BigRedX

Well add DHL to the list of couriers that can't be bothered to deliver to the right address. Earlier today I had an email from a supplier saying that my order had been completed. When I emailed them back asking what that meant, because I hadn't received my items from them yet, I got a message saying that they had checked the tracking and apparently the "delivery was refused" yesterday. That's weird because I work from home and I am in all day. From where I work I can see pretty much every vehicle that comes down the street - it's a cul-de-sac - and there was no DHL van/lorry that I noticed yesterday, and no attempted delivery that I have "refused". I did have a parcel delivered by my trusty postman with no problem. What this means is that they have tried the wrong address - but which wrong address I don't know because all my neighbours know me and they know that I work from home and if I really hadn't been i would have taken the parcel for me. The tracking number that my supplier has given me doesn't work, and having phoned them up for more information they now can't get the tracking number to work for them so that delivery can be re-arranged for Monday. Oh joy!

But those 4 strings are perfectly aligned between the 5 pole-pieces. I get where you are coming from, but when you are recreating that "vintage vibe" where do you draw the line between recreating a specific feel/look and actually making an instrument which functions properly? Are we about to see the return of over-sized neck pockets, 3-bolt neck joints and micro-tilt adjustments with a mis-aligned string plate for that authentic late-70s wonky neck look?

I have no idea what that means.

At $3500 for what is essentially a P-Bass copy (something that was originally designed to be able to be made cheaply with relatively unskilled labour) I would expect the attention to detail to be flawless. Misaligned pickups while not necessarily a problem with the sound and playability of the bass are not acceptable on an expensive instrument IMO.

The main reason that Reaper gets so much love is that it has a very low entry cost (essentially free and only £60 if you really want to pay for it) compared with other DAWs. However for that price you don't get very much other than the actual program, and to reach the same level of plug-in functionality as Logic you would probably have to spend quite a bit of extra money and almost certainly more than the £199 that Logic costs. However if all your plug-ins that you are currently using with ProTools are in AU format then you should be able to continue using them with Reaper. The other big disadvantage with Reaper is that it's MIDI editing/manipulation facilities are much less comprehensive than those in DAWs that started out life as sequencing applications like Logic, Cubase and Performer. Again though if ProTools' MIDI capabilities have been sufficient, then Reaper's should be too. ProTools for all it's historic dominance is on it's way out. Since affordable computers now have the kind of processing power that mostly renders the ProTools hardware unnecessary, it's USP has become less and less relevant. Added to it's problems are the reliance on the less than robust iLok copy protection system (as Beedster has already discovered) and the fact that the parent company Avid has been on the brink of financial disaster for years now, IMO ProTools days are numbered and it is only historical inertia rather than actual functionality that keeps its user base sticking with it. Also bear in mind that the parent company Avid are first and foremost into video editing and their audio offerings are very much second-class products compared with their main business. A cynical person might also be unsurprised that ProTools isn't playing nicely with Adobe products when the company produces competing applications - Premier, After Effects and Audition (BTW if you are an Adobe CC Subscriber you should definitely have a look at Audition as you already have it for free).

I was just looking for that, and it's no longer on the Italia web site, so obviously not that popular.

Since you are using a Mac, you should really be looking at Logic as an alternative to ProTools rather than Reaper. Reaper looks very impressive for the price, but as soon as you need any serious plug-ins you'll need to to be paying out and pretty soon that cost advantage will have disappeared. Ultimately unless you are having very serious compatibility issues with your current DAW it is nearly always most effective to stick with what you know, rather than waste time trying to learn something else that does all the same things but in a slightly different way. BTW what's your audio hardware/interface that you are using? IME the massive advantage of ProTools is the integration of the software with the ProTools hardware. Most of the problems I see have happened since the platform was opened up to use 3rd party interfaces. Some work better than others.

While it's not as impressive as that of either of his band-mates, Frank Beard has been sporting a beard for a number of years now.

IME if subsequent albums are better than the debut, it is because there has been a major change in the line-up of the band accompanied by new song writers, or a general change in musical direction, and even then it is highly subjective. For instance is synth-pop of Depeche Mode's "Speak & Spell" a lesser album than the much darker "Construction Time Again"? Similarly the Cure's "Three Imaginary Boys" and "17 Seconds"? Apart from Robert Smith's singing you wouldn't know that they were from the same band. Someone once said something along the lines of: bands spend 10 years making their debut album and 10 months for the follow up. So it's not surprising that there's the "difficult second album" syndrome. For me a lot of the time if I prefer a later album to a band's debut, it's usually because that's the point at which I discovered them and I'm more familiar with it, rather than it really being better.

But the well-known single version is a remix by Todd Terry and is far more representative of his output than EBTG's

With all carrier services there is a big difference between being the sender (especially if you are regularly sending a significant number of parcels) and being the (one-off) recipient. As the the sender you are the customer who pays the money and it is in the carrier's interests to to keep you happy. IME If you are sending multiple parcels every day, you probably have a personal account manager at the company who deals directly with any problems and also the pickup will happen at a set time each day. You've booked the collection so the driver know you are in and will probably wait the extra 30 seconds if necessary for you to answer the door and hand over the parcels. At the delivery end it's a complete lottery.

If you have the facilities blow the photo up to those dimensions, print it out and stick it to some thick card and see if it feels comfortable.

If you know the scale length you would be able to work it out from that photograph to within 5mm.

IME quality instruments use bolts with inserts rather than wood screws.

IME the quality of service for delivery to my address from all the major carriers except for Royal Mail and Parcel Force has gone seriously downhill in the last couple of months. Most notably: I had DPD randomly leave a parcel in my front yard on a rainy day, rather than take the time to knock on my front door and wait for me to answer it. At least they took a photograph of it, which I was able to use to locate the item in question and retrieve it before it got water-damaged. I work from home and the first I knew of the delivery was when the "delivered" email popped up on my screen. UPS who up until this point have been very good, left my parcel in my "Blue Bin" rather than knock on the door. I don't have a blue bin. Nor do any of my neighbours (nor did they have my parcel). I do have a green and brown bins and the brown bin had just been emptied on the day of the supposed delivery. It took two weeks of pestering the suppliers before I got a refund for the lost item. Last weekend I had a "delivery" from Hermes booked via Parcel2Go for a custom order item for my gf that has taken 8 months to build to order. When I placed the order I was told that the delivery would be made by Royal Mail. When I received the despatch notice this had been changed to Hermes. The tracking promised a Monday delivery, but apparently it was supposed to have been delivered last Saturday. Checking the tracking it has been signed for but the signature is nothing like mine. According to the information it was going to delivered some time between 11.00 and 3.00, and weirdly enough I had a delivery from Royal Mail for something entirely different right in the middle of that delivery window. There has been no sign of the parcel from Hermes, the supplier has been looking into it. I realise that all the delivery services are under increased pressure with more people ordering for home delivery, but the level of "service" is now verging on a joke. At my address it is only Royal Mail and Parcel Force who take the time to actually knock on the door and then wait for the occupant to answer it.

IIRC some of the 60 and early 70s Japanese guitars with stripy necks are made of laminated bamboo. Hopefully @Bassassin will be along to confirm this or to put me right.

AFAICS the Bluetooth feature on these amps is for playback of an external audio source for the musician to play along with. Therefore the latency from the Bluetooth connection won't be an issue.

I would hope so. I really can't see the point otherwise.

That's oversimplifying things. I think you'll find that there's more than a few people here that are of the opinion that the wood can make a difference. However when compared with all the other things on a bass that can also make a difference the choice of wood is one of the less important factors. Also the difference it makes cannot be predicted simply by knowing what wood(s) has been used in the construction. The other important thing to take away from this discussion is that solid electric instruments are completely different from acoustic instruments and what is important in the construction an sound of one is not necessarily important in the other.

An the important word is "density" and not "species".

I've been saying for years that manufacturers of digital wireless systems including Line6 have been missing a trick by not including a digital output on their receiver units. This goes part of the way to addressing the problem. Hopefully the wireless input will start appearing on their other multi-effects units. I'd certainly consider upgrading my Helix for one with a wireless input.

No.

In that case no MIDI needed. However if it is possible to control the cut-off frequency and other parameters with the Grandmother's built-in sequencer, then being able to synchronise the two might be a useful function.

There's a trick that guitarists with bolt on neck instruments sometimes use and which might be applicable the basses made in the same way. Slacken off the strings so they are not exerting any pull on the neck. Then very slightly loosen the bolts/screws attaching the neck to the body. This only needs to be the smallest amount so that the neck isn't held completely tightly in place, no more than 1 turn and probably less than that. Then tune the strings back up to pitch. This has the effect of pulling the neck as tightly into the pocket as is possible. Then tighten up the neck screws again. It probably won't make much difference to instruments where the neck is a very snug fit in the pocket, but on some it can make a noticeable change to the sound.

MIDI is not audio. It is mostly digital information about what notes are being played and how they are being played. Think of MIDI data as the punched roll on a player piano. If you want to know what MIDI functions the Grandmother will send and receive have a look at pages 43 & 44 of the manual. AFAICS most useful thing you can do is to synchronise the the Grandmother's sequencer and appreciator to the drum machine clock - see page 37.