Happy Jack

Oh God! did I lust after that Dudepit model at the time.

A noisy reformer? Did you plug it into a Trace combo or something? 😉

Quite surprised to see how much these things go for nowadays ... well north of £2k I gather. In all fairness, I greatly prefer the Grabber. I do like me a sliding pickup. 😎

By sheer coincidence, I've just finished watch a twoodfrd YouTube about fixing & setting up one of these.

Too late ... I've already blown the Xmas fund on something else. 🙄 https://www.korg.com/uk/products/synthesizers/rk_100s/index.php Comes with a set of roller skates. Allegedly.

Different strokes for different folks. As an absolutely amateur DAW-user who mainly needs to mix live recordings taken in pubs & clubs the night before, I find it hard to imagine spending 20p on 3rd-party plug-ins, let alone £200. 10 years ago I was happily publishing unmixed, unprocessed MP3s recorded with a Zoom H2 set on a shelf behind the bar at the pub. At the time, unbelievably, that was enough to put my covers band head & shoulders above the local pack. 😂 "That's a live, no-frills recording of us playing the Dog & Duck last week. That's exactly what we sound like. Book my band to play here, and what you hear is what you'll get." I got a LOT of gigs like that. All very different from how @BigRedX (and many others) use a DAW, and I get that. It's worth bearing in mind that the OP (from 2017!) was not "the best DAW" or even "the right DAW for me"; it was "the best value DAW" and a product as good as Reaper that can be had for nothing, not a sausage, bugger all, represents value that simply can't be matched by any of the established high-end competitors. Even if you choose to buy a licence (as I did) you're still looking at a one-off £40 payment for a product that gets improved/fixed/updated quite literally every week.

Reaper. I say again, Reaper. And thrice! Reaper!

After a huge amount of research time and money spent, my opinion is that the best compromise between sound and weight is currently the QSC CP12. It's neither as loud nor as 'hefty' as the QSC K series, the RCF ART 712, or the Mackie SRM450, but it's easily enough for most venues and it weighs 13.7Kg which is about a third less than the others I just mentioned. When it's time to put them on or take them off a pair of shoulder-height poles you really notice that missing weight. Where I need more oomph than that for whatever reason, I just combine them with a couple of sub-woofers sitting on the floor, so no lifting onto poles involved. They also make superb floor monitors.

I use a Crazy 8 on an old PA pole as my stage monitor (putting the cab at ear level virtually guarantees no feedback concerns) and then get most of my bass sound and volume through the band PA. All of my gigs include @Silvia Bluejay on sound engineer duty so the mix always sounds great out front while I don't need to worry about what the audience is hearing. This video is from the loudest and most raucous of the pub gigs we play:

That's a lovely looking thing. Does it play even remotely as well as it looks?

Mat? What you need is a Reformer.

Do you get much of a volume variation across the pickups? Is the bridge noticeably louder than the neck or maybe vice versa?

And while you're in there, be sure to weigh it. I had two of the real thing (thank you @silverfoxnik 😂) but had to sell them for the heinous crime of weighing 11lbs. That's each, you understand.

Pilates, pilates, and more pilates.

Already done ... goes back to the supplier (full refund, not a replacement) tomorrow as soon as the Post Office opens.

He's in Aberdeen, Chris. That's a commitment level too far for me, and I'd guess for you too. 😀

So that pickup arrived. @Silvia Bluejay and I tried to install it today. £132 of cheap'n'nasty plastic, the battery holding socket being particularly poor design. The CR2032 lives in a recess so you can't just slide it in/out, the battery clip has to be lifted. Then it snaps. A piece of proper spring steel would have cost maybe a penny. A bog standard battery cover (as used on every clip-on tuner) might have cost 5p. But no, they chose to compromise a £132 unit to save 5p.

Long time ago now, but the biggest issue was the internal mapping between the XR18 and Reaper running on the PC. Secondary issue was that I couldn't find a way to do instant playback in the studio of what I had just recorded ... I had to render each take to a WAV on a memory stick, then take that stick to the PC in my home office and listen to it there. Just getting everything hooked up so it worked meant spending ages watching (really very helpful) YouTube tutorials of the "connect A to B, now set C to D" variety. Next time, I'll get the best take (or the take the band feel happiest with) 'as live' recorded as separate stems on the Ui24R, then take those stems into Reaper for the pixie dust. That process will reveal the flaws that need fixing, which can be dealt with one by one. In everything I say, do bear in mind that I'm not recording Dark Side Of The Moon here.

Thanks Paddy, will do.

I have a weird acoustic bass guitar (a custom-built 5-string Safran Iris) to which I want to attach a non-invasive piezo pickup, ideally with a small preamp. I've found this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shadow-Nanoflex-Active-Pickup-Control/dp/B000MSQBHQ/ref=asc_df_B000MSQBHQ/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=310812505354&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10819983389944498702&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9045969&hvtargid=pla-552840324703&psc=1&mcid=1a9dd4bc467d36fa922f24c0c6b8fc6a&th=1&psc=1 Has anyone used one of these? Or know anything about them?

During Covid I recorded a track in my studio using an XR18 as the front-end for Reaper. Reaper worked perfectly in every regard and was as easy to use as ever. On the other hand, the functionality of the XR18 was such that it was a nightmare to get it rigged up (this is after a couple of years of live gig experience, so we weren't novices) and I would never wish that experience on another musician. The results were perfectly acceptable. UKZK72000004 Cut Me Some Slack 811949163.mp3 Next time I do this, I shall be using a Ui24R as front-end which makes the entire process of recording the stems an absolute doddle.

Unfortunately, it seems that Macca thought that Michael Jackson was a friend. Now that really was naive.

If weight is the issue (and it's one I'm very familiar with) then I'd suggest looking at a lightweight head and separate cab. I've had a lot of success with https://www.bax-shop.co.uk/bass-guitar-amp-head/trace-elliot-elf-200w-ultra-compact-bass-guitar-amplifier-head?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=surfaces&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=17868851192&utm_term=&adgroup=&creative=&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiAx_GqBhBQEiwAlDNAZnseZptbD2kbaGt5Y5aG5bBzMQWIkJONTUI8sQNscwbM3Jc4h26PghoCUygQAvD_BwE paired with https://www.andertons.co.uk/trace-elliot-1-x-10-enclosure?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=surfaces&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiAx_GqBhBQEiwAlDNAZgyyys3qFiB0E0ySD6u-gqH_AFgUTTKZAvqzQx1_HJUgOQEcvnflWhoCQEIQAvD_BwE Ludicrously lightweight, way more volume than you'll need for any venue that doesn't have PA support, and surprisingly versatile. I run a Rickenbacker 4003s5 through it with my covers band, and a double bass through it with my rock'n'roll band ... sounds great either way.