from Phantom Screenprint, to the point that I've never since bothered looking into any alternatives. http://www.phantomscreenprint.co.uk/

Anyone else ever used the Maxon CP-101? I originally bought it for guitar use, but it seems to do a great job of evening up my shoddy bass playing. But then, I've no experience of any bass-specific compressors so have no real basis for comparison.

Another vote for the heavy duty velcro stuff. Never had any bother with it.

[quote name='xilddx' timestamp='1368624287' post='2079347'] I have millions of ideas too, it's just sitting the f*** down in my studio and starting to arrange and record them I got a new recording system and I'm only just starting to get the hang of it, I find it daunting and have to push myself to geet in there. I have a fair bit of pro recording for an album to do aswell which will definitely push me to learn it quickly! [/quote] Yeah, I wonder if it would help to sort my home recording setup, meaning I can get ideas fleshed out more quickly, and hopefully follow that through to completion. On the other hand, it could just end up being yet another displacement activity…

Yep, sorry if I wasn't clear! I'm talking about the writing process - with regard to getting stuff completed, rather than specifically the ending of the songs!

At the moment, my band and I have a big stack of songs that are "NEARLY done". Obviously there's an element of "oh just get on and write the vocal parts/work out what happens here next and stop faffing about", but I find often when I'm trying to do this I'll go off on a creative tangent and BOOM, yet another one to add to the increasing pile of unfinished material. Was just wondering if anyone else a) experienced this problem and b ) had come up with any effective strategies for managing it.

[quote name='tonyquipment' timestamp='1367513956' post='2066300'] you can certainly try it but it wont like. the low freqs of the bass will make the speakers turn inside out hahaha [/quote] Don't worry, I'm not going to be using it with guitar speakers! I'm intending to use the guitar amp, through a bass cab.

I'm thinking of attempting something, but just thought I'd better check I have my facts straight. [size=4]My band currently has an old Laney GH100 guitar head lying around in our storage locker, and our bassist currently doesn't have an amp. Given that it was ditched from guitar usage due to being 1. insanely loud and 2. a bit to dark sounding, I was wondering if it might be worth giving it a bash for bassing, through an appropriate cab (i.e. a bass cab rather than a guitar cab). [/size] [size=4]Am I right in thinking that the amp should be fine and it's guitar [i]speakers[/i] that won't like having bass through them, or is there anything else I need to watch out for?[/size] [size=4]If it ends up being at all serviceable, was thinking it might be worth running a Sansamp in front, maybe some sort of EQ, and seeing if it can become a full-time, rather than temporary solution.[/size]

Bought Wilco's Bass Big Muff last week. Great communication, it turned up super-quickly and in great nick; overall, dealing with him's been a great, utterly painless process.

Do you know what I think would look awesome on this? White.

[quote name='xgsjx' timestamp='1366894213' post='2058657'] It does indeed. Not all bass cabs have the tweeter in this position. Most have the tweeter above the driver, but I think Alex puts the tweeter in that position on the Midget as the cab is already designed to get the best from the driver (so making the cab bigger to fit the tweeter in is going to make it sound different from the other with no tweeter). I believe most of the other BFB cabs have the tweeter in a top corner of the cab. [/quote] So it doesn't affect the sound coming out of the big cone, having all that business in front of it, I assume?

On a more important and relevant note though, I'm planning on chucking some potato bread into my Saturday fry up this weekend.

[quote name='chrismuzz' timestamp='1366888149' post='2058510'] The bass is super clear in this one [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRK_M1vJXfQ[/media] [/quote] I think the key thing with this is there's actually some sonic territory left free for the bass, frequency-wise, by the guitar sounds. The key is finding space in the mix for everything and, in a band context for everyone to concentrate of the overall sound, rather than just the sound of their respective instruments. Seems to me though that there's lately been a bit of a shift back to actually being able to hear the bass as a distinct instrument in metal, which really wasn't the case for a fairly significant chunk of the 90s and 00s. Part of this is perhaps due to somewhat "retro-ey" tendencies in some bits of metal, but I suspect it's equally that people were getting bored with unrelenting walls of mid-scooped guitar.

[quote name='Mikey R' timestamp='1366885828' post='2058470'] Since youre a bass player, why not reorchistrate your songs for one guitar and bass? Playing bass in the three piece is awesome fun, you get to fill out the rhythm line AS WELL AS playing the bassline. [/quote] It did occur to me as an option, but we've found a new guy now so it saves me having to relearn a bunch of stuff (no picnic when you're singing at the same time). But I think there'll be a bit more consideration of what the bass is up to now, and it's going to be more integral to the overall sound.

[quote name='xgsjx' timestamp='1366877732' post='2058319'] It's the tweeter. [/quote] So it sits in front of the other cone? Sorry, mostly a guitarist so tweeters are bizzarre, alien technology to me.

Forgive my ignorance, but what's going on with that stuff running down the middle of the top cab?

As someone who plays guitar in a metal band that lost its bass player earlier in the year and, as such, has been doing a fair bit of playing with just two guitars, drums and vocals, it makes a BIG difference. Funnily enough, it's given us a much clearer idea of exactly how we want the bass to work within the band, part of which is for it to be a lot more prominent in our overall sound.

[quote name='EliasMooseblaster' timestamp='1366714365' post='2056248'] I think the situation is a bit different in London: most people don't have a car - or daren't drive it through the centre - so a lot of rehearsal rooms have realised they have to provide amps of at least passable quality. [/quote] Was just about to say something along these lines. My experience of London rehearsal rooms has ranged from the dreadful (Line 6 combos you have to pay an additional fee to rent), via the unsuitable (that Fender Twin sounds very nice but probably isn't going to do the job for high gain metal) to the surprisingly good (Markbass stuff at the place we currently use). However, I mostly use my own gear as we tend to store all our stuff at the rehearsal rooms. Partly because that means it isn't taking up space in our tiny London flats, partly because that means it's all in one place if we need to take it to gig. And it has the added advantage of meaning we actually get to use the gear we've spent money on with a view to it doing a specific job, and we have time with the gear to fiddle about and tweak how things sound, both individually and in relation to how the rest of the band sounds.

[quote name='TomWIC' timestamp='1365937826' post='2046143'] It is indeed. It's a fantastic bass for the money, still in need of a good setup as I mainly play in Drop C, but I've been playing a lot of stuff in standard tuning on it and it's a beast, the Gibson pickups make a huge difference. It's lighter than the bolt-on Thunderbirds I've owned, the only thing I'm not sure on is whether I want to change the hardware to chrome. I'm a huge fan of Thunderbirds anyway, so I may be a little bias, but when I compared it to a Gibson in my local music shop, I failed to notice any difference in sound or build quality, other than the fact there's a 'Made In Indonesia' sticker on the Epi. [/quote] Ah, rats, I'm probably going to have to buy one now.

Sort of. I play guitar in this band [url="http://bit.ly/Oox4ds"]http://bit.ly/Oox4ds[/url] (We've been described as "too punk for the metal crowd, too metal for the punk crowd" on more than one occasion, so I'll let you be the judge of if we count as metal.) but we've recently had to replace our bassist. In order to teach our new guy the songs, I've been learning to play them all on bass. It's made me realise, retrospectively, that the bass is mostly way too quiet on that last recording, and also made me pay a lot more attention to the sound coming out of our new bassist in practices. Also, our new guy is less of a "play the guitar part and he'll just come up with something that works" type than our previous bassist, so I've been having to give a bit more thought to what the bass needs to do when putting songs together. Overall, it's been a pretty interesting experience as, despite actually playing the guitar, the whole process has made me think a lot more like a bassist at times, and generally pay it a bit more attention as an instrument, and realise I'd been neglecting its importance a bit before.

[quote name='Jazzneck' timestamp='1366184951' post='2049234'] My tuppence worth of experience....... Many, many years ago I went to work on the technical side of a development product which I had come across during my previous company's job. I was employed to improve the product so that customers found it easier to convert. I'd been at the company for a few weeks when the MD asked me (as a 26 year old technologist) why I thought the product was not selling as it seemed to be "the answer to a maidens prayer" at the time. My comment was that for the price being asked, the product seemed too cheap - "what's wrong with it?" So the crafty old fox doubled the price the following week and sales went exponential during the following year and continued to grow to the point that the business is still very profitable and still growing today. Do not confuse cost with price. Market perception is very important. Quality and customer service is king. [/quote] Yep. Related: if something's perceived as being good, demand increases, meaning you can charge more for it.

[quote name='TomWIC' timestamp='1364510892' post='2027635'] My new Thunderbird arrived today so I can finally contribute to this thread! [/quote] Can't quite make it out from the pic - is this one of the Epiphone neck-through ones? If so, how is it? Quite tempted by those - seems like a good price for what you get.

If there a white one, I could well be all over this.

Oh, something else I wondered: with amps with a built in DI out, can they be used sans cab for direct recording, or would that require some sort of dummy load to avoid blowing it up?