BigRedX

But if your going to be honest with yourself both bands without their front person where pretty awful from a musical PoV.

Some people have been able the sort out the intention problems by reversing the whole saddle/screw/spring assembly. That way when the saddle is back far enough for the intonation to be right it's at the end of the screw and therefore it's not a problem. You can also try playing about with relative string heights using the main bridge height screws as well as individual saddle height screws. I had a similar problem on an HB baritone guitar and was able to find a compromise that worked by adjusting these until the intonation screw was no longer a problem. IIRC you wind the saddle height screws right down and set the main action using the bridge supports, only using the saddle height screws to match the radius of the fingerboard.

Shim the neck to increase the break angle over the bridge and fit a set of Newtone Axion Custom Works Fender VI stings which are about a third the cost of the LaBellas and IMO the superior round wound strings for Bass VIs. I'm assuming you want round wounds. If not your options a bit more limited, and expensive; but IIRC Picato do a set of Bass VI flats. After that it will be down to personal preference and how much money you want to spend. The next thing you'll probably want is something to stop the bridge wobbling about on it's supports. Increasing the break angle of the stings goes a long way to help but its not a perfect solution. If you've got some DYI skills and the right tools you may find one of the home-brew solutions using metal tubing will work, but otherwise you are looking at a Staytrem bridge. The problem with the bridge and vibrato mechanism is two-fold. With the light gauge strings supplied the vibrato can be quite effective, but unfortunately to get decent bass sounds out of the lower stings, and once you fit either LaBellas or Newtones the increased tension of the strings will make the vibrato mechanism almost impossible to operate. Also IMO the wobbly bridge has no place on a bass guitar. It's fine if you want to do MBV impersonations on a guitar but on the Bass VI it's just an inconvenience. Personally I found the biggest problem with the Squier Bass VI was the narrow neck, which I found unfeasibly narrow even by guitar standards and more so fitted with bass strings. My ultimate solution was to replace the Bass VI with an Eastwood Hooky Bass 6 Pro which is an exact copy of his Shergold Marathon Six String Bass.

Personally I would never plug a USB drive from an unknown source into my computer, and after watching MR Robot I would now think twice about any CDR 😉 Given that my experience with CD production brokers is that they only do the most cursory of checks regarding the copyright of the music on the CDs they are producing, it would be fairly simple for a malicious band to stick some serious malware into their CDs if they wanted. Maybe something that silently streams the band's back catalogue in the background all the time the computer is on. That's a whole new can of worms...

And finally... Whilst I think that for a physical release, as a tactile artefact, an album pressed on 12" vinyl in a nicely produced sleeve is a very lovely thing of wonder, you also have to consider the practicalities of where and how your are going to sell them. 12" albums are fine if you are headlining/playing last or someone will be on hand to man the merch stand until the end of the night, but it is my experience that CDs are more practical for putting into a coat pocket or bag if you've sold them mid-way through the evening, and remember that your main selling times will be immediately after your band has played and just before everyone gets kicked out of the venue at the end of the night. Also remember that if you intend to also sell physical product on line (through bandcamp or similar) a CD fits into a D1 size Jiffy Bag which are cheap to buy and go in the post as "large letter". 12" vinyl will require more expensive packaging (12" record mailers and you WILL require stiffeners as well to protect them in the post) plus the postage is significantly more.

IME (well at least for me) you need a heavier low-B than you would normally think would be required, mostly because it is so low tension compared with the other strings. In my case for a 100-40 (E-G) set I go fo a 130 B string. In your case start by trying a 120 with the 95-55 set and see how you get on with that. Also depending on the bass and bridge construction you might want to consider a taper-wound B string.

What gauges are your E, A and D strings going to be?

The Terrortones 3rd release was on cassette and download only. Despite the fact that the download version was initially free and the fact that I doubt many of our fans actually had cassette players we still sold a significant number of cassettes. Enough to cover the cost of getting them produced in the first place. Make what you will of that!

No you'll need to use the 200 you got when you first set up the Bandcamp account (unless you've already used them in which case you'll probably have to buy some more).

The best way to get download codes is by doing a Bandcamp release. You get 200 codes free with your Bandcamp account, and you can either buy more or you'll get another 1000 for every $500 of Bandcamp sales.

It's a tricky one and most probably depends on the genre of the band. For your's I would have thought that CDs were still perfectly acceptable. It was certainly my experience when The Terrortones played "punk" gigs that our CDs were the most popular format. In the case of one of my current bands - Hurtsfall - what we have discovered works best is to release each song separately as a single for streaming and download only. The way each song gets the attention we think they deserve, unlike an album or EP where normally only one track will get any publicity (usually the first one). At some point we'll probably collect all the songs together for a physical release on vinyl which will be sold along with a download code.

Those of you that have been on Basschat a while will know that I used to play in a band called "Dïck Venom & The Terrortones" which like Happy Jack's band was perfectly appropriately named for the music we were playing - a garage rock/psychobilly hybrid. Myself and the rest of the band were under no illusions that on stage Mr Venom was THE TALENT and our job on stage was to provide the tightest of tight musical backdrops for his over the top performance (both visually and lyrically). The band was entirely Mr Venom's concept and he was the driving force that allowed us to go from nothing but an idea to complete band with a musical and visual concept performing our first half-hour set of songs we'd written ourselves in just 8 weeks. He also did the majority of work behind the scenes - getting gigs and interacting with our fans on social media and all that non-musical stuff that can be very off-putting and tedious for the average musician. The only downside to having a band named after the singer is the is absolutely no future for it once the singer decides that they have had enough, as we discovered when after 6 years Mr Venom became too unwell to be able to consistently deliver the level of live entertainment that our audience had come to expect, that was the end of the band as he was the only member that wasn't ultimately replaceable.

Play more. It doesn't have to "practice" as such. Just pick up your bass and play.

It is my experience that Amazon and most of the "budget" delivery services employ drivers who haven't yet figured out how conventional UK house numbering works. Add to that the pressure to get an unfeasible number of parcels delivered every day, it's not surprising that many drivers can't be bothered/simply don't have the time to locate any property that isn't immediately obvious. I've also had one parcel "delivered" to an address with the same Street name and number but with an entirely different post code and therefore in a totally different part of Nottingham. It would also suspect that unless the item has a retail price of over £10, it won;'t be cost effective for Amazon for you to return it.

I assume you mean what are all those weird people doing on "stage"? The gig was at The Hearty Goodfellow in Nottingham, a pub that has since been demolished and replaced by a new building for the up-market Indian Restaurant "4500 Miles to Delhi" Back in the 70s and 80s The Hearty Goodfellow was one of the few places that originals bands could get a gig, either on a Monday or Wednesday night, or supporting avant-garde jazzers Pinski Zoo who had a Friday night residency (and which was the only "weekend" gig available if your weren't playing rock covers). The band was called "The Perfect Party" and was a post-punk/synth pop amalgam, and in true post-punk style featured "unconventional" instruments and playing ability/technique. It was formed by the percussionist and myself who'd been together in a previous band, and various weirdos we'd picked up from ads in the local record shop. The band lasted just a year of which only the last 6 months was spent gigging, but in that time we managed to rack up on average ay least one gig every week, record two demos, get a track on a local compilation produced by BBC Radio Nottingham and build up a decent reputation and following, all of which got CBS records interested in signing us. Eventually they decided to go with Wham! instead, and that pretty much resulted in the break up of the band. On stage from left to right the "musicians" are: Percussion (bongos and home-made drum synths plus drum machine - Boss Doctor Rhythm - programming). With his back to the audience our guitarist whose unique approach to the instrument meant that we couldn't write anything with conventional guitar parts. He went on to be half of Diskonexion who had a couple of critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful house records released on Graeme Park's Submission Records label in the late 80s. Next, our singer who also played recorder on a couple of songs in true post-punk style. Two synth players one playing an Octave Kitten and the other an EDP Wasp (which belonged to me). The girl used to go out with Stevo (of Some Bizzare Records fame) which we though might help raise the profile of the band when we asked her to join. It didn't. She also did backing vocals on a couple of songs. Finally there's me on bass guitar and in control of the drum machine. Musically we fell somewhere between early ACR and a low budget version of New Order. The songs were all written by myself (music) and the percussionist (lyrics). For the time (1981/2) we were pushing the envelope of what could be done with technology if you didn't have record company backing to be able to get professional quality gear. The drum synths and the Wasp were particularly unreliable, but not in any predicable way. At one gig the Wasp played random notes all by itself during the first song and then remained stubbornly silent for the rest of the set. Back at the rehearsal room the following day it was perfectly fine. The photo comes from one of our later gigs when we had properly found our musical direction and had learnt how to write to the various members musical strengths and weaknesses. It was taken by a friend of mine who would go on to be a synth player in my next musical venture. Somewhere there is a mixing desk recording of the gig which sounded pretty impressive at the time, but I suspect hasn't aged as well as I would like to remember. So there you go, with probably way more detail than you would care for...

The real tracking number and courier information will be on the label which the sender will have a copy of. Ask them for the details and you should be able to get more up to date information.

I think EBS_Freak was referring to the fact that you'd called HMRC "Inland Revenue"...

I found in the days when I was using individual non-programmable pedals, apart from a digital delay that had a numerical read out for the delay time, I didn't have time to change settings between songs, so each effect was reduced to either being off or on and the setting would be the one that was the best compromise for all the songs that effect needed to be on, rather than tuned exactly to each song. In the few instances where I absolutely had to have different settings for an effect, I would have a separate pedal/device for each different setting. It wasn't ver efficient, and my last iteration of this set-up filled a 14U rack case, and was controlled by a massively complicated custom-made foot switch bank (with its own huge cable snake). In 1991 I replaced all of this with a 1U Roland GP8 multi-effects unit and it's FC100 foot controller, and I haven't looked back. My current multi-effect unit is a Helix Floor. Whilst I do most of the programming from my computer using the HX Edit program, all the parameters I might want to fine tune once I'm in rehearsal with my bands are at the most 2 button pushes away, and its certainly more reliable and consistent than the 14U of individual effects (and IMO only very slightly less easy to use).

But unless you're a competent DIYer with a box full of the right tools and parts, there's no substitute for a decent plumber. As a covers band you have to ask yourselves "what can we bring that is superior to a well chosen Spotify/iTunes playlist and how much extra is that worth?"

Almost all of these "problems" can be fixed by buying a decent multi-effect pedal and using that instead.

Actually the one I used to own sounded pretty much like a very good P-Bass without any noticeable increase in sustain or additional harmonics.

Having a "hi-mass" badge is supposed to prevent energy transference from the string as the non-string parts of the instrument are too heavy to vibrate. Except of course they don't really work because the overall increase in mass of a typical bass body with a hi-mass bridge compared with the same body and a BBOT bridge is negligible. For an alternative look at isolating the string from the rest of the instrument have a look at the Born To Rock bass. In this case the design was conceived to do any with the need for a truss rod.

That makes a lot more sense. Thanks for posting that photo. I have to say I'm not keen on having any non-latching connectors in a gig situation. Maybe it's just the kinds of bands I play in and gigs that I do.

@Dood

Add 25% onto the combined sale price plus shipping charge and you shouldn't have any nasty surprises.