BigRedX

I love the way Atlansia work. They may not always get it right but they are continually pushing the boundaries of what is possible with stringed amplified musical instruments. It's certainly a lot more interesting than yet another P or J bass copy.

I used to have one fitted to a Squire VMF Jazz. It's OK I supposed but it didn't really do anything that I couldn't already do with the tone controls on my BassPod. Also fitting it required routing out another couple of mm from the depth of the control cavity and then having to re-shield everything. IMO too much hassle for no appreciable gain, but then I'd have probably said the same about any of the similar pre-amps available for the J-Bass. I personally can't see the point of fitting something in your bass that doesn't really do anything more than you should already be able to do elsewhere in your signal chain.

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1430321095' post='2760271'] WOW! Nice bookings Blue [/quote] Thanks. It's going to be "interesting". Personally I'm not a big fan of festivals as a punter because IME the British summer weather isn't really suitable for them. Audiences invariably end up with trench foot or occasionally sunstroke. My favourite festival to attend as an audience member was just 10 minutes walk from where I was living at the time so I could go home if the weather or the bands were sh*t! Organisation at some of them can be a bit too relaxed for my liking. In previous years we have played events where we've had to cut out set short due to bands before us over-running. On one occasion we were left with 20 minutes in which to set up and play before the curfew! And having done the first festival of the year on a day when it has mostly been raining nothing so far has changed my opinion. The stage and a good deal of the audience are was under cover, but the bit just in front of the stage was open to the elements, so the atmosphere for the bands playing earlier in the day wasn't great. Luckily the rain had stopped before we were on so people were actually down at the from for our set, but it could have been a pretty depressing gig. Lets see how the rest of the "summer" turns out...

Our first festival gig of 2015 at Puzzfest in Sowerby Bridge. We were the last of the bands playing the outdoor stage before the final band of the day played in the pub. Typically for a bank holiday weekend there was a slow and study fall of rain all through the afternoon and into the evening when we turned up. The stage and a large portion of the area around it was under cover, but the section just in front of the stage was open to the elements and consequently the audience was huddled in the sheltered areas away from the bands. Luckily by the time we came to play the rain had stopped and some people were actually down the in front of the stage. After a few lack-lustre gigs recently, the extra rehearsal we've been putting in for our forthcoming album recording played off and we played a stormer, with Mr Venom climbing up into the rafters and some of the more enthusiastic (drunken) members of the audience joining him in a state of undress. The cold weather played havoc with the tuning of the semi-acoustic guitar and bass, but we managed to sound reasonably in-tune for most of the set. [IMG]http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n249/BigRedX/Dick%20Venom%20Live/11210515_10153250914127836_5616556718067456548_n_zpsquxsbw97.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n249/BigRedX/Dick%20Venom%20Live/11150692_10153250914637836_3978842837679579347_n_zpslro71cbg.jpg[/IMG] Next week we're in the studio and then it's Strummercamp in Manchester on 22nd May.

[quote name='Stompbox' timestamp='1430463810' post='2761583'] I like the idea of a semi/hollo body bass - but feedback may be an issue. [/quote] My current main live bass is a Warwick Starbass. Feedback is only an issue when I want it to be and it feeds back very nicely when I do. Unless you play very loudly with lots of gain and/or distortion it shouldn't be a problem.

Looks like a modified Fender Coronado I.

When you buy an expensive bass you are mostly paying for playability and an exceptional standard of fit and finish. IME what this does is it inspires you to play better. It certainly works for a very ordinary bassist like me. When I got my fist really good bass (an Overwater Original) my playing and consequently the sounds that I was making improved massively since for the first time the only obstacle to being able to do what I wanted musically was my lack of ability and not any restrictions the the instrument I played was putting on me.

[quote name='uncle psychosis' timestamp='1430319489' post='2760239'] Here is some info about modding the bridge on these: [url="http://thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/38132/ngd-mosrite-style-baritone-deko"]http://thefretboard....e-baritone-deko[/url] [/quote] Thanks for that link. However on mine it's a combination of both the intonation and height adjustment screws that are preventing me from having the strings in their ideal locations. I'll have a play with the suggestions in that thread (at least I've discovered how to adjust the overall bridge height from it) but I think that if I'm going to keep the guitar, the supplied bridge will have to go and be replaced something a bit more robust and easily adjustable. If I could find a Tune-o-matic type with individual height adjustable roller saddles that might be the best bet.

Dick Venom & The Terrortones have a whole bunch of festival dates coming up: [url=http://www.puzzlehall.com]Saturday 2nd May: Puzzlefest Weekender, Puzzle Hall Inn, Sowerby Bridge[/url] [url=http://www.strummercampfestival.co.uk]Friday 22nd May: Strummercamp Festival, Manchester Rugby Club[/url] [url=https://www.facebook.com/events/854544004588079/]Friday 29th May: Alice’s Wicked Tea Party, Lytchett Matravers, Dorset[/url] [url=http://jsouthgat7.wix.com/deerstock]Friday 24th July: Deerstock Festival, Newton Cross Country Course, Nottinghamshire[/url] [url=http://www.outciderfestival.co.uk]Saturday 1st August: Outcider Festival, Fernhill Farm, Compton Martin, Somerset[/url]

Bi amping is great if you do it right and have a definite need for it other than it sounds like a good idea. As others have said the upper signal range needs a lot less power to be heard so most of the time you won't be utilising the full power potential of your amplification. On the other hand you do have the possibility of much more control over your sound to get the just the right balance. Off course you need the right cabs to do this - most bass cabs are designed to be full range which isn't what you want at all in a bi-amped system. When I used to run a bi-amped system my top cab was custom made based on the speaker housing of my favourite guitar combo with 2 x 8" speakers. The bottom cab was a standard 1 x 15 with the tweeter removed a more bass focused driver installed. For me the biggest advantage to bi-amping is if you use a lot of effects you can distribute them in the signal path where they will do the met good and have the least adverse effect on the overall bass guitar sound. The only disadvantage to this is that you will need supply separate DIs for the high and low portions of the signal to the PA and this often requires a bit of re-education for the person mixing the sound.

[quote name='chrismuzz' timestamp='1430259948' post='2759696'] Yep! I have two Peavey Zodiacs.. one is the DE model, the other is a BXP.. I thought they were identical until I put Entwistle neo pickups in both (and the same strings, Elixir stainless). They are noticeably different! The white one sounds more aggressive in the upper mids and the black one sounds "cleaner", more solid. The difference is even bigger once you apply some overdrive. Since the body woods are both painted and glossed the only thing I can think of as being different is the wood underneath! [/quote] Are you sure that it's the wood that is making the difference. Have you tried swapping the pickups between the two instruments? That's the only way to be sure.

[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1430303030' post='2759966'] Style over substance ..?? no..!! [/quote] But style is part of the substance. It's far easier to do well as a band if you have an image. If you don't have the confidence to look good on stage then IME you don't have the confidence to be a decent live performer from a musical PoV either. Those musicians who think they can get away with "letting the music do the talking" are deluding themselves.

[quote name='ras52' timestamp='1430301343' post='2759936'] I'm not a fan of more than one volume control, so I've also pondered this, but I don't think I've seen a pan-pot on a passive bass... is there some reason to do with buffering and/or other clever electric stuff for that? [/quote] Shouldn't be a problem. On the cheaper pre-amps that get fitted into the majority of far-eastern basses both the volume and pickup blend controls are passive, only the EQ part is actually active.

Well I think I know what has given the Baritone guitar its deko status. I restrung it with D'Addario Medium gauge baritone strings (14-68) which has made a big improvement in the playability at the bottom end although for my tastes I'd be happier with an even heavier low B. However fitting the new strings has shown that it is impossible to get even string spacing with the bridge that is currently fitted, as the height and intimation screws get in the way of the ideal positions for the stings. Looking at the Eastwood version, I see that they have a more conventional Tune-o-matic style bridge rather than the Jaguar style that this Harley Benton sports. However Tune-o-matic bridges are fixed radius so I'm going to need one that matches the radius of the HB fingerboard. There's no specs given on either the Thomann site or for the Eastwood model, so how do I measure the fingerboard radius to ensure I get the correct replacement bridge?

I find the phrase "smart casual" hilarious since the men wearing it invariably look neither smart or casual.

TBH I with a few highly specialised exceptions, bass rigs aren't designed to be transparent. What most musicians consider to be transparent is actually something that sounds pleasing to them with the tone controls in their mid-way position. I'm sure that if you actually looked at the waveforms going in and out they wouldn't be identical at all (which is what you are hoping for with a transparent system). If you are really after something that changes the sound of the bass as little as possible I would look at an Avalon DI going into a high quality PA power amp feeding a full-range PA cab. However I have a feeling you might not like the results much. For me finding a rig with the right kind of coloration of sound is far more desirable than being totally transparent.

6v6 are you playing covers or originals? The market is completely different for each.

[quote name='owen' timestamp='1430205195' post='2758795'] I used to have Peavey Midibass - it tracked fine but was less than inspiring as an instrument! [/quote] Of all the guitar synth systems that I have tried the Peavey one was by far the best on account of it actually working. Like yourself I've pretty much abandoned stringed instrument as a method of controlling synths in favour of the string triggers/fret button devices. I have a Yamaha EZ-EG which is very limited in what it can do compared with the recent systems, but works perfectly well for controlling synths when I need a guitar like device rather than keyboard to get the feel I am after. I think when the next generation of these controllers come out with expression in the fret buttons, it's going to kill off "conventional" MIDI guitars for anyone who doesn't need actual guitar generated guitar sounds.

As others have said, pitch to MIDI conversion is a complete non-starter for the bass guitar due to the time it takes to sense the pitch of the string and then convert it to MIDI data. The laws of physics are against you on this. On a good system like the Axon coupled with the latest version of the Roland pickup you are looking at 1 1/2 cycles as a minimum, That's 41Hz for the E on a bass which which works out at 37 ms. That's slap-back echo territory and a noticeable delay. Add onto that the time taken to convert that into MIDI and you can see why this is a dead end system for those of us wanting to drive MIDI devices from stringed instruments. A less good system like Sonuus will take even longer. Even Tony James who is probably one of the most experienced users of pitch to MIDI for driving bass sounds doesn't use a bass, but has a MIDI guitar driving his synths transposed down an octave. Even then he has still had to train himself to play slightly ahead of the beat in order to be in time with the drums. This means that realistically you need an instrument with a fret sensing system to work out the pitch of the notes you are playing like the Industrial Radio system. Luckily for you it's not the only option. You can still find the previous version of the technology which was licensed to Peavey in their Cyber Bass and MIDI Bass instruments. Although they have been discontinued they do turn up reasonably frequently second hand. Make sure that they include the cable and interface unit as it's useless for driving MIDI devices without them. The Bass Gallery in London has [url=http://thebassgallery.com/bass/4-string/peavy-midi-bass.html]one for sale for £590 right now[/url].

I really don't understand why it's considered acceptable to use the same cabs and just swap amps. I would never allow someone to plug their amp that I know nothing about into my cabs. I've once used my amp with someone else's cabs which was a totally nerve-wracking experience. The cabs were so unsensive that I had for the only time ever the master volume on my amp above half way (with my cabs it rarely goes past 10 o'clock) Luckily the cabs seemed to survive our set, but I vowed never to do it again. Plus I had to borrow some Speakon to Jack leads to connect my amp the the cabs - I don't consider any cab that isn't equipped with Speakons to suitable for use with my amp. And having seem what happens with guitarists and their far more delicate all-valve heads where often the owner of the shared cab doesn't know what impedance it is, I find the whole idea of being able to share cabs ridiculous. I'm quite happy to let the bassist from the other bands we share the bill with use my complete rig. That way nothing gets unplugged or plugged in wrongly. It also helps having a rig that is so stupidly loud that even the dumbest, deafest bass player would never be able to run it at anything approaching fatal volumes.

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1430163466' post='2758593'] Absolutely, it's not perfect. Gaps in coverage both for connectivity and the music selection are quite big. I still buy music and will probably continue... even if it's only out of habit. But I think one day streaming will probably be good enough that most people would not care about buying. Only us old die hards It's not there yet, but the idea is attractive. Ad even if it isn't attractive to me, it seems that's the way we're going: moving to get people to pay smaller amounts regularly rather than larger sums once. It's even there in software, look at Adobe and Microsof Office 365... Little by little, we pay for a service rather than ownership. Once we moved to CDs, I stopped progressively caring about the physical format. The old records with the big sleeves, the artwork, all the information inside, photographs... thatw as interesting and precious. Then CDs arrived and it's all small, if it exists at all... it's just not the same. I converted all my CDs to mp3 and that's how I play music most of the time, from a hard drive. [/quote] I still view my CDs (and vinyl) as backup for my iTunes library. Back in 2001 when I bought my first iPod I spent a week testing different MP3 converters and bit rates to find what sounded to me the best and then spent the next year ripping my CD collection (as well as digitising the vinyl that wasn't available then on CD). Now that storage is both cheap and plentiful I'm in the process of re-ripping everything as uncompressed AIFFs. However over the last 14 years I've bought quite a few tracks on line when the songs I wanted weren't available any other way and trying to keep track of where they came from so I can add the best quality versions to my new library. I know that I'll invariably miss transferring some over and short of going through around 35,000 tracks to spot which ones I've missed there is no way to ensure I get them all. There will be no problem getting everything on CD transferred across, just the time it will take. I'm still not convinced by the subscription model for software either, and I'm not alone in this respect. Only one of the advertising/design agencies that I freelance for has "upgraded" to Creative Cloud and that's only because they needed more licences and CC is now the only option for adding new seats.

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1430159643' post='2758540'] and there's that too! A streaming service that recognises what you play, and suggests "others you might like" has a huge potential. I have spent hundreds on Amazon after buying a CD and checking the "other Cds you might like", discovering some interesting bands in the process. [/quote] There's a service called Pandora (which sadly is no longer available in the UK) which offers this. When I've used it in the past it has been very good at suggesting music I should be interested in based on my tastes and I found my current favourite band "The Birthday Massacre" through Pandora. Unfortunately for musicians it's royalty rate is even poorer than Spotify.

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1430159460' post='2758539'] ... yes, and that's why I wasn't keen on music streaming. Until it started to become easy for me to find music I wanted to hear at a reasonably low price. I still buy... but I like not depending on having the music physically with me. As long as I have internet connection, I'm set. It's not great yet... but eventually coverage/selection will be better. It frees you from having to have that particular CD with you, or the mp3 in your player or whatever. Enough people like that to make streaming popular. [/quote] I'm quite happy to use a streaming service to listen to bands I've heard about that sound interesting, but if I do find something worth hearing more than a handful of times I'll still buy the CD. I wouldn't want to rely on the streaming service being the only way I could listen to the music and I certainly wouldn't be prepared to pay for it, when I'm using it solely as a try before I buy service. While internet connectivity is a lot better than it used to be it's still not 100% reliable, whereas so long as I have electricity I can alway listen to my CDs, and even in cities mobile data can be very patchy. IME the infrastructure still isn't good enough to make streaming a viable substitute for actually owning a physical copy of the recordings you want to hear. And that's before I even start looking at the huge gaps in the various streaming services catalogues...

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1430040138' post='2757259'] Yet we pay to stream movies that we will also not own, and think nothing of it. Before that it was renting movies, so we also paid and didn't own. Times are changing! I wasn't a fan of streaming music. I wanted to own the files so I could play them anywhere, anytime. But as the availability increases, streaming starts to look more appealing. It does seem like it's where we're going... [/quote] But most people who are older than 6 don't want to watch the same movie over and over again. I'm quite happy to pay to stream a movie once, and if I thought it was any good I'll be happy to pay in couple of years time to watch it again. Songs that I like I will want to listen to all the time. If it's through a streaming service you are totally at the whim of the service and the artist allowing their music to be on that service. At least with a CD ripped onto my computer and iPod I can listen to the song whenever I want.

[quote name='lowregisterhead' timestamp='1430122625' post='2758047'] It's a custom 5-string with a bolt-on neck, and I've just tried the looseing/tightening of the neck screws which did seem to help a little. I was interested in the idea of reducing the headstock mass (as a Fat Finger seemed to move the dead spot down) as logic would seem to suggest that trimming a bit off the tip (which I'm thinking of doing for aesthetic reasons anyway) might move it up? Obviously there's no way back from that kind of mod, so I wondered if anyone had tried it! [/quote] In that case I'd try some lighter machine heads first. You can always sell them on an refit the old ones if it doesn't have the desired effect.