BigRedX

If this bass is in otherwise good original condition - especially if it it still has the Shaftesbury branded TRC - it is probably worth more than £100. Unless you intend to keep it forever and gig it regularly, any modifications you make (especially non-reversible ones) will devalue it should you ever want to resell it and you'll probably find yourself mocked in the eBay forum on this site should you do so. Without seeing the actual bass it's impossible to give a 100% definitive answer, but I'd consider getting the pickup issues sorted out in the least intrusive way possible, and if it then turns out to be not for you, you should make a decent profit when you sell it which will allow you to get something that you will use. Paging @Bassassin

And just to prove there is always an exception to the rule: I've been fitting Schaller Straplocks to my instruments since the mid 80s and have never had one fail. I've owned one bass that had Dunlops fitted from the factory and one of them failed terminally within 3 months of buying the bass. They were replaced with a set of Schallers before the next gig. The majority of problems with Schallers that I have seen reported are down to either user error or expecting poorly-made counterfeit items to withstand the same use as the real thing.

But the OP has already fitted the Schaller. Besides the Dunlops aren't any better, just different.

How good are your IEMs? Many cheap drivers exhibit harmonic peaks which make some notes sound out of tune. The last place I worked had a nasty radio/CD system with terrible speakers. Some CDs just sounded horribly out of tune when played on it.

If the drop tune is done by digital processing, the laws of physics are going to be against you no matter how or what you play.

I think in this case events have just conspired against us when playing at this venue. On the previous occasion the weather was atrocious. At least one of the band who had been booked to play the night before our gig had been unable to get there due to being snowed in. This time around our gig coincided with THE main goth/post-punk event the month - Carpe Noctum in Leeds at the Lending Room, and while there is a healthy audience for our music in the North of England, and I know that as a punter if I had to choose between 3 or 4 reasonably well-known bands at an excellent venue in Leeds complete with a great club night after the live music, or 2 bands (only one I'd heard of) in the back room of a pub in Gateshead, I know which gig I'd be favouring. If I was a promoter I wouldn't be putting on a goth gig the same night as Carpe Noctum unless it was for some really well-known band at a venue in London.

Are you sure that you've only transposed that up 1 semi-tone. The singer sounds like Mini Mouse, compared with the version I'm vaguely familiar with. Even if you do work out the key for the main part of the song, how do you know that it doesn't change for this particular part or that a note from outside of the key was used because it sounded better? Use your ears and play the notes that you think sound right.

Unless you are intending to create new parts for the song rather than following what's on the definitive recording, does it matter?

Next gig for me is with In Isolation at Ivory Blacks in Glasgow on Saturday 18th May, supporting Joy Division tribute band "Shadowplay".

Looking at the video, if it's not possible to make the back and front joint up, then I wouldn't both with the back at all. Leave it plain white and maybe extend the checks from the front a bit further around the sides.

Unfortunately because this is also the computer I use for my work, Firefox which appears to be the only browser whose updates are not limited by the OS (so far), is reserved for an important single-use function, and I am unwilling to use it for other tasks.

But the OP has a Headrush which should be producing all the "colour" they need. The amp and speakers in this case should just be there to make it suitably loud.

With In Isolation at the Black Bull in Gateshead on Saturday. This is great gig but the last two times it's been rather poorly attended, with this time probably due to to Eurovision and several other high-profile goth gigs up north. Despite that those that did turn up seemed to enjoy it and some were even dancing all the way through the set. Sold some CDs afterwards and had several people asking when the new songs are likely to be released. Special mention to the support band Machiner who were absolutely brilliant, and by far the most interesting and enjoyable new band I've seen for some time. Go and check them out on your streaming or download service of choice. There's a good chance that we'll be sharing the bill with them again in the future. The whole gig was video'd so hopefully I'll have some visuals to post later.

I'm on 13.1.2 which is the most up-to-date version my OS (10.13.6) supports. Until I can afford a new Mac (unlikely any time soon, even ignoring all the other things I'm going to have to upgrade as well) I'm going to be stuck with less and less functionality. If I ever unexpectedly disappear from Basschat it will most likely be because a forum upgrade has removed my ability to view them, rather than something more serious.

Can someone post a photo fro those of us who don't have Facebook?

Does it need to look like a conventional bass rig? If not any good quality FRFR powered PA speaker will do. I have an RCF745 which has proved more than adequate for the two times I have needed to use it to supply bass guitar FoH for the audience, as well as on-stage for me. Also PA speakers generally have better dispersion characteristics than a conventional bass rig which means that you can be quieter on stage and still produce plenty of volume FoH. The last time I used my conventional bass rig without PA support I had to be so loud to get the right FoH mix that I could barely hear the rest of the band.

Looks like a problem with my version of Safari.

Tried putting a Spotify preview in a post this morning and get the following: Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information). The link I'm trying to add to the post is https://open.spotify.com/album/31GrE2G6NnPRyx8QKsMgex?si=9l1cv3tvQ2uE_Vw26YBKWg Is this a Spotify or Forum problem? It worked last time I did it so I suspect one or the other has changed something since then.

Machiner - The Sound Of Disappearing. Great band who supported In Isolation at our Gateshead gig on Saturday. This song was probably the highlight of the set for me: Spotify link wouldn't display as it usually does...

True. But you don't need to. The Helix isn't going to suddenly stop working if you don't update the firmware. The functionality on the Boss unit that requires Bluetooth or a computer connection seems like it might be quite important to some people. Having been bitten in the past by products that promised additional functionality through firmware/software updates that never materialised (Tascam I'm looking at you), I will only make my purchasing decisions based on what the product will do at the moment I buy it. I would still be as happy with my Helix even if it was still on the firmware it came with 6 years ago. All those updates are just a bonus IMO.

Right, I've watched the video and for me the most surprising thing was Rick Beato's generally positive comments. Other than that there was nothing new. The sky still isn't falling. From everything I have seen AI composition is still very much at the stage most of us were at when we were writing our first few songs, with our primary influences still very obviously on show, and the problem isn't that AI is taking away from musicians and composers, but more that it is likely to be sued for plagiarism. This for me is why AI music in the way that it is currently being marketed is not ready for public consumption and should not really be in the public domain. Even the very derivative output still requires a lot of well thought out user input to get anything close to original. That part was conveniently glossed over in the video. Admittedly as musicians and composers we're going to be more critical than the average listener and sometimes we forget that music isn't as important to a lot of people and definitely nowhere near as important these days as it was when most of us were teenagers in the 50s, 60s 70s and 80s. So the output of AI music generation systems may well be acceptable for those for whom music is simply there because the alternative would be unpalatable silence. However these people are not our audience and never will be our audience. There's a far more realistic video about trying to compose just using AI tools that I saw recently. The biggest thing I took away from that is just how far AI still has to go before it comes remotely close to being able to make the artistic and technical decisions that composers and sound engineers make all, the time without really being aware of them. IIRC the only AI components that made the final cut were some of the lyric generation and a voice replacer to make the vocals sound like Dua Lipa and even then the composer had to input a real singer who already sounded close before they got acceptable results. Everything else was discarded in favour of human generated content. Where AI music is going to have an impact soon is "library music" and if I was a composer in this area I'd be looking at repositioning myself as an "AI Wrangler". In the same way that many keyboard players and producers in the 70s and 80s had people behind the scenes to program synth sounds, and understand and work all that new technology in the studio and at gigs, there will be new opportunities for those who have the skills to come up with usable and appropriate AI music output in the quickest possible time. For the rest of us the sky still isn't failing.

I'm going to. However the fact that he's mentioned in the title says to me a lot about the sort of audience it's going to be aimed at.

Boss go to all that trouble to make the device as hands on and user friendly as possible with all those knobs and then make one of the key features accessible only via an unreliable protocol that requires extra hardware to achieve. While the Helix might not be quite as immediate and hands on, there's nothing you can't do from the actual user interface.

Given that it appears to be more click-bait from Rick Beato I'm tempted not to watch it. IMO he comes across as a sad old man railing against modern technology when that boat has very much sailed, producing videos that deliberately mis-use and mis-represent the technology he's against in order to pander to his core audience of equally sad old men. Either that or he really is very stupid and hasn't understood how the technology should be used creatively. All the AI generated music I've heard so far has either been very poor (both technically and creatively), or has required so much input and intervention by people who actually understand music and audio production, that really it would have been just as quick to make the tracks without using any AI. I'm sure the day will come when this is no longer the case, but until AI starts spontaneously producing interesting and original new music without any user intervention or prompting, but simply because it NEEDS to, much like human song writers and composers, the truly creative won't have anything to worry about. I work in graphic design where AI has been in use for quite a long time and even though many of the features are there IMO for the artistically challenged, some can definitely help speed up the design process. Last year my band used AI generated graphics to produce the cover art for our "Christmas" single. The cover for our previous single which I created based on ideas supplied by our singer took two weeks (working off and on) and 8 iterations before everyone was happy with the results, and this time around we needed it doing quicker. Even so it took several hours of one of the band members supplying prompts and refining parameters before we got something that was sufficiently good and close to what we wanted. I think that had I had the time to do it myself the "old fashioned" way it wouldn't have taken me much longer and the result would have been 100% what I wanted at least, circumstances were against me then.

But if it's like the Drummer plug-in once it's producing a performance that's close to what you want you'll be able to render it as MIDI and assign any instrument you like to it. I realise that the style might be "piano-y" but you never know where it will take you inspiration-wise. One of the more interesting "hacks" I've seen with Drummer is to replace the drum-kit with an arpeggiator synth sound, which has produced the initial inspiration for one song that I've written recently. However I won't be upgrading yet as my Mac is too old and I'm stuck at Logic X 10.4.8 I see the current policy of Apple with their applications is aimed at driving new hardware sales which is where the real money is.