BigRedX

I must also be one of the few people who doesn't like autographed records. I can remember being massively disappointed to discover that having waited several weeks to get my (only available by mail order) copy of the Eyes Of Christ 7" single by Vice Versa (who were about to rebrand themselves as ABC and go onto much bigger things) then found that the band had seen fit to deface the cover with their names.

I only started buying band merch in the last 10 years when the band(s) is was in were supporting ones I liked and I had somewhere to safely put my purchases (with my gear) while I enjoyed the gig. Before that from the mid 70s onwards I have nothing other my memories from the gigs I attended. Most of the time after I had scraped together the money for the ticket I rarely had enough left over to buy a drink at the gig let alone a T-shirt or anything else. And TBH I can't remember merch being sold at a lot of the gigs that I went to - especially in the 80s - other than the dodgy T-shirts and posters being hawked outside as I was going home. For me it always the records, which I already had before I went to the gig and the experience of being at the gig, rather than the associated merch and memorabilia that interested me.

Either you aren't that bothered about getting paid, or you are doing it wrong.

Whichever version sounds best to my ears. I like it when the remastered versions of the CDs add non-album singles and b-sides, but then they go and spoil it by also including demos, live versions and previously unreleased songs that would have been better left in the archives. There is usually a good reason why they weren't included on the album in the first place.

And this is why I have almost zero interest in covers bands. I don't think there has been a single song mentioned yet that I would want to have seen/heard being performed by the band that wrote it back in the day when they were still young and sexy, let alone a bunch of middle-aged blokes churring it out in a pub...

Sorry didn't see this before my previous post. Does it really need to be double pole? Can you post your circuit diagram? You might be able to get away with a standard PU sector switch.

What is the switch actually for?

But IME those bassists who say they don't use/need compression, when you look at the signal path from the bass to the audience's ears there is almost always something in there producing compression as a side-effect to whatever else it is doing sonically, or it is being applied post-rig by the PA engineer.

There can also be non-nitro products in the base coats and fillers applied before the nitro top coat(s).

It's all pretty pointless, and it has been said many times on both this thread and others about compression; the only bassists who can guarantee that there is no compression going on in their live bass sound are those who: 1. don't put the bass guitar through the PA 2. don't have any devices with valves in them in the signal path 3. have no devices producing drive or distortion in the signal path 3. can definitely say that they are are not clipping the input circuitry of any device in the the signal path 4. have an amp and speaker with plenty of headroom still available when playing at maximum volume at a gig. Which rules out everyone except those who use a low output passive bass going directly into a non-valve amp with an input level indicator that never comes on, and which is being run well within it's maximum output level and driving speakers rated far in excess of the amps maximum output capabilities.

Are you sure it's Nitro? The symptoms sound very much like a poly finish that is not longer adhering to the underlying wood. There are plenty of recommendations for refinishing (IMO you can't go wrong with Sims Custom) but they do tend to be pricey. If you want to look at cutting the cost, think about stripping the old finish off yourself (that's the nasty time-consuming bit that more refinishing services charge the earth for) although you will need to be careful if it's a blockboard body.

Any venue that puts on or even plays pre-recorded music (jukebox, computer playlist etc.) has to have a PRS licence and therefore will be covered. I think the only gigs I haven't received a pubs and clubs payment for, was a very dodgy squat-style venue in Liverpool and a gig done in someone's house.

That's good to know. It's been a while since I last submitted a set list for the PRS. This is handled by other band members in the two bands I currently play with. I believe that the gig reporting system has changed since I last did it, which may make it easier than before. Previously it was simple to find the songs that you had written, and also if your set list only changed slightly you could start a new submission by copying a previously submitted set list. However as I said, tracking down the correct song when it wasn't written by yourself or another member of your band could be a confusing and time-intensive process.

In the days when I did the PRS gig reporting for The Terrortones I think the only times I had problems with the set list was when it was for some weird venue that didn't actually have a PRS licence. Looking at my PRS royalties breakdowns, the vast majority of gigs that we did we were the only band who supplied a set list and consequently we got the full £6.00. Sad to say, but if I was in a covers band, unless we played pretty much the same set every gig, I don't think I would bother submitting a PRS set list as the time and effort involved in tracking down the right songs from the PRS database is simply too great. I always diligently included the occasional cover that The Terrortones played, but finding some of them (especially any with a common song title) was a massive effort which involved cross-checking the Discogs and Wikipedia to find out who the song writers were so that I could correctly list the right song. Often making sure I had reported the right cover song from our set took much longer than all of the rest of the process.

If the keyboard and MainStage support MIDI program number mapping, then you can assign consecutive MIDI program numbers to the patches you need in set order without needing to actually move any of the patches. For instance your first three songs might require patches 56, 84, and 2 on the keyboard but MIDI program mapping will allow you to assign MIDI program numbers 1, 2 and 3 to these patches so you can simply use the up selector footswitch to move to the next patch.

So wouldn't you be better off buying a Lakland Skyline Bass instead?

If there is latency in some things but not in others then it would follow that the computer is prioritising some Bluetooth events over others. How far up the list a set of Bluetooth pedals comes then, is anyones guess.

I think eventually one of your gigs will be visited by someone from the PRS...

Yes, and no. The £6.00 is split between all the songs you play, approximately based on their duration. When you submit your set list you should also include all the covers that you play as well. The band leader's share of the royalties will be £6.00 minus the proportion that goes to the writers of the other songs you play. For example if your band plays 10 songs of which two are originals and the rest covers and all the songs (or at least the registered versions) are roughly the same length then he'll get approximately £1.20, so long as there are no other bands on the bill (or if there are they haven't also submitted set lists).

This is wrong. The performance royalties from being played on even local radio are quite substantial. My one quarter split of a song played on BBC Radio Nottingham was a couple of pounds for each play. On 6 Music it was considerably more. Also don't forget if your band is regularly playing live you can get performance royalties from this too. Last time I looked the PRS pubs and clubs rate was £6.00 split between all the songs performed live at a gig. That might not sound like much, but bear in mind that most small bands don't bother to report live performances, so there is a good chance that that whole £6 will go to the songwriters in your band each time you play. Also for bigger gigs and festivals the rate is higher. If you are out gigging regularly it soon adds up. My last band funded all our studio time (3 EPs and a full-length album - approximately 15 days in total) from our PRS royalties, that's roughly one gig a week over 5 years, plus radio play. From 40 years of recording and releasing independent music I now earn a couple of hundred pounds a year from the PRS. It may only be a few pence here and there for each song, but I'm still getting royalties from recordings made and released in the 80s and 90s as well as those I'm making with my current band.

Join the PRS. You'll also be able to collect performance royalties on your songs when you play them live as well as when they get played on the radio or television. A lot of the copyright information supplied by Bandcamp and other on-line music services such as aggregators is aimed at musicians and bands in the US where the mechanism for collecting performance royalties is somewhat different to that in the UK and Europe. Don't sign up for any service on-line that purports to collect your performance royalties for you. If you are a PRS member you won't need it. In the UK you don't need a publisher. All performance royalties go to yourself (and you co-writers) unless you have specifically assigned a proportion to a publisher. In the US it is somewhat different as a lot of collection agencies will assume that you have a publisher and hold back the publisher's share. You can get around this by setting up your own publishing company and assigning them a proportion of the performance royalties. However it is only cost effective if one of your songs is picked up to be used on a US film or TV show.

Is Bluetooth fast enough for timing-critical operations like patch changing? In the days when I used to automate all my band's patch changes with our MIDI sequencer, one of the things that we spend a lot of time on was getting the program change commands in exactly the right place for a glitch free performance. Often we'd be moving things forwards a back by the smallest MIDI timing increments to find to optimal position for each one. My understanding of Bluetooth is that there is too much latency for timing-critical operations, and that the latency is not consistent depending on what other operations the two Bluetooth devices are also doing at the same time. I'd get a proper set of MIDI pedals and MIDI interface to connect to the computer to do this. Does the audio interface you are using on the computer not already have MIDI?

That's pretty much how my Hondo Alien sounded, particularly once I'd replaced the horrible bridge with a proper Schaller one. Plenty of clarity and a piano-y sound with round-wound strings - very suitable for post-punk bass lines.

I would suspect two reasons: 1. Not everyone liked them or understood how they worked properly. I bought a 5-string Overwater Original fretless from a prolific session bassist where the pre-amp had been replaced with a Ken Smith one. 2. They eat through batteries compared with modern designs. I much preferred the sound of my fretted Overwater with the filter pre-amp to the one with the Smith, but I can see/hear how they wouldn't be for everyone.

Even that is no guarantee. I had 500 copies of my band's LP on vinyl delivered on a pallet from the pressing plant in France. By the time they reached me the pallet had been smashed to bits and every single box had damaged records in it.