BigRedX

My choice of bass (or guitar) goes like this: 1. Looks. If I don't like how it looks it won't even get picked up. I don't care how great it might possibly play or sound, I don't want IMO boring or ugly instruments. It's not the 70s any more where there are only a handful of decent playing and sounding designs and everything else is awful. These days you have to look pretty hard to find a new bass that plays or sounds bad, so pick something you like the look of. 2. Playability. Entirely subjective. Spend some time playing without plugging the bass in. Concentrate on how it feels to play. If you gig standing up don't forget to try it on a strap first. I made this mistake with a Squier VMF Jazz. It was fine sitting down in the shop. On the strap I found reaching the G-string machine head difficult. 3. Sound. For me not really an issue. I can get the sounds I want out of any bass once it has gone through the Line 6 Helix that I use by adjusting the EQ and/or my playing technique. I've yet to encounter a bass that met the first two criteria that couldn't be made to sound right in the band mix.

To the OP: What sort of music do you want to play and what sort of a band do you want to be in in terms of commitment? If you want to go covers get along to some jam or open mic nights and start networking. If you want to do originals go to local gigs and get a feel for the sort of band you'd like to be in and get to know who is doing music in that style in your area. One of the bands I play with at the moment, I joined simply because I was a fan and was following them on Facebook, so knew when they were looking for a replacement bass player. Of course you could always put an ad up on Join My Band. Be specific about the sort of music you want to play and the sort of commitment you are prepared to put in and what you want out of any band you would like to join and that should filter out most of the time-wasters. And these days age is less important than ever for most genres. I formed what has been my most prolific and probably best-known band a few months before my 50th birthday. I'm now in my early 60s and at the moment I'm playing in one well-established (two albums out working on our third) and one up and coming band both in the post-punk/goth genre. When I'm not gigging (I have gigs with one or the other band at least every other week) I'm writing and recording new material. Over the last 15 years I've never been busier musically.

For me image, and especially something that fits with the overall band image is massively important. One of the reasons why I have never played a P-Bass is because I think they look so boring, I have never even been vaguely tempted to pick one off the wall in a music shop. I don't really have any bass heroes but when I was getting into music and playing in bands most of my favourite bands had bass players with Gibsons or Rickenbackers (certainly the ones where I noticed what the bass player was playing did). As for sound, by the time my bass has passed through the compressor, drive, chorus and delay (if required) and been EQ'd to fit into the band mix it really doesn't matter what it is. Over the years I have used a number of widely different basses, but I have always been able to get the right sound for whatever band I was in at the time out of any of them. Having said all that, in one of my bands I play an Eastwood Hooky 6-string bass. This has been chosen simply because it is the only Bass VI with a suitably wide neck to accommodate my playing style. Luckily because of the Peter Hook association, it also fits the post-punk/goth image of the band, although if I manage to get the funds together it will be replaced with something a bit more interesting looking, but with the same neck dimensions.

I've abandoned wireless for the moment. For both bands we are back to playing smaller stages when we headline, and when we are on the bigger stages we're generally crammed in at the front after the headliners have set everything up, and since most of the time I'm pretty much stood on top of the Helix and the pedal that controls the backing, I really can't see the point of not using a lead. When I'm set up stage left I run the lead from the Helix around the left side of the stage and then behind me so it is completely out of the way of my (and the rest of the band's feet). Having said that I will be playing Sheffield O2 Arena next month, so I might have a look at trying the wireless system in rehearsal first.

There was a video of some author playing one in the unexpected bassists thread.

Do you mean the Bass MuRF? Have you followed the setup procedure in the manual?

What is your amp for? Home practice or are you intending to play some gigs? If it's for gigs what is the line-up of the band?

The Vintage Hofner site is the place to look. Examples of both of these basses appear on this page towards the end.

Thanks! We've also done an animated lyric video to go with it:

Yes they are ridiculously expensive, but my bass version was second hand and a fraction of the price a new one costs. If it wan't for the fact I don't have enough use for a bass with only 4 strings I'd probably still have it. The only thing I didn't like about mine was the bridge which was obviously designed and built by an engineer rather than a musician. The guitar version has a standard Tune-o-matic bridge and doesn't suffer from this problem.

It's made from expensive tone aluminium instead. Actually there are two wooden inserts in the back of the "neck" which look like they were salvaged from a wooden pallet and then painted silver to match the rest of the instrument. As for sound. I've been told it sounds like a P-Bass. It does have the right pickup in the right place which apparently is the main prerequisite for the P-Bass sound. However as I have never actually played a P-Bass myself I couldn't really comment.

Born To Rock F4B. In name, material and overall appearance... ... and it's essentially a P-Bass.

I spent over 2 years from when I first started using by Squier Bass VI seriously until I received my Eastwood Hooky from the first batch they made trying every Bass VI style instrument I could get my hands on, and none of them came even remotely close to the playability of the Hooky for what I wanted to do with the instrument. There's a whole thread documenting my search here. What I found, was that most Bass VIs are essentially guitars with 30" necks and occasionally (but by no mean always) pickups positioned in suitable places for getting bass-type sounds out of them. The Squier had a very uncomfortably narrow neck - the guitars I use have wider necks by comparison - and while most alternatives were better none were a massive improvement. I used a Burns Barracuda for a while which was easier to play but I still found myself plucking the wrong strings especially when I was swaping between sections that involved up and down plucking of multiple strings to all down strokes on a single string and back again. Until Eastwood announced the Hooky, I was seriously considering getting something custom-made using classical guitar string spacing (which was still just a guess), but now I know that the significantly wider string spacing of the Hooky is just right for what I want, and if I was still to go custom, I'd be getting them the copy the dimensions of the Hooky neck.

That looks very similar to the ones I bought directly from Van Damme (I'm sure it was the same Cat5 cable). They were fine for about 6 months use, and then become less and less able to coil neatly before finally failing. Are yours still properly coilable?

This. There's no point in being younger if you are just going to make the same mistakes all over again.

For those of you using Ultranet, where are you getting your gig-proof properly coilable Cat5 cables from? In the days when I was running a BassPod and Floorboard which are connected by Cat5 I was getting through a cable every other month. I ended up buying a couple of very expensive Van Damme Cat5 leads which were a lot more robust, but even they were never as easy to coil up as a standard mic lead and eventually after a couple of years these failed as well.

Why? I do all my Helix programming either on headphones or via my HiFi system, and then do the fine-tuning in the rehearsal room where I go direct into the PA and where I can properly hear how my sounds fit in with those of the other instruments. Any conventional bass or guitar amp will add too much colouration to the sound for me to be able to make any meaningful decisions unless I was to always use that amp and cab in every single situation.

Running iOS on a non-M series Mac is a bit of a faff and doesn't always work reliably and then the Mac will still want to communicate with the device using Bluetooth because that's what a phone would do. For me having to program a footswitch designed to be able to control a computer from a completely separate device seems completely unintuitive and a backward step.

Having the signal conductors twisted as a twisted pair is better for noise rejection and the removal of RF interference. In today's phone heavy gig environment that has probably become more important than ever.

That does look interesting and a couple of extra footswitches are always useful, as I've been thinking of adding loop on/off functionality to our set up to allow longer intros etc. The only thing that puts me off is that it looks as though set-up/editing is done via your phone. Hopefully there's also an option to to use a proper computer. Please let me know how you get on with this.

This kind of phrase come up quite a bit and wonder just how much truth there is to it? Not withstanding the fact that the last time I wore trousers that were actually capable of "flapping" was some time in the late 70s, I don't think I have ever needed to be so loud that I could feel sound pressure waves emanating from my cabs. I suspect if I had, I'd be even deafer than I am now...

I've gone with no amp. All my sound shaping is done by my Line6 Helix and AFAIAC the amp and cab models are just more sound shaping devices, so sometimes the tone I want needs one and sometimes it doesn't - bout half the patches that I use at the moment don't have any amp or cab models in the signal path and most of the ones that have use a guitar combo model because I like the sound. Because of this my actual amp and cab(s) would simply be something to make the bass guitar louder, so most of the time I go straight into the PA. I have a PA-style FRFR cab for rehearsals and the very occasional gig I do where the PA is strictly vocals only.

That option on paper seems to offer the greatest amount of treble cut. I take it you have the treble control set to cut in order to try and get the top end to your taste? However it might be that you really want the upper-mids taming, in which case one of the first two options might suit you better. Personally. I'd just try each one a see which (if any) you like the best. The worst that can happen is you won't like any...

Which setting is it currently on?

IME if you worry about this, then it will happen and you will be upset. for all of the 90s I used an Overwater original bass, which I picked up second hand at a bargain price, but which I subsequently discovered would have been very expensive and time-consuming to replace as a new one would have had to be a custom order and would probably not have come with the original filter-based pre-amp. I can't recall this bass picking up any additional dents to the few almost invisible ones it already had when I bought it. Interestingly the much cheaper bass I had as a spare but luckily never needed to use at any gigs turned out to be covered in bashes and bumps when I came to sell it, despite the fact that it had spent most of it's life in its case or on a stand at the back of the stage. Since then I have been playing Gus G3s live including 6 years of almost weekly gigs with The Terrortones where we were on the bill with Punks and Psychobillies. IMO if I don't play these expensive basses at gigs there would be no point in having them. Also just because an instrument is relatively cheap doesn't mean it's going to be easy to replace. In my other band I play the relatively cheaper Eastwood Hooky. As this has become my main bass with this band and there is no suitable alternative, I've been looking at getting a spare. I think I've seen two come up for sale second hand in the last 18 months and both went almost instantly. For a new one you have to pre-order and then wait 6 months. IME the lack of an easily obtained suitable replacement is more of a worry than getting a bump or scrape on an expensive instrument, so I've stopped worrying about it altogether.