Waddycall

Aesthetically not for me at all - 

headstock

bridge

the massive area of nothing between bridge and pickup

shapes just a bit weird and featureless

its a shame as im always hoping someone’s going to bring out something new but they’re so often miles off the mark for me. Can’t get excited about fender a likes either.

Thanks chaps, lots of bedtime reading 👍

28 minutes ago, Phil Starr said:

Getting a drummer is problematic for your PA unless they use eDrums. At that point everything gets so loud on stage that three things become issues; monitoring, picking up unwanted sounds in the vocal mics and potentially acoustic feedback. Even that leaves out the big one, your hearing becomes threatened by the sound levels on stage. I'd strongly suggest you plan for this from the outset and you say:

Hold on to that thought and plan this from the start and let it guide your purchases. I use an RCF M18 but Behringer, Soundcraft and Zoom all make great digital mixers with plenty of aux feeds. The Behringer mixers and some of the others offer multitrack recording also so you could trade in your R24 to part fund a good mixer. We run rehearsals with all in-ears, no PA or floor monitors needed. for gigs everything just goes via the PA. our guitarist still uses his guitar amp but turned down and miked up. I'm hoping to get him to go through a modeller and lose that too.

 

 

Buying a digital mixer is key to everything. Your sound will be in-ears and you'll need to organise that. You can each adjust your own monitor mixes right from day one and that will remain your personal sound whether you are on stage or in the shed. You can keep your programmed sounds and a click track or lose them at will when you add a drummer and send a balanced mix to the PA which means you have complete control of your band sound. The PA then just functions to make everything loud enough for the audience. 

 

I think your Yamaha 400 should be good enough at least for a while. Yamaha claim 129db and whilst I think that must be peak level that will make a lot of noise. The 400/600 series are much more competent than the 300/500 series that were it's predecessors. Ultimately I'd probably replace it with some more capable active speakers but I doubt you'd need to do that quickly. With no backline amps and currently no drums to drown out  you can just turn it up to the volume you are happy with. There aren't many pubs down in Cornwall or the rest of the West Country you won't be able to fill with sound.

 

Concentrate on finding the right mixer and all the in-ears and headphone amps first of all and get that bit right.

Ace - thanks Phil. It’s years since I’ve gigged and those little speakers on the Stagepas just don’t look up to it to me but if they can handle it that’s makes it a whole lot easier! Quite happy to buy a digital mixer ias the hub of a growing system. We have a rehearsal on Friday so we’ll see how we get on with our current gear and go from there. 

Id heard previously about IEMs s being good for keeping levels down last rehearsal I couldn’t hear myself and despite knowing better couldn’t resist the temptation to crank my amp up until it was silly. I’m beginning to think that losing my bass cab could be a blessing. I expect selling that would fund a couple of passive speakers if we’d wanted to go that way. 

I’m in a newly formed band that seems to have a fair bit of potential. We can’t find a drummer at the moment. There don’t seem to be many down here in Cornwall. We don’t want this to hold us back.

The guitar player is excellent using DAW and really enjoys it so he has created backing tracks for the drums. He has also created other parts such as synth, percussion etc where appropriate. 

If we can get it to work it’s going to sound great.

The rehearsal space has a Yamaha Stagepas 400 PA. For now we’re going to use my zoom R24 to play back and split the backing tracks between my bass amp and an old 200w guitar combo the guitarist has. I’m not sure this is a good idea unless we keep the volume right down but it will keep the small PA for vocals and acoustic guitar.

im now pondering how we might be able to set ourselves up for pub gigs using as much of the gear we already have as possible.

The singer has his own Stagepas 400 PA rated at 200w x 2.

I have a QSCRMX850a power amp which powers my bass rig (Vanderkley 210).

Were thinking of using in-ears to make sure we keep time with the backing tracks.

im thinking that we could get a small mixer and run everything through that and into a crossover with the lows going to the QSC power amp and into my bass cab and send the rest into the Yamaha Stagepas. If we get a mixer with enough aux sends we could then have monitor mixes how we like.

does this make sense or is it fundamentally flawed???

is the Stagepas likely to be able to handle everything in the average pub gig???

if it works out we could invest in some more gear but I’d rather make use of what we’ve got for now with the addition of a good mixer and a rackmount crossover if needed.

I currently have a Delano Hybrid set up in my Ray 34. I routed out a neck pickup pocket and wired it all up several years ago. It sounds good and does what i think are good reproductions of the MM and J tones but to my ears the J is a bit too harsh and the MM a bit too woolly.

im thinking of swapping this for another simpler set up of a matched MM and J pair and a two or three band preamp.

anyone got any recommendations?

Always seems to be an issue. Had a rehearsal with a newly formed band yesterday. We each chucked in 2 songs plus a few others. Learnt all of them note for note and spent time making sure my effects set up was spot on for all. Turns out the singer decided against doing two the guitarist chose and the guitarist chose not to do the singers choices so I learnt four songs note for note that  I didn’t need to and some were quite tricky.

anyway it actually went really well. We play well together and can all hold our own. 

Bit of excitement on the group chat today with lots and lots of suggestions coming in for new songs to do (some of which i really dislike). I’ve had enough over the last 30 years of learning songs never to play them and I’m concerned I’m going be wasting a lot of time with this lot doing just that. I suggested we chuck in suggestions for a few days then meet up for a pint or on zoom to discuss and thin it down to a reasonable number that seem doable and work well together.

for those in bands how do you do this? Seems my suggestion hasn’t gone down too well but just seems like a good way forwards.

10 hours ago, LukeFRC said:

take the microbes out the equation... what's it do then? 

Good idea but the microbass is my only pre-amp (microbass goes to headphones or power amp) so a bit tricky to judge without.

Weirdly its back connected up as it was with the same cables and it’s now working fine! Still sounds great 👍 

Why does someone always state the bleeding obvious and up being right 🤣. Thanks smurf👍

Just plugged it in in front of the preamp = bass - clone - fuzz - microbass and it was the other way round! Really quiet when bypassed but loud when on! I swapped the patch cable between the clone and the fuzz and it was fine. If it was a dodgy patch cable I can’t understand why it was fine bypassed but ii have got a tiny brain.

I bought a bass clone a week or so ago from a fellow basschatter. Initially it was all working fine and I had it balanced on the edge of my new to me pedalboard, powered by my new to me one spot cs6 and connected into the effects loop of my microbass 3. I’ve just come back from picking up some patch cables to set my board up properly. Set up is bass big muff into microbass 3 with bass clone in the effects loop of the microbass.

the chorus now has a low output when on. When bypassed the signal strength is the same as having a patch cable between the effects send and return or having the return unplugged so it’s  not a cable issue.

ive tried powering it from different sockets on the one spot and tried different power leads. I’ve also tried powering the pedal with just a battery and it’s always the same. With bass and treble cranked on the pedal it’s closer to bypassed output but that didnt seem necessary previously.

any thoughts?

Just bought a pedlaboard and power supply from Ian. Excellent communication, packaging, pricing etc. Pleasure to do business with. Deal with confidence 👍

Just bought a pedal from Tim. Excellent communication, pricing, packaging etc etc. Pleasure to do business with....deal with confidence! 👍

I have a Nordstrand MM4 in between the two single coils on my fretless Jazz. It sounds great and has decent output. I can’t remember if it’s series or parallel though.

I reckon something stingray like would be good. Definitely sounds active as it were and with a 3 band eq they’re pretty tweakable and great for solo playing.

You’ll need a bridge pickup.

Haha, just read half this thread, got bored and went off to the marketplace

Looks like quite a complicated amp. Would probably help if you can take some good photos of the back and the front of the amp. Looks like there are a few features on there that could trip you up.

I’ve been using my microbass 3 into my QSC RMX850a  but only at house volumes so far. Won’t  get to put it through it’s paces properly until the new year. So far so good. Seems to be supplying the power amp with enough signal. I’m unsure of any other test I can do other than comparing it with my channel strip which seems to have a slightly higher output before clipping.

sounds ace

Price drop to £500 shipped!

More pics -

It’s a no from me.

I have a microbass 3 coming my way shortly so I’ll give it  go direct into my power amp and report back.

I’m thinking of moving on my fantastic TL Audio pre amp. It’s really a studio channel strip that makes a great rack mount bass pre amp. This unit has taught me a lot about compression and e.q.

The eq is really flexible with selected shelving filters for treble and bass and semi parametric high and low mids with selectable frequency centres.

the compressor is fantastic and really versatile - from light compression to fully squished or just set the threshold and ratio high and use it as a peak limiter. 

The VU meter has a function switch that can be set to input level, output level or gain reduction level, the latter of which is really handy for setting the compressor as you want it (especially for limiting).

I’m downsizing to using a microbass 3 as my pre-amp (as long as it performs like EBS claim) so this should be surplus to requirements in a few days.

pictures show it in a 2U rack case which I’ll include for another £25.

price doesn’t include postage.

I’m with Bunion. The wording is enough to put me off even if I was looking for a PJ.

Up for grabs is my Fender Vintera Mustang in sunburst. It’s fitted with a black pickguard and the original is also included.

its had some copper shielding done both to the bass and the pickguards. It’s in excellent condition other than a small chip on the lower horn.