jazzyvee

I had a really good gig with Musical Youth at Festival Too in King's Lynn. Alembic Series I 5 string bass, two Mesa boogie powerhouse cabs and my mesa walkabout head. Lovely sound & great crowd too. I hope we get invited there again in the future.

Stanley Clarke in Leeds

Generally I use 45 - 105 on my basses. But a short scale bass I bought a couple of years ago came with 40 -100 so for that bass anyway I will stick with that gauge.

I don't really see it as a problem I hardly ever pay the band cash these days even when I recieve the cash at the end of the gig. Since becoming self employed in my day job my accountant has advised me to pay it into my personal bank account and then pay the band individually by bank transfer. Sometimes strangely the manager of the venue pays the band members individually.

I got a similar invitaton to join such a band last autumn when my mates band had the bass player leave. It's a weekly residency for an open mic night and we do some songs and back others. I'd never done that kind of music before as I'd normally be playing Jazz-funk, reggae, funk and Rnb but I thought it would be a good oportunity for me to overcome some comfort zone hangups by doing something new that I have no experience doing. Whilst none of it is music I'd listen to at home it's been good for me as a musician to do that and it's much less pressure than my other gigs. I'd say take it, any opportunity you take to play you will learn something even if it points out areas of your playing to focus on. Playing regularly too is also a good way to become consistent and develop a style.

Good topic Blue, something I am also aware of. My main band is a named reggae band and with that band I'm at the back near the drummer so don't move about the stage much because the lead singer is a great showman and likes to make the most use of the stage and I don't want to get in his way. But I'm told I move a lot in my area of the stage but its not something Ireally notice myself. One thing I get told a lot is that I don't smile enough which is hard change because forcing a smile looks false and I already thought I was smiling because I'm enjoying the gig. I'm always having a good time on stage and I think I do smile a lot but I'm told I look serious a lot of the time unless someone makes a mistake in a funny place then I really laugh. With my own band Jazz/funk we are instrumental mainly and as i'm band leader I'm front of stage with the saxophonist and I'm really comfortable. Have seen many videos of us so I can critique myself and I think i do ok up front and don't have many serious concerns about it. That's not to say I don't have anything to learn about stage presence, I do and I'm learning all the time from watching other bands.

Most of the backlines I've had to use over the past 5 years not been to my liking. Usually they sound like they have been trashed or not very clean sounding and edgy/distorted even at the lowish volumes I prefer on stage. These days when I know in advance, i tend to carry my own rack pre-amp and go direct into the power amp of whatever head is on stage. If I'm just carrying the bass, well it has an external power supply which also handles the signal outs so sometimes on a quick turnover If the amp head is too complicated to get the sound I want or I don't like the sound, I will go direct from that psu signal outs into the power section of the bass head.

Thinking about it the donor bass has no position markers on the surface of the fretboard so there shouldn't be any sound problems with sliding over dissimilar materials. But as for getting a good luthier, Jaydee is only a few miles across town for me so that would be my first port of call and hope they aren't too busy making their own basses to fit me in. I'm not even sure I have the guts to do it but it's been on my mind on and off for a while and since that bass isn't one I use for gigging I wouldn't be sacrificing anything from my gigging basses if I didn't take to fretless playing. After reading the comments, i think the safest way forward is to try to find a 35" fretless in a guitar shop and see how that feels to play first before jumping in the deep end. Eeek I have just remembered there is an inlay of a shark in the 12th fret area is that gonna be problem with vibrato on the 11th and 12th frets?

Currently I only gig with 34" and 30.75" fretted basses. However I'm curious to have a go at fretless bass. I currently own a 35" scale 5 string fretted had made, made in Thailand, bass with a nice thick ebony fretboard. It currently has two sets of ACG EQ02 systems, one for each pickup installed by John East which I plan to remove at some point. I don't gig with the bass and only use it for rehearsals or practice when I'm away from home, hence it may be a good candidate for converting to fretless. So a few things come to mind, I have no desire to do this myself and wonder if it is: a) a big job for a luthier to take on would it be better to have a new finger board or just de-fret the existing one and have the fret slots filled. c) as I'm more used to 34" scale and the short scale fretted basses is that likely to mess up my muscle memory and hence my ability to play in tune on a 35" scale fretless bass or is the difference so marginal that it makes little difference? Thanks in advance.

[quote name='Twincam' timestamp='1499040406' post='3328808'] Yes it might achieve the same output. But say I had my gain at 2 and needed to turn the power section to 9 to achieve the same volume as the gain at 4 and the power amp at 6 for instance.isn't the first example for lack of a better word "pushing" the power amp more? Is it not better to achieve a given output using more gain and ask less of the power amp. [/quote] It's just the sound will be different depends what you want at the output. If you want a clean sound out of your cab like I do, I turn my power amp to max and turn the input gain of my pre-amp head only enough to get the output level I want from my cabs and that is usually the 9 o'clock position on the gain pre-amp dial or less. That said you can only do that if you have a low noise floor in your signal chain. On the other hand if you wanted more gritty sound then could turn up the pre-amp gain much higher and then use a lower volume setting on the power amp to give you the same output volume from your cab but the sound would more likely be more gritty/edgy/distorted.

Allianz is what I've used and added international cover when I've been gigging abroad.

Here is my double p style bass. Alembic elan all maple body quilted maple top, maple neck with ebony fretboard. Extremely versatile bass and so punchy. [url="http://alembic.com/club/messages/411/120441.jpg"]http://alembic.com/c.../411/120441.jpg[/url]

Yeah Birmingham gets missed out on a lot of these kind of gigs. Maybe promoters know how low turnout can be in the city and see it as a risk!

There are incredibly few, low single figures i think, non series II basses with CVQ.

Here is my Shorty 30.75" on the right and it's younger longer scale length sibling waiting to start a gig.

[quote name='Lozz196' timestamp='1497525303' post='3318842'] D`addario Pro Steels, def the most comfortable steel rounds I`ve played. [/quote] Same here and RCocco are the most abrasive I've played.

Good choices there Zomnius

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1496080742' post='3308640'] If the band doesn't have paid gigs, I'd have to quit. Blue [/quote] I'd love to find a band/musicians that would rehearse till the music is really propertly rehearsed and tight and then look for gigs.

There is a review on the Alembic web site that I saw way back that you might find an interesting read. http://club.alembic.com/index.php?topic=479.msg2488#msg2488

I've quit about 3 bands in the past 8 years or so. The first was a mainly original band with a couple of covers. I thought the songs were fine but the band leader who was also the song writer was so bad at rehearsing the band that the music never progressed on a week by week basis. The one afternoon I decided to approach the band leader about this and she wasn't really interested in any constructive idea's I had for getting some progress on the band. Anyway I did the three we had in the diary and straight after the last gig finished I took her to one side and told her I was leaving and why and that even though I thought she was doing things wrong I made it clear that I liked her songs but had decided to leave a while back but wanted to honour the gigs before leaving. A few days later the drummer rang me to tell me he'd, then the guitarist, then the keyboard player left a few weeks later. I saw her play with a new band about 6 months or so later and it was painful to watch. The other band was a funk disco soul band who had a string of hits in the late 70's and early 80's and I left that one because the two guitarists who were also the singers and band leaders never learnt their parts and spent so much of the rehearsal time arguing over the chords and messing around with their effects boards. It was becoming a waste of my time. The last one was another original music band who were musicially really a great band to work with but again the band leader/songwriter was so disorganised about how the songs were to be played that it became a chore going to rehearsals and gigs were difficult because she was scared of the audience. I left that one too after about 18 months but let her know that I would work with her as a session player if she needed but would not stay a member of the band.

Definitely 1970's music mainly reggae from the Wailers, funk bands like Earth Wind & Fire, Ohio Players, Blackbyrds, music from the Stax sound then later on when I discovered return to forever and jazz-funk from the likes of Jeff Lorber Fusion, Grover Washington Jr, Ronnie Laws, The Crusaders. etc.