WinterMute

Yeah a lot, it's very tactile and "woody" for want of a better word, but it wears like epoxy or ebanol.

here you go.

I had a Squire Jazz with an ebanol board, it was ok, didn't have any issues with it, I had an Ebony board on a Wal Pro 1 which I liked a lot, smoother to the touch but it cut up a little more than the Ebanol with round wound strings. I now have an epoxied rosewood defretted SR5 which is lovely, and I had Alan fit an acrylic infused lava bubinga board to my ACG 5 string, which is absolutely perfect, combines the smoothness of ebony with the toughness of both the ebanol and the epoxy coated board. I can't say I can hear much difference with the amount of processing I use, but the feel definitely changes between woods.

My neighbour has BA55 NAV, but he's not a bass player, or called Nav...

Geddy Lee's Tom Sawyer tone, I started playing bass after hearing Permanent Waves, and Lee will always be an major influence. Love the Ox's tone on that track although his tone evolved quite radically if you listen to the Live Aid version of that song. Tim Comerford's tone is always great, his work with Audioslave is under-rated I think. John McVie's tone has always been absolutely perfect for the band, and his line in Go Your Own Way is an absolute peach, plus his timing is immaculate. What stands out is how poor some of the tones in the metal bands are, and how bad some of the timing is. The engineer in me loves Cliff Williams tone, it'll work all day long in that band. Honourable mentions for Nate Mendel, Chris Squire and Rick Butler.

Lovely work and the tone fits perfectly in the track. If my bass sounded like that, I'd be breaking out the new Rotosound swing bass...

My garage conversion studio follows BigRedX suggestions pretty much exactly, except for having a floating floor and false ceiling additionally, the conversion includes a baffled A/C unit for ventilation, as the very last thing you want to do is punch holes in your isolation for vents or fans. This is not a cheap option, but it works. Don't neglect the door/window fit if you have windows, decent double glazing is OK, triple glazing is more expensive and doesn't actually help that much. commercial installers won't know how to isolate the window frames correctly to prevent flanking. A well fitted fire door will help as they are naturally sound isolating, but the frame will need to fit tight and have seals installed to the rebates, mine is an FR120, and it's very good for isolation.

Yup, that sh*t's getting deleted without being read, that's if the spam filters haven't got it first.

Turning Japanese was not a song about emigrating to the Land of the Rising Sun.... Apparently.

Much like my old mate Bartleby I use the same name on most forums, it just saves time having to thing up yet another name, it's from a William Gibson novel Neuromancer.

I've fronted bands while playing and have done BV's in others, I find it much easier to achieve with original material than with covers, as you tend to write the parts to fit your ability/natural rhythms. I've tried to play Rush/Cream etc. stuff and it's very, very difficult to get it right. I remember Geddy Lee commenting that the first few weeks or Rush rehearsals sounded like a Rush tribute act, and that the most oft heard phrase was "I can't f*ck*ng play this".

Needs to be quite a lot lower to hit "the brown sound" 7-14hz at significant amplitude may affect the lower bowels... Consider that the shock wave of an explosion is essentially a 1Hz sound wave once you're out of the actual blast/shrapnel zone, I'm damn sure that'll have a major influence on your energy field... Otherwise, complete b*ll*cks.

Bought tons of kit for the Wapping Bass Centre over the years, Ampeg 8x10, GK 800RB, TE 4x10, pedals and my Warwick Thumb 5 in 1988. Still have a Bass Centre gig bag kicking around somewhere, although almost everything else is gone... It was a great place to try stuff out, bit of a faff to get there but the staff were great and you could noodle around all day. Sadly missed.

I have a QSC K12.2, plenty of power, plenty of bass for 5 string, one hand lift in a bag... Everything's modelled in the Quad Cortex, all I need is something to make it loud, the monitor format is brilliant for rehearsal and stage and it's got a balanced DI output for the main PA.

Very nice indeed, Alan's work never fails to impress.

They rarely come up but the Tony Levin signature OLP 5 string is an absolute gem and usually goes well under £350, which is a bit of a crime IMO. Mine had a Bartolini Pre-amp and pup, but the stock offering is very good. Otherwise, another vote for the Sterling Ray 35s, excellent basses without paying the premium for the full on SR5, and the aforementioned Skylines. I played a Warwick Thumb for 20 years, and beautiful it was, but I've never come across anything in their lower ranges that compares well. YMMV.

Are you sure it's not a latency issues, are you listening to the input bass sound when recording rather than the output from the DAW? If the timing is absolutely consistently ahead, then you may be suffering from the round-trip latency of the system, it's worth checking. If thats the case, as BigRedX says, drag the track back into line with the drums and see what it sounds like.

I bumped into Jonas in a lift in Olympia on his way to a demo with that beast round his neck, I believe it was for electronic drums and he'd just turned up to play with his mate... Honestly didn't recognise him at first as I was ogling the bass..!

I've used Etymotic ER20XS passive earplugs for years, 20db attenuation, flat response, dirt cheap. https://www.etymotic.com/product/er20xs/

The old Focusrite Octapre was a good unit, and has optical outputs on some models. The pres aren’t their best offering but they are serviceable and there’s 8 of them… Edit: This is on Reverb right now, don't know wether this constitutes "cheap" but it ticks all your boxes and adds a bunch more pres to your rig. https://reverb.com/uk/item/64024902-focusrite-octopre-mkii-8-channel-mic-preamp-with-adat-optical-output

That's pretty standard, it's also why a lot of engineers prefer to record and mix rather than just mix, as they're assured of the edits and the comping etc. Still no idea why he thought it was OK to remove your performances without discussing it, not cool. Drummers and bassist do get replaced in some genres a lot, but only by prior agreement. it remains cheaper to programme drums rather than record live drums, although to my ears it never sounds as good.

If the bass signal wasn't "hot" enough, he could have increased the gain with any number of gain stage devices in any number of DAWs. That was not an honest thing to do and I'd be p*ssed if it was my project. The most important aspect of mixing someone else's music is a clear understanding of what they want it to sound like, and how they've gone about recording it, if it's a live band feel, that needs to be retained, if it's a Mutt Lange re-build note by note then attention to detail is essential. Good engineers respond to the music, the musicians and the intention. I have a list of questions I use to get to the meat of what an artist wants, even if I'm only engineering, not producing. There are limitations to what can be done with some self-recordings, particularly where distortion is concerned, but there are tools available to make a fist of almost every recording error these days. When you say "stems" what do you mean? If I was mixing your track, I'd want everything as close to original as possible, "stems" is a term that comes from Post Production engineers to describe sub-mixed groups of tracks. Do you mean comped and editing tracks?

Best SR5 ever made IMO, although I'd really like to try the 35th anniversary model as it looks very slick.