Kevsy71

Great news Mick! I can't imagine how good your Sean Hurley sounds through it

Sold Phil a power amp - fast communications, smooth transaction and an all-round pleasure to deal with! Thanks Phil

Sold Tim a greenboy cab - excellent communication throughout, a smooth transaction and a friendly chap! Deal with confidence

Hi there MWP, certainly no harm in starting on a 5 - many discussions here on the benefits of being able to extend the scale patterns by one more string, meaning you can 'park' your fretting hand in one position and minimise shifts up and down the neck. Pay attention to muting as you have one more string to keep quiet when it's not being played though! I found this video useful: ...albeit I was coming from 4 string. The Sire sounds a great choice, or keep an eye on the Basschat markerplace. Good luck!

I can well believe that - to my ears, the '85 olive ash Wal I all too briefly owned direct to desk via XLR was both my favourite tone and one with zero noise - amazing electronics!

Brilliant Trevor! Our tech guy is a legend, he thinks my Bruce Thomas Profile through a SansAmp VT 'SVT' setting is the best bass tone he's had in the worship room and cranks it up. You almost don't need a monitor!

I'd absolutely love to do gospel sets - for one thing I'd have a stone-cold excuse to get a Ken Smith 5 again! I suspect gospel players are never told 'sit this out until the chorus, and don't go North of the 5th fret'

'Overplay' in Worship bass can mean 'more than one note per bar' or even 'any note per verse'! Just have to enjoy the song and from a technique perspective, think of it as good timing and sustain practice.

Stage setup is (something like) bass->DI->desk mic preamp->mixer->foldback/IEMs. Assuming a digital mixer then it is likely to have a decent DAC, and the mixer may be sending you a bass-heavy monitor mix which differs from the front of house mix (and/or you may have your bass amp as an additional monitor). So that contributes to a fine venue sound. As @Richard R says above, YouTube compresses heavily and audio degrades with reduced video quality. Also the DAC and headphone amp of the average computer are pretty basic which further affects the audio. Unfortunately most parishioners won't have a Focusrite or similar DAW with a decent set of cans :( Certainly worth checking with the sound team and seeing what they can do with EQ to help you in the mix :) On another note, had my first recorded session (four songs) at church last night - look forward to hearing the results. Due to some last minute key changes I was delving lower on the 5-string than normal and that typically does not come through well on the livestream. And having practiced all the songs in faster/upbeat mode they were performed as slow/quiet...still, good to challenge the timings and note feel. And when asked to sit out for the first two verses I simply play them but with the tuner mute on to keep in the game!

If you are tuning B E A D then I do not see the problem, although the nut slots are likely to be too small as they will be cut for E A D G gauges. You will probably need to adjust the truss rod to account for a different string tension. A cheap way to try us buy a single B string and give it a go.