BrunoBass

Yes, I’m 6’2” with an 18 stone rugby players frame, a Strat looks like a toy on me. Anything other than a full scale bass looks ridiculous on me.

https://bbc.in/33Yd8ej

I’ll just leave this here... You’re welcome.

Cool photo

I could class a bad gig perhaps as one where we don’t play well, or something goes wrong with equipment / personnel / some other ‘out of our hands’ circumstance. But really, a bad gig is one with no audience. We’re a pub band, and we social media the hell out of our upcoming gigs, as well as word of mouth, so locally we always get a good crowd. But further afield, you’re really at the mercy of the pub owner / landlord and how well they promote the gig. Our regulars won’t travel fifty miles on a Saturday night to see us so a lot of the time it’s pot luck whether or not the venue has bothered to promote the gig, but that’s another thread.

We met up, The Man Who Hits Drums muttered an apology through gritted teeth, and then spent the next hour moaning about everything he doesn’t like about the band. Total negativity and insincerity. The only positive is that my mind is made up, I’ll fulfil my commitments until the end of the year (mate’s wedding, launch party of another mates new pub amongst the usual pub stuff) and then I’m gone. I fancy a break and the chance to find another band.

Easy Life. Young band from Leicester, kind of jazz / hip hop / indie / urban but with a very English vibe. Been into them for while, really good I think.

Paul Simonon, Sting and the 2-Tone guys like Mark Bedford, Horace Panter and David Steele. I was ten in 1979, just getting into music and I thought all of them were great. Still do.

He texted us earlier today, saying he wants to meet up. Apparently there are some personal things going on that he wants to talk about. We’ll see.

You’re quite right, but the drummer and the guitarist/singer are close friends, I joined later. They can probably recover from this better than I can. If anybody’s walking it’s me, and if I go... well, it took them six months to find me to replace the previous bassist. Replacing me mightn’t be any easier, who knows.

⬆️ Spot on

Maybe... Definitely an overreaction, and as today has worn on and I’ve had time to think about it the more angry I am about how he reacted. If someone has a problem we deal with it in a mature manner. Being called a **** by a bandmate is unnecessary and unacceptable. I’m pretty easy going usually and I’m normally happy to work things like this out and move on, but being the character he is I think this will fester to the point that the continuation of the band is probably untenable. I don’t need the grief - this is supposed to be fun.

Well, that escalated quickly... We had a decent gig, really rocking by the second half, the whole pub up and dancing. All good. But then with about four songs to go the pub practically emptied, we finished and got no encore. The first time ever we haven’t heard ‘more, more’ at the end of the set. Oh well, no biggie, it means I get home quarter of an hour earlier. After loading out we were outside by our cars, discussing why the pub emptied like it did. I mentioned that we were very loud (we were, something about the room made the drums sound very, very loud). The drummer only hits things with one level of velocity, so the obvious answer of not hitting the drums quite so hard doesn’t register with him. Consequently me and the guitarist had to turn up a bit, but nothing drastic. Drummer then starts getting defensive, saying he had to play loud to compete with the amps, ignoring the fact that we were loud to compete with him. He’s a difficult character at the best of times but he then started acting like a stroppy teenager and getting pretty het up. It ended by him getting in his car, calling us a pair of ****s and speeding off. So as of this morning I don’t even know if we have a band anymore. Guitarist has tried to contact him this morning but no response. The sad thing is I’m actually not that bothered if it’s over, I don’t need that kind of hassle.

+1 for Jack - top man, great service.

Wow. I gig regularly in rowdy pubs where beer gets spilt and mic stands get knocked etc, but I’ve never had anyone grab my bass by the neck. I’d be grabbing them by the neck if anyone ever did that...

I don’t mind a bit of artificial wear if it’s subtle and looks like it’s the result of many years of use. I look after my stuff and despite years of, er, energetic gigging it’s still clean and pretty much ding free. I often wonder how people’s gear gets into the state it’s in. Similarly, when I see other people’s gear at gigs or rehearsal studios I’m often struck by just how dirty some it is. Build up of gunk on the frets, greasy finger marks... some people must never clean their stuff.

There are a couple of guys active on the Facebook Rickenfakers group turning out some high quality stuff, including 4005 copies. I won’t mention their names here but have a look, you’ll soon figure out who they are.

That’s more like it!

Interesting to read all the posts on this thread. I started playing bass in my late teens in the late eighties but I never visited The Bass Centre. I remember seeing the ads in the magazines and viewing it as some kind of mythical sanctum of dream gear with myriad pro players casually hanging around. I probably found the idea of visiting a bit intimidating if I’m honest. I do remember my mate Alex making the trip down for some kind of New Year sale, it must have been 87-88 time and he told me he’d camped out on the street outside so he could be first in the queue to nab the Jaydee Supernatural he had his eye on when they opened up, he got it too.

My RMI Boomslang Jive has a mini toggle that does just this.

From my experience, I would never again use or recommend Hermes for anything, bass or otherwise. There are only so many lost / missing parcels, ignored email / calls to customer service and faked signatures I’ll accept.

Yes caught that last night, good stuff.

Great, thanks.