WinterMute

Bit harsh, you might not like his music, but there's no way you can deny he's a talented musician who fronts one of the most popular bands of the last decade, all while playing "real" instruments, occasionally with a broken leg.

I think this is more to do with licks and phrasing, groove and invention than "sound", sure the best session guys get their work because they have a sound, but Carol Kaye played on hundreds of hits and you wouldn't necessarily know it was her. Good session players do what the gig requires, unless they're Eddie Van Halen, in which case they do what they always do.

Coldplay? I'd rather some kid with something interesting to say over a messed up Fruity Loops track got an award than that bunch, sure they can play, but what they play is so f*ck*ng bland. There will always be music we don't like, much of it new, but it's absolutely essential that kids get to play in the sandbox without us old b*st*rds telling them to keep it down.

This is why you turn the damn thing off as a habit before you plug/unplug anything.... Nothing worse than having your Coles ribbons fried by some lazy-arsed engineer who didn't check the 48v status.

Seconded on 2 counts of BigRed's advice, if you don't want to stick a really hot processor in it (the i5 isn't regarded as powerful these days) then at least 32Gb of Ram is very useful. An audio drive is essential. If you're going to using a lot of soft synth and samplers, another drive for libraries might be in order and you really should look at a faster processor with more cores.

I had the 110 for a while, great little practice/demo amp, plenty of grunt and, if used well, the models weren't bad either. Very useful DI output too. Use the 400w 2x10 combo too. Just wasn't loud enough.

I swapped my big rig out for a QSC K12.2 when I got my stomp, works as expected, although it does show up any limitations in your signal chain more than a traditional cab would.

I had the Super Flightcase in my studio for a year or two, lovely little amp to record with, never missed a beat. Quality kit, well designed. A bit quiet unless you add extra powered cabs, but that wasn't the purpose in the studio.

Used to use as many 10" as I could lay hands on, 16 of the b*ggers at one point, silly really. Last serious gigging rig was 2x12, 1x6 and tweeter in the Phase 1 Barefaced Big Twin, that cab really changed my view on 12" speakers. Now using a single 12 and horn in the QSC K12.2 wedge. Even with 5 string basses there is nothing a good 12" can't do as backline I think, provided you've a clean DI feed from your rig to the PA.

The obvious ones, Geddy Lee, Jaco Pastorius, Les Claypool, Mick Karn... Pino to a certain extent and John Giblin, although both will tune their sound to suit the artists work and are more recognisable by their playing style and phrasing.

Honourable mention for Barefaced cabs, hugely loud and spookily light, I had the Big Twin 2x12 for a couple of years, it's a one hand lift and with the built in rollers it's a very easy "big" cab to cart around. If you still like big backline, it's well worth looking at with a good head of your choice. Easily as loud as a good 4x12 or 2x15 or even a 6x10 (I used to use Ampeg 8x10 and I'd say it's probably as capable as the older fridges). It fits in a Golf/A3 sized hatchback too. Alternatively, something like the QSC K12.2 used as a wedge (or a couple of wedges for extra pain) will work brilliantly, especially in an FRFR situation where your amp/fx have modelled elements. I have to say I still like the idea of a big, throbbing rig behind me (oooo, er) but I play live so rarely these days it made no sense to keep the big Barefaced. I used to run it with a QSC 1500w power amp and the Line 6 Pod XT Pro rack, it was a monster rig. However, the little K12.2 has proved to be more than adequate for day to day work, has a really good sounding DI output for the PA and is easily loud enough for full band work.

Some DI pedals can be powered over 48v, but not your's by the look of the spec. I'd always advise turning 48v off before plugging or unplugging anything, as plugging a mic into a live 48v feed can cause some nasty bumps and bangs. It's not certain that it will affect the Fender box, but why risk it?

it's a Kramer neck for sure, very difficult to fake an ally neck, but the body looks a bit odd to me. Kramer hybrid of some sort?

Any mix engineer worth their salt will be able to extract and present that tone in the mix I think, but it often depends on the producer (or lack of) as a lot of production doesn't leave enough room sonically for the bass tone and it often gets relegated to simply filling the LF in. If Rush can get Geddy's tone to cut through their massive mixes, there's no excuse...!

I'm so old I started with 1" 8 track...! Protools makes sense to me. I'm not seeing any flakiness in the iLok system, it's been rock solid for me over the years, and it protects revenues and quality from the developers, alternatively I've always found Waves licensing to be an absolute pig, and the number of systems I've had to flush pirated Waves plug-ins out of to solve issues is high. Yeah, protools is pricey, yeah you need the expectation of revenue, and certainly the company can be problematic, but the phase accuracy of the aux's and the plug-in delay compensation is essential, even mixing in Logic doesn't yield that level of accuracy, and their hardware integration and S series surface capability is second to none, thanks to EUCON. Sure, it works great with Logic and Abelton too, that's the point of it. I'd really like ARA support for Melodyn, and if Luna ever picks up EUCON support (it won't) I'll seriously consider switching, I really like the console emulation UA have got going. Horses for courses, Logic/Abelton/Reaper etc. are all capable and are often brilliant, but for me none of them offer what Protools does. Obviously YMMV.

Second the K&M with counterweight, works a charm.

I think it depends on what kind of production work you intend to do, if it's going t be a lot of EDM stuff, Logic and Ableton are very good straight off the bat as they had a wealth of synths and samplers built in that are very good indeed, Logic is a fine audio recording and editing DAW too. If you need to record a lot of audio and edit/manipulate it then mix it, Logic and Protools would be my choices, with Reaper as an interested third. Honourable mention to Universal Audios Luna, which is proving to be excellent but lacks support for the Avid surfaces currently, you also need UA's hardware to join that party. You'll find Logic and Abelton have a very good set of built in effects and play well with a wide range of hardware and plug-in suites. Protools is still my go to system as it works exactly like a recording studio would, and I really like the elastic audio editing system and the fact it's still the only DAW with sample accurate delay compensation for plug-in latency. It's very expensive if you're not making money out of audio though.

Comparing the Sterlings with standard Rays doesn't reveal a lot of difference in my experience, a good spec Sterling is a match for a standard Stingray both in 4 and 5 string versions I think, but the specials, the BFRs and the Anniversary Rays are something else, I have a 20th anni SR5 that is spectacularly good, I've played the 4 string version too, it's excellent, probably the best version of the Stingray. Might be worth tracking one down for a trial.

The only thing to watch for when tracking with plug-in based tech is the latency, that delay induced by the amount of processing the plug-in has to do to make the sound, the more powerful the plug-in, generally the longer the latency for real-time work. Universal Audio get round it by adding DSP to their hardware and running the plug-ins there rather than in the computer. Most systems have a work around in their monitoring, but you'll have to figure it out.

I approach source for bass in the same way I would anything else, what does the player need to hear to perform well, and what do I need to capture to have the materials for the mix later? If your sound needs distortion and compression to get you the vibe and drive you need to play well, then that's the sound you record, but I ALWAYS take a DI directly from the bass onto a separate track so that I have a sound to work with in the mix if the players original tone doesn't work out (which it doesn't occasionally) I run my bass direct into a RND Shelford channel, EQ and compress lightly to taste, you don't need something of that expense, a decent DI box with a link output is fine, but I really like the sound of my basses through that unit. Then I use the link output to run the unaltered bass sound into an HX Stomp where a set of models and FX turns it into an ungodly noise, this gets tracked onto a second DAW track. The mixed bass sound is very often a combination of both tracks, with processing added to the DI sound. The advantage of this is that I get the nasty distorted and compressed sound I need to actually play with the aggression and vibe I need for the song, AND I get the clean sound that can save/make a mix. YMMV but the sound we make is very often the vibe and performance maker, track with that sound.

The lovely wife and I had a very agreeable first date slating Coldplay and their miserable excuse for music, it's been something of a standing joke ever since. Nothing against the individual members, never met them, but I find their stuff insipid and not worthy of the praise it receives and as for them being a great live act, I've seen much better in local pubs. Why stretch it out to 2025?

Yup, you won't go far wrong with good ears, except for the understanding of how to get from a "bad" sound to a "good" sound, that takes skill, experience and occasionally vast amounts of money...

I think this conversation is in two parts now. Firstly, there's no doubt that someone with the requisite talent and experience can get professional/commercial results from some very modest gear these days, which is a testament to how powerful technology has become and how easy it is to get hold of, but the learning curve is hellishly steep and you do require talent as well as knowledge. Which is not to say that home studios can't produce some very good results, because they can. Secondly, paying a professional to record your work will almost always end up with a better result. My "home" studio is not really a "home" studio at all, it's a studio that happens to be in my home, it's isolated, treated and contains some very advance hardware and software, more to the point, I've been a professional audio engineer for 35 years. I also play bass and write and produce songs, lucky me I can do it all and the advances in tech mean I get to do it to my professional satisfaction without having to spend £100,000s. A little knowledge goes a long way here, and improving your home recordings is easy to do with a little effort and direction, it will not make you Bob Rock.

Modest year: In: HX Stomp QSC K12.2 Amphion Flexbass 25 UAD2 plug-ins: Capitol Chambers and Manley Massive Passive. out: Phil Jones Super Flighcase GED2112 rack pre-amp Ordered, pending: ACG Uber Krell 5 fretless

It's perfectly possible to get "professional" results from the kind of kit OP has, but with all tools you have to know how to use them, there are no short cuts to "professional" 10,000 hours of practice to be able to play bass competently? Same thing with audio kit. Understanding how systems work, learning to use them and then practice will yield results, there is no magic bullet and "all the gear, no idea" applies just a s well to us as it does cyclists or golfists. Ask, listen and practice, if you want to learn, you will.