uk_lefty

Played my ABM set up at Friday nights gig.... Soundman had to walk out front and ask me to turn down a few songs in. Volume was barely near 10% 😎

Yup. I bought mine, not B stock, from a retailer in Belgium and paid VAT on bringing it in because that was very cheap compared to anything in the UK... If I'd have waited your PMT deal would have blown that out the water for value.

What's the plan?? Very interested in what these can do, the price is so tempting.

I've only ever had lefty instruments... If I got into buying right handers I'd be bankrupt. I recently bought an Epiphone Casino six string though and I sweat sometimes when I look at it it must be a righty body, the lower horn seems ever so slightly bigger than the top horn. I should measure it one day so it's not taunting me from across my office. One bass I'd like to try flipping though is a Gibson/ Epiphone EB-3. If I was playing heavy rock/ classic metal I'd want one done up like Iommi's SG.

Maybe the stockroom has a lot of mirrors in it and they all looked right handed... But little did they know...!

https://youtu.be/mPObzJkWueY

Watched that last night... For a few seconds. It's not my thing.

Any other bass chatters playing or watching? We will be on the main stage at 2pm on Saturday, the Desert Penguins, playing our "pop goes rock" covers set. It's a great one to be doing for me personally, I've only been in the Penguins less than a year, but my former band was the very first band to play the very first Todd in the Hole a few years back. Hoping this weekend we will be playing to more than a handful of punters and all the stall holders setting up! Unless everyone is hiding from the sun, of course!

I know this gets discussed a lot and there's a handful of really good people out there making custom pickguards... I just wanted to do a little note here for Gig Ink... I think he's on here but can't find the username.... Anyways I have no real affiliation apart from being a paying customer twice over. Once to get a p pickup surround after I'd done some pretty shoddy "routing" and now to get something a bit different for my Stingray. I'll try to do proper pictures in a few days time but this is a mirror pickguard with my band logo engraved on it. It's a bit Phil Lynott without being totally Phil Lynott if that makes sense... And it was turned around very quickly from the original ask so I could have it for a gig this weekend. While I know there's other good quality people out there, I wouldn't hesitate to use Gig Ink again.

Absolutely gorgeous!!! It took me long enough to get a lefty Jack Casady bass so I'll be sticking with that, but whenever I see one of these I get the GAS. I also realised recently that I've moved from having mostly Fender basses and guitars I've somehow got a bit of a Gibson derived bass and guitar collection: Epiphone Casino electric guitar, Epiphone Jack Casady bass, Kramer (after the Gibson buy out) fretless bass... I might have to chase down some kind of EB2 or Grabber now!

Still discovering. I had it disengaged first time I used it live. I've got a gig Friday night but unlikely to use the Ray as I need it fresh for a big gig Saturday afternoon.

That's utterly insane. Prices for most things shoot up as soon as the word "wedding" is mentioned so they're just jumping people's prices up even more to line their own pockets for what? If they're not happy with how much money they're making they need to address it themselves, not shovel it on to others. Rightly taking a public pasting.

This is my thought process too. Buy strings that were built for that bass! Obviously there are other good strings out there but I just use stainless steel Ernie Ball's on mine. Now I've got an ABM600 I'm loving my Stingray more and more. Soich more I treated it to a custom scratchplate today with the band logo on it...

There's no way you can protect yourselves against the drunken stupidity of others. Even lashing black and yellow warning tape around every possible thing you don't want people to go near, let alone touch, won't stop a p!ssed up idiot. How far should a band go at these things? Have a burly mate in hi-viz acting as security? Dad's metal gates around the stage area (my guitarist would LOVE that!), or something else? I really don't know the answer but having seen so many drunks tumble over and cause near misses at gigs, and I don't gig anywhere near as regularly as a lot on here, there are serious accidents waiting to be caused with a band potentially in the cross hairs for a claim. Worrying stuff.

The Markbass one doesn't feel like it should do but it can prop up a decent sized cab for a whole gig. I've had mine for quite a while, you can't go adjusting the angle and it feels a bit steep but it really does do the job.

Changing strings is a great way to change your tone. It's easy to just buy what you always had but changing gauge, material and shape of strings can really breathe life into a bass you're not bonding with.... Then you can go through the whole process again later :). Over the last twenty years my fretless has probably had everything except those weird neon coloured strings and each time it gets new strings it sounds different.

Don't know of you're being serious or not... But that was from an ITV "Comedy/ Drama" years back when Martin Clunes and Neil Morrissey were in demand after Man Behaving Badly finished. Neil Morrissey is the singer in that clip and I recognise the guitarist from various other stuff on the telly.

Bargain.

So good I bought one new.... I'm a tight Yorkshireman and I'd usually buy expensive things secondhand unless it's something special that I want to keep.

I find the mid control the most useful part... For me I max the bass, have a smidge of treble and generally have the mids cut. But, if I want a more old school sound or something more prominent then I bring the mids up and roll the bass back down to just above the notch. I still get the punch of the big pup but I get a softer and rounder sound that works for things like Crazy Little Thing Called Love, for example.

Left field idea.... Get a Positive Grid Spark or Blackstar BEAM amp and connect that to your recording kit via USB? Then you've got an amp, onboard effects, and recording input. They're not great as bass amps but for recording they're really neat and easy to use.

Pop goes rock at a brilliant venue. Playing til after midnight. Excitement guaranteed. If a BC'er comes down make yourself known and I might get you a pint.

Some venues just suck sound, others love it. I played in a bay window alcove of a hotel reception facing into a big room and dancefloor with a Rootmaster 500 and hardly had the volume over a quarter and they kept telling me turn down!

Funny how this list is mostly what I would call standard pub band. Not really what I would have expected for a "function" but then again I've played a lot of these songs at weddings and sports club award dinners, so I guess they're functions too! I used to waiter at dinner dances and so on in my teens (twenty plus years ago) when I was still bashing out Hendrix tunes along to cassettes. I remember one really good function band that would always play "dance the night away" by the Mavericks and give their bass player a turn on lead vocals for "c'est la vie" by Chuck Berry, in my mind that was always what a typical function band would be but sounds like either times have changed or they were quite niche.

I'd never thought of it like that but now you've said I can't un-think it.