BigRedX

I certainly wouldn't want to be putting anything in the overhead lockers if it didn't have something like a Mono case as the minimum protection.

Bu if your are betting on the fact you'll never need to make a claim, you are probably better off not paying out for insurance at all (unless it is a legal requirement), because paying for crap insurance is definitely a waste of money.

IME you have to hit a royalty payment threshold in order to be eligible for this. Most bands that are just getting performance royalties from gigs don't manage it - certainly the Terrortones never quite made it even in our most prolific gigging years. However a band that I was in during the 80s recorded a 3-track session that was broadcast once on Radio Trent, which did generate enough performance royalties to be eligible for a (very small) share from the unlogged royalty fund for the next 2 or 3 years.

This. I'm sure that quite a few of the writers of the cover versions you do are not multi-millionaire superstars, while the few pence that your cover is going to earn them isn't much on its own it all adds up. After all if your band is earning money out of playing other people's songs isn't it only fair that you should report this - especially since the money they get won't be coming out of your pockets?

Bu as I said previously in the past amps were considerably less powerful, and jack plugs and sockets were (and still are) fine for 100W and less. These days I would consider any new bass amp or cab that wasn't fitted with Speakons as a serious piece of kit.

If you are the only band playing, the £6.00 is divided between the songs submitted in your set list. If you play 12 songs the royalty will be 50p per song. If those 12 songs are made up of 8 originals and 4 covers, you will get 8 x 50p = £4.00. The other £2.00 will got to the writers of the cover versions you played. Also that £4.00 will be divided between all the song writers at 50p per song. If you are a 4-piece band and all your songs are credited equally to all 4 members, then you’ll get £1.00 each. Obviously if the songwriting credits are different for each song then it gets much more complicated. Also if you have a publisher they will also get a cut of your performance royalties dependent on what your deal with them is. I hope that all makes sense!

It depends on the gig. There is a specific category for Pubs & Clubs which is a fixed rate of £6 a gig divided up between all the songs played. And yes you could potentially get more money than the other bands playing that night by doing lots of short songs, but IME bands at the Pub & Clubs gig level rarely bother with submitting set lists to the PRS, so usually the full £6 goes to the one band that does and is evenly distributed between all the songs in the submitted list. You are supposed to fill in the details of other bands on the bill in the section where you put in the venue details but it isn't a compulsory field to complete. There is a completely separate rate for "Concert Venues and Festivals" which requires filling in an XLS spread sheet and this might take timings (if known) into consideration.

Song lengths are only important when it comes to performance royalties for the playing of recorded music (usually on broadcast radio or TV) where the length of the performance is a known quantity. Yes the PRS ask you for the length of a song when you register it with them, but you don't need to fill it it, and it can only be accurate for a particular recorded performance. They don't ask for specific song lengths when you supply a set list for a gig. Therefore they don't know where you have added another couple of minutes to a song for extended solos or repeats of the final chorus or conversely have removed a minute or so by trimming off the atmospheric recorded intro that doesn't work at a gig. From looking at The Terrortones royalty statements, it is obvious that we have been paid by number of songs as all the songs played at a particular gig have attracted the same amount of Royalties, irrespective of the length we have submitted for the recorded versions.

From analysis of my PRS statements, song length isn't important when it comes to Pubs and Clubs gigs, just the number of songs played. Because it's a live performance there is no way of knowing if the version of the song is going to be the same as the recorded one with regards length and therefore it isn't taken into consideration. PRS payments are for composers only. If you are not one of the song writers you won't get any PRS royalties.

Yes it does. The standard Pubs and Clubs royalties are based on a single payment of £6.00 per gig which is distributed between the number of songs played by all the bands playing on a particular night. Unless the on-line form has changed since I last had to complete one, they ask for a list of all the songs that you have played (both originals and covers) and also the names of any other bands that played on the same night. Of course it depends on all the bands submitting a set list, and IME if a band doesn't submit a set list then they don't get included in the payout. In the past The Terrortones have played gigs with 2-4 other bands on the bill, but when we've looked at our subsequent royalty statements it is obvious that we've received all of the £6.00 payment for some gigs even when there were other bands on the bill and we have included them in the gig details.

I would check that the mailbox hasn't filled up and is blocking the receipt of any emails. IME these types of accounts have very limited email facilities and although they can be set up to automatically forward and then delete incoming email, the process is less than straightforward. A deluge of emails from a popular thread could well have caused your mailbox to reach its maximum.

But that was from the days when an instrument amp rated at over 100W was a very rare beast indeed. Times have moved on, and now when 300W seems to be the entry level for a gig-worthy bass amp, it makes far more sense to go with an updated and up-rated connector.

Lovely!

I remain unconvinced about the tonal qualities of low-scale strings tuned higher than G. I just about works for the B and E strings on a 30" Fender Bass VI, but on longer scales the high C and above string always sound like a cheap jazz guitar and don't sit properly in the bass register/tonality.

What colour is the back of the neck? Both photographs have cleverly avoided showing it.

Useful to know. When tried one in the shop it seemed considerably louder than the competition, but obviously that still isn't loud enough in a real acoustic gig situation. However in my recommendation of the TB10 I was assuming that the OP would be using it with some sort of amplification, and was implying that IMO this was the benchmark for a decent electro-acoustic bass guitar.

If you need to be completely un-amplified you are going to need a double bass. Acoustic bass guitars simply aren't loud enough to compete with anything more than a single quiet (not strummed) acoustic guitar because the body isn't big enough to project the sound. Low notes and a decent volume requires a large body, hence the size of the double bass. There are a few very large bodied acoustic guitars like the Earthwood Bass, but they are very rare and expensive. The other issue you will come across is that decent small-bodied acoustic basses (one you will be using with an amp) tend to cost a lot more than an equivalent quality electro-acoustic guitar, partly because they aren't so popular and also because once again amplifying low notes is more complicated than a standard guitar. Unless you get very lucky with something like a bargain-priced second hand Takamine TB10, expect to pay at least £1k to get something of the equivalent quality to a £350 electro-acoustic 6-string guitar. TBH if you are going to have to reply on amplification you might as well use your favourite electric bass and a small and unobtrusive combo. It will sound better and you won't have to worry about feedback or excessive handling noise from cheap piezo pickup systems.

But he is using a Wallace Valve amp so there will be compression on his signal whether or not he has a dedicated compressor on his pedal board.

Ideally you should be using Speakon connectors for all your amp to cab wiring. It's a more robust connector capable of carrying the sorts of currents that modern high-wattage amps put out, plus it is a locking connector so you won't get any problems with cables pulling out of their sockets and potentially shorting out. If you need good quality speaker cables making up OBBM here on Basschat is the man to contact.

When this is what the majority of the punters seem to want, I can't really blame them. I've seen them play "Cries From The Midnight Circus" once and apart from that everything else has been SF Sorrow and earlier. I did speak to Phil May after one of their 40th anniversary gigs about the possibility of doing some of the 70s songs and his reply was that without a 70s biased line-up that wasn't going to happen...

Is that when you were in the band? My favourite albums are from Parachute to Savage Eye, so that's the material I'd want to have seen them play. The current line up is very good, as their latest album proves, but they rarely play anything that wasn't written in the 60s.

For gigs I wasn't able to attend at the time... 1. Greenslade at Loughborough University Students Union some time in the mid-70s. I wasn't a student and couldn't persuade anyone to sign me in, so I didn't get to see this gig. 2. The Pretty Things, any time between 1969 and 1976. 3. The Human League, any gig in 1978, 1979 or 1980. 4. Cabaret Voltaire in 1979 or 1980 when Chris Watson was still in the band and one where they didn't suffer from major technical problems. Gigs I'd like to be able to see again... 1. Young Marble Giants at The Boat Club, Nottingham 1980. (In fact just about any of the gigs I went to in 1980 at either The Boat Club or The Ad-Lib Club. They were all great gigs by bands that were still relatively unknown and so I wasn't able to appreciate at the time just how important some of them would turn out to be). 2. None So Blind any time between 1981 and 1983. Either one of the Nottingham University Buttery Bar gigs, or Chesterfield Art College in December 1983, when I would politely decline their request to do the lighting and be able watch and enjoy the performance from the audience.

Was this for your car?

I would have liked to pick something a little less obvious (for me), but for me the album of 2017 has to be "Under Your Spell" by The Birthday Massacre. I've been a fan since I first heard them in 2005, and each album has pretty much been my favourite album of the year when it was released. This year's runners up were: "Darkness Falls Upon The Light" by Luxury Stranger, and "Fake Sugar" by Beth Ditto.

The two halves should be identical, otherwise the pickup won't be humbucking.