adamg67

Jamming with people is how I like to do it. All our best stuff just came from either drums, bass or guitar just playing something and then everyone jamming along. You have to work on it once you've got the basic idea and they don't all make it, but 9 times out of 10 the ideas that just come to us on the spot are the best ones. We've banned our drummer from thinking about things, they always sound contrived. If I'm at home I'll just set up a random beat and jam to that, or dig out old ideas and jam to them, or just play around. I do write in my head a bit as well, but often starting with an idea, but I sort of jam in my head and just let ideas come out. I have a feeling this is different for everyone though.

I just wanted to post what I've learnt recently about saving / loading preset banks to / from SD cards on the multiamp. The ability to backup and restore all your presets is one of the major bonuses of amps like this. If my Multiamp gets run over by a truck tomorrow I can get hold of another one, load up my presets and I'm all ready to go, with zero setup time. If I screw something up with my presets when I'm fiddling in a soundcheck I can just load them up again and everything's good. With this in mind I sorted out my old SD cards and went to back up my presets. I learnt a few things doing this:[list] [*]The Multiamp only works with cards under 8 gig. This is fine since the preset files are tiny, it's a good way to use smaller cards that are leftover from other things. I'm using a 512M card that used to be in my camera, and 1G one that was in an old phone, and I've got a 2G card that came with my Zoom H1 recorder as a spare. [*]The Multiamp only works witha FAT32 filesystem on the card. The weird thing is that it won't even "format" a card which doesn't have FAT32, it just says "no SD card" or something similar. If that happens, just format the card in a PC or similar and i should be fine. Cards formatted in my Zoom H1 don't work in the multiamp, I had to reformat. [*]The files are obviously named, eg USER1.BNK, and can be copied onto a PC or whatever as an extra backup. [s]You can rename them and then load your sounds to a new bank, or (as I have done) copy all your presets from one bank to another - just rename USER1.BNK to USER2.BNK, load bank 2 and it's done. I now have all my presets on both banks 1 and 2, so again if I screw anything up I can just switch banks and everything's there[/s] Edit - there is something weird here, I need to do more testing but if you save the mono bank you can't load it to a user bank at least. I'm doing some messing about with this at the mo anyway as I'm hacking up a little utility to make it easier to play with bank files so I'll post an update when I get to the bottom of it. [/list] Last word - don't put off backing stuff up!

Finally tried this at rehearsal yesterday, you can switch between amp models no problem, obviously if they sound different you get a sudden change in sound but I was switching between presets mid-note and it was fine.

I've gone the DI / amp modelling route for bass now, with a Markbass Multiamp so fair enough there is a class D amp in there as well to use for backline / monitoring, but that's really just amplifying the sound I have. It means that what people hear out front and what goes down when I record are the same thing I hear out of my amp. At home I always DI into my DAW and practice that way, done that for years with guitar and bass as it means I can record new ideas and never lose them. Had the opportunity to listen to it from out front the other day when the bass player from another band borrowed it and it sounded awesome. Also, because everything's on presets it was ok for the other guy to change all the settings and I still had my exact sound at the touch of a footswitch. I don't think I could go back to something without presets now.

NIgel bought my Cry Baby Bass Wah and everything went nice and smoothly, fast responses, quick payment, couldn't ask for more.

Here are a couple of recent tracks by our band, Studio 13. We always struggle to describe what we are, sort of a rock blues funk type o' thing. Enjoy! Soundcloud: [url="https://soundcloud.com/studio13-rocks/sets/sneak-preview"]https://soundcloud.com/studio13-rocks/sets/sneak-preview[/url] Web: [url="http://studio13.rocks"]http://studio13.rocks[/url] Facebook: [url="https://www.facebook.com/studio13.rocks/"]https://www.facebook.com/studio13.rocks/[/url]

I think it's like a lot of others, switching individual effects on and off within a preset is seamless, just like a pedal would be, but I'm not sure about switching presets while playing - I don't do it, and I think there's a tiny delay when you do? I'll check next time I'm playing if I remember.

I was going to say get some from Professional Audio Cables, hand made with Neutrik plugs and good quality cable, but TBH reading above it sounds like Dave does the same anyway. I like the Neutrik silent plugs (the ones that mute when you unplug them) for the instrument end.

I went through a similar search (see here: [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/266971-overdrive-suggestions/page__fromsearch__1"]http://basschat.co.u...__fromsearch__1[/url] ), I ended up with a OneControl Hooker's Green Bassmachine which did what you're after, and a DHA VT1, also highly recommended. I tried a Solid Gold FX Beta and it was very nice. Then I got a Markbass multiamp and sold most stuff, but tellingly I kept hold of the DHA despite the size and 12v power.