BigRedX

I'd rather have this Travis Bean bass.

Depends on the gig and how the band are getting there. Ideally one and a spare, but sometimes if we are travelling light there won't be room. TBH in over 40 years of gigging I've only needed a spare bass on three occasions (and didn't have one on only one, where I didn't even have a spare set of strings and I had to borrow the headlining band's bass), unlike when I was playing guitar and it was a rare gig when I didn't break at least 1 string. The most I've taken to a gig was 5 - 2 fretted and 2 fretless basses and a spare guitar for the guitarist who didn't have one.

I think @Bassassin would be interested in this and may have some additional information.

The passive tone control rolls off the top end (based on the value of the capacitor used). It also adds a very slight resonant peak at the cut off frequency.

Personally I'm glad that my "rig" has been reduced to a single FRFR which hardly ever leaves the rehearsal room as most of the time the PA does all the "lifting" for me. Regarding reliability I've owned valve, solid state and class D amps. Nearly all have worked perfectly. The only failures in over 40 years of playing have been an all-valve amp that went pop in quite a spectacular way mid set, and a class D that suffered from a well-known design fault.

Live albums occupy a weird niche in performance terms. Most of the time if you make a mistake playing a gig it's over and gone in a fraction of a second, and most of the audience will never even have noticed it. However once you capture that performance for posterity, it's a different proposition. If a mistake is obvious, then I think most musicians would want to fix it before making the recording available to the public. Even if none of the performances required individual attention, the recording will have been mixed at leisure, often with the same attention to detail that a studio album would have received. On top of that most live albums will have been compiled from multiple gigs - in the case of WOA the just under 2 hours of album represents the best taken from 90 hours of recordings - so there is always some degree of artifice.

The concerts that made up Wings Over America (album) and Rock Show (film) were recorded on multi-track tape (probably 24-track) using one of the many mobile studios that were popular for live recordings in the 70s, so having a different mix to that heard FoH with the bass guitar louder would have been simple. How does the mix compare with the audio only version on WOA? Like most "live" albums of the time, various parts were overdubbed afterwards, in the case of WOA specifically the backing vocals, but anything else that required attention would have been touched up if necessary. Both releases were complied from multiple concerts and in the case of Rock Show it is possible that footage from a different performance to the audio was cut to fit, if the best audio and visual performances didn't come from the same gig. Very few "live" recordings of any kind are done direct to stereo, even when they are being broadcast in real time, the broadcast mix will be done separately to the FoH mix, and nearly always recorded to multi-track to allow for the possibility of fixing errors and adjusting the balance at a later date for release or rebroadcast.

Unless you as the buyer specifically asked for the seller to use a different delivery service to their usual one(s), then the responsibility is with the seller all the way, for both the goods and the method by which they have sent them.

Are you using the built-in WiFi router or an external one?

The clip is from the "Rockshow" film, which comes from the same concerts as "Wings Over America".

Was that before or after she was doing backing vocals for The Eurythmics? Mine is that I turned down the opportunity to work with William Orbit, although it was pre- Bassomatic and his current band Torchsong were a bit crap IMO.

Thanks. I've been lucky enough to have played with some great drummers in the various bands I've been in.

If you're using a computer to play back your backing then you can use MIDI sync which is what I do. Allows a lot more besides.

To the OP, you'll hopefully get a bit of time in the soundcheck to work out an IEM that is comfortable for you, but unless you need the click for the count-ins or to keep time in sections where there are no live drums (personally if I had created the backing I'd have these elements separate to the main "metronomic" click), I'd keep it low in the mix and work off the live drums instead.

I think it's probably got more to do with what genres of music you listen to and play. I've spent most of my playing "career" in bands with some sort of click or backing track since 1981 - I'm now in my 60s so I doubt I count as a "younger" musician.

Spot on although given that you included tempos I suspect you stuck the tracks in a DAW to see how well they lined up start to finish with a fixed tempo grid (that's what I would have done!) StickyPants speeds up slightly all the way through and there is no way that it could have been done with a click. We did look at a variable tempo click for DoodleBug Blitz, but the amount of changes made it impractical and it never felt quite right. However if you weren't specifically listening for it I doubt anyone would have spotted which were done with and without. We were helped by having a super-tight drummer (his other band was live drum and bass) who would often make us rehearse at 3/4 tempo to tighten up our playing as a band.

The original performance will have been recorded onto 24 track, so it would be trivial to overdub or replace any parts that weren't quite up to scratch on the evening. Remember that other well-known "live" albums of that era had been seriously tickled up afterwards.

I used to do this with my band back in the 90s when it was a lot harder to achieve then it is now. In my current bands all my effects changes are automated in time with the backing. Unsurprisingly my playing and on stage performance is much better if I don't also have to be in the correct place on stage to hit a particular switch at exactly the right moment. This is especially true for the band where I play Bass VI and where on some songs I'm switching between "bass" and "guitar" parts with corresponding sound changes every other bar. I'll be rolling this facility out to the other band members over the next couple of months. The only thing we don't automate is the start of each new song. I do this via a footswitch in conjunction with cues from our singer.

If the band was to stretch the songs out because of a favourable audience reaction then who decides? How is it signalled? how do you know when to bring it all back to a neat and tidy ending? Fine if all the band have played together for ages, but I probably wouldn't want to do it with a dep who has just stepped in for a single gig. Also remember that for every person up on the dance floor there's someone else waiting for the band to "play something good", so playing the song as originally agreed and moving on to the next could be an even better move.

Does the band have a drummer?

Here you go. There's two 3-track EPs at least one song on each was done without a click. RockinRollin' VampireMan EP Invasion of the SpiderQueen

Every venue I have played that use a back projection system for the band logo have the whole system in place - screen, projector and laptop - and all the band have had to do was to supply the logo, usually as a high resolution JPEG or PNG file sent by email a couple of days before the gig.

Some music works with a click. Some doesn't. Good musicians know when, and when not, to use one. There is no single position answer that is correct for every case. A previous band I was in used a click on some tracks when we recorded them. However we tried every song with and without the click first in rehearsal and only used the click in the studio on those songs that benefitted from it. On some we'd program the tempo changes into the click so that they always happened in the right place and by the same amount. Even then only the drummer heard the click. The rest of the band played to the drums. I would defy anyone to listen to the recordings and spot which were done with a click and which were not. Until the OP comes back with more detail about the band and music they are playing, it's all pointless speculation.

Does this band have a drummer? I've been in several bands who using backing and a click, and play in one now, but only the drummer gets the click and the rest of us play to the drummer. The drummer gives it all the push and pull we need, and because the songs are strong there's nothing lifeless or robotic about the performance. Also because the backbone of the arrangement is going to be perfect every time it gives you a bit more wiggle room as a musician and a performer. I don't what sort of spontaneity you are looking for, but I've found the extra tightness that having some parts pre-recorded/programmed time more than makes up for this. My other current band has drums and some synth on the backing. Songs have been programmed with tempo changes where necessary - most of the time it's a subtle few BPM up and down to keep the correct feel of the different parts of the song. When we finally go onto IEMs we'll be able to loose the count-ins and other audible cues from the FoH which will make the performance from the audience's PoV even better.

And as you have said there's your problem. For me there's a big difference between rehearsing to play the songs and rehearsing to make sure that all the technology I'm (and the rest of the band are) using works properly. Time for a technical rehearsal for your band. Once you've sorted out all the IEM issues you should never need to do it again, because all the settings will have been stored.