BigRedX

If they were further north I'd have been interested too!

I don't know what sorts of bands he's going to see, but simply from a practical PoV getting rid of the drummer is far more useful than getting rid of the bass player, or any other musician come to that. If you use backing tracks with live drums you have to then consider click tracks for the drummer and how they are going to hear that as well as the rest of the band. IME it makes everything so much more complicated, most of the time it would be simpler to have a bass player. Also once you don't have a drummer it cuts the amount of gear that a band needs to take in half. Without a drummer my (3-piece) band plus all our gear and someone to roadie and work the merch table fits into a single estate car. I suppose it also depends on the genre. In post-punk/goth there are plenty of bands without drummers but very few without bass players and there are some where the only instrument being played on stage is the bass.

IME the larger toggle switches will be much stiffer to operate than the typical mini-toggle and you might be better off with the original foot switches. Also have you checked to see how the existing switches are wired inside the pedal? The amount of space available and whether they are soldered directly to a PCB may limit your choices for replacements.

And so do I, with the same leads for the last 30+ years and not one of them has failed yet.

Nothing. I did put 100 Herco Flex 75 picks on my Amazon wish list, but no-one bought them for me. Everything else musical that I want is far too expensive to expect anyone to buy for me.

As other have said, unless you are well rehearsed playing with recorded drums instead of a real drummer, you'll probably be better off hiring someone to fill in, as there are all sorts of issues that you'll encounter and you need to be prepared and have contingency plans for all of them. You'll need to add count-ins for all the tracks and guide clicks for the rest of the band on any tracks where the drums don't come in at the beginning. Likewise for any mid-song sections with no drums. You'll be surprised how badly you'll drift out of sync on anything more than a single bar without something to keep the beat. You'll need to be able to hear the drums loud enough to play too. Again you'll be surprised how loud this actually needs to be when you don't have a human drummer on stage with you, because you will be relying entirely on the sound, and there's no flexibility in recorded or programmed drum playback, it's completely up to the band to keep in time with the recording. Depending on the genre it might look rubbish without a human drummer. Any additional clicks you need for timing purposes will detract from the performance. And to be brutally honest, if you need to ask about how to do to it, you'll need to spend a lot longer sorting it out and practicing, and maybe even spend money sorting, then is worth the effort for a fe gigs.

As others have said, I suspect that all of us are replaceable but depending on the band, it will probably change the sound and the dynamic, especially for originals bands. But what if you're not even replaced? In my current band when the guitarist left before we looked for a replacement we tried rearranging the songs with me swapping from traditional bass parts to using a Bass VI and alternating between bass and melody parts with the synth player. It worked very well and defined the sound of the band. When our drummer left latter on, we decided that rather than look for a replacement we'd go with programmed drums instead.

I can only speak from my own personal experience, but I've not found it anywhere like a difficult as some people on here seem to say it is. I don't know if it's down to where I'm based? Despite having a decent number of venues available for originals bands to play, Nottingham doesn't really have much of a "scene", the musicians from here who have done really well for themselves, have done so after they left the city and don't make a big deal about coming from here. However, it is reasonably well placed to get to most other parts of the country and about two thirds of the gigs I've done in the last 12 months have involved 2-4 hours travelling each way. I've just done a VERY ROUGH calculation and from 15 gigs in the last 12 months one of my bands has made just under £150 a gig when the profit from merch sales and PRS performance royalties from gigs is also taken into account. I know that's not much compared with your typical pub covers band, but has paid for our transport to and from the gigs, the couple of occasions we have had to stay overnight and rehearsal room costs, and we already have a decent sum available to put towards to manufacturing costs of our album when it's finished next year. We have been able to do this because we are organised and have picked the gigs that we play carefully. We have traded upon the various members' past achievements (we'd be stupid not to), but that only gets your foot in the door a few times, before you have to consistently back it up with an entertaining performance and songs that your audience want to hear. There has been some luck involved - the current iteration of the band landed a really good spot on a goth festival as our first gig, based on our past bands' reputations, but we delivered a performance when it mattered and got an excellent review as a result, and have been able to build from that.

I know this thread is probably aimed at covers bands, but my originals band changes its set every time we have a new song ready to gig. We have a 45 minute set and a 30 minute one. Each has a different opening song, and both end with the same two which are our big crowd pleasers. What happens in between is fairly fluid. There are combinations that work better than others, but we will always try out a different order at rehearsal first to make sure that the set flows properly from start to finish.

It depends on what you mean by "heavy" when it comes to gigs. IME for most originals bands who aren't signed to a supportive record label, playing any night other than Friday or Saturday is a waste of time unless you are supporting someone popular enough to be able to sell at least 100 tickets at a 150 capacity venue on a week night. That of course will limit how many gigs your band can do in a year. I don't expect to be able to make a living out of playing songs that I have written, as I suspect it will entail too many artistic compromises, and I already have a creative day job where my client is the "king". However I do expect to make back any money I have invested in the band and after that initial investment for the band to be at worst completely self-financing. From what I have seen the reason most originals bands can't even manage that, which should be an easily attainable goal, is either because they aren't very entertaining or because they simply aren't organised enough.

As much as every band wants to be unique and original, genres definitely help you to find your audience. So if you're a bit punk/metal/rock put yourself in all three and just go with it. After all if you found enough musicians who were happy to cross genres to make your music there will be even more audience members who like the combination. Also don't worry about not headlining, but at the same time don't get bogged down in gigs with lots of disparate bands. Go with your genres and stick to gigs with 4 bands or less, if necessary, starting at the bottom and working your way up the bill as you get better known. IME playing just before the headliner is almost always the best spot. If they really are popular enough to be a proper headliner then most of the people who are coming to see them will be there when you go on, and if they are just "playing last" the band immediately before normally get the biggest crowd of the night. Then put on a show and have someone ready at the merch table to sell your CDs and T-shirts to the audience to moment you finish playing. IMO no band is worthy of a proper headline slot unless they have an album out and re selling significant numbers of physical product - CDs/records/cassettes.

Addressing the OP, it depends on how much effort you want to put into a band on top of playing the bass guitar. If that's all you want to do, then it might be some time before you find a band that you think is suitable for you. However if you want to be a bit more proactive then it should be a lot easier to find a band that isn't quite right but has the potential to be so after you have had some input. After The Terrortones stopped gigging it was over 12 months before I found another suitable musical venture. I put a very specific ad on JMB and was prepared to wait for the "right" band. They weren't 100% perfect when I joined, but over the next few years I subtly exerted my influence on the way the band developed and now we are pretty much exactly the kind of band I want to be in. Sometimes band are the way that they are, not because they are terrible, but because the existing members simply don't know any better, and all it might take is a push in the right direction to make them much, much better. And regarding getting paid, there is absolutely no reason for an originals band to lose money playing gigs unless they are deliberately playing for free or they are just badly organised. I think the last time any originals band I've been in played for less than £50 (unless we had chosen to play for free) was some time in the 80s. Even if the gig payment itself doesn't cover our expenses I would expect to make up the deficit (and more) from PROFIT on merch sales.

Unless it's for a permanent installation, make sure you can find a suitably robust cable to use with this. I have yet to find an ethernet cable that will withstand the rigours of being coiled and uncoiled even once a week at gigs for more than a year.

Bass > Line6 Helix > Mac running Logic > Denon Amp > Sennheiser headphones. This used for writing and practicing the songs my band plays. IMO there is little point "practicing" without using the correct sounds/effects on my bass, and without playing along to the programmed drums and synths we have as our backing, hence the set up.

IMO most bands are worthless without a great front person, and the rest of the band have to decide whether to put up with their foibles or be a bunch a musical nobodies (and probably without a band). I've been lucky enough to have been in bands with some great front people over the past 45 years. I've also been in the lucky position where as the main songwriter from a musical PoV, a lot of my bands have essentially been partnerships between myself and the front person who adds the lyrics and vocal melodies to my musical ideas. My current band is a great example of each member playing to their various strengths. Our singer/frontman is an essential part of that, and we acknowledge that without him we'd be nowhere near as popular. He's a great singer, knows how to keep the audience entertained between songs, and has a great image. Myself and our synth player write all the music (and come up with the initial song ideas) and I do all the drum programming whilst the synth player does to production work on our recordings. Without any one of us the band would not be able to function.

Is it properly rack-mountable?

Two much better photos from last Saturday's In Isolation farewell gig:

But those retailers chose which courier service they use. Therefore they are responsible when the courier service messes up.

My warning has now gone. Is it possible to find out what it was for? AFAIK I've never had a warning here on Basschat, and the section for the warning on Guitarchat doesn't even exist in my profile on Basschat. Edit: Still can't post in General Discussion.

+1 for using a bicycle box. Much more heavy duty than any guitar/bass shipping boxes. You will need to cut it down to size though.

I've reported my own post so hopefully it will attract the attention of someone with an answer. Not being able to post in General Discussion until I have made 5 posts elsewhere is a bit crap. General Discussion is where the interesting topics are. Does this restriction also apply on the current version of Basschat?

Unfortunately the simple answer is that there is no simple answer. Don't use Yodel or Evri because they are mostly crap. All the other delivery services except Parcel Force will charge a premium to deliver to many parts of Scotland and NI. Parcel Force can't be used because they won't insure musical instruments for the amount most people on here require. Sorry...

Just had a look at Guitarchat logging in using my Basschat profile. For some reason I can't post on any of the threads. Also in my profile I have "1 warning point - No restrictions being applied" but no indication of what it is for. No wonder hardly anyone is using the site.

Occurred twice today using Safari on a Mac. On both occasions the ad failed to render on screen properly, but at the same time it prevented clicking any of the links on the page requiring me to use to back button on the browser to escape.