Leaderboard

I didn't think it was worth doing a 'Kinda New Old Bass' thread (or K.N.O.B. for short 🙄), so I'll just add to this instead. As you know, I went up to Status HQ late last week to drop off the Fender Flea. Dawn and I discussed what would be the best neck option for this bass. My initial thought was to get a maple coloured graphite neck as it would go with the exposed wood in the relic paint job and would keep the whole thing quite light. There was also the choice of blocks, dots or plain as well as having a black neck with the same options. I'm hopeless when it come to choices, especially when you can't actually see them attached to the bass. A deciding factor was that Rob had a black neck which had been commissioned by a mystery artist. This neck hadn't been used for whatever reason and after some enquiries it turned out that it was no longer required. I hadn't actually seen it prior to agreeing to have it, but I was sucked in by the fact that it was blank like ebony fingerboard on my 'Starry Night' Stingray. I visited Status HQ this morning to collect my Fender Flea. I was greeted by Dawn who showed me through to 'that room', which if you've been in it, you will know that there are more than a few things to look at in there! The 'Fleatus' was in the rack by the work bench, along with a myriad of other bodies, necks and complete instruments. Dawn removed it from the rack and laid it on the bench and said 'I really think the black works'. On seeing it, I could only agree with her that it had been the right decision. There was a little residue left on the headstock, so Dawn went to get Rob who came through and removed it. We had quite a chat about the old neck which was basically firewood at best. Looking down the old one you can see a massive bow in the last few frets at the nut end. Probably more than any truss rod could cope with. The new neck is very slightly deeper and as a result, is very slightly heavier, but the whole bass is nicely balanced and plays beautifully. I have no plans to replace the tuners with lighter ones as it sits very nicely on the strap. The sound is definitely different and this was to be expected. It's a bit difficult to describe, but overall it's less warm than the wood neck, but has more bite. Also, the tone controls seem to offer more flexibility in range than they did before. It also sustains forever. I haven't had the chance to put it through my gig rig yet, but from what I've heard through headphones on my Bass Buddy, it's going to sound great. I might even swap the pick guard back to the original and use it with my 80's band at the gig on Saturday. I'm super impressed with not only the neck, but the level of fabulous service I received from Rob and Dawn at Status. The only downside is that I now have massive GAS for another Status. They sure do make some incredible basses. Just to avoid the emoji's....

I’ve got one from back when I was a DJ during the rave days in the early 90s, this is really embarrassing. I used to play at illegal parties in disused warehouses and squats, rickety old buildings, dirt and broken glass everywhere etc. One night, just before my DJ set, I’m up on the rooftop of a particularly dirty burnt out building, chatting up some girls and trying really hard to look cool, going on about my DJing skills and impressing them with some very boring ‘rave’ stories. I look at my watch and tell them “it’s time for me to hit the decks, ladies”, and with a wink and a smile, I turn the wrong way, trip and fall off the roof. I fall about 25 feet and land on my àrse with a loud crescendo. It’s chucking it down with rain, and I land on a pile of wet cardboard boxes filled with garbage. One of the girls is screaming, the other one is pointing at me and pìssing herself laughing. Somehow I am unharmed and there’s not a scratch on me. It takes me a good 20 minutes to find a way to climb back into the building, and I then spend the rest of the night drenched, with a huge brown muddy wet patch on the àrse of my bright yellow ‘rave’ trousers, stinking of garbage and hiding from the hot girls on the roof.

Trying to get these finished for the bash - it's going to be tight!!

I like loud rock music and have played in some very loud bands over the years. Even the AC/DC tribute act I used to be in rehearsed at sensible levels with sensibly sized kit. We played across large parts of Europe for years with dummy full stacks on stage. Yeah they were essential to the aesthetic but were no good for getting the right foh sound because guitar cabs are so directional that they're generally pretty awful at blowing FOH mixes even in some of the big clubs we were playing in Germany. If it's too loud for the room then either the sound engineer needs shooting or the musicians are just being a bit childish. If I walked into a rehearsal room to audition for any band to find a guitarist with a cranked 4x12 they wouldn't have to laugh me out the door. I'd happily leave them to their own childish approach.

THE SUN SAYS What's wrong with our Young People? They're all a bunch of snivelling woofters COMMENT By The Sun 34th September 2018, 2:49 am Updated: 35th September 2018, 2:50 am Kids Today, eh? WHATEVER happened our young people? Back in the old days we'd listen to music by Deep Purple or Led Zeppelin then go out on a Friday night like a horde of rampaging Vikings intent on burning, looting, and pulling a few stunnahs. But our kids don't do that anymore. Instead, they sit around posting videos of themselves singing the Jeremy Corbyn song while their pinko 'friends' (say it with a whinging lilt) bang on about 'isshoos' and communism. What a bunch of nancies. Research shows that our nation's shining youth are far less like likely to drink, smoke or bonk than any of their proud British ancestors. But it's not really our kids' fault. Meddling social workers and hand-wringing 'teachers' have brainwashed them to reject booze, ciggies and shagging. And make no mistake: these socialist 'assassins of youth' could never have got away with it if they hadn't been supported by a Brussels-financed Quisling record industry full of whiny ginger snowflakes with stupid tiny guitars and screeching pop feminists on a mission. THERE'S only one answer: Everyone under the age of 25 must be prescribed a musical crash diet of Whitesnake's Greatest Hits until they're back to normal

I also couldn't give a flying f@rt whether he reads this or what he cares about. The guy's producing expensive and botched solutions to problems that didn't exist in the first place. Outside of snowflake land that makes you a target for derision.

80s, but not the good 80s; the kinda naff, spandex-driven 80s... We're the By Jovi band I've alluded to in the Audition From Hell thread a while ago, we'd achieved a functioning drummer, and decided to embark on a UK Tour in installments...basically, we'd been through the back of Kerrang, listed the pubs/venues that other folk were playing, and phoned them up. The furthest North was a place in Stirling, which, of course, we couldn't manage to hang another gig off, so we were going to have to drive up and back in a day. Oh good. Singist blags a Merc van off his Dad, which was certainly big enough for all the gear, if a little elderly. Guitarist turns up with his mate, whose reputation had preceded him as a Proper Roadie. As he and I are the only driving license holders in the entourage, it's decided I'll drive up and he'll drive back, as I've spent the morning in work, and I'm clearly going to be far too fatigued with playing and then fighting off the attentions of adoring fans and almost certainly herds of groupies to drive back. Off we go. 400 yards later Proper Roadie demands a comfort break, an event which he repeats at depressingly frequent intervals during the 250-mile journey, hinting at early-onset incontinence issues. The trip is made even more depressing by the realisation that the van's 50mph top speed isn't quite enough, even with all the windows down in the rain, to expel all the carbon monoxide which the broken exhaust is depositing into the cab. The van's also doing about 8mpg, but at least that means we get to stagger out, coughing and wheezing and doing that wafting thing, at every services between Manchester and Stirling. By teatime we're at the venue, all is suspiciously quiet, and the total lack of any of the posters we'd sent should have set warning bells ringing. The landlord, who in hindsight had been just a bit too keen to get us to play this particular weekend (I might add here we were doing this for a fee based on 'Either what you can take on the door, or 10% of the bar, boys' i.e. nowt from the landlord himself) welcomes us with a beaming smile and cheerful predictions that 'the place'll be rammed very soon, boys'. Predictions he seems happy to repeat throughout the evening, despite increasingly overwhelming evidence to the contrary. And so, chanting the hopeless mantra 'Well, we're here now, we may as well...' we set up and soundcheck. Proper Roadie, his heavy lifting duties discharged for the time being, returns from the bar beaming and holding a pint "This Drybrough's Heavy* is good stuff. I'll just have a couple, I'll be right as rain by the time you're finished." I should really have paid closer attention, but right then we were more tasked wondering where the the adoring fans were all meeting prior to turning up en masse. We settle down to a couple of hours of taking it in turns to wander outside to look up and down the street, eyes peeled for any signs of the crowd, before eventually deciding that we'll go on and start, because then the siren-song of, erm our songs will inevitably draw the punters in... I might add at this point that in the three hours we've been at the venue no-one, and I mean no-one, has even looked in the door, and the sole other occupant is the landlord, who has disppeared to his back room, and has taken to just popping his head round the door every now and then, giving us a two-thumbs-up, pulling another pint for Proper Roadie (I did say I should have been paying closer attention) and disappearing again. After some tense negotiation, we decide that a door take might scare off the potential punters, and we'll settle for 10% of the bar take, relying on some last-minute hard-drinking Scottish rock fans to take the edge off the diesel bill to get home. Off we go, all staring at the door, willing the punters in. Nothing. Not a Scottish sausage. Another scout of the postcode in the break reveals a deserted neighbourhood, with nary a punter to be seen. Spirits are low, with the exception of Proper Roadie, who is very happy indeed, about something or other. As I've said before, I wasn't paying much attention... Then, in the middle of the second set, two ladies wander in and up to the bar. Our somewhat listless performance jumps up several gears, anticipating the late surge of fans, and many unwise shapes are thrown for their benefit. Perhaps understandably, given the desperately pirouetting, lungeing and eyebrow-waggling idiots on stage all trying to catch their eye, they drink up quick and leave. Are they rushing off to bring all their friends? No, they aren't. We finish the second set, not even able to face playing an encore to ourselves, and start to break the kit down. The singist, always a man of infinite resource when there's things to be lifted which might be heavier than his mike stand, volunteers himself to seek out the landlord. He returns holding aloft our earnings for the day, the princely sum of 15p. He shows us a piece of paper on which the landlord has helpfully detailed the important financial transaction: '2 x halves of lager @ 75p each = £1.50 x 10% = 15p. Cheers boys.' We look up. The landlord is once again absent. 'Read it again' says the drummer, squinting like Peter Grant looking for the catch in a new contract... 'We could raffle it' says the guitarist, ever the optimist/cretin. It is by now gone midnight, and we've the really big PA boxes to shift, and now, far, far too late, I'm looking for Proper Roadie. He is eventually found out in the beer garden slumped in a pool of...let's just say 'his own making' and leave it there. Drybrough's finest (or at least Heaviest) appears to have snuck up on him somewhat. We take an arm each, and without getting too close at any point, give him a cursory rinse under the outside tap before depositing him damply in the back with the gear. And so it's down to me to drive us all home, dispirited, unadored and possibly even more tragically, un-Groupie'd. I've been awake for twenty hours so far, have participated in loading up, out, setup, played, and loaded it all back again. With added Comatose Proper Soggy Roadie. And now another six or seven hours before bed. Showing splendid soldarity in the face of adversity, everyone is snoring by the end of the road, and only my lung-busting coughing is keeping me awake. Somewhere in the Borders and the Wee Small Hours I succumb into the arms of Morpheus and we have a refreshingly exciting 150-yard off-road excursion up an embankment of a dual carriageway, eventually thumping back onto the road with miraculously little damage, although Proper Roadie in the back sounds like he might have to have a stand removed from a body cavity when we finally get back home. I pull over at the next layby and kill the engine. Some more tense negotiation reveals the fact that the drummer has a Provisional license, and is willing to consider a spot of Deserted Dual Carriageway Driving. We convince him it'll be good practice. As his de facto supervising license holder and guiding presence, I immediately get into the back bench seat and go to sleep, albeit in a supervisory and possibly guidey manner. We got home just after lunch the next day. Proper Roadie never roadied for us again. We never did find out why Stirling was deserted on a Saturday night. Oh, and I've just rememberd the Battle Of The Bands thing we did at the (then kinda big) Willows Variety Centre in Salford, hosted by none other than the brother of Johnny 'What's Another Year' Logan, erstwhile Eurovision Song Contest winner (where's the Hobnobbing With The Stars thread?), who made a point of telling us he was wearing the very jacket that Johnny won in...his breathless pause for gasps of awe came and went without remark, which seemed to disappoint him. We came third to a children's steel band and a vent act. That wasn't a great afternoon but, like facing a firing squad, at least it didn't take long. * For the Caledonian Quaffing Cognescenti, this'll date it a treat, given that Google tells me Drybough & Co were Borg'd and shut down by Allied in 1987...

We’ve got a ‘location’ box ready, we’ve been testing it on Guitarchat and will add it here.

There's my new band name, right there.

I played a gig in a Glasgow bar a couple of years ago. The first set went down well, but one odd looking guy aged in his 60s stands at the side of the band facing the audience while nodding along to the tunes. He then disappeared. Second set starts, and about 10 mins in to it, the nodding sidestage man appears in the same place, only now he's holding a black padded holdall. He then proceeds to unzip it mid song, and produces a saxophone!! Which he then parps along to the tune we're belting out. At the end of the song he shouts,"YES, YES, YES!!!!", packs up his horn and vanishes. At the end of the night we ask if anyone knows will the random player was - no one had the faintest idea who he was!! Another oddity was being roped in to dep on bass for a "Christian rock band" (yeah, I know!!) on a gig in Aberdeen. Hours of driving to the gig, to be faced with a crowd in a church hall consisting of sheltered teens and early twenties types who look like they've never been allowed out in public on their own before. Lots of shuffling from them during the band's set. About 20 mins in, they form a large circle facing each other, ignoring the band. Then, one by one they start doing forward somersault rolls from one side of the circle, across the floor, to the other side. And so it continues. Oddest thing I've ever had to play through.

Ted Nugent seems to be generally quoted with the famous quote of "if it's too loud, you're too old". However, following a recent conversation with a pub landlord and customer it seems then the modern day version in smaller gig locations should be "if it's too loud, you really are too loud". . . Some background - we played a gig at a new venue for us that's had regular live music for a long time. After sound check the landlady came over and told us we sounded really good and were the best band they'd had in for a long time. Obviously we're all smiling and happy but a bit confused as all we'd played was a few sections of three songs to set the sound up for each instrument. I asked her what it was she liked - she replied without hesitation that we weren't stupidly loud and she could hear herself think when we were playing and also her customers when they ordered. We got a decent crowd and seemed to go down well and spoke to her about possible future gigs. She said she really liked us but that she was almost certainly going to stop having live bands completely. Her reasons were really interesting: Too many of them are too loud - deafening the staff and punters and increasingly annoying neighbours Poor quality sound - guitars drowning out the vocals, bass making things shake around the room and everything sounding a bit disconnected One of her regulars joined the conversation and backed her up. He obviously knew a bit about live sound and he reiterated that bands were getting louder and louder (he mentioned they seemed to be able to do this even with small combos - which is true of course with so much modern gear). The thing that annoyed him the most was the imbalance of sound, only vocals in the PA, PA sounding 'thin' and lacking clarity and the dreaded guitarist and bassist continually turning up to drown each other out whilst the drummer thrashed away regardless. Neither of them thought the musicianship was poor - although they said they often couldn't tell because of poor vocal quality. They both also said that vocals were the single most important thing for most everyday pub gig goers and they couldn't understand why bands seemed to pay so little attention. Soon after we played another gig where the landlord said something along the same lines. He felt he was losing customers because his local bands were simply too loud week after week. He was always telling them to turn down but they always said they had to be that loud because they couldn't hear what they were playing. He said he was not booking any more bands this year This morning I saw a thread (not here) where someone was saying he was in a new band playing weddings and corporate functions but probably wouldn't be in the front of house mix. Another player then said he needed a really powerful amp that went really loud. I see this 'it's great, goes really loud' quote all the time from people playing small gigs and also so many players saying that the PA is just for vocals. I can understand that 'volume' is all part of the dynamics of playing live but surely it should be 'controlled' rather than the mayhem unleashed by so many pub bands? It amazes me that people still think, in an age where quality PA is easily available for not too much money, that being insanely loud is something to aspire to and that they don't seem to really care about setting a band up for the audience rather than themselves. Putting everything into the FoH mix allows you to balance the sound across all instruments so that the audience can hear everything clearly - especially those all important lead vocals. It also allows everyone on stage to pull back on volume so they aren't deafening each other and can hear what everyone else is playing (adding stage monitors or in-ears is a bonus but I realise that's often too much additional expense or is taking up too much floor space). The lead guitarist in my band sets his Mesa Boogie combo to 5w and never needs any more volume. So, apologies for the long post but it genuinely worries me that more & more gigs will disappear if bands don't get their sound in order. . .

Chris Watson is one of the outstanding field recordists of all time. Cabaret Voltaire were never quite as good after he left.

I was going to say he doesn't move around the stage much - he's still in the same place as when he started the worst gigs ever thread! I'm 52, 33 years of regular gigging, pretty much with the same guitarist throughout. I'd say that no matter how good you think you are you can always get better (assuming no health issues to trip you up). There's always room for improvement, both technically and musically. It's a journey with no end destination.

Just about to mention Sandberg. But now this has reignited my Sandberg GAS. D'oh.

Let me guess, the bass player never turns up for band practice.....

The current mrs discreet is delighted when I'm rehearsing or gigging, because she can then watch all the terrible crap she's recorded on TV. Occasionally she'll come to a gig, but she tends to drink too much then stand at the back and shout 'Fùck Off!!' Which can cause friction later...

Looks like "reasonable travel time" varies a lot.I play in two bands that rehearse an hour away from me and both bands rehearse weekly.Gigs(15-20) are also also at least an hour away.I also have played in pit bands for musicals that also require an hour each way.Unfortunately things always seem to be on different days/evenings due to work/family/other musical groups ,especially in the 7 piece swing band. I live in Northern Ontario in Canada where nasty winter weather is just part of life and sometimes the drive to rehearsal is a bit more of an adventure than I would like but I'm smart enough now to know when to stay home on really bad days/nights.I'm 72 and still working part time as well as my band commitments but as was said above "being in a band at all is golden" and even though I figure it actually costs me money to play in the bands it is worth the time and money to me.I have gear(BG,EUB,DB,amp) that works for me and is paid for and currently have no GAS,well,nothing serious. As I have said before, we are so lucky to have music in our lives and be a able share it with bandmates and audiences.I am fortunate at my stage of life to not have some of the responsibilities that many of you have but I also realize my time is running out and I want to use it musically as much as I can,I'm contemplating finding a DB teacher(also an hour away of course) to help me with my DB skills and augment the teaching vids on the net.I live in a very rural area so any type of public transportation is out of the question...remember this is Canada. I'm lucky I get to play lots of different types of music with very good musicians and at this point I'm willing to make time for it and my playing is improving as I try to keep up with them.Making music is magic.

That's a bit personal, isn't it? Why do you want to know? Are you thinking of buying him a shirt..?

Sounds very uncomfortable. Do you have to have special shoes? ..... Oh I see

Forget the iPad - I'm going to have all kinds of video and audio recording equipment, possibly all in operation at the same time!

I have to disagree. Turning up the volume of a good sound changes that sound. It can make a good sound a bad sound. That's beside the point tho. Too loud is too loud whether the sound is good or not.

Just about to set off for the weekend. Hope to catch up with you guys. Jack, that pint is a promise mate. I loved the band last year,the songs were so infectious and full of fun.

Looks really good that H. Not doing my Status GAS any good at all. Missing my old Streamline but can't decide which bass to cull to enable an acquisition. A nice replacement (fretted) neck on my MM Fretless might be the order of the day!

I was half expecting not to like the Status neck on the Flea body but it actually works very well! Good work!

Holiday in Cambodia - Dead Kennedys On and off since last Saturday when it popped into my head on a long bike ride.

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I think many many teachers, rather than wringing hands would like to wring necks. Unfortunately they are not allowed to these days. Shame, in my day it had the double advantage of improving the gene pool and providing entertainment for psychopathic metalwork teachers.

I like the new aesthetic a lot. The vintage reliced body with the hi tech neck give it a sort of steampunk vibe. I'm sure it sounds and plays fantastically well too.

Seems like there's this pre-conceived notion that rock covers are easy with easy bass lines. I say be careful going into an audition with that notion. Blue

ok, I'm sorted

So after buying a sub n up to replace the T16... then buying a second sub n up because I loved the capabilities of the first one so much... I discovered there's an internal tone pump adjuster inside the body cavity! I dropped that 1/8th of a turn, and it'll now play nicely with my T16! I now have 3 varients of sub octaves that I'm likely to never need, but hopefully this info will help someone else down the line, as I haven't found it anywhere else

My favourite one was back when I was in a rock band trying to play country, We landed a show at a country festival. As we came off the motorway we saw a massive festival and the boys in the band were elevating my status as booker to that of legend. However SatNav took us past that one by two miles to a run down rugby club. On the bill was a young lad singing along to Karaoke hits by all the greats. The girls loved him and he was decked out all in black with a black hair and a black cowboy hat. We quickly realised we were more Lynyrd Skynyrd than country but went through a set, being repeatedly asked to turn town by some rather grumpy old folk dressed as cowboys. When this singer went on he did some fairly bland takes of Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson et al classics to his backing tapes. Afterwards he was lecturing our singer on how you don't need a band, just get a box with all the tunes and you can earn more. Our singer was politely taking it all, when Colin, our gentle giant of a rhythm guitarist lent in and said, "Excuse me Barnaby... can I just say what a massive fan I am of your music?" He cut for quite an intimidating figure and young Barnaby replied "er, oh, thank you, thank you very much" to which Colin than added "not so much you doing them, but those original versions are great!"

Ah ha! But I try to keep up with all the new Britpop bands... Def Leppard, UB40...

What none of you seem to understand is that those are valve memories ...

^ Yes. It's because the music you listen to between the ages of 11 and 18 (or so) happen at the most incredible and impressionable time of your life. Of course you're going to remember your first girlfriend, your first acid trip, the first time you drove a car, motorbike, the first time you fell in love, the day you left home - and the horror of pubes. The music you hear at this time is indelible and when you hear it now, you're not only reminded of those times, you're BACK THERE experiencing those feelings all over again. Powerful stuff! Nothing special about the music though - it's just burnt into your mind through association!* *Actually, some of it is still pretty special.

He makes some valid points about every generation predictably denigrating the music produced by the next. But the stuff about your musical tastes being set when you're a teenager is complete BS. In my teens I was listening pretty much exclusively to heavy metal bands like Maiden, Megadeth and Anthrax. I stopped listening to that stuff in my early twenties. It would never occur to me to put one of their albums on these days. Now I mainly listen to to soul, funk and jazz stuff that I would have turned off if it had come on the radio when when I was kid. I'd guess most people are the same, eventually we get bored of the same old, same old and move on to something else.

I discovered this one after he’s tried to scam a friend of mine who’s selling a guitar on eBay. Tried to tell him it’s a different cheaper model to the one he’s selling and that just because it has a hard case shown in the photos (title and description both say “case not included”), he should apparently include the case as it’s eBay law that what’s pictured is for sale. as for if he’s a BC member or not, that doesn’t matter to me. Warnings need to be in place to protect people from scammers/badgers like Mr Phillips. I have heard stories of youngsters/beginners unfortunately being messed over by him selling them unplayable guitars even though “the set up is the very best”. This one is a very prime example. He’s messed up a perfectly fine 7 string (that’s about £200 new) and made it totally unplayable then expects to get over double the RRP on it? I’m sorry but if you’re happy to have people like this in your “community” then that’s one I don’t want to be a part of.

Rocco!

This is particular bug of mine... but I'm hoping that what I write here can scratch the surface to help people with their live mixing... First of all, lets look at the volume thing and a thing called the Fletcher Munson curve. In a nutshell, the FM curve does this - At low volumes, our ears are more sensitive to the mids... at higher volumes, our ears become more sensitive to the highs and the lows... so all the detail in the mids (e.g. where the vocals lie), tend to get lost. So in a gig situation, at sound check, things can sound great. As the evening progresses, and as the band volume goes up, there goes your vocals . Also, as the performers ears tire, their ability to hear details in the mids from their amps decreases... so what happens then? They turn up... further compounding the problem. So actually mixing at low volume and simply turning the volume as the punters begin to fill out the room, won't help your mix and how you sound as a band. So there's the first issue. Second issue... Cast your mind back to physics at schools... and wave theory. If you have say, a 150hz sine wave with an amplitude of say x, then if you add a second identical sine wave in phase with the original wave, you'll end up with a single wave, with amplitude of 2x. So what's important about this? In short, the addition of similar frequencies together can cause some very unwanted effects and volume boosts. For example, a lot of bands will start mixing with their kick drum and set that to the volume that they think will suit the band. If you consider say, the fundamental of that drum to be say 35hz and harmonics at 70 and 140... when you lay over a bass guitar that is combining with the frequencies of the kick, you are going to get an increase in volume in the lows due to like waves summing together. An increase in volume in the lows will obviously begin to raise the overall volume of the band and add to the low end mud. This fascination with low end reproduction in cabs has always bothered me - because unless you know what you are doing, all the bass player is going to do is spread a layer of muds in the lows. Now consider two guitarists... sound check 1 guitarist. Sounds great. Soundcheck the other. Sounds great. Now put the two together, and the wave forms of those two guitarist begin to sum - so you aren't just getting the sound of those two guitarists playing together - you are getting some frequencies that are multiplying together to form peaks in the overall mix. So the more instruments you add, the problem starts to compound itself. Then when get frequencies bouncing into open mics and causing feedback loops. Also consider something when micing drums with overheads... that top end air all sounds great in isolation... but when the cymbals are also spilling into other open mics, those high frequencies all start summing... to the point where everything starts to sound really harsh. And what happens when the volume gets turned up, well, the mics start picking up more spill, more summing, more treble... and the more obliterated the mix becomes. I'm amazed at home many people don't understand this - and of course, the average band will then finish with the vocal and then attempt to push the gain, volume, EQ in order for the vocal to cut through the rest of the noise that is coming from the stage. In reality, get the vocal sounding natural (after all, that's what people are MOST interested in) and EQ everything around it, even if the instruments would otherwise sound a bit weird in isolation. Of course, given that the average person doesn't know how to notch frequencies to account for the room, most pub bands end up falling into the above traps. But above all of that, the thing that I can't stand is players that play for themselves, not the band. You turning up after soundcheck screws the mix and makes everybody's sound worse. Cue people turning around and trying to fix what they hear on stage... and there starts the volume wars. You'd never find a sound engineer give a player access to a wedge mix... and this is why. You touching your backline is going to do nothing but screw the mix for the whole band. It makes you a selfish ****. If you cant hear, get yourself an IEM setup so what you chose to listen to doesn't screw with everybody else. IEMs aren't just for stadiums... they can work in pretty much any environment you care to play in. Let the PA do the work - it's more balanced, you have a better control of the frequencies each instrument is producing if it all goes through the desk and is amplified using the PA. Even better, cut the amps completely and the problem of bleed virtually vanishes (obviously things like venue slapback and acoustic drums can still be a problem - but the problem is vastly reduced). Anyway, I'm bored of writing now... but you get the idea.

I like that but know very little about them, apart from 2 minutes playing on one at during a bass bash!

Looks great! Could well become a better bass than it was...

Squier Std PJ goes to nice new home.

@hiram.k.hackenbacker just read this whole thread, poor you, but great responses from all the chaos in BC here. So today is the day for the Status Flea?! I am going to selflessly promote a Fender/Status mash up I put together as a first time into guitar tinkering drilling holes from scratch and the like (Scary stuff!) and confidently say I bet yours will sound awesome, I like mine.

I recently purchased an AER Basic Performer, unfortunately it came without its cover. I emailed AER twice but, after several months, I am still awaiting a reply. A company called Hot Covers was recommended to me by someone at PMT so I took a look at their site. Some AER models were listed for covers but not the Basic Performer, as the site suggested emailing if a model wasn’t listed I did just that using one of their forms to submit basic dimensions. I got a really fast response quoting a price and asking me for more detailed dimensions regarding the handle on top of the amp. I submitted the dimensions and my model of AER amp appeared on the website so I ordered it. Well it arrived today, exactly on time, it’s a perfect snug fit and really nice quality. I know we all like a good moan when service is bad but we don’t often say much when it’s good and the service from Hot Covers, from first contact to delivery was faultless, I highly recommend them, well chuffed...

Part of the problem is drummers who simply cannot control their volume. I am lucky enough to play with a few drummers who can play quietly, but also one who can't. I am seriously considering leaving that band (after more than five years) simply because the drums are always too loud, so everything else gets turned up to compensate.