TheRev

I reckons your Thomann22 is a better bass than the Gewa. If you don't also. need your bass for another band/style then it's easier (IME) to work with a new setup on a bass you already know. If your heart's set on a bass just for slap, then have a look at The Double Bass Room for an old East German/Musima ply - those things can take a real beating and will set you back about £1000

I have a Roland Bass micro cube which is...OK. In busking situations I've tended to use it more for my own monitoring and relying on my bass' natural projection against an unamped acoustic guitar. The best lightweight/battery busking setup I've used with the whole band amped was using a small mixing desk into an array of Roland street cubes and the bass cube, but collectively that setup cost close to £500, so not exactly budget. The best solution for overall sound was using our Yamaha powered PA tops, small mixer and a small petrol generator, but that wasn't exactly portable. Do you need to amplify just your bass alone or is everyone in the band amping up?

At the Jam Jar last September?

Unless you're regularly pulling 100s of punters to venues, festival bookers aren't going to be asking you to play, but they will be looking to fill slots lower down the bill, so you job is to let them know you exist and to make it easy for then too book you, and that requires a fair bit of prep work: 1) Put together a list of festivals you'd like to play. Be realistic about where your band fits into that festivals' profile, music style and clientele and whether you have a snowball's chance of getting booked. I play at (and work for) festivals in Dorset a lot, and the following festivals are the better known 'non-specialist genre'/general punter type festivals close to you: Poole Harbour festival Swanage Carnival Teddy Rocks Weymouth Quayside DorsetFest Chesil Rocks. Plus, there's tons of village fete type litte 'festvials' around every weekend during the summer. 2) Once you've picked your festivals, follow them on Facebook or wherever so that you get a heads up when they put out a call for applications to play. Expect this to happpen any time from March to May/June for a festival in July/August. Not all festivals put out calls for applications because they already get loads without chasing people, so do a bit of homework and look through a festivals' web pages/blogs/facebook from the previous year- if they don't put out calls, then send them your EPK /details around April/May. 3) Put together a decent electronic press kit (EPK) that you can quickly and easily send out to bookers and that is acessible from your band website/facebook page. Make it very, very easy for a booker to see what your band is about. Images of lots of punters enjoying your band are better than lots of pictures of your band playing their instruments. When calls for applications go out, send your EPK with a brief email that includes your contact details (assuming you are the band 'manger'), where you're located, how many are in the band and the type of music you play (disco covers/polynesian funk/Tibetan goat folk/whatever). When applications come in, bookers have about 3 minutes to check out each application, so don't waste time with waffle/bigging yourself up, they just need the facts so they can put you in the 'possible' pile rather than the no/TLDR pile. Bookers will often approach applications with a brief e.g. 'I need a folk-punk band to do 40 minutes at 2:30 on the Friday and who will play for expenses' - so that's the sort of information you need to provide them with. Finally, and this shouldn't have to be said....but make sure the band is actually available to play at the festival you've applied for, as if an offer comes in for a Friday afternoon slot, that is not the time to tell them you can't do it. If you can't do the Friday afternoon for that particular festival, then say so in your email/application. 4) Be realistic about how much you'll get paid. Every festival has a budget and the lower down the bill you are, the less of that budget there will be for your band. Decide as a band what the minimum you are prepared to pay for is. It doesn't have to be the same for each festival - you may be happy to play Pole Harbour for a couple of drinks tokens each to get on the bookers list of bands for the following year, but want travel expenses and camping for a festival in Devon. Both are fine, but have that conversation with the band before you apply, not when the booker is waiting for you to confirm an offer. In my experience, bands who are easy to work with and bands who are d**ks cost the same money, but bands who are d**ks only get paid once. The easier you are to book and work with, the more likely you are to get booked again for better money. Dave

I really like Ali Friend's playing on the Clayhill 'Mine at last' album. The stuff he did with Red Snapper is amazing, but possibly a bit closer to jazz than you'd like?

I've been looking after the merch in my band for ten years and it's a significant part of our income, so it's worth doing if you do it properly and if you approach it as a long term thing, rather than just for 5 gigs. In addition to all the excellent advice so far, I'd also suggest having a way of selling online - either a 'shop' as part of your Facebook page or a website like Big Cartel, so you can sell between gigs. For long term sales it's also a good idea to bring out a new design every now and again.

I quite enjoy a bit of accordion, primarily in this context:

I'd suggest taking your DB playing mate to see if it's actually playable - you do not want to start your DB journey with a total dog. There's lots of things 'off' about it, but if the action isn't stupid high and bits aren't actually falling off, then it might well 'do for now', providing you don't expect to get your money back on it. If you're a bit handy, it could be improved with a propely fitted bridge - dunno about the cracks though, depends if they go all the way through the top.

And this is why we don't go on talkbass...

If you're looking to spend £5k on a bass then it's definitely worth your time going to the Double Bass Room or Thwaites or anywhere with a selection of basses in that price range and play as many as you can get your hands on. That's the only way you'll get a concept of the difference between a £3k and a £5k and an £8k bass.

My upright is about as feedback resistant as its possible to get, the problem is the sound bouncing all over the place - impossible to get a clean sound for anything. Tom Brown's does music fairly regularly? The cider festival in Borough Gardens is always entertaining.

We use iZettle. It needs to be linked to a bank account, but that can be your personal account or band/business account.

Ugh. Skittle alleys... There's a pub in Dorchester that I dread playing or doing sound in their skittle alley- low frequencies are mush, high frequencies are cacophonous.

For our own gigs I'll put close mics on the snare, rack tom and floor tom, plus a mic in front of the kick. I quite like an overhead, but last guitarist was too loud to use that without significant bleed. Now he's gone, I might give it another go. When I do sound for festival stages it'll be two overhead condensers, snare top and bottom, kick inside & kick outside and rim mount/close mics on the toms.

I'm technically still in a band I joined in 1997. Had a couple of rehearsals, then the guitarist said he was away with work for a couple of weeks and he'd arrange rehearsals when he got back. Never heard from him again.

It's also worth considering the impedance of any wireless transmitter if you're plugging directly into a piezo pickup. Bob Gollihur has some useful information on his website: https://gollihurmusic.com/going-wireless-with-double-bass/

I tried a Lekato and an X-vive and wasn't happy with either in terms of sound quality vs a cable, so I took a punt on a Line 6 Relay GS2 which, to me, sounded no different to a wired connection. I've only had a couple of situations where I've had dropouts as a result of lots of Wi-Fi on stage (tablets/digital mixers), which is mildly vexing, but not enough for me to shell out £500 on a proper wireless system. Before I went wireless, I solved the 'pulling the jack plug out' issue by fitting my pickup with a locking jack socket. You still have to have a very secure way of mounting the jack socket on your bass mind.

If you're going to buy a bass that you don't need and can't afford then it should at least be an interesting bass. Job done, I reckon.

PM'd

Some of our best gigs have been Friday nights in Chewton Mendip.

That's Fat Mike from NOFX on bass, he's a bit good. Back in the early - mid 2000's I was in a band doing rocked up versions of pop songs. The best of the bunch was a ska-punk version of Beautiful by Christine Aguileria. Band after that was a three piece described as 'obscure pop songs played in a jazz style' The current band is a Scrumpy'n'Western band (totally a real genre, look it up....) doing parodies of pretty much anything in whatever style we can manage as long as we can shoehorn in lyrics about cider, drunkeness, pasties or shagging your own cousin.