uk_lefty

I raised this and one of the lads googled it, for small one offs there is no visa requirement.

Yeah I feel a bit bad going away without the family but do want to get a good look around. Thankfully the rest of the band aren't the "waaaaaayyyyy lads lads lads!" Spend all day and night drinking types so I expect to see more than just a few pubs.

Isn't it always the way... If you can decipher the timetables and where to go! We are going by Eurostar, the other lads have done this before so I'm relying on them to help get me around.

No real reason to post other than I'm very excited about this opportunity. I joined a band just before Christmas who have a linkup with a bar in Amsterdam that they e played in before. They couldn't do it through covid but now we are booked in for a monster four hour set on Fri 20th May. We are well rehearsed, well prepared and ready to go! Really looking forward to it. Have never been to the Netherlands at all so to go there for a gig is a bit surreal.

The Desert Penguins go international! Revisiting the Water Hole in Amsterdam on Fri 20th May playing a monster four hours of guitar driven pop/ rock. Come along and ply me with red bull. 11 til 3. That's 11pm til 3am.

Looking for someone who'll pay seven grand not to wait I guess?

It is one of those impulse purchases you could make, like a few extra plectrums or something.

2016 I think

1. "Just jam along, it's 12 bar blues!" Then a mess of a solo emerges and goes on for ten full minutes. 2. People who probably don't want to be in a band, they just want to show off expensive gear they can't play properly. If you're forming a band and someone says "let's talk about what gear we've got" and they list out tons of stuff down to their primary school recorder I think it's a huge red flag. My answer is "the right gear to cover most gig situations" and that should be sufficient 3. Being incredible at one song on the list but not bothering to learn most of the rest. 4. Being Mr 3 in this list and lecturing everyone else on how this band won't go anywhere unless we rehearse twice a week. 5. Venue staff telling you you're too loud when you're not. 6. Venues not giving you sensible drinks for free and generally treating the band as a huge inconvenience 7. Venues that are obviously for swearing at football on TV, and not for live music, hiring bands 8. Venues with hardly any plug sockets. 9. Drummers who can't keep time 10. Singers who can't banter with the audience 11. Long lists

Seventeen thousand pounds. For a bass. FODERA Emperor II Elite 5 String LEFTY (2012) https://reverb.com/item/54803906-fodera-emperor-ii-elite-5-string-lefty-2012?utm_source=android-app&utm_medium=android-share&utm_campaign=listing&utm_content=54803906

Done. Good luck with the project

Musicman Stingray. So, so easy to choose. Why? I bought it from brand new with a nice tax rebate after discovering accidentally I'd been overpaying tax by a considerable amount for a long time. Went into Wunjos and under no pressure chose the bass I wanted for thumping out covers in pubs, halls and at weddings and functions. It's my number 1 live bass for its massive, massive ballsy sound. You can slap it, you can pick it, you can gently fingerstyle it but you get the best out of it by digging in. The tone and punch of this bass fits perfectly for pop and rock style stuff. The neck is perfection. The EQ is intuitive and so easy to use. It's really lightweight and it looks fantastic. The only thing it doesn't do is subtlety. If it were a dog it would be a stupid, slobbery Great Dane that only wants to play 24hrs a day and jumps all over you. It will chew up your shoes but never sh!t in them and you'll just love it even more. If my house were on fire it's not the first bass I'd run back in for. That would be the "worthless" Kramer I got for my 18th birthday and have loved ever since. Many basses have come and gone but the Kramer stays. That's the bass that is just so natural for me to play. Sadly it's looks, and it's sound, don't fit all occasions.

Similar to my gig it seems! Thing is the audience don't notice most of what you will have noticed. Even my bandmates didn't notice the vast majority of my mistakes on Saturday night. We've agreed to have a "random riff quiz" at our next practice: list the songs each of us tends to f up, randomly shout the name of a song and everyone needs to belt out the riff together!

Odd gig Saturday night. Had to wait until Liverpool v Spurs finished so didn't start playing until quarter to ten. We had loads of new songs to try out before a massive gig in two weeks but this meant I forgot and messed up loads of the set staples. Loads of issues with volume (staff telling us to turn down even though we were as quiet as we could manage if you didn't want a drum solo all night) and a strange room for sound. Very small audience sat still in chairs either chatting and reacting a bit to the start of a few songs or staring intensely at us throughout. Started to feel ill through the set and just couldn't wait for it to be over. FInding the positives: we got a rubbish gig out of our system before our next which we want to be perfect; I have a greater focus on what to practice for the next two weeks.

Loads of great tips here, thank you. Our drummer is in charge of the mix, he has a laptop linked up to the PA for balancing and EQing. I will be passing on the advice about filtering as we may need it in other venues and if he knows what he's aiming for he can work out how to do it. This weekend it turned out we didn't need it. In a medium-large sized pub I managed with the bass amp (Ashdown RM500) with the input vol at twelve o'clock and the master volume at about its third notch from the bottom, so barely anything of its output, and no PA support for the bass. The room was odd with a big brick pillar in front of us dividing the room and pockets of mushy sound here and there. I was stood around 1m away from my cabs all night and heard a weird reverb type thing happening with the bass. All very odd. Not to mention a lot of other aspects of the night being odd too.

But you probably do.

This is why I'd like to put a smidge of bass through the PA, then I can lower the stage volume... In an ideal world

My thinking and the drummer too, we want to put it through the PA as a way of levelling everything out. The speakers should handle it but the guitarists are scared of it damaging them. I like @Lozz196 suggestion, get the heft and weight of sound up without actually adding volume. May be the way forward.

Asking for some advice, please. My band bought themselves a lovely high tech PA system before I joined... Without subs. Nobody in the group owns a van or has loads of storage space so buying second hand subs is a bit of a last resort and could be awkward. For gigs where we provide our own PA, which in my 6 months ish has been about half, I just play with my amp providing all the bass. My amp is an Ashdown Rootmaster 500, going through two fifteen inch ABM Neo cabs which are rated at 300w each. I really like the amp sound and it's flexible enough to handle all my different basses well. I am quite certain that for some gigs and venues coming up this will not be enough bass output, so pumping up the amp as I have done in a nice big room, would be intolerable on stage but maybe ok out front. It's not been a problem yet, but I don't really want a problem later. So with "buy some subs, idiot!" As a last resort, what would you recommend as first steps? Remember my cabs are rated at 300w each. I bought these recently brand new so don't want to take the hit of selling them on if I don't have to. I like my amp, I could get the 800w version for more output, but can the cabs handle it? Or would the heft of an ABM 600 be a good way to retain the cabs but get more bass output...? Thank you!

It's a lovely bass. Fantastic old school tone with flats on it. I've developed a bit of a thing for Epiphone now. I sold off my acoustic guitar and telecaster and acquired this to keep the jack Casady company...

Or like a METEOR....a.

I'm no massive user of it but I think they're two very different effects. I had a Dunlop bass crybaby and it was fantastic, I'm now using an AMT bass wah and it's pretty good, the Dunlop was better in that it had more range. I'd use an autowah when I want a quicker response than I can get from rocking my foot but the wah pedal gives more depth or sweep to what you're doing to the note... IMO.

I'm getting really tempted to buy an ABM Head for the added power in terms of output watts and also the sheer heft of the things. I'm currently running an RM500 through two ABM Pro Neo 15"s rated at 300w each. It sounds great, the RM is so flexible it's just a small tweak to get it sounding perfect for any bass (I have and gig: fretless 5 string Kramer, MM Stingray, Sire V9 and an Epiphone Jack Casady). But, having used ABM heads before I found them outstanding for a passive P bass but not so good for an active J. Did I not spend enough time tweaking or is the general way of things? My main bass is a Stingray so it needs to sound great for an active bass, which the RM does easily.... Next question is then around output and what my cabs can handle. Ashdown seem to make a wide range of outputs from the heads but then the cabs don't quite match, e.g. if I get an ABM 900 do I need a third 300w ABM cab?? Thank you

Only one way to find out... If the venue has a backup amp for you that you know works then it can be a v quick changeover after sound check or the first few songs. I'd just stand your Ashdown cab on top of something and/ or angle it upwards if you can to get some projection. Out of interest what is the venue?

True, but there'd be knobs in all the wrong places...