BigRedX

£15 is now the minimum for a band T-shirt. Last time I was selling them for just a tenner they only cost us £3 each to produce. IMO most merch for new originals bands only sells at gigs, so it's a legitimate form of gig income IMO. And consider this: we recently were part of the musical entertainment for an all-day "alternative" market. As well as getting paid, fed and watered all the bands had a large shared gazebo with tables from where we could sell out merch for free. We did well and sold out of CDs of our debut single as well as nearly all of our last batch of T-shirts. Everyone else selling at the event will have paid £50 for a space and that would have just been a space and nothing else.

Looks like an Ibanez of some kind.

That's not what I said (or even implied) and you know it. To me that sounds like your originals band is doing it all wrong, or you covers band has some lucky breaks that allow you to skip some of the usual costs (like being able to rehearse at someone's house for free). My originals band has had a good year so far, and while we may not be commanding £800+ a gig yet, we've had some very well paying ones which means that I've just been able to pay for a production run of 2 designs of T-shirts and limited edition CD single which will tide us over until the album comes out next year. We'll make a decent profit on this which will in turn pay for the production costs for the aforementioned album. IMO if I can be in a band that can do this then anyone can. You just need to have the enthusiasm.

My reading of the OP is that they were asking what kinds of cabs people were using along with the genre and playing style. I stated that my preference was for no cabs, what I should have added is that I play post-punk/goth and mostly (but not exclusively) with a pick. In this genre no backline is becoming increasingly the norm. My band did a couple of all-day events earlier this year. At the first not a single act had any kind of backline, and the FoH sound seemed all the better and more evenly balanced for it. It's certainly produced the best sounding phone video of my band that I have seen to date. At the second only one of the acts had any amps and they most definitely had the most uneven sound of the day.

What I was trying to imply was that, for me, the only reason the chose a specific type of cab(s) for a particular genre of music is for the image. For the sorts of gigs I play my choice of both amps and cabs make no contribution to what the audience hear FoH. Since for one of my bands our image is for an empty stage I don't use any cabs and go straight into the PA.

IME unless you can actually see which terminal is connected to which contact on a jack socket, it is always best practice to use a multimeter to check.

Why not? Did you choose to play for free? Did you not think to ask to be paid? Or were your band simply not entertaining enough for the promotors or venue to consider you worth paying? Unless my band(s) had deliberately chosen to play for free, we'd always be paid at least enough to cover the expenses of playing and promoting the gig. This is from when I first started gigging in 1980 right up to the present day. In those early days when we were all either students or unemployed, lots of the gigs that we played would have been impossible to do if there was no payment involved due to equipment hire or travel costs. Also based on my experience, I'm still not convinced that covers gigs pay as well for the time effort and general expenses that need to be put in compared with a well organised originals band.

Or you could chose to play in an originals band, where unless you deliberately decide to play venues that don't normally put on live music almost everywhere you will want to play will have an in-house PA and lights complete with someone to work them for you.

Next Saturday Hurtsfall will be playing as part of the Oxjam Beeston festival: We're down as playing The White Lion at 6.00pm but given that's it's outside (albeit under cover), we're a band with a lot of technology, and the current forecast is for rain, that might change. On the plus side we should have a load of shiny new merch to sell, including one item that won't be on-line and only available from us at gigs.

My preferred bass sound is to do all the tone shaping I want in my Line6 Helix and then dispense with back-line entirely and go straight into the PA.

That's the data base that iTunes uses to get its ID3 tags lying to us again. And "Squashed Things On The Road" was originally the B-Side of their 1980 single "The Haunted Tearooms" although IIRC the version on the album which did come out in 1982 was a new recording.

If you want to stick to just 1982 these are all superior (and more memorable) bass lines than the one in the OP: Squashed Things In The Road by The Dancing Did Somewhere by Danse Society Life In Tokyo and Quiet Life by Japan (in fact everything off the Quiet Life album) Steppin' Out by Joe Jackson She's In Parties by Bauhaus

But compared with how poorly some other members partners have done previously in this thread, that's pretty good. Especially considering that she knew the names of several bass players that I didn't.

Helix Floor with nothing else. I did toy with the idea of adding my Linn Adrenalinn, but it turned out to be too much hassle for slightly improved sounds on a couple of songs. In an ideal world Line6 would add a MIDI-triggered filter/gate to the Helix and I would be an even happier chap. Until that happens I'll make do without. I've realised for quite a long time that playing live is not about trying to exactly replicate the sound of the band in the studio.

My girlfriend managed to name ten bass players well within 5 minutes and without needing to include me. Some (mostly from 90s nu-metal bands) were people I didn't know my name and had to check to make sure they actually were bass players!

To the OP. The simplest thing to do is to take the price of the item plus the cost of the shipping and then add 25% to the total. Is it still significantly cheaper than buying from a UK retailer? My rule of thumb for buying from outside the UK is don't unless it is something that is extremely difficult or impossible to get through the manufacturer's standard export channels. IME anything that looks like a bargain compared with the UK price won't once you have added shipping, VAT, import duty and the carrier's handling fee. Also if something should go wrong or it needs to be returned it could end up more hassle than it is worth.

IIRC the threshold at which VAT in particular applies is higher on goods brought back personally as opposed being sent by a delivery service. You need to go on the relevant Gov.uk pages and check what these are.

Are you intending to run both amps at the same time or is the second simply there as quick backup should anything go wrong with the first? If both are going to be on simultaneously you may need to increase the ventilation in the case.

I doubt I'd have recognised Jason Momoa, and if I had it would have been as Aquaman rather than a bass player.

I didn't even recognise the band, and after doing a reverse image search I know why. A band I had zero interest in back in the day and even less now.

If you make a narrower enclosure you will need to put adequate ventilation grills both sides and the back. Take a look at the owners manual for you amp.

Looking at the manual for this amp it appears to be exactly 1U high and requires 4" either side for ventilation which means it may have been designed to fit into a standard 19" rack case. Were rack ears ever available for it?

The unfortunately it's not a rack case, as the format is strictly 19" wide.

Nothing stopping you trying the guitar version. There are usually good reasons for not putting bass guitar through guitar amps at gig volumes but if it's modelling you can't break anything. The worst that can happen is you won't like the sound. Remember that a lot of "classic" bass amps are simply a guitar amp with a different name on the front and maybe the EQ frequencies shifted down. Apart from the Dark Glass pre-amp model, I don't use any bass-centric amps or effects in my patches on the Helix, and I do use a few guitar amp and combo models all of which would probably break if was to use the real thing at gig volumes.

You'd be surprised how many musicians can't even manage this. On the occasions that The Terrortones had to use dep drummers or guitarists, the instruction would be that ideally we'd like them to wear a black leather biker jacket, black T-shirt, black jeans and black boots, but failing that, then a plain black T-shirt and jeans with no obvious visible band or brand logos would suffice and no trainers for the guitarist. The number of people who either couldn't or wouldn't follow this simple instruction was staggering.