Boodang

Behringer 502 analogue mixer… £32. Plug in your bass, auxiliary ins and headphones, job done.

TC Electronic Spectradrive has everything you need plus toneprints for the drive and comp, so you can choose from a range of downloadable options.

Circle of 5ths and two octave runs make more sense on a 5 string but…. for me I find as a result of the range in any one part of the neck I tend to stay there and play across the strings whereas on a 4 it forces me to play up and down the neck a result of which is I play more inventive lines(but that’s just me). I do have a 5 string as well but I tune it high C and use it only when chordal work is needed. And, just me again, I’ve never heard a low B that sounds right!

From a gig the other week, but only just got around to editing the video. Our relatively new blues band, this was the first time out with just us on the bill. Pulled in a nice blues loving crowd who really appreciated the set.

Legs wide apart I would say.

True enough! The thing I find amusing though, if you took this thread and went to publish it as a book of advice to bass players, an editor would have a brain spasm trying to make sense of it!

This is exactly why I feel sorry for the OP!

Interestingly, according to the blurb, the whole of the USA designed it!

I have to say that I feel sorry for any newbie that comes on here and asks for general advice… I doubt they’ll be able to see the trees for the wood by the end of it, not withstanding the obligatory sh!t fest of disagreements that bass chat seems to excel at!

… the rain, coupled with the scraping against the wall, gives your basses a free relic treatment which is much cheaper than Fender charge. I did this to an American strat recently, it rained so much and the relic effect was so good that I sold it at auction for nearly a million dollars to an Irish museum.

I’ve often stay on in hotels after gigs. My advice to hang them out of the window (like a guitar wall hanger) when you’re not in the room, that way they’re out of sight of the staff.

Yep, I learn songs from Spotify but I also take lessons and I do like to buy books to delve into. The Gwizdala books are my fav at the moment and he does put tab at the back for everything but the notation is easier (at least I find it easier as it has the note duration which is quite a key part of playing!).

Actually I’m with @diskwaveon this one. Not because you’ll always be stuck in pub bands or can’t play jazz, because I don’t think that’s the case, but because knowing how to read dots opens up a lot of learning opportunities and also because it’s the language of what we do, so seems like an appropriate thing to do. Also, not that hard to learn, like anything you’re doing it just takes practice and although frustrating at first, is rewarding when you get there. I’ve just picked up some etudes and classical pieces to study purely to learn and expand on some harmony/melodic concepts and the only format is notation. You could always incorporate learning to read as part of the overall musical journey you’re on, which could be fun. But as others have also said, it’s not by any means strictly necessary.

This! Last night we put on a small music festival and I put my mates band on first. Their bassist has only been playing for a year and this was his first gig. I caught up with him afterwards to ask how it went for him (I thought he played a very solid gig), and he said what a difference between just rehearsing with a band to playing live in front of an audience. A new found respect for playing live. And I think he’s now addicted to playing gigs as he did get such a buzz from it.

We organised Islamabad's biggest (and only!) open air music festival this weekend. Actually a very modest affair, I got 5 bands to play (there's only 6 bands here!), food vendors and fireworks although we couldn't do a bonfire as the pollution is so bad at the moment we were told we couldn't add to it. We held it on our football pitch and sold 300 tickets, for here not a bad turn out. Plus we put out bouncy castles and stuff for the kids, so quite chilled out. I'm in three of the bands, only hiccup was our punk band had to drop out at the very minute as our guitarist ended up in hospital with an IV for fluids... a bad case of 'pak-attack' that left him dangerously dehydrated. The Hendrix band went down particularly well as did our soul-blues band, had loads of fun playing those sets. Finished off the night with a band that uses backing tracks and plays all the disco hits. A great way to finish the evening with plenty of dancing and went for two and half hours straight. They're real pros, they get the audience going and keeping the energy there.

Squier jazz maybe? I had a MTD Kingston that I thought was excellent, only got rid of it because I had a cull of my collection, one of those would fit the bill nicely.

What a dreadful gig last night! The wrong gig with the wrong audience. Got asked to play an hour set at a halloween party, however turns out we were on after an hour of drum & bass from an overly loud DJ. After which an hour of punk went down like a led balloon. One guy sang every word of every song, so in my opinion worth it just for that, but the rest of the audience just went to the bar and waited for us to finish before going back to the duff duff moron beat of the DJ. Of course I’m in the minority here! Wrong gig at the wrong time really. Live and learn I guess but actually a good shake down for next week when we’re doing an open air gig with, hopefully, a good crowd.

As a drummer I'm just going to say that as a substitute for drums, cajons suck @rse!!

Just had a thought... do you record your gigs? I use a Zoom 4k stereo thing which I put out front (and hope someone doesn't steal it!) and it pretty much records the audio as the audience would be hearing it at that point. At the last gig I managed to put it on top of a light fitting (admittedly most of the audience weren't listening to the gig at that location) but it gave an excellent view of the band and we got the balance about right so we're actually using parts of it (the bits we didn't c@ck up) for a live recording.

Having said that I have found the SM58 beta has greater tolerance before feedback than the standard 58. If you’re pushing volumes to the limit then mic choice is important. I play drums as well as bass and I love it when we play smaller venues and I have to pay attention to dynamics and be inventive. Someone else mentioned that drums, and specifically cymbals, don’t sound the same unless you hit them hard… well this is all well and good if you’re say Benny Greb and the audience are there specifically to hear you, but otherwise you’re asking an audience to indulge the drummers whims which is not really the object of the exercise for most bands. I play everything from a large kit with shiny cymbals, small kit with dark cymbals (actually my favourite, which helps) to an ekit. Whatever gets the gig right.

I’m convinced that the older you get the harder it is to find a band. But when you do I’m convinced it’s worth it. Keep at it and don’t lose faith!

Two & a half years!! Two & a half months would be too long. I’m in three covers bands, in all of them the policy is A. Plenty of numbers in the bank so we can mix and match according to the audience and B. Constantly add new numbers. The later is for several reasons 1. We don’t want to bore ourselves 2. We don’t want to bore an audience who see us more than once and 3. There’s so many good songs in this world, why restrict yourself!

We had this problem with a drummer once. As he refused to do anything to reduce his volume we started playing gigs where we made everybody else in the band quieter than normal and refused to turn up, so the drums absolutely drowned out everybody. We ruined two gigs that way but the weight of opinion (from the audience as much as anybody) against him was so much he eventually saw the light.

Daisy chaining the power can lead to noise issues with some pedals. Getting a PSU with buffered outputs avoids this. I use a MXR DC brick and it works a charm. It also has an 18v output as well as 9v. For my bigger boards I use a Palmer which has 12 buffered outputs, four of which can output 9, 12 & 18v.

Xotic Super Sweet. Bought it on a whim and don't know why, except now it's always on. Initially tried it with the voltage doubler and it was ok but nothing special. Then tried it on 9v and ta dah! 9v has less headroom so there's a small amount of compression and in default mode there's a small amount of mid boost. Result is a defined but punchy tone. The photon death ray, being an optical comp, seems to just work on enhancing top end notes on the D & G strings and between the two it's my latest fav tone. Playing a MM thru the board and occasionally a jazz fretless which also benefits (especially from the PDR).