Happy Jack

Apart from being 21 at the time (and sharing a floor in the East End with Bruce Dickinson - yes, that Bruce Dickinson) I went the same route. I had a 40+ year career doing something dull, unglamorous, unpopular, but necessary and turned 'pro' as a musician (for a given value of 'pro') when I retired. Musicians are artists and entertainers. We are every bit as desirable as actors, sculptors, impressionist painters, and Premiership footballers. Also, about as necessary, as in not really necessary at all. If I look at the people I have 'needed' over the last few years, I find it easy to spot shopkeepers and delivery drivers, plumbers and roofers, lawyers and surveyors, but I struggle to remember a single occasion on which I genuinely needed a professional musician. Right now, I am imagining this topic transported to PlumbChat where dozens of plumbers are earnestly bemoaning the fact that they are losing business to enthusiastic Weekend Plumbers who will fix your dripping tap for little or nothing, just a mug of tea (with four sugars, please), before returning to their mundane jobs on Monday morning.

Agreed, and there's a reason for that. Meanwhile, here's the view from one of the vanishingly small percentage who managed to make it.

And there, in a nutshell, is your problem. They play for no fee because they WANT to do it. When push comes to shove those musicians (like so many others) face a simple choice ... do I want to play for nothing at a gig that I really really want to play, or would I prefer to sit at home watching TV and being proud of the fact that I "stuck to my principles"? Either way, you get nowt. I have every sympathy for unemployed or under-employed musicians, but you can't just ignore the fact that they have chosen to try to make a career out of an enjoyable hobby. Some people succeed at this, but they're a vanishingly small percentage of all the musicians, footballers and PC gamers who would just love to be paid lots of money for doing something they would anyway be doing in their spare time. Putting it really bluntly, if you want to be paid then get a real job.

After six years? I suspect not ...

Those 12V strips are nice and bright, ands that design is waterproof, but be aware that they run pretty hot. Attaching that strip to the inside of a metal grille with (maybe?) glue or something could be a fail waiting to happen.

Deffo this. The freebies we played were targeted at pubs that had given us gigs in the past, and that are (or have been) a pillar of the local music scene. We didn't offer them to just anybody!

More accurately, the market comprises many elements, including "musicians accepting unpaid gigs". Nobody has a God-given right to paid gigs, still less a God-given right to complain about musicians who play simply because they enjoy it.

I think it's too easy to see this pay/no pay situation as a binary, black -v- white thing. In my experience, it's anything but. Right now I'm involved with four bands. 1. Junkyard Dogs - a fully commercial pubrock band, playing together for many years. Under normal circumstances we would not accept no-pay gigs. During Covid we volunteered to play two freebies to help certain venues stay in business. Immediately post-Covid we volunteered to play one more freeby simply because we were so rusty after eight months that we'd have been embarrassed to ask for money. Apart from that, all the gigs in our 2021 diary are paid, and more-or-less properly. 2. Damo & The Dynamites - a fully commercial rock'n'roll band, playing together for three years. Under normal circumstances we would not accept no-pay gigs. During Covid we volunteered to play two freebies to help certain venues stay in business. Immediately post-Covid we volunteered to play one more freeby to help a venue with no music budget (yet) but where we expect to get many further paid gigs. Apart from that, all the gigs in our 2021 diary are paid, and more-or-less properly. 3. Soul Seniors - a Lockdown project which has more-or-less survived, but we're a long way from being tight and I'm the only member with any recent gig experience. We've played no gigs at all yet, and we'd jump at the chance of playing a few freebies. Don't much care why they're not paying or what excuse they're giving ... we need some low-stress no-pressure gigs to gel properly, and we'd be playing for nowt because that happens to suit us just now. 4. Fat Walters Band - a band that died a few years ago but suddenly revived last month. The format of the band has changed radically, again I'm the only member with recent gig experience, the repertoire is about 50% different from before, and the choice of material is - frankly - not commercial. Very few venues would be prepared to pay us, and we're far more likely to be offered mid-week gigs for beer money. If the mini-fest in the OP were reachable from here, I'd have no problem in offering the latter two bands. Stealing bread from the mouths of starving musicians? Bollocks. If the organisers have no budget for music and have come right out and said so, then what's the issue? No band is getting paid, and the mini-fest will have to put up with whatever music is available free. In my case, that would be my two weaker bands, neither of whom are actually good enough (right now) to charge a fee anyway. 😂

Tuner ... tuner ... where's my damn tuner ...

Take firelighters.

And you even joined Basschat solely in order to do it ...

+1

Shame he's turned the finger cutouts into ... erm ... knuckle cutouts.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/333749530501?hash=item4db505af85:g:eeUAAOSwmflfgY5Z Apparently this person knows how to build a bass, but doesn't know how to do a setup. Buy with confidence ...

If you can get that for £900, or even for the £1250+ I ended up spending, do please send me links!

Look up Jamieson 'Junior' Brown, check out his geetar stand thang.

Agreed, but Andy's services are very much in demand and by a lot of musicians better and more famous than me! I think he had just decided that this was one prject he should walk away from. 😂

On an 8-year-old bass, I'd say that "nice cracking to the finish" was actually bloody near catastrophic!

Easy for you to say ...

You've got me wanting one of these now (🙄) even though @Silvia Bluejay and I have been using an XR18 for two years without any situation arising where we'd have needed it! I can easily see it as a belt & braces thing mind, especially since Silvie's attention has to be split between the PA and her video cameras.

I get the upper register extension thing, Tony, and the Spuler you've posted has vestigial frets to make that extension usable. The bass in the OP has no such frets and would be pretty much unusable in that way ... certainly it would sound bloody odd if you tried! I'm still quite sure that the OP bass has a neck intended for use on a lefty (with integral thumb rest), but which has for some reason been fitted to a righty.

A distressed Squier affininty is just what you need to play Paddy McGinty's Goat ...

The way the edge of the neck continues beyond the fretted zone looks to provide an excellent thumb-rest ... but it's on the wrong side. If it's intentionally continued below the strings like that, then I am baffled as to what purpose it serves.

Judging by the shape of the neck up where your thumb might go, I'd guess that started life as a leftie and then the design got reversed for some reason. Either way, it doesn't do it for me.