BigRedX

So adding tags to a thread, will cause a sidebar to appear with other posts with the same/similar tags? Well in that case I'm going to stop using tags because the sidebar takes up what is IMO valuable screen space that would be better used for thread content.

True. But only if the person working the DAW needs/wants/is capable of doing it.

But most people don't really need a fully-featured DAW. I've been a Logic user for almost 25 years now, and I only use a tiny amount of the facilities that the program offers. In fact for a lot of what I do these days Garageband would probably be more than adequate. Don't forget that the OP is a self-confessed beginner when it comes to recording, and the last thing he probably wants to do is get bogged down in an overly-complicated program just to get a few ideas turned into full-fledged song recordings. IMO a bit a simplicity can do wonders for focusing the mind and the basic task in hand which is recording your musical ideas and turning them into a fully arranged song. In fact if the OP is new to all this, then he probably already knows the songs and the arrangements and he just needs a way of recording them is quickly and easily as possible, and the fewer new things he needs to spend time learning, the better the end result is likely to be. Because these days you can buy the same DAW is that used by all the big name studios for a couple of hundred pounds at the most, the choices can be somewhat overwhelming for the new home-recordist. When I first started recording in the mid 70s you had basically three choices: Live into a mono or stereo reel-to-reel or cassette recorder Bouncing between to tracks of a stereo reel-to-reel recorder building up your recording one instrument at a time. Going into a commercial studio (which unless you had a lot of money to spend would probably only be 4-track) There was semi-pro studio equipment available, but even the most modest of 4-track studio set ups would cost you several thousand pounds in the days when a new Fender bass cost around a couple of hundred. It wasn't until the original Portastudio came out in 1979 that home recording started to become remotely affordable and simple enough for the average musician to get to grips with. And this brings me to another point. What exactly does the OP want out of the recordings he makes? And how much is he prepared to spend getting them to sound the way he wants them to. OK he has and iMac and Garageband, but he's still going to need an audio interface and some form of monitoring, he's taking about buying a keyboard for playing the Garageband instruments, and he'll probably also need a microphone, unless all his compositions are instrumentals. All of a sudden you are looking at spending money that could buy you a couple of days in a decent local studio where a well-organised and rehearsed musician could quite easily record and mix a 5-6 track mini album which will most likely sound far better than anything he can do at home. As others have already said, spending on studio equipment can make even the most rampant bass GAS look completely insignificant. I have my own cautionary tale of home recording. Having stated at the bottom, recording live onto a stereo cassette recorder and working my way through 4 and 8 track Portastudios adding analogue and then MIDI sequencing along the way, I finally upgraded to a fully-fledged DAW. by this time I had spent well in excess of £30,000 on equipment and the room in which it was all housed (most of which was done over the space of 7 years, and in retrospect for what I was trying to do would have been better spent hiring a pro-studio and producer). And while my recording were improvements over those I was making in the 70s, it was mostly technical improvements in sound quality (the elimination of tape hiss, wow and flutter, and not having to worry about sound degradation when bouncing tracks), and I still wasn't able to make recordings that sounded as good as the records and CDs I was buying. In the end I had the face up to the facts that the weak link in my recording was my (lack of) skill as an engineer - something that was very much brought home to me after a couple of trips to local studios with my last band where it took the engineer a matter of minutes to get a better sound than I was able to achieve on my own in weeks or fiddling at home. I've ended up selling nearly all my studio gear, and for anything other than basic MIDI sequencing and sorting out song arrangements I would go into a decent studio. So to the OP, think carefully about what you want to achieve. Home recording can be a lot of fun, but it can also be very frustrating experience. Just because you are a competent musician doesn't automatically mean that you will be a good engineer as well. From my PoV I'd much rather have a few really professional sounding recordings than what I do have which is lots of "home demos" in various states of (un)completion.

Why should it? If you think and item is too expensive don't buy it.

Why do you want 35" scale? Do you like the extra stretch between the frets?

I never saw the attraction either. I had a friend in the early 70s (when we were 10/11) who must have had one of the original versions. He looked like a complete idiot wobbling about on his brand new Raleigh Chopper and was the only person in our year who failed his Cycling Proficiency Test due to him not being in adequate control of his bicycle. Also the big fat tyres were rather prone to getting punctures compared with other designs and as a result we tended not to ask him out when we zoomed around the neighbourhood on our bikes as inevitably he'd slow us down when his tyres became defaulted and we'd end up having to help him carry his heavy and ridiculous excuse for a bicycle back home.

The whole back catalogue of IAMX, since I discovered them a couple of weeks ago.

Thanks! That's a significant improvement IMO over the Bass VI which measures 35.5 between the centres of the highest and lowest strings. If you wanted some better strings for this bass over the ones that came with it have a look at La Bella Bass VI set.

There is a difference in the suitability of doing this between bands who have their own PA and bands that use the PA in the venue; and I suspect that the OP is most definitely in the latter category. If I was playing in a band that always used its own PA system I'd have no hesitation in ditching my backline provided that the FoH was up to the job of properly amplifying the whole band and the monitoring system could deliver all the instruments clearly. However, for at least of 3rd of the gigs that I've done in the last ten years, either the venue PA and/or monitoring was completely inadequate for anything other than vocals. These gigs are fine with backline, but can be a terrible experience for both the band and the audience, as the band struggle to hear themselves and the audience is presented with a less than impressive FoH sound. And I certainly wouldn't want to risk using an unknown PA for a band that used acoustic drums and no backline.

I use to have one of those Wesley acrylic basses too and the break angle at the bridge was fine. If I hadn't been happy, then I would have looked at changing the neck angle with a shim instead.

Could you do me a big favour and measure the width of the nut from the lowest to the highest string. It would be interesting to compare it with the Fender/Squier Bass VI which IMO has an overly narrow neck. And you are right in assuming that it was originally intended to be strung EADGBE like a guitar only an octave lower. The scale length is really too short to go much lower than this, and while you could go A-A baritone guitar tuning, the single pickup and its position is more suited to bass tones rather than down-tune guitar.

It will very much depend on the sorts of gigs you play, but don't rely on the venue's monitors for bass. IME most of them (unless you are playing somewhere of a decent size like Camden Underworld) do a very poor job, and every other instrument you put through them looses clarity for the other instruments so of which like vocals have no alternative to monitors. Certainly the last time I played in a band with no backline, we ended up getting our own monitoring system for the instruments so that the in-house PA monitors could be used just for vocals and led to everyone in the band having a much better on-stage mix. And you are quite correct in saying that you don't need to model a bass amp - an amp is just some tone-shaping circuitry bolted onto something that makes the signal loud enough to drive speakers - which is why the Helix is worth a serious look, as there is no requirement to use any of the amp or cab models in the signal path. Having said that IME some of the EQs in the amp models seem to be more effective on the bass than the stand alone EQ modules. In addition to the sources mentioned by LukeFRC I'd suggest that you also have a look at the FRFR thread in the amps section. I've recently ditched my two big traditional bass rigs for a Helix and an RCF745 FRFR which I use in it's "monitor" configuration. I've only done one gig with it so far, but that was a big success as far as myself and the rest of my band were concerned.

If you can find the acrylic telecaster guitar build, you'll see that it is possible to polish all the internal surfaces too including the wiring channels and control cavities.

It was special glitter acrylic. I thought the bass played fine when I tried it (although it was heavy) but no attempt had been made to pretty up any of the internal faces where the wiring channels and control cavities were, plus with the acrylic neck you could see every cut for the frets.

It's short scale - 30"

I've seen the Crimson Charlie Jones Acrylic bass up close (and played it) and it's a horrible mess. One of the downsides to using acrylic for making guitars is that all the bits that are normally hidden away are still on show and any unpolished internal surface just looks plain nasty. There was someone who made an acrylic Telecaster Guitar (on one of the Telecaster forums IIRC) and he took the time to make sure that every surface was properly polished up and that looked really brilliant.

I don't know what your problem with my statement is? Rehearsals are for making the songs sound right in a band context. One of the things that makes the songs sound right is having the right sound for each of the instruments. Certainly both the band's that I play with use rehearsals to tweak the sounds of the various instruments so that they all sound right together. I try and get all my various patches on my helix sounding right before I get into the rehearsal room, but I know that I'm still going to have to do some more tweaking once I hear them in conjunction with the other instruments at gig volume. I think that one of the biggest problems that musicians have with complex equipment is that they don't take the time to learn how to use it properly. You are unlikely to join a band the day after you buy your first bass guitar, so why do you think that you'll be able to get a complex multi-effects process working properly for you the same evening you took it out of the box for the first time?

That's what the global EQ setting on the Helix is for.

That’s what rehearsals are for. There’s no way you can tell if any aspect of you sound is like in a band context without playing with the band.

AFAIK none of them were long scale as the OP requested.

@Sibob It seems weird that the Saffire Pro 24 is exactly 1U high but there is no way of properly rack mounting it. Normally with devices like this if the manufacturers didn't want you to rack mount it they would make the casing slightly larger so that they occupy more than 1U. I had a look at the alternatives that you suggested. The Saffire Pro 40 appears to be discontinued, but there is a "refurbished" version hidden away on the Focusrite web store (I had to use Google to find it as there weren't any links for this model anywhere on the Focusrite site). What does refurbished in this case mean? And how long will Focusrite continue to support the Saffire range? Apple have depreciated the FW protocol so I am assuming that very soon it won't be possible to run these devices if I want to stay up to date with my Mac OS for the other applications I need to run.

Whenever you want to.

Thanks. However MoonBassAlpha is right and looking at the Dual Lock there won't be enough room for it plus the Saffire in a space that is strictly 1U high. The Sugru looks interesting. How easy is it to remove when I no longer need the Saffire in the rack?

My Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 interface is now a permanent part of one of my band's gigging set ups and I would like to get it rack mounted with all the other stuff that goes with it. However there doesn't seem to be an "official" Focusrite rack mounting kit for it. At the moment I have it "clamped" between two rack mounting shelves, with a bit of effects pedal velcro attaching to the side of one of the shelves. This is not a particularly good solution as the shelves don't clamp it firmly enough in place and the velcro at the side isn't enough to hold it effectively. After each journey the rack case has done so far the Saffire has become dislodged to certain extent. So I am looking for a solution to fix it permanently in place, but without unduly damaging the casing of the Saffire. Ideally I would use effects pedal velcro over the base but as the Saffire is exactly 1U high, there isn't enough room the fit both the Saffire and velcro in-between the two rack shelves. I had a look at the base of the Saffire, but there don't seem to be any screws that I can repurpose to screw through the lower shelf. @Sibob What do Focusrite recommend in this situation? At the moment the only thing I can think of is to cover both the base and the top of the Saffire in strong double-side tape which will attach it to both the top and bottom shelves, but that seems a bit extreme and either still won't be strong enough to hold the interface in place while the case is being bumped around when it is carried, or it will permanently mark the casing of the Saffire which I don't really want to do. Does anyone have any other ideas. There isn't any room for some of the more obvious solutions as it all needs to fit into a 3U case with a removable top which is full as follows (from the bottom up): 1. Patch bay for all the external connections 2. Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 on a 1U rack shelf 3. Rack shelf holding a MacBook Pro surrounded by flight case foam. All these also need to be on the same face so I can't be creative a move some to the back of the case (which is full of rack-mounted mains distribution unit anyway).

Roots and fifth at the same time is the BEST!