BigRedX

I would completely disagree with this. While it is nice to be able to hear everything, IME unless the rhythmic element is solely on the backing, you really don't need to be able to hear it. Every band I've been in that has used both backing tracks and a drummer, the drummer plays to the click and the rest of the band play to the drummer. If there are sections with no drums but other live instruments the drummer provides a subtle click (sticks or hit hats) for the rest of the band to follow and keep in sync. Of course making this work does require a drummer who can play to a click track. That's not as easy as you might think. While every other musician in a band is used to playing in time to the drums you'll find that because the drummer normally sets the pace of the band, they very often don't have the experience of having to keep in time and sync with something else. Also when the drummer is perfectly in time with the click it will tend to be inaudible because it is being masked by the sounds of the drums themselves.

@NancyJohnson The backing tracks getting lost in the mix isn't necessarily the PA engineer's fault. It can be difficult enough to mix a four piece band with complex arrangements without throwing in extra taped or sequenced backing for which there are no visual clues coming from on stage. The only time I have been in a band that used backing tracks and were able in integrate them properly into the live mix, we had our own sound engineer who was essentially a fifth member of the band who would mix the sequenced parts and drum samples from our own mixing desk which was fed from separate multicore from the various synth and samplers on stage. However it made for a massively complex set up which took the the best part of an hour to rig at each gig. Not something I'd be massively keen to go back to unless my band was big enough to be selling out 500+ capacity venues.

Just because it's on the recording doesn't mean that it needs to be on the live version. One of the bands I'm in currently uses backing tracks. It works because we've all been playing in bands that use them before and the set up is compact and doesn't require any at the gig assembly. We have a 3U flight case that holds the laptop, audio/MIDI interface, DI boxes all wired up to a front panel patch bay. We send two balanced XLR feeds to the PA and a click-track to the drummer's headphone amp. It takes less than 5 minutes to set up at a gig. However, other than at really big gigs where we are playing through a massive PA system once the band kicks in most of the backing is lost in the overall mix. Apart from a couple of intros and one middle 8 that are all backing track, we can play all the songs perfectly well without it, and I doubt if anyone other than the the most hard-core fans would notice.

Make them yourself. Unless you are playing the songs EXACTLY like the version(s) you are covering in terms of arrangement, key and actual notes being played by the live instruments you are going to need to to change your backing to match. I've spent about half my gigging life playing in bands that use sequenced or pre-recorded backing and although they were all originals bands, when I have done covers we programmed or recorded our own backing to suit our arrangement of the song. The one time I tried using a pre-programmed backing track I had to make so many alterations in order to get it to work within the context of the band I ended up redoing most of it from scratch.

There's already a pre-amp built into your bass amplifier. If it's not doing it for you then you probably have the wrong amplifier.

Made by someone whose seen an Andreas Shark Bass. Once. From a distance.

Think of a company name. Set it up as a limited company. Job done. However if you actually want to make some money out of your company you need to either: 1. Get together a catalogue of music that TV, film and game producers will want to use in their productions, or that other well-known artists will want to cover. Employ someone with plenty of music/TV/film/gaming industry contacts who will spend all day on the phone/email/social media persuading producers to use music from said catalogue. 2. Alternatively you could sign up lots of gullible artists to your publishing company then sit back and take 25-50% of their performance royalties for doing f*ck all.

Some the later Yamaha FM synths had the ability to "microtune" the individual notes and IIRC had presets for things like true temperament. I tried some of the alternative tunings on a friend's TX81Z and was less than impressed.

It looks as though we have scared the OP off... So just in case they come back here is a sensible answer they their question: "Tone Woods" make a lot of sense when it comes to acoustic instruments. They are all about the transfer of the vibration of the strings through the top of the instrument to the air inside the body and projecting those vibrations out. Everything about the design and construction of an acoustic instrument is about getting a good tone at a usable volume. The shape and volume of the body, the thinness of the top the way the bracing is just sufficient to stop the instrument collapsing under the tension of the strings and the top sides and back are joined together with the minimum of contact to allow the maximum resonance. No compare that with a typical solid bodied electric instrument. The body is a big solid 1.5" thick lump of wood, and more often than not on mass-produced instruments 2 or 3 separate pieces glued together in an ad-hoc manner to produce a blank big enough to be cut to the desired shape. Its main purpose is to provide a comfortable and aesthetically pleasing platform for attaching all the other component parts - neck, bridge, pickups etc. None of the tone wood properties that are so important in an acoustic instrument matter very much in a solid body. Here the overall construction is far more important. I'm not saying that the choice of wood is totally irrelevant to the sound of a solid-bodied instrument, it's just IMO the least important factor and one that is impossible to quantify. Every single piece of wood is different and two bodies cut from blanks that came from the same tree can produce two different feeling and sounding instruments. So after all that what are the important factors when picking a piece of wood for a solid bodied instrument? 1. Strength. It must be capable of holding together under the tension of the strings and being hung from a strap. TBH pretty much any hardwood will fit the bill and even some softwoods. It might be worth considering long-term wear. Have a look at any solid-bodied instrument made 40 or more years ago, and you'll see the actual wood has worn away in several places due to contact while playing. 2. Weight. Overall the average weight for a bass should be somewhere between 4kg and 4.5kg, the closer you can get it to 4kg the better. 3. Appearance. If the wood is going to visible on the finished instrument then it should be something that you find aesthetically pleasing. And that's it. Good luck with you build!

Exactly. For me it is difficult to see what benefit having your Fender assembled by custom shop luthier brings, especially when the design of the component parts is no different to the standard production-line models. None of those classic, and now very valuable, instruments from the early days of production (pre-CBS) got any special treatment during the manufacturing process, and if anything modern production methods are far superior to what could be achieved with the 1940s technology that was originally used, so a modern Fender instrument off the production line should be a superior instrument. Make you wonder if Fender are deliberately holding back on the quality of their other instruments, so that something out of the Custom Shop can be guaranteed to be better?

The differences in tuning are so slight between a standard fretted instrument and one with true temperament frets that unless you can guarantee you are fretting each and every note that you play without stretching the string any more than required for it to be properly stopped by the fret and only moving it in a perfect downward direction with respect to the fingerboard then you are going to negate the compensation offered by the true temperament frets. There are problems when you try and bend strings. You are also tied in to a limited range for type and gauges of string. Also if any of the chords played are created by pressing down the same string on two different frets (such as a standard barre chord on the guitar) then the extra stretching of the string will negate the composition of true temperament frets. True, a standard fretted instrument in a very slight compromise in tuning, but the true temperament fretted instrument is just as compromised. The compromises are different, that is all.

But only works if all the other instruments in your ensemble are also true temperament, otherwise some notes between the instruments will be out of tune.

Plywood is perfectly fine.

Whichever of the Line6 Helix range does what you want for the lowest price.

Surely it's got more in common with the Memory Moog?

Interesting. Any idea what the nut width and string spacing at the bridge is? How do I ask a seller a question on Gumtree?

As I say each time the subject of streaming comes up I'm amazed at how many people have apparently ditched their vinyl and CD collections in favour of something that mostly requires and internet connection and could quite easily be gone tomorrow. The important thing to remember is that NONE of the streaming services actually make any money. They are either loss leaders for the parent company's profitable divisions or being propped up by fickle investor confidence (and what will happen if that confidence should evaporate?) For me they are fine for checking out music provided that it was released in the last 10 years and is broadly US/UK centric. However none of the current services will ever replace my CDs and vinyl because there is far too many artists and albums that I consider essential listening, missing.

Can someone give some good starting point settings for the B7K emulation? Because the default setting sounds horrible and every adjustment I make seems to make it worse.

Those would work. I'd probably go the second route to save on blocks.

I've spotted another potential problem. Unless the two outputs can be configured as two completely independent outs, you can't use the volume control to set your on-stage volume without also affecting any DI to the PA. The Helix (full version) allows me to send one output at full volume to the PA and the other via the Helix's volume control to my FRFR stage monitor.

I only need to use more than 6 blocks if I have snapshots with very different sounds in them that I get by turning on and off blocks. Without snapshots and without having dedicated footswitches to turn blocks off and on, I doubt that only having 6 blocks is going to be a massive problem to most people. However I personally couldn't live without the snapshot function as there is too much latency when switching between very different sounds without using snapshots.

IMO audiences want the bassist (or any other member of the band) to look as though they belong in the band. That means being dressed appropriately, having the correct instrument for the band image, and presenting themselves on stage in a way that fits in with the overall band performance. Other than that unless you are horrendously out of tune or out of time they really don't care.

Manual is already available on-line. Nothing specific about the power requirements other than they recommend that you use the supplied PSU.

Surely that defeats the object of it being battery powered?

Got a prompt reply from Newtone basically saying that because the strings are wound on a Hex Core, I don't need to worry about cutting them before fitting. It would have been a good idea if the packaging reflected this advice. Anyway the strings are a higher tension than the ones originally fitted to the Barracuda as evidenced by the tail-lift of the vibrato mechanism. I'll need to adjust the vibrato springs to compensate. However they are IMO much better strings for both feel and sound, and at £18 plus P&P a set a far more affordable alternative the the LaBella Round Wounds. I'd whole-heartedly recommend these if you are looking for round wound Bass VI strings.