BigRedX

[quote name='Beer of the Bass' timestamp='1426080538' post='2714127'] Oh dear, I didn't really pay attention to having been enrolled. I'm selling an item ending on Saturday and the current high bidder turns out to be in Italy. I didn't specify international postage when I listed the item, but I guess eBay does that automatically now. I hope this goes OK, as there's not much I can do once bids have been placed. [/quote] You'll be fine so long as your parcel isn't over the maximum shipping size. If it's a bass it might well be. The way it works is that you send the item to their depot in the UK, so as far as you are concerned it's just another UK address. The buyer has paid an additional cost on top of your item price and UK shipping charge, to have the item forwarded to them in their country. The problem is that, I can send stuff directly to my foreign buyers either by Royal Mail or UPS through Interparcel for a lot less money than eBay's global shipping programme charges buyers and it gets there quicker and there doesn't appear to be any parcel size restrictions. All three of my global shipping programme sales had problems. The most bizarre was when I sold 3 items that all ended within a few minutes of each other to the same foreign buyer. Two went through as normal but the last went into the global shipping programme. This mean that having quoted a combined postage cost to my buyer, I couldn't honour that price and in fact it was completely impossible to make an invoice for all three items as only the two not in the GSP appeared on the invoice. It took a whole day of messages between myself the buyer and eBay to sort the mess out.

Slightly off topic... Who comes up with the names for these colours? "Sonic" blue to me seems to be about as far removed from a colour I would think of as sonic as it's possible to get. More like weedy pastel blue.

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1426068158' post='2713905'] Really? These basses have not been involved making a single piece of music that I have liked or listened to since I discovered what a bass guitar was. I just wanted to share. [/quote] For me it was completely the opposite. Growing up and getting into pop and rock music in the 70s, just about every band I liked had a bass player sporting a Rickenbacker (and the few that didn't had Thunderbirds or EB0/3s). The bass I lusted after was the 4001 with the triangular inlays (or perhaps a copy made by John Birch).

Off the top of my head: Crash Pickups Adeson

[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1426060481' post='2713810'] I can never understand why Jethro Tull never sued the Eagles..? Maybe they paid him off quietly ages ago..?? [/quote] Inventor of the seed drill who died in 1741? I'm sure any songs he wrote were long out of copyright by The Eagles' time. ;-)

[quote name='charic' timestamp='1426007485' post='2713365'] Might try hooking it up to my keyboard [/quote] You'll need a device that is at least 6-part multi-timberal and allows each part to be put into Mono Mode in order to get anything useful out of it.

Looking at the spec, it's a lot like the Yamaha EZ-EG, although that has a "hammer-on" setting. However as detailed in a previous post and based on my personal experience with both the KX5 keytar and the EZ-EG, I don't think the standard 5-pin DIN MIDI socket is robust enough for live use on and instrument that is worn rather than just sitting on a stand. I discovered that I would have to do something about the DIN socket about 15 minutes into my first rehearsal with the KX5 after a succession of stuck MIDI notes, and by the next time it sported an XLR connector for the MIDI which proved to be far more suitable.

[quote name='charic' timestamp='1425998470' post='2713231'] I've got one of these from when I was massively into playing rockband... wonder if I could get it to do the same [/quote] Does it produce MIDI data?

Too dead is just as bad as too lively though. In a very dead room everything sounds quieter than it really is, which means that you will find yourself monitoring at much louder levels.

TBH the vast majority of people who claim to want a Rickenbacker bass don't want anything of the sort. What they want is something that sounds and feels like a Fender P or J with the Rickenbacker shape holographically projected over the top.

Surely you don't need any dimensions as for a Steinberger style instrument form follows function. Some if you have all your hardware (I would suggest you get it all before starting) then: 1. Length = scale length - length of neck + size of neck pocket + extra length of bridge behind the saddles. 2. Width = enough room to fit the pickups and a control cavity and neck pocket 3. Depth = enough room to fit the pickups and controls (or the same as any other solid bass) Then it's just a question of joining all of these up in an aesthetically pleasing outline. Job done.

[quote name='Meddle' timestamp='1425250443' post='2705629'] I just don't understand it. Ampeg come out with massively unreliable Class D amps and people defend them to the hilt. Ashdown come out with new technology and everybody uses this as a chance to get the boot in. If British bassists defended British manufacturers the same way American bassists defended theirs then this forum would be a slightly more positive place perhaps. Not sure we need pages of Ashdown bashing, and I'm glad to see a rep coming on here and kicking some backsides. [/quote] Ashdown have made their share of Class D clunkers too. I'll never forgive them for the lack of concern they gave to me and the problems I had with my Superfly amp and as a result I'll never entertain the idea of buying one of their products ever again.

I'd post this question in the relevant section of the Sound On Sound forums.

Isn't the cresting wave body shape also protected though?

It's not the latency of any individual unit that's the problem, it's when you have 2 or 3 units each adding their own very slight latency that all of a sudden they add up to something that is noticeable. I'm sure that if you have have the resources of NIN then using a Mac on stage isn't a problem; and they probably have at least 2 running in parallel with redundancy on all the connected devices, so if one fails you would hardly notice. However IME most bands using this technology live can barely afford one instance of all the gear they need let alone 2 or more... USB is a terrible idea for performance instruments not just because of the host/controller issues but mostly because the cables and connectors IME as simply not up to the rigours of gigging. There computer leads (and I include FireWire and Ethernet in this) are fine for home or office use. You can just about get away with using them in the studio, provided that you don't unplug them too many times. But for live where the gear has to be set up and broken down every night, they are completely unsuitable. It's all very well the manufacturers saying that the leads are inexpensive to buy and universally available, but when you are replacing the cheap ones every other month until you bite the bullet and go some special "road worthy" quality leads at roughly 10 times the price, you start to wish that they had spent another £10 or so to fit proper robust locking connectors on their equipment in the first place. Even the DIN connector used for MIDI is not immune. When the MIDI spec was originally released, the connections were supposed to be made using XLR connectors and DIN was only there as a low cost alternative for non-professional equipment. However AFAIK Voyetra were the only company that actually used XLRs and as a result had to supply convertor leads with all their synths. In the days when I used to use a lot of MIDI gear live it was very quickly apparent that the DIN plugs and sockets were not up the job of providing reliable connections for the MIDI data and therefore where ever possible we replaced them with XLR sockets which not only proved far more robust but meant that we could use standard balanced mic leads for all our interconnects. Where it wasn't possible to replace the sockets we used heavy weight metal bodied DIN plugs. If there was ever a problem with the gear it could nearly always be traced back to a DIN connector becoming loose. The only way I could contemplate using USB or FireWire connectors in a live rig would be if they were part of a permanently assembled unit and neither the leads or the equipment they plugged into was cab able of any kind of movement.

[quote name='Beer of the Bass' timestamp='1425946622' post='2712737'] AFAIK it requires some sort of host device, usually a PC or Mac, though some people have setup things like the Raspberry Pi to do this job. I'm still a little wary of anything which would require me to run a computer as part of a live setup, as every time I've had bandmates using laptops with MIDI devices there are the occasional glitches or even two-minute silences when it crashes and has to be restarted. Perhaps this is me being a little behind the times though. [/quote] IMO any device that takes longer than 15 seconds to go from completely off to fully functional is unsuitable for use in a gigging situation.

[quote name='tauzero' timestamp='1425944651' post='2712726'] MIDI over USB, so it should be easy enough to interface it to 5-pin MIDI. [/quote] Is MIDI over USB simply a question of making up a suitable lead, or does it require an interface to get actual MIDI protocol data? Every time you have to convert data you introduce latency which is the last thing you want in a performance instrument.

That went very cheaply. The only original Fleischman bass I've seen was about 10 times that price. Pity the photos were so out of focus. It might have fetched a bit more if they'd been any good.

[quote name='Ancient Mariner' timestamp='1425930365' post='2712461'] I wonder if you can use any external synth or if it's restricted to just what's on board? Some of the clean sounds seemed OK, but the electronic sounds were a bit nasty on the vid. It still smacks of EZ-EG and the earlier Casio version, though hopefully done better than either. [/quote] AFAICS it's simply a controller with no sounds of it's own. You need an iPad or a computer to change how it responds to your input and to get any sounds out of it.

Ideally you want just enough string wrapped around the machine head post to hold it in place and no more. That usually works out at just over 2 full winds. On a modern style machine head that works out at about 8 cm and on an older style with a thicker post about 9 cm. However on basses with non-angled headstocks where the windings are required to get the right break angle over the nut you really want as many as you can fit on the post without the winds overlapping. The reason you want want as few winds as possible is because this area of the string gives up it's excess elasticity more slowly than the unwound length which means that on a new set the more winds you have on the machine head the longer it will take for the string to become stable and stay in tune. Obviously if you are are going to fit a set of flats on your bass and leave them there for the next 10 years then a couple of extra days of tuning instability isn't really going to be a problem, but if you change your strings every week or more frequently then you might find that your basses never stay properly in tune because of the excess windings.

[quote name='Woodinblack' timestamp='1425904031' post='2711949'] Some of that certainly, although most of that is guitar based, where this is specifically not guitar based, which makes it more interesting (and why I have just handed over my card for one). As soon as you base your idea off a guitar you have just added a load of restrictions to it. [/quote] But looking at the promo video the people getting the most expressiveness out of it are the ones who treat it like a guitar with some extras. Nothing wrong with that, but I don't think it's quite as radical as its inventors would like us to believe.

Why don't you just join a band?

First gig of 2015 for the Terrortones. And a great way to start. Supporting The Ricochets at The old Angel in Nottingham. Tried out some new songs which went down well, and our guitarist went wireless for the first time which he thought was a success. Just need to find something suitably robust for Mr Venom... [IMG]http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n249/BigRedX/Dick%20Venom%20Live/11045297_10153732842411164_359736755359529453_n_zpsu1tnobve.jpg[/IMG] The rest of the month is going to be relatively quiet while we work on new songs and get ready for recording our album. Next gigs are April in Leeds supporting The Brains and Birmingham with The Frantic Flintstones.

For some bands image is important. Some musicians think it's ok to look like a sack of sh*t with a string tied around the middle. Clearly the two are not compatible.

The most radical thing about it is the the price (provided that once it's for sale in the UK it's not priced at £ = $). Essentially it's just the logical progression from the Synthaxe, Yamaha EZ-EG, Starr Labs controllers and the YouRock Guitar. Personally I'm still waiting for David Vorhaus to turn his Kaliedophon into a proper commercial product.