BigRedX

Well it looks as though I am the only person here with actual experience of owning a keytar. That's me in 1985 in my synth-rock band (like a synth-pop band but all the lead instruments went through distortion pedals). I'm playing a Yamaha KX5 which was the first affordable MIDI keytar costing about £350 IIRC. It didn't make any sounds of it's own being simply a MIDI controller keyboard. Mine was attached to a Casio CZ5000 keyboard. The first batch of MIDI key tars in the 80s weren't really ready for serious live use. My band had to quite a few modifications to ours in order for them to be reliable enough to gig, most notably replacing the MIDI DIN connection with a locking XLR and finding something more durable for the ribbon controller covering. Of course while we had them apart for these modifications we also took advantage of the fact to paint them some more interesting colours. Mine ended up gold, and my band mate's red and black tiger stripes. I think that photo is from the first gig we did using the KX5 so I'm still concentrating on playing it rather than throwing too many rock n roll shapes. Also being the support band at that gig I seem to remember there being limited stage space. On a well-designed keytar the performance controls will add a lot more expressiveness to the sounds - IMO the ribbon controller was far more useful than a pitch wheel in that it let me do "hammer-ons" as well as conventional pitch bending. The KX5 got sold a couple of years ago after sitting 25 years unused in its flight case. If I was going to get another one, I'd be looking at Alesis Vortex Wireless. I wouldn't consider getting one with built-in sounds as they are too limiting. Using a controller keyboard means you can choose the sound module you like rather than what is built into the keytar. Owen from The Birthday Massacre uses a keytar to great effect live and it fits in perfectly with the band's dynamic stage performance.

The main riff from one of the songs we'll be playing at the gig, followed by a couple of notes of one or two of the more extreme sounds I'll be using. If I'm playing with the band where I use the Bass VI I'll alternate between a "bass" and "guitar" patch so that the PA engineer can get a feel for balancing the two different types of sound, though because its all going through the Line 6 Helix, all they should be doing is EQ'ing to compensate for any deficiencies in the PA plus a little for the room acoustics. I always make sure that as a band we do at least a verse of the opening song, so there is a fighting chance that we'll sound at least half-way decent from the start.

Unfortunately John Peel was very much the exception to the rule. As can be seen from the thread about being out of touch most people are struggling to keep up before they hit 40.

It's done with a spray gun and then 2 or 3 different colours, with the lightest colour overall and the darkest colour at the extreme edge, and IMO most mass produced sunbursts are appallingly done, with nasty hard edges and no sense of subtlety. A good airbrush artist could create a wonderfully blended sunburst with a smooth graduation from the lightest to the darkest colour, but they are highly skilled people and the time and wage they would demand would probably double the cost of a MIM Fender!

This. Completely!

Well then why don't you go and listen to some of them? People are posting up clips of new bands all the time - there's a thread full of them here, so there is absolutely no reason not to know about new music apart from your own inertia.

For me the only thing that matters in my current rig is the Line 6 Helix. That's where my sound comes from, and it has always come from my multi-effects since I bought my first (a Roland GP8) back in 1989. The next most important thing is having the right low E on the short scale basses and the right E and low B on the long scales basses. After that everything else is pretty much negligible by comparison. The basses themselves are chosen almost entirely for their looks in relation to the band image. So long as it's not unplayable, I can make pretty much anything work.

But the other parts aren't equal. For a start the neck construction of the maple board bass will different to those with rosewood boards. I'm also pretty sure that you could find 4 P-basses made all out of the identical combinations of body, neck and fingerboard woods with the same tonal variations as these 4. The only thing that struck me about the second comparison, was that the tone control on the 77P didn't seem to work in the same way as the other 3 in that it was always letting a bit of the extreme top end through all the time. And once again though, in a band mix with the appropriate EQ on the desk they would all sound so similar as to not be worth bothering with the differences.

This last one's a bit of a cheat, since I'm now their bass player, but I remembered the band from doing a gig with them back in the early days of the Terrortones, and was so impressed that when the chance to be a member of the band came up I jumped at it!

Very interesting. The first time through I listened with my eyes closed and to be honest the change in tone from one bass to another wasn't that great, and in the context of a band mix with the a bit of post-production EQ any one of them would have done the job perfectly adequately in any of the playing styles. IMO the P-Bass performed adequately on all the playing styles, but was never the best of the 6. Based on that video I'd be buying a Rickenbacker or a Thunderbird. The most disappointing was the Stingray closely followed by the Warwick. Both sounded weedy with no real body to the sound in any of the playing styles, not at all what I was expecting.

Which pretty much rules out every festival held in the UK. My experience of playing festivals, is that only one I've done in the last 5 years when it didn't rain was the one where we played indoors in a hall while the "audience" were outside enjoying the sun.

Fair enough. It wasn't obvious from your original post that was the case. I see it quite a lot on this forum that people get bogged own on specific specifications without taking the whole instrument into account. I play short scale basses myself, but I also play 34" and 36" scale length basses as well - and also guitars. I don't find any problem in changing from one scale length to another. There are certain things that are easier to play or sound better on a particular bass, but the scale length is rarely an issue for me.

Unless you are very keen on a particular bass amp sound, especially one that features a deal of valve-y distortion, I personally wouldn't bother with an amp sim for the bass. Most bass amps are simply devices with a baked in EQ profile and a means of adjusting some frequencies within certain limits. The average channel strip in your DAW will be far more flexible than any amp sim. Start by cutting the extreme bass and treble and then use the remaining frequency bands to get the bass to sit where you want it in the mix. Add some compression and you are done. If you are after some valve type distortion, there no reason not to use one of your guitar amp sims - after all until the late 70s there was virtually no difference between a guitar and a bass amp. The only reason you wouldn't put a bass through an actual guitar amp is that it wouldn't go loud enough and the frequencies are more likely to cause speaker over-excursion. Since your amp sims are just digital representations of the real thing, the worst that can happen is that you won't like the sound you get, in which case your can just try something else.

I've seen all there versions - Freur in 1985, Underworld Mk1 in 1989 and Underworld Mk 2 in 1993. I haven't been to see them since Daren Emerson left and they got massive. For the Freur gig there was a lot of the music on the backing tape and they made no secret of the fact, but given the complexity of the album (and its follow up Get Us Out Of Here) and the state of music technology at the time it was a wonder that they were able to perform any of it live. The PPG Wave synth required constant rebooting during the gig I saw, and it was very obvious when it dropped out of the mix.

It's totally subjective. Stop worrying about it. Martin makes some very nice basses but they are not to everyone's taste.

It's a nice piece of wood. However someone has seen fit to use it make a very boring bass.

My experience of Rotosounds is that they are very good at making standard gauge (40-100) 34" scale 4-string sets, but anything else is completely hit and miss. I gave up using them when they consistently failed to be able to make a 36" low B or a 30" E that would produce a proper note that rang out like the other strings on my basses rather than a dull thud.

I have a policy of hiding any signature that occupies more vertical space their typical post.

I suppose it depends what you are comparing them to. I have quite eclectic string requirements, so Newtone Bass VI and taper-wound 5 string sets compare very well on price next to what I was using before from La Bella and Warwick.

IME the thing that fails is not the PSU but the unnecessary extra connection between the PSU and the device that it is powering on the low voltage side of the assembly, because these connections and cables are simply not rugged enough to take the kind of abuse that gigging a device that by its very nature is going to be kicked about on stage, especially if you are plugging and unplugging the PSU every time you set up and break down your equipment. From experience I have found that any connector that isn't either an XLR or a 1/4" jack is going to fail eventually in a gigging environment unless it is a make once and never disconnect as well as being securely attached to either a pedal board or hidden away inside a rack case.

While having the same type of strap locking mechanism is a great idea in theory, in practice it doesn't really work because, unless all your basses have the same body shape and you play all of them at the same height, you still need a separate strap for each bass. A bass with the strap button at the back of the heal will require the strap lock to be on the opposite side of the strap to one with the button on the upper horn. Different body shapes require a different length strap to make them hang at the same height, and if like me you play different styles with the instrument at different heights you need different strap lengths for this too.

Because IME unless the unit has a cable retainer at the PSU in socket they can quite easily come out mid performance. And even if you do use the retainer it will eventually wear out the PSU cable causing it to fail (as happened recently with a guitarist I play with). If you mount the whole lot permanently on a pedal board then you are less likely to run into problems. Needless to say the Helix has a built in PSU and uses an IEC mains lead for its power like a proper professional piece of equipment should.

Other than strings I only bought one piece of bass gear in 2018, a Burns Barracuda Bass VI, and it really was both the best and worst thing I bought. It was the best because it was (for me) so much better than the Squier Bass VI that I had been using before. And it was the worst because it has made me realise that there are no "off-the-peg" bass VIs that first my requirements for feel and sound, and therefore I am on the cusp of ordering something custom that will suit me perfectly rather than being the compromise that the Burns and the Squier are. I did discover the best Bass VI strings - Axion Custom Works Bass VI strings from Newtone which are as good as the LaBellas but nowhere near as expensive.

IMO the Helix is only expensive because much of the competition is now in real terms stupidly cheap. My first multi-effects unit, a Roland GP8 plus foot controller and volume/expression pedal (which was a separate unit) cost as much as the Helix when it came out in the 80s and in real terms would have been considerably more expensive for something that does a fraction of what the Helix is capable of now. Also unless you are going to mount your multi-effects permanently in a proper pedal case, I would be very wary of getting anything that uses an external PSU to power it.

If you want to support a British firm making strings have a look at Newtone.