thodrik

Hello. I use the BDDI V2 with the mid control and it is leagues ahead of the original. Still not 'transparent' but great for my purposes. If you want a really flexible pre-amp it might be worth getting something like the Helix stomp which would enable you to pick and choose any number of amp tones. It might be a bit over the top for occasional dep work and at £500 it is a pretty substantial cost, but the flexibility is there to cover loads of different amps, pedals and effects and signal chains. It can also be used for guitar which is why I am seriously considering one next. Alternatives off the top of my head: - Aguilar Tone Hammer - Ampeg SCR-DI (an Ampeg preamp plus overdrive) - MXR M80 Bass DI (like a Sansamp BDDI but make a little bit less coloured) - Origin Effects Bass Rig (at £400 though a big investment - essentially a super modern attempt at the Sansamp 'amp in a box') - Two Notes ReVolt (another amp in a box) -Walrus Badwater Bass preamp (not tried it myself but looks cool) - EBS Microbass or Valvedrive (preamps but not as coloured as a full on amp sim). - there is also the Darkglass pedals, but I don't think that they are very transparent (I own four DG pedals and like them) apart from maybe the Harmonic booster which is just a clean preamp Generally it worth taking the time to try out different options. Not always possible but you can find Youtube demos fairly easily for most pedals so it is worth having a look online.

I really like the SVT 3 Pros. There is someone selling another on the marketplace here for a decent price. My nephew has one and it is great. He was looking at a bunch of options including second hand Ashdown ABMs, Warwick Tubepaths, Orange 4 four stroke. The Ampeg won out in the end just because 'it is an Ampeg and Ampegs are cool'. Funnily enough I have also ended up with a Mesa Big Block 750! Took me years to find one though. Frankly, I don't think that I will ever be selling that. In terms of the Warwick, I have only tried the 5.1 which I thought was really nice however I only played one show with it (it belonged to someone else). For a decent price I would say it was worth a try.

Thanks! I’m also a Les Paul player as well, so will put that on the list!

Or you run the treble at literally zero to get some mids into the signal and then turn up the mids and presence to add treble. A thoroughly strange tone stack on the Rectifier line, especially on the higher gain settings. I still kinda love mine though it is only the Single Rectifier. Would still prefer my brother’s JCM 800 though…

Focusrite Scarlett is great. I have had one for ages. If space is an issue, then the iRig HD 2 is brilliant for plug in and play stuff. It also comes with a version of Amplitube, which has very basic recording ability. I have the Scarlett 18i8 and the iRig HD 2. I think that the Scarlett series is far more flexible but the iRig is so damn handy for headphone use. For recording, Studio One Artist is fairly intuitive IMO. I far prefer that to trying to put anything together on Pro Tools. There is Reaper too but I found the learning curve and customisability a bit off-putting though the customisability is actually helpful for those who figure it all out. For just jamming on a PC, I have a basic version of Bias Amps and Amplitube which I chop and change from. The tones on Bias are varied but some of the bass ones (notably the Orange and Ampeg SVT) models are pretty decent. For £40 I have found it to be decent value. I haven't splashed the cash on the Ampeg stuff on Amplitube as I find that my Sansamp plugged into the interface is good enough!

Then I would go either bigger cab or cabs. Its strange that a lot of times that the only time you need a big cab is when you are playing in a small venue with no bass going through the PA.

The C4 cabs are 8 ohms each so you can't another without damaging the amp which has a four ohm minimal load. Adding another cabinet would damage the amp. If you can hear yourself on stage and you are going through the PA I would probably make do, otherwise you will need to look at a new cabinet that gives you the kind of onstage monitoring that you ideally want. If volume is not an issue is it perhaps more of an EQ issue? As said by Mykesbass above though, the bass may sound different depending on where you are standing.

Leads, cables, or as my brother likes to give me 'T-shirts with terrible bass related puns or jokes': A small sample of what I have received over the last few years: My wife utterly hates them, which means that my brother will continue sending me them for as long as we are both alive (he is 38 and I am 36). If we stay in good health then that is possibly 80 more t-shirts if a t-shirt is provided every birthday and Christmas.

https://reverb.com/item/4046543-trace-elliot-715x-bass-combo if it is one of these then you could maybe run the jack from the combo into a head but there is really not much extra cabling so you may struggle. I would just use the combo or bring an amp and cab.

Usually Orkney, sometimes Edinburgh and Glasgow. Though the Helix is on the back burner for the next few months at least owing to housing renovations at the moment

Thanks! Your posts on the Helix over the last while have really brought my head round to the idea. It is definitely on my list of purchases. This year hopefully!

I tried running just a Sansamp into the PA with a monitor wedge at a gig circa 2009, but the soundman refused to put any bass through the monitor on account that 'the monitor is for vocals only' irrespective of the fact that we were an instrumental band and were headlining the gig! For that reason I have generally always used my Mesa Walkabout 1x15 combo so I at least have a monitor for me whatever the set up at the venue, even if none of the Walkabout tone is going through to the audience. Being honest, this is probably a good thing since the Walkabout is usually turned up beyond a level where clean headroom is actually possible. I will always own some mammothly loud amplifiers and cabinets, but that is just a personal interest. I don't need them, I just like them. I have been tempted by the Helix route, but was put off by having a Bass Pod, where I got option paralysis and discovered that the Sansamp was a far quicker and more practical for gigging. Yes the range of sounds on the Sansamp are limited but the sound it does is pretty much everything I need when gigging and recording at speed when I just need to lay something down for somebody. A Helix is definitely on the cards though as it could cover so much of my recording needs for both guitar and bass.

In terms of EBS, I don't have much familiarity with the class D stuff, but I have owned a Fafner since 2009 and have used the HD350 and TD650 amps in the past. The EQ controls and characteristics of EBS amps bear a lot of similarities. Very versatile and powerful EQ controls and can be used in pretty much every type of genre. The drive circuits are very good as well, though I think that the EBS amps sound best run pretty clean and I prefer the drive controls on Aguilar and Mesa amps to EBS for 'rock' style tube overdrive. In terms of a pedal platform though the EBS amps are brilliant as the amps can be very transparent.

I wouldn't discount the Aguilar TH series either. Like the Darkglass it doesn't have a valve, but the drive feature is really good. The TH500 or TH700 would be on my list for sure. If you want something bigger and with loads of headroom, someone is selling my old Mesa M6 in the classifieds here. I actually sold it because it was too loud and clean and preferred the furry, bloomy tone of my old Walkabout. Heavy compared to modern class D amps though would perhaps be a lethal weapon with a Barefaced 6x10.

Hmmm, I actually have 3 'drive' pedals on my board and a full on fuzz. However one 'drive' is the Sansamp bass drive which I run on clean, the other ones are a Darkglass B3K and Alpha Omega which I run with the gain at very low levels. To my ears the two Darkglass pedals sound better together than run by themselves, so I use them for adding 'character' as much I use them for actual overdrive. For a loud rock gig the pedals are almost always 'on' so I haven't bothered trying to get the AO and B3K in a seperate loop that I can turn on and off with one switch. This has been my 'that will do' temporary set up until I buy a single drive pedal to replace the AO and B3K. However, I have not had this set up for nearly five years! I should never have sold the Aguilar Agro...

Rumours era Fleetwood Mac. I used to have a 'Peter Green or nothing' attitude to the band. Now I really really like the later period stuff, especially the 1980s stuff. Other than that I am fairly consistent. There is nothing that I used to love 'back in the day' that I now actively dislike listening to. Well, maybe the Red Hot Chili Peppers, post-Stadium Arcadium, and perhaps Baroness and Queens of the Stone Age depending on what their next albums are like. Even then that is more me not really being interested in the direction the bands are going in (and in Baroness's case the tinnitus-levels of red line peaks and brick wall compression production techniques) rather than me growing tired of a particular style. I probably listen to Queens of the Stone Age, Nine Inch Nails, Kyuss, Rage Against the Machine and Alice in Chains a lot less than I used to, but that is more on account that their back catalogue is engrained into my brain so I really don't need to listen to them anymore, particularly when there is so much new music to listen to.

I very much favour Mesa over Ampeg. For a back up amp I like something light and in a small package, because generally it won’t need to be used unless the main amp has an issue, which will generally (or hopefully) be very rare. You can’t really go wrong with the Mesa. I would definitely take the D800 over one of the class D Ampegs including the SVT 7. I would like an SVT Classic but not as a back up amp I would be taking ‘just in case’. I do like SVT IIIs, however the Mesa will have far more power and clean headroom.

Finding them in the UK new is tricky. The lack of an actual tube pre-amp and limited EQ (compared to the TT 800 and WD 800) is kinda what stopped me from buying one. Also the voicing of the amp is apparently similar to the older Carbine amps which I found to be a bit aggressively voiced. I owned an M6 for 18 months or so before selling to buy a Big Block 750. If I was lucky enough to own a DB750 and wanted a back up amp that was tonally consistent then I would probably be looking at an Aguilar Tone Hammer 500 or similar. If nothing else, if you buy a Mesa you generally get something that is rock solid in terms of design, construction and reliability. I have had a Walkabout for 13 years and it is still kicking. If you can try one out I would definitely recommend doing so.

Ok then. Probably the Ultra Jazz then. Probably five strings. Probably sunburst. Probably would still get sold.

If offered for free, definitely a Fender Custom Shop which I would then try to sell. I would then use the funds from the sale to pay for some floor insulation and a new oil tank.

To be fair I am guilty of that on many occasions. I wasn’t meaning to ridicule so much that it is good to know that it isn’t just me who does that.

Bands like Torche who use drop A tunings on guitars (Sonic Youth style with the low E tuned to and the remaining strings in standard) tend to have the bass in standard tuning. For Sabbathy tunings around C sharp standard I would just tune down. For modern metal on 8 string guitars I would probably do something similar to Deftones approach or the Meshuggah approach where the bass is actually tuned ‘up’ from standard EADG tuning. For me it really depends on what works for me in the context of the band. Currently I’m back playing in standard EADG tuning for the first time in ages.

I am regularly guilty of the odd typo, but someone at Bass Direct has really had a bad day here. Definitely gave me a laugh and to be honest it won’t stop me from buying from the shop again.

Theoretically about £13,000-£15,000. Realistically about £0 in the current economic climate and my current actual need for a new bass.

For drop C on a four string I use gauges of 130, 95, 70 and 50. I used to use a 120 but prefer the tightness of the 130 though I wouldn't try to tune it to D standard! With a drop C/D standard bass I used a 120-90-70-50 set of D'addario Balanced Tension strings, If Chi Cheng was using 120-65 strings for drop G# that would seem to me to be very light gauges for the tuning. Pretty sure that he was using a four string tuned to G#, C#, F#, B, so a 65 gauge tuned to B wouldn't be overly tight. I used drop G# tuning and needed to at least use at 145 gauge but had better results with a 160. The type of tone Chi Cheng went for did not require a really tight bass sound. His sound was massive, slightly-soupy and all-enveloping, so it is possible to use lighter gauge strings tuned down if you are going for that kind of sound. Personally I really liked Chi's playing. I used to use 115-55 sets of GHS strings in standard tuning, which were about my limit.