The Badderer

cheers Ralph. I had also looked at their site along with a few others and it seemed very sort of musical professional-ish but something didn't sit quite right with me and i have to concur that i generated the same opinion that it seemed to be a well put together course but to what end after the course. I think i'm erring towards just making time and using my own understanding / the awesome forums on S.O.S. and Gearslutz and piecing together solutions to problems as I find the problems. I think i'll learn far more by just doing than I will from doing a long drawn out degree / diploma thing. I think i might do a couple of day courses on Ableton when i think my basic understanding is good enough to enable me to get the most out of a couple of the more advanced courses.

My thoughts about courses are now thinking about whether i should look at either electronics / acoustics in the future but i'll let the path my music takes determine if either of those are a good idea.

Interestingly part of the thing we're looking into with the youth music project is whether we build a recording / practice room in the church grounds and set it up for making music. Because we don't have to buy the land, we're only looking at the building cost of the building itself and trying to find the best way to doing that.... but it's one for a few years into the future. i need to get my head round all sorts of things before then and that's where i might need some acoustics training.

[quote]
[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif][size=4]The [/size][/font][/color][color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif][size=4]Ziricote has a hint of 'coffee table' about it [i](I'm probably committing heresy by saying that).[/i][/size][/font][/color][color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif][size=4] [/size][/font][/color]
[/quote]

I'm glad someone else posted this first.... i thought it looked a bit like expensive floorboards..... [size=4]
but it's fair to say i like stripey wood... this is my ACG [/size][size=4]http://www.acguitars.co.uk/acg_admin/wordpress/portfolio/0037-finn-sc-classic-4-string/[/size]

really useful information. am reading some things with interest. confirmed a few things i'd been thinking, changed how i was thinking about others

Ditto to the above. For my taste the Skyline neck is nicer to play than the Fender neck. Obviously in the musical mass produced market there will always be QC control issues of some level, but there seem to have been far less people having any issue with a Lakland and also not many people moaning about dud ones, or needing to play every one in the store to make sure you get the right one. That said, my Fender Jazz is excellent and currently my main go to bass because i'm just playing in a basic band with no need for a fancy tweakable sound. Just plug and play.

2nd suggestion for the Xotic X blender too. it is now my most important pedal on bass. look no further.... but i'm sure you will.... the quest for tone and G.A.S.

if you're looking at the Soundbox 2 options. the dimension reverb is excellent on bass with really great controls, the orbital modulator is also great on bass and will give you some excellent spacey sounds especially is you use it with the reverb, but also look at the OFD bass modulator from them as well.

PM'd also.

i use a Shure SM7B for recording vocals... never tried it on anything else yet. It is top notch high end quality. if i get a chance i'll have a go at recording my bass cab with it. It's an excellent Mic. I also have an Avalon U5 as my instrument preamp for Bass and Guitar as you get a really transparent high quality bass tone through it and don't need to use one of your Mic preamps on your focusrite if you're trying to record instrument and vocals at the same time.

so THAT'S where all the spectres in the UK went.........

Hi BC people.

I thought i would turn to you guys for recommendations based on my situation. I have a 10 year old degree in music and I understand the music tech world has moved on about 50,000 parsecs since then. I have been moving back into the world of making my own music for about 6 months and have reached a point where i want to make a bit more time for it in my life and could probably make 1 day a week spare to study. I am currently using Ableton + MainStage 3 but would also be happy working with Logic or if needs be Pro Tools.

At the same time as doing my own stuff at home, I also help with a church youth project / band helping them to make music and have taught a couple of people bass. This is reaching the point where it needs to advance in terms of music kit and my skill to use it. We need to start putting the drums in a drum cage with mics and running in ear monitors with a midi controlled click to allow us to use ableton tracks live / push midi controller / MainStage 3.

It would also be good for me to develop general sound engineer stuff so i can consider different options for working in the industry in the future.

I thought it was good to give you guys a general run down of where i'm at and what i'm wanting to do as that will rule out certain courses and directions.

I'm looking at doing anything from 1-5 day mega crash courses to 6 month - 1 year part time courses with evening study as an option.

Any recommendations and advice for what to steer clear from would be appreciated as I have seen some really great options and some that look like a company just in it to put you through a slap dash course and take your money and you come out the other side none the wiser.

Thanking the BC community in advance

ok cool. thanks for clarifying. i can see this importance of that before someone thought they could crank a 500W amp into a 250W and think that nothing bad would happen to the cab. my wording may well have given that impression with no warning about damaging the cab. cheers luke

i mean i understand that if you can put more than the 250W it will drive the cab harder than the 250W that the cab's rated to (which isn't good for the cab)

i always get confused with amps and watts and ohms and bleugh......

please do explain why not strictly true as i like to learn (without meaning to hijack the thread)

i think he's asking if you were stood in the best place to hear the cab, sometimes you're running with plenty of volume but can't hear yourself if you're stood with the guitar amp pointed right at your face and your cab is facing away from you.

remember if it's a 250W cab you're only using 250 W even though the LM2 produces 500W at 4ohm.

that's why he's saying you need to check it with a different cab as the ashdown cab might have not been the loudest.

i was close from memory wasn't sure if they'd had to change the streamer shape

ha!! posted 1 min before me

yeah. Stuart Spector designed the original shape, then Warwick just went ahead and exactly copied it to make the warwick streamer, then there was a lawsuit where stuart spector sued warwick, and i think they came to a settlement when warwick I THINK... pay him some sort of license fee for the shape rather than changing the shape of the warwick. it's something like that anyway. spector are a really cool company to research the beginnings of. Doug Wimbish tells some interesting stories of when he was playing on one of the rolling stones albums and Stuart Spector was designing him a bass (the same one he plays to this day).

it has always made me wonder why Spector has been so under the radar in the UK. they are such great basses with great tones. I don't know if it's just that they aren't that well known by the general public so music stores (not Bass stores) don't stock them because they don't sell in bulk....

I too started with a Korean Spector, then a US Spector came up from Eubasix and i couldn't resist. What an amazing thing. So worth it. I've heard people say the Euros are really close to the US models but i've never played something straight out of a case that made such an impact (my ACG made a similar impact but in a different way)

yeah. if there's no problem of accidentally being in active / passive mode then there's something's not right there.

if you have a push/pull volume control like my german made warwick, then if you have pulled out the volume knob you have put it into passive mode. this completely bypasses the EQ section and the only thing that effects the sound is the blend between the neck and bridge pickups. please note this is in a German $$ corvette. And if your battery is flat, it will switch into passive mode (on mine i have to pull out the volume to put it into passive mode even if the battery is flat)

have you tried changing the settings of the pedals and seeing if it happens over the whole range of sounds of the pedals, or only when the two specific settings that you like meet each other. you may find that the OD is altering your signal in an area where the chorus is then wanting to also change something and that means your signal is actually getting reduced. i don't know enough to use the technical terms, but first thing i'd check is if it happens throughout the whole range of the pedals or only on certain settings. if it is that only certain settings cause the drop, then just tweak them until you get a sound you like that doesn't cause a drop.

there was no criticism of your technique intended at all. i thought you did a great job both with recording and playing.

No. 2 seemed to have more presence, i thought your playing on Bass 1 on the 3rd clip was better than Bass 2 on the 3rd clip, there were a couple of untidy fret noises, so I thought No. 1 my have been the Pino due to better playability.... but i preferred the tone of bass number 2 so I'm going to guess No.2 is the Pino.

Makes you wonder thought what you're paying the extra £2k+ for. but as mentioned above, your technique is good so probably does a lot to close the gap. You might find a mid level player with not such tight sounds might get a much nicer sound out of the £2k+ instrument, but you'd be hard pushed at a gig to tell any difference especially if you chuck a couple of pedals into the mix.

When you post about what the playability etc. was like it'd be really interesting to hear your thoughts of the 2 and if the affinity require much more effort to play.

Shows your £2k might be better spent on lessons and a decent amp

you might find that because the 2nd hand market has been so subdued recently that people with mid to low end stuff are hanging onto it because there's no point in selling it unless you have to. you might as well keep it as a back up until the market starts to pick up if you can afford to keep it. if you've got a more expensive bass you might want to shift it or trade it as it will release you some serious cash or get you a change of bass for something at the same level. Just a thought not fact based.

the EQ is input to the Return of the signal from the FX loop. the blend function has to be on for the EQ to be applied, so when you aren't using the blend function it won't be colouring your signal. I believe the aim of it is to compensate for any pedals that you have that suck your low end so it compensates only when using the FX loop.

[url="http://www.xotic.us/effects/x_blender/X-BlenderManual.pdf"]http://www.xotic.us/...enderManual.pdf
S[/url]ee the diagram at the top of Pg 2 showing where things like EQ and Phase inversion are applied in the signal chain.