SubsonicSimpleton

Is the bass bar still attached?

The cracks in the top and the f-hole sinkage look like there might be serious work required, and the crack in the back looks like it runs under where the soundpost would be sitting - I think the important information is really what the inside of the instrument looks like, is it stable, does any repair work look well executed or is it a patchwork of bodge jobs.

I would take it to a good DB luthier and get an informed opinion, there is a lot of information that can't be divined by looking at photos.

As it stands, does it sound good pizz/arco?

4 hours ago, Happy Jack said:

 

The in house sound engineer at the last gig I played also spent the entire time surfing pornhub on his tablet and doing nothing about the audio, so kudos you are well on the way to being true pros 👍

1 hour ago, Davo-London said:

  I genuinely believe a drummer should not play in a gigging band until they have 10 years of play/practice under their belt.

Seriously?

If you could travel back in time and apply this standard retroactively to drummers, bass players and guitarists I think you would at a stroke wipe out in almost its entirety blues, jazz, rock and roll, rock, pop and punk music from the face of the planet.

8 hours ago, hiram.k.hackenbacker said:

Does anyone else think it’s a bit odd that this bass doesn’t feature on the Music Man web site?

Vulfpeck's business model is based primarily on selling direct to their fans, I remember watching an interview on youtube a while back where the signature bass came up for discussion and the Vulfpeck guys were voicing their disappointment that Musicman didn't really cater to their (direct to fan)business model, so I would guess that they either contracted Musicman to make the instruments for them or negotiated with Musicman to be the exclusive sales outlet for this model. If Musicman are not selling this through their regular channels, then featuring it on their website could be viewed from a business perspective as counter productive and confusing for the end consumer (as well as wasting admin costs fielding enquiries).

If you want to sound authentic it never hurts to spend a lot of time listening to authentic recordings, whatever the genre in question - the main question I would be asking in this instance is what sort of sound is he trying to create,

or this

or something in between from Brit two tone era

Different folks have somewhat different terms of reference depending usually on how old they are...

Its worth also considering that there is good evidence that 20 mins is about optimal for the purpose of mental focus, and both the DB teachers I have studied with have recomended that it is more productive to focus on a single key/scale/arpeggio per practice session (either on the basis of key of the day or key of the week) and prioritise quality over quantity.

You might want to consider breaking your practice into smaller chunks to minimise potential injury issues for the time being.

Small constructive criticism - you spent six and a half minutes to communicate about 20 seconds worth of information.

Considering your skills as a musician(I have watched some of your other vids btw) I would have much preferred to have listened to you playing some funk for 6 minutes and a more to the point info summary.

Previously owned by Aquaman and carefully stored in a pond by the looks of things.

Audacity is great for certain tasks (recording audio from online sources using speaker loopback, editing/processing stereo/mono audio files - e.g. splitting down a long recording of a gig/rehearsal into individual songs) but it doesn't really work nearly as well for multitracking as Reaper IME, but by all means give it a try. Reaper will run happily on low spec machines, and doesn't take up much drive space, so no real excuse not to use it on your secondary computer.

I remember spending hours trying to get cubase to find my audio card back in the day when I first used it, once I'd figured out what I needed to do future installs took a couple of minutes to get up and running. Same pattern with recording my first tracks - once you understand how to create a track, assign an audio input to it and set your basic project parameters, you can set up from scratch very quickly or create template projects which will load up everything you need e.g. I have a template for jamming ideas with a drum plugin, that has everything setup and ready to go including tracks ready set up for guitar and bass with ampsim plugins preloaded and audio inputs pre routed so I can be up and running in a couple of clicks (saves setting up every last little thing every time you want to do that type of activity) - you can't really do this with a program like audacity, so the return on investment of dealing with the learning curve of reaper is absolutely worth it.

This series of videos is worth a look, everything built properly to regs and lots of explanation of what is going on.

A good analogue mixer is a joy to use, but any blending of sound sources will be irreversably baked in to your recording, on the other hand a poor quality mixer will add self noise and frustrate with low headroom and poor audio quality. In either case you need space to house the mixer and extra expense for cabling, and although analogue mixers are very cheap on the used market, they do require maintenance, so there might be unexpected additional expense.

Probably the more sensible course of action is to accept that you have reached the limits of your current interface and consider making the upgrade to a unit that has the features that you need going forward - if you are happy with the driver performance of your current interface it might be worth a look at the 18i8 or investigating other interfaces with 4 preamps. The cost of an interface upgrade will probably work out cheaper all things considered.

Given the ease with which parts can be recorded remotely with todays modern technology, and that this is a forum populated by bass players, would it be worth considering asking if anyone would be interested in collaborating with you?

1 hour ago, Jamie1981uk said:

I'm currently writing and recording a lot of songs and I'm in need of a short scale bass guitar. I'm no bass player so a short scale would be better for me. I'm no great bass player and what I need it for is pretty standard just to lay some bass on my tracks. What would be the best with a £100-£200 bracket? And should I maybe try second hand? I have no clue what is good or bad when it comes to bass because I'm mainly a guitarist. I won't be using a amp so that isn't an issue. Any help and advice would be much appreciated. Thanks. 

Are there many touring bands that don't use a click track nowadays?

Is syncronising lighting and pyro cues to the click cheating?

Personally I would rather hear musicians doing everything live without a safety net and embrace the imperfections, but when you consider the economics of large scale touring and the inevitability of any bad gig ending up on youtube, it is understandable that bands start to use whatever tech they have at their disposal to ensure that the show runs smoothly as it scales up and increases in complexity.

Different musicians also have different personal opinions on how music should be presented to an audience - IME those that are comfortable with silence and sparser instrumentation are in a minority compared to those that feel that big wall of sound is the way forward, so it doesn't suprise me that if the the tech is available to fill out the sound with extra pre-recorded tracks then bands that don't really need to go that route are doing it anyway just because they can.

Do both basses have identical neck construction?

Given that the neck is much less stiff than the body, it has a much bigger potential influence over the sound.

There are a couple of optons that will work without reliance on complicated tech matters like driver installation etc.

Option 1 any practice amp, or effects unit with an AUX IN and Headphone out (Zoom B1on costs about £40)

Option 2 small notepad mixer - this is the solution I use, it allows me to control the volume of my speakers and headphones independantly, and mix in any signal I want quickly with easy adjustment of levels at my fingertips. Plenty of potential options if you go this route.

I couldn't find any technical documentation for this online, and it does appear to have been developed primarily for use with smartphones (and not properly tested with a wide enough selection of devices if online reviews are a reliable indicator). Most of the devices aimed at the phone market are pants, and there are plenty of solutions that work independantly of other technology, or which are better suited for use with a PC in the £50-£120 price bracket.

The best place to start IMHO is to look at what you are wanting to do and the equipment you intend to hook up to

- do you need independance from mains electricity?

- do you want to record onto the computer?

- do you need a headphones only solution or are you wanting to use speakers as well?

In most smaller rooms, bass frequencies are not distributed evenly

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_modes

Causes some pretty extreme effects in some rooms.

Does this mean that soldiers in blue berets are going to be dispatched to escort fat middle aged white blokes off stage for playing UB40 covers badly?

Depends on how busy I am - if I have a lot of material to learn, then I'll spend the majority of my listening time on the new material, otherwise I listen to whatever takes my fancy at that particular time, which might be music I've already listened to or I might be just exploring youtube for new music and bands/musicians that I've not listened to before.

Before confining it to the scrapyard, it's worth taking a look to see if there is something obvious causing the problem like bulging/leaking capacitors, dry/cracked solder joints or obvious burnt components. There might be a better teardown video, but it took me a couple of minutes to find this and it shows quite clearly heat damaged capacitors in the power supply - if these mixers do indeed run hot, than it is likely that yours may have suffered the same fate.

You could alternatively use one tone pot, and a rotary switch to select a range of different capacitors (certainly when Maplin was still in business they sold rotary switches that were very similar in dimension to full sized pots). This would function in a similar fashion to a tonestyler, but with much more fine control provided by the tone pot.

Might be worth checking out Leeds College of Music's jazz courses if that is what you are interested in primarily - certainly living costs will be significantly lower than studying in London.

What size bass drum is your drummer using?