ASW

My festival experience this year has been different. I've played a few festivals and venues with its own back line and it's all been quite good. There was an Aguilar Tone Hammer and 4 x 10 at one festival. I liked the amp enough to buy one myself! I always carry a small pedal board with an Origin Effects Bass Rig so can DI from there if necessary. I'm sure that every gig I've played this year, we got a list of the back line and if we didn't we asked for it, so we knew what would be there to use. This enables us to ascertain whether the back line is suitable and can negotiate beforehand if we feel we needed to use our own equipment (we didn't). Admittedly, it doesn't help if the equipment doesn't work though, but still worthwhile. There will always be outliers, such as the time I played a gig years ago and their "bass amp" was some child's practice amp from the 80s with a blown 8" speaker. No proper foldback either so I couldn't hear anything I was playing and taking a preamp pedal would not have helped. That was before I learned to find out what the back line was!

The whole album has a great groove. All the players are amazing and Donny's voice is sublime. One of the best versions of What's Going On in my opinion. The album sounds good from a production perspective too. All the instruments can be heard clearly, yet you can also "hear" the room it was recorded in and the audience participation is electric. The bass playing is the icing on the cake. I'm going to have to listen to it today!

Bizarrely written article which misses out some key points and includes odd sections such as "what can we learn from Antigua". I also suspect it's an AI created article.

I left Facebook over 10 years ago. It never really worked for me to just promote gigs. I did try sometimes, but because I rarely posted and probably didn't have the right people as "friends" it didn't seem to gain much traction. I sometimes thought that I should post some important life events on there, like passing my driving test, completing insurance qualifications, getting Grade 8 Classical Guitar, moving house etc. but couldn't bring myself to do it. It just felt narcissistic to me as I wondered why anyone should care. I'm not saying Facebook users are all narcissistic, but that it didn't really work for me as a means to share important things with people. I'd rather tell them in person or not at all. I also detested what many people would post on Facebook. Opposing political views that I don't care for, or attention seekers, or irrelevant and uninteresting information. I can't remember when I joined here, but I didn't start using it until quite a while after quitting Facebook. I much prefer it here.

I wasn't there unfortunately. Although I prefer smaller venues in general, I quite like the O2. Easy to get to from where I am, the facilities are good and the accessibility is great for those who are disabled. The sound can be hit and miss, especially if you are sitting up in the gods, but live sound generally is patchy at best in all venues. I'm up for going @hiram.k.hackenbacker If you are.

That reminds me of a gig I did a few months ago. Tribute band on a decent large stage outside in a park somewhere in West London I think. For some reason, we'd not loaded the drummer's stool/throne into van. When we looked in the band dressing room/marquee, the band the night before had accidentally left behind a single piece of equipment... which happened to be a drum stool. Very weird coincidence, but one that we were grateful for!

Me and the singer (it's a duo with backing tracks) turned up to the venue, a pub in Kent, on Friday night... and they had no idea we were playing. We had been booked through an agent. The agent hadn't been told that the manager of the pub had left recently. The new manager had never heard of the agent. They were apologetic, but no hard feelings as it wasn't their fault. They're going to book us in another date in the future. So we had a curry instead and then home for an unexpected early night!

I can see me! It was an amazing gig and was great to be back on stage with you again. I was playing the 6 string, octave higher and inferior cousin to the bass guitar unfortunately for this gig, but it was still fun nonetheless. 😜 I'm not on stage for this one (I was in the Alanis, Bowie and encore sets) but here's another photo from the front. I did like the G&L L2500 being played here. I tried it out and it seemed well made, comfortable, easy to play, with lots of tonal options.

That's very nice. I have a few questions. Did the seller tell you what they thought was wrong with the neck? What's a "warehouse find"? It's not a term I'm familiar with. What's the brown furry thing next to the bass?

Thanks for the replies. It does appear there is something wrong with my one then as from what's being described, I'm sure I would be able to hear the difference if it was working properly. I'll have a look at the switch wiring today to see if there's anything obviously wrong and go from there.

I have a 2015 Stingray 5 which I've had a couple of years. I like it a lot and I think it's the only bass I've played at gigs this year. However, I do wonder if there is an issue with it. All three selections on the pickup selector switch sound identical. Perhaps it's my unrefined ear, but no matter what I do, I can't hear any difference whatsoever between the three positions which makes me wonder if it is working properly. I will upload a sound sample later, but in the meantime was wondering if anyone could tell me whether it should sound noticeably different on the three switch positions. It does appear to switch something when going between the positions, but sounds the same to me when landing on the positions. If I wedge the switch between two of the positions, it clearly becomes single coil as it has a thinner sound and I can hear the single coil hum. I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of anyone who has a Stingray 5 as to whether you think my bass my be faulty or if Musicman deliberately designed the selector switch to be utterly pointless!