BigRedX

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If it's the saddle that has stripped threads, it will require the hole plugging, re-drilling and a new thread making. Is that doable?

But you are far more likely to get the atmosphere and energy at grass roots level that made bands like Rush exciting back in the early 70s, then you are watching some old band on a video screen from a seat at the back of a stadium.

I think the C Bass predates this by at least a couple of years. Chris May old me that the older of the two Original 5-strings I used to own dated from 1983, and the other from 1985.

How is that any different from a radio or TV music programme?

Instead of moaning about how much it costs to see some old dinosaurs in an enormodrome, you could instead go every week end for a year and see some new exciting bands in a small local venue. No need to book tickets months in advance. Most of the time you can rock up on the night and pay your £10 or less to get in. And thanks to Spotify and YouTube you don't even need to take a punt on whether or not you'll like the music, as you can do your research before you choose who to see.

This role has pretty much been taken over by Spotify playlists.

When it comes to music I see myself first and foremost as a composer. I play musical instruments because it makes composition easier (for me) and I also like performing on stage so I need to be doing more than just composition within the musical projects I work on. So from that PoV I consider myself an artist. I have also been the main driving force when it comes to producing the visual aspects of many of the bands that I have been in whether that be just the graphic design of the posters, CD, record and cassette packaging or as far as the complete visual styling of the band and every aspect of how we present to our audience and the outside world. In that case again I consider myself to be an artist. On the few occasions where I have played in covers bands, my role has simply been to reproduce what is on the chosen recorded version of the songs in question. In this case I am simply a human playback mechanism, with nothing artistic or creative involved at all. Similarly in my graphics day job I see myself as a technician. There can be some creativity, but mostly it is to take other people's original ideas and apply them to new products in the range or similar. I also ensure that the job will print properly and look as far as possible (given the print budget) as what was originally visualised. I don't consider myself an artist in this role. I don't want to get bogged down in arguing about designs for products I don't care about passionately enough. I'm happy to take the money and produce what my clients want.

We currently have two similar T-shirt designs, and have found that most people want either one or the other but not both, so I'm currently working on a new one that is completely different.

I found this photo of me playing my Overwater Original some time in the mid to late 90s. As you'll notice the strap button position doesn't seem to be a problem at all:

The geographic thing is also linked to genre. I've played a few less than well attended Goth gigs in Scotland, but Yorkshire - Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, Whitby and York are consistently great. The few times that I've played Manchester the reaction has been very favourable, but getting the gigs themselves has been unnecessarily difficult. When it comes to selling merch, over exposure can sometimes go against you. In the last 12 months we've done a few gigs where the audience reaction has been fantastic, but we've sold almost nothing afterwards, because most of them already have the T-shirt and CD.

I don't know what the original is supposed to sound like for comparison but I couldn't hear much "synth" bass in that clip. I'd get pretty close to that sound with a bit of drive and EQ, and IMO it certainly wouldn't be worth all the effort of using a synth pedal to sound like that.

IME the biggest issue with playing synth bass using any instrument is that most of what you are trying to recreate will have originally been played by a sequencer on the recording and therefore perfect timing is absolutely critical. Even the typical audience member will be able to tell something is off when the timing isn't rock solid even if they don't know exactly what is wrong.

Standard for this shape of Overwater bass. Both of my Overwater Originals had the strap button in the same place under the upper horn. It never caused me any problems so it must have worked well. One of those Overwaters was my main bass for the whole of the 90s and beyond.

Back in the 80s when I first go into synths and the idea of using a guitar or bass to control them I spent some time alternating between teaching myself some rudimentary keyboard technique and modifying my guitar playing so that I could cleanly and accurately trigger the sounds on a synth. After a couple of weeks I found I could play most of the things I wanted on a keyboard, and while I had some success with the guitar controlling the synth it was very variable, difficult to repeat accurately from one day to the next, and the moment I got carried away with my playing my carefully set up sound went to pot. I know that synth control from stringed instruments has progressed massively since my first attempts, but they still require a degree of control that I can only sustain under perfect conditions in the studio. Ultimately I'm glad I spent some time learning to play keyboards because it's added another instrument to those I can play (badly).

Yes definitely. Location is very important. We're lucky here in the UK in that everything is pretty close together - at least compared with what little I have seen of the US. My band is based in the Midlands which as its name states is in the middle of the UK and consequently nearly all the major cities are less than 4 hours drive away which is doable leaving late afternoon and returning around 1 or 2 in the morning, particularly as most gigs are at the weekend. We would be happy to go further afield but then the gig fee needs to include accommodation for the night, and we're not at that level of popularity yet. Being entertaining has a degree of subjectivity, but IME it involves providing something your audience can't get from streaming you on Spotify in order to entice them out of their living rooms.

It's not so much removing unwanted capacitance. With the amount of processing that the Helix is doing I doubt I'd notice any difference. It's more so the tone control doesn't get accidentally moved from it's full on position when putting my bass in it's gig bag between sound checking and playing our set. This has happened on a couple of occasions so now I make a point a checking before I start to play, but it would be nice to not have to do that. I don't think I've ever run a bass rig with multiple EQs in the signal path. Once I started using programmable multi-effects in the late 80s I ditched conventional bass amps in favour of PA-style power amps. Before that I only had EQ on the amp. Since switching to the Helix it has allowed me to use a single EQ module that is most appropriate for getting me the right sound for each song.

What do the different colours mean?

I have exactly the right number of amps for my needs. None. I go direct from my multi-effects (Helix) into the PA. That way I can choose the right EQ for each song without having to have multiple EQs all potentially conflicting or cancelling each other out. At the moment I am mostly using the model of the Dark Glass pre-amp, but there are songs where those EQ centres don't work as well as they could and then I'll have something else in the signal chain. I have a couple of songs where the amp model has been picked solely because the mids EQ frequency is in the right place to sit the bass in amongst all the synth sounds we use. I rarely use the EQ on any bass whether active or passive and if I could be bothered to do the soldering I'd bypass them entirely.

Come and see my current band Hurtsfall play live if you can. Our next gig is at The Mist Rolling Inn in Nottingham on 28th November. I'm currently using it with a Bass VI so I'm alternating between "bass" and "guitar" sounds throughout the songs all done using the Helix to process the signal. Or have a listen to our music on-line. "Tilting" or "Lost Souls" shows these changes the best.

This is the problem with streaming services in that there lots of music, mostly from the late 70s and early 80s that hasn't made it on to any of them. Major labels are normally well represented, but where the recordings didn't make it to a CD release there is a good chance they won't be available to stream. I can't help you with Screams, but the Zones album (I was a big fan too) is available to download from at least one music blog which should be easy to find. I'm not normally a fan of getting my music from these sources, but in the absence of an official release or stream I think it is just about acceptable.

Not only are they the large size reels but they also run at 15ips, which means a proper professional tape machine and not a consumer model Revox. Adaptors should have been supplied with the tape machine not the tapes. I briefly owned a professional model Studer tape machine that had come from a BBC local radio station where it had been used for tape editing. This meant that as well as the small built-in splicing block, a more serious version had also been bolted to the front. The whole top panel was criss-crossed with razor-blade scratches, including the padded arm rest at the front. And there was no input recording circuitry so the machine could only be used for playback. Apparently this was deliberate on the part of Studer so they could sell these machines as playback/editing only where there was no chance of user error pressing record and wiping the tape. Mine was bought for digitising a number of reel-to-reel tapes of recordings made by the first band I was in during the late 70s/early 80s. The magnetic parts of the tapes were luckily still intact. However some of the splices hadn't fared as well and I was presented with a mixture of tapes where most the splices had failed and others where the glue had oozed out of the joints and spread to the rest of the tape causing the spooled tape to stick together. In the end I had to run each splice separately through the machine (after cleaning off any excess glue), and where the splices had been used to do mid-track edits join them back up in my DAW.

And here are all the rack units also in chronological order: Single Rack effects: Unknown make digital delay bought because it had an LED display for the delay time. However due to being made for the US market the readings were out by a factor of 20% caused by the difference in mains frequency. Amdek Chorus and Flanger rebuilt into a single 19" rack case Korg VCF Pedal rebuilt into a single 19" rack case Boss RCL-10 Half Rack Compressor Limiter Boss RPS-10 Half Rack Digital Pitch Shifter / Delay Akai EX65D Half Rack Digital Delay Peavey Spectrum Filter Multi-effects: Roland GP8 Boss SE50 Peavey BassFex Electrix MO-FX Linn Addrenalinn Line6 BassPod XT Pro Line6 BassPod XT Line6 Helix Floor There was some overlap between these two categories as the Peavey BassFex and Spectrum Filter were used together. Of all of these I still own the Helix, which is my current do-it-all effects unit and the Korg VCF Pedal which I haven't got around to selling yet.

If it's just pedals and not rack effects my list is as follows (in the order I bought them): Home-made Fuzz Box from a circuit published in Practical Electronics or some similar magazine from the mid 70s Korg VCF pedal Amdek Chorus Amdek Flanger Boss Super Distortion and Feedbacker These were replaced briefly by a set of dedicated rack units, until I bought my first multi-effects unit (Roland GP8) in the early 90s. I've been using multi-effects units ever since and currently own a Helix Floor. I have also owned a Linn Addrenalinn, but was never able to incorporate it into any rig. It was too complicated for live use, and in the studio the Step FX plug-in in Logic does the same thing but much better.

If you are getting noticeable signal loss due to your leads, then you need some better ones. And as I said in a previous post if the EQ centres on this are more suitable for your sound than those on your amp, then you have the wrong amp.