Dan Dare

The Shure Beta 57 is regarded as better than the 58 for female voices. I "discovered" a nice inexpensive vocal mic for female voices by accident a few years ago, which is an EV ND 367s. It isn't the best choice for those soul/blues belter female voices - you can overload it - but it's great for the type of voice you describe. You don't need to work it super close, either and it's a dynamic, which is handy in situations where there isn't phantom power.

"Weak, smiling and slow bassists", huh? Well, you've forced my hand. A couple of people have alluded to what I'm about to say, but I'll give it to you straight. You uploaded a sample of your playing earlier. Being brutally honest, it consisted mainly of medium tempo, simple pentatonic clichés with occasionally slightly iffy timing. You may be the best or only bass player in your town, but you appear to have an unrealistic estimation of your abilities. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Brilliant. That bassist must be roasting in that cossie. Like all good parodies, the playing is spot on. Great stuff.

Yep. It seems to me that many who play fretless regard themselves as somehow superior to us lowly mortals who rely on frets. Perhaps they are drawn to fretless because they see it as a way to demonstrate their expertise. Hence the over-playing, superfluous frills and clever stuff. As it happens, I play fretless as well. I've played the violin for almost 60 years, so am used to not having those little bits of brass to keep me in tune. However, I rarely use it. It only comes out when it might be appropriate.

If it is what the music calls for, it is precisely that. Being a musician is all about making the right choices - what to play, when to play it, how much or little to play and so on. All the technique in the world does not make anyone a good musician and especially not a good band player. A band is a team, or should be. The whole should be greater than the sum of its parts. If you view a band purely as a vehicle to enable you indulge yourself, you are unlikely to fit in well.

On the contrary, it's the worst time to "show your skills" Playing in a band is as much about personal skills as it is about being able to play well. By all means demonstrate that you are competent, but if you show off or start telling the other musicians what to do when you don't even know them, be prepared for a rejection.

Nowt "sad" about it and it applies to pretty well any instrument. Being in a band is about being a team player and complementing what everyone else is doing. That's what gives me most satisfaction about playing the bass.

Amen to that, especially the last part. Again, spot on. "Explosive" playing can be another word for drawing attention to oneself/showing off, or being too busy, or even trying to force a way of doing things on the rest of the band. None of these are qualities that will get you a gig unless the band happens to be in sympathy with your approach. A lot of bands don't want a "genius" on the bass, with good reason. They want someone who does the job and fulfils the role. Yes, people like Jaco P are brilliant, push the boundaries, extend what was considered possible for the instrument, etc. But would you want them in your band, drawing focus away from everyone else and even working against what the band is trying to achieve? If Jaco could be reincarnated and turned up for an audition with your band, would you hire him? I wouldn't, although I would happily acknowledge his brilliance. Geniuses are often best admired from afar.

And that right there could be the issue. If you attend an audition and tell the band "This is the way I do it and I don't care what you want", you're unlikely to get the gig. They will probably not tell you bluntly that they don't like your attitude and that they want someone who is willing to be more flexible and fit in with the rest of the band. They are more likely to be diplomatic and say something along the lines of "We're not looking for a fretless/fretted player" or similar.

Rat fur was originally a carpet material developed for the auto industry (the original product name was Ozite). Ozite itself was hardwearing and durable and would clean up well. It is often attached to cabs with tough 2 part adhesive, making it difficult to remove. Many cab manufacturers used cheaper copies of it, which is not such good news. Really cheap versions did not have a vinyl backing beneath the fur. They can be a real nightmare to remove and leave bits of fur and glue all over the cab, so cleaning/refurbing rather than replacement is sensible unless you have endless patience. Your plan - hoover after brushing (I'd try a stiffish carpet brush), then use the sticky side of some gaffa tape like a lint roller to get more stubborn dirt/dust out of it - sounds a good way to go. You can use even wet carpet cleaner and a scrubbing brush on decent quality rat fur once you have removed the surface dirt, but obviously it would be sensible to remove drive units, wiring etc first and allow to dry thoroughly before re-assembling. You have little option other than to shave pilled areas. With luck, it won't leave them looking too threadbare unless the pilling is really severe. Have fun.

Apparently, if you pick up a seashell on the beach these days and hold it to your ear, you can hear the sound of a toilet flushing.

There are a couple of decent looking Peavey 1x15 combos on eBay at the moment (including a TKO 115) for not a lot of money if you fancy a trip down memory lane. I agree with Lozz's suggestion to look at Ashdown. Decent and reliable if the weight is not an issue.

PJB are my speakers of choice, too, for electric as well as DB (and my fiddle, for which they work nicely - no tweeters to accentuate the harsh high frequencies that you can get when using a bow). I have five of his 5x4 cabs and use as many as the occasion demands. They're also great when you want that foam-under-the-strings P bass thump.

There is plenty of decent kit that will do what you want. Suggestions above are all good. I won't muddy the waters by recommending what I use. It's decent, but no better than what others suggest. Why not pay a visit to somewhere like Bass Direct and play with some stuff? Go on a quiet weekday and you can try things to your heart's content. That's what i did the last time I upgraded my gear. I'd just say that, whatever you go for, make sure it's modular - such as the Mark Bass 121 plus cab you mention - so you can take out as much or as little as you need for the job. Avoid big, cumbersome boxes and you should be fine.

I'd say it's more a case of realising, when you reach "a certain age" and become more musically knowledgeable, that what you fondly and naively imagined to be "creativity" was nothing of the sort.

Vintage instruments, like vintage cameras, cars, etc, etc will always be in demand and not just by musicians. An enormous number of them are owned purely as investments by people who can hardly play, if at all. For every Joe Bonamassa (who is a real player as well as a well-known collector), there are hundreds of architects, bankers and wealthy weekend warriors who have money to burn and who are looking for something to invest it in. Their instruments are usually kept in secure storage and rarely used for their intended purpose. As long as musical instruments are seen as investments, that situation will continue and prices will be likely to hold up.

"Misogynistic and homophobic language removed"? I remember my first pint, too.

I like the cut of your jib. OP says "no one PLAYS any more"??? Funny, but I hear plenty of people every day who do just that. Perhaps I'm dreaming. Maybe he saw playing music as a means to an end - money, fame, recreational pharmaceuticals, loose women, fast cars and the like. If only. As you so rightly say, do it for its own sake and enjoy it and treat any success is a bonus.

I have a TC Helicon VoiceSolo, which works very well. Clips onto the mic stand, so you can have it pointing directly at and close to you. Tannoy speaker, clean sound, nice reverb/eq settings and you can still send a dry signal to the PA when you use them in the monitor.

My feelings exactly. I tried to suggest we'd have little chance of following them (poor light, writ small, old gits with failing eyesight and so on) but he knew best. It was a shambles. He blamed the rest of us, of course.

Amplifying acoustic instruments is always a compromise. You have a big hollow box full of air that vibrates in sympathy with what is happening in the air around it. The resonant frequency/frequencies of the instrument itself usually need to be tamed. If you're playing on a hollow or resonant stage or surface (being a double bass, the instrument will make physical contact with it) that can exacerbate the problems. Feedback doesn't have to manifest itself overtly (i.e. through actual howling and squealing) to be an issue. When I use a pickup on my fiddle, I find notes around D always cause trouble. A decent parametric eq can be very helpful. A HPF can be a bit of a blunt instrument, in that it gets rid of a lot of things from the sound that you ideally want to keep.

I find this, too. A little give in the pick seems to produce a rounder sound, perhaps because it pushes the string aside a little less aggressively. Hardness of the material the pick is made from affects the sound, too. Good point. I find I tend to play closer to the bridge with a pick. I guess that's due to body mechanics - it's more difficult to play near the end of the fingerboard with a pick in my experience. To an extent, this is true. The sharper attack from a pick means it will never sound like fingers. You should be able to warm things up with experimentation, though.

Most participants at jam nights - electric ones, anyway - are, in my experience, blokes of a certain age (I put my hand up to that), so the musical diet tends to be classic rock and blues, or similar stuff. There may be the occasional person who hasn't got the memo who turns up with a trombone and there might be the odd budding songwriter who throws you a curve ball in the shape of their latest opus, but that's part of the deal. If you sing, so much the better. I wouldn't be too adventurous in your choice of material if you call a number or two. It's better and more rewarding for all concerned - players and listeners - to play something straightforward decently than to stagger through something tricky. I always ask, if I don't know a number, what the first change is and I try to stand where I can see the guitar player's left hand (I play guitar, too), so I can get an idea of what's going on. The sound can be iffy at some sessions, so you can't always rely on hearing subtleties, especially if it gets a bit loud (which it often does). Don't be tempted to hand out charts so you can try something more adventurous. One guy at a jam I went to did that. The place was poorly lit and we had no chance of reading them (especially as, being blokes of a certain age, most of us needed spec's). It did not go well. As others advise, keep what you do simple/solid. It's a social occasion for most and for many people the only chance they have to perform publicly, so expectations generally need to be tempered. It's usually good fun as long as you don't expect too much from it.

Might be made by the people who built this

I'm a PJB fan and user. However, a Cub or Double 4 is expensive for something that will be used purely for practice (as is the small Elf combo you mention). Whilst it's nice to have a great sounding (and looking) low volume rig for practice, might it be more economic to get a small - 1x10 or 1x8 - cab to use with your main amp for practice and keep the volume down. If money is no object, then obviously that won't concern you. Buying a PJB combo could also work out more expensive than you thought. I bought a PJB combo (a Flightcase) for practice and small, wine bar type gigs.. I found I liked the sound so much that I became dissatisfied with my previous main rig. I ended up buying several more PJB cabs and a new head and selling the old rig. As you say, decisions, decisions. Have fun.