josie

That's not worse, it's better! 🙂 I also have little coloured ribbon ties on the ends of all my cables so I can tell (1) which end belongs to which and (2) which cables belong to me. I'm trying to get the others to visibly tag mic stands and PA stands too so we know for sure who should go home with exactly what.

It's not just you. Electric string does that as soon as you turn your back. Buying cables I look for those neat little elastic-and-hook loops some have which make it easy to secure them into some semblance of order which might stay put until the next time they come out of the gig bag.

Belatedly my thanks and congratulations. I too would have preferred two separate one-hour episodes - of course i could have split up listening to it, but i got absorbed and went straight through. Good natural voices. Good to have the segments explicitly flagged up. Tiny detail - there have been threads here about "what should you always have with you at a gig" usually spare battery. strings, &c but the podcast was the first time I'd heard a hand towel recommended. I passed that tip on to the others in my band. We played a couple of outdoor marquee gigs last weekend, and I was not the only one who gratefully reached for a towel between every song! Thank you @SpondonBassed 🙂 It's a lot harder to do than it sounds, very well done and thank you.

Best wishes! and very well done for going for it. Respect. I took Bass Guitar Grade 1 at 60 and Grade 2 at 62 - got a Distinction in both. I did find it a bit disturbing sitting in the waiting room surrounded by parents who had brought their sprogs in for the exams and who were obviously much younger than me! Obviously you have much more at stake, but please don't let yourself be put off if you're waiting with entrants 30 years younger. It doesn't mean they're better, or more deserving than you of getting in. Oh and I totally f****d up the most important part of the 2 through nerves - broke down and said "Sorry, I've lost it." The examiner just calmly let me do it again, and his written comment was very positive. I suspect recovering under pressure is a skill they value. Hope this helps.

We had a somewhat different experience - we played together, off and on, for a year as a blues workshop at Band on the Wall in Mcr which ended with a friends and family gig at the BotW cafe. At the end of that gig we looked at each other and knew we couldn't let it end there. There was so much shared energy and potential, we just had to carry it on as A Real Band 🙂 Two people did drop out, one more joined, but by then we knew exactly how much commitment and ambition was shared. Played our first gigs outside Mcr last weekend, and we're all looking forward - realistically - to building on it.

And now there's a beautiful Warwick 6 for sale in the marketplace... I'm just hoping he'll tell me it weighs 20 kilos...

I have been seriously tempted. I'd love to have the full range of relatively easy options I'd get from BEADGC. I doubt I could find a 6 light enough to gig though - both my regular gigging basses (GMR 5 and Aerodyne 4) are well under typical weight and my back still complains by the end of even a 45 minute set 😞

My 1966 cherry red Gibson EB2 is faded - much more on the front that the back - and gently worn and rubbed. I had a chance to do an almost straight swap for a mint condition 1965, still bright cherry red and looking as if it had never been out of its case, and turned it down. The other looked and felt artificial, too shiny. Mine looks and feels as if she's been part of 50 years of music history. I wouldn't be drawn to a bass that was visibly seriously bashed about, even if it was genuine wear. New relic'd - only if it was the only bass on a desert island.

We think of the cello only as a four stringed instrument, but in J S Bach's time, five string cellos were common, and of the cello suites BWV 1007-1012, the 6th is just about possible to play on a 4, but not possible to play really well.The 5th string is needed for higher notes, so that would be like a bass 5 strung EADGC. (Which I did, briefly, with my ex-band, whose originals often worked best with high basslines.) Excellent discussion here: http://5stringcello.com/english/i-j-s-bach-and-the-five-string-cello/i-j-s-bach-and-the-five-string-cello/

Welcome! Sounds interesting, please let us know how it goes 🙂

Dave Pegg - one of the very best - plays a fan-fretted Ibanez SDG 5. And a beautiful thing it is.

We played Scarisbrick Marina Festival, just outside Southport, Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Saturday clashed with the footy and predictably there were only a handful of people there, it felt a bit too quiet, and we drifted toward the end. Better on Sunday - we had a drummer this time, a dep who did pretty well, still only about 30 people but they were bouncing around in their seats and clapping to the faster songs, better atmosphere and we played better. Afterwards an elderly lady came up to me with the sweetest smile, put her hand on my arm and said "Thank you - the bass drives the band, you know." Made my day 🙂

What do you have already? How far do you want to experiment? What kind of music do you want to play? Try a hollow-body or semi-hollow-body. My 1966 Gibson EB2 cost about £2k - fair price - and she's changed the whole visceral experience of playing bass. The physical resonance of that thin body combined with the growl and punch of the sound are like nothing you'll ever get from any solid-body or any acoustic.

Played Scarisbrick (Southport) Marina Festival yesterday and this afternoon - took care to keep my GMR 5 out of the sun, and she held her tuning pretty well. (As she always does, she's rock-solid 🙂 ) But I did find the little adjustments I needed today were different, the lower strings needed to come up a bit and the higher strings down. She's usually consistent, all either up or down. Almost as if the neck had warped - ? 😞 I'll have a good look and keep a close eye on it and take her to a good guitar tech if there seems to be a real problem.

This. Imho there's a supportiveness among peeps who share a not obvious choice of instrument. I've had wonderful support and encouragement from bass players I've spoken to at their gigs, as well as here. My older son was for a while a church organist (proper manual / pedal / stop stuff) - never good enough to make a living at it, but while he was trying, some of the best cathedral organists in the country went out of their way to help him. I've heard the same is true in sport - one of my students is a fencer, one of the best at university level, and tells me that she meets British Olympic fencers at competitions and they are completely into encouraging and helping her and others at her level.

Welcome! It's so important to just "go for it", as you are. Let us know how it goes :-)

I've told this story before on another thread: a year ago I went to visit my son in Nashville having just seen a Gibson EB-2 gigged at a local music festival and decided that I *needed* one (as you do 🙂 ). His many virtues do not include discouraging my GAS - guitar store crawls are an essential and dangerous part of all my visits there. I had been to his excellent local place and found an EB-2 which I tried and was just dead wood, so I thought I was safe. We walked into Gruhn's, my eyes swiveled left to where I knew the basses were, and there was another - only this time as soon as I picked her up she just came to life and sang. I couldn't really afford her, dragged my feet, decided to sleep on it. Dreamed about her, literally. We went back the next day, me well anxious would she still be there? Had I remembered her right? and there she was with a big card saying "Rob" tucked into the strings. I actually started shaking and sweating with heart pounding thinking no, please... and asked the nearest member of staff who said "Oh, that means Rob has found a buyer." Even worse... until he pointed out Rob, who had helped me try her out the day before, and immediately grinned and said "I knew you'd be back." She's still in Nashville, my son and his musician friends love her too, and I have three grand-sprogs there as an excuse to go back and play her 🙂

Innocently walking past Johnny Roadhouse on my way to work, as I do, can have that effect. I was, honestly, sort of thinking of looking for a five-string acoustic at the point when they put a beautiful Michael Kelly in the window... it didn't stay there. 🙂

Welcome! Keep on playing simple and solid and you'll be exactly what a band needs 🙂

I have one of the above but found it dangerously unstable. Much prefer this (also available from many other suppliers). Very cleverly designed, fit almost any necked instrument and fix to either a horizontal or vertical edge. https://www.eaglemusicshop.com/prod/banjo-music-mic-foot-stands/pub-prop.htm

We're more of a collective than a band, there are seven of us (I think!) from time to time, and usually three to five of us at a practice or even a gig. We just adapt the playlist and style a bit depending on who's there. If we needed everyone to be there every time we'd just have to give it up. We're playing this Saturday and Sunday at Southport Marina Festival - the drummer can only be there on Sunday, so we're doing softer stuff on Saturday and more blues-rock on Sunday. Any punters who are there on both days get a bit of variety too.

Welcome - and it's never too late! I can give you 15 years 🙂 started a couple of years ago and my band is starting to get some fun gigs. Some encouragement here:

Welcome to the low end 🙂