tl;dr: Always played drums. Bass player quit, now I play bass. Apparently I love it. Here's my gear. Hope to see you around.
Hey all!
I'm a new member and a pretty new bass player. I've been playing drums in various bands for at least 15 years, and I've played guitar for at least that long, but never in bands. Lately I've been making the switch to bass, and found that I absolutely love it. I guess the "mix" of the tonal options of guitar along with the rhythmic and groove elements of drumming just really spoke to me, and I took to it like a fish to water. I *think* I have a reasonably decent feel for the instrument (note: May or may not be deluding myself), but there's definitely a lot to learn.
The story is that my current band started up about three years ago with myself playing drums, and we had a bass player for the first 18 months or so. Sadly, he had to leave because of time constraints, since he was also singing in two heavily touring bands. So we've been spending the last 18 months as a three-piece, doing some acoustic gigs (with me and the main guitar player playing acoustic guitars) and just writing and arranging new songs.
It's been during these arranging sessions, and the demo recordings I've been doing at home, that I've found a love for bass playing. So I've requested to be allowed to move from drums to bass in the band. We'll be heading into the studio early next year, and I'll be handling both bass and drums for those sessions, but once that's done we'll be looking for a new permanent drummer. I've never played with a drummer before... scary times ๐ณ
As for gear: I've been going direct since this whole bass playing thing started, but this week I finally bought an actual amp, and the difference in tone and feel was just mindblowing (at least through our cheap PA). I've owned the bass itself for a few years, put together the pedalboard over the last month or so, and finally put it all in front of an amp at this weeks's band rehearsal.
So here is my new bass rig:
Bass: Ibanez TMB-100
Pedals: Boss LMB-3 -> TC Electronic Sub'n'up Mini -> TC Electronic Hof Mini (only used for two ambient intro sections) -> MXR Bass DI
Amp: Hartke HD500, 500 watt (peak) 2x10 combo. 15kg (~30lbs) of oomph!
I was a bit nervous about the 2x10 cab in a rock band context, but it seems to do a very nice job. It helps that my guitar player uses a 20W 1x12 combo and not a full Marshall stack. It probably wouldn't cut it for a dual guitarist metal band. Of course, I haven't tested it with a drummer yet. We rehearse by playing my programmed drumtracks from our preproduction demos through the PA system ๐
Anyway, hope to hang around for a while. I'm a hopeless gear nerd, so I'll probably pop up in those sections of the forum a lot.