BigRedX

TBH anything that isn't a 4 string, long scale bass with either Fender or Squier on the headstock is a niche instrument.

Some gear is important, and other gear less so - especially as the size of venues that you are playing gets bigger. And the venues don't have to be very big before the contribution made by your choice of bass amp and cab(s) to the sound the audience (and the band) hears becomes negligible. I don't play gigs of the size that U2 do, but even so for the vast majority of the gigs I have done over the past 40+ years the bass has been going through the PA, and that's the sound that the audience hears. Only at the smaller venues (<200 capacity) would anyone in the audience have heard the sound from my cabs and then only those at the front who were directly in the "line of fire". For myself, on anything but the smallest of stages the moment I stepped away from being directly in front of my rig, the sound of the bass in the foldback would completely take over. The PA feed was taken post-effects, and would have only included the pre-amp part of my bass rig (and only for those rigs where some of the effects went through the FX loop of the amp). Anything after that in the final chain - power amp and cabs - made zero contribution to the sound that the audience heard. In the studio there would be a mic on one of the speakers in one of my cabs, but there would also be a DI taken from the amp and another direct from the bass guitar, and I had no idea which of these sound sources ended up being the one used by the producer or engineer. It could have been the mic on the cab, but it could just as easily have been the direct sound of the bass going through a couple of plug-ins on the DAW. So long as the bass sounded right in the overall mix, I really didn't mind which was used. This was one of the reasons why a few years ago I sold my big, impressive looking, and expensive bass rigs and replaced them with a multi-effects unit and a powered speaker cab (which only gets used at the smaller gigs where I don't know how good the supplied foldback is going to be). In the studio I now go directly into the desk from the multi-effects. I find the whole idea of big name bassists endorsing amplification completely perplexing, and especially so if they are not actually getting the equipment for free - after all why pay for something you don't need or even use? At the kinds of gigs these people play, the bass will be DI'd and the musicians will all be wearing IEMs. All those big impressive looking rigs are there simply for show. No one will actually be hearing the sound that is coming out of the cabs (if indeed anything is actually coming out of the cabs). In the studio anything produced by the rig will be further modified by the studio outboard gear and "in the box" plug-ins, and even then unless you are doing the engineering yourself you don't know which of the multiple sources are actually being used to produce the bass sound in the context of the final mix. The only bassists whose choice of amplification makes a significant contribution to the sound that both they, the rest of their band, and the audience hears, are pub bands using a vocal-only PA system. Those are completely at the other end of the scale to the big-name bassists being used to "sell" the amplification.

For most musicians the recording is no longer the main source of musical income. Its the gig where how an instrument looks is probably as important as how it sounds.

It really depends what you are looking for from a bass (or any instrument come to that). If all you want is something that is easy to play and produces low notes that fits into a typical rock/pop/jazz arrangement/instrumentation then a Squier P or J will probably be fine. They're made to a 60 year old design that is barely changed over the years, and whose USP was they could be produced as cheaply as possible using 1940s technology and relatively (compared with your typical acoustic instrument) unskilled labour. These days, the CNC machines in the Far East, can churn out identical instruments in their thousands at a unit cost Leo Fender could not have imagined back in the 1940s. However not everyone wants that. They may want features that are harder to make, or simply things that might suit them, as musicians, perfectly but are by no means anywhere near the mainstream. All these things start to add up, especially when you consider that an instrument may only have a potential user base that can be measured in hundreds (and maybe less) rather than 10s of thousands. For instance I play the Bass VI. The Squier version is available at £400 which is very good VfM for what is essentially a niche instrument. However the narrow neck doesn't suit my playing style (and ability). I could probably spend a year practicing some more so that I can get around this limitation, and be boring on stage, making sure I don't play any bum notes, but I'd rather be using the time to be writing more songs. So instead I bought the Eastwood copy of the Shergold Marathon 6 which is roughly £1200 (mostly because the production run is in the 100s rather than 10,000s). Playability for me is much better than the Squier and it sounds fine. However it's a bit boring to look at and since I play live I'd like something that looks a bit more interesting. Also I'd like to be able use it with the Roland modelling system. All of a sudden I'm in custom instrument territory. The Bass VI form my preferred custom maker with all the features I want will be in the region of £7,000. I could put in the hours of practice and make do with the Squier, but if I can afford to make my life easier and more interesting why not?

That will be down entirely to the quality of the PA system. In the days when U2 were still playing gigs small enough for at least some of the audience to be able to hear the actual sound of the bass rig, AC appears to have been mainly using Marshall gear.

Looks a bit like a solution to a problem most people have never noticed existed. Plus there will be no benefit if you use non-standard tunings.

Once you start playing stages of a certain size the backline for the bass guitar becomes completely irrelevant - especially so if you are using IEM. Your technical rider may specify a mic on a particular speaker in a particular cab, but there'll also be a DI feed direct from the bass guitar itself and probably another from the DI on one of the amps, and in reality you have no way of know exactly which source is the main contribution to the FoH sound.

I'd take all of that with a pinch of salt. I would say it's highly unlikely that whatever amps and cabs he's currently getting for free will have made any significant contribution to the sound of his bass guitar either on record or at gigs since about 1982.

All my tone shaping is done with my programmable multi-effects, so the controls on my basses are pretty much ignored. On the passive basses everything is set to full on and on, and the one active bass volume is at max and all the other controls are at their centre dent position. This is so if any of them get moved I can return them to a know position. The only controls I use are the pickup selector (if there is one) and the series parallel switch (again if there is one) which are set to the sound I like the best and left there.

I usually do that during the "tasteful acoustic interlude"

I'm always amused when the audience cheer just because the band have walked on stage. Why do that? They might be awful. Even a well-known band with a great back catalogue of songs may fail to deliver at a gig.

Looks like it. It should go on to trying to find a Sine Wave Inverter that actually puts out something even remotely resembling a sine wave. If it doesn't then there's another one!

I play and compose first and foremost for me too. But there would be zero point in playing live or recording and releasing my tunes if I didn't also care what my audience will think.

Well worth reading the (fairly recent) SOS thread on sine wave inverters and why most of the the cheap ones are crap for the average musician's needs and at best will add loads of noise to your signal and at worst can damage your amp. I'll post the link when I have more time.

Solos are for boring old fashioned bands. Every note I write and subsequently play has been carefully considered and orchestrated ahead of time to to be the best possible note (IMO) to go with what the other musicians are doing at any given moment in the song. The song is the most important thing.

Even on a Bass VI chords of more than two strings tend to be muddy and indistinct unless played high up on the neck. If you want to play "guitar-style" chords use a guitar it works and sounds a lot better. For 2 note chords so long as you know where the notes are on each string the intervals between strings doesn't matter.

As a band member and composer the audience reaction to our performance and our songs is very important to me. Whether anyone thinks I have a "killer bass tone" less so. I personally think that I have the right bass sounds for all my band's various songs, but playing the right notes is more important. My choice of instruments is down to band image and playability above all else. TBH if a non-musician notices the bass tone then there is probably something wrong with the mix.

Really depends what and how you play. Most ERBs are tuned with all the strings a 4th apart. It means that you can play the same patterns whatever string you start on and still be in tune. A Bass VI will normally be tuned the same as a guitar but an octave down. However there are no fixed "rules". I tune my Bass VIs EADGCE simply because it some of the songs we play require a drone "C" and overall it's a good compromise tuning that doesn't require me to retune between songs.

Since the late 80s I've always gone bass direct into the amp. All my effects have been in the FX loop of the amp...

Yes it is a problem. And add to that, the fact that the specifications change every six months or so, and what works under the old spec will almost certainly look rubbish on at least one platform under the new one. There are web sites that will give you all the relevant specs for the various platforms and the better ones will show you the area that you need to cover so that your image is not resized to fit, and the area that will be visible in all formats for that image size. The unfortunate truth is that the area that is common to all platforms is generally fairly tiny compared with the overall image size required to suit everything, and this in particular tends to render it fairly useless for displaying lets of text. I have a feeling that this is done deliberately so that the cover image cannot easily be used as "free" advertising in the way that the OP wants.

Unfortunately it only clicks twice if you use a TRS jack plug. Otherwise it's no more secure than a normal socket.

Everything gets good reviews in the magazines otherwise the manufactures stop buying advertising space.

The answer to Question 10 is because the forum software stupidly assumes that you want a smilie rather than an figure 8 followed by a bracket. Previous versions allowed you to turn off automatic smilies, or tweak the text by hand, but the last 2 or so have left out that functionality.

Although both bands I currently play in are in roughly the same genre (post-punk/goth) I use completely different basses for each. One band is a traditional vocals, two guitars, bass and drums with synths and effects on backing; I use my Gus G3-5 strings for that one. The other is much more minimalist with just vocals, synths, bass and drum machine and I use an Eastwood Hooky Bass 6 for that. I have the same amplification for both but because it is a Helix into an FRFR, the patches on the Helix are completely different for each band, and apart from mostly using the same compressor and chorus models they don't have any other modules in common.

Yes it is, but while "vintage" doesn't have a strict definition like "antique" does it tends to refer too anything more than 25 years old (but less than 100) so all those 80s things are indeed vintage now. As are most of the 90s!