Al Krow

For a little bit of Christmas fun, thought it would be interesting to do a poll of our all time favourite bass players. Probably impossible for many of us to name just one, so I'm going to suggest we each get to vote for up to three legends. I've got a list of 15 down to get things going, but if one of your top three is not on the list - no problems at all: just name them and I'll get them added on. UPDATE - apparently a max poll list of 30 is possible, so the list is now closed. Sorry for those of you who's favourite 3 bass players are not on the list, but hopefully at least one or two of them will be up there. If you fancy sharing what your favourite bass line is by any / or all of your three favourite bass players, even better!

Thanks for that Woody. Coming back to @BigRedX's point, the sequencer on the SY 200 (and I'm assuming therefore on the SY 300 and 1000) is pretty good in terms of low latency for the reasons Woody has set out. Dunno if it would get 90% of the way there for what you're wanting BRX, though?

Sounds like it could work decently on a Bass VI?

Watching Nate is never going to be good for taming GAS.

Aww mate...you've handled 369 pages on the Yamaha mega-thread, 89 pages should be a walk in the park for you? 😅 Here you go, some earlier chat around pages 56 and 57 of this thread on synth sounds: Consensus back then was that it wasn't Helix's (or indeed most multifx's) strong point. The exception on the multifx front being the cheap as chips Zoom B1-4 and its siblings and you'd be better off with a Future Impact or C4 for monophonic synth or Boss SY-200 (or the SY-1 if you don't want presets) for polyphonic.

Jam Pedals | The Music Emporium - these guys. @MM Stingray 62 has one and is super happy with it. I'm thinking I might want something a bit more Rat based to cut through and really liked the look of @Sibob's Fuzzrocious Cat Tail on his board.

Just been recommended to me and has a Black Friday discount... I do like the sound of this! (Although maybe not quite enough to replace my Pigtronix Octava)

I'm still on that endless perfect dirt quest - the Fuzzrocious Cat Tail (with Clean Blend) has been on my radar for a little while. Any clips of what it sounds like in a band mix Si? Also where did you get that particular model from - the ones online don't seem to feature quite such compact housing?

Boss SY 200 Arp setting & expression pedal A little clip to demonstrate it in action. (I definitely need to get more accustomed to using an expression pedal, haha! And in case it's bugging anyone, the key is the one our singer prefers)

Haha - with you on the £500+ system - definitely been a discussion point on this thread! There's very decent 'mid range' stuff, but whether they are 100% as good? Well I'd love to put my (£140 new, I bought for less used) Nux 5.8Ghz up against the Shure GLD16+series and see if there's any difference, I've certainly not been disappointed with the Nux so far. I think the barrel jack point maybe quite relevant to what you're saying though: one of my older gigging basses (which also cost less than £500 second hand, as it happens!) wasn't holding a lead in that well let alone a wireless bug, so I've got a new barrel jack fitted to sort.

Maybe something like a Levy's MM4? Not tried it myself but looks similar in concept the Smoothhound holder I used to use.

Just attach the very light weight transmitter jack onto your strap and get a short lead to go into your bass barrel jack. Something those of us who used / still use Smoothhound wireless were very accustomed to doing 😊

Brilliant - love it! But there is a super easy hack you know...

But why do you find it odd? He's simply establishing a market price for his kit by putting it on eBay - I mean why should the folk who buy purely to resell kit on eBay make all the mark-up on his work (or to cite another example which I personally find galling, those secondary ticket resellers who buy up tickets purely to resell them at vast profits). Surely he's free to make use of eBay along with the rest of us? No one's forcing anyone to buy anything here.

Do you have an old / loose barrel jack?

+1 for the OC-5. One of the best value OC-2 clones on the market IMO by the folk who've a pretty good idea what went into the OC-2 😅, plus some really neat additional features e.g. octave up. In Spencer's defence, if he can make a few quid to live off from his endeavours and other folk are willing to pay the prices he's asking, good luck to him!

Been enjoying using the Arp setting + Ctrl switch to "hold" for a fixed pitch to avoid it sounding too busy when playing a riff + an expression pedal for either fx volume / arp pitch shift with ability to tailor the interval. The SY 200 maybe has a wider use on pitch shift, particularly given how good its tracking is - definitely able to rival the multifx and dedicated pitch shift pedals I've previously tried out.

Have you had the same line up since 2007 or have there been a few personnel changes during that time? Be amazing if you haven't! Is that $USD 12k each i.e. (about £9.5k)? I'm aware there's some who are making $25k / £20k per band member on this side of the pond from covers/function work, but they will likely be part of very successful function bands and that level of earnings won't be true for most. I guess that could be sufficient to live off if you were single or at least make a pretty decent dent in living expenses. There will be a bunch in a similar earnings bracket for individual band members to the figures you've said and I suspect plenty more getting half that again.

Very cool! When you say "young" what's the age range of the rest of your crew?

Sounds like a bit of a dream band - can we ask who they are, if you're comfortable with sharing? What caused you to fall out of love with playing live - is it something you could get back into if it didn't involve touring?

Haha, you're not wrong! £39 for fish & chips and £10 for half a lager!! Fortunately we had food provided (which was an unexpected treat) by the wedding couple who very kindly looked after us.

Mentioned a few months back that I'd been thinking of replacing the stock preamp on my Yamaha BB 2005. Partly 'cos it felt a little "tired" but also because I was making zero use of the Nathan East ('NE') mid-cut on it. Ended up going for an Aguilar OBP-3 with a push-pull mid frequency selector, which gives a choice of 400Hz or 800Hz for the mids: the former seems to give more mid punch; the latter is "sweeter" tonally. Early days, but I think I'm liking it. I've gotten so used to either leaving the bass EQ flat or cutting it slightly, that it was a surprise to find that I'm really liking giving the bass EQ a slight boost, which seems to add a real weight to the low end, without being boomy - but that's maybe the combination of having an HPF built into my Zoom B1-4 patches to cut out low end "crud". As the NE selector switch was going spare, I asked Gary Mac of this parish who was doing the work on it, to make use of it as an active/passive switch which will give me added peace of mind if the battery ever goes flat mid gig. Gave it a spin last Thursday night down at Kingston market with the band - was a fun gig!

Not going to be often that my crew get invited to play a wedding at the Shard - so definitely one for us to remember. Logistically it was one of the most tricky we've had to negotiate: moving kit from the loading bay, which we needed to pre-book slots for the two cars, then going off to park in a nearby car park while a member of staff plus one bandmate moved all the kit from lift 1 to lift 2 and then from lift 2 to outside the wedding reception room on the 34th floor. Then doing all that in reverse at the end of the night! The view was worth it though 😊

Aww that's a shame - we have the same issue with one of the rehearsal venues we use: the owner is both flabbergasted at how light & good a Barefaced cab compared to the "fridges" he has on site and simultaneously not being prepared to allow anyone to put bass through the PA - only just about tolerates keys! Hope you manage to bring your drummer round eventually - as you say lots of us are going through the PA these days often without backline support.