BigRedX

My first public performance in front of a paying audience was in 1976 aged 15. It was held in the local old-people's community centre and organised by various music teachers in Loughborough one of whom was the woman who taught the folk guitar evening class that myself and two friends went to. We played 3 semi-improvised instrumentals that we had written ourselves, much to the bemusement of the audience as the rest of the evening was full of earnest teenagers playing well-known classical music. The line-up of our ensemble was me on guitar and piano, and my friends playing guitar and percussion (bongos and chime bars). My first proper gig in a more conventional venue was in 1981 at the Ad-Lib Club (later the be better know as The Garage) in Nottingham. It was the only time the full line-up of my first band The Midnight Circus played live, but as we weren't sure exactly who from the band was going to be able to do the gig we played under the pseudonym of The Sickle Clowns (if you know your Pretty Things songs you'll get it). I played half the gig on guitar and the other half on bass.

Spalt Hybrid., I think I've tried or owned pretty much everything else I've been interested in bass-wise over the last 20 years. There's a few guitars I'd still like to check out - any by Jens Ritter or Teuffel.

Again I should either be writing invoices for jobs completed last week or doing some drum programming for a new song we hope to be playing on Friday, but instead I'm browsing internet forums. I will be doing the other stuff ay some point today... promise!

When I did the 3.5 firmware update to my Helix Floor it rebuilt the patches 3 times - first time immediately after the update, then again after I did restore from my backup and again the next time I switched the device on. I won't be doing the 3.6 update until I know I'll be using it at home at least 3 times before I next have a rehearsal or gig.

IMO the Rockbass version with standard bridge pins, inlay around the sound hole and without the thumb rest, looks loads better.

Better known for being the bass player in The Monochrome Set.

They don't. But they'll assume that most people who don't want coil switching options will want to use the pickup in standard (series) mode. Less chance of someone making a mistake an joining both hot wires together and making the pickup everything cancelling.

And as a result was noticed driving badly as was pointed out on another thread.

The only thing to watch with non-velocity sensitive keys is what MIDI key-on velocity value they actually output. Some will always send maximum velocity (127), but IME many will output a constant value of 64 which may make your drums sound rather weedy, as not only will the volume be down but so will any additional parameters (or sample layers depending on how the sounds on the Alesis module have been created) controlled by velocity.

Thanks! Did the pickups you bought have the magnetic polarity marked on them?

When I was living in Loughborough in the 70s The Three Nuns was notorious as the underage dinking venue. One Saturday evening teachers from the Grammar School descended on the pub and cleared out all those they knew were under 18, resulting in a significant reduction in the clientele for next couple of months. I can't remember there ever being any kind of live music on back when I was drinking there. However I doubt I've been in since 1978. Once you're old enough to drink anywhere legally there were plenty of nicer establishments to frequent.

I saw Bow Wow Wow at the Boat Club in Nottingham in 1980 just after Cassette Pet had been released. The band were great but the gig as a whole was an exercise in winding the audience up. Despite the fact that The Boat Club had a music curfew at 10.30pm the band didn't come on until just a couple of minutes before then. Before that there was no support band just two and a half hours of really boring dub reggae played over the PA (I like dub, but none of the tracks they played were any good). The place was so rammed that having spent 30 minutes slowly working my way to the front, getting back to the bar was impossible, and besides as far as I knew the band would be on any minute... When they finally hit the stage all they played were the 8 tracks off Cassette Pet plus the C30 single and it's B-side. It all seemed to be over in no time at all.

Do have a URL for that? I couldn't find anything on the StewMac website.

Whatever is on the bass when I buy it.

You want to be able to trigger the drum sounds on the Alesis module using either the NI keyboard or the Akai pads? I'm not 100% with USB over MIDI because I try and avoid it where ever possible, but my understanding of USB in general is that it is a "dumb" protocol and requires a "computer" host somewhere in the chain to organise everything. Although the protocol has been abused by low-cost manufacturers over the years the original reason for having USB A and USB B connectors was that USB A sockets were on the host device and USB B on the one(s) being controlled. All your devices have USB B sockets so they will be expecting to be connected to a "smart" host like a computer in order to function. MIDI over USB isn't the same as MIDI using old-fashioned DIN sockets, even though the end result appears to be, how the data is managed is entirely different. MIDI DIN to USB leads all have USB A plug on them because they are also "dumb" devices and need to be connected to a computer to function. You have two options. Either buy a stand-alone host box or replace the keyboard and pads with ones that also have traditional MIDI DIN sockets on them.

Those two diagrams just confirm that red and white are from one coil with red being "hot" and green and black are from the other one with black being "hot". Overall it makes no difference unless you are intending to use the split coil option where the KA and WD Music versions results in a different single coil being the active one. This is why being able to read and understand circuit and wiring diagrams is important.

Since you'll replacing most of the existing wiring does it matter that the diagram and the actual wiring don't match? Having said that, it would be useful to see where all those wires disappearing out of the left side of the photograph go.

Wooden neck.

I don't really have a problem with the interface, as I do the vast majority of my programming using the HX Edit application, and I certainly wouldn't want a touch screen on the Helix Floor version, and I'd only want a touch screen on other versions if they also had standard controls (I'm one of these people for whom touch screens don't always work reliably and IME rotary encoders are always more accurate). There are improvements that could be made to the HX Edit app, like the ability to have multiple windows open showing different things and the ability to have all the parameters for two or more modules visible at once if your screen was big enough, rather than simply scaling up the whole interface. However they are minor niggles.

More crap form our German "friends" MOS. Once again I have saved you the trouble of clicking the link.

If you are going to be doing your own electrics then you really should invest in multimeter or at least a continuity tester, otherwise you are reduced to "monkey see, monkey do" and run into problems like this when the product doesn't match the information you have, and you won't be able to work out why things have gone wrong when they do. The problem with "soap bar" when it comes to describing bass pickups is that it is essentially meaningless. Unlike guitar soap bars which are fat single coil pickups usually based on the Gibson P90 style, all you can say about bass soap bars is that the casing is wider than a typical J-style pickup. What is actually inside the casing is entirely up to the manufacturer and unless they specifically state what coil arrangements are under the cover you don't really know. Information about the Claymore pickups on the Kent Armstrong site is fairly sketchy, although the implication appears to be that under the cover is a standard (Stingray type) humbucking pickup with two full width coils. However there is nothing in the description that actually confirms this, and it could just as easily be a P-style split coil or any other arrangement with two coils that can be wired together to give a humbucking effect. I suspect that the reason they have wrapped the back and white wires together is that these are the ones that need to be connected in series humbucking mode, but it would have been less confusing if they had simply labelled each wire. In your OP you appear to have shown just a small part of the supplied wiring guide. I suspect that being able to see the other options would have clarified exactly what each wire does. Again the ability to be able to read and understand a circuit diagram would be most useful to you. If you simply want to have two pickups (with each pickup wired as a series humbucker) then for each pickup solder together the black and white wires and cover each join in insulating tape. Then follow the Standard Jazz Bass wiring diagram you posted substituting white on the diagram for red on the pickup and black on the diagram for green on the pickup.

If you are unsure get your multimeter out and check to see how the pickup is wired without any of the wires twisted together. While it is convenient, there is no logical reason why one manufacturer should follow the same colour coding for their wires as another.

I played about 15 seconds of each of the tracks that I was interested in and the thing that struck me was that how terrible most of the isolated sounds were, but how perfect they are when you hear the final mix. It all goes to prove that there is no great bass tone, just one that works well with a particular combination of musicians and instruments, and why for the most part chasing someone else's tone is a futile exercise.

Unless the jack socket fitting is recessed, I can't see that tool being any more useful that either the right sized spanner or a good quality monkey wrench.

That's you problem right there. As a band you all need to be "on the same page" as far as gigging goes. Nothing breaks up a band quicker than not all of the members wanting the same thing out of being in it, or what may be perceived as unequal division of labour when it comes to getting and organising gigs - even though some members may be much better at this aspect than others.