BigRedX

Even having wood of the same species is fairly meaningless. There are 40+ species of tree that can be called "Ash", and the fabled "swamp ash" isn't even distinct species, but simply refers to "ash" trees that have been grown in swampy conditions. Therefore if you want to make informed choices about wood, not only do you need to know the species, but also the growing conditions, and on top of that: geographical location where the trees come from, age of the trees when cut down, length of time and conditions under which the trees or boards have been in storage for each stage of preparation, and wether or not they have been subjected to any artificial processes in the "seasoning" and probably a whole lot of other factors.

Mass-produce pickups made by machines should be reasonably close to identical, but are still dependant upon the tolerances of components from their suppliers. Is every magnet of exactly the same strength? Is the new batch of wire exactly the same diameter and resistance and does it have the same thickness of insulating coating as the last? And consider that many of those vintage basses would have had pickups that were hand wound and back then no-one would have bothered to check details like the number of turns of wire and the way that those turns were applied (scatter-wound anyone?) let alone the consistency of the magnets and wire used, as long as the items supplied claimed to be the specification ordered.

The brightest sounding of all my basses is the one with the newest strings on it.

The thing is that acoustic and electric instruments are made in completely different ways and the woods are chosen and treated completely differently because of this. On a solid electric instrument, the wood used does make a difference but its one very small part of a wide range of variables, and pretty much insignificant compared with the effect that wood choices have on the sound of an acoustic instrument. And while there are luthiers who claim that the type of wood used is massively important to the sound of a solid instrument there are also those (like Carl Thompson) who say that's impossible to tell what this contribution is going to be until the instrument is finished, so you might as well just pick woods that look good and not worry about their "tone".

It's 4 different basses. Of course each one is going to sound slightly different. Whether it's down to the woods used or any of the other components, the differences in construction - remember that the neck with the maple board is made differently to those with rosewood, and do we know how many pieces of wood are used in each body? - or a combination of everything. However once you drop that bass part into a band mix no-one is going to be able to tell the difference.

How could you tell? Was every other part of all the basses in question absolutely identical? If not how do you know for sure it was the fretboard wood alone that was contributing to difference in sound/tone.

I think it is now the 4th time that's been posted here...

TBH unless you are doing the engineering and mixing, you have no idea which source has been used for the bass guitar. Every time in past 20 years that I've been in the studio to play bass there has always been a mic on one of the speakers in my rig, but there has also been a DI from the head and a direct DI from the bass, so any of those sound sources could have been used on the final mix. And TBH so long as the bass sounds how I imagined it should do in the final mix I'm really not bothered.

I've already had mine built and have been using it for the last 18 years.

I play lots of different stringed instruments, so I'm very tolerant of a wide range of specifications. About the only things I can't get on with are very narrow, very V-shaped necks and Bass VIs with narrow guitar-style style string spacing, although even those can be accommodated.

Recorded at the last gig we played in December last year:

TBH I moved from external MIDI hardware to being "In The Box" 20 years ago so I'm not really up with abilities of the current crop of drum machines. One thing that I will say, is look very carefully at how much memory they have - especially if you you hope to have very complex drum parts or more than one song programmed up at once. The DrumBrute says it has 64 patterns - make sure that is 64 patterns no matter how "busy" they are. I used to own a Yamaha RX11 which boasted up to 99 patterns, but the reality was, that if your drum parts were complex it would run out of memory long before it ran out of available patterns. Also 64 patterns don't go a long way if you want to have more than one song in memory. For a typical song you might have 1 pattern for the verse, 1 for the chorus, 1 for the "middle 8", maybe 1 for each of the intro and the outro, and then at least one fill option for each pattern. That's probably 10 patterns for a rhythmically simple song - and much more if you are going for a "realistic" drum part. In the studio this doesn't matter as you can save the memory contents to your computer (hopefully) and load up each song as required. If you want to use it live, though you may need to do some fancy lateral thinking to get a set's worth of songs out of 64 patterns. Audiences these days are not going to want to wait while you load up the next song into your drum machine. We didn't in the 80s either, but back then unless you had very expensive kit, there was no option. Finally think about the drum sounds you want. Are you after something that sounds like real drums being played by a real drummer, or weird electronic sounds and rhythms? I spent much of the 80s trying to make the various drum machine I owned - Boss DR55, Roland 808, Yamaha RX11 sound like acoustic drums. When I finally got a device with much more realistic sounds (an Alesis HR16) I then joined a band which had a drummer, and then was trying to make it sound electronic so that it would contrast properly with real drums sounds!

For me there is no "background music". If there is music it will be the most important thing - even if it is something that I don't really like. This plays havoc with my enjoyment and ability to follow the plot with a lot of films and TV programmes that like to use songs as part of the sound track, as I'll be far to wrapped up in the music the concentrate on the dialogue. If it's a piece of music I really like, I'll be on my computer or iPad trying to find what it is, rather than following the action on screen.

IME the figures are irrelevant, simply because there are so many variables - width, taper, distance of the outer strings from the edge of the neck, shape, thickness, symmetrical or not, and many of these can vary along the length of the neck. For me the simplest thing to do is to play the instrument. It will either be comfortable or not.

If you are looking for something that can be used as a completely stand-alone device, but will run in sync with ProTools on your computer, the essential piece of jargon to look out for is MIDI Time Code (MTC). This will allow your drum machine to synchronise exactly to your ProTools session and to pickup (within a bar at worst) from any point in the song you start recording or playback. Any drum machine made in the last 20 years should understand and respond to MTC, although it might not be enabled by default. You will need to check the MIDI implementation chart in the device's manual to make certain that MTC is available and how to enable it if necessary. It is not the same as MIDI sync which is much more primitive and probably won't be comprehensive enough for your needs. You will also need to make sure that your MIDI interface will transmit MTC. Because it is quite data-intensive (in MIDI bandwidth terms), budget interfaces may not transmit MTC, and most of those that do will have it disabled by default. Again check the manual. Also you need to check the timing offset capabilities. This is how you tell each device where the beginning of the song is in relation to MTC. Some devices/DAWs are not happy with 00:00:00:00 being the start point of the song. Others may demand that it is. Make sure that if one device insists on starting at a particular MTC value the other one is happy with that value as a starting point too. The other thing to think about is if your songs have tempo and time signature changes. These will need to be programmed separately into your drum machine and ProTools session. The drum machine may well not have all the nuances of timing and dynamics that a good computer DAW has, so what you can do in terms of tempos and time signatures will be limited to what the drum machine is capable of. HTH.

Unfortunately I don't listen to as much music as I used to. When I was young(er) I would either have the radio on or be listening to my current favourite single/album on repeat. At university I made a point of listening to John Peel every night - the only reason for not doing so was because I was at a gig (either playing or in the audience). I started to listen to less once I get a proper job, mostly because I found it too much of a distraction. Like others have said, I'm "wired" in such a way that listening to music take precedence over everything else. Therefore unless I am doing something where I don't really have concentrate I can't have music on while I work. These days, when I am listening to music, it's rarely to complete albums. I put my iTunes library on shuffle and see what it comes up with. Since it's all records and CDs I've bought, most of it will be tunes I want to hear. If there's something I'm not in the mood for I can skip it. If it's really something I have no interest in - some rubbish B-side, album filler or something on a compilation album I have no interest in I can de-select it so it will never play again. On thing I haven't been able to make work for me is using streaming services recommended playlists to find new music. When ever I do this it either gives me tracks I already know and like (which pretty much defeats the object) or very little in the way of music I don't know but would want to investigate further.

Flog it and buy something that is useful to me. (Not necessarily something musical)

My experience as well, although I have to say I wasn't particularly happy about it. My opinion as both a customer and someone that runs their own business, is that if there is a preferred method of communication then it should be clearly indicated on all points of contact and correspondence. Otherwise the assumption is that all methods are equally valid and effective.

Spotify has at best two-thirds of the music I want to listen to available. If I want to hear my favourite tunes they need to be downloaded from my record/CD collection to my device.

You can delete all your posts in this thread simply by editing each one in turn and replacing it with something like "post deleted". However you will have to ask one of the moderators to edit any posts that have quoted your original posts to remove that content from them.

Unless I am also doing the production and the mixing, or the song required a specific effect on the bass, I would record without any effects, compression or EQ direct into the interface using an instrument input if it has one or via a no-frills DI box. If you want to give the producer/mix engineer an idea of the sort of bass sound you are after then record with the relevant EQ and effects on a parallel track and note down which effects have been used. EQ, compression and effects can always be added at the mixing stage. Trying to compensate for the wrong EQ and compression is not so easy, and the wrong effect will almost certainly have you re-recording the track dry.

In that case you could try bending the tip contact so that the fit is more snug when the jack plug is inserted. However IMO when sockets start to go wrong, any fix is only temporary and best solution is to replace the socket with a new one, preferably from a reputable brand.

I'm a guitarist too (and a keyboard player). What you gonna do about it?

IMO the only reason to convert to MP3 is for a low-bandwidth transfer to a device with limited memory and/or storage. As a format it ought to be on its very last legs by now.

Really? SM57 isn't the best mic in the world for a bass cab. It's got a peak at 6kHz where there is little baas guitar and drops off quite steeply after 200Hz which does include some of the bass energy you would probably want to capture. Also unless the stage area is big the fewer mics being used, the more controllable the FoH sound is.