BigRedX

Does it have to be a laptop? While they are pretty good for portability, the compact design is the main reason why they fail more regularly than desktop machines and especially in hot conditions, and on the whole they are never as powerful as the equivalent price desktop, plus that tiny screen doesn't make life easy especially for most music apps.

From a practical PoV, I've tried that, but I keep coming to the conclusion that I have a favourite bass to play and nothing else comes close for the playability. As a result I've sold all my 4 and 5 string basses except for my 2 Gus G3s and I'm in the process of getting rid of the unplayed Bass VIs and replacing them with a second Eastwood Hooky. If I could afford two bass VIs from Gus I'd have them instead. I'm aware that the Gus doesn't visually suit every band, but these days I'm unlikely to want to join any band where I didn't think that look would be appropriate.

Different band images require different looking instruments.

As I said, the bass that was in my single Mono gig bag survived having a heavyweight 2x10 cab dropped onto it. Whether a double bag would offer the same level of protection would probably depend on how good the padding is between the basses and how rigid the case is with the extra width. If the bass has been in a regular padded gig bag it would have probably suffered some damage (and so would the cab). Some hard cases would also have fared quite badly in this situation.

Other than having a similar body and headstock outline it has very little in common with the original 1963 Thunderbird bass.

Really? I like Underworld's music, but I only got into to it because I'd been a fan of the previous version of Underworld, and Freur before them. All the things that make the second version of Underworld you like stand out from the other "Progressive House" acts of the time had been repurposed from Karl and Rick's previous bands. IMO Darren Emerson always looked like the weak link in the band and unsurprisingly after he left, very little changed and he's done nothing of note musically since then.

A return to the original (1963) spec with a slightly wider two-part bridge/tailpiece. Every "update" IMO makes them less desirable. If Gibson wanted to be really radical then a 5-string version based on the above.

IMO it's restrained and about as close to being economically and proportionally perfect as possible. I certainly prefer it to the more "distinctive" version that's on the G1 guitar.

Pretty much all mainstream Japanese guitars and basses do this.

In that case the Mono dual bag might be feasible. Bear in mind that two basses plus anything else you might want to cram in the pockets will be quite heavy, and you might find, like I did, that the Mono bag isn't the most comfortable to wear for any significant amount of time. I've been using a Mono M80 bag (single) for about 10 years now, but it's nowhere near as comfortable to wear for a long (more than 10 minute) walk than the Ritter bag it was supposed to replace. However it does offer a level of protection way above the standard gig bag. I had a 2 x 10 cab drop about 3 feet onto my bass in it's Mono bag and both were fine. This is why the Mono bags are expensive. The protection they provide actually works. When I bought my Mono bag it was the smallest and lightest of the semi-rigid gig bags, but it's still only marginally smaller and lighter than a Hiscox case. It will, however, allow you to cram it into spaces in the car that a conventional hard case would struggle to fit into. On the other hand, for me, it is absolutely no use for carrying my bass any further than from the car/van to the venue/rehearsal room etc. I certainly wouldn't want to make the 30 minute walk from where I live to the rehearsal room with mine, and I'd be even more reluctant to do so with the weight of two basses in a similar bag. HTH.

Why do you want a gig bag? To save a bit of space in the car, or to actually carry your basses any significant distance (i.e. more than the trip from the car to the venue).

A drummer I worked with in the late 90s had a home brew version of this, with a small conventional kit that had been fitted with triggers and comprehensively damped inside the shells. It worked nicely for the band because even the significantly reduced acoustic sound of the drums was loud enough for us to hear on stage without needing the samples and synthesised sounds loud in the monitors. It also worked well for those members of the audience who listened with their eyes rather than their ears (usually other musicians) who consistently commented on how much better this drummer sounded even though he was triggering exactly the same sounds as his predecessor who used a more obviously electronic kit, as well as the sequencer we employed before that!

And that's why I have ditched my traditional amp and cabs in favour of a wedge-shaped FRFR as a personal monitor and PA does the bass (and all the other instruments) for FoH.

Speakon plugs/sockets are a properly engineered solution for the currents and voltages present in amp to speaker connections for anything other than low wattage (under 50W) combos.

Do the drums function of useable acoustic drums too or are they damped in some way to reduce the noise?

IIRC the maximum cable length for USB was originally quoted as 5m. I've also successfully used a USB extender system which employed Cat5e cable and allowed me to control a computer several rooms away via the standard network cabling system. I don't know how good this system would be with timing critical USB data though.

In that case unless getting RecAll working is still a priority, just continue using Reaper. On the basis of that update my suspicion that it is a clocking problem that is being caused by RecAll is the favourite. If you still want to resolve this then please post the zoomed in screen shot of one of the clicks and point me in the direction of the manual for RecAll.

Female backing vocalist/keyboard player is Shirley Manson

That's Karl and Rick who are now Underworld.

If this works for you good. Just remember that £700 is still a lot of money when Reaper is essentially free and nearly everyone already has a computer for other tasks. The age of the technology means that when part of this system dies it will probably be unrepairable (or if it is still fixable it won't be worth the cost). No support for plug-in instruments, which means if you want synths and samplers you'll need to buy more hardware and if you want to sequence them via MIDI you'll still need a computer to do that. Personally I'd not want to rely on anything that requires floppy disks in this day and age, more out-of-date technology that is becoming increasingly hard to fix should it go wrong.

If the HF is there simply to remove any unwanted subsonics from your signal, then it should go last in the chain - ideally in the (series) effects loop of your amp so the amp's EQ isn't boosting them back up again. That leaves you with just two pedals that could go in either order, so experiment and see which way around you prefer.

You're probably thinking of Mikey Guitar. Unfortunately they now appear to be out of business. The domain name is up for sale and there are just a couple of low-quality video left on YouTube.

To keep the action correct for both fretted and fretless playing the fingerboard between the frets would need to be raised...

This situation is exactly why I ended up ditching my amp and cabs. With one of the bands I play with most of our gigs are supports for reasonably well-known bands who still use a traditional backline and therefore I just set up in front of the bass rig and no-one in the audience is any the wiser. With my other band the line up is vocals, synths and myself playing Bass VI with programmed drums and additional sequenced synths supplied by the computer. In this case the empty stage really suits the overall band image.

Can you please zoom right in on one of those clicks so that it fills the whole window and take another screen shot?