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Added a second short scale to the collection, next to the Mustang. I've always wanted a Höfner Club and finally pulled the trigger on an Ignition SE. I have considered the Contemporary but I wanted a full hollow Club I'm really really surprised by the quality, actually. The finish is immaculate, the frets are really good and it sounds great. I did put some Labella flats on it.

Great gig yesterday at the castle hotel Aberystwyth 5 till 8. Llinos the landlady had live bands on every week and there's always a good pub turnout who come for just that. They're always very appreciative. Our drummer has covid so we had a brilliant stand-in who's only played with us once before but if you mumble the first line to him before starting her gets the feel and the groove straight away. Hats off to David Spivek!

Road trip from darkest Essex to Stevenage on Saturday evening to play for the Lytton Players Am-dram theatre group's 75th anniversary party. Quite a nice venue (golf club), food provided and easy load in. The theatre group sold fewer tickets than expected (apparently some of them wanted a posh 'do' with live entertainment but didn't want to pay for it), so we played to fewer people than we initially hoped for, but those who came enjoyed themselves and danced the night away and we enjoyed playing for them. I took the lead on sound check and set the gains properly to allow for more headroom (the last gig everything was set much too hot and feeding back), and eq'd a couple of things better. End result was a much better sound in the room. I think we're finally getting there with the ampless setup - going direct with IEMs.

Not parasites but symbiotes. Including the poor suckers that run open mics. I've never really understood the world in which some musicians look down upon others, I've generally found it rare amongst musicians, most of the ones I know are supportive of everyone who gives it a go from encouraging a 12 year old with a mobile phone singing Karaoke through to my opera singing friend who encourages my appalling backing vocals. I have a friend who runs an open mic dedicated to people who write their own songs. Thanks to his enthusiasm I've heard the first stumblings of a teenager singing to two chords and seen him take them through to BBC introducing, is that a parasite? I've run my own open mic and given bands their first chance to try out in front of an audience or to use a decent PA, encouraged people who gave up with stage fright to give it another go in later life. Does it worry me that most of the songs were written by people who are absent and don't even know we exist? The unusual state of affairs is the monetisation of music, copyright, ownership and monopoly. Music was passed on orally for centuries in written history and for millennia before writing existed in all probability. My mother and her sister used to buy sheet music from Tin-Pan Alley and sing round a piano. All covers. Music has given people pleasure and served a social function throughout history and it arises out of a community. Everyone starts somewhere with almost zero skills, some fly and others just manage but the impulse to share or just join in is strong and it is what keeps music alive. I'll bet most people here started to learn bass by copying someone else's songs. No original music is born of ignorance, at the very least it is inspired by absorbing all the music around us. There would have been no Rolling Stones or Beatles without Rock and Roll covers, no rock and roll without the blues and gospel musicians and no blues without the African slaves. Can you imagine the cost of instruments if only a few elite musicians bought them? Would there have been a Fender or Gibson and electric pickups without the amateur enthusiasm for playing Hawaiian guitar? A network of studio's and rehearsal rooms without amateurs and semi pro's paying for them. Music is deeply embedded in our society and is the better for it and the broader the base the better for all of us. The world is a better place for having covers bands and for people making up playlists for others to have a good party and I'm in awe of anyone who attempts to make s song for other people. Luckily there aren't many here looking down their noses at other peoples music, there is room for all of us.

I fell foul of this post too and found myself ordering a red precision for £259 delivered whilst mildly drunk on holiday (I had toothache, so I thought a purchase would ease the pain - it didn't) It arrived on 22/9/23 It did it's first gig the following day It did it's second gig the day after (A Sunday night gig for a load of tattooists in Magical Great Yarmouth - most unusual. We weren't really needed, but hey ho) For the money it's a really lovely piece of kit. Setup was fine, finish was great. It also got the mrs Glambass seal of approval which is always a brucey bonus ("ooo that's pretty!")

Last Nights Rock 'n Roll gig setup. Only a 1 x 12 in that old Vox Cab ! Worked a treat, Great Fun.

We played Viking Fest on Saturday which was basically a big wake for a guy known as Viking on that particular festival scene. We went on at 10:30 and played until midnight. I was already too tired when we went on! We play a few festivals at this venue Hilcote Country Club and I really don't like it. You're set up on the dance floor, then there are some steps up to a higher level where some people sit but you can't really see them. Anyway, a low pressure gig and it's always fun to play.

I would say no. I've spent most of my playing life as a bass player in originals bands and admittedly had a slightly less favourable opinion of covers bands during those years. I'm quite late to the covers band party having only got into it by accident as a dep bass player for what was supposed to be one gig. That was over four years ago and at present I don't see me gigging ever again in an originals band. There are a few posts that strike a chord when discussing the differences between originals bands and covers bands and for me at least the most obvious ones are always getting paid for a covers gig while rarely ever getting paid for originals gigs in the past. Getting a Tennents Lager rider at King Tuts for a one hour originals set never really counted as getting paid. As far as I am aware, a typical pub venue I'd play would be covered under the likes of the PPL PRS license scheme for live music so something is going back to creators they rep and that doesn't seem parasitic to me. It's not big money you get paid to do covers but nice to have help with your fuel/replacement strings and out goings. Originals gigs were also rarely longer than an hour whereas a local covers gig at the dog and duck could be 3 x 1 hour sets and the bar manager is timing you to make sure he gets his contracted hours from you. I don't think covers bands are making it any harder for originals to get gigs. IME, there tends to be originals circuits and venues who still support new/upcoming originals bands and covers bands tend to also keep to their own haunts. I find it a bit more business like being in a covers band, dare I say harder work, and I have gained a deep respect for any covers bands who put in the work to make a good show. Once I'm up on stage and playing for a crowd who engage with the band, all the differences between covers bands and originals don't matter to me and I'm sure don't matter as much to the audience.

School reunion party at Ludlow Brewery. Great seeing all those faces from my youth and chatting to people desperately trying to remember their names😊 We played pretty well ...a few fubars but no-one noticed Pic of sound check - hence no drummer

It's a great pair with the Mustang.

I think the conclusion is that it's not parasitic. BUT there are two important lessons: 1. If you play covers you should do the honourable thing and submit your set lists to the PRS so that artists do get a share of the pie (even though it IS the venue's responsibility) 2. If you play originals, especially if you wrote them, then you absolutely should submit the set lists, otherwise you will miss out on 2½d per year royalties. ( 3. @Dad3353 must be a great employer on a T&M basis, but don't ever put an apostrophe in the wrong place)

From the ethics of playing Sex On Fire at the Dog & Duck to dreams of a quasi-socialist utopia in the space of 5 pages. God I love this place.

Plenty of disinformation on this thread so to put a few things straight: Venues are licensed by PRS/PPL, not the hirer. The 'main' business of the venue is what they are licensed for. A pub may have a jukebox, the radio and/or occasional live bands but if they do not have 'regular' ticketed events then they will just have a 'general' licence. If you regularly play at one of these establishments then you will need to apply for the 'Gigs & Clubs Scheme' at PRS. If you write your own material then you will see a small payment every so often for your trouble. If you play covers then you will reward the original songwriters, as you should... There is also a similar scheme for buskers on the Underground. https://www.prsformusic.com/royalties/live-performance-royalties#:~:text=If members play at a,is performed at the event. If the main business of a venue is ticketed events i.e. concert venue, arts centre, theatre, etc then approx 4% of box office is payable to PRS from the gross. This money is then paid out to the songwriters/publishers of the music performed after a small deduction for processing (under 10% - the lowest deduction of ANY worldwide Rights society). This 4% is SUPPOSED to be raised/paid by the venue (5p on a pint etc) and NOT charged to the band..... however, it often is added to band deductions which defeats the object if you write your own material. However, contrary to what some ignorant people think, PRS is NOT the music police and doesn't have any power to enforce the way a venue raises it's payable PRS licence fee. Also, because ticketed venues are often rubbish at asking for setlists from artists and supplying them on to PRS it is always recommended that for those performances a writer use the online PRS live set list hub to upload their set info. https://www.prsformusic.com/royalties/report-live-performances You're welcome...

Thanks! Signal path is pretty simple: Zoot Funkmeister -> HX Effects with a smidge of “tube” compression and the SansAmp sim -> Trace Elliot TE1200 DI’d pre-EQ into the PA. Sounded rather lovely I have to say. Sorry to those without Instagram, you’ll just have to imagine how awesome we are 😆

If Rory Gallagher, Jimi Hendrix, John Bonham, Jack Bruce, Duane Allman, John Lennon etc etc all fancy coming back from the dead and playing two 45s at Fogherty's this Friday night for their share of £200, I'll gladly step aside. Otherwise, the punters will just have to make do.

No, the parasites are often the guys that run the open mic nights. They go into a local venue that has had live music on for years and offer to run nights for a third (or less) of the usual fee. For a time they make it work, taking half of the money for their ‘expenses’ and giving out a tenner here or there to cover ‘fuel for the featured artist’. After three or four months they’ve exhausted every connection they have locally, the landlord calls time on it and the open mic guy moves on to do the same in another local venue. However, the landlord now knows he can get an evening’s entertainment for a fraction of the prior cost so lowers what he is willing to pay accordingly. Local music scene dries up. Cue open mic guy ranting on social media that nobody will pay for live music anymore when nobody will book him and his band. Seen it a few too many times now.

Good evening! Here's me with my bitsa Musicmaster. The neck is dated 1971, everything else has been replaced - I'm not sure about the age of the body which has been resprayed, and has a huge hole under the pickguard where a neck pickup used to be. Sounds amazing and has La Bella flats on it,

So I've gone back over this thread and from what I can work out, this is who's taken advantage of this awesome offer. I dont think I've missed anyone?? 1. Linus27 - Red Precision 2. GlamBass74 - Red Precision 3. Sharkfinger - Vintage Blonde Precision 4. floFC - SFG Jazz 5. ezbass - Vintage Blonde Precision 6. Frank n funker - Red Precision 7. Odi - Vintage Blonde Precision 8. grapefruitmoon - Red Precision 9. Delberthot - Red Precision 10. Uncle psychosis - SFG Jazz 11. Phil Starr - Red Precision 12. Jd56hawk - Red Precision

Duo gig Sunday afternoon left me with a mild back ache. 3 hours standing playing bass and vocals, with a short break in the middle. 40 songs. I guess I’m getting old. I used to that and more without any problems when I were a younger lad. Great receptive crowd made it for us though.

I tried this using a Dutch oven. Now my strings smell bad and the tone stinks but I can hit the brown note now

Money you say? Excellent. Tell me more about this "suckling" process.

Mine is a plain-jane and a million like it, but this one's mine. 1993, and a very deep tone.

A little footage for you all to watch/ignore as you see fit https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cxi2ve-M-dp/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

The Place Theatre Bedford

I got this at Download once.

Presumably as a result of the sound levels at gigs.

I told the band and Gab (the guitarist) said he’d pay to see that band … I reminded him he could carry on being paid to be in it 😄

Too heavy for a B string for me.. (Did I just unwittingly pick a team?)

The description of Faith Hill and Whitesnake had me imagine all sorts of wonderful things. All good to be fair. Anyone that sounds anything like Whitesnake must be pretty good. Dave

As I said earlier, Paul Tutmarc advertised in trade magazines and attended trade shows. All the manufacturers, on the West Coast, would have been aware of him, but I guess most wouldn't have seen a future for making money out of a solid bass. Tutmarc was an inventor and wasn't interested in manufacturing and marketing. There were many ideas floating around, at the time, and being "borrowed". For instance, the Strat headstock was a nick from the Bigsby Merle Travis electric guitar. What Leo Fender actually invented is open to discussion. He had a team working with him who had a lot of input. A lot of the final Fender "ideas" were honed by the local musicians who used to hang out at the factory. Apparently if you could convince Leo that your idea worked, was an improvement and wouldn't cost much he could adopt it. A guy called Bill Carson complained that the hard edges of the Telecaster cut into his leg when it was played sitting down. That started the idea of the Strat and it's rounded lines. History recalls that Leo did it all. He didn't. He had a lot of help.

Thanks for posting, this is a really interesting bit of history I knew nothing about. People looking back at this period need to remember how the world was at the time. Certainly in the UK the majority of houses were just being electrified, owning a radio was a big purchase that most people couldn't afford. My dad made a lot of his income before WW2 recharging the batteries that radios then ran on, that dried up as more people were connected to the grid. Even in the 1960's and later in some places street lighting was by gas and in the 1990's I was still removing the gas lighting from houses I was restoring. Most of this gear was incredibly expensive and there grew an army of repairmen to maintain it. You couldn't use You Tube to look up repairs but there were a wealth of monthly magazines like Wireless World and Practical Wireless full of practical hints, DIY designs and news of the latest developments. Ideas spread rapidly and people were experimenting all the time and if something didn't exist you would make it. Within this environment it isn't surprising that several people will come up with similar solutions. Equally trying to sell electric bass amps when the grid was at the stage fibre was ten years ago was probably an uphill task.

Oh well, that's John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers consigned to the dustbin of history for a start. And God help any folk or jazz bands out there... let alone the orchestras! To be honest I read the original post and assumed it was a troll - let's face it almost everyone on Basschat is in or has been in a covers band. For the vast majority of us it's the only way to be in a gigging band. Back in the 80s/90s I was in bands who had less of a following than the blues band I'm in now, but we would play a whole night of originals in a pub or club and get a response comparable to what a covers band gets these days. But there can be a lot of creativity in playing covers (especially blues where improvisation and random events are de riguer). It need not be cross-stitch, it can be more like needlepoint where you may well be embroidering an established design, but you have all sorts of choices of stitch, colour and texture. Ultimately, people playing and listening to live music is one of the most unifying and positive things human beings can do. From being one of a bunch of drunken students singing Hey Jude on the way back from a pub crawl to gigging 'popular tunes' to improvising a bassline to a song I've never heard before at a jam, it's all good. Music should be rated by what it brings to people's lives; discussing its originality or technical merits can be fun and entertaining, but that doesn't really matter. If people are enjoying, or getting some other benefits like solace or nostalgia, from making or listening to it, music is good. Be grateful for those who add to the sum total of music that's there to perform, but don't diss cover bands for giving people what they want.

We supported 80s Goth legends Ghost Dance last night at the fantastic Chapter 22 Roots and Records. I've been a fan of GD since Sixth Form and was looking forward to this. The venue is a record shop that also sells plants and I spent the evening of my 50th there. We had the call a couple of weeks ago and jumped at the chance. A beautiful, intimate setting. The soundman was really on it. The venue made us feel most welcome and even presented us with a Black Succulent afterwards and everyone was so welcoming and friendly. Our set was pretty slick - it didn't feel it at the time but watching back footage afterwards, we were really on it! A near perfect night. I rock the mic like a vandal! Our band with Ghost Dance and the promoters. I might be the first person to post on this thread to get a plant as a bonus for playing!

Played the Terrace in Uplands Swansea depping with Up To Eleven, dep guitarist too. Three long flights of stairs and small stage (so keyboard player was semi-detached to the side!) Basschatter @Franticsmurf came along and made some generous comments about my sound. Here's a piick of my head to prove how low I had my master volume! Was not packed for the first two set (American style gig!) but numbers went up and down and they were noisy and at least some of a very youthful audience danced and sang to most numbers. We played a ragged and rapturously received version of 500 miles, followed by Don't Stop Believing-which we thought we nailed but got no reaction at all! One very drunk girl wanted a Miley Cyrus song and spent ages trying to get the guitarist and singer to agree to doing a song they hadn't heard of. Then spent two songs holding her phone up in front of them, presimably exoecting them to learn the lyrics while playing someting else...1 Third,late set it filled right up and we had a big bunch of very amicable but wrecked lads dancing in front of us. Minor stage invader dealt with by his mates! So an entertaining night even if I didn’t get home until 2am, very stiff... Pics courtesy of @Franticsmurf 👍

Awesome. A relatively last-minute booking for Katy Hurt at Buck’n’Bull London - essentially they put on Country/Americana themed nights and forgot they needed a band! A sold out show at Phantom Peaks in Surrey Quays (what an absolute pig to get to!) and an amazing crowd. The only spoilers were me messing up a couple of tunes (I blame jet lag) and my rig cutting out during our encore. Some investigation needed today - I think it’s a dodgy input socket to my pedalboard. Bur other than that, what an immense night it was. We have footage from at least 3 angles and hopefully we can get a live video of a song or two from it 🤓

I couldn’t play music as a teenager (though I loved going to gigs). Hit my 40’s and I learned guitar and could hold a reasonable backing vocal… a pub covers band is pretty much the pinnacle of my abilities… during covid, I did write, record, produce and release a song and I have written a few others but more as a vanity/self-challenge project than any serious attempt at hitting “The slightly bigger time”… I’m now learning bass for a new covers band (first gig tomorrow) I can honestly say, I had great evenings in the audience at stadiums and festivals; I’ve discovered great original bands I’ve never heard of… And I have sung my heart out and danced to pub covers bands too! it really doesn’t matter, as long as the music has some passion and connects with the audience. You are the sound track to their well earned time off… You want to get them foot tapping, hand clapping, stood up and dancing, closed-eyed-hands-raised singing at the top of their voices… I don’t hugely care if Adele wrote the song originally, or who played/produced/released it for her… just that the lads who build houses, girls that teach in schools, carers in hospitals, postmen etc can stand together in groups having an awesome night! How am I being the parasite?

That doesn't look like an official roadworn to me, sorry. The ones I've seen certainly don't have "craters" like that where the paint wear is. I'd say that's been (and I'm being polite), f*cked around with by someone at home. Possibly Stevie Wonder?

SPLITTERS!!!

This was obviously a joke, but thinking about it, I seem to remember that metal fatigue develops more rapidly at low temperatures, so potentially if you froze your strings then put them back on quickly and played them, then repeated the process over and over again, they might acquire the played-in sound more rapidly...

I think they're a welcome part of the live experience. Not everyone can write songs and/or be a recording artist, so cover bands give amateur musicians a chance to experience the thrill of playing live. Similarly not everyone can afford to pay to see a live band every week, so it provides inexpensive entertainment for punters down the Dog and Duck. The way I see it it's a win/win. I think if an established artist wants to release a cover of someone else's song then have at it; the original artist/label can always stop the release of the cover if they don't like it.