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You need to use rehearsals to weed this bad habit out of him. Devise your setlist with songs in clusters, where you go from one song into the next without a break between them. For example, start your set with three songs - bang bang bang one into the next. Then pause to talk to the crowd. Then another two songs - bang bang, etc. Rehearse the songs in those clusters and time your rehearsals. Know how long it takes to play your set, to the minute. If he can't change his tone enough by clicking on a pedal, adjusting his volume or tone or changing pickup, then he needs to find a tone which works for all of the songs in that cluster. Your audience came to hear music, not pregnant pauses, not tuning, not jokes or banter, especially not some lad faffing around with knobs and switches. Never forget that a live show is a performance, not just playing songs. It starts the second you take to the stage and doesn't end until you leave it. Everything, what the audience sees and hears between those two points, is your band's performance.

Should anyone care about the less charitable end of my opinion, which I doubt very much, then just imagine I've copied and pasted every single natural finish bass that's been posted here in 2021. Not just ugly, but perverse and immoral. Disgusting.

BIG thanks to@Dad3353 (Douglas) for sorting this out... Couple of goes and Bingo! also 3D printed me a matching Thumb Rest! I think it looks the BIZ...

I've fixed all of your basses for you.

To complicate matters further... Even if it sounds OK at the rehearsal, it's all going to change on the night of the gig itself. Fish batter is a notorious acoustic sponge - it'll soak up all the reflections, which will have its pros and cons. You might lose the slapjack / timing issues mentioned earlier, at the expense of being to hear the other half of the band. Is it too late to suggest a change to pie & chips instead? That might mitigate the problem somewhat.

Here's the paint job on my Pacifica that a friend who is a local artist did for me in lockdown. I'd love her to do bb350f too but I'm not she'll have time now.

Ah. Fear and revulsion triggered by the unfamiliar. It's fine,a nice, safe Precision will be along soon, to make you feel all better. Yes - I do own an Ibanez EDA900.

If I was in that band I would be arranging with the others how to start a song so the the guitarist has a choice of polishing his knobs or playing. Covers bands shouldn't try to recreate the sound of the original guitarist anyway as they inevitably fail. I'm looking for that Peter Green sound - hold on while I swap my pickup around the wrong way.

There are some beautiful basses in this thread, thanks everyone for sharing. I've lightly modded my Harley Benton PB-Shorty. Electronics not finished but it'll have a built in Big Muff because why not.

Set-up reasonable-ish. Neck on without any shim, Gave the truss rod half a turn to take out some relief... Action reasonable Intonated OK on the DG, alrightish on the A, E still a little sharp, so saddle needs to go back, but height adjuster screws are almost at the back of the plate groves. The body came with screw mounting hole markers for a std Fender bridge, and the Gotoh-alike is meant to be a simple swap rellacement... perhaps i should of gone 3-5mm further back. Soundwise... Beefy Low Thump, with the flats... when compared to the Ibanez GSR200 PJ wearing flats. (My Ibby SR600 is a bit more modern sounding... but also with flats) Bit of a 'Ghosting' type tone from the E. Pickup Heights? Leant it to a mate who plays for a few days to see what they think... Got it back earlier today, so now its had a fortnighg bolted up to settle, I'll give it another going over, hopefully this afternoon Oh... and @Dad3353 came to my rescue when i asked about 3D printing a bezel. Great job and a matching Thumb Rest! a real Gent! I think it finishes it off nicely, together with the cream covers and headstock decal for that Custom 'One-Off' look. Weight is about 4.2Kg on luggage scales. Untill next time...🍄😵‍💫😉

In my old punk covers band the guitarist used to get all the right sounds/effects. He had this big TC Electronic multi-fx pedal and was pretty swift on the changes. We found that it was worth rehearsing like it’s a gig so he could get the swap over time down.

If you freeze frame that charlton Heston movie about Moses, and look carefully at the tablets of stone you ll probably see that #11 (next to his little finger) actually says “thou shalt have no other bass finish but sunburst, and blessed be the holy tort (but only celluloid not that cheap printed rubbish)” so it is the actual literal word of God that you go with sunburst

Nothing wrong with a nice sunburst. Rather than seeing it as being dated I'd say it is a timeless classic.

Sorry but I like the original too much to give this much more than one viewing. Even though it's well executed the constant smugness/smirking irritates the feck out of me. I've watched a few other Dirty Loops vids before out of curiosity and the bass player is always smirking. Moreover, like all other contemporary funk, while the playing is tight lacks the swing/groove of the 70s funk bands that made them so badass.

My bass rig ❤️ If you want to blend the power together you must make the right choice 😎💨💨💨💨🇺🇸🇺🇸🇸🇪 🇸🇪💣💣💣💣🔥🔥🔥🔥

Got myself a nice new Markbass set up over the weekend and wanted to show it off to a crowd who might actually care! It is: - 600W Little Mark III head - Traveller 102P cab on top - Traveller 115P cab below All in a custom made "trifibre" case. The Little Mark Vintage underneath the LMIII is mine too - I've basically just got a spare / back-up now. Only played a little bit with it solo so far, but good things to report already. Sounds excellent with the P, and really enjoying the differences the VLE / VPF can make. I've tried both the LMII and the LMV, and I have to say inital reports I might actually prefer the sound of the LMIII! Will have to wait for band context to see how it goes. Flight case super useful for all the upcoming gigs (fingers crossed). Who else is using this / a similar set up? How are you finding it?

My early impressions of the NUX MLD are that it's good. EQ: 3 band with sweepable mids is good. Has it's own footswitch (for preamp - vol and EQ), clicked 'off' isn't mute - it's the preamp section bypassed. Drive: Perhaps the drive at high gain could sound better (personal taste though), it sounds good to me on subtle low setting and using the clean blend though, as good as any low-gain 'always on' type mild overdrive I've used. It has it's own footswitch and can be turned on while the preamp switch is turned off if you want to run overdrive with no EQ (or volume) changes. Aux in and headphone out: Not with their own volume controls though. Quality: Decent sound quality and no hissing or crackling, feels solidly built. Noise reduction: Built in adjustable noise reduction decay/threshold. IRs: This is the main thing that lets it down a bit - it's a shame that it needs to be hooked up to a computer to change IR (a small toggle switch to go between 3 would be plenty for me and would make it a great pedal). If I have the current IR turned on and run a Fuzz pedal into it beforehand the highs get muffled (as with running a fuzz into a BDDI with sansamp preamp/drive engaged, or any other time I've used fuzz into a preamp with anything other than mild preamp settings so it's not unique to this pedal) so it'd be handy to be able to turn off the IR via footswitch but the IR is on even with both footswitches set to 'off' (I'm hoping there is some way via the software to set it so that the preamp 'off' switch also turns the IR off, but I don't think it can), there are toggle switches to turn the IR off to the different outputs though. DI: Connections are very useful. Preamp tones: I guess that it's not exactly doing the 'Preamp' thing in terms of emulating something like a SVT or B-15 tone at the moment but I'm hoping the right IRs will do that fairly well. Value: Considering it costs £120 vs alternatives it's very good value. It seems like pedals that tick similar boxes as DI/Overdrive/Preamp/IR loader are things like the Strymon Iridium (£380) Darkglass Ultra pedals (>£360) which possibly are better but I'm not sure they are 3x better. If fact, they seem to be missing one potentially very useful feature of the NUX which is the fact IRs can be separately switched on/off for 'XLR' (which also has pre/post preamp switch) and 'Output' and there's also clean 'Through' output. So potentially the 'Through' can be used to send a clean signal to your Amp/Cab while 'Output' can send an IR affected signal (or not) to a mixer or FRFR speaker, and the XLR can send yet another signal (pre/post preamp and IR/no IR) to FOH mixer/audio interface etc. Can also record directly to a Laptop via USB with different settings (clean/affected/reamping) ....and if you really wanted to go for it could also use the headphone output so it's pushing out 5x outputs at the same time! I mostly just wanted a simple pedal for end-of pedal chain volume control and EQing that could be used as a DI if needed, it works great as that. The main competitor seems to be the MXR M81 - but that costs more at > £150 (but it does have a smaller footprint and perhaps a bit tougher build quality) so even if the NUX only did the DI/EQ things it'd be a tough call between that and the MXR, the fact it also does all the other things too I think make it very good value.

This is my absolute pet hate. I've even left bands because of it and we've let people go for it. Learn the songs BUT it is a show. I can be the little Hitler on stage saying "talk to the audience, not each other" and telling people not to check their tuning for the 19th time. Rehearse the WHOLE set, not just the individual songs. It's the difference between a good band being good and a good band being great.

We've introduced a knife throwing routine. The guitarist stops and fiddles around while we take it in turns to throw knives at him. The audience loves it

I am in a second, also new, group, in which I am doing more of the admin work. That's fine, because the new group is very capable, and made up of better musicians from my town. And me . . . The Panto group, however, has dumbed-down chords - although I am told that the chords will be corrected later. So, we practice the wrong chords, then move across to the correct version. Currently, the dance moves consist of people walking around in a circle, and getting used to moving while singing. I suspect that the script, and the dance moves, will be tailored to what the musicians can play, and the singers can sing. " . . . . oooh. Snow White is lost and in the woods. Where can she stay tonight...? " "Why not take a train to Waterloo, and stay at the YMCA . . .?"

Start the songs without him and it won't be too long before he gets the point.

Yes, it that will ruin it for the audience, so make him stop. Even worse is if what he plays gives a 'spoiler' of what the next song will be. Really really stop that.

Some kind of multi-fx should fix it with a bit of time spent to get the levels all matched up. Any tiny loss of “tone” is better than making the band look like a bunch of clueless amateurs.

Bin there, dun that, got chilli oil stains all over the t-shirt. The whole music-in-the-community thang can be a lorra lorra laffs and very satisfying UNTIL you find yourselves dumbing down the song structure to suit the ukelele player who could never be bothered to learn the rest of the chords. Not that ... ahem ahem ... I speak from personal experience, you understand. 🤨 Ahem.

Same here, and I genuinely love the tone that comes from it.

you'd never think it but I absolutely adore my BV1001T. It is just made to work and do the job!

@King Tut - what a great story! Hope you don't mind me reposting the bit about the BV 1001T on here. A mate of mine mentioned that there was a £1,200 used Berg Forte amp in the FS, but with another excellent reminder from you of just what great vfm a new £250 Bugera is I think I will be safely avoiding any expensive GAS on that one!

We played a hot sweaty gig on a fairly cramped stage with my main band, Richard Davies & the Dissidents. Some serious players in the group and we are rehearsing regularly so I felt we did well. All my basses seem to have developed minor faults so I was down to a 51 parts bass!

Horn section was outstanding, the rest... meh. And I usually love anything with Cory Wong, but honestly, he might as well have not been there.

Looks more like some sort of prehistoric fish to me, what was it, a coelacanth?

Next Saturday (18th) on BBC2 at 9-30pm, 'When Nirvana Came To Britain'.

JMJ all the way, I've had a lot of the variants, couple of Japan re-issues, Mex PJ, American Performer and the JMJ is the keeper, feels, looks, sounds superb !

My board (I only have one so it is, by default, a gigging board, creative board, amp-less board etc.) may look like this for the 80’s band. I’m contemplating swapping the Cali76 TX out for the HXStomp and using the C4 in its loop but I’ll get a play about with them both and the make a call as to what’s what. I’ve not wired the C4 up to anything yet as I’ve been trying it out solo’d. It has a lot for functionality and the octave patches I’ve tried are pretty close to the Zeus (which is an OC-2 circuit). I’d really need to try and program some similar sounding patches with fuzz and octave (or find some in the community files) and do a head to head.

Quick! Fill your boots @redstriper.

There's also this........ more brass, more funk, more bass solo, more Cory, you get the idea.

A Hard Day's Night (in the wrong key, without the iconic opening chord); YMCA (wrong key, without the horn riff at the start)l Waterloo by Abba (part of a medley with YMCA) . . . All songs are started by the leader saying "and a one and a two and a three and a four" regardless of whether the song is a disco rhythm, or the Waterloo "bounce". It is, as others have said, British and bonkers. I am not enjoying it much. I had hoped that the band would give me the opportunity to play new material with good musicians. This is not the case - I was told that I was one of the main musicians, and some of the others are treating it as a strum-along session. I think that I need to get out before my sanity suffers!

Lookin' Grr-r-reat!..

Deciphering this, there's going to be a drummer, bass player and trumpet player in one area (A), a keyboard player and a guitarist in another area (B) and two singers wandering around an area between the two groups (C), one of which will singing acoustically, the other singing through a small amp that's also being shared with the keyboard and guitarist in area (B). Area (C) will also be full of people at tables, eating. I'm not going to sugarcoat things here, but everything you've posted indicates this has all the necessary elements for this to be an unmitigated disaster on so many levels. Please report back after the event. Let us know how the fish supper was.