Jean-Luc Pickguard

In response to a PM about this thread here is an example of a song recorded recently at the Boom Boom Club in Sutton when we opened for Stan Webb's Chicken Shack. It was recorded using the Zoom H4 with its built-in mics on a camera tripod pointing at the stage about halfway back next to the PA engineer on the left side. I'm playing the NS CR5M upright through my bassamp, two guitarists with amps and the drummer was not miked up. Only the vox went through the PA.

Normally I'd run this through some mastering processors before distributing it but here it is unmastered as an example of the H4's raw sound quality. It was recorded on the H4 as a CD quality WAV and converted to MP3 just to shrink the file size.

Our version of Neil Young's Cinnamon Girl:
[url="http://www.o5b.co.uk/mp3/o5b-cinnamongirl.mp3"]obviously 5 believers - Cinnamon Girl[/url]

[quote name='gilmour' post='55193' date='Sep 4 2007, 12:23 PM']Has anyone got any experience of using the Tascam MP3 bass trainer.

I've had a look for reviews but can;t ind any som I'm assuming it's a pretty new piece of kit.

I've read reviews on the CD version and they're all very positive, other than the fact that the seem to eat battteries. I'd assume that the MP3 version goes through a lot less batteries than the CD version - is this the case?[/quote]

I use the guitar version, it is a little bit fussy about MP3 bitrates and the user interface isn't going to give the ipod any sleepless nights, also the 1Gb memory which cannot be added to is a bit of a downer, but it does allow me to charge it via a usb socket (or an old blackberry psu) and it allows you to get some headphone practice in at the drop of a hat (as long as your songs are already loaded). I don't use the guitar fx as I just want to make sure I know the notes and it sounds very good without any fx. I don't know how useful the bass version's fx will be, but I'm not going to upgrade mine.

Regarding the batteries - It has a built in rechargable battery and comes with a PSU/charger but more usefully also charges from the PC/Mac via a USB cable

Leroy Hodges & Howard Grimes

I wouldn't use anything but the trusty zoom H4. Set it on a camera tripod and press the big button. Then connect to a PC via USB and drag the wav file across for editing. Nothing could be easier, well nothing I've found. The sound quality is good enough for a live demo CD.

[quote name='Hit&Run' post='54867' date='Sep 3 2007, 06:20 PM']Come on guys, someone must know something?[/quote]
Apparently Not

Only fingers for me

maybe I'd use a pick if we did a song that required the bass to go "dugga dugga dugga dugga dugga dugga dugga dugga", but then again I'd probably just use my fingers

I do use pick on geetar though.

Its crying out for a thin coat of off-white car spray, then let it collect natural mojo.

I bought a "stripped" musicmaster bass for £100 a few years ago for my daughter's birthday and promised we'd paint it any colour she liked as the alder used was not very well matched in colour & it wasn't very pretty.

At a larger branch of halfords, she flicked through the colour books & chose a lilac used on some model of honda that I'd never heard of. The chap there mixed the paint & filled two cans (that was interesting for her to watch). I also bought some cans of white undercoat and clear lacquer. The paint job is nothing like a pro job as I did rush it a bit, but from a few feet away it looks fantastic and cost very little apart from a bit of hassle.

One semi-unrelated tip: If the pickup on the musicmaster (either a 6 pole strat or mustang guitar pickup) is a bit noisy and/or weak sounding, the humbucking Cool Rails strat pickups for £30 from brandoni guitars fit perfectly and sound excellent, the black enclosed version looks exactly like the bass's stock pickup. The hot rails is similar but sounds a bit clanky to me.

This sounds like what you need - MP3 Bass trainer. I use the guitar version of this as the bass version wasn't available when I bought it.

[quote name='Sibob' post='40101' date='Aug 1 2007, 05:35 PM']I've always worked by the 'rule' of thumb that you should have the bass at the same height standing as when your sitting with it on your lap.
That way you're not playing in two completely different ways.

Cool
Si[/quote]

For this reason I hardly ever play sitting down.

I find that my different basses each need a different length strap to feel right, so each bass has its own strap optimaly adjusted. The time to adjust shouldn't be an issue as once its set as you like you don't have to do it again - Iyou should usually be able to get the optimum length for any leather/suede strap within a few minutes.

Note: If you get a thunderbird bass, you really should adjust the strap as long as it goes, as they don't look cool played high up.

[quote name='OldGit' post='54135' date='Sep 2 2007, 11:48 AM']Tbird neck dive fix is here
[url="http://www.lysator.liu.se/~wizkid/music/thunderbird_mod/"]http://www.lysator.liu.se/~wizkid/music/thunderbird_mod/[/url]

Cant help you with the weight though [/quote]

Ha! that's exactly what I did to my "sno-white" epi t-bird. It certainly cures the next dive.

I don't notice any weight issues - mine doesn't seem any heavier than any of my fenders once I moved the strap button.

If it was in or near Surrey/South London I'd be interested, but I think I'd get sick of the A3 trekking down to Portsmouth.
Good luck with your search.

[quote name='Bass_Junkie' post='53791' date='Sep 1 2007, 01:01 PM']aparantly those basses are quite bad sounding, though i love the look of them![/quote]
It appears you have been grossly misinformed about the sound of epi t-birds.

You should try one for yourself before repeating such nonsense.

You should have received Cubase LE in the box in addition to Gigastudio. I think that could be what you are looking for.

I bought one for £50, then realised I didn't really have a use for it so sold it for £85. I guess I should have hung on to it for a while.

It could be that (for example) your maximum bid was £10 higher than the bid currently shown the winner put in a bid £11 higher than the current bid, which was £1 higher than your maximum bid.

[quote name='warwickhunt' post='51923' date='Aug 28 2007, 08:09 PM']Think Thunderbird... great bass I'm sure but horrendous balance issues.[/quote]

Not if you know where to locate the strap button.

I use Thomastiks, they are very low tension and feel better than any string I've used. A lot of people prefer a higher tesnsion string so they're not for everyone. I used to use rotos a while ago which are high tension but I'll never user those again as I had three sets that sounded & felt very inconsistent from string to string.

For Old-school you may like the LaBella Deep Talkin' flats, like James Jamerson & Duck Dunn used in the 60s. My daughter has a short scale set on her 30" daisyrock heartbreaker bass - sound & feel great and come in a variety of lengths & gauges.

[quote name='Alpha-Dave' post='51290' date='Aug 27 2007, 02:24 PM']The first issue is that it would be a lot of work, and second describing sound is so subjective that it's really difficult to get the gist.

To quote someone from bassworld (BT68 I think) " ... trying to describe a sound in writing is like trying to describe a smell through the medium of dance ... ".

To be fair though, Andy at Monkey FX gives it a good go: [url="http://www.monkeyfx.co.uk/fxguide.html"]http://www.monkeyfx.co.uk/fxguide.html[/url][/quote]

That's an excellent description.
Now I'm off to buy myself a wah pedal and a well trained monkey...

Reminds me of...



"Talking out of turn...that's a paddling."
"Looking out the window...that's a paddling."
"Staring at my sandals...that's a paddling."
"Paddling the school canoe...ooh, you better believe that's a paddling."

As much as I like Flea, the tutorial dvd he did a while ago was a complete & utter waste of money.

I have mine working perfectly in XP with cubase studio 4.

If you're using XP and need to do a clean reinstall, there's doc here: [url="http://www.tascam.com/details;8,15,68,19.html"]http://www.tascam.com/details;8,15,68,19.html[/url] clean Uninstall of the US-122 on Windows 2000 / XP (download) that might help along with the latest drivers.

It won't work in Vista though until new drivers come out. The XP drivers don't work.

Gavin at GM audio fixed mine:
[url="http://www.gmaudio.co.uk"]http://www.gmaudio.co.uk[/url]
GM audio is a Trace Elliot affliated authorised service centre and used to do all the warranty work for them.

I think the idea of using egg crates comes from seeing photos of studio walls covered in foam acoustic tiles that look like egg crates (as redroque mentions), certainly not actual egg crates.

If egg crates are used it'll be like the bits that boy racers stick on their cars that they think look cool but don't actually have any practical advantage.

I've tried various types of recording device to record rehearsals in the last few years: DAT, minidisk, iRiver H340 HDD MP3 player with PZM mics, a Stereo electret mic, a matched pair of phantom powered condenser mics, using a variety of cables, mixers etc sometimes with various Heath Robinson-like configurations. It would usually take up a fair bit of rehearsal time to set up and even longer to get the results edited down to CD.

Then we used some gig funds towards get a zoom H4, a couple of 2GB cards and some rechargable AAs. Now it takes literally a minute to set up the H4 on a cameral tripod press record and the whole rehearsal can be recorded very easily in the best sound quality I have been able to get of all the setups.

I then put the card into the reader on my laptop, pull the CD quality WAV file across and edit in Magix Audio Cleaner 10 (whichwas going cheap in PC world) I can edit a rehearsal down to CD and make copies a lot quicker and easier than before.

I have also used this to record our gigs (the other methods I had tried were too much hassle to set up) and we have used CDs created to make a live demo that has got us more gigs.