BigRedX

[quote name='EBS_freak' timestamp='1489539397' post='3257826'] Yes and no. RJ45 but Ethercon - so a lot more robust! [/quote] Since I had my heavy duty Van Damme Cat5e cables made up, it is looking as though the weak part is probably going to be the cable itself rather than the shrouded connectors.

[quote name='EBS_freak' timestamp='1489539552' post='3257827'] They do. If you look at some peoples pedal boards, I would wager that it's a lot more accessible than some of those! [/quote] I'd always assumed that the pedals wedged in sideways or at the top end of those unfeasibly huge pedal boards were either on a loop controlled from a more assessable part of the board of not needed to be switched on or off mid-performance. I proved to myself at rehearsal last night that I can't reliably use switches on the second tier of my Line 6 Shortboard when sitting down - never mind standing up - so I'd have no chance with one of those boards!

IIRC batteries behave differently when used continuously until they run out as in the test above and when they are used for a couple of hours once or twice a day, as would be the case with most being used in musical instrument and effects pedals. For my own battery usage, everything that can be run off a mains adaptor is, and where I can only use batteries my PP3s are Duracel Industrial and my AA and AAAs are from Ikea where they came in packs of 10 for £1.00

[quote name='owen' timestamp='1489519489' post='3257648'] Note: We get quite a bit of rock radio play but never get around to claiming for that either. If you are not registered with PRS then there is money sitting somewhere waiting for you. Get on it! [/quote] Actually the money is only sitting waiting for you for so long (a year IIRC) after which it goes into the unlogged royalties pot which is distributed among members depending on their logged PRS earnings. So if you don't join the PRS your songwriting performance royalties eventually end up going to people like Bono and Elton John. Also if you are a PRS member you can submit set lists for the songs you play at your gigs and earn money from playing your own songs live! Admittedly it's not a lot - £6 divided by all the songs played by all the bands at a gig - but IME most bands don't do this so if you are the only band supplying a set list you'll end up with all the money. For a regularly gigging band this can be a decent source of income. The Terrortones funded the recording of two of our EPs with our PRS royalties from gigs.

[quote name='nash' timestamp='1489502686' post='3257474'] That's what I like about the Axe FX. It has that Links feature. So you just run a standard XLR cable to the board. No messing. [/quote] It's a pity though that they didn't also use XLRs for the MIDI ports as well.

[quote name='nash' timestamp='1489480179' post='3257208'] I've considered getting the rack version. The pros to me are: If the footcontroller breaks it's cheaper to replace. No long signal cable (wireless) just the cable to the controller. Cons: Can't fly it. Doesn't have an expression pedal built in. Initial cost is higher. It's a tough one. [/quote] Very much my dilemma too. One thing to consider is the connection between the rack unit and the pedal. Have Line6 gone for something a bit more robust that the standard Cat5e cable with RJ45 connectors that they used previously? IME these are simply not robust enough to be used in a gigging situation. At one rehearsal and a couple of gigs a week I was getting through a cable every 2-3 months, whereas all my (OBBM) signal cables are still going strong after 6 years of constant use and abuse. In the end I had a couple of special coilable Van Damme Cat5e cables made up with extra robust shrouding on the plugs to protect the locking mechanism (one that breaks the cables are virtually useless), and even so they are getting close to needing to be replaced after 2 years of intensive gigging.

[quote name='EBS_freak' timestamp='1489442848' post='3257070'] Oh cmon, you can do better than that Nash! [/quote] Do the people who design these things actually use them in real-life gig settings? I find it difficult enough accurately hitting any of the switches on the second row of my Line6 Shortboard. I can't imagine having the use a third or fourth row unless it was a sit-down performance.

Enjoyed that a lot. Is there a CD or Vinyl?

[quote name='TimR' timestamp='1489489215' post='3257305'] Yep. Set up a server with 100 virtual machines streaming the same song over and over again. You could increase the figures by 300,000 a week. Would be fairly easy to do at home in your bedroom, assuming Spotify isn't watching for this kind of behaviour. [/quote] IME you would need to set up a separate Spotify account on each virtual machine, and they would have to be full paid-for accounts as the free version will stop playing without user intervention every couple of hours.

In many ways I think that streaming is a far more accurate indicator of what is popular as opposed to sales for exactly the reasons that Happy Jack has said. And I don't think it's any more or less open to abuse than previous methods of calculating the chart were. Sure I can stick my band's latest release on continuous play on Spotify and rack up the micro-payments that it generates, but unless I can persuade a few hundred (if not thousand) other people to do it during the same week, my activities are not going to affect the chart standings. I think the decline in importance of the charts for us "older" basschatters has less to do with our tastes stagnating (although that's always a cause), and more to do with the way we consume music these days. Since pretty much everything is available on demand, there is little reason to be bombarded with the usual crap that the radio plays in order to hear the few songs that you like each day, and therefore it is very easy to lose touch with what is popular. Even if you are constantly on the lookout for new music and artists it is much easier to do that without exposing yourself to what Radio and TV think you should be listening to.

[quote name='TrevorR' timestamp='1489427650' post='3256837'] [size=3][font=Calibri][color=#000000]It’s funny the way in which you hear Wals being referenced in terms of the big 3… Mick, Geddy and Justin as if that is the gamut of the Wal sound.[/color][/font][/size] [size=3][font=Calibri][color=#000000]For me whilst I enjoy Geddy’s late 80s/early 90s sound and the bits of Mick’s fretless I have heard (Japan were never a huge part of my listening list and I can’t honestly hum any tune by Tool) they represent for me only the tiniest corner of what a Wal is capable of. And it’s their ability to sculpt a host of different tonalities which has always been a huge draw for me (fingers arguments notwithstanding).[/color][/font][/size] [size=3][font=Calibri][color=#000000]Think of other notable Wal users and their tones… Flea on BSSM, Bruce Thomas on Elvis Costello’s “Punch the Clock”, Laurence Cottle with his Big Band, with The Alan Parsons Project or with Black Sabbath, Macca on Flowers in the Dirt or the Light Fantastic Live Album, Martin Kemp with Spandau Ballet, John Illsley with Dire Straits, Percy Jones with Brand X, Jeff Ament with Pearl Jam, Greg Lake on the ELP Black Moon album… all broadly different examples of tones that a Wal is capable of producing.[/color][/font][/size] [size=3][font=Calibri][color=#000000]Back on topic, though, it was interesting to see what happened with the second hand price of Wal basses in the two or three year hiatus between Pete Stevens finally retiring and Paul Herman restarting production. If I recall the highest I saw a pretty standard Wal model go for was around $9500 dollars (around £7500 at the time – a decade ago now). It will be interesting to see how other luthier brands go when their makers stop making. However, as others have said, I suspect it will also be driven by distinctives around design. Zemaitis basses were already goig to silly prices before Tony Zemaitis. Real Zemaitis guitars and basses are now eye-wateringly expensive. And if any instrument had a distinctive USP they were one.[/color][/font][/size] [size=3][font=Calibri][color=#000000]At least the future of Wal seems secure for the foreseeable.[/color][/font][/size] [/quote] And what about Leigh Gorman of Bow Wow Wow? I think that the collectability of a particular bass depends very much on interesting players using that particular bass in preference to all others and not just as a passing phase like some of those mentioned above, who for me can just as easily be associated with other basses - like Martin Kemp who for me will always be associated with the Stingray he used in the early days when they were interesting rather than popular.

Thanks that's excellent info! Can you run the Helix with the amp models completely off? You can't on the Pod, so I just picked the model that sounded the best to me from the initial presets and worked from there. From my PoV the models of the actual amps on the bass Pod all sounded a bit on the "thin" side irrespective of how much they sounded (or not) like the amps they were based on. Only the Sub-Dub preset sounded sufficiently fat as a starting point for the bass sound I wanted "out of the box".

[quote name='hiram.k.hackenbacker' timestamp='1489418908' post='3256740'] Well, I think Wal and I think/hear Geddy. [/quote] And for me Geddy Lee will always be associated with the Rickenbacker on the cover of "All The World's A Stage".

[quote name='0175westwood29' timestamp='1489418344' post='3256729'] needs to be a load box not a di but this is what i was saying you'd get the sound of your jcm not the svt sim of the vtdi [/quote] If it's going between the amp and the cab you don't need a load as the cab will still be acting as one. However check that the DI is capable of dealing with the current that a modern high-wattage bass amp is capable of producing at its speaker output. IME most of these devices are aimed at guitar amps with a 100W maximum rating.

I don't get why "beginners" are going to struggle with multi-effects. You never see this kind of advice being handed out on synthesiser forums where since the mid 80s everything has been programmable and the user interface can be a lot less friendly than that of a good multi-effects unit. It's impossible to be beginner synth player and not have to deal with far more complex equipment than the average multi-effects device.

I've just been looking at these as I've been thinking of upgrading my BassPod XT... Is there anywhere I can try any of the Fractal units in the UK? I'd like to see if it's worth the extra €400 for the amp models on the AX8. TBH as a bass player, I'm not really bothered about how "authentic" they sound. On the Pod I mostly use the Sub-Dub preset as my starting point which isn't really an amp model at all. IMO so long as the EQ is flexible the "amp sound" doesn't really matter. One concern will be how quickly Fractal keep up with changes to Mac OSX for their editor. I know Line6 don't have the best reputation for being able to respond to the latest versions of the Mac operating system. Finally is there any real advantage to getting the rack versions of either the Fractal or Helix, other than it keeps most of the expensive electronics out of the beer puddles? The rack version of the BassPod XT adds a couple of useful extra functions and some I/O options, but otherwise that's it. I'm not initially impressed with the Fractal foot controller, I don't really like 2 banks of foot switches as I find the second bank awkward to operate on stage, so 3 banks is rather off-putting!

CT basses are an interesting proposition. According to the website he is no longer taking custom orders and the only new instruments being produced are the no frills and semi-frills basses, which will be a lot more consistent in terms of features from one example to the next which will definitely help with future collectability. However I suspect that Les Claypool is the main driving force behind the desirability of CT basses, but the range of instruments that CT has produced over the last 40 years encompasses a lot more than the type of bass that Les Claypool is associated with, so I suspect that while certain instruments will only get more collectable as time goes on, not every CT bass will go through the same increase in value. It would have interesting to see what would have happened with Gus had Prince not passed away when he did. Apparently he was very taken with his G1 Guitar and was in discussion for a matching bass... One of the things that always amuses me when discussing the desirability of Wal basses, especially their distinctive sound, is that the two bassists most renowned for being Wal users, one (Mick Karn) sounded pretty much the same when he was using his Travis Bean TB2000, and most of his best known work was done with that bass; and the other (Justin Chancellor) sound is as much to do with his pedal board as it is with his choice of bass.

I don't know why everyone is so down on programmability. Even in the days when I was only using a few pedals - filter, distortion, chorus, and flanger, I was always altering the settings on them depending on the song, and trying the get a seamless change-over when I needed to turn more than one pedal on or off at the same time was just impossible. For me programmability and the ability to completely change my sound at the single press of a footswitch couldn't come fast enough and I bought my first multi-effects unit (a second hand Roland GP8) in 1990. I had a look at the individual units mentioned in the posts above, but only a couple of them really work in the way I would like without needing extra kit to get the full functionality, and I'd still need a MIDI foot controller to run them all from. TBH live no-one is going to notice that the octave down sound (or any other for that matter) isn't quite as good as it would be from the most suitable dedicated pedal, and in the studio, It'll either be done in the DAW with a suitable plug-in or I'll double track the octave part as a separate take.

[quote name='hiram.k.hackenbacker' timestamp='1489333508' post='3256094'] ....and Carl Thompson. [/quote] I don't think so, for the same reason that I don't think that Sei basses will ever be really sought after once Martin Peterson stops making them; for the reason that they are too individual. The reason that Wal basses fit the profile is the fact that there is essentially one model (with a few variations) and irrespective of the top woods used the things that make a Wal what it is, the body shape, the pickups and the pre-amp are consistent from one example to the next. For that reason, should a big name bass player (or two) ever start using a Gus bass exclusively, then they will achieve the same status as Wal because there is little non-cosmetic variation from one example to the next. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next 10 or so years with Gus. Simon Farmer got a lot of rather useful publicity out of the fact that Prince used one of his guitars very briefly at his last ever gig.

[quote name='pete.young' timestamp='1489395478' post='3256486'] All the built-in effects loops I've ever seen have the 'send' downstream of the pre-amp in the signal path, so any pre-amp distortion is going to go into the loop. [/quote] Exactly. You run the effects that need to go before the pre-amp drive in front of the amp and those that need to after in the effects loop.

IMO the bass in question needs to satisfy two conditions: 1. It is no longer being made (either the whole brand or a particular model) 2. It is the bass of choice for a well known bassist with a distinctive musical style.

Have you looked at [url=http://www.luminlay.com]Luminlay[/url]? I had them fitted to my Warwick Starbass for exactly the same reason and they have been great. IIRC it cost £50 to have the fitted by my local luthier, although if the bass had a detachable neck I would have probably done it myself.

My playing notably improved when I bought my first really good bass - an Overwater Original in 1993, because that was the point when I realised that I could no longer blame any short comings in my playing on the instrument.

Effects loops are most useful on amps with valves in the pre-amp, so that you can run the effects that sound best post-distortion in the appropriate place.

Just play it like any other gig... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJx_CD-qj2g