BigRedX

If you really are going to go the DIY route there are a number of things to consider. 1. Make sure that your band are behaving in a photogenic way when you do the shoot. Get them all to dress appropriately and actually put on a performance. It is a video after all. If you can't look entertaining then your video is going to do more harm than good. Make sure there's nothing distracting happening off-stage, in the audience, or in the background. It's about your band not anything else. 2. You'll need several camera angles that you can cut between in order to make the video interesting. That means either more than one camera person filming the gig; playing the song more than once to capture a few different angles; or knowing that you can cut in bits from other songs with a different angle. On the actual song concentrate on the singer, and get the rest of the shots from other songs. Trust me no-one will notice that the musicians aren't actually playing what is on the soundtrack. Good hand-held moving shots always add interest. 3. You'll need good quality audio to go with your visuals. That means something better than what the camera mic is capturing. Personally I'd go into a recording studio and get a good live take of your band so that it sounds like it would a gig but a proper mix and no mistakes, and then cut the video to match this. If you are going add some audience reaction make sure that it is all very enthusiastic but in relation to size of the gig. 4. Keep it short and snappy. No-one is going to spend ages watching your video. Unless it is brilliantly put together and entertaining most bookers will give it a minute, tops. Either pick your best short snappy song, or if you are going for a compilation to show your range, then a great intro followed by the just the choruses of 4 or so exceptionally catchy songs. As you can see, a single static camera in the corner isn't really going to cut it. And unless you have a friend with a good eye for visual composition who will act as your camera person, you are probably going to have to hire someone to film your band you might as well get them to edit it too. But if you really want to edit it yourself, then you'll need some decent software. If you have a Mac then you already have iMovie. If you are a Creative Cloud subscriber access to Premier and After Effects is included in your plan. DaVinci Resolve is cross platform, there's a free version, and it's pretty good, but you may find that you'll need to upgrade to the paid for version in order to get some of the more interesting features.

It looks like the first fret line is a quarter tone up from the nut but all the others are spaced at the regular semitone intervals from that.

What's going on with the fret lines on that bass?

Travis Bean as a company stopped making guitars in 1979 (although there was a limited edition of 24 instruments made in the late 90s), and the man himself died in 2011, so I would suspect that any patents, copyrights etc have long expired. Kevin Burkett the man behind the Electrical Guitar Company once said that he wouldn't make any Travis Bean copies as he didn't want them passed off as the real thing at later date. That situation has obviously changed, although with the Electrical Guitars having a different headstock, it would be very difficult to pass them off as Travis Beans.

It's not so much the number of fixings on the front panel but how rigid it is since it is also the point at which the amp bolts into the rack case. Just looking at some photos of this amp and the front panel does appear to quite thin compared with how heavy you describe the amp as being. Does this amp have any rack mounting attachments at the rear (I could find any photos of the back of the amp). The important thing from the PoV of preventing damage to the amp is to stop the back of the amp moving up and down. Good quality heavy rack mounting gear will also have fixings that attach to the back of the rack case to prevent this.

I have Ultralites on my Black Gus bass and they are also unbranded and look exactly like the ones in your photograph (other than they are black).

Personally I'd be more worried about the stress on the front panel of the amp rather than the bolts attaching it to the rack case. Heavy rack gear should provide fixing both front and rear, to hold it properly in place. Failing that could you bolt a heavy duty rack shelf into the back of the rack and support the amp that way?

How do I stop the latest version of the forum software from converting my text smilies to those nasty picture ones? There used to be a setting in the text entry box to disable automatic smilies but I can't find it anymore.

Says the person with a boring sunburst J bass as their avatar. 😉

No more so than any wooden necked bass IME. I've owned 2 Kramers, a Hondo Alien, Hartke XL-4 and a Born To Rock F4B all with aluminium necks, I've never had any problems with them staying in tune on stage. IMO Mick Karn always sounded better with the Travis Bean.

No it's an Ibanez Black Eagle

Production fashions go in cycles. That much is obvious from the few comments here already. In the 80s I couldn't stand listening to most of the albums I'd grown up with in the 70s due to (at the time) sterile sounding production with their weedy cardboard box drums. Now it all, sounds fine again to my ears. I can remember someone on one of the recording forums in the late 90s berating the gated reverb drum sounds and wondering how we ever tolerated them. It didn't go down too well when I suggested that in another 10 years time they'd be saying the same about the currently fashionable ping-y snare drum sounds. And to answer the OPs question, it is for me not so much about the production as about songwriting quality control. There's plenty of albums on CD from the mid 90s onwards that are simply TOO LONG. Just because the CD format allows you to put 80 minutes worth of music on a single album doesn't mean that you should. Like most albums there are a couple of killer tracks, some other songs that are OK and then an additional 40 minutes of self-indulgent rubbish. I find that the higher proportion of poor songs makes me less likely to listen to the album as a whole, whereas if it had been a normal 35-40 minute release I'd have probably played it more often and spent time getting to like the less obvious songs. Instead I just stick with the 2 or 3 tracks I know I like and never listen to the rest.

I think latency probably depends on the Bluetooth device that you transmitting to. I've had to ditch a pair of Bluetooth headphone for watching video on my Mac because there was a noticeable delay between the images on screen and the sound from the headphones. Also with a Bluetooth mini-hifi you are dependant on the quality of the D/A conversion in the hifi. Personally I'm not convinced by unnecessary wireless connections. In my house at any one time I can see 15-20 different wifi networks not including my own and any that have their SSIDs hidden. All those routers and the devices connected to them are fighting for bandwidth and dominance, and invariably there are problems with dropouts and some devices losing their wireless connection. And depending on the Mac the OP may have more options than just the headphones out socket. Most Macs also have a digital audio output as well as the analogue one.

Bluetooth is fine if all you want to do is get the audio out of computer to better speakers than the built-in ones, but if you require synchronisation to video displaying on the monitor or you are going to be playing an instrument also routed through the computer along with a track then the latency is simply too high.

I'd have to agree with this. After immensely enjoying the first two Clash albums, I found London Calling distinctly underwhelming. Other than the tilted track and "Lost In The Supermarket" the only other track I like from those recordings - Armagideon Time - isn't even on the album.

The Electrical Guitar Company make some very nice looking instruments. That boring P-Bass copy isn't one of them. Even if you could patent styling features, any patent would have run out a long time ago for both the TB and Kramer versions.

What are the speakers for? Just a better/louder reproduction of audio from iTunes/Spotify/YouTube etc.? Or as part of a home recording set up? In the case of the first stevie has already answered you question. In the case of the second you should really be looking at an audio interface with better D/A convertors between the Mac and the amp.

The way I look at it, is because the effects/amps/cabs are just models I can use any of them without worrying about them getting damaged due to feeding them with inappropriate signals in terms of frequency or level. At the moment my favourite amp model to use on the bass is the one based on the Roland Jazz Chorus amp. Because the worst thing that can happen is the end result won't sound very good, I'm just getting in and experimenting. Everything and anything is available for me to use. Stop thinking that you have to use models of bass equipment for processing your bass guitar and try something different.

But which is the "classic" line-up? Bill Buford or Alan White on drums Tony Kaye, Rick Wakeman or Patrick Moraz on keyboards?

As others have said the "Jazz" basses from the two companies have very little in common other than they both share a body shape that has its roots in the Jazz basses produced by Fender. Beyond that everything is different. It's pretty much the same with any two high-end basses from different luthiers. While they might seem superficially comparable, for the discerning musician, you pick the one that speaks to you.

Also while The Terrortones were without a permanent drummer and using deps, two of them were readers. One only used his scored-out drum parts while he was working out the songs with us in rehearsal. Once we were gigging everything was played from memory. The other had his parts set up on a music stand, put it still didn't prevent him from messing up the drums on our single twice, in two different ways.

Although none of them have actually used the skill while playing in any of my bands I suspect at least 3 of the drummers I've worked with could read. One used to play side drum in the Boys Brigade. One had previously worked in Nashville as a session drummer. One, as well as teaching drums full time for a living, is also an orchestral percussionist.

I quite like that finish on the body. And unlike manufacturers of other bolt-on neck basses, I'd trust Warwick to have made that neck joint function properly despite the way it looks. When I read the title I was expecting to see this bass:

The easiest way is to get someone else to do it for you. There are plenty of budding film-makers around who will do the job for £100-200. This Terrortones "performance" video was done for about £150 which included hiring the venue where it was shot, took a couple of hours to film and the approved edit was completed by the end of the week.

The relative heights of the bridge should match the radius of the fingerboard. Since the bridge is specifically produced for this particular bass, there isn't any reason for the action of each string to be individually adjustable. If there is a problem on just one string then there is probably something wrong with the frets.