BigRedX

There is no "best bass builder", just the luthier who can make the bass that suits the individual musician. At the level that the OP is taking about, a feature that is must-have for one musician, might make the instrument completely unsuitable for another. Also at this level aesthetics will have a lot to do with it and that is completely subjective.

Can you please explain how you can read for one instrument and not another that you can also play?

Personally I wish high tech gear still came with half-inch thick manuals. The helix comes with a double-sided A3 sheet and a PDF of an out of date version of the manual on a USB memory stick. Quite how anyone with just a phone or a tablet as their "computing" device is supposed to get the best out of it I don't know. As for modelling stop using your eyes and start using your ears. Currently my favourite amp and cab model on the Helix for the bass is the one of the Roland Jazz Chorus combo. In real life the puny 12" guitar speakers and open-backed cab design would make this totally unsuitable for bass guitar frequencies at any decent volume. However because it's just a digital representation of the real thing there is no risk of damaging anything, and as a result it sounds glorious!

TBH I never practice anything just for the sake of practicing.

I'm assuming that this is a sealed unit? There are two types, one which is centre on, and one which is centre off. You probably have the centre off variety. If you you look carefully at the side it should be marked.

IME venues come and go. There's no point in clinging to the past, and trying to save a venue just because that was the place that has previously had live music. If there is a genuine audience for live music then then another venue will start putting it on.

IME if you have to set yourself a regime you'll never stick to it. It will become a chore and you'll soon loose interest. People learn best when they want to learn and make time to learn because it is fun, not because they think that that they ought to.

When I first started using multi-effects units in my bass rig in the early 90s there weren't any dedicated bass ones so after trying all the available models I bought a Roland GP8. It did't sound thin in the slightest. After all several of the effects were based on Boss pedals that I and many other bassists of the time were using. These days I use a Line6 Helix. Very few of the effects or amp models that I have in my many patches are bass specificc. In fact I think the only dedicated bass module I have is one of the amp models that I am using on 2 patches solely for the distortion sound the drive control gives me. For me that's the beauty of modern multi-effects units. Because they are digital there's no danger of damaging them as you might be able to do with the actual effects/amps/cabs by expecting them to reproduce bass frequencies at gig volumes. The worst that can happen is that your patch won't sound very good, in which case you can replace the crap sounding module with something else and try again.

Chris Watson is one of the outstanding field recordists of all time. Cabaret Voltaire were never quite as good after he left.

That looks truly brilliant! Is it even remotely playable?

It may have been, but both the Ultracure and the Hellcat VI have been discontinued, and the strings are nowhere to be found on the Ernie Ball web site.

Well, my plan was to get another set of LaBella Round Would Bass VI strings and then send the old Burns strings to Newtone to see if they could make a similar set, when I discovered Axion Custom Works Bass VI Strings on the Newtone site. At £18 plus postage for a set, that seems like a really good deal, and the gauges look pretty good too (quite how anyone can think that a low E string lighter than a 95 is going to be anything other than a floppy mess I don't know). Certainly cheap enough I'll let you all know what I think when they arrive and I've fitted them on the bass.

I'm now after my first set of replacement strings for the Barracuda. Easy I thought. I'll contact Burns and ask them what they fit as standard, because they are exactly what I want, and where I can buy another set? Unfortunately the prompt reply back from Burns was that they didn't know, the supplied strings were fitted on the bass when it was made in China, but could offer me a set of Picato flat wound strings for are more "authentic" sound at £35 a set. When I pointed out that the "authentic" sound I was after was that of New Order and The Cure, they weren't able to help any further. A quick on-line search reveals that there are not very many options for Bass VI owners. Apart from the Picatos, LaBella do both flats and round-wounds for the Bass VI, and D'Addario do a set but for some inexplicable reason they are the ridiculously light gauges that Fender/Squier fit to their Bass VI models and everyone with any sense replaces immediately (perhaps @D'Addario UK would care to comment on this). Before I get another set of LaBella Round Wounds are there any other manufacturers offering round wound Bass VI strings with suitably heavy low E and A strings?

Not as good as their Sleepify album. 😉

Two gigs on Thursday and Friday with my other band Hurtsfall. First supporting Strange Circuits from Chicago at the Chameleon in Nottingham. As happened last time, Rodney Bakerr who is Strange Circuits didn't want to play last so we were promoted from being a late addition to the bill to "headlining" status. Not bad for a band on only it's second gig. Not the greatest of performances and one of the new songs was performed at a pace considerably slower than usual. However most of the audience stayed to watch us and we got plenty of appreciative comments. Mr Bakerr even said he preferred this band to the other one I play with who supported him last time he played in Nottingham. The following night we were in Manchester to open for TicNotToc, who are friends of our drummer, on their EP launch night. This was a much better gig in front of a crowd who knew nothing about us and despite being very much at odds musically with the other bands on the bill went down really well. I was staying the weekend with friends in Manchester, so I didn't have to endure the lengthy roadworks delayed return trip of the rest of the band. Edit: Just found these two photos of the Manchester gig on Facebook

And once again you have totally missed the point.

I suppose it depends what kinds of gigs you go too. Most of the originals bands I go and see are in small venues and at best only half the set will be material that has already been recorded and released.

TBH I've yet to try a set of DR strings that I like, and I've tried plenty (although not DDT), and at DR prices I'm unlikely to by a set just to see if I can get on with them when previous experience says I probably won't. As someone who thinks that the 100 E in a standard 40 - 100 set is slightly too light (the others are fine), and won't use anything lighter than 130 for low B, I think my ideal tension for strings is very different to yours. I also play a hollow body bass but find that the string feel is the same as my solid bodies ones.

This one has also been told before. First a bit of background... Thos of you who know Nottingham will know that Nottingham University campus and its halls of residence are located a fair distance out of the city centre, and back in the early 80s getting back to the campus after a night in town was neither cheap or easy. Consequently both the Student Union and the individual halls had some form of entertainment on every weekend - often there would be 2 or 3 gigs going on in various locations across the campus. There were also plenty of opportunities for decent local bands to get supports to often to some fairly well known acts. My friend's band had managed to tap into this circuit and could be found performing about once a month to enthusiastic audiences and getting paid £100 as well. Not bad for a band playing post-punk electronica originals. I decided that I would like a bit of this for my band, and we lined up our "audition" gig in the Student Union bar. That went very well no doubt helped by the presence of a video crew who had come specifically to film us which in those days was a very big deal indeed. In due course we were offered a gig at one of the hall parties. The band had taken a couple of months off to work on some new songs and sort out a cohesive band image, and this university gig would be our first in the new and improved format. The first sign that things were not going to go smoothly was discovering that due to the number of gigs being held on campus that weekend the technical committee wouldn't be able to provide us with a university PA system, we would have to use our own (and because like all originals band we didn't own one would have to be hired in out of our gig payment). Secondly we discovered that rather than opening for someone the audience was likely to have heard of, we were going to be the only live music on at this particular hall party. We were also required to set up and soundcheck in the middle of the afternoon, so that everything would be ready by the time the event started. Soundcheck went OK although the hired PA wasn't as big as we had hoped for, as a miscommunication between the band and hire company meant they hadn't realised that we were an electronic band with no backline and relied completely on the PA for our amplification. Having completed the soundcheck we the plan was to go back to one of the band member's houses to chill out for an hour or two and then go and play. However as we were about to leave, two friends of one of the band turned up and dragged their mate off to the bar for a drink or two. By the time the rest of us returned, all three of them were compressively p!ssed on cheap student beer. In hindsight what we should have done is bought them all another couple of drinks and let them pass out safely in the bar while we played the gig one member down. What actually happened was that our inebriated member, played random notes on his synth and then spend the next few bars celebrating this technical prowess by leaping about and shouting. Half way through the gig, he had to go and have a p!ss which he announced loudly before departing from the stage. He was most put out on his return to discover we had started the next song without him. There exists a single photograph from that gig, of the rest of us hunched over our instruments hoping that the ground will open up to swallow us all, while he is leaping in the air arms and legs akimbo. Meanwhile his two equally drunk friends spent the entire gig shouting for us to play our cover of Nancy Sinatra's "Summer Wine" which we had intended to do as an encore (should we get one) and being generally intimidating and obnoxious, gradually driving what little audience had come to see us away to the other room where there was a disco. One of them ended the evening by poking his finger through one of the speaker cones in the PA (which we were subsequently billed for). Needless to say the University never asked us back to do any more gigs there.

IME you can get away with it more on the guitar where the difference between string gauges is less than that on a bass. I need a chunkier string for drop D on a guitar partly because of how I play and partly because I favour a set that is light top heavy bottom. I've tried tuning the E string down to D on the bass. It was horrible and both sound and feel.

If you want to get your music up on iTunes, Spotify etc. then you'll need an Aggregator service as well. And never underestimate to importance of gigging - not just for selling your CDs at the gig but also for advertising in order to sell CDs and downloads on line after the gig. Back again with The Terrortones 95% of of music merchandise income came from selling CDs and vinyl at gigs, but also once the band stopped gigging the on-line sales of both physical product and downloads has dropped off to almost zero. In fact in the last 2 years we have sold 1 LP. Also as a "dry run" for putting out the first Terrorises single as a digital release, I put up a compilation of recordings I made with my band from the late 90s. Despite the fact that "back in the day" we had a decent sized following and before we split were getting a lot of record label and management interest, and that apart from a couple of tracks none of the music on the compilation had been previously available; we have not sold a single download. Not one. I get about $1 each month from streaming but that is it.

If you have your E string the right tension for E, then how can it possibly still be the right tension for D (a whole tone lower)? Bear in mind that at those kinds of pitches the the difference in string gauges for a 5 semitone drop is 25-30 thousands of an inch, so you'd want a string tuned down to D to be at least 10 thousands of an inch heavier than one then tuned to E. It might be that I am more sensitive to string tension and compliance. I have a separate guitar for drop D playing as I need to have a 56 rather than my standard 52 gauge string fitted.

IME it sounds best in a decent 5 string where D on the low B string will have proper tension and not be a horrible floppy mess that results from tuning E down to D. For me the enigma of covers bands is what makes them better than a playlist of the original recordings? Yes they are. But since a lot of the music they play was never recorded when first written, they can get away with it. However with contemporary classical music there is now a trend towards ensembles playing music that has been specially written for them. For instance I don't think I'd want to see anyone other than Arditti Quartet perform the Fred Frith pieces that he composed for them to play.

Bandcamp. IME there isn't any point putting them up elsewhere. I have Terrortones CDs up for sale on both Bandcamp and on the band's own website. Since they went up for sale on Bandcamp I have sold only a couple from the website, and I'm seriously thinking of taking the website merchandise page down, since it is twice as much work to update both sites every time the postage changes and Bandcamp has it's own "shopping cart" which you really need to have if you are offering more than one product for sale.

Wasn't he playing an ACG at some point recently?