BigRedX

I get it now, but so much scrolling on smaller screens to get to the useful bits. It would have been far better to simply list all the plugins with a 1-2 line description of what they do and then clicking that takes you the relevant page for more detailed information, a video explanation and a download link. I don't think my PoV regarding linux is snobbish. It is IME simply realistic. I would love to give linux a go, but while it seems to be ideal for hard-core geeks, for anyone wanting to actually do something creative, the applications simply aren't of a suitable standard or variety. A couple of my friends have tried to dabble with linux and encountered more than fair bit of snobbery from the linux forums when just trying to get started because they didn't seem to have sufficient geek credentials and the questions they were asking made that clear. One didn't even manage to get their copy of linux installed on the PC let alone get to experiment with the applications available.

There's a really good documentary on the BBC iPlayer about the recording of the News Of The World album and subsequent US tour. Freddie Mercury has shorter hair than he did at the time of Bohemian Rhapsody but still not as short as his later "clone" look.

I would imagine that the guitar designs went through a number of prototypes with varying success until he settled on those design features. The bass model(s) will need to do the same. I wouldn't expect him to get everything right first go. The most important thing to remember is that despite outward appearances a bass guitar is not simply a normal guitar scaled up. Things that work well on a guitar are not always desirable on a bass and vice-versa. Plenty of experimentation is going to be required before he come up with a suitable bass guitar design.

I did a gig at the weekend using my Helix and RCF745 where the PA support (for reasons only known to the engineer) was intermittent. My standard setting is with the volume control on the back of the RCF at about 3 o'clock and the output volume on the Helix at 10 o'clock. On stage that was plenty loud enough for us all to hear the bass once I'd angled the RCF at 45° across the stage. Out front for the headlining band that also used my rig, when the bass had been taken out of the PA (I don't know either) it was still audible although not as loud as I would have liked it. This was for a venue with a couple of hundred capacity, and had there been no PA support there was still plenty of volume available from the rig, although on stage hearing the other instruments on stage might have been a struggle at the required volumes to project FoH.

But unfortunately there isn't any direct and absolute correlation between cone size and frequency response as the trace that Bill posted shows. Yes, a manufacturer can design a range of drivers that will exhibit the characteristics that Chienmortbb's trace shows, but unless you know exactly which drivers are inside your cabs you are far more likely to get the sorts of results that Bill posted. @Al Krow stop trying to rely on misleading figures and just use your ears.

Other than pickup selection and coil section (for basses with more than one pickup or coil per pickup) I don't need any controls on my basses.

If you are going to get involved with MIDI program mapping is one of the most useful features available so long as your devices support it. Without program mapping, selecting program #1 on your controlling device sends MIDI program change message 1 to the receiving device(s) which in turn selects program #1. Selecting program #2 sends MIDI program change 2 and selects program #2 and so on. If you have program mapping, the program numbers on the controlling and receiving devices don't have to correspond which gives you a lot more flexibility. For starters you don't have to duplicate patches if you use the same sound more than once. You don't run into problems where the receiving and controlling devices have different numbers of programs, and therefore after a certain point the one device no longer has corresponding programs for the other. And if like me you like to have your patches on the controlling device in order of the set, you only have move them on the controlling device, the receiving device will still select the correct patch. HTH.

Which is why you really need program mapping. Does the Boss controller pedal allow you to do this?

IMO it completely defeats the object of not using Windows or Mac OS if you then have to run your plugins under emulation. You must require a special linux mindset to understand the Airwindows site. No matter how hard I looked i couldn't find any download links for the plugins. They certainly weren't on the products page, where I would expect them to be. And the list of plug in suppliers for linux in that last link is pitiful compared with what is available for Windows or Mac OS. If all I was going to do is surf the net and send some emails, or if I wanted to run a web or file server linux seems to be fine. However for actually doing anything creative linux just doesn't cut it.

Surely changing the number of coils attached to the output will change the impedance and therefore the sound?

Flavor Flav?

OK in that case you either need all identical cabs, or you need each different sized driver individually crossed over to prevent dispersion inconsistencies.

The monster tone only last weeks? I'd want longer than that.

Are the strings sufficiently far enough apart for there not to be cross-talk? And to be able to get individual coils in place?

Al's problem is that he wants definite empirical answers to his questions, but they don't exist because the sound of a cab depends on lots of different things of which the cone size of the driver(s) is just one, and as Bill Fitzmaurice has just shown there isn't necessarily a direct correlation between driver size and frequency response. And ultimately it may not even matter. @Al Krow what exactly are your cabs for in a live situation? If the bass is going through the PA your choice of cabs is pretty much irrelevant because their contribution to the FoH sound will be negligible.

Neither. Songwriting is what impresses me the most. Write a decent song and don't obsess over how to play it.

And what about pro-quality 3rd party plugins under linux?

AFAICS from the manual there is no MIDI program mapping and only 100 memory locations, so MIDI programs above 100 on the controlling device won't have a matching program on the Elektron, and if you want to the same drive sound on two different ES-8 patches you'll have to copy them on the Elektron.

Onto the second page and no-one has mentioned "American Edit" by Dean Gray yet?

Yes. I've owned a Hondo Alien - short scale with minimalist body a few cm wider than the neck, a Born To Rock F4B - a neck plus an aluminium tube outline of the body and an Atlansia Solitaire 1 string bass which is just a 36" long square section of wood with a string running along the length, and can't recall any of them causing me any problems to play. Back in the early 80s when I tried one of the original Steinberger Basses the lack of headstock was more disconcerting than the lack of body when it came to play it. However I did forget to add point 7... 7. Some method of attaching a strap.

All a bass needs is the following: 1. A neck 2. Some method of tuning each string 3. Some method of intonating each string 4. Some method of spacing the strings apart at the end witness points 5. A pickup 6. Some method of connecting the pickup to the rest of your signal chain Everything else is personal preference.

I'm looking at a similar solution for a custom Bass VI that I am spec'ing out, and even though I'm going to be going for a much wider string spacing than the Revelation, I don't think that splitting the pickups is going to do it for me. For a start what would I do about the "G" string? For some songs it would definitely be part of the bass sound and others part of the guitar chords. Sometimes it would need to swap over in the middle of the song depending on what I am playing. I've decided that it will be far simpler to go for two outputs and 3-way switching on each pickup (1/off/2) and then tone shaping/filtering further along the signal chain to achieve what I want to do. It helps that my rig these days consists of a Helix and an FRFR so I don't need to worry about separate amps etc.

Is it just me or is the Issuu interface really terrible? The pages are so small that the text is unreadable even at full-screen on a typical laptop or tablet, without zooming in and then having to scroll around. They massive area reserved for ads at the bottom of the screen doesn't help when there is already plenty of dead space at the sides. Also what's with the stupid page turning animation? It's not a real magazine. It's time that ePublishers stopped pretending they are producing physical product and started designing to the strengths of the medium they are using for their delivery. It also doesn't help that there are several factual errors in the descriptions of the basses I am familiar with, plus I wonder if the author actually asked for permission to reproduce any of the photographs?

The mono mixes will always sound better, they were the ones that had the most time spent on them. The stereo versions were generally dashed off in an afternoon afterwards. Besides there won't be that much to make stereo from a four track recording where all the bounces were to a single track.

No if your on-satge speaker is an FRFR, then you should send the same signal to both this and the PA.