BigRedX

My point was, that unless the cab was mic'd and the mic'd source was the main component of the broadcast bass sound, then the choice of amp and cab is completely and utterly irrelevant. My experience of large gigs and live broadcasts, is that the engineer will try and take the DI feed from as close to the bass guitar as possible. I've never had my cabs mic'd up and the only reason the engineers have used the DI output on my amp is because that is the sole accessible point in the signal chain that also includes all all the effects I use. Otherwise I am sure they would have taken the DI feed from somewhere in front of the amp. This has been one of the reasons why I have replaced my large, heavy and expensive conventional bass rig with a Line6 Helix and an RCF745 powered cab.

I'm using Warwick Black Label Strings on some of my basses and LaBella Stainless Steel Round Wounds on the others. Although D'Addario strings are my first choice for my guitars and have been for the past 30 years, I haven't used any on my basses since 2002, and although I thought they were OK I have since found strings that suit my basses, playing style and sound better. I'm always open to experiment with new strings when I can but it's not always cost effective to try something different on a whim. A free set of NYXLs would always be appreciated, and if I find that they don't suit me I'd be happy to pass them on to someone else to try.

Of course how much contribution all this gear makes to the sound you hear from your TV will depend on where the DI for the TV feed is in the bass guitar signal path and how much separate processing has been done on that feed. Two things you can't possibly know unless you are the engineer doing the TV sound.

Boiling/cleaning strings is IME a waste of time and effort. It is at best a very short-term fix and every time you remove and refit the strings you increase the chances of them breaking. Coated strings. You'll have to try them for yourself. Some people like them others like me can't stand the feel. I'm currently using Warwick Black Label Strings. If I didn't have a requirement for a taper-wound low B I'd be quite happy with the much cheaper Red Label versions.

We at least you got answer. I asked the same question a couple of months ago and it was completely ignored. The forum software seems to be heading more and more towards the illiterate Facebook generation.

At 20 I was just starting my second attempt at university doing Town & Country Planning (which was going to be just as unsuccessful as my previous attempt at Marine Biology) and about to have 15 seconds of fame when my band's record was going to be played on John Peel's radio show. Music and graphic design were the two main things in my life but I hadn't really figured out how to do either of them with any effectiveness. The record and subsequent radio exposure were all down to being in the right place at the right time, and my graphics skills were all entirely self taught so I didn't know how to turn them into skills I could use in real world situations - not that I knew much about the real world at 20. Now that I am a couple of years away from my 60th birthday, music and graphic design are still my main obsessions but in the last 35 years I've learnt how to use both of them more effectively. I make my living working with graphics and I'm doing far more with music these days then I was when I was 20. I've paid off my mortgage and having avoided the money pit that is having children I am able to live comfortably and have fun without having to work too hard. I probably don't listen to as much music these days as I did when I was 20, but I have noticed that more music I produce myself the less of other people's I have time for, which is something that has happened on several other times in my life and not unique to my current age.

Pickups look wonky to me - especially the J.

Bas Extravaganza. He appears to have taken down his site so there's very little information about his instruments out there any more other than what other people have saved or written.

The thing is Saturday night TV is for Sad acts with nothing better to do with their lives, so it is really no surprise that there isn't anything interesting on. If you really must have some moving pictures style entertainment, that's what your TIVO/DVD recorder/Netflix etc is for. Otherwise why not do something more intellectually stimulating like read a book?

Talking Heads for me are one of those bands filled with interesting people with lots of interesting things to say. Unfortunately just not musically interesting. I'll happily ready anything that Davis Byrne has written, but don't expect me to listen to, and enjoy his music.

My CAR Gus was originally green/purple, and was done by Simon Farmer of Gus Guitars.

If I was after a J style bass it would have to be Sei, but that's because I know that martin would be able to build me something that looked superficially like a J but had all the problems I have with the Fender design ironed out. However I get the impression that the OP wants something much more conventional but with a few tweaks to his specification. It shouldn't be difficult to find someone to build that considering that the basic J bass was designed to be cost-effective to be made by relatively unskilled labour and by now is a well-known tried and tested design. Pretty much any UK luthier offering a J style bass should be able make you exactly what you need within your budget.

If you can't even agree a rehearsal time then they are not the right people for your band. There is a lot more to being a suitable band member than being able to play an instrument competently.

I think it helps if you were friends first before you were in a band together. Certainly that is the case with all my ex-bandmates I still see regularly. I think there is only one bandmate with whom I have had a really bad falling out, but now 15 years on I'm really not that bothered anymore. Since the band split up I've gone on to do some fantastic things musically and AFAICS she has not. The most common reason for me not keeping in touch with old band members is that IMO they have stopped being interesting people and I simply don't have the time or energy to continue being friends with people I don't really have anything in common with anymore.

Dood, as others have said social media is the way to go. Even if you are not a Twitter or Facebook user, now is the time to sign up and kick up a fuss, because that's what companies will take notice of. Like them on Facebook, and them hijack one of their posts, ideally one where they boast about how good they are that can be tangentially linked to your problem.Hashtag them on Twitter and mention how poor the quality of service is. I'm sure it is doing your "soul" some good coming on here, venting about the problem and getting lots of sympathetic replies, but 3+ pages on it doesn't appear as though you have managed to sort out the problem. Also who was actually responsible for booking the courier service? Yourself or the Shop? If it was the shop then surely it is also in their interests to be making a fuss? Why aren't they?

I think it is very much down to your local UPS depot. I've been using them for larger parcels for about 10 years now and have sent several 100 packages during that time. I get to deal with the same driver every time (except when he is on holiday) and I have only once had a problem (caused by the depot at the delivery end of the chain) which was promptly sorted and compensated without fuss in full. IME UPS are no better or worse than any other courier service - with the exception of Yodel and Hermes who are uniformly terrible and I can't believe how they mange to stay in business, are they being propped up by profits from another company? Delivery services are only as good as the weakest link in the chain.

The thing is with Thunderbirds is that all the different models are all very different basses united only by the name and having roughly the same body shape, so they are not substitutes for each other. If you believe that woods, construction and pickups make a noticeable difference once the bass is in the overall band mix, then what you need to do is find out exactly which version of the Thunderbird is producing the sounds you like and get one of those. But be aware that both Gibson and Epiphone have a bewildering range of models with different specifications in their past and current ranges. A 2018 Gibson Thunderbird has very little in common with a 1960s one other than the approximate shape. There are also this who would argue that the best Thunderbirds are currently being made by Mike Lull. Choose wisely. You may regret it otherwise.

And that's why you are looking at the Helix all wrong. The only bass-specific module I am currently using in any of my patches is there as an "effect" because I like the distortion sound the drive control on one of bass amp models adds to the bass. Most of my patches don't have any amps or cabs at all, because after all an amp (as I keep saying) is just something to make your instrument loud with a baked in sound and some limited EQ adjustments to that baked-in sound. I normally just use one of the EQ modules instead. Same result and usually with more versatility. Where I am using an amp model it's a guitar one - based on the Roland Jazz Chorus combo. For me, this is the big strength of the Helix. You can do what you want. Because everything is digital there's no chance of breaking it, as you could if you used the actual device and expected it to reproduce bass guitar frequencies at gig volumes. The worst thing that will happen is that it simply won't sound very good, in which case simply try another module instead.

I'm a songwriter first, a producer second and a musician a very distant third. So for me the most important thing is to get the best possible production and arrangement of the recorded song, by whatever means necessary. The various parts of the song are still my ideas even if I didn't actually play them. If someone else can play it better than me that's great. If a sequencer can do a better job that's also great. I have nothing against anything from moving/replacing a few duff notes, chopping up the bass part into its constituent notes and groove quantising it to the drums, or replacing the bass completely with a synth played or sequenced (I've done them all). Whatever give me the right end result for the song and the recording.

I'm still not convinced by the semi-rigid gig bags like the Mono. As others have discovered many of them are as big and almost as heavy as a Hiscox Case. I have a Mono M80 and as a case for protecting the bass inside it is great, but as a gig bag not so good. I find it very uncomfortable to wear for more than a few minutes, and it's certainly not a pleasant experience wearing it on the 30 minute walk from where I live to the rehearsal rooms in town. I wouldn't buy another case of that type without trying it with my bass and everything else I wanted to put in it first.

TBH honest all those concepts are pretty alien to me including the one about reversing your car (I'm an appalling driver and consequently for mine and the safety of other road users, it's been over 20 years since I last got behind the wheel of a car) 😉 I don't think I've ever played a scale in my life. Sure I know where all the notes are on a keyboard or fretboard, but actually playing scales doesn't hold any musical interest for me. Similarly with "licks" and arpeggios. I see this "building block" approach to playing all the time usually from guitarists when they are "improvising" a solo. It looks impressive the first time you hear it, but by the third solo you realise that all they are doing is rearranging the same musical phrases in slightly different orders and in different keys depending on the underlying chord structure. When I'm writing I can normally hear what I want to play in my head, so I'm not being bound by patterns my fingers are comfortable with. If I do notice that I am reusing elements from something previous, I'll deliberately go out of my way to break the pattern to come up with something new. I does mean that as I'm writing a new part for whatever instrument I'm playing, it will take me a little longer to get up to speed while I'm searching for the perfect notes and training my fingers to play in patterns they are unaccustomed to. Ultimately I think it results in better songwriting.

Can we define what "reading" music actually means? There seems to be an implication from many of the replies that "reading" = sight reading. Is that the case? However if reading simply means being able to get a musical performance out of written notation no matter how long it takes, then pretty much anyone should be able to read music. Work your way through the notation for a simple bass line one note at a time and you'll quickly learn where the notes are on the stave and what all the timing values are. All the less common symbols can be looked up as and when required. You might not be able to play something the moment it is set in front of you, but at least it won't appear to be a load of incomprehensible gibberish. Does that count as "reading"? In 45 years of playing music I have never needed to be able to read to any standard - either sight reading or working my way through a score one note at a time. For music I'm composing myself I'm creating the parts I'm working out the composition and arrangement. For songs written by other people, I either learn the part by ear from a recording or compose my own part from scratch depending on what is required. While I know that many of the musicians I have worked with over the years could read (and probably sight read to a high standard) for the music that I have played with them, it has never been required, or even mentioned. My very limited abilities come not from needing it to get a gig or even from learning for my own interest or amusement. I had to learn to write because back in the early 80s when I joined the PRS the only way they would accept song registrations that had not been released on a record, was to score out the main musical themes - the vocal melody along with the lyrics and any important instrumental parts onto blank manuscript that they supplied for this purpose. It took me several days for each song working out the notes for the vocal melodies and tapping out the rhythms, so I could write the parts down. Sometimes when I was really stuck with the timing I'd cheat by tapping it into the drum machine and see where the notes appeared on the display. Because I learnt this way dealing with vocals and multiple instruments, my knowledge isn't tied to a single instrument, and so I am always a little surprised when I come across musicians who can sight read for one instrument (usually something they learnt at school playing classical music) but seemingly can't transfer that skill to being able to read for another instrument that they can play but haven't learnt by reading music. It makes me suspect that in order to be able to sight read competently you need to be able to bypass some of the information. So instead of looking at a part that has been scored out and thinking: that is a C, in order to play C I need to put my fingers here on the instrument. Instead you think: note on that position of the stave = put my fingers here.

Every on-line magazine I've seen has been terrible. They all seems to combine what for me are the worst aspects of the paper publication with the limitations of on-line. Stupid pointless page turning animations, and forever having to zoom in and out of the page to see things properly. Low resolution "photography" that doesn't have the sharpness or detail of print. Half the screen seems to be taken up by the "interface" and doesn't seem to matter which format you use to view it - wide screen monitor on a PC or 4:3 on a tablet the format still can't make the best use of any of them. Plus you can't safely read it in the bath.

I wonder what that will mean for Bass Player in the US? I can't see Future Publishing running two versions with localised advertising as that defeats the object of merging the titles, not to mention that US magazines are a completely different format (size) to UK ones. Do Future Publishing's other music titles sell in the US? If they do are they the same as the UK editions?

That's going to be interesting given that one is a UK publication and the other US... Are we sure this is genuine and not "fake news"?