MartinB

Really enjoying Turnstile's set, aside from the pointless synth interludes.
Olivia Rodrigo was a lot of fun when the whole band were involved - proper 90s sounding. It's a shame that the production on her recordings is so bland in comparison.

17 hours ago, Sibob said:

what the HX Stomp then receives in the way of phantom power isn’t damaging, although I’ve heard it ruins the tone/signal. All that to say that you’ll HEAR that PP is on before you do any damage

I've read the the same thing here and there, and always along the lines of "it degrades the sound" but with no specifics. I've just tested my Stomp with phantom power from my audio interface, and it sounded the same to me either way 🤷‍♂️. It also didn't explode, which was nice!

Depending on stage layout and who's providing the bass amp, I sometimes use a short TRS - XLR cable, and other times an Orchid Electronics DI box

20 hours ago, Downunderwonder said:

Work around round 2: install a switch to cut out the speaker.

Plugging anything into the headphone socket on the rear panel should disable the speaker - even just a dummy plug

14 minutes ago, Wolfram said:

Yes but then you lose the preamp and tone stack colour. 

Yep, that's why it's an unhelpful design. You could do something daft like a DI box in the effects loop followed by a clean boost that would act as your master volume, but (a) it could introduce noise, and (b) you shouldn't have to go to these lengths

10 hours ago, Cosmo Valdemar said:

they're charging another tenner on top of the advertised price for "service fees" 😡

Well that's made the decision for me

8 hours ago, Downunderwonder said:

Use the fx send to another DI.

The fun thing about these amps is that the FX loop also comes after the master volume 🙃
Really the only option is to stick a DI box between the bass and the amp

Quote

The notion of Stadium having forty new effects that you don't get in HX doesn't really make sense, because HX should have those effects as well. So no, there aren't any new effects in 1.0 for Helix Stadium. There clearly WILL be more effects, and the goal is, the plan is, is that those effects, if appropriate, if they're not completely insane DSP-wise, those would also end up in existing Helix and HX products as well.
 

We're building the effects library not to somehow sunset Helix - that's never been the plan. But we've been building this effects library so that we have a platform to build off of with Stadium

Obviously he'd be mad to say "everythng is definitely being added to the old Helixes forever, 100% guaranteed". But given their track record, I'd personally be surprised if they immediately started acting like the current models no longer exist. Whereas I'll be _very_ surprised if the Darkglass Anagram is still getting updates 10 years down the line...

Yep, same problem

They've said that any new effects that they add to the Stadium will also be added to the rest of the Helix line where possible:

12 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

 

Anything mangled by YouTube's compression then played through little phone, laptop or PC speakers is unlikely to sound anything like it does IRL.

Crap speakers are going to cause problems for sure. But other than that, things that sound bad on Youtube are more likely to be down to a bad recording than anything to do with data compression: https://jimlillmusic.com/does-youtube-mangle-audio/

8 hours ago, jd56hawk said:

Why Squier hasn't come out with a Sonic Jazz bass is beyond me.

The answer will be "money". The margins are tight at this end of the price spectrum; maybe they can't get a good-enough Jazz built for the same price as the simpler Precision. Or maybe they think that a Sonic Jazz would eat into sales of the Affinity Jazz? There wouldn't be an obvious "upgrade" from one to the other, which would lead people towards the cheaper one. With the Affinity Precision you might feel you're getting more for your money because it has an extra pickup compared to the Sonic.

That crisp Stingray top-end 😙👌

And then for a change of pace:

You'll probably want to lower your action to get some rattle/grind from the frets

A decent comparison here, starting around 10:24:

The Pedalnetics stuff is really nice, but I built myself this for under a tenner 😁

The volume knob fits into a hole in the back - I only use it for the headphone level, so I don't need access when gigging.

- 66.5 x 31.5 x 20mm box (RX2KL07) https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/121941168040

- Momentary footswitch https://www.bitsboxuk.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=116_128&products_id=3060

- Flat patch cable https://www.thomann.co.uk/harley_benton_fpc10_flat_patch_cable.htm

When a band plays over their allotted time, sometimes the sound person will shut them off - but sometimes they won't, and every band after them has to cut their sets short. Either way, there's no excuse for it. I can't control other bands, but I can make damn sure that my band are not being arseholes. Be the change you want to see in the world! 😁

I use mine as a timer - it resets to 00:00 whenever it's switched on, so it always shows how many minutes have elapsed since then.

On one of my other basses I replaced the stock tuners with Gotoh GB640s - but at the same time I replaced the bridge (standard Fender-type BBOT) with a heavier Gotoh 201B-4. The end result was that the total weight of the bass barely changed - but since what I'd lost at the headstock I'd added at the bridge, the balance was much improved. I'd have done the same with this one, but it's already my heaviest bass and I didn't want to add any more weight! 😅 Even with just the combination of lighter tuners and a strap with some grip on the shoulder, it's become more comfortable to play.

Nice! I made myself a similar board clock a few years back. I've been thinking about making a box to sit next to my HX Stomp to hold two auxillary switches, plus an input for an optional expression pedal - I might migrate the clock unit to it, since it's going to have some spare space between the switches.

The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted that there's no 4+1 set available from Retrovibe. I imagine that you if you asked David nicely, he'd sort you out - but I didn't, because I wanted to test a theory.

While looking for affordable lightweight tuners, I also came across these: Allparts TK-7567-010

There's not a lot of information provided - in particular the expected headstock hole size - but they looked quite similar to the Retrovibe ones. So I took a punt on a single left-handed one. And sure enough:

I'm would imagine these are the same model too: https://shoppartsland.com/kg700-r4-cr-p127/

Anyway - Retrovibe is still the best place to go for these, and they came with screws that felt less flimsy than the Allparts ones. Just wanted to share this extra info to help anyone fruitlessly googling the dimensions of the Allparts ones in the future 😄

Here's my Squier Vintage Modified Precision Bass V:

The neck is fairly chunky, and though I wouldn't necessarily describe it as divey, it's definitely not perfectly balanced.

Each tuner + bushing + screws weighs 93g:

What if they weighed... less?
Enter Retrovibe UltraLite tuners! https://retrovibe.co.uk/product/retrovibe-ultralite-bass-tuning-machine-heads-clover-leaf-or-lollipop-only-224g-per-set/

57g each, that's more like it! 180g less in total, which doesn't sound like much in the grand scheme of things - but every little helps when it's at the end of a long lever.

Much like Hipshot Licensed 1/2" tuners, these are designed for a 3/8" (16mm) hole - but the Squier's are more like 17-and-a-bit-mm. There are metal adapters available, but they're a bit spendy for what you get. My alternative: a small sample piece of maple veneer from eBay, and cutting a strip to fit neatly around the circumference of each hole. This reduces them enough to give a nice snug fit on the bushings. There are only two screws needed for each tuner, and they're not close enough to the existing screw holes to cause problems. 2mm drill bit for the pilot holes; wax on the screw threads before fitting them, as they're tiny and the hard maple is at risk of snapping them. Et voilà!

Is it life-changingly better? No. Is it marginal improvement that makes this bass slightly less unwieldy? Undoubtedly!

I built many a PC with parts from Scan back in the day

As above, if you want flat response with rolled-off highs, the Low and High Cut EQ block should do the job. Or the high cut control in the Parametric EQ block, or global EQ, which behave the same. If the roll-off isn't steep enough for you, you could try the high cut in the IR block instead - you can use this "empty" without an IR file loaded.

Low/high block = green

IR block = blue

Both set to 6 kHz

Yeah for sure. For the OP's Stomp XL, it's pretty short at maximum of 2048 samples (< 50ms) - which is probably why the Line 6 docs only describe it for use as a cab sim, although people do routinely use it for acoustic instrument captures as well. It's just not going to be much good for a cathedral reverb
😄

2 hours ago, HeadlessBassist said:

the Ultra II now has the cheaper 'Skunk Stripe' neck construction with the truss rod hole above the nut, the same as every other Squier/Fender bass.

It can't be that much cheaper - I've got three Chinese Squiers and none of them has a skunk stripe