TimR

Charity events organised by actual musicians are the exception that proves the rule. They can be done well and I for one don't mind playing for free. A large part of the ticket sales will find its way to the good cause. And my drummer only needs to bring his snare and cymbals*. *The guitarist will bring his amp, huge pedal board and 3 guitars. The singer will turn up just as we are called to the stage.

That will be because the charity will be regulated and its activities audited. Which is different to someone off the street organising an event and donating the profits to a charity of their choice, or raising money for a local good cause. Charity comes in different forms.

In my current band the drummer makes the call. If he has to bring more than a snare drum and cymbals - he wants paying.

I once played a charity gig for extensions to a local church. It was for a dinner and dance at a local 5 star hotel. We went in for £1600 and got 'knocked down' to about £400 after the organiser laying it on thick. We found out tickets for the evening were £100 each. There was an auction of promises after the meal - it went on and on and on. We had been there at 5 to set up. The Auction made £20,000. We finally went on at 11:30, played for half an hour! That was about £60 each for 2 hours travel, 2 hours set up and pack down, 6 and a half hours sitting around and 30mins of playing. After that we were very careful to do our research for all gigs.

Depends whether its a corporate charity gig at a posh hotel, a small local festival, or a local church hall gig where no one gets paid.

Yes, that's what I was trying to get at.

Bedroom virtuoso players who can't play with other musicians or lay down a track when the red light comes on?

I suggest some people maybe taking some comments too literally. 😀

I don't think it needs a refret. I replaced the pre-amp with a very cheap one last year which isn't fantastic, but the bass is only worth a hundred quid at most. I'm better off moving on to a better new bass. I did put Gotoh machine heads on it which I'd probably fit to a replacement Ibanez.

It's similar to auto tune on vocals. Used on every recording - then when you see a real singer they don't meet expectations. I think we may already have covered bass players who can play several complex tunes at home in the bedroom along to the recordings, but can't play at a simple blues jam.

That gets very expensive very quickly. Fine if it's your own money, but the record companies aren't going to live with that if it's taking months to record an album.

He does cover that aspect in the SBL podcast. He seemed genuinely concerned about exposing someone wrongly, whether he was doing the right thing, and checking and double checking the facts over several days.

You should have given it a full minute. It gets much better.

I have just purchased a cheap kit from Amazon on the basis that my 25 year old Ibanez is ready to be retired and just needs a small amount of work to maybe get another few years out of it.