BigRedX

On 02/07/2020 at 10:14, Ed_S said:

As for relic jobs, the more genuinely it looks like a bass has had a hard life, the more genuinely I want to treat it to a refinish.

I'd agree with this sentiment. I've had one reasonably old bass that I acquired second hand completely refurbished and refinished, because I loved the instrument but couldn't stand how it looked with the wear.

On 02/07/2020 at 10:51, Rich said:

As far as signature basses are concerned... I would definitely consider one (even if I wasn't a fan of the player in question), IF the bass had unique design or features that particularly appealed to me. Three that spring to mind are the original Fender Urge (the 32" with the J-P-J pickups), the Fender Roscoe Beck (IMO the best bass Fender have ever produced), and the Ibanez Gary Willis fretless 5. I would never consider one purely because I liked the signature-player -- e.g. I do like and admire Mark King, but you will never find a Kingbass in my house.

And I agree with this sentiment too. In fact when I've investigated the music produced by all the people whose signature basses I've owned or lusted after, I didn't really like any of it. Their basses were still fantastic through! 

5 hours ago, ricksterphil said:

Interesting comparison of different condenser mics, from cheap to expensive, by Mark Parkins who runs Psyrex Soundlab in Nottingham

https://www.psyrex.co.uk

 

Where one of my bands was doing our last round of recording (pre-lockdown). The results of which will be available soon...

4 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

This thread is me.

The Youtube clips I found show low-res versions of things that bear no resemblance to what I have got (I can switch views...) and the mumbled commentaries with dogs and children in the background give me no faith that the persona who made them know anything about sound recording...

I don't want to mess with midi, I want to use it like my four track.

I have an MP3 of 'Schools Out' and an M4A of our drummer doing the drum track which I've converted to a Wav.

I can make them play and stop playing but it treats them as samples not tracks. I cant seem to get them properly into a track so that I can see their waveforms side by side and get them to line up (I naturally want the recorded drums to be out front so my bass lines up with that rather than the record if their are any timing errors, I just want to hear enough of the original to get my cues).

Can anyone help? Do I need to load them in a different way?

IMO Ableton probably isn't the right DAW for you. Although most DAWs can be made to do most things, not all of them do everything as well as others. Ableton can probably be made to work like a conventional multitrack recorder, but that's not it's main strength.

I'd suggest that you investigate Reaper instead.

18 hours ago, shine182 said:

Interesting, can you expand a little? Are we taking power rating / sensitivity / frequency response etc? 

When a cab is described as 2x12 all it tells you is that the cab contains two speakers each with a cone diameter of 12". Nothing else.

There is no given sound, power-rating, frequency response, sensitivity, cab size, weight etc. implied by a 2x12 configuration. These are dependant on the construction of the speakers and the cab. So essentially 2x12 tells you very little.

If I was still interested in bass cabs the important criteria would be:

1. Is it loud enough for what I need when coupled with my amp?

2. Is it easily transportable by me (assuming that I'm not in a band with its own transport and crew)?

3. If the bass isn't also going into the PA does it sound right when coupled with my amp?

And possibly

4. Does it look right for the band on stage?

None of these questions are answered by the number and cone size of the speakers. In the past I've owned cabs with the same number and size of speakers but have been wildly different in sound, size and weight.

23 minutes ago, Skinner said:

Yes, the convenience is great, the quality of sound is very good - however I recently had the chance to play my bass through my own power amp and a genuine acoustic 360 pre into one and then 2 folded horn cabs = bass nirvana, the sound was exactly what I e been searching for, I know where I'm headed now. I also don't mind lugging big heavy gear around - which is lucky cos that's what I will be doing for gigs. Ultimately if I can replicate that tone with more modern gear then that's fine- nothing I have tried so far has come close.

How does you audience here this fantastic bass sound? From your rig or from the PA?

If it's from the PA are they mic'ing up both cabs?

7 minutes ago, Chienmortbb said:

Sadly those luxuries are far beyond what most of us weekend warriors can dream of. However it does suggest Horses for courses and although my head has a DI out, I always have my Orchid DI on the pedal board just in case. The irony is that 4 out of 5 times I have to loan it to get someone else out of a jam. 

The thing is I don't consider it as a "luxury".

I'm essentially a "weekend warrior" too. It's just that I play in originals bands and having full in-house PA support is very much the norm at the venues we play. Apart for a some very small venues in the early 80s when we had to hire in the PA out of our fee and often all we could afford was a vocal only one, this has always been the way for the bands I've played in.

For modern bass cabs the cone size of the speaker(s) is probably the least important specification.

My experience is that the benefits of going pre-amp/modeller with an FRFR depend on the number of gigs you do where the bass is in the PA and how energetic you are on stage.

I got rid of my rig because having played almost 400 gigs over the last 10 years I can think of less than 10 where my bass didn't go into the PA, and because given enough space I'm a fairly energetic/mobile performer, I found that I couldn't hear my rig most of the time unless I was stood directly in front of it. This was either because I'd been asked to turn down so far, so as not to mess up the FoH sound or because the stage was too big for even my 1kW rig to give a balanced coverage where ever I was stood.

With the FRFR I usually aim it sideways across the stage so that the rest of the band can hear me without needing to have too much additional bass in the foldback. Also this means that am able to use parts of the stage (or even off-stage) for my speakers that normally wouldn't be used or would look wrong with a conventional bass rig. Nowadays for the bigger gigs, I don't even bother bringing the FRFR as the foldback will be more than adequate for me and the rest of my band to hear the bass. It helps that I'm not precious about having to have the perfect bass tone on stage. So long as I can hear what I'm playing and it sounds good FoH, that will do for me.

Fantastic!

Is that the original mute mechanism on the MkII?

Without looking at the previous answers I'd have got 9 - players and their instruments.

However I'd only have got 5 if the photos had shown just the instruments and nothing else.

Because I'm first and foremost a composer my bass playing always serves the song.

If I'm writing on the bass, the first version will be busy and full (lots of two note chords and 2/3 string patterns/arpeggios) this will simplify down once I present it to the rest of the band to give them some space.

If I'm writing on another instrument or coming up with a bass line to fit a song written by one of the other band members, it will start off simple (probably root notes only), develop to get fairly complex, and then simplify down to somewhere between the first and second versions once all the other instruments have found their space.

10 minutes ago, AndyTravis said:

Dunno (Mayones Patriot)

Anthony Jackson (Fodera Sig)

Joe Dart (MM Sig)

Dunno (RD Bass - maybe an Edwards/ESP)

Geddy Lee (60’s Jazz)

Steffan Lessard (Modulus)

Pino Palladino (Pre EB Ray)

Dunno (MM SR5 HH)

Jimmy Haslip (Roscoe)

Billy Sheehan (Yang attitude double neck)

Sting (Hamer)

Ida Nielsen (Sandberg)

Stu Hamm (Fender urge)

Jack Casady (Gibson LP Signature Bass)

Chris Wolstenholme. (Status thing)

1. Mohini Dey

4. Still don't know

8. Gail Ann Dorsey

Just tried the guitarist one.

I got 9/15. Only 4 would have been obvious to me from just the guitar. The other 5 were helped by the rest of the photo and the choices available. Of the 6 I didn't get, 2 were unlucky guesses and 4 were ones I didn't know at all.

Have you read the description? The body in particular has quite a history.

Didn't sound too shabby in the video clip either.

3 minutes ago, stewblack said:

Anyone else unable to see this? Either by following the link or searching reverb itself all I get is a big blank 

Looks like your phone doesn't like whatever widget Reverb have used to run the quiz in. Works fine on my ancient iPhone.

4 minutes ago, Rich said:

Likewise Mr 'Arris's West Ham P. 

On its own, to me it looks like just another P-Bass. I only got it from the context of the photo and the multiple choice options.

9 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

I would say that thundercats bass is actually fairly distinctive.

Yes, it was one of the five I could have identified by just the bass, the other 4 being: Bootsy, John Entwistle, Lemmy and Victor Wooten.

4 minutes ago, paul_c2 said:

Simple question - what is the advantage of balanced tension?

It's supposed to make all the strings "feel" the same without requiring lubriciously large lower strings and cheese-wire thin upper strings. However as I said in my last post it relies to an extent on the compliance of the string evening-out lack or excess of tension, to give an even feel across the set. However since compliance is in part based on factors which are outside the string manufacturers' control such as the construction of the bass and the way some strings are attached to the bass (on a non-angled headstock for strings that do not pass under a string retainer you have no way of guaranteeing the break angle over the nut), it is IMO a bit of a none-starter, especially for any bass with more than 4 strings.

2 hours ago, Baloney Balderdash said:

Balanced tension when talking strings usually means approximately equal tension, as in balanced, not spot on straight dead on equal tension in numbers, but pretty much in feel.

With the kind of tension differences like for instance in the set I mentioned you practically won't actually feel any tension difference when fretting, bending e.t.c in your fingers/hand.

You might call it balanced tension feel instead if you please and it bothers you that the numbers are not exact matches. 

If you were to make a set where the tension numbers where straight dead on equal you'll end up with some pretty odd string gauges, so I guess they just settled for it actually feeling as if they were exact equal tension instead, which is what really should matter anyway, so they wouldn't have to fabricate all sort of special custom odd gauge strings, just to soothe people's OCD rather than fingers.  

Which is what I thought. To get a low B-string even close to the tension of the E it would considerably thicker than the heaviest supplied in standard sets.

However, as I also suspected it's "even feel" which means that the compliance of each string plays a part. Unfortunately compliance IME is as much a function of how the string is fitted to the bass as the string itself, so manufacturers have no way of knowing what adjustments they need to make to the tensions in order for them to work together with the compliance to give an even feel. Unless they also ask for break angles over the witness points and lengths of the non-speaking portions of the string? I haven't seen any evidence of this.

So how do you know when string tensions are "balanced"? Because from what I'm seeing here "balanced" does not at all mean "equal".

If we are talking about taking compliance into account to get a "balanced" feel between the strings then that is going to vary depending on the design of the instrument they are fitted to - break angles across the bridge and nut and the length of non-speaking portions of the string. What might feel "balanced" on one instrument will not feel balanced on another due to compliance.

Not quite what I was expecting. I thought the whole process including moving the "capos" was going to automated.

45 minutes ago, Barking Spiders said:

More like guess the bassist by the widely used stock photo or their clothes. I got 14. If just the pics of the bass were included and the bodies had been brushed out I'd have got Bootsy and that's about it.

I got 14. 

Just went through it again and if it it had just been photos of the basses I'd have only got 5 definitely. I might have got another 7 by process of elimination for the multiple choice options, but what I could see of the players certainly helped.

So many Rickenbacker basses...

Can't seem to find these on eBay anymore. Are they still available?

What lead? Where? I think it's the reflection in the Timpani in front of it.