adamg67

Just listen to a normal one, but with the treble and mid turned all the way down...

I am need in of BC wisdom... or failing that, a load of random opinions will do I've got an Ibanez BTB456, it's a hell of a bass for what it cost (second hand), and it came fitted with a set of Thomastik-Infeld flatwound strings that are probably the best (for me) strings I've ever played on anything. So I have an Ibanez neck that plays just amazingly (probably the best neck I've ever owned including amongst others Maruszczyk, Fender, PRS guitars, Gretsches, a Tanglewater and lots of other Ibanezes) and strings that just seem to suit it really well. What I'd like to do now is upgrade the pickups and preamp to something that gets me as excited as the rest of the bass, it has the Bartolini Mk1 pickups which I think are not even real Bartolinis? And a relatively generic preamp. I'm looking for something quite "pure" rather than a very coloured sound (I've got a Maruszczyk Jake 5A+, and an Elwood 5A on the way, for colour). Any suggestions for pups and preamp for a "fake boutique" 6 string?

I've got an oldish BTB 456, like this one, tiny bit of neck dive but otherwise I just love it. It has Tomastik flats on it which just seem to suit it perfectly. Sounds good and plays lovely, a definite keeper. Reasonably understated which i like. Fretboard like an aircraft carrier flight deck but I seem to like that as well. £350 with the flats already on it.

This is a genuinely interesting and amusing basschat thread.

So, my current mini project is to have physical control of my virtual amps. I want 2-way comms with the controller, so that if I change presets or switch between tracks or plugins the values on the controller update. I picked up a second hand Kenton Killamix Mini ([url="http://www.kentonuk.com/products/items/midicontrol/kmix-mini.shtml"]http://www.kentonuk.com/products/items/midicontrol/kmix-mini.shtml[/url]) for doing this, and it's a great little box. Not sure I'd pay £270 for one but at £100 off ebay I'm happy with it. It has 9 endless rotary encoders with LEDs round them, and 9 buttons, plus banks so by pushing any of the knobs you get a different midi channel, so 9 x 9 knobs and 9 x 9 buttons easily selectable, plus you can can get more by holding down knob 9 and pressing another one. Class compliant, talks to anything, I really like it. The tricker bit is getting 2-way comms with the virtual amp and fx plugins. They are all geared up for one-way MIDI control, which IMO is no good at all for controlling parameters - it's a proper PITA just for turning stomps on and off, I've been through all that with my multiamp. What you do get now with DAWs, including Studio One v3, is the ability to map a control surface to a plugin using the automation interface between the DAW and the plugin. That's designed for both read and write and is a normal way for the DAW and eg Amplitube to communicate. Sadly, it's not that simple. First, Amplitube and BIAS FX have a limited number of automatable parameters which you configure to control what you want. That seems to make them look different to the DAW, but after much faffing I've got the 2-way control working - but by trial and error, and the method for getting it mapped is not how it shows you in all the videos. Quite a few people have given up at that point from what I can see, but I perservered. Anyway, you soon run out at 16 parameters for Amplitube and even 20 for BIAS, although that's more workable. I probably could have worked around that but by this point I was determined to make it work. So I thought I'd just have an instance of Amplitube for stomps and one for amps, that would be fine. Set it up, it works, saved it, loaded it again, all instances of amplitube have the same mapping instead of the different ones I'd set up for stomps and amps. Goes the same way with plugin presets, it seems like I can have one mapping per plugin, not per instance of that plugin. So in the end I've found a VST wrapper that has 100 parameters and lets you map them to multiple plugins, so with that it looks like I can get it to do what I want. It's just taken ages longer than it should and is more complicated to set up, which takes the edge off the niceness of having real knobs to tweak.

... or are there still some serious problems with the attitude to standards and inter-operability in the computer music world? It seems like a lot of companies have Microsoft's Disease, abusing standards or coming up with their own way of doing things. I'm reasonably technically savvy (MSc in parallel computing and 25+ successful years in development, ops and other tech fields, and still going strong) but I've never had so many technical problems with anything as I have with the music related stuff I've used in the last 10-15 years. I know it does amazing things, but sometimes things just don't work when they should. Anyone else feel like the digital audio companies that take our money also take the p*ss when it comes to making things actually work properly, especially with other company's software or gear?

The was a slightly ironic story to selling the orange head, and the weighty 4x12 fake Marshall cab I had, to a mate when I switched to Bass - he then recruited me as bass player for his band and as he was carless and lazy, I still ended up carting it around half the time, as well as a Peavey TNT 150 that felt like someone had filled it with concrete. Lightweight gear is one of the wonders of the 21st century.

I am tempted to say my old Orange valve head (guitar, not bass), but it was heavy (in weight) and only did one sound, so I'm not sure I really would have it back. I sold my first "proper" guitar, a nice white Ibanez Les Paul copy, and spent 30 years not finding anything I liked as much, until I bought a PRS earlier this year. I wish I had kept my MarkBass Traveler 102p cab, I kept the 151 instead and I like it but the 102 was so light and good enough for pretty much anything.

[quote name='Dad3353' timestamp='1509622691' post='3400346'] You'll need to spend (invest..?) a bit of time to get optimum results, time not always available when renting studio space, but well worth it.[/quote] This is pretty much what I was about to say, and it's more from knowing how not to do it than how to. Even if everyone's getting bored, you need to make sure that you've got the raw stuff sounding decent on the way in, and don't be tempted to think you can sort it out later.

That's more like it! I'm a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to guitar, and I play bass like a Gorilla, so we're off to a good start.

Still not sure whether to go for this on the box room if we're likely to move, but if I do I'll definitely look at Sonarworks