WinterMute

On 14/08/2022 at 19:14, Muzz said:

That was just awful...mostly because what Rush never needed was a second bassist and a second drummer onstage, especially the drummer(s), who sound like they're in a mediocre tribute band...oh, hang on...that's it, tho, isn't it?

Geddy Lee was quoted as saying Rush sounded like a Rush tribute band in the early days of rehearsal for any tour...

I really enjoyed that whole concert, it was a glorious joyous shambolic mess, just like South Park, and I loved every minute of it.

The locking jack socket on my ACG Krell 5 string fretless custom build is a bit stiff, hurts my fingers to get the jack out...

Pity my horrible life.

5 hours ago, BassApprentice said:

Such a subjective question - but I've seen a good few second hand ACGs go for under 2k. With the John East Pre installed they are extremely versatile and top notch build quality.

 

But again, try as many basses as you can and I'm sure you'll find one.

Thats a good shout, I have an ACG fretless thats out of this world, but it's well above your budget.

I'd be wary of the filter pre-amp though, takes some getting used to. I think it's a versatile pre in many ways, but the East standard semi-parametric pre is a good option.

Alan's Standard builds may be in reach of your budget.

Anything with a good pre-amp and twin pups should work fine, for the cash you have you're surely looking at mid to high range high volume manufacturers, Fender, Sadowski, Lakland, Sandberg, Yamaha... If the Jazz bass look is important they'll all have something for you.

Warwick, MusicMan SR5 or Bongo, or the like if you'd like something with a different look.

You'd need to decide what bass ergonomics suit you, scale length, neck profile etc.

The marketplace is your friend here, some great all-rounders on there right now well within your budget.

So I've never played a Darkray as they are very rare, but it's a Stingray 4 or 5 string, which are great basses in their own right, plenty of punch and clarity, always good in any mix. I play SR5's and Bongos.

Plus it has the omega and alpha distortion circuits from Darkglass, which are great tone and distortion units.

Wether they are better than buying a Stingray and a O/A pedal? Who knows, you'd need to try them.

Bottom line is that it'll be a great bass in either case.

3 hours ago, BigRedX said:

 

I supposed that's the difference. I don't really record just for "fun". My recording are all done with the aim of putting them out in some format for the general public to "enjoy".

 

To a certain degree, I don't find the recording process particularly enjoyable, because it makes me over-analyse my playing/performance and I become very aware of all it's shortcomings.

 

This is why I have discovered that having my own proper home studio was (for me) not a good idea, because there was always the opportunity for me to fiddle a bit more with the arrangement or mix of a track because I or another member of the band thought it could be improved. 

 

I've mentioned this before in other threads about recording, but I think it bears repeating. Right from my first band my musical output has very much been recording first and foremost and performing live a distant second. Because of this, in the 90s when home studios (i.e.something more than a 4-track portastudio in the corner of the room) became not only affordable but also capable of producing quality results, I threw myself whole-heartedly into the process, spending 10s of thousands of pounds on equipment and a room the house it all in. Unfortunately what I ended up learning was that I was simply not a good enough engineer to do all that equipment justice. My band of the time spent a year working on our first EP (although some of that was due to the fact that our original singer left just before the final mixes were complete and we spent another couple of months recording new vocals with her replacement). We then spent 4 years working on the album and follow-up single, and then end result was 4 "finished" songs that I have never been 100% happy with production/mix -wise and another 6  in various stages of incompletion, before the band split. By that time one of the completed songs was already out of date from a lyrical subject matter PoV. In retrospect the money would have been much better spent hiring a really good studio along with an engineer and proper producer who were sympathetic to the musical style of the band. That way I'd have a great sounding album's with of recordings and probably enough money left over to not only pay for the CD production but some effective promotion too.

 

My inability as an engineer was hammered home, when I subsequently joined The Terrortones, who having acoustic drums couldn't record in my studio as I had neither the environment nor microphones to do it. Therefore we booked a weekend at a decent local studio where the engineer got a much better sound than I could, in a fraction of the time I would have spent and with equipment that was technically less good than my own studio. I ended up selling all my studio equipment (most for a massive loss), and these days I have just enough to do drum programming for Hurtsfall and to record my bass parts.

 

 

I think it's very interesting how little kit you need for a pro setup these days, that's the outcome of technology, but as you say, you do need the chops to do it. 

I've been a pro engineer for many years and the results I get out of my little man-cave studio are as good as anything I used to get from pro studios except for the drum sounds, because, like you I don't have the space to record acoustic drums. Decent drum programming is ok for some genres, but a properly recorded skin-smacker still sound the dogs on rock and the like. 

I can record, programme, edit and mix to pro standards in a system that is a fraction of the cost of a major console and multi-track set up. 

Songwriting becomes easier too, my guitarist writes in Logic, chucks it into the cloud, I arrange his work and add bass and synth parts, throw it back, he sods around with it and back and forth we go till we have something we're happy with, then I'll string some vaguely coherent words together and chuck those on. We'll use the Drummer plug-in in Logic generally, or a loop for drums.

Then we'll get our drummer into a rehearsal room for a few days, and see what his input does to arrangement, groove, tempo etc, often his input will result in rewrites, which is a good point to assess where a song is. Once we have a version of the backing track we're all happy with, I'll extract guitar, bass and keys to stems, and we'll head up to Monkey Puzzle for a few days to lay drum tracks into Protools. I'll bring the resultant tracks back and we'll track guitars, bass and vocals, re-programme the synth parts and run a final edit/re-arrangement of the songs with the live drum parts.

That then gets cleaned up and prepped for mix, which I'll do over the course of many days as it's all essentially in the box and has 100% recall.

This process keeps the input of all 3 musicians, allows for variation in performance and the ability to track to live drums for feel and groove (I have extracted groove templates from live drums to lock loops down many times, which works very well), and results in songs that retain feel and spontaneity whilst allowing for the raft of technique us engineers love so much.

Sure, I've put money into the studio, but no more than many people put into serious hobbies, and a lot less than some, and the results are excellent, but I've 30 years of experience behind me that ensures I get those results.

No DAW or plug-in or synth is going to give you those results without the skills sadly.

Well, he can play, that's for certain, love seeing people who can do that sh*t, would I watch it twice? No.

Can I remember a single thing he played? No.

Can I play like that? No.

Virtuoso playing for it's own sake is a bit of a dead end for me, I can't stand a lot of the stuff Jaco did solo, but his ensemble work with other artists is stunning.

You take your joy where you find it I suppose.

15 minutes ago, tauzero said:

 

Don't be silly, there's still floor space surely?

If only there was, it's a single garage conversion that's got a floating room construction to keep the noise out of the house, and there's a lot of kit in it anyway...

I could probably lose the sofa for enough room for a 6 bass rack though, so there's always hope.

Wall hangers are essential kit in small rooms, provided you have the wall space for your massive collection...

Here's my 4, I now have a reason not to buy more basses, as I don't have any more wall space between the acoustic treatment, so it's going g to be 1 in, one out from now on.

DM'd

3 hours ago, fiatcoupe432 said:

What are those preamp in the back 

The Black rack is a UAD Apollo 16, the unit with the red knobs is a Phoenix Audio N16 Mk 2 summing mixer, here's a better shot.

Price drop to £330...

Here's my ACG Krell 34/5 fretless and my SR5 Frankenstein with their fretted brethren.

Never really thought of this as a sunburst finished bass, but it really is...

35 minutes ago, fiatcoupe432 said:

I see some nice studio equipment  in the back

My man cave is well appointed...

HX Stomp in very good condition, studio use only, not even been stepped on..!

Replaced with Quad Cortex, no box, but original PSU included.

Latest firmware and factory reset.

Will not ship outside of UK, add £5 or so for postage, happy to meet in West London local.

Loaner safety returned to it's owner, this turned up today...

3 hours ago, Nail Soup said:

Cool story, but leads me to a question... sorry!

Is the mastering done as part of the 'cutting' (i.e. you hand Porky the final un-mastered mix and he sets the controls to give the best master and then makes the cut)? Or you make a new mix made for vinyl and hand that over to Porky?

He'd do the lot for the vinyl master, as that's a different set of skills than CD mastering and this was before streaming, I used Abbey Road for CD mastering, different approach.

1 hour ago, meterman said:

Porky! He cut my first album in 1993, and it was such a ‘hot’ cut (needles in the red) that it came back a bit distorted on the top end, a bit sibilant. The bass sounded pretty beefy but the high end was super trebly, like an early Stereolab 45 or something.

 

I attended the cut and do remember he was brilliant craic, but I never heard the actual record until 18 months after it came out. All I had to go on was a pre-master cassette of the album mix. Was quite surprised when I heard it on vinyl for the first time.
 

It does have “A Porky Prime Cut” engraved in the runout groove though, just like ‘proper’ bands records did back in ye ooooolden days, so I don’t mind 😂

I've still got a few pressing plates from promos in the loft with the same inscription, George was a proper character.

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

 

The problem with vinyl is because it is a mechanical delivery medium there are various limitations as to what can actually be reproduced and they all have to be checked for and fixed if necessary, and that's before you get into the complications of optimising the running order of an album so that you get the best possible reproduction for each track in relation to its physical location on the record. This can often require a compromise between what the artist wants and what will give the best overall listening experience.

I remember watching Porky at Porky's Prime Cuts mastering and cutting plates on that beautiful old Neumann valve lathe he had, he managed to get so much bass in his cuts it was miracle the damn discs didn't just fall into huge black spirals.

There's an art to mastering for vinyl.

I think I'm starting to get the hang of this amazing little box, I have to send this one back to it's owner on Sunday, so it's probably put up or shut up time.

The Pros:

Sounds as good or better than the HX Stomp/Pod XT level kit I've known.

Excellent "playability" of the models and patches, they respond really well to dynamic playing, it is just like playing the amp/cab.

Sooo easy to work with, the touch screen and rotary switches make the lack of a desktop editor almost redundant.

Excellent use of IR integration.

Neural capture works very well for some things (really like to see where they go with this).

The Cons:

The price (same as a Helix rack etc but none second hand).

Limited "community" although quite active.

Overall I'm talking myself into this aren't I?

QSC K12.2 and subs make a fine noise, if you want something a bit more exotic the FBT small systems are excellent.

https://www.fbtaudio.co.uk/fbt-audio/portable-sound/full-systems/

1 minute ago, ezbass said:

I'd say a 'Barbie Flesh' 'Ray 5 would be the obvious Levin signature, just like they did with the OLP.

The OLP I had was natural, lovely bit of maple on the top, I'm not generally for an odd colour (wood or black is about my limit) but I think I'd make an exception for a Barbie Flesh TLMM.

I've listened to a lot of 5.1/7.1/atmos mixes, I design rooms with these formats for Universities in the UK, Steven Wilson's stuff is amongst the best, but I always find it a distracting presentation on material I previously know. 

I find it distracts me from listening to the song and that annoys me. However, new material is a much easier listen once I get over the "look how clever I'm mixing ma" aspect of surround.

I think music composed specifically for the format works much better, film soundtracks are spectacularly good in Atmos (check out the apocalyptic "holy sh*t-b*lls" chorus in the end fight of Deadpool 2 for maximum chuckles).

I may simply be too old to learn this specific new trick.

1 hour ago, fretmeister said:

I wonder why Levin hasn't got one.

 

Maybe after the OLP version he didn't want a full fat one.

I had an OLP Tony Levin and a fine, cheap instrument it was, I'd be very interested in a full blood TL SR5, I think a lot of people would.