Boodang

Oh great, a room full of tippy tappy heros!

Hmmm, I can try out some new bass cabs... through headphones! Worth it though just so you don't have have to listen to the cacophony of dozens of weekend 'slap happy' heros pulling out their top 10 greatest chops.

Get a Cort A6 and that'll be a good compromise. I started off playing average instruments but eventually got a few customs. But despite that I still play Squiers and the like... in fact my favourite jazz is a Squier VM.

I always felt the same, so got a tc Spectracomp and played with the toneprint editor to get a grip on it. Now compression is one of my essential tools for my tone.

... and as far as compression is concerned I use two types; a single band which has a ratio control for when I want to compress the sh*t out of it, and a 3 band comp which I use to emphasise the bass frequencies by having a quick attack time in that frequency band and slow attack times in the mid and upper frequencies. The latter working more like an eq.

The primary factor in my tone, both fingers and pick, is where I pick/pluck on the bass. A lot of the time, players pick somewhere between the bridge and pickup but for those deeper tones I pick over the neck around the 17/19 fret. This also has a less defined attack to the note. I find compression is important and in terms of eq this has the biggest effect. After compression I might use a bit of eq if it's still not where I want it and mostly that will concentrate on tweaking the lower and upper mids, so good to have an eq with separate upper/lower mid controls.

Well, as I said in my initial post, I can't hear any difference between this quite expensive silver coated cable and my cheap Fender festival cables. However that won't stop me buying a Zaolla solid silver core cable to compliment it now that @lee650has reminded me I've always wanted one. Don't ask me why, I think it's just a 'I've got a fancy bass, so why not have a fancy cable' syndrome! Having said that, I do think it adds a bit of professional bluff when you go in the studio, get out your U5 di and connect up with a cable like this. Of course you have to back it up with your playing which is when it all falls apart!

I wouldn't say your perception is off, it's just common to think of pedals as 'effects' rather than preamps. I've come to the conclusion there is no 'one' perfect tone and variety is the spice of life, so now I have a pedal board with many tonal sculpting options and use active PA cabs instead of bass amps as I just need them to amplify.

The great thing about losing your top end hearing is that you can download the 'teen tormentor' app and have loads of fun where ever there's a gaggle of them hanging about. My favourite sport on business trips when hanging about airports.

On this score I do in fact omit the pots on my MM and P, but rather than adjust at the amp, all tone sculpting is done on the pedal board and happens instantly at the stomp of my clodhoppers.

Reducing the noise floor but keeping power consumption low is always a juggling act when designing onboard preamps. Having said that, the East preamps are great and the J retro really suits the jazz. I like the passive interaction of single coils in parallel, something you don't get if you buffer the pickups before mixing. Interestingly the East preamp let's you choose between passive or buffered mixing which is a nice touch. So, my jazz has the double stacked passive volume/tone but my MM and P basses go straight to the output jack, no pots.

You have to bear in mind that a passive eq can only cut frequencies, a 'treble roll off' tone control being the simplest example. If you want to boost then you need an active preamp, which means powered and typically the use of opamps. The only question really (and obviously!) is do you want the preamp in an external pedal or in the bass. Onboard, it's specific to that bass and always there, pedal can be used by any bass but it's an extra thing to take with you.

Aguilar TLC. Got this recently and it's an 'always on' pedal on my board. Battery or psu powered.

Effectively the only difference between an onboard preamp and external pedal is that the onboard is going to have space and power restrictions. Of course, if you find an onboard that really suits the bass then you have a tailored preamp on hand and it does seem like a lot of preamps these days, like the East, are tailored to suit specific bass types. My preference these days is passive, going out to my pedal board where the rest of the tone shaping takes place. But I do have a shelf full of old onboards that I've tried just waiting to be put back in once i change my mind... again!

Well, I did see a refurbished Dragon on ebay for 5K, which I didn't think was too bad all things considered. A more reasonable bet might be the BX-125 model which goes for normal money.

If you can, use one of these.

If you don't have a cassette player, you could always pull the tape out into a bowl, add some pasta sauce and eat them.... that way you could internalise them.

https://www.bluearan.co.uk/index.php?&category=Speaker_Building&masthead=Speaker_Plans&subheadnew=Bass_Reflex_Sub A lot of speaker manufacturers have cabinet designs to go with them. If you just use random dimensions it won't match the performance specs of the speakers. Don't try and work it out from scratch, use a tried and tested design. Just as a generality, I've found ported designs to be louder than sealed.

Pictures?!

I could be judging a book by it's cover but the Atomic seems like it's trying too hard to be a darkglass clone. I'd give it a miss just for the marketing b*ll*cks 'digital vacuum tube'!

I've discovered so much more new music as a result of streaming, so top bananas for that, but anything special gets bought on vinyl, if it's available. I've never been sentimental about CDs and have none left, but vinyl I've kept.

The 'philosophical' reason I like vinyl (which only applies to pre digital recording); sound pressure waves are converted to an electrical signal by a microphone which is represented by lumps and bumps on a vinyl groove,, a cartridge then converts them back to an electrical signal which is amplified and moves a speaker diaphragm to produce sound pressure waves.... the process to listen to the music being a reversal (well, in principle anyway!) of the recording and all analogue. With digital your are listening to a chip generating waveforms from a data stream. So when I play my Miles Davis vinyl I close my eyes and there's, philosophically, less of a disconnect between me and artist!! Admittedly it's a zen thing and in no way is related to the quality of the reproduced signal!

For control knobs it's the dual stacked volume/tone which I prefer to vol/vol/tone, with a series/parallel switch for added versatility. And rotosounds obviously. As for pickguard, I'm afraid I like tortoiseshell.

Piccolo basses maybe?