uk_lefty

Only looks as cool as what's behind it, surely.

Yep, it went on a bit as well. I genuinely wore three watches at once on one gig and showed photo evidence. Beat that for anarchy, Sex Pistols.

The iPad debate...! Reminds me of the long thread on here a while back where someone said wearing a watch on stage was unprofessional 🤷🏻‍♂️ each to his own!

Personally I like the look of some relics and a Jaco relic has some appeal to me... BUT. Every relic guitar I've come across in person, including a fender CS Jazz, has just made me not want to play it. There's just something about the fake ageing, dirty neck, cracked finish, unrealistic wear patterns that loads of other guitars have in cookie-cutter identical places, Sandberg for example all their heavy relics look identical to me and that's disappointing for a handmade item. Each to their own, though.

Sounds like you've done well to get rid early. I recently learned the hard way that the audition process has to take weeks, it's when people think they're "in" that the bad habits and personality issues surface, or you see they're just a one trick pony. Well done on the phone call too.

I love my Stingray because it is BIG, bold and a bit gritty. It does great big dollops of deep, gritty Stingray tone, or I crank up the mids and make it a bit more like a P bass. Put simply it's the ultimate live bass. I compare it to having a big, stupid, lovable dog that slobbers all over you and always wants to play but will never just sit calmly in your lap.

Time tree is a good one. So is Family Calendar. Both are apps that work on Android and Apple. My band uses an Apple Calendar and it means I can't access it on my android phone, which is annoying.

It certainly does. But out of the 121 sounds I only find a handful actually usable!

I loved the idea of the EHX Mono Synth but found the tracking awful. It had the best sounds for popusic, if you're holding a single note for a whole bar it's great but to play anything busy it can't keep up IME. It's a shame, there's something about EHX that always pulls me in but I've never kept a single one of their pedals that I've bought even though I always want them to be the best thing ever.

You're on a very interesting musical journey! I wouldn't know about schools of the sort you mention if Google hasn't turned any up then I guess if it does exist at all it's very hard to find. I would suggest you track down via YouTube or instagram etc. players you like, who play the kids of music you want to learn and come across as personable. A lot may offer private lessons 1-1 which is great because then you can set out what you want to work on and get their input. Some absolute top players offer lessons. From my own experience I saw that Nathan King (pro guitarist and bassist who does the Andertons bass demos) was offering lessons during lockdown. A single 1-1 1hr lesson with him helped me re focus on what I needed to learn in order to progress my playing.

Ignore my previous advice, if you're handy with the tools then do this! Probably a better investment of time and money.

It's clever. A bit better than watching an old gig at a cinema but not as good as seeing them properly live and feeding off the atmosphere in front of them. I won't be going. BUT if they could do Hendrix, The Doors, etc. in a similar "better than cinema" way and at a reasonable cost I might consider it.

Almost 18 months with a Helix Stomp now... These are my reflections and experiences: 1. Ease of use. It's easy to use IF you invest the time getting under the skin and seeing how the presets are made up and experimenting with all the different variations on some effects, like the autowah which can do each vowel sound with either an upward or downward inflection. I find the PC editor more intuitive than editing on the pedal itself. Still, I often cannot be bothered to get out the PC and connect it all up. I wish they did an app for connecting. 2. Presets. I mainly use the presets as my starting point and then bring other effects in and out by footswitch as I need them. I tweak some of these to suit what I'm playing. Generally I find the presets pretty good and I'm happily gigging with Del Sol as a default sound, adding on drive or fuzz as needed. 3. Wah? I could never get an external expression pedal to function as a wah so had to buy a wah pedal. Almost every previous multi I've used had a built in wah pedal and I knew I'd miss that on the stomp. I don't use a wah much but when I do I want it to sound good. 4. Synths. I play covers and we try to add a lot of detail to some of the more well-worn songs, so for me that means synths to replicate sounds off the original records a lot of the time, or to cover up for missing backing parts. I had to buy a Boss SY-1 and add this to the pedalboard, and use an expression pedal for it. Since then Line6 improved their synth offering but I've not had much chance to play with that yet. I've not found a good OC-2 type effect yet either. It's really lacking here for me, but I guess not for the majority of their market. 5. Switches. I had to buy external switches. This 1 box solution is far from it. The more I can talk myself out of buying additional pedals, but I got rid of all my pedals to buy the helix stomp. My board now has: Harley Benton tuner/mute; Line 6 helix stomp; Two button footswitch for the stomp; Boss SY 1 synth pedal; Expression pedal for boss synth; Wireless receiver; AMT Bass Wah; Calibe power supply for everything except the Helix. 6. Downloadable patches and stuff... I paid for a package off Sigma Audio and that was.... Ok. I don't think I use any of their settings actually!! I did for a while but not now. I paid for a Trace Elliot IR too but unless I do any recording I can't see me using that either. I've had mixed experience with downloading free patches off the Line6 forum and Dr Tone. Dr Tone stuff is not suited for me on the basses I play or the style of music. Some of the free ones off the Line6 community have been ok but again I'm not using any of these live. I'm sticking with the tried and tested presets with my tweaks. Overall is it worth keeping...? Well, I can't spend my time buying pedals to discover they sound nothing like the demos or they don't interact well with my other pedals. Or buying pedals for a song then never rehearsing or gigging that song again. So the Helix has saved me there. I would like to try the Boss and Zoom multis but I don't see a massive improvement there either. Yes, they may address some issues but then there's the whole learning curve to go on again. What does the Helix do better than any individual pedal? Hard to say. The only answer is variety. It has so much more variety than individual pedals. I cannot say it's a better preamp than any of the preamp pedals I've had before, except it has so many more options. It can do all my guitar stuff too, which is a bonus, so it's not a bass specific pedal. Would I upgrade to the more expensive Helix stuff? Only if I got a stonking good deal secondhand and even then it would be a push. It's the learning curve again, and knowing I'd need to add one or two other pedals. Would I buy it again if it were lost, stolen, or most likely damaged by a punter spilling drink on it? No. There's more choice now than there was 18 months ago, I'd probably go for the Zoom or Boss multis out of curiosity on what I've missed out on and hope they suit me better. Or maybe even the Pod Go as it has wireless and wah built in.

If there's nothing wrong with it, stick. You can spend hundreds chasing some indescribable difference that you'll never catch. You have a good amp, you like it, keep it. Seriously, that's a very good amp. It will sound amazing. If you can manage the weight of it then keep it going. If it weren't for the weight I'd still have one of my old Trace's. Nothing else sounds like them.

I'd second this. Rather than buy something online that you haven't seen for yourself have a luthier make one for you. It will fit your bass perfectly and be the right height for your set up.

For me I have a spare bass on standby usually. Sometimes I like to use a different bass for a second set, sometimes it's cased up and in the boot of the car. If I don't have a spare bass I definitely have spare strings. If my amp goes down I can DI off my pedalboard. If my wireless goes down I have a spare cable on stage with me. If my pedal board goes down I just won't use effects. I've never had a spare amp because I don't want to pay out for something I hope to never use. I carry a bag of leads, speaker cables and so on to bigger gigs. The thing I find most useful is a £15 battery tester off Amazon. I've had a Stingray battery go weird on me and I have spent tons making sure I have new batteries for gigs.... Well, gigs don't tend to drain batteries much. Since buying the tester it's probably paid for itself in stopping me buying new batteries. Now I'm on a wireless and I have an active bass a quick check with this before going out... It's not priceless but it saves me about a tenner per gig.

I clocked this a while back. I'm all for encouraging learning and creativity... My daughter does enjoy having a go on my basses too

That jazz is very pretty too.

Proud Mary seems to be too well worn. Others from my old band: Sharp Dressed Man, Sex on Fire... It's like "what's the easiest song by....insert band name?". Problem is audiences in pubs and even music venues want this and will go mad for it, so you have to play some of these "classics". I think the trick is to play them really, really well and not many covers bands can! Then also to have a rotation of these so if people see you more than once you can swap a "sex on fire" for a "Mr brightside". My new band has loads of songs that I cringed at when first reading the setlist: Dakota, Seven Nation Army, Mr Brightside... There's more. But. This band plays them bloody well and structures the set well. When we rehearse we concentrate on the details in the songs to keep it interesting for ourselves and elevate the song above a pub band bashing around at it. Makes it work for us. I still hate some of the songs though, I'd gladly never play Seven Nation Army ever again.

The Desert Penguins will do a one off 00's indie rock night at the Corn Exchange, Hertford, Friday 17th May. We are learning a lot of new material for this so please come on down and enjoy the night. After the live music a DJ will be on until late. Great venue, decent sound set up, left handed bassist. What more could you want?

Awesome name for a cover band.

I got back in Sunday after a whirlwind two days away for this gig. What an experience!! Left home at 5am Friday and arrived in Amsterdam early afternoon. Taking guitars and cymbals on the Eurostar was so easy, far better than flying IMO. We arrived, had some food and a few drinks and eventually got ready for the gig. We walked into the venue, which was packed, and there was a band on stage (they do two bands each night Thursday to Sunday I think) and they were good. A countryish band with great backing vocals. The crowd enjoyed it.... We are nothing like that. After a v quick setup we were on. We spread out our set into four parts to fit the running order and to manage the churn of audience as people go bar to bar. Each of the four forty five min sets was a mini whole gig setlist with a "big one" at the end. We moved the order around a bit and played for over an hour in the first set to minimise breaks. My hands felt like sausages and I fluffed a few lines here and there but no clangers in the first forty odd mins. The place was full and the crowd were energetic, singing and dancing. We powered through and the place was heaving. In the second set I can't remember which song started it but bouncing around turned to gentle shoving and then a sort of mosh pit formed. A few songs later and I saw something I didn't like one bit, a lady was shoved by the back of her head, and stopped playing and had to say something over the mic. The band continued and I joined back in a few bars later. We gave a bit of a warning out on behaviour and shoving people who probably don't want to be shoved about. That sorted things and we continued. The energy in the place was amazing, loads of people genuinely there for the live music and bouncing around, singing along to every song. Overall it was an incredible experience. I never thought I'd end up doing something like this. Playing pubs can be great fun, but playing full music venues in a foreign capital city was just something else! The staff and the soundman loved the set, I think we will be going back!