BigRedX

I think that it very much depends on what a covers band want to achieve. Even "simple" 60s and 70s rock band recordings will be littered with extra guitar, keyboard, percussion and vocal overdubs. The trick is for the covering band to work out what is essential to the feel of the song and concentrate on getting these right. And you'll be amazed at how much you have to change the arrangement before the average non-musician audience member will notice. Ultimately these are the people who you really need to be entertaining. The only people who worry that the song doesn't sound like the original recording are the over-analysing musicians playing it. Even in my very limited time playing bass in a covers band I would often find myself playing lines that owed far more to what the keyboards were doing on the recording than the original bass guitar part. But that was what was needed to make the song sound right in the context of our covers band. IMO nail the overall feel, nail the dominant musical hooks and rehearse the songs properly to make sure that you have captured all the important elements. Alternatively fill the band with multi-instrumentalists and the stage with extra equipment to ensure that you can replicate the sounds of the recording exactly. Your call.

Remember that for home recording a passive DI box can be used in reverse for re-amping.

[quote name='Chienmortbb' timestamp='1436882291' post='2821662'] Now I would appreciate some suggestions. The system is very flexible. I can choose to switch various circuits in or out. So the questions I am going over are: 1. Should I have the HPF switchable? Pasdinwind dies but after using his amp for some months he leaves it on all the time. 2. Effects return can be configured as series or parallel. Most Amps are currently series but parallel allows some local control over the wet/dry signal mix. Oh and should those the switch and EFX return level control be on the front or back? 3. The Parametric EQ section gives me control of the mids from about 100Hz to. 2000Hz and of course this overlaps the fixed middle control. It is worth adding a switch to change the fixed mid frequency? It makes the amp more flexible but more complex. 4. Active/Passive switching and gain change. Passinwind has only active basses while I have currently only passive ones. At least one of my bases will be converted to active in the next few months with a variation of the two band MM preamp but I want to have the ability to have the two options. So two Jack sockets or one Jack plus an Active/Passive switch? I would appreciate any comments based on experience. [/quote] I don't know much about the technicalities of amp design, but from an end user PoV: 2. Both are effective. Personally I couldn't consider an amp that only had a parallel effects loop but sometimes it is more appropriate. What I would like to see is a socket switching system that bypassed the whole loop if either the send or return cable was unplugged. 4. Active/passive is really just about having 2 preset gain levels, and in many cases is a bit of a misnomer since I own passive basses with a higher output than many active ones. I'd rather see two inputs each with their own gain control and clip light so that the amp can be set up for use with any two basses and the relative levels adjusted to suit your needs.

You could try it, but I suspect that you'd be right about the feel and don't under-estimate the amount of wear that any finish on the keys is going to have to withstand. I wore through 2 layers of clear-coat and 2 layers of colour sprayed onto the keys in a matter of weeks. If you can get them 3D printed out of the right kind of material it would be a far better solution. Just remember that every white key in the octave is a slightly different shape plus the final high C. That's 9 different designs you are going to need creating and outputting.

[quote name='heminder' timestamp='1441151432' post='2856545'] No, I'll be keeping the cable. I don't bin perfectly usable equipment that just needs some work. As for the snake oil, I bought the cable having compared it first hand in the shop to others and I can definitely hear an improved signal quality. I haven't seen any of their marketing, but cable capacitance is a very real phenomenon if you know anything about electronics. [/quote] Fair enough... But first you need to ensure that the problem really is with the cable itself and not with the sockets that it is being plugged in to. Have you checked with another cable? Have you tried the Elixir cable with another bass and/or amp? What are the results? It wasn't obvious from the photos and reviews whether or not the jack plugs on your cable came apart to reveal the solder contacts. However you talk about replacing the jacks and one review does mention "non serviceable proprietary plugs" so I'll assume that you can't, unless you tell me otherwise. That said. instrument cables rarely fail at the jack plugs and if they do it is because a solder contact has come apart. This can't really happen on moulded plugs because the body is formed tightly around where the wire joins the plug, so the obvious culprit is the cable itself. So why has it failed? You didn't answer any of my questions about the use the cable has seen. Are you mostly a bedroom player with the bass permanently connected to the amp? Or are you out rehearsing and gigging every week? Do you coil the lead up neatly after use or does it get flung in a tangle into your equipment bag to be sorted out next time you need it? All of this can have a bearing on why and where along the length it has failed. If it is the cable itself that has failed you could cut out the dodgy section and solder a new jack plug onto the good end. If you are lucky the failure will have happened close to one of the plugs (the section you fit through your guitar strap to stop the jack plug pulling out of the bass is a good place to to start looking) and you won't loose too much length. You can check the cable by holding it in both hands a few inches apart and going along the flexing it until you are able to replicate the popping and crackling sounds. Check the whole length - there may be more than one problem area. Now how good are your soldering skills? Do you already have all the tools? From the way you asked the question in your OP I'm guessing not. A good set of soldering and wire stripping and cutting tools is a smart investment if you are going to be making up loads of leads and be tinkering around with electronics. But for a couple of cables its not such good value. You will be a lot better off getting replacement leads from OBBM. They are great value and extremely robust. Mine which are now over 5 years old get gigged at least once a week and are still working perfectly. Finally capacitance. Yes I know all about this and yes it does make a difference. However, a good quality instrument cable has a capacitance of between 55pF and 85pF per meter. Bearing in mind that the capacitor in the tone control of your bass is 0.047µF, for a standard 20ft guitar lead the overall capacitance of good quality cable works out at the worst 1% of the tone capacitor - in other words turning down your tone control just a tiny amount. I couldn't find any official specifications for your Elixir cable, but one forum post mentioned 10pF per foot which works out at 33pF per meter. OK this is lower than the standard good quality leads but in real terms its the difference between turning down the tone control a tiny amount and a very tiny amount. If you are 16 and can still hear those mosquito alarm things, then you can probably hear a difference when playing on your own. In a band mix? I doubt it. If you were really bothered about loosing HF signal content you'd have gone digital wireless. And this may well be why your lead has failed. There are two simple ways to reduce capacitance in a cable. Increase the amount of insulation between the conductors, or reduce the area of the conductors themselves. IME when I open up a ready-made cable with moulded plugs, I find a loosely woven screen and a very thin central conductor. I'm not saying this is what you will find in the Elixir cable, but it's the cost effective method - especially when you consider that the vast majority of the people who these cables are sold to are never going to see inside to find out. Also Elixir claim that their 20ft cable has the frequency response of a 3ft one. I don't know what kind of 3ft cable they were comparing it with, but as you can see from the capacitance figures I've quoted above, it certainly wasn't one of the good ones! Snake oil in my books right there.

[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1441134734' post='2856379']I'm firmly in the music should not be free camp... and at a charity gig yesterday, one of the main organisers was moaning his band that was on last had lost quite a bit of time and they had to start later... this was because the bill overrun. He said that there were plenty of bands out there desperate to do the gig so he didn't see why the bill needed people that couldn't play to their time slot... But they were the bands that made his event a success.. [/quote] But part of being a "professional" band is sticking to your time slot and tailoring your set appropriately. However IMO multi-band gigs that over-run are as much the fault of the organisers (and their lack of organisation) as they are the bands.

IME the only permanent way of doing this is to find replacement keys that have been moulded in the appropriate colour. Maybe getting them 3D printed? I experimented with spraying up keys in the 80s (I used a very customised Yamaha KX5 keytar) but the results were always disappointing since the paint tended to wear off very quickly - especially considering how much time and effort was expended dismantling the keyboard, spraying the keys and them re-assembling them once they were dry. Even spraying a couple of clear coats over the top of the colour only slightly delayed the inevitable wearing off of the colour.

[quote name='hiram.k.hackenbacker' timestamp='1440977284' post='2855120'] The regular bassist for a band I dep for is unavailable for a freebie music festival type gig they have been offered next summer. It's a fair trot away for a freebie (250 mile round trip) and as I work shift work, I will also have to take a nights leave. I've done freebies for them before, but they've been close and have landed on a day off rather than a work day. I have a feeling that the band see me more as the regular than the dep as by the end of this year I will have played more gigs with them than their regular. I'm normally an "anytime, anywhere" type player, but this type of sacrifice for zero return is beginning to wear a little thin. Do other bands who employ the services of deps pay them no matter what, even if it's a freebie? [/quote] For me this post pretty much sums up everything that is wrong with the whole depping system. IMO anyone who is replaced by a dep more times than they actually appear in a band is not a full time member irrespective of how good they are as a musician and what their role was in getting the band set up in the first place. If you regularly can't make the gig why are you in the band? Apart form very rare occasions reps should always be paid. If a band aren't prepared to pay and their regular member(s) can't do the gig maybe they shouldn't have accepted the gig in the first place? So, for the OP, is this gig with a covers or originals band? If it's covers you should be getting paid (and so should the band) no questions asked. If it's originals you need to weigh up how much you like the music/band against how inconvenienced and out of pocket you will be if you take the gig. The gig in question is almost a year away, so personally if this was me I'd let the band know that I'd been offered a paying gig on the same day, and see what they say. Either they'll come up with some money if they really want you, otherwise they still have plenty of time to find someone else to do it.

I think some people on here are unclear about what royalties the PRS actually collects. They act on behalf of songwriters and publishers. Now a lot of the time in rock and other modern forms of music the performers are also to writers but that isn't always the case. When a covers band upload their version of a song in order to promote (advertise) themselves is it not fair that the people who wrote that song benefit financially from it? Also it's not the bands that have to pay for the privilege of covering a song so it's not actually costing the musicians performing it anything. What's wrong with that? The people who are directly benefiting from using music and who have to pay the PRS licence in order to use the music (like Soundcloud and other streaming sites, Pubs, Shops etc.) are all enhancing their business through using music, so why shouldn't they pay for that? Soundcloud are not a charity. They exist to make money. If their business model is built on not paying the composers of the music they supply what is due to them then Soundcloud deserve to go out of business. Otherwise their shareholders can take a small cut in profits pay up. Also these days there are increasingly fewer instances of unlogged performances. Especially on-line. Soundcloud will know exactly how many times each individual track they host has been streamed. With cumulative micro-payments it is easy to work out exactly how much each songwriter whose works appear on Soundcloud is due.

[quote name='Bassassin' timestamp='1440720185' post='2853360'] Yes, don't know a lot about them but there have been reissued Teisco "classics" (Del Rey, Spectrum etc) around for a few years now. I'd guess Japanese market-exclusive, hence them turning up on Ishibashi. J. [/quote] Thanks Jon. So I'm not looking at bargain vintage instruments then. They do look pretty authentic though. I do fancy a Spectrum...

IME the main reason why the standard eBow won't work on the bass is because of the wider string spacing you can't rest it on the adjacent strings like you can on a guitar and therefore it can't be held steadily enough to get the string vibrating.

As others have said are you 100% sure it's the cable itself and not one of the sockets that it is plugged in to? If it really is the cable then IME there are two reasons why cables go bad. Either they have been severely abused by the user or they simply haven't been made very well in the first place. What sort of use has the cable been put through? Are you gigging regularly or mostly a bedroom player? It is possible to revive these cables by finding where the problem section is (hopefully near one of the ends) and cutting it out and re-soldering the jack plug to the new end. However as this is a "premium" branded cable the jack plugs might be moulded on. Is that the case? TBH though, this normally only a temporary fix. Unless the problem was caused by an isolated case of extreme cable abuse, it will fail again in the same way at some point, so unless you are happy with an ever shortening lead this isn't really a sensible long term solution. IME these branded cables never have the same reliability as leads made up from standard high quality components such as Neutrik connectors and Van Damme cable. The leads I made myself with good quality components always end up lasting far longer than any I've bought ready made, irrespective of the brand or price paid. IMO you should bin this cable, and if you have the soldering skills make one yourself with good quality jacks and screened cable or alternatively get Basschat's [url="http://www.rock-wire.uk.com"]OBBM[/url] to make you one up. EDIT: I've just found a review of what is probably your Elixir cable. I'm sorry but what a load of snake-oil bollocks that is. Well on par with the crap that high-end hifi enthusiasts get fed. It continually amazes me that these manufacturers keep trying to re-invent the wheel (and failing) when it comes to instrument cables, when there are already components like the ones mentioned earlier in this post with many more years of tested reliability behind them.

[quote name='Bassassin' timestamp='1440697455' post='2853111'] On reflection that might be a bit optimistic. I tend to go on what I'd hope to get if I was selling in a 99p start auction, and it would probably need its original bridge cover & a Teisco logo to get anywhere near that. After a second look, I suspect that in the flesh it's a bit more knocked-about than the pics suggest, too. J. [/quote] Jon - to go slightly OT for a bit. Do you know if the Teisco brand has been revived in Japan recently? There's been a few rather tasty looking instruments on the Ishibashi Ubox over the last 12 months with very reasonable prices and in AFAICS pretty good condition for something made in the 60s. Any ideas?

[quote name='heminder' timestamp='1440694069' post='2853072'] Ugh, freaking publishers. They're modern day dinosaurs. Parasitic dinosaurs. This is the kind of crap copyright trolls pull. From PRS' Wikipedia page: "In 2007, PRS for Music took a Scottish car servicing company to court because the employees were allegedly "listening to the radio at work, allowing the music to be 'heard by colleagues and customers.'" In June 2008, PRS for Music accused eleven police stations of failure to obtain permits to play music, and sought an injunction and payments for damages. In one case it told a 61-year-old mechanic that he would have to pay £150 to play his radio while he worked by himself. Plenty more stuff like this at [url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRS_for_Music"]https://en.wikipedia...i/PRS_for_Music[/url] EDIT: On further reading their page, they're not even publishers. All they seem to do is be a troll and collect fees when they feel entitled to. They're the lowest of the low. [/quote] I take it you are not a songwriter?

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1440625921' post='2852575'] And Bolan, Bowie, Slade and The Sweet were all influenced by the Beatles. IMHO, you had an interest in The Beatles, but you didn't know it. This is the point I have been trying to make to many that weren't there. Blue [/quote] Yeah, but so what? *channelling my 13 year old self* TBH everyone is influenced by everything they hear in both wanting to be like the bands they like and not wanting to be like the bands they don't like. I'm sure that I have been influenced by The Beatles over the years but to me they are no more or less important as an influence then the 1000s of over bands that I have heard in that time.

I suggest you read through [url=http://basschat.co.uk/topic/266878-sample-triggers-easy-options-help/]this thread[/url] just below yours which should provide all the information you need.

[quote name='dood' timestamp='1440582003' post='2852069'] Maybe I can help you then! - Take yourself back to when you first started learning to play the instrument. What did you do? You mimicked the songs you loved - you started learning those first riffs and mastered the first few notes around the bass neck. Using riffs is a great help for students. The reason I also suggested making a note of what scale or for example mode a riff is in or uses is very helpful. A student can begin to understand what a particular scale sounds like or indeed looks like on the bass neck.[/quote] Well it's over 40 years since I first started learning to play the guitar and so my memories of the time are a little hazy... But what I do remember is that my main goal for learning to play was so I could write my own songs and preform them in a band. Obviously I learnt the guitar by playing other people's songs but not in the way I see described here - painstakingly picking out the relevant musical lines and reproducing them. I had the sheet music and songbooks for some bands that I liked, and had learnt how to strum my way through the chord progressions for the songs that I knew. A school friend showed me the blues pentatonic scale and as far a I was concerned that was pretty much everything I needed to start writing my own songs. Occasionally when I was working on an idea I might find myself playing something that sounded like another song and sometimes I would take a 5-10 minute detour to work out a bit more from what I remembered, but it was never anything more than a distraction, and often when I compared what I had come up with against the "original" the two only had the most basic bits in common. At the time when I started playing there was a big debate in the music press about the merits of popular bands who didn't write their own songs and how they were in some way inferior, which made me and the school friends I formed my first band with all the more determined that we were only going to play and record songs that we had written ourselves. Also it was very difficult to sound like your heroes when your instrument was a cheap acoustic guitar fitted with a pickup going through a home-made fuzz box into a transistor amp, and not a Strat or Les Paul into a Marshall stack, so on the few occasions when I did copy someone else's riff, the results sounded so different that my band quickly made up our own musical vocabulary the suit the instruments and equipment we had at or disposal. By the time I had managed to acquire some proper gear and my first bass it was well into the post-punk era when literally anything went and my unconventional techniques for playing and writing were most definitely an advantage when it came to the bands I was in getting noticed. Listening back to those early recordings I can barely hear the influences of the music I was listening to in the music I was playing. For me there has always been a disconnect between the two, although there have been times when the two have been closer together than they were when I was first starting out. The other thing was that for the first 20 years of being in bands I nearly always played with people who had learnt in very much the same way that I had, so it wasn't until I started spending time on forums like this one that I realised that my musical development appeared to have followed a quite different path to that of most musicians.

I think Blue is over estimating how important any kind of music is to people who weren't actually there at the time. Despite having been born in 1960, The Beatles completely passed me by. By the time I was interested in any kind of music it was the 70s and they were long (in pop/rock music terms) gone. Not just yesterday's news but the last decade's news. Paul McCartney was in Wings who made a couple of albums that I enjoyed and Ringo had produced one catchy pop single. The others weren't even on my radar because I was far more interested in Bolan, Bowie, Slade and The Sweet. Listening to "old" music was what your parents did and to me and my friends The Beatles were old music. When we looked at photos of The Beatles they were dressed either in suits (how "square") or like hippies. They certainly didn't have that modern cool of our glam rock heroes. That doesn't mean that they weren't important. They just weren't that important to me even though it was only 2 years since they had split up. Since then I've come to appreciate some of what they did, but there are plenty of other bands from that era that I enjoy far more. They may well have stood upon the shoulders of The Beatles to be able to do what they did, but it doesn't matter to me. Sometimes the trail-blazers are less interesting than the ones who come after simply because they've had to make compromises in order to blaze that trail. Their followers don't have those constraints and are all the more interesting/entertaining for it. And that's how it is for every generation. If you didn't experience it first hand, you can never quite "get" how important the various pop cultural "revolutions" were. Plus everyone wants to discover interesting music/things/ideas for themselves and not have it forced upon us by older people who claim to know better.

Where is Beatles band? This band who have not been as of late clear of circumstance. Beatles Band! Can we no longer hear there medolious throng? John! Paul! All in Beatles Band come forth! What question have we to put? Now? Arguments neccessary can begin with whole results expected for any return. Ringo! Here in Thailand Beatles band experience is long loved and can be hurt away from John, Paul etc. Please give any news to Samuel K. Amphong of address similar to above. yours as in rock! Samuel K Amphong, Thailand

Loads of stuff that would sound better and be a lot easier to play if it was done on a guitar or a synth rather than a bass. So for me most of this was the bass playing equivalent of a dog walking on its hind legs. Impressive only because it has been made unnecessarily difficult through the wrong choice of instrument. Having said that I like the two fretless bass pieces. One was beautifully melodic while still being a "bass" piece and the other drove the music along like a bastard. And the piece played on the keyboard, showing that it's all about picking the right instrument to do the job.

[quote name='dood' timestamp='1439398017' post='2842486'] Let's have a list of (at least) 50 'must know' bass lines to learn. [/quote] I really can't see the point of learning something you don't have any need to actually play it. I'd sooner be writing some of my own. Far more interesting and productive.

Using the Enter key definitely makes a difference. Went from mid 700s on the mouse button to high 800s on the Enter Key.

[quote name='Len_derby' timestamp='1440484395' post='2851083'] Two comments to make. Firstly, I'm personally very wary of making any decisions based on the sound of any on-line sound clips. There are just too many variables and factors that influence what you will hear. Secondly, I'd say just go for it and buy one. You'll have a much better idea of what you want (and don't want) after living with something for a while. If you don't like what you get; well, pretty much everything can be sold again if priced realistically. If you do lose money, that can be looked on as 'rental' costs. Both of the above are very much my personal opinions! So no hard feelings if you think it's rammel. Good luck with your search! I'm sure Basschaters (me included) would let you try out their basses. [/quote] I'd agree with all of this. I've completely given up on sound clips/YouTube demos for basses. With the appropriate playing technique and recording it's possible to make any bass pretty much sound however you want it to. IMO all it tells you is how that particular player with whatever signal path they have chosen to make the recording sounds when they play the bass. IME, when I get to play the bass in question I always make it sound completely different. If you want a more modern sounding hollow body then IMO you can't go far wrong with a Warwick Starbass, but I think you'll find that with the right signal path pretty much any of the basses listed in your OP will do the job.

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif] Hideous in so many ways. [/font][/color]

[quote name='tracktionmonkey' timestamp='1440357425' post='2850087'] ...Probably not an Eastwood Classic 4, as I am looking less for that 60ies sound, as I didn't like my violin bass of old... [/quote] I doubt whether the Eastwood sounds any more or less 60s than any of the other basses you've mentioned as being interested in. For all their revivalist looks the instruments themselves are made with modern techniques and standard modern parts.