WinterMute

yes, looking forward to playing with it, unusually for me I'm having 2 pickups, neck is ceramic and bridge is alnico, both pushed right back like my old Thumb or some of the Wals, should be a bit of a tone monster.

I can't find a fretless 20th Anni anywhere, they only made 30 I believe. I'm having Alan at ACG make me a fretless with the mahogany core and swamp ash body in the hope it'll have some of the same characteristics as the 20th Anni TBH it'll be an awesome bass even if it doesn't, his stuff is so good.

I've got one of those too, 20th Anniversary, best SR5 ever made IMO.

I bought a Warwick Thumb 5 string in 1987 after playing a fretless one in Wapping Bass Centre that was a custom order for Jack Bruce, I bought a fretted one fully intending to get a fretless as well as soon as I had the funds, I never did and didn't play fretless for a long time. I don't regret the Thumb, it was a fantastic bass for 20 years before I moved it on, but I should have bought the fretless as well, dammit.

I've got it's evil twin, the matt stealth 5 string, never seen a white Bongo before, that's a proper looker.

The Effects return cuts out the pre-amp and injects your signal directly into the power amp with the master volume in circuit, which is fine if you want to use the Helix as the entire tone shaping system, not the Ampeg pre-amp. If you want to use the Ampeg sound, run into the input on the front, engage the 15db pad and set the output level of the Helix to about 70%, then use the gain controls to set the tone in the Ampeg. If the clip light comes on with little gain in the Ampeg, back the Helix off to say 50% and make the gain up in the Ampeg preamp, EQ your sound to suit, and turn up the master volume till you can't hear the drummer.

All the right notes, just not necessarily in the right order...

Good luck, a worthy effort to save a good bass.

It depends on the singer or instrument, as every note played or sung by a human on a real instrument has intonation and vibrato and pitch bend etc. Melodyn tracks all this information so that it can retain as much of the personality of the note as possible. Centring all notes to 0 will give a pitch perfect rendition, but that may not be what you need, so correcting EVERY note in a performance shouldn't be the goal (IMO) and you should only be altering those notes that are obviously out of tune, sharp or flat. I'll run Melodyn over every vocal performance I do, but may only end up "correcting" a handful of notes for the main vocal, BV's tend to get a bit more attention, particularly high harmonies, but you'll find perfectly tracked and tuned BVs end up sounding small, as its the inconstancies of tone and pitch that add weight to multi-tracked vocal. It's a tool like everything else in recording, use it to create the result you want to hear, my rule of thumb is that if I can hear the correction in the mix, I'm overusing it.

It really helps to understand that every bass amp is a pre-amp and power amp combination, and that running pedals into the pre on a "bass" or "guitar" amp is running a pre-amp into a pre-amp on many occasions, gain staging being what it is, that often makes it difficult to get the balance of tones right, and many prefer the straight to amp approach. Live of late I go pre-amp (latterly a Stomp, but also a GED2112 or a Bass Pod Pro XT) into a power amp (Crown 1500 is brilliant or a QSC) and an FRFR cab (I had the utterly brilliant Barefaced Big Twin for a while), now I go Stomp into a QSC K12.2 with the QSC pre-amp shaping turned off. If you're modelling an amp/effects/cab why put the sound through another amp/cab coloured set up? It's more of a learning curve with systems like the Stomp/Helix/Kemper etc. but it gives you great control over your tone or tones.

Um..... No.

I expect that there was liberal use of the DFA faders and boxes on that session.

Only due to our close association with you drummers... 🤣

Been through a few, high end Warwicks, Wals, quit once and sold them all, then bought a Geddy Jazz and a Squire fretless to noodle on then went back and got a bunch of 5 strings again... I need a 5 string fretted and fretless, that's all, I have acquired the perfect fretted 5 in the 20th anni SR5, and I'm having Alan at ACG build me what I hope to be the perfect fretless, after that I'll review the Bongo and the Frankenstein fretless see if I'll keep them, the Bongo was a 50th present so I doubt I'll ever move it on, but I currently only have wall space for 3 basses in the studio, that may well be the deciding factor...! I think they are things of great attachment and beauty, if you can keep them all, you should. Remember the perfect number of basses is: The number of basses you own +1

I've not the time I used to have to do those tests, or the tech team, Protools works in all respects and I can afford it's fees, so I'm good for now, Luna's analogue console emulation system is very appealing, but no Eucon for now, so I'll stay with Protools, Reaper is a viable alternative for many people however, it's a class act for an independently developed app.

The issue with me has always been phase accuracy of busses, sample accurate delay compensation and the ability to speak Eucon for the controller data, any DAW that doesn't have these things is next to useless paid or not. I'd switch to UAD's Luna tomorrow if it supported Eucon.

Pretty much all bundled software is for is to get you to buy the full version when you hit the limitations, if your PC is still in the minimum spec required by Reaper, go for it. Others have commented on the basic functionality in the plug-ins, but you could always spring for one of the Waves bundles or get the Sound Toys set, which is brilliant. Just remember the DPS penalty for 3rd party plug-ins will tax older computers. I'll not mention Universal Audio at this point...

Just follow some basic rules: Never, ever buy first generation hardware, be it computer or audio. Never, ever let your computer update anything in the middle of a project. Chose your weapons for a project and stick with them, don't add or update. Only update when you have the time and energy (and funds) to fix whatever goes wrong. Only update major components when the developer says they are cleared to run under your stable version of whatever OS you chose. Back-up, back-up, back-up. Go make some music, all DAW/OS/hardware combinations work for the active creation of music.

20th Anniversary SR5 "SR5" Fretless, OLP body, MM neck, Bartolini pup and pre-amp. Stealth Bongo 5

Best advice he gives, sort your room/monitors out and REFERENCE. Put simply, no-one's room sounds accurate for bass, mine included and I know what I'm doing, I exempt the likes of Abbey Road and Real World from these comments obviously! Almost no-one has a big enough space in a hobby/home studio to be able to reference bass frequencies properly, so we employ acoustic measures, my room is slightly overtrapped for bass as it's so small, and I have to employ Sonarworks to even out the response, even then the monitors cannot reproduce sub 60hz accurately and are suspect below 120hz, so the only way I can tell what's going on is to listen to recordings I trust and compare the bass response against those. This works well enough until the Flexbass 25 system shows up in a week or two, at which point I'll have to reconfigure the bass traps to take account of the extra bass energy in the room, and re-analyses it. Bass is probably the hardest part of any mix, it's so fundamental to modern musical styles.

Current bass GAS being scratched by ACG, it may or may not last... I've upgraded my studio many times over the last few years, monitors, interfaces, control surfaces, channel strips, plug-ins, the list goes on. I've just ordered the Amphion flexbass 25 system to cure the long standing lack of LF in my small room, the truth is that I need a bigger room, but it'll suit for now. The ideal target is this: https://rupertneve.com/products/5088

It's all about variations in tone, I've got the Stomp and had the Pod XT Pro before that, and that constitutes a part of my "sound", the other being the DI'd sound of the bass itself, i then mix the two together at the mix down stage t get the sound that works for the song, sometimes adding extra processing to the tracks as I go. It depends what kind of music I'm playing, wether I'm playing fretted or fretless, what tone I think works for which song. If I'm doing something that require a particular tone, the amp and cab models cab be very useful, I like the SVT and 8x10 combo from the stomp for overdriven sounds, but the core of the sound is always the bass via a good DI.

Save up, get Melodyn, you're welcome.

Result, that's a proper looker, congrats.

Buy Apple stock early 80's. Don't sell the Wal, or the JD or the Warwick... Practice more.