BigRedX

IME in venues that size the cab is entirely for looks. Why not build a mock 8x10 enclosure that can fold up for transport and can hold a smaller cab hidden inside for on-stage monitoring should you need it? Also IME you'll hear more from the PA foldback then you will from your backline unless you run it at insane levels.

Hurtsfall will be "special gusts" when Byronic Sex & Exile play The Angel in Nottingham on their Good Mourning Britain tour.

There always latency with pitch detection. That's simple physics, and the lower the note the greater the latency. You need a minimum of one and half cycles of a fairly clean signal to detect the pitch of the note. That's 37ms (at the very best) for low E on a bass which will be noticeable by anyone who isn't rhythmically challenged. That also requires the user to stick with the sounds from the GR55 or GR20 units because as soon as you add MIDI conversion to the equation in order to drive an external synth that adds another layer of processing and latency. Some of the Roland devices get around this by using signal processing/modelling instead of pitch detection as this will only add as much latency as any other good quality AD/DA system, but that's not as versatile from a sonic PoV.

IME all but the very expensive pitch detection systems are all but useless in a live situation and very expensive ones require so much additional refinement to your playing that you might as well learn some rudimentary keyboard technique which willet you far better results much more quickly.

You can get a Graphtec Ghost system that replaces the saddles of a standard BBOT bridge. If you don't want the route for the standard P-bass pickup you'll need to find an un-routed body, and anyway you'll need a different routes/cavities for the preamp and other bits.

IME having a dedicated sound engineer for the band who knows exactly how you want to sound is far more useful then any amount of additional equipment. All the bands that I have been in that had their own PA engineer were able to set up, sound check, and get a great on stage and FoH sound far more quickly, especially if the band has unusual sound requirements.

Before I ditched all my amplification, I always recorded with a mic on the cab as well as DIs from both the amp and direct from the bass. However I have no idea which signals were actually used in the final mix of the tracks, and TBH since the bass sounded exactly how I wanted it, I didn't really care which signal(s) were used. After all it's the end result that matters. Live I'm not convinced that mic'ing the bass cab is good idea. It's a lot of extra effort for both the band and the PA, it opens up the FoH and monitor mix to lots of additional LF problems, and unless the bassist is using a single driver cab with no tweeter, then a single mic close to one speaker can't really come close to capturing the sound of the whole rig. If the OP wants to go down this route, they will need to experiment to find the best mic and combine that with the best speaker and mic position and then mark that location on the cab grill/cloth, so that next time it's mic'd up they can get the mic in the same place, otherwise it won't sound the same from gig to gig.

Thanks for the extra information. Is that one or two Barefaced cabs? Do they have tweeters or just the 10" drivers? Unfortunately the sound that your hear from your cab(s) when you are stood several feet away from them, will not be the same as the sound of one of the drivers being close-mic'd no matter how flat/accurate the mic is. Have a listen to each of the drivers in turn close up while someone plays your bass, and then compare it to sound from where you would normally be stood, and you hear what I am on about. Instead I would spend some time working with the PA engineer to EQ the DI sound so that it more closely matches the sound coming out of the cab.

I've changed pickups twice. Once on a guitar that originally sounded terrible but I also replaced all the hardware at the same time it would be hard to define exactly what was down to the pickups and what was due to the other changes I made. The second time was on a fairly budget 5-string bass where I replaced the original (J-type) pickups and active circuit with a set of expensive active EMGs and their recommended passive controls, which cost about half the price of the bass. The resulting differences in sound were negligible. When I came to choose pickups for my Sei bass Martin had me spend a couple of hours playing various instruments in The Gallery and noting my comments on which ones I liked the sound of. As others have already said there's a lot more to a pickup than just it's resistance. And once you've taken all the electrical and magnetic factors into account, then you also have the consider the position of them in relation to the string length. In the end it really is just trial and error...

What are you hoping to achieve that the DI isn't managing to do on its own? What cabs are you using? How big are the stages that you are playing? Does your band use its own PA or sound engineer?

With the string locking mechanism immediately behind the nut you don't need any break angle so long as it is not higher than the nut slots. The change in angle will change the compliance characteristics of the strings but so will the fact that there's a different length of non speaking string behind the nut.

Any chance of being able to work out exactly what was going on in the original pickups and then replicating that?

Yes, quite a lot over the past 25 years, something which always bemuses me. If the bands in question were signed to a record label and appeared regularly on national TV and/or radio I could understand it, but we're just another indie band with a CD or record that we've put out ourselves. As a punter I've never asked for anything I've bought from the merch table to be signed, and the one time in the early 80s I received a rather hard to get single that I had to order direct from the band in question and wait for a couple of months for it to turn up, I was most disappointed to find that the cover had been defaced with band signatures.

As nice as that idea might sound, it doesn't have much basis in fact. The original Fender headstock on the Telecaster and first version of the Precision bass didn't feature the "scroll" design at all, and it appears to be fairly well documented that Leo Fender got the idea for the Stratocaster headstock (which was the first Fender instrument with that design) from Paul Bigsby, who had "borrowed it from Martin Guitars, who in turn got it from any number of 19th century German luthiers.

YouTube's compression algorithms will have removed most of the low frequencies anyway.

Bass into any device capable of emulating the Ampeg pre-amp, then straight into the PA.

Unfortunately already sold in my last big clear out when I got rid of everything I wasn't playing often enough to justify still owning it (which also included most of my guitars and synthesisers).

I don't think any band I've been in has got a gig on the strength of its website (or any on-line presence THB). IME websites for bands of any stature are primarily for their fans. Most the "business" is done the old fashioned way with phone calls and occasionally on-line messaging.

@lidl e Sorry I missed this back when you asked. Pics are requested: The Gus basses -the fretless 4-string has been sold to another Basschat member since this group shot was taken. Squier Bass VI which will almost definitely be up for sale soon: Burn Barracuda, which will probably slap be up for sale shortly: I don't have any photos of the Eastwood Hooky except for some of me playing it at gigs. This one is from Hurtsfall's recent Carpe Noctum gig in Leeds supporting Skeletal Family:

Definitely DHL doing the delivery? Last time bought anything large from BD they were still using APC, whose Nottingham Depot appears to staffed by useless layabouts. They wouldn't even answer the phone when their head office tried calling for me them to find out where my missing delivery was. As Mark was happy with the service he getting at his end, he showed little inclination to want to change at the time. Consequently I've not bought anything big from them since.

I've said similar on the SOS forum about limited edition and pre-release announcements of synthesisers (Behringer I'm looking at you). IMO if I can't go into a shop a buy the instrument there and then and take it home with me, or order it on line for next day delivery (or the soonest they can get it to the UK for something from abroad) then I'm really not interested any more, and the instruments in question might as well not exist. Most of the time there will be something available for immediate use that will do the job. I've had 2 guitars and 2 basses custom made for me. The two guitars (both ordered in the late 90s) took less than 3 months each to make. The first bass (a Gus) took a year but a lot of that time was taken up with Simon trying to source suitable suppliers for the finishing of bass and the hardware I had specified. My Sei bass took almost 2 years and herein lies a cautionary tale: In the early 2000s I joined a new band and it soon became obvious to me that fretless bass would be ideal for many of their songs. After spending over a year trying every fretless I came across in shops and at musical instrument shows, I came to the conclusion that the only way I'd get the instrument that I really wanted was to have it custom made. I then spent almost another year researching luthiers before settling on Sei, and placing my order. The bass when it was finished was everything I was looking for. Unfortunately the band folded six months later and my requirements for fretless bass have been minimal since then (I've used on the recorded versions of two songs and that's it). I'd really like Gus to make me a Bass VI based on the Eastwood Hooky neck dimensions (which while being the most suitable out of all the Bass VIs for my needs as at best only an adequate instrument), but price aside, the current waiting time for a new instrument is a minimum of 18 months, and I can't guarantee that I'll still need a bass VI of any description that far into the future.

I've owned one chambered and one semi-hollow bass. The chambered bass was so completely different in both concept and execution from a typical bass guitar it would be impossible to tell what effect the chambering on it own had to the sound (if anything). The semi hollow bass sounded like a bass guitar.

It's all to do with what we are used to. Had the first popular bass guitar been headless, we be wondering why there's any need to have excess material beyond the nut.

IME the more interesting musical instrument ideas and designs come from those whose main training is not in the making of musical instruments, as they have less pre-conceived ideas about how things should be done. After all how many Jazz Bass copies do we need?

The order book is currently closed due to the fact that the current backlog is in excess of 4 years. It says so on their contact page. You can ask to be informed when Wal will be taking orders again, but I suspect that if you aren't ready to put down your deposit on the day that it does re-open you are going to be out of luck. Therefore you want a Wal right now you have no alternative but to negotiate a price on one of those 9 up for sale. The fact that they are all still available to buy means that they are currently priced on the high side, but I'm sure there would be some wiggle room on price for anyone with actual cash to spend. Also bear in mind that those 9 Wal basses available for sale are a mixture of fretted, fretless, left hand, right hand, 5 string, 4 string etc. So while there are 9 to choose from if you need a particular set of features that cuts down the choice by at least half straight away.