BigRedX

Helix straight into the PA. Monitoring by the venue's foldback system. That's what I did last time I played the Leeds O2.

After a couple more emails back and forth with the Novation technical specialist, it was suggested that the problem might be down to the fact that the Launchkey wasn't getting enough power from the USB port on my Mac and maybe a powered USB hub would be worth trying. Therefore I gave it one more go plugged into the USB port on the back of one of my Apple Cinema Displays which in theory is a powered hub, although with other devices I often get a warning that there is insufficient power for them to work... and it works! The Control Surface Setup window popped up when I launched Logic, and all the functions I want to use so far work. I've just used it to add a simply synth lead part to the song I am currently working on. Panic over...

Thanks. The Glastonbury set list looks marginally better and he even did one of his novelty songs!

Here's the thing. I'm very much the target customer for this bass. I play in a post-punk/goth band with no guitarist and my bass lines are somewhat influenced by those of Mr Hook, plus the Shergold/Eastwood is the only bass VI with a suitably wide neck for me to play comfortably. I currently own an Eastwood and I'm the market for a second instrument (so I have a spare for gigs) to replace the now redundant Squier Bass VI and Burns Barracuda which both have string spacing too narrow for me to put up with any more. So do I buy another Eastwood for £1300 new, or do I buy a worn 40 year old Shergold that from a playing and sound PoV is not really any different and potentially has an inflated price, mostly due to the fact that it is old, and before the Eastwood appeared was a rarity?

So what does Sir Paul play at a pub gig (or on the main stage at Glastonbury for that matter) these days? Mostly Beatles songs? Mostly Wings songs? Post Wings songs (are there any good ones?)? Or is it all Rock 'n' Roll classics from the Hamburg days? Does he play any of his novelty songs? Mary Had A Little Lamb? We All Stand Together? Mull Of Kintyre? Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time? Does he do any of The Firemen stuff? Enquiring minds want to know...

Everyone should have a really good pre-amp in the input section of their amplifier.

Actually having played an original Shergold Marathon 6 sting bass back in the day and owning one of the Eastwood models I can say that unlike most of what Eastwood produce, this version is very accurate, and Peter Hook appears to agree with me. That means unfortunately you can also spin the value the other way and ask why you would pay a premium for an old battered bass when you can buy a very accurate brand new version of it for £1300.

More likely to be a Marathon 6 string bass. It will only be a baritone guitar if the neck is standard guitar width.

Depends on the strap and the case you put it it. Straps with hard parts (especially metal) have a tendency to damage the instrument. Ironically straps fitted with Schaller Straplocks will sometimes make the instrument too long to fit in a hard case necessitating their removal!

The only way you'll know if they are any for you is to try them. A 1 x 15" cab has no specific sound per se. The overall sound of a cab is made up of a number attributes, of which the diameter of the driver cone is one of the least important. If there was a "1 x 15 sound" there would be no need for multiple manufacturers to be trying to selling us their particular version.

IIRC the MU PL insurance only covers a band if everyone is a member.

TBH I found the new design of Schaller strap locks harder to fit mostly because I already have all the appropriate tools for fitting the old ones (a mole grip for holding the "cup" and a spanner of the correct size to tighten the nut). I didn't feel I was able to get the new design as tight because I worried that the allen key used to turn the retaining "nut" would snap before I had achieved the same tightness I could get under the old method (and which has never failed me), which pretty much renders the locking grub screw useless. Also the strap button with the built-in screw makes the new design useless for fitting to instruments not made of wood. I have raised both these points with Schaller technical support, but I they pretty much told me that's how things are from now on, I'm too much in the minority to be concerned with.

IME experience (with medium-sized gigs max) I've found that bands who originally date from before the 90s seem to be less likely to suffer from the boomy, overwhelming kick and indistinguishable bass guitar FoH sound, since this was never part of their live or recorded sound back in the day. Certainly at WGW the live sound is almost alway done in a sympathetic way to the line-up of the bands, especially those where the bass guitar is an important part of the sound from a melodic PoV.

The weight of rack stuff quickly adds up if you're not careful, and that light-weight class D amplifier will have a negligible impact on the overall weight of the rack which could end up being as heavy as an all-valve head.

Everyone will be recommending their own favourites. Don't bother with the knock-off get properly branded Dunlops or Schallers. I've used both (and my preference is for the Schallers) and they each have their strengths and weaknesses. The Schallers need to be fitted properly otherwise you will encounter problems. That means enlarging the hole in the strap to accommodate the the lock part of the mechanism, and that the button sits in the base of the cup when the bass is hanging from the strap and not the open end, and then that you tighten everything up securely. The Dunlops are such more forgiving about their installation. However the pin/spring part of the mechanism needs regular maintenance/lubrication otherwise it will eventually fail (like mine did). If you buy the Dunlop locks as spare parts they may come with that information. However the bass I had them on came with them ready-fitted and no information regarding maintenance which is which I treated them like the Schallers (fit and forget) and they eventually broke. Take your pick... BTW unless all your basses are exactly the same design, you will need different strap lengths for each one; so you loose one of the advantages of having an easily removable strap system.

Brilliant. We just need to keep it up and let people know every time the sound is inappropriately mixed, and maybe something will get done about it.

Because I don't really have the social skills to notice, I'm blissfully unaware of sales-people trying to make me feel unwanted in any shop. I'll happily take my time looking and touching all the items I'm interested in, and after all of that I may even make a purchase. However like, I suspect, a lot of people on here, I generally find myself more knowledgeable about stuff that I am genuinely interested in buying than most of the people trying to "sell" it to me.

My Helix is set up with one patch for each song and up to 4 snapshots (as required) for each patch. I have a two basic patches (one for each band) which have what I consider to be the core sounds I need and then I add and adjust the modules as required to give me the sounds for the music. The foot switches are set up so that I have 4 snapshots on the bottom tier and 4 patches on the top. I use the set list function to arrange the patches into the order we are going to play the songs, so I don't even need a printed list.

Yes, But simply knowing what the chord progressions are isn't what makes a song great. Also most of the time he's dealing with a specific recording, and what makes that great is a combination of the music, the lyrics, the arrangement, the performance and the production. The latter 4 are barely touched upon, if at all.

TBH in 30+ years of gigging with multi-effects I have never once felt the need to "tweak" my sounds at the gig.

The whole point of programmable effects is that you don't edit them on the fly. You do that at your leisure in the rehearsal room and then when you are gigging you simply hit the right footswitch to call up the right combination of effects.

But live unless it's a rig with a single cabinet containing a single driver and no tweeter, you are not mic'ing up the cabinet, you're just mic'ing up a single speaker which looses just as much of the nuances of the sound as using a load that is just resistive rather than both inductive and resistive (not that I'd want to use any of these devices with a bass amp running at gig levels).

As I said in my original post, maybe it's because most of the audience either don't say anything or simply don't care. I'm lucky in that I don't go to "big" gigs where this problem seems to be most prevalent. I don't like big venues and luckily for me the bands I go to see aren't popular enough to be playing them - the largest places I go to regularly are Rock City and Whitby Pavilion. If I did encounter it, then I would be complaining on the band's social media pages, on the venue's social media pages, and if I could find out who was responsible for the live sound their social media pages too. I might also ask the sound engineer at the gig in as polite a way as possible why the sound was like that - was if the band's preference, venue acoustics or simply because "that is how it is done these days". So every time you don't complain to someone who might be able to do something about the sound (i.e. not on here), you are in effect enabling the continuation of inappropriate live sound.

Am I the only one who doesn't get Rick Beato most of the time? Some of who he'd does is informative, but "What Makes This Song Great?" despite dissecting what happens musically (and occasionally with the production) never actually tells what makes the song great. Of course the answer to that question is entirely subjective and most of the time the thing that has made the song great is that when it was originally released in the 60s/70s/80s/90s lots of people went out and bought it (in the US) simply because they liked how it sounded.

Not necessarily. My first multi-effects unit was a Roland GP8 which apart from the delay and chorus/flanger was all digitally controlled analogue effects.