SubsonicSimpleton

My guess would be Antoni Debut looking at the finish, tuners and tailpiece - but I might be way off the mark.

You could give reaper a try - it won't cost you anything to try it out, and if you decide you want to use it, you won't have to keep buying upgrades as their model is pay once at a very reasonable price as opposed to the big name DAWS who expect you to stump up for every major upgrade.

You can probably rewire it internally without any issues, but you'll need to check the impedance of the individual drivers to calculate what your options will be for the impedance that will be shown to the amp. Old ampeg 8x10s use 32ohm drivers that are parallel wired to achieve the final impedance IIRC, but your ashdown cab might be using a different wiring scheme and lower impedance drivers to reach the final 4 ohm impedance for the cab. Once you know the impedance for a single driver in your cab, the maths for what options you will have is pretty easy.

Just to play devils advocate here, why do you think that you need a backup? Are you playing an expensive pernambuco stick that you are worried about damaging, or are you in bass player "must have backup for everything" mode? It's a really good idea to have a case for your bow, which you can put the bow back in anytime you are not playing to avoid accidents on the gig or in transit - if you play french bow, a two piece snooker cue hardcase will do the job, if you play german bow, then there are cases designed for two piece cue plus extension that will get the job done, examples below. 2 piece https://www.amazon.co.uk/Black-Silver-Padded-Aluminium-Snooker/dp/B00YXPU3CI 2 piece+extension https://www.amazon.co.uk/BLACK-HARD-PIECE-SNOOKER-CASE/dp/B008JEI6GE You need to remove the dividers and take some scissors to a cheap bathroom sponge to make some inserts that will stop the bow rattling about inside. As long as you are looking after your bow properly, it should be reliable (avoid leaving the bow tensioned, don't leave it near radiators or on sunny windowsills, don't leave it in the car for hours on hot days etc) just treat it with a similar level of care and respect to your DB. If you go deeper down the arco rabbit hole and start working on more technically demanding material, rather than needing a spare bow, you are much more likely to want and benefit from a better bow, in which case your current stick will make it's way to backup status.

According to internet lore fender red knob amps are undesirable, but if you want reliable solid state with really good clean channel the 85 and deluxe 85 models are pretty good - I have the 2x12 equivalent which has always been reliable. The distortion channel is pretty meh, but the reverb is nice and the clean channel takes pedals well, internal build quality is good and schematics are readily available. Some sellers try to hype the price because of the radiohead connection, but they do pop up very cheap from time to time. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Fender-Eighty-five-Amp/282253565426

Take your son(and his guitar) amp shopping - it's important that he likes the sound of the amp at the volume level he is going to be using it at.

Looks very wrong to me - most importantly how the fingerboard is laying right on the top of the instrument which doesn't suggest it will play well past the neck joint, or at all (in any meaningful sense) with a bow. Might be worth a punt at £95, as you could sell the schaller pickup and get some of your money back if it is a total turd, but a grand will buy you a good preloved DB or pro level EUB.

Youtube have made a deal with some of the big record companies which means that you don't need to apply for sync permissions to upload cover videos of songs owned by these rights holders as youtube pays them - the big issue is that this deal is not universal to all rights holders and somewhat difficult to check exactly which material is covered under the agreement. Some google-fu should find more detail on this. No-one is likely to call in the lawyers over a video with a handful of views, but just in case you are worried about losing your channel due to copyright strikes, you can make a new email and youtube channel specifically for that content.

If you are refuting the benefits of megbucks power cords on the basis that you are connecting them into much longer lengths of 20p/meter flat twin and earth cable between the wall socket and meter, proof isn't really necessary because magic that can bend the laws of physics and circumvent ohms law doesn't exist - if it did, then the technology in these magic cables would be being employed in much more interesting technologies which are currently theoretically possible, but not possible to implement in practice because they require things like superconductors that don't need to be at 0 degrees Kelvin to function properly.

[quote name='Rocker' timestamp='1478005076' post='3165884'] I noticed that too. But the cynic, that is me, wonders why the guy expends so much energy into just proving that something does not perform as the manufacturer claims. If buyers believe it works, then it works for them. If not, it doesn't. I believe that the so called 'retail therapy' can make us feel a lot better about ourselves. The new suit theory... What is wrong about feeling better about ourselves? There are enough problems without someone adding to the list and calling us liars if we believe something works, even if it can be 'proved' that it does not. [/quote] He is trying to do potential buyers a favour - there are plenty of things that you could spend your money on that really would make a difference if you want to indulge in retail therapy or philanthropy.

Simplified Sight Reading for Bass by Josquin des Pres is pretty good, and starts off with lots of exercises devoted to reading rhythms. For further rhythm reading practice take a look at something like this http://www.instituteofbass.com/subscribe/sample.pdf which has pages and pages of rhythm variations, set your metronome to a slow speed and pick a page at random

Here is a link to the thread that TenLetters referenced, but in PDF format with random chat removed http://stash.reaper.fm/oldsb/333146/Why%20do%20my%20recordings%20sound%20like%20ASS.pdf

This sounds much more expensive than the price tag would suggest, is an easy DIY fit and doesn't need to live on the bass 24/7, it also plays nicely with most amps without need for an impedance matching preamp. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/J-tone-Big-double-Bass-Pick-up-/201498506263

If the tracks you are recording with the zoom sound good, then they are good. Enjoy the process of recording and spend time experimenting with the stuff you have and figuring out what it is capable of - recording equipment can get very expensive very quickly, so before deciding to upgrade your audio chain, you really need to be sure about what is going to bring the best improvement. If you are concerned about recording 8 tracks at once, what circumstances are you going to do this in as an overdub where latency might be an issue? Go do it, and see whether it really is a problem - if there isn't a problem then great, if there is a problem, you need to ask how often you will need to record like that and what your options are (for something like full drumkit overdubs it may be economical to rent some studio time and take advantage of their mics and acoustic treatment and pro level kit if you are not going to be doing it on a regular basis) - do you need more kit, or can you change your approach to making the recording so the problem disappears.

Before you go hogwild buying an expensive multi channel interface, it is worth IMHO looking at the full signal chain of the equipment you already own, and make an honest assessment of whether you are genuinely being limited by the equipment. You already own a Zoom R16 - so how many recordings of your band have you made with it using all 8 channels? what mics did you use? how much time did you spend on mic positioning and gain adjustment before starting to record? and what were the problems with the end results? The preamps and AD conversion in the R16 are not on the same level as you would find in a pro studio, but problems with room acoustics, bad mic placement, poor mics or improper gain staging are much more likely to hold you back, and won't magically disappear buy buying a more expensive interface. At the point where you can positively identify that something in your signal chain is a problem, and why it is a problem is the point when it makes sense to make an informed decision to upgrade. Just to illustrate the point, go listen to Bruce Springsteen's album Nebraska which is notable for being recorded on cassette 4 track portastudio in his spare room with a couple of SM57s - it really illustrates what can be achieved with very basic equipment.

Try dropping geoffbassist a pm, he had a couple of used sets for sale at the DB bash, I nabbed one so he probably still has the other set available.

The more you use a part of your body, the more control you will develope - when you start off playing an instrument like guitar, holding down basic chord shapes and changing smoothly between them is really challenging, but after you've been doing it a while it becomes second nature, and the fine control you have gained makes learning new things easier. If you've been using one hand predominantly since birth, it will be much better educated in fine motor tasks than the hand you don't use as much, this doesn't mean that there is a difference between the potential of either hand to perform complex tasks IMHO, it simply indicates that you've been using one hand more than the other and then consistently favouring the better educated hand so the other doesn't catch up. Spend several years playing a lot of guitar/bass/piano and the gap between the control in both hands will be much smaller. Most people probably don't remember how big a challenge learning to write is - we spend years in school learning to hold the pen/pencil and refining our ability to draw the letters, by the time we are adults it is second nature. As a thought experiment, take off your shoes and socks, grab a pencil and paper and try drawing or writing with each foot - it's quite possible to develope a similar level of fine motor control with the feet as it is with the hands, but the only people who do this notably tend to be disabled people who can't use their arms (or don't have arms) and have no other option.

I'm using the Hildersine case which is excellent value for money, but it doesn't have that many handles, so might not be the best for your situation. One thing that does occur to me however is that there is more than one way to load a double bass in a small car, and maybe you would benefit from changing your approach to how you are carrying it in the vehicle. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3HJCBJFTRk It's possible on many cars with split seats to modify Geoff's approach of turning the bass on it's side and have only the wider side of the split collapsed (as opposed to collapsing the whole rear seat in the video) which still allows someone to sit on the rear seat as well as room for two people up front. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=samNHsF2NhI Bit more detail on the front passenger seat method in this one. And just for laughs while we are on the subject of double basses and small cars http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWvI3QVjlv8

Really glad I managed to get to this - thanks to Keith for kindly giving me a lift, Roger for organising, and everyone else who made the effort to turn up, bring their kit and be an all round smashing bunch of human beings. The only issue I had was that there wasn't enough time to try everything, even though I had a good go, I think there were about ten instruments that I didn't get to play.

You might not need to buy an interface at all, depending on the connectivity of your laptop - if you have 3.5mm jack plug sockets available for both microphone and aux/line in you could just use the onboard soundcard(if you have some form of effects unit or practice amp to buffer your bass) - the fidelity isn't going to be as good as a quality dedicated interface, but skype will turn your audio to poop with heavy compression anyway. I use a small notepad mixer to handle all the audio in and out of my PC, which isn't necessarily the best solution in every circumstance, but it might be worth looking at what you already have available in terms of headset, laptop conectivity and effects units/practice amp, and think about how you are going to be practicing in your hotel room as a matter of course. If there is a way to wangle a working setup from it on the basis of some cheap leads/adaptors I'll be happy to help you figure out a solution if one is possible.

A bit more digging on the lexicon site reveals that the alpha 2x2x2 was released in 2006, so at ten years old it's knocking on a bit http://lexiconpro.com/en/news/lexicon-expands-desktop-recording-range-with-intuitive-new-alpha%E2%84%A2-studio Googling for driver issues doesn't produce pages of rage so you might be alright if you are not running win10 - my experience with legacy products is that there often isn't a problem if you run an offline system which never gets updated once you have a stable config, but for a system that runs online and gets regular OS updates not such a good idea IMHO.

You might want to look at audio interfaces that are known to be USB 2 class compliant - class compliant devices will run without a manufacturers proprietary driver (if an OS update buggers a proprietary driver and the company are not actively maintaining their drivers then you are sh!t out of luck). When looking at older devices that have been in production for a while you need to be really careful about this issue. The Lexicon site mentions explicitly that the interface you are looking at isn't windows 10 compatible and they won't confirm a date for support (which sorta suggests that it isn't likely to happen, or is very low on their priority list) http://lexiconpro.com/en/softwares/alpha-driver-v2-7-windows

Anyone got space for a passenger from Leeds/Bradford? My transport is marooned in the garage waiting on parts which won't arrive till monday. Happy to split petrol costs.

Learn your chord tones - IMHO in much teaching based on chord scale theory the emphasis is wrongly placed on scales and modes and learning a multitude of fingering patterns. Chords are context sensitive, so the "correct" scale will change depending on the harmonic function of the chord (e.g. a basic C major chord functions differently in the keys of C major, F major and G major and would require a different scale choice in each case), but the chord tones always remain the same (in the case of our C major chord, the notes C,E and G), so having a solid grasp of the chord tones gives you a basic foundation which will always make musical sense regardless of the context in which that chord is being used, without the need to tie yourself in knots trying to analyse the music - the chord tones are "home" and you can freely explore other note choices as long as you can return "home" at will to resolve any tension you create by choosing more interesting notes. Also worth remembering that rhythm and phrasing are super important, and by restricting your note choice to the chord tones, you can put more focus on these aspects.

Have a lesson with a good teacher - they'll be able to identify any issues with the bow or your technique very quickly, and give you some good direction on what you need to work on going forward. Sometimes the solution can be embarrassingly simple, like not using enough rosin(speaking from personal experience ) even though I was going round the houses in my mind thinking I needed a new bass/bow/strings because I was having difficulty making the E string speak with any authority - took my teacher seconds to diagnose and fix.