Silvia Bluejay

No, I actually had her in mind too, but in my view she's another more-pop-than-rock singer. She is awesome regardless of how we choose to pigeon-hole the band, obviously.

I did not say that. Regarding what I actually did say (scroll up if you like), I suppose I'm bound to know what makes a woman a little uncomfortable better than a man would. I don't tend to talk nonsense, at least in this case. As for girls learning to drive later - grain of truth, but mostly, in our society, for people our age, the *expected* priority for young women was to look good while the expected priority for young men was to have a good job and a car. Things are different now, so much the better - it wasn't as much fun as it might sound like. Childcare - same applies, for people my age but also those a little younger and still able to have kids. Carer/provider role separation is still far from balanced. In all of the above, weare not talking what would be FAIR. We're talking what still too often happens in real life.

Yes, you're right, Doro! Forgot about her, which is rather criminal considering how few hard rock frontwomen there were at the time. You're also correct about childcare and going out to practice (and gig). Perhaps things will finally have changed for the better once the younger generations reach their 60s. We current over-55s females grew up in a world where a girl playing an instrument other the piano/keyboard was often frowned upon and therefore a rarity, and obviously a girl in a rock or pop band would often be judged to be of loose morals and not be wife material even years later. 🤷‍♂️

Oh, and just to add another thought - most hard and classic rock lyrics are not what a woman with a modicum of self-respect would want to sing.

There isn't much of a tradition for female-fronted rock bands. Especially in our age group (55+). I'm racking my brain. Debbie Harry? Joan Jett? Suzi Quatro? Pat Benatar? Chrissie Hynde? I'm sure some will say they are all, arguably, pop rather than rock singers. Courtney Love? Hmm. Perhaps Lita Ford, who at least was fronting a hard rock band after the Runaways, but she's not as famous as the others. And even I can't remember the name of the frontwoman in Vixen*, and I was a fan! There are very few, and relatively unsuccessful, female hard rock and rock bands women my age may have wanted to emulate when we were younger. How about younger potential female rock vocalists? Well, does anyone under the age of 30 like rock or hard rock nowadays? * Janet Gardner - thank you Uncle Google.

Like with all social media, you need to decide if you have the time and inclination to interact or only that to broadcast. Taking the example of our rock 'n' roll band, we have a very active Facebook page where fans comment, tag each other, and talk to the band, and we interact fully by replying, publishing videos, advertising gigs etc. Then we have Youtube where comments are disallowed, so we only publish videos but don't get into any sort of exchange, and Instagram where we publish a customised poster for each gig (one or two a week) and occasionally upload a video. We follow back bands who follow us and accounts belonging to rock 'n' roll radios and DJs, and rock 'n' roll fans, but other than that we rarely interact - usually it's a matter of responding to some direct messages from venues and similar, and that's it. If @uk_lefty feels he has more than one or two blog posts in him, and is likely to want to keep writing, I'd do it. If it looks like it's only going to last a week or two and then life takes over, I wouldn't bother.

Um, where did he say he sold it as a real Fender?

How about being at a sunny 30 degrees in my childhood flat in Florence (family duty, not holiday, though) but also insisting on not just ogling gear on BC, but also moderating the forum a bit? No, don't answer. 🙄🤷‍♀️😄

I bet there were also additional problems and costs related to it being a lefty model - the Germans seem to have always had far less trouble than the Americans (and UK manufacturers) producing LH guitar models, and far fewer misgivings of the "am I going to be able to actually sell them?" type. See also Framus/Warwick. My Hofner is an Ignition, made in Indonesia. Looks great, especially after I got rid of the horrible plasticky pickguard and @Happy Jack gifted me the proper teacup knobs. Having said that, I don't like the sound - despite installing TI flats; I don't like the tiny scale - despite having tiny hands; and I don't like not having a pickup in the "proper" middle position on which to rest my thumb. I wouldn't get rid of the bass (like the Steinberger Spirit, I want one of each in my collection) but it's certainly not the bass I tend to pick up when I want to have a play.

"... a sound that sounds just as good in a live setting as in a rehearsal" doesn't exist I'm afraid. Your bass will always sound different in each of the rooms you play in, even before considering how it sits with the rest of the band. Short of getting a sound engineer with a good pair of ears, knowledge of bass frequencies and how to manage them, and experience of what to do to correct the problems that you hear in each different venue, I would suggest you go wireless with your bass and walk up front while soundchecking with the band. Then go back to your rig - or even better, your channel on the PA - and make adjustments.

And that doesn't show my own collection! No prizes for guessing why we had to move out of our lovely bijou flat and into a larger dwelling... 🙄🤣

While I agree with the basic concept suggested above that, if I want to hear the song like it's on the record, I'll put on the CD, there are certain phrases, riffs or 'bits' of a song that are iconic and absolutely need to be reproduced faithfully. The audience will be waiting for them, and will usually want to sing along to them, going 'nah nah naaahh' when there are no words to sing.

You are correct, the non-4k version was dreadful on several levels, but luckily it has been discontinued. The Q2n 4k is a very good device for the price. We use ours on clamps or tall monopods and power them through external battery packs and USB leads. We use 256GB micro-SD cards and re-format them after every gig.

When we use the DSLR we connect it to a camera micro-mixer (2 channels) and to a Røde shotgun mic, but undoubtedly the best results come through our feed from the XR18. I think @Happy Jack uses either the headphone socket or two dedicated AUX outputs into our Zoom H4n. He then mixes the H4n direct input recording and its stereo mic recording with the room noise from one or more of the Zoom Q2ns, depending on the position of each with respect to the band.

Oh, forgot to mention the audio: DSLR audio is usually dreadful, while mini-video-camera audio can be all right if the camera is designed with music recording capabilities in the first place (do not use a Go Pro for that). However, what we now do is record from the desk (manned by me, so usually carrying good mix and EQ) and then mix in the drums when we only mic the kick, and the audience noise, usually taking it from the mini-camera at the front. That gives us the best results.

DSLRs have a max recording time of 29 mins 59 secs, to avoid being classed as video cameras (which are allowed to record over 30 mins) and having to pay additional duty (in the US or worldwide, IDK). Unless you have a person manning the camera throughout the entire gig, I wouldn't recommend using one of those, except occasionally. It is true that the bigger the sensor, the better the image, as it can catch more light. However, we find that the lack of flexibility (recording time, size, weight) of the DSLR is more of a problem than the slightly grainier output we get from small, lightweight, dedicated video cameras. We tend to use a DSLR only to record outdoors footage in addition to our four Zoom Q2n 4Ks which we place at the front, back and both sides of the band. To sum up our experience: - Record the whole gig, don't choose in advance. Something weird and possibly wonderful may happen at any time during the performance. - Therefore, you need something that can record 3-4 hours uninterruptedly. - Use more than one camera, place them at different angles, learn how to video edit on the computer. - If low light is a problem, try to increase the light, not decrease the number of cameras or use unsuitable devices. Anything else, ask away!

Be in a tight, sh!t-hot band. Create a setlist that's well thought out and representative of the product you want to sell - party covers, original indie, punk, jazz, metal, whatever. Then gig, gig and gig some more. And more. And MORE. Have some good quality flyers with contacts and social links to give to punters/scouters/visiting landlords/club managers at said gigs. Have a well maintained, up to date Facebook page, a Youtube channel with good quality (i.e not crappy hand-held mobile) footage, a Lemonrock (or similar) account with a public, up to date availability diary and a gig list. Reply to any enquiries promptly and satisfactorily.

LOL! No such views at our local Waitrose today.... On a slightly more serious note, I saw that image on FB earlier and thought, imagine the sh*tstorm if that had been a naked woman as opposed to a guy. I'm all for admiring beauty, but I feel a tiny bit awkward at the double standard. End of diversion. On a thoroughly serious note – my, is Waitrose expensive these days.

That's what I thought this thread was about at first! And I was ready to use the Moderation Tools to move it to Off Topic... To add my opinion to the OP's question, I am with the majority here. I have replaced chrome hardware with black hardware before - I bought all the black hardware brand new from Thomann. I can't see how a properly chromed bridge could ever be stripped satisfactorily enough not to make a mess when re-sprayed. Also, even the black-from-factory, brand new bits I bought had some small defects in the spraying, in that you could see small areas of unsprayed metal in hard-to-reach spots. Imagine having to first strip, then re-spray, at home or in a small shop! An absolute no-no.

They also played a Guild Starfire, although possibly a little later, in the 70s. And in the 80s they went headless (Hohner I think?), and then later turned to synths, which IMO ruined their sound. 🤷‍♀️

Violin basses and Steinberger Spirit basses - both dreadful, in different ways. I've got one of both and I keep them because they're so distinctive and look good in my collection, but I don't play them. So if @Damnthatlazlo would like his other half to learn to play bass and not dump the instrument within weeks, he should buy one that's a joy to play, if an inexpensive one. In my opinion that rules out anything by Fender/Squier (big, horrible, heavy, non-ergonomic pieces of cr@p) but leaves a choice of alternatives that don't break the bank.

Also, violin basses are terrible. Buy her a cheap Ibanez instead, she'll probably keep playing that.

No. Buy a cheapo proper lefty, then sell it here if it's unused. @Happy Jack is risking divorce for his eminently silly advice.

Yes, we have had contacts on social media that probably originated on LR, plus we've had a reasonable number of proper gig offers via LR through the years. Some people who have seen us at a gig and later decided to book us have gone on LR to find our details and send us emails, as opposed to looking us up on FB etc. Since £42 is a small sum, we're happy to keep our subscriptions up no matter what, but we've long done away with a website proper, as we decided it really isn't worth the candle for any of our covers bands (original bands are a totally different matter).

With one of our bands, when we had a website for it as opposed to LR and FB, we originally had the LR calendar embedded, then we moved to a Google calendar in Agenda mode (any other view looked horrid). We eventually got rid of the website altogether, so the problem disappeared. At the time, I did some research about embedding band calendars on web pages and my conclusion was that anything outside LR or Google isn't worth bothering with (YMMV etc.) The advantage of using the LR calendar is that it will show not just your gigs but also your available and not available dates - if you bother keeping it up to date, which you really should do. When you say that you think all you get from your subscription is the calendar, you worry me! Are you using Lemonrock to its full potential? A fully up to date calendar plus three Youtube videos, three Soundcloud tracks (if you have any originals), an engaging band blurb/bio with clickable links to all the band's social media, the option to search for venues according to different criteria, and for venues and bookers to search for your band according to several different criteria, plus automatic mailings of gig lists to your area every Tuesday do get results if you use the system properly.