SubsonicSimpleton

If being in the band is a net positive then stay, if not leave. Don't expect the other members to adjust their agenda to take into account your personal situation. In no particular order; - Creative outlet - Social aspects - Challenging yourself - Getting paid - Time & energy expenditure - Fun factor These are my rough criteria, that I use to assess whether or not I want to get involved in any sort of project - I have a limited amount of time and energy, so if the advantages don't outweigh the drawbacks I would rather invest the time and energy I do have available elsewhere. I won't offer an opinion on what you should do, as my personal circumstances have changed over the years and also changed my perspective on what is most important for the wellbeing of myself and my loved ones.

I've been busy doing my homework on acoustic uprights, and although I haven't sorted out an instrument yet, I already have built up some contacts for a teacher and some local possibilities to go play various types of music with other people as soon as I can get a reasonable noise out of it. For the time being I'm only considering playing acoustically, so no need for pickups, preamps etc at the moment, but I could really do with some advice on items such as gigbags, trolley/wheel, bow etc as the price range for some of this stuff is huge, and without the ability to really check it out in person it is quite hard to make any sort of judgement about price/quality relationship of the products. Gig bags especially are confusing, with prices ranging from £50-£500 with really big variations in padding thickness, but no real way to ascertain how practical they are to use on a day to day basis, and especially in situations where the bass needs to be moved on foot or public transport. In terms of bows, Yita gets a lot of love on the forum, and I can save a few quid and keep my bow safe with a pvc wastepipe hard case - that was the only non-obvious accessory accessory I could think of, am I missing anything else important?

Why bother modding the special? Surely it would make more sense to build a high spec bitsa around an official Fender USA neck, which would give you choice on every component, or simply learn to love the mystic red finish if the USA standard pushes all the other important buttons in terms of sound and playability. If you are in the habit of regularly changing basses, the USA standard P is the best choice.

Bought a book from Geoff, excellent communication, packaging was really good, and everything got sorted nice and quick. Thumbs up from me.

Just what the title says, leave your comments below...

I like both Leo's designs, but my favourite is the P, because it just works.

The live video is great, maybe having some more songs in live video format is a better idea than recording tracks in the studio - clients are booking you for a live show, not buying albums, and you can bring it on stage, so play to your strengths. The only nitpick I had about your promo vid was the audio is a bit distorted, in future if you could record straight from the desk (preferably multitrack) on a gig where everything is going through the PA and then resync the higher quality audio with video(quality fine in your existing promo IMHO) from the camera, dumping the sound from the cameras onboard mics you would keep everything that is great about your live performance, and up the quality of the overall presentation. Maybe consider having a video gallery of individual songs.

[quote name='Grangur' timestamp='1408627478' post='2531971'] The one that I like the sound of best is my cheap P-bass copy with SD Quarter Pounders. It has a great, dark thump and the only thing wrong is the snob value of not having a great looking name on the headstock. [/quote] If it sounds good and inspires you to get your groove on, then it is good - no one will give a f**k about what is on the headstock if you play it well. Not all instruments are inspiring to play or feel/sound good to any given human being, so when you find something that works for you either for live or recording for whatever reason, then keep it and appreciate it and FFS don't sell it thinking that something better is bound to come along - IMHO this counts double for instruments that you don't have a lot of money tied up in, as you lose way more than cash value when you sell an instrument that you enjoy playing.

Quick devils advocate opinion; Don't buy another amp until you have sorted out the band situation. In the meantime, save your pennies and try stuff out, and check out what other players are using live in your local venues, whether it sounds good, how loud the band is etc. How much SPL you need your amplification to deliver is going to be very dependant on the music you are playing, and the musicians you are playing with. 100w should be plenty capable for rehearsals IMHO, and most rehearsal studios have amplification for hire at low cost - once you are sure you are happy with the band, and have secured the gig then you can invest in something appropriate for that musical situation if you need to, without guessing about what you'll need or what type of sound you are looking for.

You have a pretty healthy budget to work with, and a good idea of what you want soundwise, but have you considered what a six string bass will be like to live with in terms of weight and bulk from a performance perspective, or do you intend to use it only for writing purposes? If your desire for extra strings is mainly to facilitate writing, it might be worth your while to also check out options like the 30" scale baritone guitars (e.g. Fender bass VI) and some of the new longer scale extended range guitars (now that manufacturers are making 8, 9 and 10 string instruments). Lots of options in terms of scale length and string spacing if you add these options to the mix. When you describe mixing clean and distorted tones, one of the first things that came to my mind was Billy Sheehan and the way he uses his Yamaha attitude bass - having two pickups with independant outputs driving two different amps - might be worth checking out some of his rig rundown and clinic vids on youtube as he is pretty knowledgeable about his own setup, and his approach is more sophisticated than just splitting the output from the bass with an A/B/Y box. Six string basses are pretty niche, you should be able to find a used Ibanez/Yamaha/Peavey/Cort at affordable money that you can move on at little or no loss later, or you could grab an SX from Rondo to mod with impunity(assuming from your posting you are based in the USA) - whether you will find the extra strings working well for you is a personal thing that you will need to figure out - no point chasing tonal nirvana if you can't live with the ergonomics IMHO.

Maybe also worth considering the string gauge you are using not just how often you change your strings - I found that changing from 45-105 nickel rounds to 35-95 nickel rounds on my Squier CV P made a big difference, the lighter gauge strings work and sound much better for slap (for me at least). It's taken a while to get used to the change, but I'm really glad I gave it a try - I've even been taking the first steps to learning basic double thumbing technique as a result.

Maybe you need to change your strings.

[quote name='gadgie' timestamp='1407586450' post='2522041'] Yes, and maybe you will leave your camera at home the next time you are on holiday and buy postcards instead. [/quote] So if you bought a ticket to see [insert band you like] and part of the deal was a high quality video of the gig you would still want to take blurry video with badly distorted sound using your phone rather than enjoy the show?

Surely a smart band would get high quality cameras and sound from the FOH desk and either offer a HQ digital download as a freebie for ticket buyers or even sell them a shiny personalised DVD of that nights performance the same way that Peter Gabriel does.

Certainly worth a try - the fives I have had chance to play have varied quite a bit in terms of string spacing, and the 35inch scale length of my five certainly feels like harder work for my left hand, but I do quite like the consistency in feel between the A and E for the right hand as a result of being able to have a floating anchor point on the string below for both.

Before buying a new amp, maybe consider that your EQ settings might be the root cause of your problems if you can't be heard or feel you are running out of headroom. Low frequencies are hard work for the speaker and amp, so you might find that by cutting rather than boosting the low frequencies you will get better performance at war volume from your existing kit.

I stumbled on this playlist on youtube earlier today and as I was listening, I noticed a number of the tracks had a very identifiable playing style and tone which sounded to me like they were probably done by the same musician with the same instrument, which made me wonder who recorded them and what bass they used in the recording. Too tired to cross reference them, but here is an example. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5rMfLJKwIE&index=8&list=RDMdC2jPPxAwk

Put some prawns in the cavity under the scratchplate

@redstriper If you want to get a somewhat accurate idea of what to expect from swapping the drivers in your Flyte cabs, you'll need to pop the driver out of one of them and make accurate measurements of the internal dimensions, any volume lost to cab handles etc and an accurate measurement of the port length and cross sectional area - this will facilitate accurately modelling both your existing drivers and the proposed replacement, and give a pretty accurate idea of how the bass response of the cab will change if you made this mod. Going by opinions of someone who has used the 3012LF is somewhat risky, because if they used it in a cab with different internal volume and porting it will perform differently to the way it will perform in your cab. Just to illustrate, I have a MAG 1x15 combo, and a MAG 1x15 extension cab with (according to ashdown) identically performing drivers - the internal volumes of the two enclosures and the porting are however very different. If I alternate between running only the combo speaker or only the extension cab without touching the amp EQ, the timbre is a bit different, but the difference in bass response is very noticeable. Based on external dimensions, my extension cab has a pack space of 120 litres, but after measuring the internal dimensions (84 litres)and subtracting the volumes of port/handles etc the volume of air the speaker actually sees is only 75 litres, so if you want to make a good model there is really no way around doing the measuring thoroughly.

If you want a PDF that will print out to scale, then look in the attachments on the first post in this thread which has drawings for 57 and 62 variants http://www.tdpri.com/forum/bass-place/178963-diy-knowledge-bass.html

When you auction something you take the risk that you don't know what buyers will be willing to pay beforehand - you might get lucky and have competing buyers drive the price up, or interest might not be that high, and you get a poor price. You don't get to withdraw your lot if you didn't set a reserve and you are not happy with the final price, that approach is simple abuse of the system.

[quote name='uncle psychosis' timestamp='1405940974' post='2506671'] Wanting to be in tune is being a massive twat now? [/quote] No but causing the whole band to look like clueless amateurs and killing the flow of the set by spending an inordinate amount of time retuning IMHO most definately is, mainly because you are pissing on the efforts of your bandmates to get the audiences attention and engage with them up to that point.

[quote name='Marvin' timestamp='1405895848' post='2506343'] ... and tuning again when taking the capo back off! I've never seen anyone do this before and it's creating huge gaps between the songs it effects. I'm personally of the opinion that gaps between songs should be at a minimum in all respects. Tuning should almost go unnoticed by an audience, they want to hear music. ? [/quote] Get a mate to video a gig, then sit the whole band down to watch it together and discuss what they could do to improve the show for the audience - the guitarist might then understand how bad these big gaps make the band look, and that he is being a massive twat by insisting on doing things the way he is doing them atm.

[quote name='Phil Starr' timestamp='1405723376' post='2504829'] The tuning of the cab is independent of the drivers. If you know the volume of the original cab and the port dimensions you can work out its tuning frequency. tune the 2x10's to the same frequency and you'll be fine, or at least no worse off than you were before. As I say someone will do this for you if you need that [/quote] Just learnt something new playing with WinIsd, I didn't realise that it would calculate the cab tuning for me if I set the volume and then adjusted the port dimensions. I have an Ashdown MAG 1x15 combo and extension cab, so I'll give them both a careful measure up and see what I can learn. Everyday is a schoolday, advice much appreciated.

If I was in your position I would be very reluctant to part with the Burman even if it wasn't getting used a lot, mainly because you would have enormous difficulty in replacing it if you decided you needed it back for any reason. Hard to argue for disposing of the GK if it is meeting your practical needs. Maybe you need to spend some time playing through the Burman and enjoying it and see if it puts your GAS in check - IME really nice sounding amps are the apex of enjoyment and satisfaction when playing electric instruments.