SubsonicSimpleton

Takes a while for any new set of strings to settle in, your technique might need some work to get a consistently good sound out of the lowest string as the mechanics of playing it differ from the top three.

My luthier of choice doesn't like being supplied with parts - I asked him why, and his main concern was that substandard materials make precision work much more difficult, and he doesn't want to put himself in a position where he is having to stand behind a job which fails at a later date due to something beyond his control which he than has to rectify at his expense or risk damage to his reputation. He quoted me £200 to supply a despiau blank, fit adjusters to it and fit it to the bass when I asked him about replacing my bridge.

edit: I noticed just after posting this that Sakae have recently ceased trading, so even though some UK retailers have stock at reduced prices, warranty cover and long term parts availability might be an issue. The Sakae PacD might be worth looking at - looks like the manufacturers put a bit more effort into the bass drum mounting solution.

There are lots of potential ways to add inputs over adat (old adat machines, digital mixers, budget 8in pres like the ADA8200 if you are on a budget and quality isn't absolutely critial), but you can't improve the performance of the bread and butter aspects of your interface that might niggle you on a daily basis - IMHO it makes sense to prioitise your spend on what you will get the most use out of, so having a couple of better quality pres, a better headphone amp and lower latency is where I would be spending unless of course you are recording live with lots of IO on a daily basis and charging people for the recordings.

This sounds like the band is either a - wanting someone who can drop in to a well filled diary very quickly and get up to speed on a big repetoire with minimum fuss, or b - borderline morons who when you get to the audition don't actually all know how to play all the songs on the list themselves I auditioned for a covers band a couple of years ago who were in the latter category, and it turned out at the audition that the list of songs they sent me to learn was more akin to a wishlist of songs they aspired to being able to play at some indeterminate point in the future - as I worked my way through the list and charts I had written out, the singer and guitarist were frantically searching tab and lyric sites on their smartphones for the majority of the songs

There is a huge amount of classical scores over on imslp.org, so you have loads of cello and double bass parts in pdf format to go at - should be fairly easy to find youtube footage of performances/recordings to play along with.

Make a trip to bassbags.co.uk near Derby, lots of stock and their instruments are set up properly.

Maybe your pricing is simply too high - online prices of used gear has been somewhat inflated by the large number of people who are trying to make money as part time online dealers. Locally to me, anything that is priced to sell disapears from gumtree/shpock within a couple of hours of being listed and most of it gets relisted at higher prices by the same half-dozen individuals which makes fair used market price appear to be higher on first glance to anyone not aware of how many of the adverts are not genuine private sales.

You really need to take it to a double bass luthier like Martin Penning http://mpenning-luthier.co.uk/contact He will be able to make an accurate assessment of what work needs doing.

Mic the drums up and crank his monitoring up until he starts to play quieter - best results with headphones/IEMs, but a wedge aimed directly at his head will be pretty effective.

Christian speed thrash K-pop dustep alt-satanic bebop doomcore retrowave 8bit-remix klezmer with neo-operatic vocals and matching pointy beards and shoes

Bill is a member here @Bill Fitzmaurice although I think he has messaging switched off, hopefully he will be notified that I've tagged him, look at the thread and contact you or post in the thread. If that doesn't happen, you could try signing up to his forum and contacting him there https://billfitzmaurice.info/forum/

Might be worth contacting Bill Fitzmaurice and asking whether that particular driver would be a good fit for any of his designs.

Just out of interest Al, what frequency do you think people typically feel the bass at a gig? And do you associate this with "heft"?

Which audio interface are you using?

Midi over USB can be a bit laggy on PC IME, if your soundcard supports the old fashioned 5 pin din midi connectors it's worth borrowing any cheap keyboard with an old fashioned midi out din port and checking what the lag situation is like going through your soundcard - I notice a big difference with my controller (which has both 5 pin din IO and midi over USB) between using it din->pc soundcard, usb->ipad, usb->pc (best to worst). The difference all lies in the driver implementation IMHO, my PCI soundcard is very low latency for everything(ancient maudio delta 2496), the IOS implentation of midi/audio over usb is pretty damn good, generic PC implementation of midi over USB just sucks for anything that requires precise timing.

From a pure science viewpoint, you would need to also completely eliminate any effect of the listening environment to ensure that room modes were not making either pitch louder or softer, and also the speaker would need to be able to reproduce the tone without introducing distortion from either the speaker cone or enclosure - of course this wouldn't happen in the real world so it's rather a moot point. I think that the best way to really understand what is and isn't important is to record a loop of your bass with a DI, then play back into your efx return on the amp head from your DAW with an EQ plugin on the track, and then experiment with moving the high pass point progressively until you can perceive a change - it will vary from rig to rig(some speakers are rubbish at reproducing true LF content, but still sound good for bass guitar), and it might be quite suprising how high you can move the filter without compromising the sound coming out of the speaker. I have access to a couple of rack mount parametric EQ units with variable high pass filter, and IME you can set the frequency much higher than you might expect at war volume running the unit in the amp efx loop without compromising "heft".

IIRC the zoom R24 in standalone mode is limited to recording at 24bit/48khz as best quality, so if you intend on using it for tasks such as tracking live drums at your rehearsal room and then overdubbing other instruments at home later on, it might be a good idea to stick to using that standard even if the unit can run at higher sample rates in interface mode. The important thing is to use 24bit rather than 16bit, as this gives you much better headroom and makes it easier to avoid clipping as you are recording, but still have a good usable signal with enough detail and dynamic range without needing to worry too much about signal/noise ratio.

Each note on a piano has its own dedicated strings - even if you detuned the note an octave above so both notes sounded at exactly the same pitch the notes would sound very different, because they are being made by different length strings with different diameters. If you really wanted to put this theory to a proper test, you would need to use a synthesiser or tone generator producing a pure sine wave with no harmonic content, then repeat the test with synthesised tones of increasing harmonic complexity to guaruntee that the harmonic content of the test tones isn't being influenced by factors like inharmonicity of physical strings (which is the reson why fretting a low B at the fifth fret doesn't sound the same as the open E even though they are the same pitch).

Take a look on youtube for the videos about DIY drum isolation platforms - basic low tech solution that uses tennis balls sandwiched between two boards. Take the idea and then scale down, and maybe substitue the tennis balls with something a bit softer (squash balls, foam dog balls) - a lot depends on how heavy your amp is.

There is a good series of videos that a drum teacher posted on youtube which shows the design and construction of a proper 2 leaf room within a room building. There are also a couple of garage conversion vids that show in reasonable detail their methods along with proper measurement It's not too difficult to also find projects where people have ignored key principles and end up with lots of expense for little real world return, so it definately pays to research this topic with some thoroughness before starting to build anything.

Thomann still stock DBs made by Hora(11) and Strunal(1), the cheapest besting their own brand anonymous far east offering(the 111) - Gedomusic is a different music instrument company in Germany that also sells the same Strunal and Hora basses as Thomann and their own anonymous far east sourced DBs by mail order. It's reasonably easy to spot the Strunal and Hora offerings on the Gedo site by the neck join and tuners, when I asked them they were reluctant to discuss the origin of any of their instruments. The same numbering convention repeats on the Thomann site for hybrid basses Strunal(2) Hora(22) and full carved Strunal(3) Hora(33) IIRC, if you email them Thomann are happy to confirm the origin of their instruments. If you order the same bass from either company there will be a price differential - Thomann won't add shipping cost on top of their price, but also don't bundle anything with the bass, Gedomusic do bundle some things in. Based on personal experience of playing instruments supplied by both companies, I would take their claims to perform any sort of setup work with a large pinch of salt.

Take a look at this, the problem could be being caused by something other than the caps.

It might be worth getting in contact with this place (in Keighley not far from Leeds) http://www.daltonmills.co.uk/ They use parts of the mill for filming all sorts of stuff including major film and TV dramas on a fairly regular basis, so if there is a section that fits what you want the video to look like, then they will be quite willing to accomodate you, and there should be no issues with power or access, but they will charge. There is also a rehearsal studio over the road from the mill who might be able to help out with lighting/cabs etc if necessary.

There is a PDF that you caould presumably print out and use as a template here https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxndWl0YXJwbGFuc2NvbGxlY3Rpb258Z3g6NDc1YjQzZjJjMDlkZDFjNg A print shop should be able to print out 1:1 on single sheets, but some printers will print out multiple sheets of A4 that you can cut/paste together.