Dan Dare

As for foam pop shields not being "rock n' roll", most punters aren't going to notice in a pub or club. The obvious point is that you don't need a pop shield the size of a football. Thin foam ones are available, believe it or not. Not much use as pop shields, but they will protect the gnashers from impact. Incidentally, old geezers aren't rock n' roll, either (I speak as an OG), no matter how hard they try to pretend they are.

Good man. There's no need to formally "give up". Just view it as taking a break from playing.

So he "can't deal with the look of the wind shield" and refuses to learn proper mic' technique, then complains he hits his teeth on the grille? Sounds like a him problem. Why get dragged into an issue that's entirely of his making? He's just trying to make it someone else's problem. Don't play his game. If he says he " too long in the tooth", tell him the problem will eventually solve itself as he'll wear his gnashers down bashing them on the mic' 😃

Nah. Plastic pop shield. 58 is metal.

Surely you change the key to suit the singer. There are no medals for struggling to play something in the "original" or "correct" key (which may well have been changed between the writing and recording of the song to suit the singer, anyway). In my band, we do that. As she has a penchant for Eb, I carry a bass tuned a semitone down for some numbers. Everybody's voice is different.

Virtually every gig sees changes, but they are mainly minor running order alterations, together with additions/deletions according to how long we are being asked to play for. We have more numbers ready to go than we need (unless we have to play for 3 hours plus, excluding breaks). We carry charts of things we are working on, so we can throw a few of those in if the fancy takes us. We try to add a couple of new numbers a month to the list.

I use a padded lighting bag. Less than 20 quid and does the job.

If it's short scale, would a guitar case do the job? Obviously you couldn't use a shaped one, but as long as it is of sufficient length, it should work. Measure it and see what's available.

This, although I'd amend it to "a good musician is able to play at any volume, etc". It doesn't apply just to drummers. In my experience, rods do not produce a good drum sound - a bit limp and unfocussed - but lighter sticks are certainly an option. If the drummer already has a small, light kit, what's his problem with using it? I take smaller backline to compact venues without making a fuss. Sounds as if the drummer only thinks of numero uno. If you're in a band with three pals and you're the odd one out, it doesn't sound a good place to be. I appreciate you can't replace the drummer. In your shoes, I'd be telling the rest of the band I don't want to play the small venues any longer because of the problem. Let them worry about finding another decent bass player/sound man. They aren't as common as one might think.

I agree with Lozz. You're a no frills, competent player. Don't shy away from applying to any band because of lack of self-confidence. A lot of bands want someone on bass who can simply nail it down and isn't going to try to steal the show from the soloists, tread on anyone's toes or try (and fail) to be the next Jaco. You fit that bill fine. You just have to keep plugging away, putting yourself about (open mic's, jams, etc) and applying for things. Most people will tell you honestly if they don't think you're right for the job. Accept it and move on to the next. As others suggest, don't dismiss anything because you never know where things can lead. So don't be too hasty to write off the "not so good" bands. If joining one gets you out playing, it's a bonus and you can always work on getting them to improve. Someone may see you out playing and approach you (it's happened to me). It's in the nature of sites such as Join My Band and BandMix that you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you meet a handsome prince. When you say you get a lot of timewasters applying, what do you mean exactly? It's been my experience that I've had to do the applying on JMB and BM, rather than the other way around. Do you mean you apply to something that sounds potentially good and you are disappointed when you get there? That's the way the cookie crumbles, I'm afraid. EMG456 is right. The best player definitely doesn't always get the job. Personality and work ethic and how well you click with others are often are more important. As he advises, unless finance dictates that you have to sell your gear, don't. You never get what it's worth and it's likely that you'll get rid of it all and be offered a gig. Bon chance.

I know. I was agreeing with you. Still, have the last word if you want it.

This. There are no immediately obvious visible differences between 2 and 4 pole Speakons. If you look into them end on, you may be able to spot the extra contacts, but the space is quite tight. 4 poles are often used for PA purposes. My 4 channel PA amp has 4 pole outs. +1 and -1 are for the top boxes, +2 and -2 for the subs (the amp has onboard DSP/crossover).

Not really his take, more your version of it. No mention of acoustic/non acoustic sides of the band in the OP. If I was told that, I'd take it as code for "we've found someone better". It happens.

Like any tool, NN is useful for its intended purpose. It's an aid to session players/singers who need charts that help them learn and play or sing a piece (which could be in any key) quickly when the meter is running and time is money. Most of those pieces will have quite a simple structure - three or four chord pop/country numbers and similar. It isn't, as Dad observes, intended or ideal for more complex music. Unless you are a busy session player who is up against the clock, it probably isn't worth using.

True. For practical/DIY purposes, Neutrik is the widely available over the counter brand, though, so the OP is much more likely to find them, rather than something that is usually available to OEMs.

You ask what gauge of cable to use. I assume your reference to cable numbers refers to AWG ratings. If so, you are correct that the lower the number, the higher the diameter. However, much speaker cable in the UK is graded according to metric measurement of conductor diameters. The most commonly available are 1.5mm, 2.5mm and 4mm. For short speaker cables (they aren't going to be more than a metre long, more likely shorter) from your amp to cabs, 1.5mm will be fine. 2.5mm is useful for longer cables and high power. 4mm is overkill except for very long cables for very high power PA use. Please heed chris_b's advice and use only genuine Neutrik Speakons, not no-name copies. The difference in price is minimal and Neutriks are guaranteed to do the job properly

As a matter of interest, do you know whether or not the speaker in the photos (which I assume the buyer sent you) is the one from the SWR? As lemmywinks suggests, might he have photographed a damaged one he had lying around? How old was the combo? The speaker in the photo has a "RoHS compliant" sticker on it. As far as I can find, the RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) Regs came into force in 2006. If the combo is older than that, you wouldn't expect to find that sticker.

"I get back to you tomorrow"? Sounds the sort of thing a chancer would say. Then, in the same breath and as if by magic, "I've fixed it. Took 2 hours". 2 hours to pop rivet a tag board back into the hole on the chassis (which you can see in the photo)? Yeah, right, sunshine. Bullet dodged, I reckon. I wouldn't be surprised if he tries to bill you for 2 hours of his time next. Suggest you offer him 20p for the 5 minutes it actually took him.

Has anyone bought from Japan? If so, what are the import duties, etc you had to pay. Thanks in advance

I particularly enjoy the "Whether you're a professional or just starting out" line, which seems to appear in all AI generated descriptions. Were I selling anything, I'd be too embarrassed to include it, whether or not I knew anything about the thing I was selling.

I wonder what the guitar player's take on this is.

Try Richard Hill at Electrohill in Palmers Green. Google will give you contact info.

The DBX Driverack does a similar job. There's a lower cost equivalent from Behringer and several other companies offer similar devices. They can be very useful, especially in awkward acoustic spaces. They frequency sweep the room and adjust the overall eq to compensate for anomalies. Makes set-up a lot easier.

Agreed and this is the important point. I want to know what a piece of gear can be set to do, how well it can cope with varying situations, etc. How it sounds "flat" is of little value, as I am unlikely to ever use it that way. When I bought my bass head, I didn't choose it on the basis of how it sounded "flat". I tried it with the actual cabs I use and experimented to find out how well it could be made to work with them. I did the same when auditioning PAs. I bought the PA I own because it is versatile and has very good onboard signal processing, enabling me to get a good result in a wide variety of environments. The problem with comparative tests such as the one above is that they can create a false impression of how equipment performs. Several have commented, for example, how the separate sub is "boomy", "muddy", etc. Given that it is on the floor, it isn't really a surprise that it will be more bass heavy due to coupling and boundary reinforcement. A box on a pole, by comparison, may sound cleaner. However, with proper adjustment, the separate sub could well prove to be superior if both it and the box on the pole are set up to perform to their full potential. The separate sub may have more to give. It's well known that some manufacturers will configure equipment to have showroom appeal, so it sounds good off the bat when set notionally "flat". The implication is "if that's how good it is flat, just imagine how good it will be with some tweaking". The truth could be that it's doing about as well as it can and has relatively little potential to give much more.

"Flat" is very much a notional concept, though. No piece of equipment, especially if it is built to meet a certain price point, is truly "flat". Even if eq is bypassed, there are limitations imposed by the room acoustics and shortcomings in the equipment itself. Perhaps if one is shopping at d&b Audiotechnik prices, these might not be so much of an issue, but for real world use by ordinary people (i.e. us), there is no such thing as "flat". No instrument is "flat". No microphone or instrument pickup is "flat". So even if you feed a truly "flat" system with a coloured signal from those mic's or pickups, you will get out what you put in, which won't be "flat". If the colourations in a faithfully rendered signal clash with the acoustics of the room, you are going to need to correct that via eq. If you play recorded music through a system, you are hearing the eq applied at mastering stage in the room where the mastering took place. It may well not suit the space you are in. Again, you need to correct via eq. Manufacturers try their best, within the limitations of budget and technology, to maximise the performance of the equipment they make. However, they test in anechoic conditions, which we never encounter in reality. They have to. Were they to test in a notional "typical room" and set gear up to work best in that environment, it would probably sound worse in conditions unlike the "typical room", because every space is different acoustically. Acoustic conditions in the same space can vary over time, according to how many people are in the space (lots of soft bodies soak up certain frequencies and reduce the volume of free air in a room), temperature, humidity and so on. The DSP on my PA has a variety of starter acoustic profiles, ranging from nominally flat, through settings for reverberant spaces and so on (there is even one for tents/marquees). They are handy to get you part of the way, but you need to tweak them further to suit the space you are in.