BigRedX

Very few bands exist where every member is equally important. Most are vehicles for the singer and/or the main songwriter and the rest of the members are all replaceable without making any difference to the feel/sound/look of the band. That makes them little different to the solo performer and their hired hands in the studio and on stage.

So what's wrong with the PSU that comes with the Quad Cortex? Aside from the fact that IMO any multi-effects that doesn't have a built-in PSU is not a gig-proof piece of equipment, it worries me that the supposed weakness of the supplied PSU is actually a known issue.

Try this: 1. Delete whatever Line6 Updater software you already have on your Mac, restart and download again. 2. On the HX Stomp there should be a foot switch combination to press on power up which puts it into update mode, read the manual to find out what it is. 3. Now run the updater. Make sure that your computer isn't set to go to sleep at all. I do all my Helix firmware updates from a my desktop machine that has sleep permanently turned off. If this doesn't work get in touch with Line6. You may need to send the Stomp back to them for a reset. I hope you made a backup of all your patches.

Just had a look at what is going to be available and I have to say that I was surprised to find that there are a few that I might be interested in provided that they came on CD or with a download code for an uncompressed digital file. However I would want to hear them first or at the very least get a track listing. Unfortunately for the two releases I am most interested in, one brings up an error page and other simply won't load. Not impressed. Edit: the page that was being slow has finally loaded to reveal... no actual track listing.

Is the jack input expecting a balanced line using a TSR jack plug?

I know this question wasn't aimed at me but I thought I'd give you my experience in case it helps. TBH I've never "felt" the air being moved by my bass rig when I was using one not even the massive 1kW rig I had with The Terrortones. I suspect if I had I'd be even deafer than I am now! One of the main reasons for ditching my conventional rig was that on the bigger stages once I stepped away from being directly in front of the cabs I was totally reliant upon the PA foldback anyway, and on the smaller stages I would often find that I was being asked to turn down so much so as not to ruin the FoH from the PA that I could hear more of myself in the guitarist's wedge on the other side the stage than I could from my own rig immediately behind me. For the band that has completely ditched our backline, even though we are yet to go IEMs the overall mix from using the PA foldback is much clearer and better balanced than it was when everyone had their own amp and speakers. For the other band when I was using the FRFR on stage I had it in wedge configuration means that I could put it in all sorts of places where a conventional bass amp and cab(s) wouldn't even begin the fit. Much of the time I had it pointing across the stage for the benefit of the rest of the band rather than out at the audience who should be getting the band sound from the PA.

I go direct into the PA from my Helix. I have an RCF745 powered speaker (FRFR) that had been using with my other band for rehearsals and the occasional gig on smaller stages. IMO the problem with using a power amp (or power amp section of a bass amp) and bass cab(s) is that the cabs are anything but flat and therefore you'll need to compensate on the multi-effects which isn't what the PA feed will want.

It will be an earthing problem due to the PSUs for your pedals not having the same earth reference as the rest of the signal chain. I suspect that the metal earth pin on the Mooer PSU isn't actually connected to anything and is there simply because it's more robust (the plastic pin on the One Spot is notorious for breaking off). How are you connecting to the mixer?

First gig of 2025 for Hurtsfall will be on Friday 21st February at The Grove (on Avenue C in Sneinton Market) in Nottingham. We'll be supporting The DSM IV with Modern Coven opening. Tickets are £10 or £12 on the door.

Do your pedal mains adaptors have a plastic earth pin on the plug? Have you tried running them off batteries?

I won't know if I'm going to like a bass enough to use it on a regular basis until I've had it for a few weeks and done a couple of rehearsals and at least one gig with it. The last bass that I kept and used for any serious length of time having tried it in the shop first was back in the early 90s. The two I've been able to try first since then were both moved on fairly quickly, as although they seemed OK in the 30 minutes I played them for in the shop spending longer with them at home and actually playing them with my band revealed all sorts of problems that I couldn't live with. Everything else has bought on the strength of a few photographs and a description on-line or has been custom made for me. Of the three basses I currently use regularly, one was custom made and other two were bought on-line.

I thought the idea of RSD was to entice people into record shops and hopefully they will come back when it isn't a RSD as well. Otherwise they are going to need something like RSD at least once a month and not just once a year. If RSD continues to be the unappealing experience that it seems to be then it becomes self-defeating IMO.

There is also a danger that the RSD experience (as described in previous posts) could put a lot of punters off going into those shops at other times. I have to admit RSD is not for me. AFAIK none of the bands I really like have ever participated in it and if they did I don't think I'd be prepared to queue for the privilege. Even then I'd probably happy to wait until the record or CD surfaced on eBay or Discogs a few years later when all the fuss has died down and it was priced at a more appropriate level. Also I'd rather buy recordings directly from the band at one of their gigs

The reason that bands have become seemingly invisible to whoever wrote the text that was used in the OP (it certainly wasn't composed by @Bass4real) is that the charts are all about recorded music and for most bands the money is in live performance and not the selling of recordings. Certainly here in the UK, the charts have had less impact on the typical member of the public since Top Of The Pops was taken off the air. Also the current charts are even more artificial than ever before. Partly because of the demise of the "single" and mostly because it has become necessary for the chart compilers to apply negative weighting to streams and downloads of anything that isn't a current release otherwise those acts currently topping the charts wouldn't get a look in, as the top 50 would be almost totally dominated by recordings made over 30 years ago. There are plenty of new and interesting bands out there gigging for anyone who can be bothered to go and look for them, and while it has always been cool for bands to say that they aren't interested in the charts, these days they might actually really mean it. When the charts are all about selling recordings, but for a well-organised and entertaining band at grassroots level it's all about live performance, because that when coupled with T-shirt sales is where they can make money. Record companies won't take chances on new bands and because of this by the time most bands have got to the level where record companies start to take notice of them there is very little that a record company can offer them. When you can make a great recording on your home computer, a video on your phone and get them on all the digital platforms for about $50, the lure of the record company advance becomes less compelling. And the more successful a band becomes on its own the less important record companies become. No wonder they stick to young "solo" artists who are easier to manipulate and exploit. The problem for Rick Beato and his "sad old men club" is that the industry is no longer what it was 25 years ago and they still don't appear to recognise this.

It's rarely enough to just be a musician. The real money is in songwriting.

Why has the OP been typed as some kind of incomprehensible prose poem?

But you don't bodies into record stores unless they have something worthwhile to sell hence it is as much about the artists as it is about the shops. The problem with record shops is that no matter how hard they try they can't compete with the whole of the internet. They were fine in the 60s 70s and 80s when everyone's musical knowledge was pretty much limited to what the music press wrote about and what got played on broadcast radio. It was easy to keep on top of all the new releases. Even Virgin Records in Swansea were able to get most of the records that John Peel was playing in 1979. Also because these days the whole model of selling recordings on physical media in bricks and mortar shops makes the price of these recordings unnaturally high. For an independent artist it is impossible for your local record shop to sell your product at a sensible price. I know because I have tried it. The mark up that all the record stores wanted to add to our album (on vinyl) would have meant that even if we let them have have copies at cost they would have been at least 25% more expensive than the maximum price we could consider charging at gigs and through Bandcamp.

But if you didn't at least half believe that you wouldn't have gone to the trouble of typing it in the first place.

The only bass I could afford in the 80s was a 20 year-old second-hand Burns Sonic that had been heavily modified by a previous owner. It cost me the grand total of £60 including the original hard case and I managed to persuade the shop to throw in a free Fender branded strap.

@tauzero how busy was it? I've played there a few times and because it's not exactly in the centre of Coventry, and can be quite hard to find if you've not been before, the audience size can be variable. I have a gig there next month and hopefully it will be a better turnout than some of the times I've played. The most disappointing was when I was in The Terrortones and we had local bands Octogoth and Army of Skanks supporting. The place was packed during their sets and almost empty when we went on...

I'm sorry, but IMO that's just about the most stupid thing ever. Even if I was in a band that only needed one sound for all the songs I'd still be using my multi-effects because I know that one sound I've created with it would be the perfect one for that band. Whilst I may be using more of my multi-effects than most on here I'm still only using a fraction of its capabilities. Most of my patches are made up of the same 3 or 4 modules just with the parameter values tweaked to fit the rest of the arrangement. Every so often I'll try an alternative distortion or chorus or delay or flanger and then I'll go back to the ones I already use and like. And you know what? It really doesn't matter. Those alternative versions of the effects I use aren't for me. They are for all the other users who want something different out of a multi-effects unit. And that's why they are so great. TBH the only time I "play around" with my multi-effects is when I am working on sounds for a new song. I had a quick listen to all the built-in Presets the day I bought mine, decided that none of them did what I wanted and have never bothered listening to any of them again. When I am working on a new song I'll start by going through all the Presets I've created for the other songs we play to find the one that works the best for the new song and when I'm ready to actually create the Preset for that song it will be the starting point. I'll probably go through a few more tweaks once I'm in the rehearsal room with the rest of the band, but after that I'll only edit it again if we change the arrangement of the song. My multi-effects is a tool. A very versatile one but still just a tool. Use as much of it as you need a quit worrying about it. The only people who get close to using all the facilities of one of these devices are those who are being paid specifically to demonstrate just how versatile they are. They are not real-world users and you don't need to try and emulate them.

I'm a Helix user (but the principal is the same). I have a separate Preset for each song with Snapshots for each song. Admittedly I play Bass VI and I'm alternating between bass and melody parts with our synth player, but I'm often using two or more different bass sounds as well as "guitar" sounds for different parts of the song. For instance on the song we are currently working on: Snapshot 1 is a "lead guitar" sound with a bit of dirt and lots of delay which is used on the intro and the middle eight, where the synth is holding down the bass. Snapshot 2 is the verse bass sound but it has an octave "guitar" part generated from a pitch shifter which is a muted version of the sound in Snapshot 1. Snapshot 3 is the chorus bass sound which a Cure/Peter Hook style high part with rhythmic delay and is doubled up with a more conventional bass sound an octave down. Snapshot 4 is for the last chorus to create a lift and has a more pronounced flanger effect to Snapshot 3 whilst still keeping the same relative level within the mix. I use MIDI to control the Preset and Snapshot changes which is run from the computer the is our drummer and second synth player, so I don't have to worry about my tap-dancing skills, as some of the Snapshot changes come very quickly - we have one song with a section where each part is only 2 bars long and another where the there are changes that only last 2 beats at 171bpm! Because of the electronic nature of the band even if I was to use the same sound for all the bass parts, each song would still need it own EQ, drive and volume tweaks for it to sit in the correct place in the mix with the other sounds that are being used.

There is little point in "conventional" one gig every night touring these days unless you already have a sizeable and enthusiastic following. Most tours by indie/small bands now consist of a month of Friday and Saturday gigs with the occasional Thursday and Sunday at venues that have a reputation for getting the punters in on those nights. Mid-weeks gigs for relatively unknown bands are IME poorly attended as those with jobs are more concerned about their "careers", students are trying to get VfM out of their loans and debts, and everyone else is too poor to go out. These days the smart way to gig is to be an a band that doesn't have a drummer or use backline, or to just do gigs where the drum kit and cabs will be supplied and you can cram the whole band plus their instruments and merch in a single car.

Low C is only a semitone higher than low B on a 5-string, where I would consider 125 to be the absolute lightest string that has any chance of sounding decent. So I would suggest ditching the 110 in favour of a 120 and see how that sounds and feels. Also try lowering the pickup slightly further away from the lowest string as the chunkier strings are more affected by the magnetic pull.

A P-Bass that doesn't look like a P-Bass?