BigRedX

A few months ago when I was in the market for a keyboard controller for my DAW I went into the Nottingham branch of PMT and found the all displays in the guitar and bass sections woefully bare compared with my previous visit in 2019. The high-tech and keyboard areas were cordoned off with no explanation as to why and none of the staff appeared to be interested in helping me, so I left and bought a controller from Amazon instead.

When you apply a plug-in to a track in the default settings all the Logic Plug-ins appear at the top of the list by category, and the 3rd party ones are right at the bottom under "Audio Units" and then in sub-menus for each manufacturer. I believe there is a way to change this order but I haven't felt the need to do this. If you have done this either on purpose or inadvertently then your new plug-in could be anywhere (I'd start by checking the effect type in belongs under - delay?) Also check in Preference > Plug-in Manager. Again 3rd party plugins will be at the bottom of the first column list.

If you're not going for original authenticity but making this a player's instrument to sell, then almost any serious prospective purchaser will want the shim refitting and the bridge raising up to compensate. String choice is a matter of taste, but if you can get the intonation right with that Fender set, anything else the next owner might want to fit will also be capable of being correctly intonated.

If you are going to string this with modern heavier strings (i.e. those from LaBella or Newtone) you will eventually need to refit the shim to get a decent break angle over the bridge to reduce the compliance of the string. Without the shim the strings pass over the bridge and on to the vibrato mechanism at too shallow an angle which makes them feel even floppier than they would be normally. This is standard procedure for anyone buying a Squier Bass VI these days. I assume that the lack of bridge posts means you can't raise the bridge high enough to allow for the shim at the moment.

It's probably more people than you would imagine. I've been interested in being able to control synthesisers from guitars and basses for the past 45 years, but for my playing technique the technology still isn't quite there. In the mean time I've built up almost enough keyboard technique to render the quest redundant. I would imagine that due to the nature of the instrument and it's accompanying interface, they have been affected by the current world-wide chip shortage. However if they are not prepared to communicate this to customers or potential customers, then that's not good business practice IMO.

Which version of Logic? Which version of Mac OS? Have you checked all the plug-in sub-menus - the two 3rd Party plug-ins I have are hidden away there. I trust you have downloaded the 64bit AU version of this plug-in and not any of the others?

Just about to add a reply to this thread when I notice that I have already answered. However the thread doesn't have a "star" next to it like all the others to which I have added a post. Any reason or is it just a random glitch?

Because they essentially have no competition if you want a bass guitar capable of generating MIDI note data with close to zero latency.

But in my case it was. What I wanted was a Bass VI with comfortable (for me) string spacing at both the nut and the bridge. However as I discovered the width of the neck at the nut has little bearing on the distance between the two E strings. My Squier Bass VI which started this whole quest off has a narrow nut at 40mm and 35mm between the two E strings. This string spacing was far too close for me (it was even closer than my guitars) so I started looking at Bass VI alternatives with wider necks. I soon discovered that a wider neck didn't automatically mean a proportionally wider string spacing. It seemed to me that the wider the neck got on most Bass VI type instruments the further from the neck edges the E strings were, so adding another 3-4mm to the nut width would only result in the overall string spacing increasing by only 2-2.5mm. Also having owned a lot of very different bass guitars over the past 40 years, I can say while on P and J style basses there may well be a direct correlation between the nut width and string spacing at the nut, once you step away from these designs pretty much anything goes. Also there is no direct correlation between nut and bridge string spacing. Of all the basses I have owned, the one with the widest string spacing at the bridge also had the narrowest string spacing at the nut. That why IMO all those measurements are important, because they tell you what the actual relationships are between the strings and edges of the neck rather than simply making assumptions which based on my experience may well turn out to be wrong.

I just thinking some more about who does promotion, where and why. And IMO it really does depend upon the band and the gig. The next gig I'll be playing is at the Lending Room in Leeds. The venue is a decent sized room above a pub called "The Library", whose core clientele couldn't be less interested in live music. The last time I was there the main pub was rammed full of students in Superhero costumes, seemingly all intent on getting drunk and then hopefully getting laid. The venue part even has it's own separate entrance (although you can also get to it through the pub). Advertising at the pub consists of one poster for each gig happening in the next two months, and TBH thats all they need as the various "nights" are so disparate in genre, that punters attending one evening are unlikely to be interested in any of the others, certainly apart form the two other Carpe Noctum events coming up there was nothing I had any inclination to want to attend. Also at all the gigs there that I have attended either as a band member or as a punter, I could guarantee that the vast majority of the audience are members of the "It's Goth Up North" Facebook page and that's how they know about the gig.

Depends on the band and depends on the gig. I play in two goth/post-punk originals bands and these days I rarely have to do any promotion. Most of the gigs my bands play are well organised, and run by established promoters on the scene. We're often supporting much better known bands who will be the ones pulling in the majority of the audience. We'll put a couple of posts up on the bands' social media pages but that's really all that we need to do. It will probably be a different story if you're playing covers in a pub.

Hurtsfall have two gigs in December. The first supporting Skeletal Family at The Lending Room in Leeds on Saturday 3rd December, part of the Carpe Noctum series of gigs The second at Shakespeare's in Sheffield for "In The Black Midwinter Festival" when we will be playing on Sunday evening 18th December.

Did you try TecAmp or EICH? IIRC the name TecAmp is now owned by some US concern and have almost nothing to do with the original company. The designer of the amp is Thomas Eich who now runs EICH Amplification, and he is more likely to be able to help.

That's pity as this was a terrific sounding amp when it was working properly. I only sold it back to you because I have moved to an ampless setup. However, during the time I owned it, I found it was somewhat temperamental regarding the electricity supply it was presented with. On 3 or 4 occasions at gigs it went into some sort of "protect" mode and could not be persuaded to produce any more sound for the rest of the evening. Plugging it back in at home the following day would always result in it working perfectly. Have you tried getting in touch with Thomas Eich? I believe that he will still repair old TecAmp/Tech Soundystems gear if he has the parts.

When I was playing Dad-rock covers I could have got away with a 2 string bass tuned to E and A for most of the songs. I once took my Atlansia Solitaire single string fretless bass to a practice just to see how useful it was in a "real-world" situation. IIRC the fretless aspect was more of a drawback than the fact it only had a single string.

I suspect because there are no/less problems with DHL on mainland Europe they have been given the contract for deliveries and returns in the UK too. Certainly pre 2021 I haven't come across any problems with DHL, it all seems to have gone wrong in the last two years. Thomann obviously regard the UK market as something to be worth bothering with, hence them including out all the VAT and import duties in the sale price for UK customers. However a supplier is only as good as their weakest link, and right now DHL in the UK appears to be a very weak link. They need to sort out their pick-up policies for returns, because a lot of what Thomann sell are large items and these seem to be the problem for the current system, or the contract needs to be given to another carrier for the UK. And part of the problem may well lie with us, the consumers. If there is an issue with returning an item to Thomann because of DHL's pickup points, let both Thomann and DHL know, in writing as well as by telephone. If we don't complain about bad service nothing will get done about it. And it does work. I have had problems with the pickup/drop off point for another carrier service, and on both occasions I have complained to both the carrier (UPS) and to the two companies who chose to use them. The result of this is that this particular shop is no longer part of the UPS network.

And what exactly is wrong with keytars?

It's only used for the filter sequencing functions and goes through one of the effects send/return of the Helix and so can be treated like any other Helix module, and is also connected via MIDI for patch change and MIDI clock. For the band I use it with, we have computer controlled backing so this provides the MIDI clock for tempo control. So far I've only used it on one track which we don't currently play live, but the plan is to start doing more with it because it's easier to bring to gigs than a additional synthesiser keyboard.

Also something struck me when looking at the photos the Rob OReilly bass the both this instrument and the IR MIDI bass have bolt-on necks. Why? The neck is an integral part of the pitch detection system, it's not as if you can take it off and replace it with another one! Does anyone know what happens if you try and remove the neck from one of these basses? Can you? is there a connector in the neck pocket for the fret-sensing wiring? Could you fit a shim if it was required?

Most of the time their service is great, although I have always found it somewhat on the slow side (even before the UK left the EU). However note that Thomann have form for sending out returned items as "new" and getting stuff back to them because it is faulty etc. has always IME been less straight-forward than it should be and has got noticeably worse since 2021. Until they have the UK returns process sorted out (whereby they always offer the option for DHL to pick it up direct from the customer rather than going through one of the "drop-off" points) I don't think I'd want to chance it buying anything large from them.

Another boring J-Style bass with an even uglier headstock. And very vague on the actual pitch detection mechanism.

Thanks. Same as the Squier then. What bridge do you have fitted in these photos?

Two points: 1. As has been said the IR bass uses fret sensing to derive the pitch information which makes it much faster and more accurate than the alternative pitch-to-MIDI systems. 2. It's not a MIDI output on the Godin basses but a 13-pin connector that can be used to drive a separately bought pitch to MIDI convertor. The problem with pitch to MIDI is that it's slow and the conversion speed is dependant upon the pitch of the note being converted - the lower note, the slower the system will be to identify it. The very best of these systems require at least one and half cycles of the waveform in order to identify the pitch. Most of the time they require more, and they also demand a very clean and precise playing technique in order to get the best out of them. Low E on a bass is 41.2Hz which means that at the VERY BEST a pitch to MIDI system will take 36ms to correctly identify the note. That's slap-back echo territory and a noticeable delay. And that is before you factor additional delays caused by the conversion to actual MIDI data and transmission to a MIDI device. This why pitch to MIDI on its own is unworkable, and why the Industrial Radio system is the only realistic system available and so sought-after by those who can afford it and are prepared to wait for their bass to be built.

That looks better already! Out of Interest what is the spacing between the centre of the two E strings at the bridge?

That's exactly what I was trying to say. When you stand 10 feet away from your cabs your brain knows this due to the "ambiance" of the sound and the fact that you can see you are standing some distance from the source, and somehow everything is OK. If you are standing right next to your rig, or even worse you are using IEM and the signal is also delayed by 10ms it sounds all wrong, because the signal should be instantaneous, but it's not.