EliasMooseblaster

I recently learned about the potential benefits of some subtle mix bus processing, and it has been quite eye-opening (ear-opening?) However, a big source of disagreement seems to be around where you do this processing: apply effects to the master bus, or create a separate aux channel which then goes out to the master bus? Being the internet, opinion I've seen sits on a scale between the extremes of "it doesn't really matter" to "only someone on a par with Harold Shipman would apply effects directly to the master bus." So, looking to a more level-headed community for advice: is there a good reason to keep effects off the master bus (at least at the mixing stage)? Is there a big benefit to routing everything through a separate bus before sending that onto the master? Or does it mostly come down to personal preference? (Not that I expect it to make much difference, but I'm working in Ardour, in case that informs anyone's response!)

Hands down, the Ibanez TS-9B, aka "Bass Tubescreamer" I shopped around a few different bass overdrives before settling on this one, and whilst most of them sounded quite nice, I felt like they were designed very much for comping. Sure, they all distorted the signal, fattened up the low end, but they all made the bass sit quite politely underneath everything else. I had been looking for something to help me push the bass forward in the mix for the songs in which I was soloing. Of course, the original Tubescreamer is a much-cloned and ubiquitous pedal among Blues guitarists, famous for providing a warm and mellow overdrive with a distinctive mid-range hump that helps to push the soloist through the mix. It also interacts nicely with the guitar's volume pot - crank it up for more aggressive overdrive, back it off for a smoother tone. So it made perfect sense that a bass version should do the same for me. There's not much I can say, other than it did exactly what I was hoping it would. It's a bit more elaborate than the guitar version: the vol/tone/drive controls are replaced with vol/drive/blend/bass/treble. The blend and EQ controls make it very versatile - if you want a more polite overdrive for comping, it can do that too. But then, I bought it for soloing, and it does that perfectly. So I say: bassists of the world, rise up (through the mix)! You have nothing to lose except your bandmates' patience!

Time to start splitting some hairs: not whole basses, but I have switched allegiance as far as pickups were concerned. I've always favoured quite a midrange-heavy tone (think classic Precision with the tone control up at 9 or 10), so I developed a dislike of bridge pickups, probably on account of the cheap, solid-state amps I was using for so long. Too burpy on their own, too scoopy when blended. I always defaulted to soloing the front pickup on whichever bass I was using. Enter a regular salary, and a line of vaguely affordable valve amps from Ashdown. With a bit of warm, valve saturation, I gradually started to come around to some of those mixed-pickup tones. Then enter a Gibson Thunderbird, which I had to admit had quite a pleasant-sounding humbucker in the bridge, and a delightful growl when brought up just behind the neck pickup. Or a splendidly aggressive twang when fully on, with the neck backed off a bit. I never run them at matched output though...too scoopy for my tastes, still!

Have you ever come across this blog before? https://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.com/2014/02/nirvana-sheep.html In short, the guy digs around the various bootlegs and rarities to re-create albums that never were, or nearly were, or how they could have been. If I've understood correctly, this hypothetical reconstruction of Sheep is supposed to recreate how Nirvana's second album might have sounded if they'd stayed on Sub Pop. (Plus all the background info makes for interesting reading!)

Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, anyone? Rising is superb - arguably their best album. But the self-titled début? Maybe not a stinker, but I feel like every other track is rather underwhelming.

I have spent a certain amount of my free time in lockdown working out how to record an EP at home. This one here is the lead single from said EP. Audio only, I'm afraid, but I'm quite pleased with the way the Tony Franklin Precision ended up sounding, even if I do say so myself:

Nicely done with that right-hand "gallop!" And that Precision does sound very nice.

Posted a CD to Germany yesterday, for the first time since the new arrangements came in. If the buyer's game, I'll be very interested to hear when it turns up! (Sent another one to Illinois at the same time, so I'm half-tempted to race them...)

Which Jackson designed it? Pollock?

I must admit, the style of music I'm making doesn't necessarily require 24/192 KHz, but I do know that I like the sound of Focusrite's mic preamps. Having four of those in one box is the main attraction. On the other hand, Behringer do offer some native support for Linux, which Focusrite do not. This hasn't been an issue so far, as I can control the 2i2 entirely from its physical controls, and Ardour talks to it quite happily. I'm concerned this may not be as true with the 8i8, which could be a strong plus point for the XR18.

With one recording project complete, I'm obviously thinking about the next one. I've been quite pleased with what I can get out of a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 going into Ardour on Ubuntu, but for the next project I want something with a couple more mic inputs. The 8i8 therefore looks appealing, however, I understand that the more advanced Focusrite interfaces are controlled in part via proprietary software. Crucially, I hear, this includes switching between the preamp and line level inputs on the XLR sockets. Has anyone else tried running one of these in Linux? Or can anyone recommend a decent competitor? (I see Tascam offer the 208i at a similar price, and that looks like it's fully hardware controlled - thoughts?)

I've not tried one of their own devices, but I did buy a Hotone B Station from them in the end - and I've been delighted with that! A very preamp/DI for its price point. I get the impression they're in a similar boat to Joyo, Caline, etc - surprisingly good for the money, and cheap enough that you could take a gamble on them without breaking the bank.

Thanks for sharing that. I'd only ever seen the edited clip from the Kids Are Alright film previously - which includes the infamous explosion, but not the performance of Miles, nor the footage of the hosts trying meekly to recoup after The Who's performance! (The former, particularly entertaining for Entwistle's slightly sinister grin when he realises the camera's pointing at him.)

There's a wonderful extra layer of comedy to that story: the Smothers Brothers' team knew well in advance about the group's destructive reputation, so their techs took them in hand and made sure they could destroy their instruments without bringing the TV studio down in the process. The rigged up the kick drum with what they deemed to be an "acceptable" charge and test-fired it to show the band, who were singularly unimpressed (by Daltrey's account: "it was more like a wet fart"). So Moon took the techs to one side - sweet-talking and bribery are variously mentioned by different sources - and persuaded them to look the other way while he loaded up the kick drum himself. It's not clear whether he was just unfamiliar with the material available in this foreign studio, or whether he deliberately overcompensated, but not even The Who were quite prepared for the size of the explosion that resulted. Townshend apparently insists to this day that it was this incident which caused the most lasting damage to his knackered hearing...and not the decades standing in front of stacked Hiwatt 4x12s.

Oof! "...and the Florida-based luthier received the famous instrument in a box slightly larger than a shoebox" I'd heard the instrument was broken - I hadn't realised the damage was quite so extensive!

Taking this to its logical extreme: I'm sure Ritchie Blackmore won't have been the only pro guitarist who asked his tech to pass him a cheap Strat copy for the last song on various Deep Purple gigs, so that he could "Townshend" it for the finale.

The bit highlighted in bold pricked up the ears of my inner guitarist, and as any six-string-toting-fule kno, if you have a tube amp about to crack, and you want to push it into overdrive, then you plug in a Tubescreamer (or a similarly mid-focused, low-gain OD pedal). Fortunately, Ibanez also make a bass version (look up the TS-9B), with a more bass-friendly centre to the midrange boost, and I can't praise mine highly enough. Because it focuses on the mids, rather than the lows, you retain definition in a way that I've really found lacking in a lot of other bass ODs and distortions. Whether it will get heavy enough for you is another question - and to be honest, I use my own TS-9B more as a boost for solos. If the song calls for fuzz bass then I turn to a bass fuzz: EHX's Bass Big Muff might not seem like a particularly exotic or 'boutique' optionm but it does this really well. The trick is to turn the Tone control to the left - it's basically a pre-shape, so if you turn to the left, it gives a flatter response; to the right, it starts to scoop the mids, and can get very muddy.

I think there are a few which are almost there - I have a Hotone B-Station, for example, which gives you a preamp, 3-band EQ, simple (one-knob) compressor and DI out, but alas no tuner (though it does also have a half-decent and blendable drive circuit).

Update: this has now gone to a good home. If somebody could lock and/or move to the 'completed' subforum, that'd be grand.

No, that was John Entwistle.

There's a different tone, isn't there? And I know there are lots of other factors that will affect your tone in different ways, but I've found that shorter scale basses sound different from the longer scale counterparts - I'm sure a lot of people will attest that their medium scale lengths are important factors in the Warwick "growl" and Rick "clank." I read an interview with Alex Callier years ago, where he explained that he'd moved to short-scale basses because he liked the old-fashioned click-and-thump he got when playing them with a pick. No mention of easier playability, as I recall, and I think he's a pretty tall feller.

Reading that, I think I learnt more about the seller's life history than I did about the bass itself! Still, you've got to love the little details in the "Item Specifics" section: "Features: With Pickup." How generous of him!

I think my wallet just ran and hid from me...