MartinB

MXR M87 Bass Compressor and M76 Studio Compressor (same pedal, different paint job) are apparently both 1176-inspired

A few more options: Bassics A900 (850W @ 4ohm): https://www.bassics.co.uk/ Straight Ahead Mini-Power Amp (500W @ 4ohm): https://www.facebook.com/straightaheadamp/ AMT Bass ZEALOT BZ-300 (300W @ 4ohm): https://amtelectronics.com/new/bz-300/

Have you got the original? I reckon someone who makes custom scratchplates/pickguards could probably do you a copy.

Well this is a blast from the past! Here in 2021, I'd like to think that all the crappy promoters have found themselves new careers over the last 18 months, leaving only the good ones who treat the bands well. But I'm not holding my breath... 😆

The pre-amp pedal looks very interesting - it'll be good to hear some proper demos when people get their hands on one. 7kg for the head seems a lot when the pre-amp's only 750g. Must be some big iron in there... imagine the heft! 😆

I'm guessing that's the same as the Joyo American sound (also sold under a couple of different brand names). It's a great little unit, isn't it? Very versatile for guitar and bass

Trying to copy the guy from Royal Blood with his separate signal chain for bass and octave up

The Elf gets hot and needs airflow, so strapping it to the top of the cab sounds like the best option so far! Maybe attach it with some kind of metal bracket that would also act as a heatsink?

I always assumed that was a deliberate variation, but maybe the mark of a great bassist is that even their mistakes sound intentional! The Kingsmen's version of Louie Louie is well known for the vocalist coming in too early after the solo (~1:56), which the drummer then covers with a fill. But less obvious is the drummer yelling "F**k!" as he drops a stick, around 0:54

If all of the pre-amps are trying to boost the incoming signal, then you're going to run out of headroom somewhere. You'll probably have to experiment to see what gets the best sound, e.g. High output from bass --> pedal at unity output (same volume when switched on/off) --> low gain on amp (or "active" input/switch) Low output from bass --> pedal boosts the output --> low gain on amp Low output from bass --> pedal at unity output --> high gain on amp Or each of them doing a little bit of signal boosting, etc.

You've mentioned that you don't like the sound of your bass and that's it's not "cutting it", but how does it sound in the context of the band? Drop A#... does that mean you're potentially getting drowned out by one or more guitarists with baritones/7-strings, who may be getting a little enthusiastic with their amp's "Bass" control? High-passing the guitars would be a lot cheaper than buying a new bass 😉

I'd knock the idea of "democracy" on head - it's your band and your vision. You want a benevolent dictatorship, where others are encouraged to make suggestions, but you're making the final decisions. One of the problems with democracy is that people don't always know what they want. There's often a difference between "music I like to listen to" and "music I like to perform" - until they're asked to learn it, folks don't necessarily realise that a song actually has some really fun guitar parts etc. And some songs just come alive the first time you try them out as a band, even though the original's nothing special. I can't stand most 80s music, but I'd still rather see an 80s cover band with a coherent setlist and who've obviously put some effort in, instead of a generic "bit of everything" act!

Good analogy! And in both cases there are very few opportunities to use them at full throttle 😁

I've got the Fender "Pure Vintage" ashtray set and the bridge cover's not quite as tall as that - at the open end it's 22mm externally at the highest point, so about 21mm between the body and the inside surface.

When I've been the support and the headliners have supplied the backline, it's always been fine. Bassists generally know what they're doing. When I've been the support and the organisers have supplied the backline, it's often been a knackered old mismatched head and cab(s) where the tone controls don't seem to do anything, or a hopelessly underpowered practice combo. No problems when I'm the headliner and supplying the backline. I'm confident my cab can take what any head can reasonably put out. If people use my head I usually have to point out the Mute switch, otherwise they panic when they plug in and get no sound 😆

There's a particularly sneaky variation on this where letters from different alphabets that look similar are substituted. Take a look at the following links (but don't click on them!). https://www.basschat.co.uk https://www.bаsschat.co.uk They look the same, right? But the a's in the second one are not the Latin letter a, but the Cyrillic letter а. In many fonts they look very very similar, if not identical. If you're not using a touchscreen, moving your mouse over the second link might show you the Latin-ised URL where you'd actually end up if you clicked on it - some browsers are helpful like that, but not all. Again, please don't click on that second link! I don't know what's at the other end 😅 If an email tries to get you to urgently follow a link, don't - type in the URL yourself. (This is called an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDN_homograph_attack, if you're feeling geeky 🤓 )

There are companies coming up with new ways to produce existing effects, e.g. Gamechanger Audio do a pedal that uses plasma discharge to generate distortion, and one that uses light to enhance reverb. And there are new ways to control existing effects, like Rainger FX's liquid-controlled overdrive, various gesture-based alternatives to expression pedals, etc. But genuinely new effects? I reckon we may have exhausted them all. What can you do to an audio wave? Change the frequency, amplitude, and phase - that's your pitchshifter, your tremolo/volume pedal/compressor and (almost) your phaser. You can add in some noise with harmonics and clipping to get your various flavours of dirt. You can introduce additional copies of the wave, to get delay/echo/flanger, and then phaser if you change the phase on the copy. Isn't everything else just some combination of these? EQ/filtering is just adjusting the amplitude of specific frequencies, instead of all frequencies. Add in the ability to apply that EQ differently based on the incoming signal amplitude, and you've got an envelope filter. An octave pedal is just a copy of the wave with the frequency halved. And so on. Once you move from analogue to digital and you're sampling the wave, you can do things like fiddle with the encoding to get a bit crusher effect. And some things probably just can't be implemented in an analogue circuit, like the harmonisers itu mentioned - you might be able to get a second signal at a different pitch, but I'm guessing not the smarts of having it change the interval based on the pitch of the input and the selected key. My hunch is there are still plenty of interesting things to be done with sound in the digital world, but it's all combinations of effects that already exist - just applied/combined/controlled in new ways. Things like shimmer and granular particle reverb feel "modern" to me, but even those have been around for donkey's years now. Well anyway that's my 2p. I am not an expert and could be talking out of my derrière!

Stiltskin didn't exist before the Levi's ad - the song was written for the ad, and the "band" put together to cash in on its success.

I'm speculating about the source - it's possible the OP has access to the original multi-tracks from the rights-holders, and permission to publish them. You're absolutely right that they don't give you the full picture. What you're hearing is not the raw performance straight from the bass, but potentially a mix of multiple mics on an amp, DI, compression, EQ at the desk, etc etc. Very interesting nonetheless! Makes you appreciate that what sounds like a nice clean tone in the mix is actually pretty weird on its own. Case in point, the bass tone on September sounds absolutely rubbish:

I've got no reason to doubt that's the original bass recording taken from the studio multi-track tape. All the little variations are in there. These tracks have been available for years thanks to the Guitar Hero/Rock Band video games, which contained individual stems for bass/drums/guitar/vocals/etc that could be extracted. It's cool that folks keep posting them on YouTube etc, as they inevitably get taken down for copyright before too long.

This is brilliant - I had no idea!

And not even a full song in their case - a sped-up sample of a remix that they tacked on to the beginning. An awful lot of people felt they'd been taken for a ride about 30 seconds into the single! 🤣 They did eventually release a remix-of-a-remix that was closer to what everyone expected:

Let's not get hung up on the word "wrong", eh? @Cliff Edge's goal was to play it like the original recording, but they accidentally played something else. That doesn't imply any judgement of folks who set out to play something different. Anyway. Can anyone think of any songs where the original bassline is so fundamental, simple, well-known etc. that you really couldn't stray from it without getting funny looks? Another One Bites The Dust maybe? Feels like it's so minimal that a drastic re-interpretation of the song would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Wow, he was really attacking those strings!

The rest of that top ten: 6. THINKING OUT LOUD - ED SHEERAN 7. CHANDELIER - SIA 8. SOMEONE YOU LOVED - LEWIS CAPALDI 9. I GOTTA FEELING - BLACK EYED PEAS 10. RADIOACTIVE - IMAGINE DRAGONS https://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/the-killers-mr-brightside-claims-record-breaking-260th-week-exactly-five-years-on-the-official-singles-chart-top-100__32800/