Boodang

In fairness I'm outraged by anybody using cnc machines and charging custom prices. And just because the prices are comparable to another company doesn't make it reasonable it just means they've jumped on the band wagon. People can be put off customs as it can be hit and miss, and I guess having a known quantity with a name like Status is reassuring but doesn't justify the price tag. I had a custom jazz made recently with graphite stringers in the neck, not only is the hardware top notch and build quality incredible, but more than half the price of what Status are asking.

I have to say as I've got older I've been getting back to basics. Now I only gig with the small board and have somehow managed to get my pedals down from 21 to 12.

As you say, it's not so much about the sound as the 'vibe'. Plus they're charging custom prices for a cnc'd wood bass (I know the hardware is top notch but it's not that much!).

Actually I don't have a YouTube channel but it's a good suggestion and I'll knock up a demo next week. Apart from selecting pedals and blending the signal, rather than having them daisy chained, the tri mixer also helps control input/output levels to optimise the gain structures. Channel one has the Seamoon which I'm running as just a LPF (great for low end punch), channel two is the supafunk as that doesn't like a hot signal and works better clean, channel three has the octamizer and Fwonkbeta/fuzz (via the aby looper). Input to the tri is via a comp and output goes to the grape phaser/echo/reverb. Once you get your head around it, it's quite logical. PS my fav pedal on the board is the grape phaser which is so funky!

Two bright onion pedals; the orange one to select an input, the yellow is the aby looper which has the octamizer and Fwonkbeta on it. Apart from being rock solid pedals you get to choose the colour of the pedal and the colour of the leds! Plus,I think, great value for money.

Yep, Vigier did a similar thing a few years back. They've been making neck thru basses since the start then it's bolt on necks only. Supposedly for sonic reasons which means it took them over 30 years of making basses to realise they'd been doing it wrong all that time!

Status graphite not making graphite basses! I’m going to be cynical here and say the new basses are cheaper to make and thus more profitable.

Good shout, I can go back to mixing with drumsticks then.

I do this when I’m playing drums and have the laptop controlling the xr18 at my side. Trouble is, when it was an analogue desk I could adjust the sliders using a drum stick but that’s not possible now, unless I had sticks with capacitive tips!

Well, I think with the xr18 it's a bang for buck thing. Not a lot out there, if anything, doing the same thing for the money.

Not sure this is the solution you're looking for as it would require a rethink on your setup but.... the band and I have got so fed with the random quality of stage sounds that we've decided to take matters into our own hands as far as monitoring goes and have bought a digital stage box (xr18, nice and small) which we all plug into and which then feeds our iem's. Guaranteed sound and monitoring levels everytime as it'snot at the mercy of an engineer. Each band member basically has 2 feeds, one for our own stage box and one for foh. No amps involved and as we use an Ekit that's easily sorted and in the mix too.

So, are we talking Billy Cobham / Herbie Hancock or more Stevie Wonder / EW&F? I was in a trio where we did the Cobham style material which I consider more jazz/groove tv theme tune music rather than funk, but although the audience mostly didn't know it would get them on their feet. So is EW&F more the thing your thinking of?

When it comes to musicians tourette's I don't know whether to laugh or cry(actually it's mostly cry). However, in another thread I've been talking about our bands recent use of a digital desk which in the absence of a sound engineer I'm in control of, so, as a friendly word hasn't had the desired effect in cutting this out, I'm now just going to hit the mute button on the guitars between songs... should be fun. I won't say anything, I'll just look for his expression of 'my guitars not working' after he tries to noodle. PS on the desk you can type in a description for each channel, for the guitarists I've entered 'feckwit1' and 'feckwit2'.... we love each other really!

Ooh, might have a look at the mixing station as having issues with the x-air app.

Yeah, the wifi remote tablet thing is great. No more snakes! When we get a new sound guy sorted that'll be the way forward.

The xr18 is just a small stage box with no controls. I connect a laptop and have that next to me. The fx and input gain settings are all done in advance of a gig, I then just have to worry about the overall mix and master level and with scene recall that's easy than using an analogue desk.

We're going to use the xr18 even if there's a sound guy at a gig just so we're in control of our own in ear monitor mixes and not at the mercy of the engineer.

We've been using a Behringer XR18 for the last few gigs and it's been quite the revelation. Impressions so far; metering is great, so setting gain levels is easy, as is keeping an eye on send/returns and bus outputs, plus an RTA which helps with overall eq'ing. Fully parametric 5 band eq, comp & gate on each channel is brill. The effects modeling is amazing, shame there's only 4 stereo fx slots but that's only a minor gripe. Still a lot of stuff to get a grip on like the dca groups and ultra net monitoring, so still on the learning curve with it. Oh, and it's got a small stage footprint and doubles as an interface for the home studio. Our foh and monitoring sound have definitely benefited from using this desk, I can't see me or the band going back to an analogue desk again. Anybody else using / getting into the digital desk thing and your impressions on using them?

I play drums in another band where the guitarist finishes a lot of the songs with a solo. In fairness they're pretty good and fit the moment but unlike songs with a definitive ending the solo can be indeterminate in length, so I've developed a method of ending songs by doing one bar of kick drum / crash as a signal. The beauty of this is that if I feel like I can make him solo forever!

Well, I think one of the issues with playing metal songs is that it would be a bit at odds with the rest of the set and what we're known for, which is a mix of lounge stuff like 'fever' 'feeling good' and Stevie Wonder and EW&F numbers. And we have a violinist so it also goes into wagon wheel territory. I think there's some people in the audience who would love some metal songs but A. I wouldn't and B. They're at the wrong gig. We could always try and do Enter Sandman in the style of wagon wheel, that might be novel. Might also stop the guitarist noodling if he realises we'll take his favourite metal numbers and turn them into country songs!

Very much an adult band. 8 piece and nobody under 40. In fact the guitarist and I started this band last year and between us we provide everything (pa, mics, stands, keys, drum kit, even the bl**dy tambourines) and he has a rehearsal facility we all use with everything setup. The guitarist is very talented and dedicated, puts in the work so he knows the songs, which makes this tourette's all the more awkward as in every other respect he's spot on.

It's like an 'adulation' syndrome some musicians have (I'm looking at guitarists here) where the audience appreciation has to be just for them.

Id settle for a bit of ‘teddy bears picnic’ rather than whole segments of sandman… spare me!!!

I’m in a covers band and at gigs, between numbers, the guitarist blurts out death metal riffs, none of which we do in the set. Recently we got a second guitarist and, encouraged, is now doing the same. I was talking to the 2nd guitarists wife and she said ‘well, the audience seemed to like it’ but my point is yes, but A. We’re not doing the song the riff comes from (which is metal) & B. we do lounge numbers like ‘fever’. We’ve talked about this issue, particularly that I don’t think it’s very professional, but it still continues. I’ve never come across this before in any band. I’ve suggested that separately they form a metal band to get this out of their system! They want, and enjoy, being in the covers band but it’s like a guitarist form of Tourette’s where between numbers they can’t help themselves. At the moment we’ve lost our sound guy so I’m doing the mixing. Their noodling fecks me off so much that the ‘automatic’ mute function operates on whichever channel a feckwit metal noodling guitarist is using. They think this is unprofessional! So touché. Has anybody come across this sort of behaviour before? I haven’t come across this problem before at this level, but it doesn’t seem to extend to keyboard players, drummers or vocalists, if anybody it seems to be the province of guitarists.

"Give me a gig!" at the very start of this video says a lot about where Jaco was mentally when this was recorded. Has to be one of the most unexpected starts to an interview for someone of his talents!