BigRedX

My band has done it and it was pretty successful too. This is what we discovered: 1. Anything other than Friday or Saturday night is a complete waste of time, money and effort, unless you have a suitable venue and enough money to be booking bands who are well known enough to entice people out on a school night. 2. Pick a format that works for you and stick with it. Decide whether you want covers bands, originals bands or an open mic night, if you are looking to build up a regular audience, because IME there is only a little crossover between the three. 3. Start small and grow carefully. There's a point at which something which is doing a turnover of a few hundred pounds an event suddenly turns into something that requires a lot more financial risk if you want to carry on expanding. Don't get too over-ambitious. And this is what we actually did: We made it work by using a venue that was already putting on bands although so they were already set up with an in-house PA and a roster of people to work it. We got a once a month Friday night slot with a percentage of the bar takings that was used for publicity and to pay the bands. We put on bands in a very specific genre rockabilly/psychobilly/garage rock so that over the months people knew what to expect and we could be a little more daring with our choices of headlining bands once we had established an regular audience. We started off by booking reasonably well-known up and coming bands from out of town (such as Pussycat & The Dirty Johnsons, The Franceens, The Ricochets), with our band plus another popular local band as support. That way we could maximise our audience for the evening. We called in a lot of favours from people we knew for poster design and general publicity, as well as having proper DJs to play music between the bands rather than just relying on an iPod playlist. It helped that we made it into a proper themed evening, where it was more than just a few bands playing in a pub. After the first 6 months people could simply show up even if they hadn't heard of any of the bands before, but know that if they had enjoyed it last month, they were going to enjoy it this month as well. Good luck!

Unless someone is going to be permanently collating the information into the first post of the thread, pretty soon it's going to be very difficult finding the info that you want from several hundred posts. Forum software isn't the best way of displaying this information IMO. Just have a look at the recommended luthiers and amp tech threads.

Why is the centre section of the body un-coloured and stripy, when it's a bolt-on neck (that isn't stripy)?

As I have said many times before, the various different Thunderbird models available from Gibson, Epiphone and others have very little in common with each other except for the basic body shape. They vary considerably in construction, woods, electronics and hardware. Because of this, just because you like one version doesn't mean you'll like any of the others. My advice would be to go and play as many different ones as he can, and see what suits him the best. Having said that, there is a new Epiphone model coming out later this year which appears to be the best attempt yet to get close to the original 1960s Gibson version (if that is important to him).

My experience with Brandoni is from a guitarist who had a NOS Vox guitar made up from parts that they supplied, and AFAIK that was the main bit of their business. If they also do bog standard kits I wasn't aware of that.

[quote name='EliasMooseblaster' timestamp='1486475528' post='3232100'] I have no experience of the kits from KBG, but the Precision copy which I have owned for about 15 years, and which was my main bass for the majority of those years, was built from a kit. Essentially, it's like doing a parts build, except that all the parts come to you in the same box, so you don't get much scope to customise what you get. I got mine from a company called Brandoni - no idea if they're still active. I stripped it down and gave it a refurb a few years ago, but apart from that brief period, it's remained in active service throughout and it's an excellent instrument. (There are some "before" and "after" photos up at [url="https://thecrowfrombelow.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/precision-bass-refurb/"]https://thecrowfromb...on-bass-refurb/[/url]) [/quote] From what I've seen of Brandoni (and yes AFAIK they are still going) they are in completely different league to the kit linked to in the OP.

[quote name='markdavid' timestamp='1486404573' post='3231527'] Hi All Was having a band practice the other day and we recorded some of it , I dialled in a nice gritty overdriven tone, I was initially planning on just having a tiny bit of overdrive but once the rest of the band came in the overdrive effect almost seemed to dissapear and I ended up cranking the drive a lot higher, eq wise I boosted the highs to about 3 o click (+12db) and the mids i turned the selector to 2khz and up to about 2 o clock (+9db) and cut the lows to about the 10 o click position (-9db) In practice it sounded great, gritty and never lost in the mix , however when I played back the recording the bass tone was quite dark and lacked bite, seemed to be all lows and low mids, I know there is a simple explanation to this , just wondering what it is , thanks [/quote] Is that when you are listening to the recorded bass in isolation or in the full recorded band mix?

[quote name='Dan Dare' timestamp='1486466700' post='3231993'] You said it - "The guitarist wrote the music". It doesn't have to be an "orchestra or pit band" for there to be arrangements and it isn't "arrogant" for a writer of a piece of music to visualise the entire piece, rather than just a simple melody/top line and to want parts played in a certain way. Why, because it's "pop or rock", does that mean it has to be a free for all? Afraid you're being naïve. [/quote] [quote name='Bassassin' timestamp='1486468750' post='3232016'] I agree with this - in my band I compose the music, apart from the vocals - I absolutely don't want a guitarist & drummer deciding to discard my work & rewrite the parts just because it's "their" instrument. They get a degree of free rein to interpret parts - and I'm always open to input & trying different ideas & approaches - but the bottom line is the song's the song and once it becomes a performance or full band recording, [i]everyone[/i] serves the song. [/quote] Very much both of these. I write nearly all of the music for my band and the majority of the time I have a pretty good idea what I would like the other instruments to play in the songs. I've been in bands that write with everyone contributing and jamming the structure out and IME there is almost always far too much flab in the songs and nothing is ever tightly focused like a good arrangement will be. Also IME the right musicians for most bands aren't "ten a penny" and sometimes it is better to make do with someone who maybe isn't quite up to the job rather than no-one and consequently having to put the band on hold while a suitable replacement is found. From the band PoV it's always better to have a suitable replacement ready before discarding any under-performing members. IMO the song and the band as a whole comes first and the individual musicians very much second.

I think it is very easy to take the high moral ground on the part of the existing bass player without knowing all the details. Lets face it if you're not a particularly competent player you might be quite glad that someone else is coming up with the bass lines for you to play and is going to be playing them in the studio where it really matters. Lets face it too - live unless you are persistently playing out of tune and/or out of time, if you are not the singer or the main melodic instrument no-one is probably going to notice. Maybe the existing bass player looks good on stage. We just don't know.

If it's a lacquered finish, then whatever you would use for the rest of the bass.

[quote name='tauzero' timestamp='1486452247' post='3231795'] My Ebay | Account | Communication preferences [/quote] I looked there. AFAICS none of the options cover this particular situation.

That went relatively cheaply in the end - probably because the seller wasn't prepared to ship it.

I've been making up my own cables since I got my first electric guitar back in the mid 70s. However when I needed some new ones 5 years ago, I found that OBBM was only slightly more expensive than the cost of the components to make my own, and certainly after I'd figured in the cost of my time to do it, he was much cheaper! These days I'd only be making up my own cables again if I had a large number to do (at least 50) and a lot of them were very specific lengths and connector combinations. Otherwise It's a lot less hassle (and more me more cost-effective) to pay for someone like OBBM to make them for me.

[quote name='radiophonic' timestamp='1486072243' post='3229099'] Well thanks for that last bit. Sounds like a big no no. I've had similar bad experiences, but not in Nottingham! Live would be ideal vibe-wise, provided the engineer was up to the job of balancing isolation and room sound. We're very much a live band but the prog tendencies of a couple of band members and having a couple of 'proper' musicians in the band means we'd need a fair amount of control due to the vagaries of guitar sound switching and people playing more than one instrument in the same song (violin + keys primarily). I'd imagined going live in one room as a group to get the basic dynamics right, keeping a bed track of percussion, bass and rhythm guitar and then building it up. The line-up is Vocals, Guitars, Bass, Keys (emulating Organ and Harpsichord mostly, plus a few wind instruments), Violin and percussion (no drum kit though). [/quote] I that case I would suggest that you go and have a look at JT Soar and First Love studios, have a chat with the engineers and see which of them has the right attitude, vibe and is sympathetic to what you want to do.

I assume the truss-rod adjustment is at the body end of the neck?

Can you not choose to solder to either the top or bottom set of contacts? Or a mixture of both? That might make it a bit easier.

Only just seen this thread... To the OP what is your band line-up in terms of instruments and how do you you want to record - all together in the same room or are you happy tracking the instruments one or two at a time? If you want to record a whole band in one go then you really need to be looking at JT Soar, as they are one of the few places in Nottingham that have a live room big enough. My band recorded our album [url=https://terrortones.bandcamp.com]SnakeOil For Snakes[/url] there, mostly live with just vocal and theremin overdubs. The only other Nottingham studio that I know of with an equally big live room is First Love, but I haven't recorded there for several years now since the previous owner left so I don't know how good they are any more. If you are happy to track one or two instruments at a time there's plenty you can try. The most important thing (as with any studio these days) is that you get on with the engineer. The problem is that these kinds of places open and close with alarming rapidity so most of the ones I would like to recommend no longer exist. You could try Pyrex who I've used recently and have been competent and friendly. [b]AVOID[/b] Confetti. It's a great looking studio with a lot of excellent and impressive gear, but because it is attached to a teaching facility, most of the people engineering the session will be students so the quality is very variable. And IME the teachers aren't all that much better. I've had the misfortune to record there twice. After the disaster of the first session where almost nothing we did was usable and everything except the hi-hats and some bass guitar had to be either replaced with samples or re-recorded at home, I vowed never to use them again. However my band were asked to contribute a track to a compilation album and the record label who were paying for the studio time had struck a deal with Confetti so we had to record there. The engineers at the tracking session were inflexible about how they wanted to record the band so we were all in separate rooms on headphones. It shows in the "performance" which doesn't have the immediacy of our other recordings where we all played together in the same room at the same time. Also because the engineers were inexperienced we ran out of studio time before recording the vocals and trying to get back in for this an mixing was hard work. None of the mixes produced by Confetti were actually any good, so eventually we got them to give us the audio files and went to another studio to mix at our expense. Even then they somehow managed to loose some of the guitar overdubs, so the finished track didn't didn't sound as we had envisaged, but by then we'd run out of time and were holding up the production of the whole album. Like I said at the beginning. Avoid.

[quote name='Chiliwailer' timestamp='1485958034' post='3228006'] Thanks for the post, I don't have a multi-meter though and would also need a crash course! [/quote] If you are going to be doing your own wiring then a multi-meter or at the very least a continuity tester is an essential piece of kit. That way you can quickly check what the contacts on an unfamiliar switch actually do and then use that to work out what wire needs to go where.

Get your multi-meter out and check the contacts to be sure, but I would suspect that C1 toggles between contact 1 & 2 and C2 between 3 & 4. Then it's just a case of following the diagram. If it's the wrong way around for what you want then simply swap the wires going to contacts 1 & 2 and likewise 3 & 4.

Is wireless actually fast enough for audio rather than just as a control source? Certainly Bluetooth has too much latency to be viable.

A good parametric EQ will also have a Q control which changes how wide the frequency range is.

[quote name='Skol303' timestamp='1485079135' post='3220868'] Writing a song like that no doubt takes more skill than it might seem on the surface. Yes, it's an awful piece of music in some respects. But I can hear it in my head right now and I haven't even needed to click on the YouTube link. That's one helluva ear worm, no doubt about it. Same thing with the Birdie Song. The KLF used a similar approach to Doctorin' The Tardis, as described in their book The Manual (worth a read for anyone interested). Again, they make it sound easy when writing this sort of stuff - and making it work - is actually rather difficult. [/quote] Having read "The Manual" I don't think it's at all easy. The list of things they suggested you would have to do in order to have a manufactured hit required a lot more effort and commitment that most people would be willing to put in. Unsurprisingly only one other artist managed to have a hit using The Manual as a blue print and they only made it to number two - Bring Me Edelweiss by Edelweiss [quote name='TrevorR' timestamp='1485104496' post='3221135'] Of course you know that John Cage's people sued Mike Batt's people over copyright infringement of 4' 33"... [/quote] [url="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-11964995"]A great story, but entirely made up as a publicity stunt, which obviously worked extremely well as people are still believing it[/url] And even if it had been true, any sensible court would never have upheld the claim, as 4' 33" is not a silent piece. Admittedly no music is performed by the musicians for the duration of the piece, but it's actually all about the ambient sounds in the venue when there is no music playing on stage. Mike Batt's "One Minute Silence" is a track on a CD and therefore it will be complete silence.

[quote name='ambient' timestamp='1485449751' post='3224065'] I guess in the right band it'd be ok. It's a bit like those pointless LEDs on Mark King's basses, I can see the point along the side of the fretboard, but not on the front, that's just for the audience, like this. [/quote] And what is wrong with giving the audience something interesting to look at?

[quote name='markstuk' timestamp='1485435161' post='3223936'] Sure.. Although it's not second hand and is a Steinberger clone to boot... :-) [/quote] IIRC at the time the full price for a Wesley acrylic was about £120. And the expensive bit of an acrylic bass is the body. With that teeny tiny "steinberger" body it should be nice and cheap.

[quote name='Sonic_Groove' timestamp='1485434749' post='3223929'] First Album (Real Life) -- Is that an HH amp?? [/quote] Yes it is.