Ramirez

Well, had my fretless debut on an all-nighter BBC session las week that's broadcast tonight!

Yes. Melodyne is very good. I haven’t tried AutoTune yet 🫣 Getting used to it- I had a Harley Benton short scale fretless that sounded wonderful, but seeing as I’m trying to play upright bass as well, the jump in scale lengths was one step too far and the more I played one if them, the more out of tune I seemed to get on the other! Everything seems to fall into place easier for me on the standard scale fretless. That said, playing along to other tracks still show that there’s work to be done! One thing I find helps quite is to ensure that you’re playing your FRETTED bass on top of/just behind the fret - ie. at essentially the correct position for a fretless. Muscle memory becomes much easier then, as you don’t have to change your technique as much when switching basses.

Well, to answer my own question, I tried the 3 they had at Wunjo’s in Denmark St yesterday, and walked out with one. I was very impressed, sounded beautiful, and the weight, feel, sound and build quality were very consistent between the three. Also a shout out to the excellent and patient service at Wunjo, even on a busy saturday. They currently have the Casady fretless at £649, which is cheaper than anywhere else I can see.

The mics will be fine. Ribbon mics with conventional XLR wiring are also perfectly fine with phantom power as long as nothing’s faulty- it’s become a bit of an internet myth that phantom power WILL break ribbons! XLR outputs from other equipment is a different story - some (most, perhaps) are fine being connected to an input with ohantom power present, while some don’t like it. I’ve seen a few digital mixers shut down when their outputs are connected to an inout with phantom, and I’ve some some older equipments outputs go bust. It will PROBABLY be fine, but it’s safer to use the jack inputs* if you can (or a t transformer isolation box/phantom blocker) *Phantom power should not be present at the jack inputs, and this is true in most cases with properly designed equipment, but sometimes, on some equipment using XLR/jack combi inputs, the phantom can be present on the jack input. Always best to check!