Happy Jack

I played the stage outside The Marquess Of Lorne last year with a rockabilly band ... great craic.

From the Cheap Pedals thread I started six weeks ago: Two pedals that I have used extensively since Covid are the Digitech Drop and the Digitech Luxe. That's about £350 worth of kit (if you can find them) and very nice they are too. I broke my Drop at the last gig - trod on the p/s at the pedal socket, doh! - and I simply have to have a whole-tone pitch-shift for one particular song so I went looking for cheap alternatives. I found the Mooer Pitchbox MPS1 for £59. It's about a third the size of the Drop, it does exactly the same job only with rather better tracking, and if you flick the switch from setting #2 (pitch-shift) to #3 (de-tune) it also does exactly what the Luxe does.

https://www.lemonrock.com/sidewinder

Nah ... the difference is that the guy in Clip #1 is actually playing live while he does the whole Riverdance thing, whereas the suited & booted chap in Clip #2 is miming. Badly.

In truth, I've never been convinced by through-body stringing.

Troo dat, but with many drummers that's absolutely a losing battle. I'M JUST TICKLING 'EM!!!

That's right up there with "Queen Tribute seeks Freddie Mercury".

The only person who can't hear the vocals (usually) is the drummer. Guitar(s) and Bass stand up front, with their heads close enough to the PA tops that hearing the vocals is no problem at all. The answers are totally different if you're playing Glastonbury or the Albert Hall. If you're playing the Dog & Duck to 40 people, then arriving in an Edwin Shirley pantechnicon and loading-in a ton (literally a ton) of PA kit is going to win you no friends and no re-bookings. The main reason (IME) that someone needs a monitor is that everyone else has a monitor and the noise levels on stage make it impossible to hear anything unless you have one too. Take away everybody's monitors and you reduce by half the gear you need, reduce by at least half the volume levels on stage, provide everyone with lots of extra room, and save a fortune. I repeat ... you're playing a PUB!!!

This is a big, BIG topic and I would move forward slowly and carefully, if I was you. If you're not putting the whole band through the PA, then forget about putting the kick through it and buy something lightweight that will be good for the vocals. If you're starting to play pubs, why do you need monitors? What do the band members need to hear that they won't be able to hear in a pub? If you're not weight-lifters, consider buying a power amp and a pair of lightweight passive speakers ... why would you want to lift a pair of power amps above shoulder height at every gig? Above all, go and see some Basschatters local to you play some gigs, check out what they're doing, ask what works for them and what doesn't. My signature contains links to both my bands and all their gigs; if you're anywhere near one of those, come along and talk to me or @Silvia Bluejay and we'll tell you what we can.

Noble are based in California and have a long wait-list. Their product is tiny and will disappear into pretty much any piece of luggage. If you book a flight to California several months in advance, the flight is much cheaper. Currently, the cost of such a flight is about £150 more than the cost of importation. Just saying ...

It's just another waffle opportunity, a bit like a really low-profile Twitter account.

No no no ... to see a profile, you just have to look at a Member side-on.

Sorry Billy, but I think Stew may be right on this. With just four years under your belt, I'd suggest you get involved with one or more other bands at the same time as this one. Not only will your bass playing improve faster and stretch out more, but the more musos you play with the more you'll get to see that most of them are pretty much like this. And there ain't no law against being in more than one band at a time, especially if they're not gigging anyway. Doesn't necessarily improve your temper, but you'll likely end up thinking less that the grass will be greener with a different crew.

Or you could source a simple BBOT and cantilever it off the back end of the body by 10cm. There is a precedent y'know ... 😉

Well I would play 10,000 hours, and I would play 10,000 more ...

Granted that we're all on some sort of spectrum, and I'm far nearer the control-freak get-it-done-now-and-get-it-right end of that spectrum myself, but I'm forever astonished at how many of the people I've played with over the last 15 years have either had substance issues (usually booze or dope or both, of course) or self-worth issues or were just perfectly feckless in how they lived their lives. I'm only talking about people I've actually played with here, so a sample size of perhaps a hundred musos. If I were to include all the musos I've met but haven't played with (i.e. a group largely comprising flakes and fantasists) my sample size gets quite respectable. To me it's clear that a "career in music" (bwahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!) frequently attracts a certain personality type - along with plenty of perfectly sensible, hard-working folk of course - and that a lot of them work really hard to live down to the image of what a rock musician is supposed to be. One of the saddest things I ever hear is when some desperate Keef Richard wannabe sees me doing something he wouldn't do, and says "not very rock'n'roll, is it?" like there's a rule book which he memorised as a 14-year-old and can't let go of.

Use of the word 'plateaus' is of course complete bolleaux. 😉

It's been designed like that to suit people with enormous sausage fingers.

I suspect that the '10,000 hours' is only one component of achieving mastery, Grasshopper.

Concise and accurate ...

Dammit Daz! You beat me to it.

He is very versatile, I'll grant you ...

Whatever you think works best will be fine for me, Andy. I am not 'aiming' for a particular sound or feel ... this will be a wholly new and unique bass. 🙂

I had forgotten the very existence of the Singer Chamois. Pretty soon, someone will start referencing Sunbeams and Simcas and then there'll be no coming back from that ...