Paul S

2pm today, Ipswich harbour my lot Toredown are playing a 45 minute set, part of Summertime Ipswich. Come and heckle!

A modelling mic. So if I sang into it and set it up with a Paul Rogers sim I'd sound like him - is that how they work?

Excellent! Cradle of Judas is particuarly appealing.

The answer for my circumstances is 'it depends'. My band is a blues rock trio and a good gig for us is one where there are punters who are into this genre and you get that wave of appreciation back. Money/size of venue are side issues - none of us in the band play for the money but for the enjoyment. This year we've had a couple of marvellous gigs supporting pro blues bands who are touring - we get to play on big stages with fab sound to a larger appreciative crowd than at a small pub. But for very little money - we only just cover our costs. We've also played a couple of gigs at a very small music pub where the management and the punters like us a lot and they are great gigs that pay 3x the support gigs. But put us in a town centre pub where the usual pub fodder is expected and we get zero interest - one place guitarist Alan was putting his heart and soul into a solo and there was a punhter stage left playing a fruit machine. So we've stopped doing them.

Bands that have gigged and lasted more than a few rehearsals. A fair bit of overlap between some of these, 4 were going concurrently at one point. Still The Thrill. Short lived blues rock band with 2 guitars, keys, drums, bass and vocals. Keys and drummer were just plain weird. This morphed into: May Contain Nuts - with new drummer and no keys. Standard pub band fare. Lasted 5 years until singer got a Napoleon complex. This morphed into: 5 Shades of Grey with a new singer. Xerocks - heavy rock covers, 2 guitars (one sang), bass, drums. Great potential but internal friction saw if off. Illegal Tender - odd covers, mainly but not exclusively 80s stuff. 2 guitars (both sang) drums (he sang, too), bass. Immense fun. Ran it's course over 5 years, band leader decided to pull the plug after a period in limbo after some 'musical differences' became apparent. Retrograde (awful name, just awful) - 80s rock covers with male and female vox, guitar, keys, bass, drums. Quality band, huge potential that went down the pan once the singers became an item, leaving respective partners, wanted to change the band. Wayward Sons. Pop/rock covers band (not the famous one, although we coined the name before them). Guitar, vox, keys, drums, bass. Excellent band. This morphed into: Just Jovi - unsurprisingly a Bon Jovi Tribute band. Same personnel as above. Another quality band I am proud to have been a part of, huge potential that was rarely reached as everyone had other projects ahead of the queue. I stood down during lock down for assorted reasons, mainly because my heart wasn't in Bon Jovi music. Tore Down - my one current band, 3 piece blues rock playing music I love and my favourite of all those. Long may it continue!

I used to use one of this type of thing when I had a cab. Cheap, lightweight packs away to nothing but sturdy enough to do the job.

Not surprised - you are right up at the dusty end, always a worry.

Indeed, I have done it before and been out of sorts all night.

Don't you usually stand the other way around? Edit, I don't mean facing backwards obvs.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find a case that didn't fit one. Pretty much any generic case would fit, plus the scores of fitted ones for P or J basses. My current fave is the SKB-44.

Do you mean annals?

Exactly so - earplugs to attenuate the volume. Or, in my case, I use my app. to reduce the volume of my hearing aids. Our set up came to £2K on the nose - 2 x EVOX 8s, a new desk, leads etc. I bought it and the other guys pay me a depreciation cost each year - working on the stuff losing half it's value over 3 years, they each paid me £110 a year. Coming up to 3 years now, so then they'll pay me £55 a year for 3 more years, assuming I am still alive and gigging. When you look at it that way it isn't much.

I'm certainly a massive fan of the EVOX 8 units my band use. As I keep saying, I feel they are a quantum jump in our FOH and on-stage sound, portability, speed of set up/breakdown and can't recommend them highly enough.

Wot he said.

I use a TC Spectrodrive, which does all those things, straight into the pa. You can load it with different compression and drive patches, which is useful - especially for drive. The various patches range from downright fuzzy grind to a light boost, which is the one I use. Been using it for a couple of years now and I like it.

Necks on those Hondos are outstanding. 32" scale. But the body is HEAVY! I married the neck of one with the double cutaway body of an Encore short scale, after some jiggery-pokery with the bridge placement.

Cpoy and paste of this. Unbelievably good value. Actually I fib, I swapped the white pickguard for a black one.

I swear you have a different bass in every single picture. How many do you own? I ask out of curiosity, not being judgemental

hardest part must be deciding which songs to play.

Documented elsewhere, my blues/rock trio use a pair of RCF EVOX 8 units. 2 x vox, bass always go through, sometimes the kick drum, sometimes the whole kit. Guitarist is convinced he loses tone when he puts it rhough (he doesn't) so just uses his combo Maybe @Al Krowhas the link to hand as he expressed an interest at one point and came to see them in action. For the small pubs we play the units are coasting. We used them outside a couple of times and there was still plenty in the tank. I can't imagine needing anything more - anywhere larger and we go through a house pa. You can place them behind you and they don't feedback (they really don't - sometimes in some venues there is a little squeal from a certain frequency but this is tamed by adjusting the eq. Just like it would anywhere with any set up) so we don't need to use monitors. But, most importantly they sound frantastic - everything sparkling and crystal clear. For our band getting these was a quantum jump in our sound quality, plus they represent the quickest set up/break down of any pa I've had experience of.

Friday, not last night. Another gig at a tiny little music /Irish pub called The Shamrock in the heart of Ipswich. Copy and paste of the last time we played there - small but really enthusiastic crowd many of whom came especially to see us. Lovely place. We played well, went down well, got paid more than we asked and had free drinks all night. And I found a free parking spot close by A12 south was shut was on the return leg, so the diversion was a long a dark country lane which added 35 mins to the trip. Still, I smiled all the way home

I have a Peavey Foundation 5 sitting in a case doing nowt but am in SE Essex with no practical way of getting it to you or back again, short of courier. And for what that costs you'd be better off investing in a Harley Benton or a cheapie on eBay/Gumtree.

Might be worth measuring up a case for a 335 style semi-hollow guitar? I had one a few years ago and a number of basses I had fitted with room to spare, albeit none with big bodies.

Thanks for that Silvia, I agree it is worth getting a proper job done having thought about it. That lot looks good and in the grand scheme of things isn't a lot of money. The gig ink's 'skin it' page doesn't seem to want to work.

My band are going to get a kick drum logo. Seems there are various options. Getting a whole new skin with the logo printed is, I guess, the very best thing. At the other end of the scale you can get a vinyl sticker for 1/10th of the cost. Has anyone used the stick on vinyl? Any good? The old adage is that if something sounds too good to be true then generally it is - but vinyl stickers/wrap technology does seem to be pretty good these days. All opinions welcomed Muchas gracias.