BigRedX

I disagree with that completely. When I got my first really good bass (an Overwater Original) my playing improved pretty much overnight. Since the instrument was no longer putting any limitations on what I could do, it was all down to me.

I think the question of whether the Fender bass sounded better than the competition of the time is entirely subjective. These days we take the P-bass sound for granted as the "benchmark" electric bass sound, but as I said in my previous post if you listen to rockabilly and rock n roll records of the time the mixes change to accommodate the different sounding electric bass guitar instead of the upright bass. The Fender bass became established off the reputation of the Fender's other solid bodied instruments rather than because there was anything intrinsically superior about them at the time of their introduction. Everything after that is about familiarity.

And the bassists in the bands I grew up listening to in the 70s played Rickenbackers or Gibsons.

The Fender P wasn't the first. Paul Tutmarc's Audiotex Model 736 pre-dates Fender's offerings by many years. However, Fender's success with their solid electric guitars paved the way for the Precision Bass. Personally I don't think that the P bass slots into the mix as seamlessly as others would have you believe. Listen to rockabilly records from the 50s and the mixes are different to allow for the change from traditional upright bass to Fender's solid-bodied electric bass guitar. And for recognisable bass sounds what about the Rickenbacker 4001? It also had the advantage of being visually much more distinctive than Fender's rather anonymous offerings.

No worse than the majority of late 70s Fenders.

Ashdown certainly weren't interested in fixing the problems on my Superfly.

True the modelling gear can be expensive, my current rig, consisting of a Line6 Helix and RCF745 cost £2000 when I bought it new a year ago. However they are pretty much at the top end of the the range, and you now you can get a Helix Stomp and a cheaper FRFR for about half that. I can't recall the last time I did a gig where there bass wasn't DI'd into the PA, and at several gigs I played before I switched to the new set up I had been asked to turn my amp down to such an extent that unless I stood directly in front of it, I could hear myself better though the fold back for the guitarist or the keyboard player! It was at this point that I started looking seriously at FRFR powered cabs. For me it was no brainer - I had spent over £2000 on my last serious bass-only rig and most of that was second hand prices, and with a bit of luck when I sell it along with my guitar rig I will get back what I spent on the Helix and RCF cab. The new set up is a fraction of the size of my old rig and does everything need for guitar as well as bass sounds.

Those can't be the latest tour pics as Tony Hadley is no longer singing with them according to the Spandau Ballet web site. And even if he's not using IEM from my experience of playing on big stages (and they look like big stages) you need to be directly in front and within a couple of metres of your rig to able to hear it over the sound of the PA monitors.

If I had a road crew to move it all for me and was playing in a band where having an impressive looking backline was part of the stage show then I probably would. Otherwise I really can't see the point. Also I don't really see Spandau Ballet as being a wall of amps rock n roll kind of band. And it certainly is overdone, since AFAICS nothing other than the bass, the phase 90 (when it is switched on) and maybe the amp A (depending on where in the amp signal path the DI feed is coming from) will be making any contribution to the FoH sound. If the schematic is correct, he can't even be using amp switch since as soon as he switches from amp A to the Amp B+C combination there will no longer be any feed to the PA. Are there any photos of Martin Kemp from the tour where he is using this gig so we can see if he's using IEM?

You probably need to read this thread.

Some of that is harsh but true. However for an originals project 4 months to write and release 9 songs isn't unreasonable (depending on the songs of course). For the majority of new originals bands a handful of 25-30 minute support slots would the way to ease into gigging. No one is going to want to see an unknown band band with unfamiliar songs playing for any longer. IME originals bands don't need a PA. The venues they play nearly always have them. In the last 10 years of gigging with originals bands I have done less than a handful of gigs at venues that didn't have an in-house PA and engineer to drive it.

And even if he isn't using IEM, from my experience, on all but the tiniest of stages with the most rudimentary vocals only monitoring systems, I could only ever hear what was coming out of my rig (which although not as massive as the one pictured was plenty big enough - two 4 x10 cabs fed from a 1kW amp) when I was standing directly in front of it and significantly closer to it than I was to the monitor wedges.

I was replying to the OP

Apologies if my original post came over being somewhat flippant. I think it would help to give you the correct advice if we knew why you wanted to set up a publishing company? If it is simply for the purpose of collecting "publishing" royalties on your own songs, you don't need one. Just join the PRS and MCPS as a writer member and when you register the songs make the royalty splits add up to 100% between all the writers. If there is no publisher assigned to a song the writer members will get all the royalties. IIRC correctly it actually costs more to be a publisher member of the PRS and MCPS than it does to be a writer member, so there is no financial advantage. Signing to a good, well-established publishing company can have advantages if you want to get others to cover your songs or have a better chance of them being picked up for use in TV/film/game soundtracks, or if you think it can be used as a stepping stone to getting a record contract (does that even happen nowadays?) However the publishers need to have all the contacts to be able to get your songs listen to by the right people, and I would expect a sizeable amount of cash as an advance on signing. The Terrortones had a number of small publishing companies interested in us from the release of our first single onwards, but when we questioned them closely on exactly what they were going to do with the songs to justify them taking between 20% and 50% of the royalties, they quickly stopped talking to us. The only time I can think that having your own publishing company could be an advantage would be if you are going to use a US based PRO to collect your US royalties as I believe they will keep back 50% of all performance royalties on works that do not have a publisher assigned to them. This shouldn't be an issue if you are using a non-US PRO such as the PRS to collect your US royalties. I hope that is more useful.

Having had another read of your OP, If the backing tracks are to replace your current keyboard player, why don't you get him to make them?

That is what I do. Line6 Helix and an RCF745 FRFR.

@police squad Don't do parts without any timing reference. Get your drummer to subtly click through the intro part to keep everything in time. It doesn't need to be a full quarter note click, half or even just a beat at the beginning of each bar will suffice. We used to do a song with an 8 bar unaccompanied guitar intro followed by another 8 bars of very minimalist drums. A simple click on the first beat of each bar turned out to be sufficient to keep the guitar part in time. @NancyJohnson Despite the horrific amounts of equipment involved in the band I described - 2 large rack flight cases for the synths and samplers, 1 small rack case for the electronic drum module and drummer's headphone monitoring system, a large flight case for the mixer and associated effects units, plus the multicore and a large flight case full of cable snakes the connect everything up, there were certain advantages to running a live backing in that we could also do real-time automated control of the live instrument and vocal effects as well as those for the sequenced sounds. No having pedal boards cluttering up the stage or worrying about being in the right place at the right time to hit the correct pedal to change sounds made for a much more interesting and energetic live performance. For the current band I play with the backing runs continuously with a couple of programmed stops where the singer knows he's going to want to talk to the audience and I start it going again on his nod. Gaps between songs are kept to a minimum - ones with atmospheric intros pretty much run into the end of the track before. It's all done in Apple Logic using track markers and meta-events, which allows me to stop between songs if necessary, skip tracks with a simple keyboard command, and have all the "unused" songs added to end of the official set as possible encores. The next refinement will be to use the Helix to control all that so I don't even have to look at the laptop on stage.

Since AFAICS only one of the heads is DI'd (the one on the top right) and none of the speakers are mic'd up it's all a bit pointless.

I would completely disagree with this. While it is nice to be able to hear everything, IME unless the rhythmic element is solely on the backing, you really don't need to be able to hear it. Every band I've been in that has used both backing tracks and a drummer, the drummer plays to the click and the rest of the band play to the drummer. If there are sections with no drums but other live instruments the drummer provides a subtle click (sticks or hit hats) for the rest of the band to follow and keep in sync. Of course making this work does require a drummer who can play to a click track. That's not as easy as you might think. While every other musician in a band is used to playing in time to the drums you'll find that because the drummer normally sets the pace of the band, they very often don't have the experience of having to keep in time and sync with something else. Also when the drummer is perfectly in time with the click it will tend to be inaudible because it is being masked by the sounds of the drums themselves.

@NancyJohnson The backing tracks getting lost in the mix isn't necessarily the PA engineer's fault. It can be difficult enough to mix a four piece band with complex arrangements without throwing in extra taped or sequenced backing for which there are no visual clues coming from on stage. The only time I have been in a band that used backing tracks and were able in integrate them properly into the live mix, we had our own sound engineer who was essentially a fifth member of the band who would mix the sequenced parts and drum samples from our own mixing desk which was fed from separate multicore from the various synth and samplers on stage. However it made for a massively complex set up which took the the best part of an hour to rig at each gig. Not something I'd be massively keen to go back to unless my band was big enough to be selling out 500+ capacity venues.

Just because it's on the recording doesn't mean that it needs to be on the live version. One of the bands I'm in currently uses backing tracks. It works because we've all been playing in bands that use them before and the set up is compact and doesn't require any at the gig assembly. We have a 3U flight case that holds the laptop, audio/MIDI interface, DI boxes all wired up to a front panel patch bay. We send two balanced XLR feeds to the PA and a click-track to the drummer's headphone amp. It takes less than 5 minutes to set up at a gig. However, other than at really big gigs where we are playing through a massive PA system once the band kicks in most of the backing is lost in the overall mix. Apart from a couple of intros and one middle 8 that are all backing track, we can play all the songs perfectly well without it, and I doubt if anyone other than the the most hard-core fans would notice.

Make them yourself. Unless you are playing the songs EXACTLY like the version(s) you are covering in terms of arrangement, key and actual notes being played by the live instruments you are going to need to to change your backing to match. I've spent about half my gigging life playing in bands that use sequenced or pre-recorded backing and although they were all originals bands, when I have done covers we programmed or recorded our own backing to suit our arrangement of the song. The one time I tried using a pre-programmed backing track I had to make so many alterations in order to get it to work within the context of the band I ended up redoing most of it from scratch.

There's already a pre-amp built into your bass amplifier. If it's not doing it for you then you probably have the wrong amplifier.

Made by someone whose seen an Andreas Shark Bass. Once. From a distance.