WinterMute

Make use of the Cortex Cloud for captures, some of them are very good, the patches not so much, people seem to want to use everything at once... The other improvement can be in the cab IRs, particularly stuff like Celestion's offering, which is brilliant for the 12s and 15s, but does cost a bit. There's a ton of good free IRs out there for an hour or so on google. It's quite a step up from the Stomp, and does take a bit of getting used to.

This is called marketing, everyone who makes money off a product that isn't in some way iconic does it... 😀 There's simply too much noise in the signal to find good music by accident these days, almost everything new I've liked has been recommended, often by the good people of this very parish. I'm lucky enough to have the skills and the tech to do 90% of our production work at home, we go to a friendly studio for a long weekend to record drums, everything else is in-house. It's a hobby, not a profession any more, and like all hobbies, you have to put some time and money into it. Some people paint, some knit mittens, I record songs with my mates, it's as good a way to pass the time and spend the money as any I think. It's about the journey and not the destination now. Our last album is up on the usual streaming services, we did 50 CD's for friends and family and, as someone else on the thread said, to make it real. It's cool, we're not getting "discovered" and no-ones going to offer us a support slot on a world tour, it's good to be able to make music for fun and not have the pressure of trying to be pro. That said, it's always a buzz when someone listens and gets in touch to comment, but I feel for those of us trying to offer something to the genuine fans to listen to.

Always thought it was a dumb concept, exposure to any music or literature for that long would render them meaningless. I guess the bible and the shakespeare would make decent kindling. Luxury item: a phone/iPod loaded with my entire music collection, a power source and 1980's era Kate Bush, am I doing this right?

Never got it, always preferred other peoples covers of their work, thought both Lennon and Macca were utter c*cks and Ringo did his best work narrating Thomas the Tank engine... However, I know all the bloody words, acknowledge their place in musical history and watched Let It Be with increasing admiration for all of them as musicians and people. Macca is/was some sort of genius I think, and Ringo was a machine. Lennon's Above Us Only Sky documentary very nearly changed my mind about him as well, although I still think he's a second rate Dylan who is himself a second rate Cohen... I work with Eddie Veale a lot, the guy who engineered Imagine and built studios for Lennon and Harrison, he speaks very highly of both of them. I bought the Let It Be stripped back mix album and will tolerate a few track when they come on the random playlist, although Lennon's "charming" interjections still fosters me off. Same with the Stones, and a lesser extent, the Who, who just seemed a bit more modern to me. Not a fan.

A piece of bass history right there, I had absolutely no idea that was a fretless bass till I saw that listing... John McVie was, quietly, some bassist.

I think you and Fretmeister are right about accuracy, in the end these boxes are a stack of possibilities of tone, and you use the parts that you need to in order to get the tone you want for the music you make.

I've been a longtime user of midi patch commands for synths etc. in bands, if I was still playing in a band that used click and midi parts, I'd have the QC connected for song and section patches no doubt at all. I'm all in for the one box solution, and the QC is the best one I've found so far, tried the Kemper and didn't like it much, would have bought a Helix rack if the QC hadn't panned out. I'd love to try the Fractal FX3, as I have guitarist mates who swear by it. It's certainly the best time for choice if you're looking for a big multi-FX modeller/profiler.

474 (or 479 if we add 2pods 5 into the total...)

Aye, you can make that argument, I know many musicians with pedal-boards and amps that cost many times that, but £1500 is still a lot of money for one unit. Everything's relative.

I use DistroKid for most things these days, although any of the aggregators will let you choose your platforms for streaming. https://distrokid.com

Line 6 Bass Pod XT Pro got me started, Stomp HX after that, but the Quad Cortex is the single most interesting and creative tool I've come across. The Helix is a brilliant board, my guitarist uses one and it's very good indeed, but I felt the playing experience with the QC was better and I really like the capture options. I'll be interested to see where Line 6 go after the Helix, it's been around for a while now. It's all a bit pricy though.

Very nice, as usual from Alan. Congrats, that's some bass.

It's a well know fact that ZZ Top need somewhere to land their tour jet... I'm sure it sounded as good as the Furry guitars with the floppy strings.

+1 for the Hercules hanger stand, excellent bit of kit, I've got the double one. https://www.thomann.de/gb/hercules_stands_gs_422b.htm

Yup, thats the problem with the serious UAD2 kit... The Volt range is brilliant, particularly the Volt 476, which has very useful 1176 emulations on the inputs. Importantly they sound as good as the SSL or Audient offerings.

Audient iD44 is excellent, but the Volt 4 by UA is very good as well, as is the Apollo X4 if you want to spend some serious cash...

That'll buff right out...

I rewired my entire studio after changing over to UAD2 hardware from Focusrite, the only looms I didn't make up were the D-subs from the A16, which came with the unit second hand, but I did clip all the ends and rewire XLR and TRS for the appropriate inputs and outputs, as you say, there's something very therapeutic about it as long a s you have a decent solder station. Don't think I'd care to get into an EDAC though...

I grabbed a QSC K12.2 from this very parish a while back, replaced a Barefaced Big Twin, which wasn't heavy but was big, not as big as the 8x10 mind... I ran my Stomp and now a Quad Cortex into it if I need a bit of real-world grunt, it happily keeps up in rehearsal with a lead-fisted drummer, drops into the carry case and into the car with no bother. Weighs about as much as a cased bass, maybe a bit more. It's got a DI output for live work.

If I'm not making single cables, all my multicore and patch stuff comes from VDC. They have a bespoke service on the website. They do Neutric, Switchcraft or their own VDC hardware and a wide range of good cables. https://www.vdctrading.com

Love the grain detail through the centre of the ebony top. The last few weeks always go much slower knowing it's nearly finished...

Right, I see what you meant, no variable blend for input/DAW. With a zero latency interface, you monitor through the DAW, the only time you need to blend the input with the DAW is what the DAW can't deliver zero-latency input monitoring.

This kind of parallel master processing is more often seen in Mastering than in multi-track mixing, it allows a more aggressive compression/limiting to be used that can then be blended with the uncompressed master signal to retain clarity but add required loudness. It's a perfectly legit technique for mixing too however, I tend to run 2 sub-masters, one a return from my summing mixer and one ITB master, the summed return will have a limiter attached and then blended underneath the main mix till I get the loudness I'm looking for, both are then run into the Master I'll add a general EQ to the Master, in case I need it, but it's not used often. Personally I'd never add time-domain effects to a master, they will be handled in aux sends and returns, and I can EQ or dynamically control the stem signals going out to the summing mixer if needed, this can be very useful to add a bit of control to the drum overheads or the kick generally before it hits the summing mixer. In the end all you gain is a measure of control of the amount of limited or compressed signal you add to your main mix buss, but that can be invaluable.

Not sure where the idea the Volt has a fixed DI gain comes from, spec says 55db of gain for the TRS input, both UA and SSL use combo input and neither have a dedicated DI input. I've spent a little time with the Volt 4 and have spec'ed SSL desktop stuff for Uni builds, there's very little to chose between them really. I prefer the "vintage" Pre-amp sound to the SSL "4K" but it's so subjective. Both will do exactly the same zero latency or direct monitoring. Both come with a range of software, and the Volt include the Ampeg equation found in the Apollo range, which is very useful. What the Volt ange won't do is play with UA's Luna DAW, which is a excellent bit of software that comes free with the UAD2 age of hardware.

I've got the Quad Cortex, there's a bunch of ways to kick in whatever gain or tone changes you want, song by song, section by section, I can change amps for choruses if I need to. My point was more that fuzz or distortion pedals have never been able to deliver the kind of sound that I want.