EliasMooseblaster

Depends if you go valve or solid-state. Valve amps require a load; I *think* I'm right in saying that solid-states do not.

This might be the key here. Plugging straight into the desk is much more forgiving to active basses than it is to passive basses! An active bass produces a higher-impedance signal (so less vulnerable to effects like cable capacitance, interference, etc), and the onboard preamp may "warm up" the tone a little more. You'd probably hear more of a difference if you tried the DI with a passive bass. After that, it's down to personal preference. If you're happy with the sound of the bass into the desk as it is, then carry on! Again, this probably comes down to the onboard preamp - I personally find actives sound alright played DI, whereas passive basses can sound a bit "sterile" without a bit of preamp coloration..but then some people prefer it like that.

Whilst I can't comment on the CV-5 specifically, I will chime in and say that Schecter's Diamond Series basses are things of great joy and beauty. The four-string Model T is one of the best basses I own - and I've seen very positive reviews of its 5-string equivalent. While it doesn't have as many bells and whistles* as the CV, it is a really good, solid P/J, which sounds great and is a delight to play. *the passive version (which I have) was just V/V/T; I think the modern (active) versions are V/B/EQ

I was just trying to place what it reminded me of - that's exactly it!

Just a thought: if you could stretch to £500 or so, that seems to be the high street price for a lot of Chowny basses. They seem to specialise in short-scales, and I've only heard good things about them. (They might be harder to come by second-hand, as the company's only a few years old - but worth trying the Marketplace here) Or you could follow Frank Blank's advice...that Gretsch looks gorgeous! (I'd be tempted myself if they did a long-scale version...)

I started out on a Squier Bronco myself - short-scale, and a very good bass for the money (about £200 brand new these days). However, if your daughter's used to the Jazz then she may want something with a wider range of tones. Squier do make a Jaguar bass, which you could very easily get within a £400 budget, especially if you go second-hand - you might even get a s/h Fender if you're lucky! I believe they're also a 30" scale.

Quantifiable Heft?

I expect it's historic - way back when, if you wanted a bass with one pickup, you bought a Precision. If you wanted one with two pickups, you bought a Jazz. I don't actually know when the first PJ basses were produced commercially, but I could imagine them being easy for Fender to market as a halfway house between a Precision and a Jazz. Besides, Leo was nothing if not practical, and they would already have a sound design for the Jazz bridge pickup. Typically, the bridge pickups have slightly higher impedance than the neck pickups in Jazz basses; they may have anticipated a certain amount of R&D cost in getting the impedance right on a P-pickup for the bridge position. (Please note that the above is all speculative and may well be complete cobblers)

I managed to do the opposite years ago: disconnected the head from a Laney combo after it started playing up, and connected the speaker to a new head. So I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out!

Oh dear - arguably, having one member of the band not playing along looks worse than nobody trying it! I do remember sharing a bill with one group where the guitarist and singer were obviously making the effort (leather jackets, dark colours, and other such accessories) but the drummer and bassist were just in hoodies and tracksuit bottoms. It made it look like the rhythm section had failed to turn up and the singer and guitarist had asked the roadies to fill in for them!

(It sounds a bit like this if you want a quick demo)

This is the nub of the question, I'd say: is the pedal going to be used for fat, fuzzy tones to thicken up your bassline, or do you want it as more of a boost to make your solos audible? If you're after a soloing pedal, I'd recommend the Ibanez Bass Tubescreamer every time. If you just want to fuzz up your basslines, you could do a lot worse than the Bass Big Muff (or clone of the same). I know it's technically a fuzz, but it certainly allows you to get dirty tones without sacrificing bass frequencies - heck, mine even has a bass boost option if you need to overcompensate!

But those that do tend to be trustworthy sources.

This is broadly correct, at least insofar as if your song is in E, you'll get the most convincing results out of an A harp. It's a bit different from the idea that you transpose for the instrument, like you would with brass or woodwind - rather, you buy the harp at conert pitch, but play it modally. A diatonic Blues harp in A major will give you the notes of the "standard" A major scale, or Ionian mode. But if you try playing the E major scale on the same harp, the closest you can get (without bending notes) is the Mixolydian mode of E. This mode lends itself better to Blues and Americana more generally, but also puts the notes you're most likely to want to bend (3rd, 5th) into inhale positions, which - believe me - are far easier to bend than the exhale. (You can also get a Dorian mode of B out of an A harp, should you want to play a minor-key Blues with it)

On a more positive note, the inlay on the fingerboard looks quite pretty. Presumably somebody else did that.

And there I was thinking I was free of GAS. They always manage to come up with something, don't they?

If I'm using my own amp, I just use the preamp that's built into that. If I'm not, I've a Hotone B-Station. My reasoning: I wanted something with a midrange control for as little money as I could get away with. The Behringer BDI-21 had been fine, but I felt like I was fighting the mid-scoop the whole time. The B-station also has a drive circuit and compressor, which put it in the same ballpark as things like the EHX Battalion, and I was able to get my hands on a B-station for a good price. I've been pretty pleased with it so far, though I've yet to try it out in a live setting.

This one might surprise you, but: Gibson Thunderbird. If I've not picked mine up for a while, I'm always amazed by how light it is. You wouldn't think it for a bass which needs a 5ft-long case, but the awkward shape is misleading. If you're looking to keep your budget tight, I hear good things about the new run of Epiphone T-birds (the "Vintage Pro" seems to be the series to go for) - if the weight is comparable to the Gibsons, you'll be laughing all the way to the bank.

Not strictly a bass pedal, but I've found Joyo's guitar chorus pedal surprisingly good for fretless bass. Might be a tad toppy for your tastes - it was certainly brighter than the Boss Bass Chorus I also tried when I bought it - but certainly good for a vaguely convincing Pino impression.

My current home recording setup is quite simple - mics -> Focusrite interface -> computer. It does a decent enough job, and I've been certainly been impressed by how much the Focusrite has improved the sound going into the computer. But, as ever, GAS finds a way to strike, and I see that it's possible to get one's hands on some relatively affordable mic preamps with valves in them. As I'm mostly recording acoustic stuff at the moment, I've found myself adding a touch of "tube-like" saturation in the mix to warm up the overall sound, so I've wondered whether it's worth trying a valve preamp in between the mic and the Focusrite. Has anyone else tried this, and does it make a worthwhile difference to the sound?

Oh yeah...further to my response yesterday, I've just remembered that I would quite routinely switch basses during Cherry White's usual set. But that was because most of the songs were fine on a 4-string, but a couple of songs needed the 8-string. I'd like to think that was a big enough change in sound to justify swapping guitars.

As Chris rightly points out, it's more common for the bassist and drummer to settle on one sound and stick to that; usually tweaking the bass sound to taste rather than changing it for something completely different. I'd have thought the most common reason for guitarists to switch guitars mid-set are: 1. Different tunings 2. Broken strings 3. Overestimating how much a rodent's posterior the audience gives about the different tones available from their three very similar-looking Les Pauls 4. Just wanting to show off. I distinctly remember seeing one group whose two guitarists had very differing approaches. One of them had a rack with half a dozen guitars, which he insisted on swapping over every other song. The other just came on with a Telecaster. After watching them both, my friends and I agreed that "Just-a-Tele" man was the much better guitarist, and that "I-will-definitely-need-all-six-of-these" man was possibly overcompensating.

That was my first thought as well - it's made it quite difficult to choose! And I'm sure my three worst offenders will change over time, as popular songs fall out of favour, and more terrible piles of shyte splatter down on us unsuspecting buggers below, but as of this morning, I'm going with: Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars. (IT HAS NO TUNE. A vaguely funky horn riff doth not an entire song make.) Wonderwall / Don't Look Back in Anger by Oasis. (I'm allowing myself a joint entry for this one, because ten-year-old me, hearing them on the radio around the time that album came out, genuinely believed they were the same song.) Come On Eileen by Dexy's Midnight Pillocks. (It's not just that Kevin Rowland's slack-throated yelp is annoying, it's just that he seems to have inspired a legion of indie singers to mimic his style in a way that invariably sounds like a transparently affected grab for "authenticity." As patient zero, my condemnation falls squarely in his court.)

Obliquely related to this idea: I remember watching a documentary about Pink Floyd (20th anniversary of The Wall, or something like that) in which David Gilmour said, "In the past we have definitely thought, we are so faceless that we could probably send a different band up on stage, and a lot of people wouldn't know the difference." Whilst I think he did himself a bit of a disservice with that idea, musically speaking, there's a similarity with Kiss here - while Pink Floyd made themselves faceless by not putting their faces on their album artwork (I think Ummagumma was the last one to feature a picture of the band(?)), Kiss did the same by obscuring theirs behind the black-and-white face paint. Another man of a similar stature could copy the makeup, put on the togs, and probably make a decent fist of passing for Gene Simmons. After all, a Kiss show is all about the theatrics (I'm sorry: I've no time for their music), and as long as somebody could put on the same persona, they could probably fill that role and the band could continue in perpetuity. And, much as I don't like their songs, I'd take that over the seemingly endless barrage of crap musical theatre based on exhumed songbooks from yesterday's popular artists that seems to be endlessly clogging up London's West End these days.

The most obvious upside to having the external pre-amp is that you can use it with multiple basses. Obviously you can always unsolder the onboard preamp and pop it into a different bass, but that does rather interrupt the flow of a live show...