BigRedX

Whatever you do make sure it's stable with the rig in place on it. I stopped using my Gramma Pad after watching a video of the band playing at the venue where it was most needed and being horrified to see that my rig was swaying all over the place in response to any other movement on stage. When we next played and I didn't use it there was a slight extra roominess to the bass sound, but I could live with that in exchange for not having to worry that my rig could topple over at any minute.

If you are getting noise with your Helix when it's attached to your laptop and goes away with the laptop PSU is disconnected, then there is something wrong with the earthing on your set up.

Could be a digital clocking problem. You need one device to be the master clock (normally your computer) and all the other devices sync'd to that. Have a look at your Audio MIDI setup Utility on the Mac and see what it says there.

If I understand the OP correctly they are not interested in a Fender style bass no matter what it says on the headstock, so most of the suggestions on here aren't going to cut it. There are two contenders among Hellzero's selection but both are currently out of stock. I can sympathise, when I was started playing fretless bass there was very little choice at the cheaper end of the market if you didn't want something derived from the Jazz bass design. I briefly owned a Squier VMJ Fretless and hated pretty much everything about it. Luckily for me a second hand Pedulla Buzz turned up at a very attractive price (although still well over the OP's £500 limit) and that sorted out my fretless problems until I could afford to have something custom made. My advice to the OP is that if you really don't want a Fender-style fretless bass even just to get you started, then you need to keep an eye on the ads on here and eBay and eventually something interesting will show up at a suitable price.

From what I have seen both sending and receiving, if you pick a tracked, signed for or guaranteed time delivery your letter or parcel will get there pretty much on time (guaranteed deliveries are still guaranteed for the correct day but may not arrive before the normally specified time). Everything else is hit or miss if it will arrive within the usual time frame.

But bass amps and cabs are just devices with a pre-set EQ curve (based on the design) and some adjustment of this at the amp. In an ideal world all an amp and speaker set up would do would be to take the input signal and make it louder without changing it in any other way. Amps and cabs only have "a sound" because originally it was close to impossible to build a system that provided the required volume levels without additional colouration of the sound. We've only become used to these sounds and seek them out after the fact. Using a just good EQ module on my Helix I can get a far better and more versatile sound (to my ears) than any amp and speaker modules can achieve.

Really don't get the obsession with having to have an amp and speaker sim. I use hardly any amp or speaker sims in my patches and mostly when I do it is used as an effect - one of the amp sims has a distortion sound that suits my basses and playing style better than most of the distortion pedal sims. The rest of the time I just use one of the EQ modules instead. Far more versatile IME.

The other thing to remember is that on a lot of the records the "bass" part is being provided by the left hand of the keyboard player, while Wyman noodles away in a higher register.

Nothing wrong with my post here in Nottingham. I've had a couple of time-critical work-related deliveries in the last week both of which have arrived on the day they were supposed to. OTOH my Boris letter has only just arrived a few days ago...

Just remember that when you come to sell it, it will be in the eBay Weird & Wonderful section with the usual suspects pointing and laughing...

Well the playlist that best represents me as a musician would be tracks that I wrote and/or played on: 1. The Midnight Circus: Pre-Natal Counselling From the cassette album "Pre-Natal Counselling" (Bland Craze Recordings/Deleted Records 1980) re-released on the CD "Richard, Roger, Rodney, Rastus, Raoul, Roderick, Randy, Rupert" (Hyped To Death 2003) 2. The Perfect Party: Sex In A Glass From the Radio Nottingham cassette compilation album "The Bomb Party" (Radio Nottingham 1982) 3. SSURAEA: Melodramatics From the cassette EP "Plug Into Electric Living" (Beat Trouser 1984) 4. Senior Love Daddy: Assassin Limited edition 10" white label (White Label 1990) 5. Optimum: Love Junkie From the CD EP "Love Junkies" (Aster 1997) re-released as SugarBox on the "Skin-Tight" digital album (Aster 2011) 6. SugarBox: Skin-Tight Recorded 2000, released on the "Skin-Tight" digital album (Aster 2011) 7. Mabel's Husbands: Pest From the CD "...I Direct" (Mabel's Husbands 2009) 8. Dìck Venom & The Terrortones: Invasion Of The Spider Queen From the EP "Invasion Of The Spider Queen" (Jailhouse Morgue 2013) 9. The Death Notes: Syncretize From the EP "The Black" (Sonic Disruptor 2018) 10. Hurtsfall: Calling Out Digital single (Sonic Disprutor 2109) Apologies for all the tracks I couldn't links for, even in this digital age where almost everything is on-line somewhere if you look hard enough! I'll try and get them up on a Soundcloud playlist at the weekend. But if you want me to do this like everyone else has done here's my list of influences in chronological order: 1. The Pretty Things: Cries From The Midnight Circus 2. The Sweet: Hell Raiser 3. Cabaret Voltaire: Nag Nag Nag 4. Comsat Angels: Total War 5. The Human League: Being Boiled 6. Freur: Doot-Doot 7. Underworld: ME 8. The Postal Service: The District Sleeps Tonight 9. The Birthday Massacre: Goodnight 10. IAMX: Stardust All together on this Spotify Playlist

Good to see the Hooky is deemed to be so important he's on there twice! No JJ Burnel though.

I can't understand why anyone would buy a drum machine and not create their own patterns for it. I know for a fact that no a single drum machine I've owned has ever come with any kind of pre-programmed rhythm that I would want to use for my songs. And it's not that difficult - you just hit the pads in time with the metronome just like you were playing the drums but much easier!

Here's the weird thing about the Carlsbro Stingray bass amp. Back in the early 80s the one bass player who I really admired was in a local band and used an Aria SB1000 bass with a Carlsbro Stingray combo - the green version with the 15" speaker. He had by far the best bass sound of any band at the time, crystal clear and always up front in the mix and this was a six-piece band with two guitarists and a synth player so lots going on sonically. Maybe it's not the amp but the user who is at fault?

I run the Helix Floor and use HX Edit exclusively to program it and manage the firmware updates. Unless something has changed with the most recent update, I can confirm that it works fine with El Capitan on an even older Mac than the one you are using. Having said that it does have significantly more RAM than 4GB.

Just remember with the round cores you need to bend them before cutting them to length.

Unless the 2+2 headstock is very big you are unlikely to get all 4 of the 4 in line tuners to fit properly. I would imagine that at least one of the tuners on the "wrong" side will either protrude beyond the end of the headstock or not fit at all. Just buy some 2+2 tuners. you know it makes sense.

Surely the hole size depends on the machine heads you are intending to fit? As others have said, drill a pilot hole first. I'd want to be using a pillar mount drill to guarantee that the holes were at exactly 90° to the surface of the headstock. I've also see build videos where the luthier will drill the full-sized holes half way through and then flip the neck over and drill from the other side to prevent tear out. You will definitely need pilot holes and a pillar mount drill for this method.

The easiest way to get the silks to line up is to use strings without silks:

No, the Smooth Hound has relatively high latency compared with other wireless systems. On it's own most people won't notice it. Combine it with one or more digital devices in your signal chain and your experience might not be so good.

I think the fact that your silks lined up last time was completely down to chance.

Ash is a very wide-ranging description as there are over 40 species of tree that are described as "Ash". Strangely enough "Swamp Ash" isn't a distinct species but simply refers to any ash species that has grown in swampy conditions.

I forgot about my oldest and perhaps most important guitar: A mid-70s Kimbara acoustic heavily modified. This was my 14th birthday present from my parents - the one time they supported my musical activities. When I wanted to go electric I couldn't afford a solid electric guitar and an amp, and I couldn't see any point in owning an electric guitar without some means of amplifying it. However I could afford an amp and a cheap piezo pickup for my acoustic so that's what I got. Later on still not being able to afford a proper electric guitar and not being particularly happy with the amplified sound via the piezo, I added the Schaller magnetic pickup. It was supposed to be attached to the end of the fingerboard, but I didn't much care for the sound I was getting in that position. However there was sufficient room between the top and the strings to squeeze it in at the bridge so that's what I did held in place with double-sided tape and still in position over 40 years later. The piezo was moved to underneath the bridge inside the guitar and both were attached to a TRS jack socket on the side. This connected by a two-conductor and earth cable to a footswitch that allowed me to switch between the two pickups and a second footswitch routed the signal to either the bright or normal input on my amp. I later added a Practical Electronics fuzz-box circuit between the two switches and this was my guitar set up until I completed my self-built solid electric during my final year at school.

I will never own or even play a Telecaster.

That lyre engraving on the bridge plate looks oddly familiar. Any ideas?