WinterMute

On a hopeful note, aikido buddy of mine had a similar op a year or so ago, much the same context, fused vertebrae being supported with new hardware, lots of titanium and a deal of Black n Decker work, proper do or die stuff to save his ability to walk, and he came through it with greater mobility and less pain once the actual op wounds had healed. Very best of of luck.

I played a Warwick Thumb 5 for 20 years, sold it when I thought I'd done with playing bass, now have a couple of EBMM SR5s. a Bongo 5 and a beautiful ACG Krell fretless, I didn't plan on playing MM, it's just the way it came out. I did plan the ACG, meticulously, and I may well drop the SR5 fretless and the Bongo in order to fund a fretted ACG in the future as Alan's work is so spectacular. So Warwick to ACG by way of MusicMan.

It's not how well the bear dances, it's that the bear dances at all... I love seeing these kids doing their stuff, I used to see all the Chinese and Korean kid violinists coming over executing the most challenging scores flawlessly, but ask them to improvise, not a hope. The Taylor Hawkins concert proved just how difficult emulating players like Peart is, even Omar Hakim struggled with YYZ, and he's a monster player. Watching Nandi and Shane play with such energy is a pleasure, and they may go on to great things, I hope so. The young girl is great for her age and experience, she can certainly play, but no-one plays with the aggression and attack that Geddy Lee plays with, always just on the edge of chaos, it's a thing of beauty. Long may there be videos of kids playing challenging music on YT and TikTok or wherever, more music makes the world a better place. Maybe one of them will be the next Geddy or Eddie VH, who knows.

Logic is the obvious replacement for Cubase, Protools not so much, it doesn't have anywhere near the built in synths or samplers, it's not as easy to do the dynamic loop stuff and it's expensive. It's easy enough to add all that functionality but thats very expensive in plug-ins. Protools still offers a lot to people who are looking for a DAW that operates the way a studio does, it appeals to me immensely in that respect and all my production work is in Protools, my writing partner uses Logic, so I have that on the system as well, but I find it's not as good for editing audio or doing some of the donkey work that band production needs. Logic is brilliant for synths and beats and EDM stuff though, and is perfectly capable of audio editing and mixing. Abelton might be worth a look too.

That's a bit of history right there... £42K though, it'll go in a glass case somewhere rather than being played down the Dog and Crackpipe of a Friday night.

The whole thing was on YouTube after the live broadcast, all 6 hours or so of it, in very good quality, I expect there will be a release of an official compilation once they've done the US version next week. The YT version has gone now, but there are loads of clips of all the performances.

Tons of processing power, limited connectivity, and you can’t increase the RAM so if it came with 8Gb, you’re stuck with 8, which isn’t really enough. if you’re spec’ing a new one and can live with the ports, 16 or 32Gb is a definite advantage.

I played a Warwick Thumb 5 for many years, with 16.5mm spacing, it remains the most comfortable bass I’ve played for spacing, I now have MusicMan basses with the 17.5mm spacing which aren’t bad at all, but needed adjustment, I don’t really get on with anything above that. When Alan built my fretless ACG, i had him go with a 17mm spacing, which works very well indeed, the combination of the spacing and the bias cut necks makes it a very comfortable instrument to play. I played a Stienberger 5 string a while back, which was (I think) 15mm, that was too close, very difficult to play smoothly on, so generally I’d say string spacing is important.

Headless, fretless, all the same, Alan makes great basses.

You going headless? This is the only single cut design that I really like, if I get around to having Alan build me a fretted bass to go with my Krell fretless, it'll likely be a Salace E type. That looks like it's going to be a stunner.

Sorry, perhaps I wasn't entirely clear, my bad, we had one in on appro and ran it in live sessions against some of the mics it's modelling and frankly the results were excellent, certainly within the bounds of the differences between 2 models of the same mic in normal use. I'd not be unhappy using one in a session at all. It's actually a very capably mic without the modelling, a little neutral but very capable. it's the same price as a Sontronics Mercury or a second hand U87ie, both capable mics but without the range of the L22. There's one on Reverb for £950 currently.

That's very sad news, yeah I knew him, we played gigs at the Arts Centre together in the early 80's. RIP.

Tamworth has a history of oddly named bands, Fetch the Comfy Jigsaw, Those Attractive Magnets and Badger, to name 3 from my time there.

I had a good play with this and with the same tech in the UAD plug-in, the mic is very good anyway and the modelling just adds a layer of tonal variation to the mics capabilities. The plug-in is less successful unless you have a very good mic in the first instance, nothings going to make your beaten up old 58 sound like a U87 sadly. If you don't want to buy multiple mics, it's an interesting option. Addition: I was thinking about this after I posted, the Sphere is actually a lot more sophisticated than the Slate for instance as it models off axis response and polar pattern colourations as it's a dual capsule mic, it needs 2 mic pres and records to a stereo channel, it is capable of replicating the sound of some of the most iconic mics very well indeed, but you are completely at the mercy of the developers maintaining the software and the plug-in, I doubt people will be using their Sphere's 30 years from now... I loved the tech, it's the best modelling option on the market, but it's the price of a U87ie, which is an iconic studio mic and will serve you well for decades. If I was in the market for a studio mic and one came up 2nd hand for a good price, I'd consider it.

I found the Focusrite Control app to be very useful when setting up this kind of thing, it allows various levels to be defined before they go to the DAW. https://focusrite.com/en/focusrite-control I use UAD interfaces now, they have a very similar app that also allows the use of plug-ins in the signal chain. Be aware that adding effects of amp simulations in the DAW will lead to more latency in your signal, using a pre-amp ahead of the interface will cure this.

I love the multiple meanings in McLeod's work, Wake does some heavy lifting in that book, from following on behind to celebrating the life or mourning the death. Clever b*gg*r Mr McLeod. Glad you're still with us.

Yeah, Hiscox would be my first choice, but nothings going to protect it as well as a "proper" fitted flight case I think. I had a Packhorse flight for my Warwick thumb that was responsible for it's fair share of shoulder injuries, but that bass travelled for years without a scratch. The Hiscox that came with the ACG is a great unit though, plenty of protection for the usual bumps, but I don't think it'd survive being run over by the van.

Tony Levin had a list of unused band names on his website for a while, some funny and useable names on that. For the last project we trolled though the usual pop culture references and in jokes (Putin's Tiny Horse was a favourite for a while), then looked at all of the ship names in Iain M Banks Culture novels after Anal Musk started using the names for his drone ships (the "Of Course I still Love you" and "Significant Shortfall of Gravitas") there's some good ideas in there. In the end we chose a Ken McLeod Novel title.

This is why god gave us lofts.

The Humanscale Freedom chairs have an ingenious mechanism where the arms drop flat to the seat, they're brilliant for studio chairs where there's lots of playing, very comfortable for long sessions too. You just have to be able to tolerate the cost... https://www.humanscale.com/products/seating/freedom-headrest-executive-chair

Where's the fun in that?

Apropos absolutely nothing, and in a Primus thread too, this video of Neil Peart playing after going through a tom head and having his tech swap it out is just brilliant, I used to go to a couple of shows on any Rush tour, once just to watch Peart work, what an irreplaceable force he is. There's a moment after the tom is replaced at about 4:35 where he hits a big fill and we get a little smile from him as if to say "that would have been a sod to cover up"...

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.

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.