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Thinking about an Ampeg SVT 2 Pro

I've been using SVT's for fifty years and they are among the most reliable amps out there. If it's been sitting in a closet for ten years the tubes are probably fine. check it out, if it sounds good and is loud as hell and all 6 power tubes are glowing similarly, play the hell out of it, you'll probably never turn back. I don't bring any of mine to a shop unless they obviously have a problem which is not very often. 6550's last for years.
This

What’s the appeal of 33” scale basses?

If you look at scale lengths from a Fendercentric point of view, you have 30” on one end and 34” on the other.

30” are generally viewed as easier to play but don’t sound as defined.

34” are generally viewed as harder to play but sound more defined.

In the middle, you have the 32”, which I guess you could argue is in some ways a best of both worlds: easier to play than a 34” but sounds more defined than a 30”.

Lately, I’ve noticed a few bassists playing 33”, like Matt Garrison, Janek Gwizdala, Tony Grey and I think Scott Devine’s signature bass was also 33”.

I guess what I’m wondering is, what’s the appeal? Is it literally just an inch closer to sounding like a 34” but an inch easier to play?
Let's face it, 34" scale was something Leo Fender thought would be ok. And it was, but other lengths could also have been ok. 33 is easier on shorter fingers though.
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Double Bass Helix HX Stomp as preamp?

For the previous iteration of this board I just used the tuner in the HXS (which is plenty accurate), but I wanted to be able to have a visible tuner that could be "always on" (mostly for peace of mind when playing arco passages when I can't hear myself well enough). It takes up an extra block, but I also add a mute block to tune silently.

I think your plan for the routing makes sense. Electric bass signal chain into the L input and upright into the R (and out to the Walrus DI/LI the same way).
I chose to run everything into the HXS and then use a block to add the Cali76 to electric patches to give some wet/dry mix flexibility (beyond the pedal itself). I made what's essentially just an insert cable to send two lines from the 'stereo send' on the right side of the HXS (I don't use any stereo effects so I tend to think of 'stereo' as 'dual mono'); into the INs on each external pedal and mono returns back to the HXS (in my case, I didn't bother running a return from the tuner).
It might be more cumbersome, but sometimes I like the challenge of finding a solution to a problem I created :)
Thx again! :)
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Question about dingwall pickups dimensions (FD3n vs Dingstrand Nordwall usage)

well damn, if only i had knew it before having put MECs in the bass :D

how is the sound? Does it sound dingwallish? Do you have any sound clips of DI?

I really hope that they will make 6 string illumina Bass one day, because the bass is awesome i just miss the high C string


Also thank you for being brave enough ordering them and trying it out
It sounds great honestly! Here's some quick soundcloud demos of how the bass sounds with the dingwall pickups + lusithand preamp.

GOC dingwall pickup demos

I'm gearing up to make a proper video of some sound demos as I've changed a decent amount of things on the bass since I got it

Underrated bassist: Mike Mills

Definitely underrated. He is a great vocalist, keyboard player and songwriter as well.

I had to learn 25 songs in about two weeks, helping out a REM cover band for one gig several months ago. Had a blast! (It didn't hurt that I was already a fan). Came to appreciate his parts all over again. Some can be tricky to get right. Driver 8 for example. Sounds relatively easy until you listen to the isolated bass track.

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I think he used his Guild Pilot bass on the studio recording.

Fretless Players: Does Switching to a Multiscale Bass affect your Intonation?

Fretless Multiscale with no lines….Hmmmm…

The Japanese have an outstanding response for this kind of thing. First, there is a sucking inhale through pursed lips, as when tasting wine. Second, they will say “Verrrry difficult.” Which I generally took to mean nearly impossible.

Of course, nothing which is not counter to the Laws of Science is truly impossible. I suppose that one could practice 12 hours a day for two years, as Edgar Meyer suggests as a starting point, and get sufficient proficiency. I would personally choose other effort directions; but, that’s me.

Fretless Multiscale with Lines. That should work just fine.

My fretless has a graphite neck; so, I don’t “need” multiscale with that instrument. YMMV
yeah itl deffo be a bit of a errr well itl be fun to learn to say the least
i am playing an unlined fretless already and i usualy play multiscale so i guess i have a head start sort of lol
partially lined is a good idea though

Playing live over the internet with low/no latency? Is it even possible?

My cousin is a guitarist and when we got together last summer we really enjoyed playing together. Here's the rub: he lives in Munich, DE, and I in Philadelphia, in the US, and so getting together to play is not a thing that we can do very often. Does anyone know of a way to play together over the internet? We both have reliable/stable connections via our respective ISPs, but given the latency and compression I experience every day with the likes of Zoom/Teams/Facetime, those solutions doesn't really sound practicable.

Thanks in advance.
We are working on helping with this frustrating problem. It is early still, but feel free to try Lyrekos and we would love feedback on if it works for you or what issues you run into. Thanks, Lance

Radial Products Are Coming To Rocket!

I had my first rehearsal last night using the Radial HDI and loved it!

My signal chain was:
Lull P4 w/ flats ->
SFX micro-Thumpinator -> Broughton Low + High Pass Filter -> Empress EQ ->
HDI ->
Bergantino Forte ULTRA -> Bergantino NV-412T

I didn't have a compressor in the path, other than what the HDI does: slight optical compression on the clean path and whatever flattening happens as a result of hitting the transformer just short of aggressively. It felt well compressed despite the lack of a dedicated compressor in the chain. That was really nice.

The sound was big and fat; I ended up with the HPF set around 80Hz by the end of the night. In a live setting with PA support, I don't think I'd want to do that much filtering upstream of the HDI. I'd like the sound guy to have more low-end if he wants it. So I'll probably move the filter pedal to post HDI, or I may may just ditch it and use the filtering on the Forte ULTRA.

I was boosting my upper mids pretty aggressively but still wanting more. I'm guessing the compression I was getting in the HDI was probably fighting my EQ moves. I'll try moving the EQ to post HDI, that might fix the issue.

All in all, I'm loving the HDI. The grit it adds is very tasty, the blending of clean and dirty signals leaves you with a hairy yet still solid and well-defined tone, and the overall compression doesn't sound over-compressed. It just sounds right. I keep coming back to the word natural. It all sounds very natural, whatever that means.

Fender Pure Vintage 66 Jazz Bass Pickups

Ok, I’ll play…
A/B’ed the AVRI re-ish against my Feb 66 Jazz..and I’ll speak only to the direct question…the AVRI’s were brighter and crisper than the originals, and not necessarily in a good way. If you want to head down Marcus Blvd with a slightly fatter bottom, here ya go. Looking for the JPJ / JoBo/ Noel Redding warmth, depth and controlled top end, nope. Too much emphasis upon the ping and zing. Antiquity’s are closer to that, and Reimer’s “Growl-O-Wind” J’s are damn close to the real deal.

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Medium scale 5string

MTD

Any thoughts on this P/U set up?

Yeah the MTD Super (both the US and Kingston) have similar, close pickups. It gives you some pretty cool options. In those basses, each pickup has a switch for series/parallel/single coil. Out of the box, it'll give you the outer coils in single coil mode, to get you in the ballpark of a jazz positioning. You *could* also modify the wiring it to give you the inners insted OR they could give you a combo of either series OR paralle/inner single/outer single. Having the inners on single coil mode would put em extremely close to the classic stingray position. We chose to use the outers for tonal variety. The Stingray sweet spot tone isn't radically different than either pickups solo'd or even both together in parallel to my ear (and certainly not in a live loud context). Commence the comments telling me positioning is the ONLY thing that matters on those pickups.

My Vigier Passion has dual coils in the same position without all the switching and it's a very uniquely voiced bass. Very mid-focused, which I love. With the middle (neck?) pickup, it's in the ballpark of an Aria SB1000 and the bridge is what you would expect from a bridge.

Like anything else, it's pretty much just a matter of taste!

Music Man sound and pickups

What you really ought to be asking is whether or not the preamp you're using with it can boost treble sufficiently for your tastes. Assuming it's a halfway decent boost/cut preamp you should be more than fine.

You could also watch some of @LowEndLobster 's many videos featuring the Old Smoothie. Here's one: Login to view embedded media

I had a listen to it, & the only thing that i found a downside was strung with flats vs the rounds on the "classic". So while i could decipher a little bit, the smoothie was well way smoothed out. If both had the same type of strings, it'd've been a more fair comparison i guess. By no means a bad review overall, just the comparison was kinda the "down" factor for me.

However, the bas channel had done a review/overview, & it sounds like rounds all the way through. Which gave me a better hearing tone point to stand on & base for my personal needs. It definitely can sound bright enough, & my 4 band EQ with separated mids, I can effectively give the bite needed for my own pick attack/clarity.

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Bass Better-er VST/AU - next steps following BETA feedback (survey request)

I recently made a post on here looking for feedback on a provisional beta for a bass focused VST/AU "Bass Better-er" - effectively giving people an immediate studio quality bass tone for recordings, and a proprietary developed fuzz with multiple channels.

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Firstly, genuinely appreciative and overwhelmed at the feedback from people (and downloads), I've implemented a lot of the feedback, and just overall have been flattered with the response.

Now this was a beta: I am absolutely committed to keeping and maintaining a free version of the plugin indefinitely, but I would love to know what's ok to keep free and what's ok to make premium?

I am currently doing intake with a few of the larger market places for a commercial option, and in my mind I was thinking:
  • Free version
    • as is but add a distortion in addition to the fuzz (so the button is FX with a dropdown) and a basic param eq for each channel
    • Dynamic documentation/help mode
    • Assignable key shortcuts
  • Premium version (in addition to everything in free)
    • Octaves Up (Includes additional channels I've modelled)
    • Additional Fuzz
    • Additional Distortion
    • Full customisability of the fuzz/distortions
    • Ability to hide channels
    • Multi-channel output to DAW
    • AI chat to say "here is what I want" and the AI will configure the plugin for you (probably capped at 100 request a month for free etc)
I think I've got a pretty capable and stable back-end to the plugin now so I'd be appreciative for anyone who took the time to give their thoughts here in this survey to help finish up something anyone can use, and something that can help recoup the costs it's taken me to make this over the last few years :)

Thanks in advance!

Survey link


If you do not want to fill in a survey then comments here are also fine!

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