chris_b

. . . . . . I guess he'd have got the DI out of the case? With your band I guess there would be a pretty hefty adjustment to the totally different stage sound. My gig was an old style Chicago blues band, so pretty easy to get to grips with the differences. I went cab-less because the gig was in Portobello Road (and on a Saturday afternoon!) and there was no chance of parking the car within a mile of the gig.

I'd play your normal bass and donate the price of this bass to charity.

I gigged yesterday afternoon with no amp. Just a DI and a monitor. A good sound guy and a couple of adjustments and we were fine all day.

I love playing bass. I can like or dislike the songs, the gig or the band but if me and the drummer are playing well together, I'm in a negative free zone.

Do you play hard? Dig in? If so change your right hand technique and play lighter. Then you can drop the action and give your fretting hand a break as well.

Many years ago I was in originals bands who were signed to labels and management. That was another world, but in the years since I've worked with songwriters where the writing was anywhere between great and woeful! Funnily enough, the worse the writer the less willing they were to listen to ideas. So I have a pretty jaundiced view of the semi-pro "originals" band as a genre. If you are going down the originals route, which is a valid decision, you have to develop a very strong quality filter. It's really not a good thing to be the William McGonigal of song writing. Just being an original song is not enough. It still has to be a good one. A good covers band will play what the audience wants. A better covers band will make better song choices. You have a larger, more varied pool of songs to chose from and you can pick songs that are fresh, audience friendly and excellent songs at the same time. Audiences usually just want what they know but you can broaden their horizons if you do it well enough.

Hey Jack, sounding good.

This. I don't buy many these days, but I always buy the CD. I like to hold my music.

The better bands I play with always have CD's for sale on the gig. Most of them have several and one guy also has a VHS video. He was planning a Vinyl album, but I think that idea has been shelved for the moment.

So did I, and Play That Funky Music, Freebird and several others, in the middle of our usual rock/blues set. We wanted to get the audience up dancing. Worked a treat, great night had by all.

Looks like the Stealth is the Vertigo without the "boot" and with reduced storage. So lighter than the Vertigo, less bulky and cheaper. Looks good if you are the only one who carries your bass. I use a Vertigo but if anyone else is moving my bass the hard case comes out.

A few years ago I weighed everything. The cabs were 21lbs each, the amp 6lbs and my accessories/stand case was 45lbs! The only thing I regularly used from that case was my extension lead. Everything else was there "just in case". It's been in the shed ever since.

This is why it's always better to play with guys who have a grown up and professional attitude and are in at least 2 bands.

It was. They recorded it at FAME studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

Put a big smile on my face.

I don't think we are seeing the death of big cabs, a decline definitely, but people are still buying and using them. What we are seeing is the rise of lightweight cabs. 12 years ago people needed a reason to buy a D class amps and Neo cabs, now they need a better reason not to. It's evolution, who buys those wardrobe sized TV's these days?

I have a pair of Goodmans Magnum SL's (bought from Laskeys in about 1974) upstairs. My son used them for his hi-fi system up until last year.

Lovely. I'll get my old Lasky's catalogues out for another burst of nostalgia.

Sadowsky basses have been a revelation for me. The bands comment on the bass more and last week I had another member of the audience asking about my 5 string bass. It's become quite a common occurrence with this bass. Also, since moving to Barefaced cabs I get a lot of comments about the overall sound of the bass. I guess that's because they can hear me better with the clear and full sound. The Sadowsky Metro has a very full and dynamic sound. I'm in a perfect storm of bass loveliness. Some people in the audience do notice but it's the bands who play better where there is a better bass sound. I agree about the price, that's why I play a used Metro and couldn't even look a new NYC. But the new Metro Express basses are coming in at less than the cost of a new Fender Elite/Ultra. They use the same electrics and pickups as the more expensive basses and are guaranteed to be less than 9lbs. They should be on everyone's "To Try" list.

That's all anyone does when they make solid body basses or guitars. Getting that idea to work was Leo Fender's lightbulb moment back in 1949.

Yeah: 5 strings, Sunburst, Rosewood or similar fretboard, tort, single coil pu's, 19mm bridges, P shape, J shape. Nah: Everything else.

This is the good part. A bunch of speakers in a box has worked for decades, but sound quality in the new lighter cabs improves because these cabs are designed properly.

Many years ago we hired SVT 810's in a couple of bands. They always sounded good, but I'd never consider owning one. I have owned several 412 cabs, one of which I couldn't even lift on my own. When you have roadies you buy what ever you want but sensible decisions have to be made when you are moving your own gear. I have owned 4 215 cabs, a Peavey, 2 Fender Dual Showmans and the least sensible cab, even as a 22 year old, an Ampeg 215. I've owned several 115's which weighed nearly as much as a 412, but the EV loaded cabs sounded the best, even if they were the heaviest! When I started looking at lightweight cabs I discovered that they were generally designed to higher acoustic standards and produced more volume, tone and definition than the older cabs. A laser rather than a battering ram. 2 of my current 112 cabs are much louder and easily heard than any of those 215s. YMMV

Stew, I have played all those songs. Many times. I like them all. They are well crafted pieces of music, and better still they are songs that audiences like. I played some Jessie J, Beyoncé and Bruno Mars for the very first time awhile back. Never thought I'd be asked to play anything like that. What great songs and a blast to play. IMO you've got the right approach. Songs are only as good as we play them. So if they are crap, we're not playing them well enough.

Some signature basses are a whole new bass and some are just a colour scheme. So far I they haven't tempted me, although I really liked the Fender Roscoe Beck and Marcus Miller 5 string basses that I played. Sadly they were both way too heavy for me.