BigRedX

Surely you shouldn't need a router as the mixer base and the iPad ought to make their own one-to-one network? In which case using it somewhere where there isn't "conventional" WiFi will actually be better since they won't be competing with everyone else's devices for channel bandwidth.

I currently own 7 basses (it used to be over 30) and my band does about 40 gigs a year. I take the same two basses to all my current gigs - Warwick Star Bass 5-string which has the right look for the band and the red Gus G3 5-string as a back up. Although the others don't get much live band use right now, I did use 2 of them in the studio when we made our most recent album and just because I don't play them a lot at the moment, doesn't mean that one of them won't suddenly become my main bass in the future if I was to do something different music-wise.

[quote name='RhysP' timestamp='1452030380' post='2945784'] That's more like it - people I've not heard of! (Except Hadrien Feraud & Nick Oliveri who have been around for quite a while so they don't count). [/quote] And the fact that every Hadrien Feraud recording I've heard sounds like an out-take from a 1974 Greenslade album...

The thing with these small esoteric bass amplification brands is that they are much more about the people who design and and create them then they are about the brand name. So when a big company comes along and buys up one of them, all they seem to end up with is some no longer cutter edge designs, and as soon as the old owners non-compete period expires, they are back with newer and better products under a new name. Fender and Genz Benz being a case in point.

Two things occur to me. Firstly it was a lot easier to be ground-breaking and influential when your instrument and chosen medium was still new and seen as radical maybe even dangerous. As it becomes more and more mainstream, comfort and complacency set in. These things also go in waves and/or cycles. Right now popular music is mostly looking to the past and repurposing it in slightly different ways rather than tearing up the rules and starting from scratch. At some point, something new will happen, but it will occur in its own time and probably none of us here will see it coming. Secondly does it even matter? Those musicians being held up as inspirations from the past probably didn't see it themselves at the time. They just wanted to have some fun playing music (and having sex and doing drugs) and maybe earn a living without having to go to the factory or the office.

Before you go spending any money check whether you really do need your own PA. Almost every venue that I have played at in the past 6 years that puts on bands playing their own material has had its own PA and sound engineer. I can only think of two occasions where we had to supply a PA and both were venues that didn't normally do live music that was more than a singer with a guitar. In both cases we hired a PA for the evening. It may be that things are different in your part of the country, but we play all over the UK and have yet to be asked to a venue where there was not a house system installed.

If it says active in the description, then they will have a built-in pre-amp and require a battery to function. If you are wondering whether the coil and magnet part has been specifically designed to take advantage of the close physical location of the pre-amp and whether the two parts have been matched for optimum performance, only the manufacturer can tell you. Or you could buy one and take it apart. After all they're not particularly expensive.

Since it appears that you are joining an existing band who have probably all done this many times before, ask them! And take a look at what they did for their previous photo shoots. I would expect that they already have their "image" worked out and most likely you will need to fit in.

Play, play and play some more. For me it's all about repeating what I do until I can play it without needing to think about what I am doing. It's very obvious that for me repetition is the key, because the parts that take the longest to stick are those that only occur one or two times in the song and not the main parts that repeat over and over. Also if you are learning covers by playing along to the original, stop doing that as soon as you can. The recorded track acts as too much of a crutch and because it never goes wrong you can get away with not knowing the song properly because the music acts as a prompt. Of course once you are doing the song with the rest of your band, it only takes one other member to not know it properly either and the whole thing falls apart.

There are so many threads complaining about other band members' inappropriate tone settings, so maybe we shouldn't be so quick to slag of the punter and his comments without actually hearing the band in question for ourselves. I was very much a clean sound only bass player (except when I was using it fuzz or distortion as a specific effect) for the first 20 years. That was until, in a previous band I swapped to guitar and noticed that my replacement on bass was always dialling in a touch of overdrive on his bass sounds and even when he was playing exactly the same bass lines as I had been doing his sound sat far more comfortably in the band mix. Since then unless the song calls for an ultra-clean bass sound I always have at least a tiny amount of drive to my bass tone. And after seeing T M Stevens at one of the Manchester Bass Days, and hearing how punchy and well defined his bass sounded in the band mix but when he was playing without the rest of the band just how much distortion he was using... It may well be that the OP's bass sound is perfectly fine as it is, but I am sure that a small amount of the [b]RIGHT KIND [/b]of drive/distortion will make it even better in the context of the overall band sound.

IMO the only true active pickup system is the Lightwave one. Everything else are standard passive coils and magnets with a pre-amp circuit buried in the epoxy covering.

IME a little bit of overdrive on the bass works wonders for most classic rock songs. After all, most of the songs you are covering will have been recorded with the bass going through a valve amp and the speakers straining to cope. See if you can find some isolated bass tracks from the original recordings of the songs. I think you'll be surprised by just how much dirt is actually in the bass sound. Remember that what sounds good on its own doesn't always sound as good in the full band setting.

[quote name='bluejay' timestamp='1451511773' post='2941199'] Yes it does. No point in having good ideas and then losing the will to live through attempting to use MS Word to turn them into posters. [/quote] I would disagree. IMO the key to getting a good looking poster is having some design skills in the first place. Having decent quality tools will make the job easier, but it's by no means an absolute requirement. And there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to do something awesome with MS Word. After all it's only a glorified typewriter and typewriters are capable of some spectacular images:

Get a guitar. If you want something cheap to start you off have a look at at a Harley Benton Deko Strat, around £20 plus shipping when they come up but you need to be quick. If you can't be bothered to wait the full price is just over £50.

The trick to getting some decent posters is to have some good ideas in the first place. The the software you use doesn't matter.

I'd also check any 80s or 90s Yamaha Super Strat that you can find. No EMGs but you could always fit them if you really want to. The big plus IMO is that the Yamaha version of the FR vibrato doesn't require you to cut off the ball ends of the strings and therefore is quite a bit easier to restring.

Are there any guitar shops that aren't just full of Strats, Teles, Les Pauls and their copies? I realise that these are the staples but it would be nice to see a decent selection of alternative designs for the more discerning guitarist.

Do you find that the string tension is high enough when you tune down to D? I'm lucky enough to have a guitar for permanent drop D tuning and even with my standard 52 - 10 set I find the E string too floppy when down-tuned to D so I buy an extra 56 to replace the 52 for tuning down to D.

[quote name='Chownybass' timestamp='1450948213' post='2937212'] Hi! It's exactly the same spec as the short scale model. But it's 34"... we had to make it a little heavier to solve some neck-dive issues, so now it's perfectly balanced. I am busy editing together a little video demonstration of it, which I'll post in the Affiliates area of the website. It's the same price too (£360), but will come in only 3 colours (Emerald Burst, Sapphire Burst and Tobacco Burst). This final production prototype we've just had is perfect, so we will spool it into production for delivery about March/April time. We'll start taking pre-orders in the new year. (At which point we'll add it to the website and Facebook pages) [/quote] Brilliant. I want to see some photos though... When's the 5-string version coming out?

Line 6 Pod of some description. Lots of tonal options plus effects and programability.

Glam most definitely - preferably early to mid 70s

[quote name='EssentialTension' timestamp='1450793824' post='2935931'] Gretsch do one,,, [/quote] Gretch actually do a couple - the White Falcon in 34" scale and there's an Electromatic as well. I'm sure that there are more 34" hollow bodies but I think you'll find most are either expensive or difficult to find.

[quote name='pete.young' timestamp='1450891637' post='2936799'] My Duesenberg is 30". I think chowny has just brought out a 34" version. [/quote] Only the Duesenberg Motown Bass is hollow body with a 34" scale length. Do you have any more info regarding the 34" Chowny Bass? I couldn't see anything on their website or Facebook page.

IME for speaker cabs, the only spec worth bothering with is the impedance. Everything else is marketing bullshit and entirely subjective. For me it boils down to: 1. Does it give me the sound I want in the context of my band? 2. Does it look good on stage? 3. Is it transportable by my chosen method?

From what I have seen, these amps are extremely fussy about what cab(s) you plug them into especially when running into a 4Ω load, where one setup may work fine and another will keep cutting out. IMO the amp is only worth the time and money it will take to fix it, if you intend to keep and use it as your main amp. In that case get it repaired by Ampeg and get a guarantee on the repair. Otherwise sell it for "spares or repair" on eBay. You'll be surprised by how much non-functional equipment sells for on there, especially that with a well-known brand name. I had a similarly poorly Ashdown Superfly (sported all the classic Superfly maladies - high pitched whistle on the output, random failure to power up) and it still sold for £75 which considering it was EOL'd at £199 was well worth my time and effort to get it listed.