WinterMute

The Barefaced Big Twin is a monster, I suggest you take a listen to the Gen 2 if you can, they've come a long way since the prototypes. 

Yes, the looks are a bit spartan, and they do not have a "signature" sound, but if you;re looking for a cab that'll show off your amp and bass tones, I haven't heard anything that works quite as well. I ran 5 string fretted and fretless through mine and did all the tone shaping in the pre, including wedges of distortion and filter effects, the variable tweeter (compression horn in the Gen 2) allows you to set the cab up for a room without having to mess about with your sound.

Never had a better stage sound.

10 minutes ago, Mcgiver69 said:

If you like Mac and don't have the money for a new or second hand one then another alternative lots of people are using is Hackintosh which is basically a PC with Mac OS installed in it. Lots of musicians are going for it and it works very well.

Well, it works, but it still leaves you with issues to deal with... The ideal is that you spend minimum time administering your computer and maximum time making music, in my experience Windows PC's and Hackingtosh's require more admin than Macs, the relative cost notwithstanding.

Each to their own I guess, but I'd recommend a proper Mac unreservedly for music production.

PJB do a powered cab that connects to the line out. 

Any combo with an aux input will also work.

Now sold.

1 hour ago, Leonard Smalls said:

I've had  a look at 2nd hand machines...

I could get a refurished 2008 Mac Pro with 32Gb RAM and 3.33GHz 6 core processor for £495 with OS of anything up to El Crapitan - food for thought! Not being that familiar with Macs makes me lean toward PC more, but I used to use a MacPro back in the late 90s so it might come back. It is, however, 10 years old.

I've also looked at 2nd hand business machines - servers, Avid workstations and the like. I can get a 5 year old refurb HP Z640 with choice of Windows 7 or 10 and 48Gb (!) DDR3 RAM for the same, or an actual Dell Avid with 64Gb RAM and Xeon octacore processor for £695...

Problem with the internet is there's so many choices!

If you can afford it, a Mac Pro Cheesegrater is the way to go, I've been using Macs for music production for decades now, and they are intrinsically less hassle than PC's, but they do cost an arm and a leg.

My 2012 17" MBP died at the beginning of the year, needed a new motherboard, £500 thanks very much, so I bought a second had 6 core Mac Pro pedal bin with 64Gb or RAM and 2 TB of SSD, cost north of £2k but I'm not short of power or storage now, or at any point in the future I suspect...

19 minutes ago, Sibob said:

Excellent choice

In the interest of transparency, I work for Focusrite / Novation, so always interested to see what people are using!

Cheers
Si

To be fair Si, you're also really nosey...

Barefaced all the way for me, despite having sold my Big Twin earlier this year, I think their range is brilliant. 

I used a lot of modelled tones onstage and the BT just ate it up, the Big Baby is a magnificent little all-rounder, very similar to the FRFR, worth a look.

Now on hold pending the usual.

2 hours ago, Frank Blank said:

This is very true. Jaco leaves me absolutely cold and yet I recognise him as a great player and a pioneer. Kraftwerk, however, have been a huge inspiration to me over the years, I totally dig them and yet I can understand people who don't.

Same with the Beatles, great songwriters, I mean truly great, but I can't stand their whiney nasal racket...

I have changed my mind about a few bands over the years, I genuinely detested Steely Dan as a youngster, but I find them fascinating now, same is true of Country and Western.... 

No, wait, I still hate Country and Western.

1 hour ago, Hellzero said:

Anything by Muse, as they are unable to recognize that they are just making an awful plagiat or a bad remake of Ha!-Ha!-Ha! by Ultravox!

I always thought I really should like Muse, the guitars, that bass work... Nope, although their cover of a Feeling Good isn't bad.

43 minutes ago, EliasMooseblaster said:

The biggest barrier I have to getting on with Muse is that I've noticed Matt Bellamy's audible gasps for breath before every single line that he sings. Once you've noticed it, it's impossible not to notice it on EVERY SINGLE MUSE SONG.

There.

I've just ruined Muse for the rest of you now as well.

This.

Never mind bloody albums, how about bands? 

The Beatles, wrote some great songs, ruined every single one of them. 

Coldplay, waste of carbon.

Rolling stones, why?

But then I loved Grace, apart from Lilac Wine, Jaco Patorius with Joni and the last Rush album

Vive la difference!

Had one of these in the late 80's, fast like you wouldn't believe, it went after I moved to 5 strings.

Iconic bass, GLWTS.

Seen some use but still going strong, this is the 48v powered version with single pp9 battery backup.

As can be seen, it’s a bit battered, but these are built for the road and hard studio use.

Been stored without the pp9 battery, and will need one if you want to have the back-up in case the 48v supply fails.

Unit is in West London, Heathrow area and i’ll post it for £2.50 UK only.

i’ll not ship internationally, sorry.

Line6 Relay G50 wireless system for bass or guitar, digital 12 channel system with “cable tone” (whatever that does, never used it).

Very reliable and easy to use, it’s the metal cased version, so very durable too.

Unmarked and rarely used.

Includes a 3rd party connecting cable featuring a silent switch in the angled jack that prevents clunks and bangs when changing basses.

Unit is in West London, Heathrow area, but can be in Stevenage during the week, happy to meet, otherwise £5 shipping to UK.

I’d rather not ship abroad.

Al Murray used to play in a Jewish heavy metal band called Guns n Moses.

It wasn't very PC...

Their set appeared to be a very loud and fast version of Hava nagila...

Proxy Music is an obvious stand-out.

Blobby Williams?

Deft Leppard?

Lez Zeppelin?

All real apparently...

1 minute ago, SpondonBassed said:

I know my Ibanez preamp has Ibanez branding on the pcb and no branding marks externally visible on the mkI Bartolinis.  I'll assume that yours is a Bartolini branded pre.  Does the mid band on yours have switchable range?

Yes, sits at 800hz normally and switches to 1.4Khz when you pull the pot up, if memory serves.

Yes, it's a Bart branded pre. it has the stacked HF and LF pot and a passive active push/pull on the volume.

2 minutes ago, SpondonBassed said:

We're having a Skype meeting with Mr Chown this weekend.  I'll bear it in mind.

 

Remember where you read it first.  I'll grant licence for the usual fee.

I'm going to be seeking a finders fee for owning the pig that started all this, just saying...

I've got the Bartolini Musicman replacement in my fretless with the 3 band Bart pre-amp that has the switchable mid, and I don't think it's weak at all, it's a very useful and musical pre that voices really well on the fretless.

1 minute ago, SpondonBassed said:

Depends on your intentions when left alone in a darkened room with it...

It has advantages over the lego, that's for sure.

12 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

But hey, I digress (but a lot less than about Peppa Pig... 🐖😂). Yes sir, you can Boogie, all night long. And that is certainly improved by the band not having to fiddle about with analogue pedal settings mid set...there you see what I did there? Seamlessly back on track! 

Jesus, can't a man buy a plushy pig....?

29 minutes ago, adamg67 said:

I think it was the effects in the Multiamp that did it for me, espcially drive, pitch and filter.

Yep, very capable unit, I looked at it before I bought a second hand XT Pro, but I needed a bit more power and went with a sweaty great Crown amp into the Big Twin.

2 minutes ago, EBS_freak said:

Haha! That's fighting talk!

I've tried the Helix and the Pod XT Pro against the Kemper rack and the Multi-amp, what I observed was that the units designed specifically for bass were more flexible and therefore more useful than the "general" units that had some bass models in them, that said, I thought the models in the Helix were perfectly useable but needed more attention, and the Kemper was fine as long as you didn't stray too far from the original modelled sound. The MB was a cracking unit, but I didn't think it sounded any better than the Kemper or the Line6 units, it sounded different. Studio use of course.

1 hour ago, Danuman said:

Thanks @WinterMute

I’ve tried that, but it doesn’t return any problems. Apple help desk wasn’t able to help me any further either. Hopefully I can salvage some of my stuff, but it looks like I’m going to have to do a reinstall.

Is your OS up to date? Focusrite Control is on a new version I think.

boot the machine into Single User mode by starting it up and holding down CMD+S at the chime till you see a black screen with a bunch of white text.

Wait for that to finish loading and then type fsck -f (the space is deliberate) this will force the machine to do a full check of the disc architecture and run fixes.

Wait for the process to finish, it'll either say "Mac HD look OK" or Mac HD was repaired" or something like that if it says OK, type sync;sync;sync;reboot and press return. The machine will reboot and hopefully work.

If it say repaired, run the fsck -f command again until it says OK.