Dood

I know that folk had complained about the original power supply, but I didn't know that Neural had upgraded it, that's brilliant actually. Good on ya Neural! I've been building a few new presets recently that, when done, I'll put up on the Cortex app.

It was so good, it was worth telling twice! 😊

The Gulf Of America describes the space between the giant Wotsit's ears.

The Fender Stage 800 combo, like the Boss Katana is laden with effects.

Wait, mine's a wall wart! Are you all saying you have a different power supply than I? I mean, my QC is an early one from the first batch of consumer models. (It might even be a pre-release model!)

{EDIT: See my reply to WinterMute} I agree, its one of the things I miss about Helix LT - straight in with an IEC, no messing about with extra boxes and nonsense. The included QC power supply I have to admit, doesn't fill me with confidence when I see how other poepole treat their gear. The wire alone appears thin, so, I leave it carefully coiled up and bring the mains to the QC rather than have the QC power wire loose. That said, the QC has done a lot of gigs now and the PSU hasn't failed.. so, maybe it's not so bad after all lol.. I wonder if Neural assumed that users would just opt to get the QC on a pedal board asap and use pedal power instead, the wall wart being a compromise?

I bought the MyVolts pile for not much over £20 new and, I knew it was only going to be used on my desk, so from a personal use point of view, it didn't warrant the extra for something stage-worthy. It's still a better build than the enclosed power supply.

Boss pedals are centre negative, Neural DSP followed suit. iIRC I read that somewhere. Generic non-music gear stuff is more often centre positive. The MyVolts power supplies appear to be non-music gear specific and thus come with polarity changers. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with the power supplies. I’m not sure how many in the various ranges are fully isolated though.

I'm using the supplied PSU 😂 - Frankly, I do agree with the comments that it doesn't appear that roadworthy. I've been meaning to use something decent. The only thing that lets down the MyVolts power supply, is that they don't mention they send a 'polarity changer adaptor' with the unit because the QC uses a centre negative connector and most generic (non-music gear) supplies are centre-positive. The latter making way more sense to me.

Yes, I have the MyVolts premium power supply threaded through my desk for when QC is in my studio space. I bought the premium version, though I think it was cheaper when I ordered, a long whiel back now. Seems absolutely fine, no digital noise or interference and plenty of current on tap.

I've been using DeepDish's GigBook for years now. It's a really simple app and doesn't "do" a lot of features that other apps have, but for dep gigs and the like, it's enough.

This set up is from a recent gig but the IEM stuff is on another stand out of view. Pretty lightweight, easy to move and covers pretty much any gig these days.

Oh, the Ampeg SVT 4 Pro model on the helix is excellent 👍

I’ve ran the stomp, HX and Helix LT. They’re all amazing. The Stomp is brilliant but I ran out of lanes / rows for parallel processing and I prefer more “stomp pedal” buttons for fast access to individual effects. I loved the LT, it had everything I needed at the time, but QC won me over with the form factor, touch screen, user interface and profiling. That said I still use Helix Native on my desktop and I might make up a mini rig with the Stomp.

Just a couple of items 😂 (Honestly this isn’t even half of the kit I’ve owned 😂)

I used to play in a band called, “Don’t Call Me Surely”. Of course we loved ‘Airplane!’ and all things Leslie Nielsen. We used to play “Bitch School” and “Majesty Of Rock” in our set, so I suppose that was Spinal Tap enough. Though our drummer died. Well, I say died, he pulled out of our first gig with just a couple of days warning, which at the time was enough to want to pummel him to death 😂

Hmmm, you’ve just got me thinking. I use a bunch of stuff to make up my custom in-ear mix and, I’ve never really thought about using QC as a glorified headphone amplifier as well as looking after my gig sounds. I think I’m going to try out some routing options and report back. i do know that there’s a chap on YouTube who created an IEM mixer for his Line 6 Helix guitar set up that he uses for worship gigs, so there’s probably an idea or two in there (sorry I forgot the channel name!) So, yes, off the top of my head, you could in theory receive a PA aux in to any of the 4 QC inputs (the main ins and the two fx returns) as they are all 1MΩ or greater. I am thinking that I’d set the master volume control to operate the headphone output alone and set aside one of the processing rows (there are 4) to the job of mixing the aux, instrument and one other feed. Of course this does mean I can EQ and limit what is being sent to my ears. More thoughts on that later. As for power supply, I do t have pedal board power, I bought a spare adapter, but I do have the new EBS power supply here, I’ll see if that can power QC. I think it might be able to!

For Drop C and Drop C#, the best off the shelf strings available in a packet, everywhere are D'Addario Balanced Tension Medium / Long Scale Set EXL160BT Newtone custom strings are very good too!!

Thank you! Yes absolutely, I can tilt it a little - my bass has a pretty heavy low string on it that needs a little space to move but the bass is designed with tap style in mind so the action is pretty low too. With that, yes, playing lighter means less chance of buzz, but not too much that the tone suffers. There's a balance to be had. Absolutely the same here. I can definitely feel a slight height adjustment in the ramp the same as I can if the action has changed. There's definitely a sweet spot that feels right for me. - I have a couple of PJ basses with active EMG's in and I use the P style as a ramp when needed too, so the height of those are decided by feel rather than the optimal height of a standard passive P pickup (Active EMGs are interesting as they are best set as high as possible versus passive pickups that should have around 1/4" between the poles and strings).

I appreciate it is less than helpful for those who might not hang on to their bass and want to retain a re-sale value; my ramps on my two Shuker basses (That Jon Shuker and I designed together) drop all the way in to the body, thus it is routed like a pickup. We chose really strong springs so the ramp doesnt flex and it can be adjusted for height and angle. I'm not sure what it is, but the wood itself doesnt sound clacky and hollow when you tap it either.

That's a fault with the teacher not 'reading the room'. Plenty of great musicians out there who are supplementing their income with "a bit of teaching", but have no teaching experience. I'm not surprised you were put off, where's the fun in endless exercises?

As a teacher of many years (and successful students) I can offer the other side of the discussion. Now, I am very passionate (really Dan, Reeeeaaaallllly?) about eveything bass. I've made it my career and it is my life. Not one of my students has ever come away from lessons feeling that I have taken anything, anything away from them. That's not how teaching works. As Bilbo has so brilliantly put it, "A teacher gives you tools. How you use them is up to you." On the subject of feeling that you can't be taught, well that can be down to your experiences of being taught. I have been very lucky to work in a wide range of settings including SEND students, ADHD, Autistic, behavioural 'needs', those suffering from Dementia and those 'incarcerated', mainstream school and private studio lessons. There's a difference between being an experienced teacher and an experienced musician. A good friend of mine is an A list, top-tier guitarist, but in his own words, he hates teaching 1-2-1 lessons and finds it frustrating and difficult. You can be "taught" by someone who isn't a best fit and if this happens on more than one occasion for example, this can embed a confirmation bias based on previous experiences. You might not have met the right teacher yet to suit you and, let's face it, we are all very different!

They are brilliant, I'm a big fan of D'Addario and use these mostly too. All of my guitars have D'Addario strings, I really rate the XS coated for electrics. (I do however grab the '2-pack' versions of the standard bass XL's as they are often cheaper, but prefer these and Pro Steels.)