mike257

I've got a Hercules one with a wooden backplate on it, pretty sure it was under 15 quid. It seems solid and has a nice locking mechanism that closes when you rest the bass in there and releases when you lift it upwards, so the kids can't pull it out of there. Also rotates and self-balances so if you have a headstock that isn't the same on both sides, your bass still hangs straight. I variously keep basses, electric guitars and acoustic guitars in there (usually depending on what I'm gigging next and need to practice) and it's showing no signs of falling apart. Quite a smart design all round really. EDIT: Here's a link... http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B0009K9MUA/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1438460889&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX200_QL40&keywords=hercules+wall+hanger&dpPl=1&dpID=31AvOtPQTKL&ref=plSrch

Roland SPD-S is a drummer-proof sample pad with 9 triggers available at any one time. Alternatively, the Akai MCP range of samplers are pretty bulletproof, can.be triggered from the on-board pads or from an external midi input. If you want something on the floor to control it yourself, I'd expect the Behringer FCB1010 can be persuaded to send midi note messages.

I think some banks have small print in the T&Cs about not using personal accounts for predominantly business use, although I'm not sure if it's enforced with any vigour.

I know of one or two venues here in Liverpool where they have bands starting after midnight and carrying on as late as 3. Don't really fancy nights that late for pub money if I'm honest!

If you want to make a living out of music then making those moves now as a young guy with minimal existing financial and family commitments is the right time, but you need a plan past just "going on a tour". I left a secure (ish) job at 28 with a baby and another on the way to work as a freelance musician and sound engineer. I'd already been doing tons of freelance work alongside the day job though, was already playing in a busy function band and had enough friends and contacts from being involved in the local music scene for over a decade to be able to pick up some work. I'm three years in and still perennially skint and struggling but getting there. I think another year of hard graft will get me to a more stable place, it's getting there! I've only got through it by having multiple sources of income though. I play with a couple of regular bands and dep with others as a bassist and guitarist, as well as doing occasional acoustic gigs etc. I work as a freelance live engineer in local venues and PA companies and also in corporate event production as a tech and occasional production manager, have backline teched, tour managed and crewed for bands, hire out my own PA gear, have assembled and MDd bands for theatre and various other endeavours. Other guys I know do a lot of teaching to get by. If one thing goes quiet I can lean on another. If I was just depending on one I'd probably have been f***ed a long time ago. I also have a very supportive partner with a stable full time job, which of course makes a world of difference. Do it, but do it with your head screwed on about the harsh reality of not knowing when your next invoice will get paid, and knowing that sometimes you'll be sat looking at an empty diary and wondering how you're going to pay next months rent! I love it but it's a constant challenge and not for everyone.

Different strokes for different folks, I've met people who treat music as more of social thing and getting together in a rehearsal room is an end in itself rather than the means to get out and gig. I'm playing and sound teching full time and have had one rehearsal in the last year, and that was more for the comfort of the artists we were backing on a one-off theatre gig than for the band's benefit. There's space for both, if every band wanted to gig four times a week there wouldn't be enough venues to put us all in!

There are four pole and two pole versions (NL4 and NL2), the four pole female will accept two pole male connectors but not vice versa. Most manufacturers use the four pole sockets as standard for this reason. There is also an eight pole NL8 version which is physically larger and is generally only seen in larger PA applications when four individual signals (for example: sub, low, mid, hi) can be carried in a single run.

Drop D has always just been a quick "stomp on the tuner" change for me. I've been taking an extra bass out for sets where I need to be half a step down for certain songs, two guitar stands behind me on stage and the switch takes seconds so it doesn't hold up the flow of the set at all. It is giving me five string GAS for the first time though, would ssve making the switch at all! When I'm playing skinny strings I'll usually have a Tele and an LP, very different tonally and I'll occasionally make use of that but generally I can get through a whole gig with one or the other.

The amount of sound engineer bashing I see on this and other forums these days, and the general attitude that we are all clueless pricks out to sabotage your gigs or massage our own egos is just ridiculous. I don't know a single fellow engineer that doesn't take pride in their work and try and make every gig sound the best they can with the tools available to them.

I reckon they're going to harvest your organs and flog them on the black market, tidy profit to be had. On a serious note, I know of at least one band whose current line up consists of two of the original members from their 1980s heyday and a handful of session guys. Despite the fact that the hired hands have been 'with' the band for a number of years and done tons of UK and international touring and festivals, our friends in American immigration refused visas for everyone except the two founder members on the grounds that there were plenty of American session guys who could do the same job. Said band had to go to the states a week early to rehearse with their new Yankee band mates! So yeah, don't pin your hopes on it....

If you want to send me your email address, I'll pop over an example or two that I've put together for bands I engineer for.

Can I be a four and a half? I really don't feel like I need anything other than my Sandberg California JM4 to get me through any gig. The one caveat is that with some of the function work I'm doing lately I'm feeling (for the first time in my life) that a five string would be handy, mainly because of some of the daft key changes that get thrown at me. Aside from that, totally content. I love my bass!

Yeah, a Japan only sub-brand of ESP. I believe the basic construction is done in China and then fit and finish over at the ESP gaff in Japan on the same lines as their top end guitars. I have an Edwards Les Paul and it's utterly fantastic. The guitars generally ship with Gotoh hardware and Seymour Duncan pickups as standard spec and all the finishing is of a very high quality. Close to or as good as most Gibsons I've had it next to.

I love this place. A guy asks for a "cheap but decent" bass and we come up with Sadowsky and ACG

[quote name='bartelby' timestamp='1431632858' post='2773523'] I give you Opeth's Martin Mendez [/quote] Music stand just out of shot.....

[quote name='Dad3353' timestamp='1431733643' post='2774562'] This looks good to me (yes, it makes sense..!) and is worth a try. You'll need a pair of subs, however, to keep the stereo image in the tops. As mentioned before, only one sub is really necessary, but if you've the logistics for a pair, this method would work well, I'd say. [/quote] Wouldn't need a pair of subs as the single Alto TS sub they already own has Left and Right ins and outs so can work as a mono sub under a stereo pair of tops. To be honest, in most small setups there's an argument for a single sub being a better solution than a spaced pair - less issues with phase etc. They're fairly omnidirectional once you get right down low anyway.

I make a big chunk of my living from playing weddings, so have to suck it up and play all sorts of rubbish, but Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol is the one song that makes me want to hang myself from the lighting rig every time. Can't abide it.

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1431649506' post='2773707'] I'm glad you brought up this topic. For bands playing new venues, I'm talking pubs and bars. When the bar is in a separate room from where the band performs, that can and tends to be problematic. Blue [/quote] Absolutely - it can totally destroy a gig. On the occasion I mentioned above, the bar was literally downstairs in a completely separate room that also had its own music playing. Killed the main room stone dead, nobody was going to trek up and down the stairs all night every time they wanted a fresh beer.

I'd agree with the comment about not keeping kick and bass exclusively in the subs. The sub you have rolls off above 125Hz, the good stuff that gives a bass guitar its definition and clarity is above that in the mids. Same applies for kick, you'll get the very low end welly, but all the attack and the beater click is (depending on the tuning of the drum, type of beater, playing technique etc) will be up in the high mids between around 3kHz and 7kHz somewhere. Subs will give you the low end extension missing from the current setup, but they don't give a full range representation of bass instruments. In most PA systems, you would use a crossover or system processor to make sure only the relevant bits of the frequency spectrum were sent to each set of speakers, so (for example) you don't overwork the hi/mids by trying to make them reproduce sub bass frequencies outside of their capability. Looking at the kit you've got, you can actually achieve this by using the "Power Amp Insert" points on the mixer. From what I can gather looking at the manual, they're post master fader so you could pick up a couple of TRS to XLR insert leads and connect them from the insert point with the "Send" going to the inputs of your sub and the "Return" coming from the outputs. This will make the sub work as part of your complete system with no extra buggering about with monitor sends etc and have the added bonus of using the crossover built in to the sub to filter the extreme low end out of the signal being sent to your tops, so both the power amp in your mixing desk and your main PA speakers aren't being worked as hard. Hopefully that makes sense! It's late and I'm tired so it's very likely I'm excessively waffling!

Smaller crowds are definitely harder work. One of the function bands I sound engineer for also has me 'DJ' (as in, deploy a generic Spotify playlist and hope nobody asks for anything else) and at a recent wedding the bar was in another room on a different floor of the venue and everyone except one loved-up couple got off down there. DJing to just two people for an hour and knowing they could potentially hate the next song was surprisingly stressful. On this occasion, David Bowie, Chic and some obscure soul cuts saved my life and it was hugs and high fives all round when I finally got to shut it off. Give me a few hundred drunks any day!

[quote name='Roland Rock' timestamp='1431453083' post='2771556'] Thanks. It's the penultimate comment on this thread http://basschat.co.uk/topic/160414-has-anyone-here-upgraded-their-sandberg-pickup-advice/ [/quote] Interesting one - read the thread, definitely not a problem that I recognise. I've done various recordings with it and used it an absolute bloody ton live and never felt I've had to tame any excessive brightness. May be down to how peoples amps etc are set up too I guess. I do find it to be a Swiss army knife of a bass, with enough flexibility from the electronics to cover a pretty broad range of tones - if you cranked the treble on the preamp you could certainly end up with too much and it has no problem doing biting and agressive, but then I kept flats on it for a couple of years and it really nailed that warm, thuddy old set school tone too so it's more than capable of dialling it out.

Neck pickup on its own is a wonderful, deep thump. Sounds great all round though.

I've got an older Sandberg when they still had the pups Delano branded. Got a J neck and MM style bridge, haven't experienced any unwanted levels of brightness with rounds or flats and there's plenty of control available from the pre to dial in or out what you need. First I've heard of the issue to be honest.

I'm really tempted by that 5 string P that a few of you seem to have grabbed. Don't have a five in my collection but finally started running in to situations where I could do with one, seem a nice (and mod friendly) way to start dabbling!

[quote name='Bilbo'] 4,000 at a Jazz gig. [/quote] Really? Had they double booked the venue or something?