BigRedX

IME unless your singer is also the main songwriter for the band they matter less than they (or the rest of the band) would like to think, and especially for a covers band. In one of the covers bands I have been in they had at various times 2 different male and 2 different female singers, no-one in the audience ever seemed to mind who was actually fronting the band. The only time it has caused a problem is when I foolishly said I would come back on bass for one gig so long as they did a set full of songs that I already knew. When said set actually materialised it for male singer who had been in the band when I first joined and not the female singer from when I last played with them (who was taking a break from the band and the male singer had stepped in, like me, to help out for one gig), and while I had played all the songs in the set before, there were a good number that I had only played a couple of times and not for about 4 years!

My mistake - Fast Cars reuses the Boredom riff.

What’s the power requirements of the pedal? Can’t you just make a custom lead from you main PSU?

Or with a Neutrik PowerCon in-line connector which has the added advantage of being locking.

The Japanese insist on printed lyrics with all releases. I think every Japanese CD I have has the lyrics either printed in the booklet or on an insert sheet. It’s worth trying to track down Japanese releases of The Cocteau Twins albums if you really want some entertaining reading.

The classic example is of course “Shot By Both Sides” by Magazine and “Fast Cars” by The Buzzcocks. Less well known, but apparently using the same backing track is “Ca Plane Pour Moi” by Plastic Bertrand and “Jet Boy, Jet Girl” by Elton Motello.

You shouldn't need to hope anything. The person responsible for doing this should be getting on and fixing it so that you would never know it happened in the first place. Maybe then they will take proper precautions when when soldering on other customer's basses in the future.

Is there actually anyone on Basschat in Oklahoma who plays C&W and desperate for a gig at this venue? We're a UK based forum. There are venues closer to home that are actually worth getting worked up about how they treat musicians.

And who cares? There are plenty of gigs that pay properly. Simply cross this one off your list and move on. They will probably be out of business before the end of the year. When I was in The Terrortones the only time we were asked to pat to play was when we were trying to get gigs in Manchester. In the end we stopped trying and concentrated on paying gigs elsewhere in the country. Even London venues paid us.

Personally, I think that if I am going to be earning money by playing other people's songs, then the least I can do is to buy the record or CD the song comes from. You never know there may be some other song on there that you enjoy listening to.

In the days when I played in a covers band, after initially starting out learning the bass parts exactly as they were on the record, I discovered that for a lot of songs this was a complete waste of time, as the recorded bass part was a combination of bass guitar, extra rhythm guitar, and keyboard left hand, and often the bass guitar part on its own was insufficient to drive the song along and fill out the bottom end of the arrangement at the same time. Once I'd realised that, I'd just learn the riffs/tunes and the chord structure , and work out what I needed to play based on what was already there in our arrangement, and what was obviously missing. You do need to be in a covers band that practices between gigs to do this, as I know many don't see the need to do this.

If you look at the TRC you can see it says "Series II". This is a lower-cost model made in the late 80s and early 90s. For me everything that makes the Pedulla Buzz special is missing from this bass.

If that's the result of work you were paying for, the person doing the work should fix it to your satisfaction for free. If that means a total re-spray of the body so be it. If that was my bass, and body was otherwise flawless I'd want it returned to the state it was before the any work had been started.

I could ask why you don't just set up your amp's tone controls so it produces the sound you want? If it's so you can get two different sounds you may find that the pedal is more convenient as it's a simple press to change.

The guitar amps are all-valve which makes a big difference.

I'm pretty certain my Wesley purple acrylic bass was just under 10lb. It did have a very small body and wooden rather than acrylic headstock. It was definitely more comfortable on the strap than the Squier VMJ that was supposed to replace it.

I assume you are thinking of fitting a J-Retro? The only thing you need to watch is that some of the cheaper Fender basses, savings have been made by reducing the body thickness, and the control cavity may need an extra mm or 2 carefully routing out to accommodate the depth of the pre-amp.

I don't know about the vintage ones being better than the modern ones, but I can definitely say that in 1979 anything with an Ibanez logo on it was vastly superior to any thing coming out of the Fender US factory.

I expect it is the same everywhere in the EU. The problem seems to stem from the fact that after many years of not having to pay VAT and import duty on items from the UK, some EU-based buyers have still not realised that things have changed, hence the number of parcels I've had refused and returned because they don't want to pay any additional charges. Hopefully in a few more years it won't come as quite a surprise and I can start thinking about selling outside of the UK again.

The bass sound in the video is hardly "transparent".

Bill Fitzmaurice has already given you the correct answer: Unless you rig is for personal monitoring only, in which case pretty much any modern cab will be fine.

While the tiny USB drive that comes with the Helix should contain a version of the manual, it will be the one that was current when your Helix was originally made. There is a new revision of the manual with each firmware update, so log in to your Line6 account and download the latest one, and update the firmware while you are at it.

All you need to do is read the manual. Most of it is fairly straight-forward.

Thanks. However as you say in the past the carrier used to do all of this for you based on your description of the contents of the parcel. Now not so much. This all appears to have started at the beginning of 2021, and for anyone coming across it, it can be a serious put off. There are also problems with VAT for private sales. If you sell through one of the big sites like Amazon or eBay, this appears to be handled for you. Last time I posted a Bandcamp sale to the EU, it cause no end of problems at the Post Office because Bandcamp wasn't on their list. The record ended up being refused by the buyer because they didn't want to pay the VAT on it and was eventually returned to me in a condition that made it impossible to resell. I assume that the postal service goes to the expense of returning items like this because it is cheaper than having to pay out insurance on it, if it was "lost". However for sellers it means that we loose out in both postage and item cost. As a result I won't be sending anything outside of the UK until I know for sure that the situation has significantly improved.

Boiling strings is a waste of time and energy.