Woodinblack

Just now, Al Krow said:

 

Before folk start wondering, the XE sounds like an old Jag model to me? Time for a bit of Xmas XS? 😅

Oh yes, XS. Which sounds more like a Jag to me! What was wrong with PS - they have a PS-5 and 6, could this not be the 7?

36 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

 

Just had a quick play on with pitch shift set to -2 semis fully wet, and GX10 seems to comfortably handle taking down the low E by a couple of semis in terms of a usable-in-the-mix bass. What are you finding with the ME-90B?

Oh its more like a wammy effect, in fact it is only available on the footpedal, but it is too electronic to use as a clean bass sound.

There is a song I do that is downtuned which is just bass and vocals for the verse, this wouldn't work for that, its not an 'in the mix' song, it is effecgtively a solo bass sound, which the XE-1 can do.

7 hours ago, Al Krow said:

Being able to assign the expression pedal to dictate the amount of gain on drive patches to take it from mild to full-on drive is also very neat. 

Yeh, thats the same on the ME-90B as you would expect (same company), just that the pitch shift isn't in the same league as the XE-1, certainly not up to a couple of semitones below a drop D as a solo instrument live.

Well, this was a bit of a change. We had our last gig before christmas today, a short 2 hour one on a sunday afternoon at one of our local pubs, a pub owned by the guy who gives us our free practice space. We were going to get the other christmas song sorted but the guitarist was ill on thursday, so we didn't.

I was looking forward to it - short, in the evening and local. The last two gigs hadn't been great, the one before last I had covid (didn't realise at the time, but felt really bad), then the last one my wife had a heart attack while I was away and ended up in A&E until 2 and visiting every day of the next week, still dealing with the fallout from that. So a chance for a gig that didn't have that would be great.

2 hours before we were ready to go and setup for the gig, got a message from the guitarist, who had said yesterday he was good for both christmas songs that he was too ill to come.

Quick panic, not enough time to arrange anything. Asked the drummer who is in another group, but they couldn't cover - we really didn't want to let this landlord down at this short notice.

The singer contacted the keyboard player who left about a year ago and he agreed to cover, so we quickly packed and headed down there, huddled over an iPad working out what we could play without the guitar. Turns out as it is only a 2 hour gig, we had more than enough songs we thought we could do ok.

The pub was heaving, wasn't really expecting that. Set up, the first 2 songs went through fine so got a bit more confidence and after about 5 songs people came to the front dancing. Had a brief 10 minute break and back on. Some of the songs were a bit.. creative and we did moondance and I think he was a fifth out from where i was, but you know, jazz! Some of the songs however went really well, and the last run of 5 (ie, last song and 2 encores) songs was just solid dancing from everywhere and we did nail them.

Packing up and the landlord came over, really happy with how it went, and loads of people thanking us for a great evening, so came away happy. And honestly even when things were going wrong in some songs, I enjoyed it just fine. In fact, I haven't enjoyed a gig as much for a while, it was just fun. Although maybe if i am going to play guitar on a song I should run through it at least once beforehand!

Oh - I played the bongo 5, the light up acrylic bass, a indie tribal guitar, all through the dwarf and a bam200 to the PA.

Shoes provided by solivair, my old pair that are broken, as my feet are still sensitive for how ripped apart they got trying to walk in my new pair!

pm'd

7 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

And in answer to my own question, have managed to get some decently usable pitch shift patches on my GX10 ( and making me ponder whether to hold onto my dedicated Boss pitch shift pedals - OC5, XS-1 and XS-100?)

So is your GX10 pitch shift s good as the XS-1 (and 100)?

On 18/12/2025 at 21:55, Mudpup said:

The singer/guitarist was inacapable of learning any new songs on his own and coming to rehearsals with them semi prepared, that was driving me nuts. You know when you've all agreed to learn a song, everyone does their homework and then someone shows up at a rehearsal and asks what key its in or what version is it?

Sadly all too well, and I have been thinking about that a lot recently!

27 minutes ago, bassbora said:

I was looking at this pedal more like a functional tool rather than a box that makes sounds.  

You can rest assured it makes no sounds unless you do!

Yes. Some pedals come with a dose of regret or a realisation that you don't really need one (mostly synth pedals), but some are pretty essential.

6 minutes ago, bassbora said:

Very curious about the XS-1 pedal.  Mostly to just change key, up or down 1-2 steps and nothing more than that.  How are you guys finding it?  I does it cope in a band setting?

Absolutely perfect, it is a great pedal for a band setting. I wouldn't record a drop D bass downtuned by 3 semitones, but in a band it is not an issue. It is really good when you are doing a song and the singer wants to knock it down a couple of semitones. There are some songs that it is easy enough on a 5 string, but if it is a song in drop D (like most of the metal songs), it is a pain without this.

18 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

 

Why..? I don't understand this perpetual need for 'change'. If it's Good, it's Good. New stuff, old stuff... Nothing needs to be 'changed' just for 'changes' sake, does it..? 

Clearly something did as the company collapsed.

11 minutes ago, BassAgent said:

Except for John Stirratt, Chris Wood, Tame Impala, Tina Weymouth, Robbie Shakespeare, Flabba Holt, Dale Davis, JMJ, Max Oleartchik of Big Thief... Need more?

I didn't know half of those, so googling them showed all of them except Max Oleatchik with a different bass (almost all a fender) as the first image. I don't think it is enough to keep a band going that half a list of people quoted as being players of a brand I didn't know and they were playing something else anyway. In fact thinking about it, I have never seen a group who actually play one of those basses, in fact thinking about it, i have never seen one of those basses outside a shop. One shop. 

1 hour ago, Muzz said:

 I've been using a pair of £62 Lekato MS-02s - super light, tiny and handy, battery lasts hours (never got down to even half the charge lights on them with 4-hour gigs (start to finish)), 5ms latency, no dropouts and even a stereo option that, as mentioned above, 

Thats the one I use instead of the U4, although mine cost me £32! But the switch can be a bit intermittent, sometimes the quality can slip and after a lot of gigs and practices the receiver battery life is starting to get close to the end of our gigs if I forget to plug it in at half time.

1 hour ago, Al Krow said:

Our lovely, and very capable, little desk has 6 monitor outputs, not quite enough for us to go down the stereo route which would require 4 x 2 = 8 monitor outs for our 4 piece set up. Has going stereo really improved your gigging experience, Woody? If so, maybe something for me to consider for my crew down the line at some point!

Absolutely - I wouldn't want to go back to mono. In my metal group we have P16 so you connect via the network like plug and you can adjust your own personal mix. Live, there are only 2 of us with IEMs, so I just use two channels of that.

1 hour ago, Al Krow said:

Is the U45 a decent step up from the U4 for you? 

No, I didn't have a problem with range or bandwidth, its just mono.

10 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Drummer has recently got a Swiff WX520 from Ali Express (they're currently just under £75) which he's really liking.

Oh interesting - I have a U4, but I have been using the cheap £20 wireless because it is stereo and having got used to stereo it is hard to go back to mono. I hadn't seen those, I was trying to find something that was stereo that was somewhere between the £20 and £300 range!

5 hours ago, Reggaebass said:

I was watching a series on Netflix last night and briefly caught a song in it that I’d never heard before , I instantly liked the Bassline and found out that it’s Talking Heads and psycho Killer

Agreed with others it is actualy a surprise a bass player not knowing that song, but I suppose everyone has to hear something the first time some time!

I wouldn't (and didn't when we did it) play it as an open A, but I think she does, but also bends the previous note so it is not on pitch

5 hours ago, Burns-bass said:

 

Nobody should work for free, not even students. You’re effectively telling them they’re not deserving of being paid.

I never said anything about not paying them - I think artists should support artists.

I mean you could quite easily get a group of art students making a video for an AI song to show off their work, and that would be the same thing.

I think I would still prefer to try talking to the video class of an art college to get something like that done, then everyone gets something out of it!

you can remove photos, you just have to remove them from the photo section down the bottom. 

48 minutes ago, Wombat said:

I ended up using copilot to make some images (typed in the lyrics and went through a lot of questions as to ‘what I wanted it to look like’) and used a vid edit program to stitch them together… Happy with the results, especially as none of the people involved had time to be in it 😂.

ok, thats why I asked the question of whether people meant AI or just standard video effects - your one there, any normal video editor can do that quite simply, but if someone asks for AI I assume they mean a generative AI video, where you have virtual people doing things etc, like the hyper realistic videos of people who aren't real.

You can get a service where you would only pay a few quid for a video, but it would take probably a few iterations to get it how you want, so it might be better getting a subscription.

This is assumign you wanted to animate the  photos and make an AI video, unless you just meant one of those videos where you just have the pictures fading into each other that any photo service should be able to do free

There is no way for users to delete posts, and unless there is some privacy related reason that is very pressing we almost never do that. Especially for problem posts as maybe someone else has a problem and it would be a shame to get rid of a body of info.

If there is some really pressing personal reasons that you don't want some of the info publem, just do a support request on it asking for that data to be deleted.

48 minutes ago, SimonK said:

 

Another awesome Ibbi finish ruined yet again by the truss rod adjuster and the patch of exposed neck at the end of the fretboard - I wish they wouldn't do that!

I wish they wouldn't too, but at least on that with the dark wood it doesn't show as much as when it is maple. 

9 minutes ago, dub_junkie said:

My new to me SR2605 in Cerulean Blue burst

Loved the 2605 - I had one when they first came out, but in the end when I was cutting things down, I had the 1605 and the 2605 and the 1605 was my first love (and not so harsh) so it had to go

50 minutes ago, ossyrocks said:

In other news, I woke in the night with the shivers, a banging head and a really sore throat. Temp of 38 this morning and I feel like death. I have succumbed to the f**kin flu that's going around. But there's no backing out of the gig, it's tonight, and I have no understudy. Lemsip, mask and distancing will be the order of the day today! Bah humbug.

I felt terrible last but one gig a few weeks ago, but did it anyway. Then I did a test and found out I had covid. Thenn the rest of the band got covid!