pkennethk's forum posts 2051

I asked the admins about iconic status and how that works awhile back. I don't think I got an asnwer on that one yet. It's something they've been experimenting with over the last year or so, I think.

I don't disagree with any of your picks. I mean, there are a lot of instruments I'd put ahead of MA's Jack Daniel's bass, but I was a kid in 1984... I get it.

Fixed. Nice catch!

I've had issues with certain photos not uploading correctly to the site in the past. Are you uploading the same new photo over and over with no luck, or has it failed with multiple different images and image file types? Are you uploading from MacOS, Windows, Android or iOS?

Tonepusher has been a hot topic with my Industrial/EBM friends, that dude has cornered the market.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6J2ABG3GBFw

I suspect that some day soon, someone will make a Matrix 12/ Xpander clone that's as worthy as the many OB repros that are on the market now... but I doubt it will be in 1-unit rack format... sadly...

Is it time to start a boutique synth/FX company that ships 1 and 2-unit rack conversions of today's most popular products?

I don't think we have that ability yet...

It would be sad if someone, after seeing the incorrect information that Toshiya uses a Sadowsy Metroexpress, buys this guitar, only to find out that Toshiya actually used a model 10 times more expensive.

I agree -- I worry about that happening too. The good news is that by default, incorrect submissions are hidden from view in the artist's profile -- but someone has to rate the submission incorrect in the first pace for that to happen.

Ha! You and I have very different aesthetic tastes, my friend. To each their own. :)

The "unique" shape of the headstock and the "interesting" paint job make me think it's a PRS-style DIY build. I've never seen a headstock that splay out wider at the top like that from anything Schecter Research, Hamer, PRS, Dillion, etc ever did, but I can easily imagine it coming from a DIY kit.

I'm with Jim: DM or @reply the dude on social media to politely ask them directly. The worst that can happen is nothing, but I'd say better than 50% chance they respond.

TLDR: start with sounding like MA while unplugged, and then avoid #$%*ing up your good tone as the signal makes it's way from your fingers/strings to the amp's speaker.

Howdy.

I'm assuming that when you play your Fender Player II Precision unplugged, you already sound a lot like Michael Anthony, right? Because if you don't, amplifying that performance with the Rumble 25 isn't going to make you sound more like MA.

My advice would be:

1. Establish a baseline tone: Set both knobs on your Pbass to full/100%, set all 3 EQ knobs on the Rumble 25 to noon (pointing straight up at the words Bass, Mid and Treble), turn Contour and Overdrive buttons OFF. Adjust the amp volume knob to whatever is a comfy/safe level for the space you're in.

2. Pick a single VH song you want to "tone clone".

3. Find a "no bass" version of that song on youtube to play along to. Search live footage of the song, or google around, to make sure you know if it's a song Anthony played with his fingers or with a pick.

4. Play along to the track a few times and tell us what you feel is missing, tone-wise. I'm sure folks here will have more to say once you've zeroed in on a specific tone from a specific song.

Big picture: you're not going to be making any radical knob adjustments to dial things in. You might end up backing off the tone knob on your bass like 10 or 20%, you might need to + or - one of the EQ knobs on your amp by 10-30%, and (depending on the song and what the overdrive circuit on the rumble sounds like) you might decide to engage overdrive on the amp... nothing crazy, think of these as finishing touches.

I'm not in a VH cover band or anything like that, I'm just trying to get the ball rolling here. Others will have more VH-specific knowledge.

The things that will make the biggest difference:

1. Your fingers/pick technique. Articularion and note length. This is where the tone resides. In most live footage I've seen, MA plays behind the neck pickup (the split/P pickup), but in front of the bridge pickup (when his basses have a bridge pickup). On a Pbass with just the one pickup and one tone knob, where along the string you choose to strike (in relation to where the pickup is) is especially critical to controlling your tone.

2. The setup of your bass. Some rock players play with high action so they can dig while keeping things pretty mechnically clean, and some set the action low and lean into fret rasp and clank. I don't know enough about MA's setup to know which way he leans here, but knowing the answer will tell you whether the grit and grind is his tone is coming from an SVT head, preamp, pedals, post-processing, or some combination of those things plus mechanical fret rasp.

3. AFTER 1 and 2, now you're in the territory of icing the cake with minor tone knob and amp EQ tweaks, and deciding if the Rumble OD circuit gets you closer or further away from your goal. Once you're at this point, then spending money on an OD pedal or something like a SansAmp might make sense, but these kinds of things rarely bring much longterm happiness in the world of bass. Try to keep your signal chain dead simple for as long as you can.

That's why I only play Labellas.

What part of the world do you live in, Chizuru? You seem to have easy access to the best Japanese boutique basses. Even having a chance to demo a boutique Japanese bass here in the US is becoming quite difficult/rare, and we'll pay a premium relative to what those in other countries would pay.

I'd love to try an Xotic (JP shop) bass, as every review online talks about how amazingly low and precise the action can be... and they still cater to my old fashioned tastes.

I too tend to be biased towards Japanese craftsmanship, as I have such fond memories of Fender Japan guitars from the 80s, 90s and 00s. Plenty of countries make amazing instruments, but my personal tastes seem to align best with the precision and fine detail of Japanese luthiers.

This is a popular request. I agree completely and wish there was a way to fix or remove submissions you regret.

All of us who have been on here for awhile have at least a few completely wrong submissions we wish we could delete. You'll get used to it, sadly, lol.

Nice! Were most of the bassists you asked rock/metal players? It's hard to generalize with musical instruments, obviously. The genre/style context of the recommendation is always a factor.

Another one:

https://equipboard.com/pros/mike-paradinas

https://equipboard.com/pros/-ziq

They are more known by their artist name, but artist name contains the "Mu" character (μ-Ziq) that equipboard does not seem to support so well, so you can't search for artist by their artist name on the site. I'm not sure what the best solution is.

https://www.guitarworld.com/music-industry/fender-legal-ruling-protect-stratocaster-body-design

Are we headed for a world where every S-style guitar is uglier than what Fender sells?

Headstock shape has been protected by trademark for decades. Result: lots of really ugly/awkward inline-peg headstock shapes from companies trying to steer clear of being sued by Fender.

Fender won a copyright suit here, not a trademark, and the ruling is just Germany and "other EU countries" right now... so what that means legally... @#$% if I know. I'm not a lawyer... but I'm worried we're about to see some really awkward non-Fender-Fender-style guitars hit the market.

They're still making those 8 voice rack polysynths? In 2026? Dang. I listened to a few demos. It sounds like it could strip the paint from your walls. Does anyone ever use these things for something subtle? lol.

It's not as tidy as all that from what I've been told by fellow studio electronics owners, but that's roughly accurate.

Works for me. We're talking about a coupla smart dudes cannibalizing Minimoogs into MIDI-capable rack synths. A more gradual shift to in-house PCBs as that became more practical/profitable makes sense. Also very possible the dudes doing the work at the time no longer remember exactly when/why the shift happened, regardless. Time and solder-vapor tend to smear memories.

my understanding was the midimoog was the first batch and after a lawsuit they changed the name to midimini, not a lawsuit from Bob, he had to sue to get his own name back!

I heard the same, BUT when they had to change the name, that is supposedly also when they switched to clone circuit boards instead of actual Moog guts.

Fake news?

a midi mini is a racked mini moog anyway, they did prophet 5s and pre-midi oberheims too, I once owned a SE midified obie SEM

I thought only the MidiMoogs were actual racked MiniMoogs, and the Midimini guts were clones of the Minimoog circuits manufactured by SE?

Nevermind, he confirms it's a midimini on his own site.

Jim, is there any way to tell whether rack synth in this video is MidiMoog or MidiMini?

https://youtu.be/rwDUTqWrAcU?t=51

There is some info that might be helpful to the admins in diagnosing the issue:

1. What exact time did the error happen? (Include your time zone.)
2. What artist/band name were you trying to add? (any special characters?)
3. Did you paste any links (Spotify/YouTube/etc)?
4. What type and size image did you upload for the artist (.jpeg, .png, etc)
5. What country are you in?

Chrome desktop has great developer tools. If you're comfortable copying and pasting a few things from Chrome dev tools, the following would be helpful to the site admins/developers:

1. On desktop Chrome, open DevTools (View → Developer → Developer Tools).
2. Go to Network, check Preserve log, then try adding the artist again until it errors.
3. Click the red (failed) request and paste:
   • Request URL
   • Status code
   • Any cf-ray / x-request-id header values
   • Response text (even if generic)
   • Also paste any red errors from the Console tab.

If any of the above too technical or too frustrating, that's totally OK, don't even bother with it. Just knowing as many details as you are comfortable sharing would be helpful. I can't promise a fix will be found, but I will pass along whatever you give me to the Admins directly.

You're using Chrome for both desktop and mobile, right?

As far as the crazy zero-CSS pages I'm seeing on EB right now, that issue looks like it's just a regional outage affecting some users in Southern California. The site is functioning normally in other areas, so there’s no sign of a hack — probably just an infrastructure hiccup that needs to be resolved.

the site is having some major issues here in Southern California right now. The problems seem to be regional and not worldwide. The 500 error you're receiving likely isn't related to that, but just in case: what region of what country are you in right now?

he passed a rev5 off on you as 4? what a creep

Eh, I'm glad I got to be hands on with one for a few days, regardless. It's what inspired me to call up this dude I'd traded with in the past and ask if his JP6 was still available. The programmer for the MKS-80 isn't exactly an ergonomic miracle -- I want something super fun and engaging for that kind of money.

The MKS80 was a local pickup via eBay thing (this was before Reverb, I think), and I just don't think the guy was very knowledgable/detail-oriented. Seems like maybe he inherited it from somebody. He took it back with a refund without protest. No harm, no foul.

We both know the rev4 MKS-80 is the one we'd actually use and enjoy.

I purchased an MKS-80 years ago, but the seller was mistaken re: which rev it was, and I wasn't willing to pay what I paid for a rev5, so return and refund, but it was still a nice few days with that rev5.

I wish roland would reissue the mks series.

The only MKS I currently have as the 50/alpha Juno. I was watching a thing on Trevor Horn the other day, and for the first time in my life, I craved an MKS-70. He finally made me want the JX-8P sound.

You're craving an awful lot of edgy/bite-y early 80s analog... hmmm... It's rude of me to suggest this in public, but... maybe you're pregnant?

If you end up with a Voyager RME, why would you also want/need a minimoog-style SE rack mount as well?

I know the Voyager is in many ways a very different flavor than an OG minimoog, but it can still do most any minimoog-type thing you'd want it to do, no?

EDIT: I sold the sub-phatty and forgot about it, not in the walk in anymore LOL checked my review of it and I sold it years ago and forgot completely. WOW! I think I funded something else with that money. I also found my sy35, old casio, cz101 and kawai k5 in there, so more keyboards I don't use a lot due to space... the 101 and the k5 are seriously unique... I really want a k5000, kawai's last synth, I never seem to scoop one up

That's the most telling review of the Sub-Phatty right there: you didn't even remember you ditched it. Stone cold you are, Jim... stone cold.

With an SE1 AND a Sub-Phatty, I think you have your Moog tones covered. I remember demoing an OG Sub-Phatty alongside a Minimoog reissue at a store here in town years ago, and as far as classic bread and butter basses went, the Sub-Phatty held its own amazingly well -- Much better than I expected. I'm not saying they sound the same, because they don't, but you also can't say that the Minimoog blows the Sub-Phatty out of the water, because it does not. One is an orange, the other is a tangerine.

What about just getting a minimoog or a reissued minimoog? Outta space?

Nice! I like it.

Just tried it out. FWIW, it's a bit strange to require a decent-sized sentence of notes when you're tagging the original hardware.

[notes empty] -- Rejected: must have notes

"This is the original hardware." -- Rejected: notes not long enough.

"This is the original hardware, because there are multiple pieces of info on this page telling you that this is the hardware it was modeled after." -- Accepted!

...But I get why notes are required for submissions now, in general. It'd be weird to waive the requirement for some tags, but not for others, I suppose.

We're down to just a handful of items that are legitimately Plugin Alliance brand. The plugin world hasn't decided on one clean standard, so we did the best we could with naming and re-branding. Not perfect by any means, but way better than what it was.

Looks great to me. Nicely done!

none of us will buy one? I have an SE1 and might sell the old one and get the new one if it sounds like an upgrade... I would want to be able to try it in person somewhere, I skipped the 1X and se3 and I always thought I would trade backwards to a midimini just for bragging rights. Or I'll get one if it feels like I'll use both enough at work that its going to pay for itself (unlikely) or if I'm sick of soemthing else I own in the same price range that can offset. The dmeo certainly sounds more versatile than the SE1, but not a ton more versatile. The eurorack patchpoints are a nice addition.

Well, I'd be happy to be wrong re: none of us buying one. What is it you're not getting from the SE1 that makes you open to a midimoog/midimini?

Sounds good!

Plugin Alliance should NOT be a brand on EB.

Alright thanks guys we'll need to get that cleaned up and do some consolidation.

Well, now I'm looking at just how many plugins on EB have "Plugin Alliance" listed as the brand name... my god.

Even if PA isn't supposed to be a brand name, if this many people think it's a brand name, I think we'll be in endless correct-and-consolidate mode forever with this stuff, right?

Is it more practical to just slight the brands that develop for the Alliance and let users keep listing things with PA as the brand?

I belive you're correct, but their licensing is awesome... I've dome location gigs and licensed for 5 seconds over a networkand the dropped off the network and as long as I don't close the DAW it runs fine, which is nice in adverse environments

I'm glad to hear they do it right. That takes me back: I once worked for a software company with customers that often worked remote in outdoor/low-connectivity environments... sometimes our licensing checkin pings had to be spaced several months apart if they were working on remote/outdoor or high-security projects. "Oh, you're drilling a freeway tunnel through a mountain? Well... could you have the crew take home their tablet PCs every 3 months or so to connect?"

Just to drive it home after Jim's great info:

Plugin Alliance should NOT be a brand on EB.

All products sold through the PA marketplace have their own brand, regardless of how closely PA + Brainworx were involved in a given plugin's development.

So, we'd have only 2 products listed:

• Unfiltered Audio SpecOps
• Bettermaker Bus Compressor

To the best of my knowledge, all products sold on the PA marketplace utilize PA's copy protection scheme, so anyone who buys a plugin "protected" by the Alliance is going to have to go through PA to register and activate, even if they purchased on another marketplace like Plugin Boutique.