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Al Krow
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Everything posted by Al Krow
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I don't quite follow the economic argument about prices having to go up with scale? I see Pirate's business model being more akin to Weatherspoons vs local boozers. Becoming national hasn't meant Spoons' prices increasing.
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Reading through this thread, seems to me there's a bit of a regional divide here? Pirate seem to be competitive on price and are regularly used by several London based BC'ers (me included), whereas there often appear to be better value, manned alternatives outside the capital?
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Oh I'd definitely use them ALL the time if they paid me 😅
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I guess the principle is that BVs should be secondary in prominence to the lead vox. But that will always depend on: - how strong the singers are relatively (key variable); - what mics they are using. Given the first of these, not sure it's possible to give a general rule?
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Thanks, that's very kind of you to say - I'd best not ask which of three female vox featured, haha! And hopefully an endorsement of the RCF 932As delivering the sound.
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We use Pirate a lot and have happily done so over a number of years. Yes it's automated/unmanned locally; the flip side is it's decent value, certainly compared to other London studios we've used. Also they have many studios per site which means you can usually get a booking and a very flexible cancellation policy. The aircon wasn't working on a recent booking and a hot day! They couldn't fix it remotely in time and so offered us 25% off our next booking. All good.
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Quite a long clip - some decent footage from about 10 mins in illustrating a variety of sounds and pretty tight tracking.
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A fair few of us have been buying kit via AliExpress eg as an alternative to Amazon. It can sometimes be significantly cheaper! What I've really appreciated about Amazon is the secure knowlege of getting a full refund if the item is not suitable, never gets delivered etc. I recently ordered a camera lens off AliXP - wrong model sent by retailer. I was half expecting to have to take a hit, but return, postage paid, was to a UK warehouse, even though the original product was from China, where they are made for global export. Full refund received today.
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Loving my GT1000 Core too - appreciate that it may be less intuitive than the Stomp, but definitely worth putting in the time. Our lead guitarist is also using one and I'm really liking both his range of sounds and my bass tone that the Core is delivering.
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£££spendy though? I picked up my SY-200 £175 used.
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Tracking on their latest release is very disappointing from online reviews.
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Well the: - better display; - arpeggiator (which we use on a couple of our cover tracks as @Kiwihas also mentioned); plus historically: - MUCH better "tracking" / lack of glitchiness; - more compact form factor Are usps that have made the SY-200 much more useful for me as a gigging musician. Sure YMMV etc. Given that FI are now saying the tracking is much improved on v4 and are offering a more compact form factor, the very significantly better synth tones the FI offers, make it a very attractive proposition. But for some reason I thought it now also had an arpeggiator function given that it does so much else, but my bad for misunderstanding that. The SY-200 is the only programmable bass synth pedal with arpeggiator I'm aware of (unless the C4 also provides this)?
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Ah ok, thanks. Looks like my Boss SY-200 is gonna survive for a while yet on my little gigging board.
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Looking forward to finding out more! What is the arpeggiator like on F1-4. Any clips? It's one of the features that's keeping me tied to the SY-200 currently
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For me, one of the very best female singers the UK has ever produced! Love her!
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Going to have to give that a careful listen to: it's not everyday that someone says the tartan crew trump the Four Seasons! 😅
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Fabulous advice!
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I've pulled together four live clips all using the RCF 932As (with no sub) for one indoor and 3 outdoor gigs, recorded through a Rode stereo mic into a Sony s6300. Compared to my previous 912As (which I've held onto as a very capable back up rig) I think the 932s do let the vox shine whilst maintaining a meaty low end. Let me know if you agree?
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Which one of those are you spending the most time with? Any more details you can share (e.g. line up / how often you're out gigging / how long the band has been going etc. ?)
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Haha, you and me both! I guess having owned and tried really hard to love the FI multiple times (I've had five attempts from v1 onwards!) over the years and never quite managing it, there's definitely an element of "if they could just do that" e.g. decent tracking, form factor, make it accessible by loading with popular 'known' patches, replace the numerical display with something that displays words (Boss 200 series, many midi pedals do this). But András and crew, to their credit, are definitely getting there and there's been more progress with the FI than a lot of the competition - remember the Markbass Super Synth anyone?! Getting us back on topic: the trouble for FI/C4/Boss et al. / good news for us bass players is that MXR Synth has arrived on the scene and is already providing a great deal of what we want in a synth pedal and is rightly causing a stir.
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Sure. I guess my angle is coming at this from an accessibility / marketing stand point. Having popular synth bass patches in 1-10 or 1-20 is going to be a great start. 20 such patches => already 12 more presets than the MXR. But then making it clear that: Bank 3 is for delays / choruses and reverbs?? Bank 4 for octaver, pitch shift?? Bank 5 for arpeggiator & more esoteric fx?? Banks 6-10 free for 49 user created patches (which is more than enough for 95% of bass players methinks?) Now that v4 has apparently cracked the tracking and glitching that plagued so many of us with the earlier iterations, and which is very much one of the MXR's selling point, the rest of the FI's capabilities should make it really shine, not least given it's a similar price point: FI "synth-multifx" vs MXR "synth". Multifx users are very used to getting their hands dirty when it comes to PC patch editing. For sure, there are some who are content to grips with the FI editor on a standalone basis, but the moment you label the FI a "mutlifx", it's suddenly then emotionally worth investing the time for whole additional bunch of potential users, because there are a plethora of different usable patches rather than it being just about tweaking a few usable synth bass sounds? I've mentioned having a better display elsewhere (e.g. Boss 200 Series type) to display patch names rather than numbers (who want's to have to take a notebook with reference numbers to a gig: "damn, which number was the MJ patch again?") - which they've been doing for a few years now on their pedals. That would also set the FI apart from the MXR and C4 competition. Just a few thoughts - I'll leave that all with you!
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Well the FI is the much more home-grown product over here and vice versa for the C4? 😊
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I've added in midi to the FI additional capabilities list on my earlier above.
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Sounds good! I think where I'm heading is that the FI with 99 presets is capable of being much more than "just" an excellent synth pedal. Why not have banks dedicated to some of the commonly used fx that the FI does well e.g. Bank 2 modulation - chorus, delay etc. Bank 3 octave and pitch shift etc.? It then becomes a synth / multifx.
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Maybe a complete non-starter, but was thinking that given that synth pedals have to track pitch, would pitch shifting, which a lot of pedals struggle to do well (even dedicated pitch shift pedals!) be something they could be set up to do? Basic pitch shift would be excellent in itself, but there's then maybe the possibility of chords too?
