BigRedX

Just over a year ago I was in the market for a keyboard controller for my DAW. I'd done my research on-line, but thought it would be nice to get some hand-on experience of a few before I made my final decision. We have a fairly large PMT here in Nottingham so the next time I was in town I went in. This is the first time I'd been there since COVID, and the store was looking very sorry with loads a spaces on the walls that used to be full of guitars. The keyboard/high-tech area was cordoned off with a note informing me to ask if I wanted to try anything. I was told that someone would be along shortly to help me. I passed the time waiting by looking at the much reduced selection of guitars and basses and after about 10 minutes and when no help was forth-coming I left. I bought my controller on-line from Amazon.

LaBella Hard Rocking Steels (or whatever they have changed the name to). However IMO Warwick Black labels are just as good and about half the price. You could always order a custom set from Newtone. They can do taper windings on any string over a 50 gauge.

HiFi is entirely subjective. There's plenty of examples being mentioned here that wouldn't consider even vaguely HiFi. Also you'd be surprised just how much dirt and EQ is on the typical bass guitar sound, even when it appears to be clean and flat in the context of the mix. Finding the isolated track can be a bit of a revelation. I the OP wants useful recommendations they should post examples of recording that they consider have a HiFi bass sound.

Interesting what is supposed to be the classic Wal sound. Kev's Wal is hardly a typical model and Mick Karn did most of his best known work using a Travis Bean.

Well then pay for someone who can solder to make you up the appropriate cable(s).

Making your own. This is what I have done whenever I have needed MIDI leads where the cables exit the plug at right angles. I was able to buy a supply of both metal and plastic bodied DIN plugs where it was possible to orientate the pin arrangement in 90° increments, so that when assembled the exit for the cable was either to the right, left up or down depending on what was required for the installation. If I left enough excess unsheathed cable inside the plug this could be changed if I needed to reuse the lead in a different location.

I'm happy with our singer not helping with packing up, because he will be involved in the equally important task of selling merch to audience members who have enjoyed our set, and taking to people who are interested in booking us for more gigs.

I've only had the misfortune to have done a gig like this once. It was my penultimate outing with the dad-rock covers band and one of the many deciding factors in me handing my notice in sooner rather than later.

Not any more, and not for quite some time. By the early 90s all the venues I was playing, including pubs, that put on originals bands were putting in PA systems and lighting rigs. At the time I was in a brand new band so we were starting back at the bottom. We got our first gigs by asking bands playing at these venues if we could support them and built in up from there. Before that in the 80s we would hire a PA for each gig as it was required and that cost would be factored in to what we would ask for our payment. And in the days when we hired in a PA it would come with a sound engineer who would do all the setting up.

But I was talking about originals bands. I wouldn't be looking at playing any of those venues in the first place.

It might be a good idea since the most usual place for a feedback link - in a user's signature - is no longer as effective as is should be, due to the fact that lots of people have all signatures hidden, and they are not visible at all to anyone browsing Basschat on their phone.

I'd probably get a second Eastwood Hooky 6 to use as a spare for gigs. What I'd really like is a Gus Bass VI built using the their G3 Baritone shape, but last time I enquired (pre COVID) I was looking at in excess of £6k for the spec I was after... Edit: After buying the Hooky I'd use the rest of the money to buy one of my bands in the studio with a decent producer who is sympathetic to our genre/sound and get as many tracks recorded and mixed to best possible standard until the money ran out.

I can't help thinking that you must be playing the wrong venues. Since the mid 90s almost everywhere I have played (that's pretty much all over mainland UK) with originals bands has had an in-house PA and lighting system. The few times (around 5) when there hasn't been a PA on site was when we deliberately chose to play venues that don't normally put on live music. And while I do get to play some big venues, my bands still play places with capacities of 100 or less.

Play in an originals band that doesn't need much gear. Firstly you don't need to carry a PA or lights because they will already be there at the venue. Then replace your drummer with a computer or drum machine. One of my bands has exactly 8 pieces of equipment to pack and carry and two of those are stands. The rest of the equipment is: 2 synths each in a lightweight hard case, a bass in a gig bag, Helix in it's backpack, a 3U rack case that holds the computer and audio interface that is our drummer and second synth player and a small bag of leads and bits for connecting it all together and to the PA. Between the three of us in the band we can carry everything between the venue and the car in one trip. Both setting up and packing down takes no more than 15 minutes. No backline means that the sound both on-stage and FoH is much easier to balance. Win all round.

For me the two are equally important and completely interlinked. I know the music I want to create and play and I require the correct equipment to be able to achieve that.

Very much this. Also the problem with video reviews (and tutorials) is that you can't skim-read them to find that one piece of information you need. I'm very reluctant to sit through minutes of introductions and the presenter telling me to like and subscribe and then the over-long "content" in order to qualify for YouTube's monetisation program, and sometimes after all that it doesn't even cover the information I am after. I could probably skim-read the written content of the average 10 minute video in under 30 seconds to find whether it contained what I needed or not. It also doesn't help that the "presenters" have either an image best suited for radio, or a voice that should be heard, and won't have considered the idea of writing a script first. Nothing puts me off a video quicker than hearing the phrase "I don't know". It's not as though these videos are being created live. Cut; and go and find out, and then come back with the information. It's as simple as that!

I always mention which of my two bands are playing. I don't use any backline and the basses will be obvious from the photos I also post, besides these days I only use two - an Eastwood Hooky with one band and a Gus G3 with the other.

OK, but that wasn't what you appeared to be saying in your OP. If you want a wide variety of sounds that are easily accessible then it might be worth looking at a programmable effects unit that includes one or more decent EQ modules. I've never really got on with on-board pre-amps, as I find them too fiddly and tricky to accurately change mid-set. Instead I have a Line6 Helix which does everything I need and more, with a separate preset for each song my bands play that has been EQ'd and level adjusted to match the sounds of the other instruments. I'm sure there will a cheaper device that will be suitable for you.

But there's musicians in their 20s who probably think that anything made in the 20th century counts as vintage.

I've owned bass guitars with pretty much every scale length from 26.5" to 36". I don't have any problems moving between them, in fact I went from playing a 30" bass for most of the 80s to a 36" for most of the following decade. I do prefer a 30" scale for my Bass VIs though. So I voted for everything except 35" and 32" as the only 32" bass I've had was a cheap and nasty Futurama 1 Bass, and I've yet to play anything with a 35" scale length that had a better sounding and feeling low B string than a well made 34" scale bass.

IME there are just two ways to ensure that you have as little messing about to should you need to change basses mid-way through the set and not be wanting a different sound. 1. Have two identical basses, or at least two basses with the same pickups (in the same places) and electronics. 2. Use so much signal processing down-stream, that the contribution the bass itself makes to the sound is negligible.

I won a PC-2 at a Roland/Boss event in late 1984. At the end of the evening they did a draw for a few of the cheaper devices they had been demonstrating and my name came out of the hat. Out of everything they gave away this was the least appealing and after playing with it for 5 minutes at the next band rehearsal it went back in its box and was PX'd for another device they'd shown - the Boss Super Distortion and Feedbacker Pedal.

I that case anything you like the sounds and user interface of will most likely be fine. Get something that supports MIDI clock, and ideally MTC (MIDI timing Code) to you can run it synchronised to GarageBand or Logic. If it supports MTC it will also pickup at the correct place in the song without needing to run it from the top every time you want to do a drop in. There maybe some delay with the pickup function, but you won't know what it is until you try it. One thing you might want to think about is how your chosen device backs up whatever you have programmed into it. Hopefully it will support something like a SysEx memory dump. Of course the other thing to remember is that a backup is only any use if you can actually retrieve the information at a later date. Just because the backup has occurred successfully doesn't automatically mean you'll be able to do a restore from it. The devices I used to own (see above) that did tape backups also had a verify function which compared the playback of the tape with the contents of the device memory. Having owned a room full of MIDI (and before that CV and gate plus clock sync) gear in the 80s and 90s, it would have to be a very special device that would persuade me to go back to working outside the box. The headaches I and my band use to have trying to get all the devices to talk to each other properly is something I don't miss. Even MIDI didn't solve all the problems: there would be clock glitches that would cause synchronised effects to go out of sync and massive delays on pick-up for timing codes that meant a lot of the time it was simpler to run the song from the start even if all I wanted to do was drop in a section right at the end.

In the days when I was still using amps and cabs and not all of them had standardised on Speakon connections, all my speaker cables were made using heavy duty orange mains cable, so they could be easily identified.

My second main bass was an Overwater Original 5-string with a 36" scale length. I never noticed the extra two inches, although that might have been because my previous main bass was a short scale. The first time I realised that it was longer than standard was when I tried fitting a 34" scale set of strings and found that the silks started in the first fret area. Back then (in the early 90s) finding extra long scale sets with a usable low B was very difficult. These days it's much easier. Since then I've owned basses with all sorts of scale lengths and my experience has been that scale length on it own only makes a difference for the sound and feel of the lower string when you go 36" or longer.