BigRedX

Dick Venom & The Terrortones will be playing at [url=http://www.theoldangel.com]The Old Angel[/url] in Nottingham on Saturday 7th March 2015. It's a Dick Venom Presents… evening with The Ricochets headlining. Completing the bill is Dick Dynamite and the Dopplegangers. Admission is £4.00 on the door and it all starts at 8.30! [IMG]http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n249/BigRedX/Gig%20Posters/1965678_1043497138999359_5482845395464462437_o_zpssror3xob.jpg[/IMG]

Is it a Marathon neck with a different headstock grafted on?

[quote name='CamdenRob' timestamp='1425033493' post='2703128'] Thats not a shergold neck, look at the headstock [/quote] No it isn't. I wonder where it came from. In that case at £300 it's overpriced.

[quote name='Roland Rock' timestamp='1425027752' post='2703011'] Duff duffs it up at 2:40 [media]http://youtu.be/ogxmYA3l6DA[/media] [/quote] To be fair he doesn't make it easy for himself using that clunky bolt-on neck bass.

There's a Shergold Marathon for £300 but it's collection only...

Just another Fender copy. What's the big deal?

[quote name='Roland Rock' timestamp='1424982709' post='2702673'] Why are they failing? It's that spiky 80s hair metal logo! [/quote] They've had that logo since the mid-70s at least.

Really wish that they'd make a long-scale 5-string version. I'd have a couple!

There is currently a [url=http://www2.gibson.com/Products/Electric-Guitars/Bass/Gibson-USA/Thunderbird-Non-Reverse-Bass/Specs.aspx]Gibson Version[/url] listed on their website. There was an Epiphone reissue some time back, but that was essentially a J-style bass with the NR Thunderbird body shape. Both these reissues and the originals are all 34" scale length.

IME the technical specs of synthesisers in determining sound quality are largely irrelevant and completely subjective. It's a question of picking the right instrument for the job you want it to do, and then it's all down to the skill of the user in programming it. At the cheaper end of the market the savings are generally made in the quality and size of the keyboard and the friendliness of the user interface. If you can live with non-weighted keys and are prepared to your programming via a computer, then it's simply a question of picking one that produces the kinds of sounds you want with sufficient polyphony and/or multi-timbral capabilities. There are so many different ways of generating the sounds on modern synths that you need to get one that produces what you want. If you are after accurate reproductions of acoustic instruments then an analogue type synth isn't going to be much use to you.

[quote name='Pete Academy' timestamp='1424865569' post='2701284'] A music rep. [/quote] Ah… Would this rep be selling stuff that isn't class D by any chance?

Big CE printed on the back of my Tech Soundsystems Black Cat too. Where did you get the information from?

[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1424783299' post='2700380'] Well to be honest you have to go back to the fifties to get to a time when some form of auto levelling (or compression or limiting) wasn't in use on recorded output as pretty much the norm.[/quote] You'll probably find that any signal that has passed through valves or been recorded onto magnetic tape has had some degree of compression applied to it even though it didn't pass through an actual compressor, simply because of the nature of the electronics and the way audio signals behave when recorded onto magnetic tape.

[quote name='Jus Lukin' timestamp='1424812626' post='2700829'] BigRedX, how did you get on with the F4b? I dig 'em but I have no idea whether the neck brace works, or how they sound! [/quote] I really liked it and if it had 5 strings I'd still own it. Sound-wise it was pretty much a P-Bass - when I took it to a bass bash the main comment was how conventionally "woody" it sounded. The lack of truss rod means that the neck is very slim and almost perfectly flat. The tension of the strings is countered by the neck brace and holds the neck in place rather than pulling on it like a conventional stringed instrument. The downside is that if you break a string the whole bass goes completely out of tune. There were a couple of features that betrayed the basses engineering rather than lutherie roots mostly the bridge which still needs some work IMO (the guitar version sports a standard tune-o-matic bridge). I used it a couple of times with The Terrortones and it looked and sounded great, but the lack of a low B meant that there were too many songs we couldn't do. A wrote a more comprehensive "review" of the bass complete with lots of photos [url=http://basschat.co.uk/topic/32239-aluminium-part-3]here[/url].

[quote name='Marvin' timestamp='1424804059' post='2700672'] That's a bit of an weakness, for some, in your argument to be honest. I notice you live in Nottingham, which is on the M1. You're in pretty easy reach of several good sized towns and cities, Manchester is only just over 2hrs away. London is only 1hr 45mins from Nottingham, it's 4+ from where I live. Bristol is the nearest good sized city with a good music scene to me, that would take me and my band in excess of 2 1/2 hours to get to. [/quote] Maybe. But my overall point is that the bands who get the gigs are those who are prepared to put the extra effort in to get them, and if that means travelling a bit further than usual for a worthwhile gig then that's what you need to do. I find it interesting that you single out Manchester and London. In our experience neither place is any more or less important than anywhere else in the UK other than a lot of their venues and promotors have an over-inflated sense of their own importance, which with the current state of the "music industry" is rather unwarranted. Yes there are probably more large cities in easy reach of Nottingham compared with where you are, but we go where the worthwhile gigs are and if that means a 4+ hour journey each way so be it.

[quote name='tedmanzie' timestamp='1424715145' post='2699537'] Oscillator sync is great. Not sure what you mean by the signal path, I have never owned or played an MS20 before so I'm not sure. I seem to remember something is new on the patchbay bit but can't remember what [/quote] One of the great things about a true modular synth is that you can connect any output to any input and listen to the results. That means being able to do things like use audio output of a module as a control voltage for another. The classic example of this is cross mod (using the audio signal of OSC1 to modulate the pitch of OSC2 or vice-versa) which appears to have been implemented to a degree on the new version as the FM switch. What is less good is that the only place the audio signal appears is at the final output which limits your options considerably. Looking at the patch bay also I can no longer see a separate keyboard input for OSC2 which would have been even more useful now that cross mod is actually available.

[quote name='Bassassin' timestamp='1424778941' post='2700288'] I keep meaning to ask... how did your Burns Sonic end up with what looks like a 1980-ish Kasuga bridge? [url="http://dms01.dimu.org/image/01Szzq3Zgq"]http://dms01.dimu.org/image/01Szzq3Zgq[/url] And where's the rest of the Kasuga? J. [/quote] When I bought the Burns it still sported the original bridge and machine heads but neither were particularly functional. The machine heads slipped as they approached proper tuning and all the threads on the adjustable bridge had stripped so that it was held together by being wrapped in wire. The current bridge is the third one I tried and IIRC came out of miscellaneous guitar parts drawer from the old Carlsbro shop in Nottingham and cost me a couple of pounds. It doesn't have anything stamped on it and is only drilled for 4 strings, but otherwise it's the same as the one you linked to. Strangely enough the previous, less suitable bridge was an 8-string one. The big problem in replacing the original Burns bridge is that it has a very small foot print but the saddles have to be very tall due to the design of the bass. Also the string spacing is quite narrow - 16.5mm. Finding another bridge to replace it has been a real challenge and in the end I gave up looking for one with the same footprint and bought this one mainly because it didn't have pre-slotted saddles so I could file my own. It was then mounted on a piece of mahogany to get the saddles to the right height.

It would be interesting to know if the DAD rig that I posted earlier in this thread was real or mainly for show. It might be worth the OP getting in touch with whoever designed/built it for them.

[quote name='neepheid' timestamp='1424775035' post='2700217'] Was it easy at the start though? [/quote] Actually it was. We went from being an idea that Mr Venom had for a band, to playing our first gig in about 8 weeks including writing a short 25 minute set's worth of songs. We recorded our first demo about a week later. Mr Venom networked like mad to put the band name about and within another month we had landed a decent slot on a Psychobilly all-dayer headlined by The Meteors. Everything pretty much stemmed from that. In a way it helps that the music we play fits into several identifiable niche genres, but knowing the amount of behind the scenes work that MrVenom and myself put in to promote the band and comparing that to what my previous less successful bands used to do, it's not really surprising that we are doing so much better.

Getting gigs is easy provided that: 1. Your band is entertaining 2. Your band is prepared to put in the hard work required to get gigs in the first place and then to get re-bookings. 3. Your band is prepared to travel to where the gigs are. Simply turning up and playing your instruments is never going to be sufficient. If we wanted, The Terrortones could be out every Friday and Saturday night for pretty much the rest of this year playing songs we wrote to enthusiastic audiences up and down the country and getting paid for it. However we've decided to slightly scale back our gigging and concentrate on better gigs and quality support slots while we record our album. The band has no problem getting gigs and repeat bookings because we put on a show and we put in the hard work making contacts sending out promo material and chasing up every lead we are given. IME for most bands this is just too much effort and unsurprisingly they struggle to get gigs.

I used to have the PitchShifter/Delay and the Compressor along with Akai micro-rack delay (same 1/2 rack footprint). They all worked fine, but for me programmability was more important so I sold them along with another 4U worth of effects and replaced the lot with a 1U Roland GP8, which is still going strong over 20 years later. BTW unless you want to spend ages playing around with double sided tape you need the proper Boss rack shelves as these are the only ones with the right shape for the screw fixings.

[quote name='tony_m' timestamp='1424722843' post='2699702'] Blimey, you must also have an interesting selection of cases to go with them! [/quote] I suppose so… A mixture of large flight cases, standard Hiscox Lite-Flights and custom branded gig bags. The Burns Sonic still has the original (very battered) Burns hard case!

[quote name='ead' timestamp='1424722828' post='2699701'] Mr BigRedX has three of the buggers. How can that be fair [/quote] I also have a G1 guitar: [IMG]http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n249/BigRedX/GusG1.jpg[/IMG] I've wanted a Gus ever since I saw photos of the prototypes in a music mag in the late 80s. I got one of the basses relatively cheaply second hand because it was in terrible condition and the others were bought at a time when the prices were considerably less than they are currently.

[quote name='Graham' timestamp='1424718796' post='2699623'] I like that a lot, if memory serves it's an aluminium neck'd Hartke? Edit: third time's the charm, and clearly a Hartke from the filename [/quote] It's the XL-4 model which was the top of the range assembled in the US and apparently each one was personally inspected and tested by Larry Hartke himself.

[quote name='pete.young' timestamp='1424620930' post='2698359'] I wouldn't bother trying to use a bass guitar with a midi controller. My experience with i2m was loads of latency even if your technique is super clean. Better results every time by playing the keyboard. [/quote] Very much this. Unless you have the cash for an [url=http://www.industrialradio.com.au/index.php]Industrial Radio Bass[/url] MIDI via a bass guitar is a complete non-starter.