JPJ

Latest incarnation of my board, transplanted onto a Pedaltrain Metro 20 kindly supplied by our own @spacecowboy. This will probably be the last incarnation of the doubling board (for electric, acoustic, EUB, and double bass). If I acquire any more pedals I’ll probably split between an electric board, and a second board for the acoustic, EUB, and double bass gigs.

So I’ve had time to have a good play around with the various features of this pedal and colour me impressed. The tone control with the added harmonic distortion could become addictive. I’ve only tried it through headphones thus far, and I’ll have to see how that mod-scoop sounds live, but suffice to say she’s making her way onto my pedal board in time for next weekends gigs 😎

Close mic the drums (as close to the skin as you can get) and gate the hell out of them to control the mush. For most of our gigs, mic ‘ing the drums is a bit overkill for front of house but essential for IEM’s and our drummer definitely plays better and more consistently on IEM’s. Quite often his drum mic’s are not in the front of house mix, save for a well eq’d and gated bass drum.

So this just arrived from the lovely folk over at Anderton’s. I’ve been sans compression on my board for a while since convincing myself I didn’t need it and selling my Spectracomp, but I recently came to the confusion this was a mistake. As much as I loved the Soectracomp, the requirement to engage with software to tweak the parameters made me shy away from a like-for-like replacement, and both the Empress and the Cali 76 were identified as possible candidates. After a late night YouTube session I settled on the Empress. Looking forward to getting to know this over the weekend and then all being well, gig it next weekend.

Two of the best gigs I’ve played for onstage sound have both used side-fill for monitoring. One, a local bar that is popular on both the national and international circuit for up and coming bands has monitors mounted from the ceiling both in front and to the side of you, where they are pointing directly at your ears instead of your knees. The second was a major bike festival where the floor monitors were supplemented with two stacks of side fill stage left and right.

For an accurate ‘70s period relic, you need to add the cigarette burns to the headstock 😉

Most mixers only have one headphone out, so you’ll need something like this to take the mixer stereo headphones out and power two sets of headphones. https://www.behringer.com/product.html?modelCode=0835-AAF If you go down this route, don’t forget to buy a TRS to TRS cable with the right size plugs to fit your mixer.

He gives a nod to Rick Jones in the video so it’s possible that the Upton is based on an Acoustic Image design.

Since entering the world of double bass ownership, I’ve watched a lot of the content put out by the guys at Upton Bass in the good’ol US of A. Last week they posted this interesting video of a combo they are developing specifically for double bass. Interesting combination of a down firing 10” woofer with a front mounted mid-range driver, built-in HPF and an eq ‘specifically voiced for double bass’. Still in the prototype stage, but I thought I’d share here. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJZ-FN3yk-b/

I defretted my Warwick Rockbass Alien electro-acoustic a while ago and its revolutionised that particular bass. Here’s my thread on my method. Might be a few useful nuggets in here, but as @paul_5 says, patience is key.

@Hellzero you sir win word of the day for “perturbated” 👏👏👏👏

Calling @Bill Fitzmaurice

You ‘could’ try burning it out with a soldering iron, but bear in mind you will still need to drill out the wood and fit a dowel. I had this happen to me once and I drilled a parallel hole up against the screw then pushed it over into the new hole with a punch, then redrilled a bigger hole and fitted a plug. BUT you need a drill press to drill the plug hole otherwise the drill bit wanders about. Having said all of that, a plug cutter is probably the safest and easiest answer.

Just my thoughts, but if you intend going down the diplomatic route with the maker, then I’d resist calls to ‘name and shame’ on here until you have exhausted that route.

Sounds like a win to me. The way I would describe those Sigma Audio IR’s is that they add ‘air’ to your EUB sound. I did a fair bit of A/B’ing the various basses and microphones before I found a combination that had maximum effect (no pun intended) and in a pleasant way. Also found I had to open up the NXT’s tone control much more than I normally would on its own.

Don’t forget that the Ashdown preshape button works ‘the other way around’ I.e. you press it in to defeat the preshape not to enable the preshape. That caught me out for years before someone on here helpfully pointed this out. Press that button in to get rid of the inherent boominess.

Excellent stuff, thanks chaps (roll on order) 👍

Quick question, I’m a mild eczema suffer which unfortunately affects my hands. When I have an outbreak, it can make my plucking fingers painful if the keens are in the wrong places (which they annoyingly usually are). For gigs, when necessary I have been using both the white microporous tape and regular flesh coloured Elastoplast, but it seldom lasts a full set. I’ve seen a few double bassists using finger tape, so I know I am not alone, but what tape are you/they using? Oh, and before anyone say’s “use a bow”, let me assure you the world is not ready for my bowing technique (or lack of)😂