PTB

Clarky's excellent post gives you all you need in terms of the various components. Here's my diagnosis of your complaint based on your symptoms. I would suggest that your pick-up is the weak link here as others have above followed by the Sadowsky box. I use a Mark Bass 121 combo and this is very popular amongst a number of players working in London such as Orlando Shearer and our own Paul King & Sloblusine so I don't think the amp is a weak spot. It may not be to your taste of course but I would start elsewhere. As for settings, I use mine flat usually with a bit of VPF for mid cut but no VLE as this just makes it dull. Also, it has a rear port so needs space behind it - if you put it against a wall, it sounds odd and feeds back. I use a B Band Statement pick-up system which has unfortunately been discontinued. It combines wing elements like an Underwood with a Realist-like element that goes under the bridge foot to pick up the body. It then connects to a buffer/pre-amp which lets you pre-set two blends between the two pick-ups and switch between them. I've recently bought another 2 pick-ups and a pre-amp used on TalkBass so they can be found. I find I get a great sound for the sort of stuff I play - blues & swing - and it's very feedback resistant. I'm usually about 60% bridge wings and 40% body but find that this is the main tweaking I do, more or less warmth/clarity. I must admit to having very little personal experience with other pick-ups - I just struck lucky first time with my B-Band - but would suggest that you seek something other than the BP-100 which has a reputation for being temperamental at best. Others here will give you suggestions on this but it . However, if all my B-Bands broke, I would be tempted to replicate with an Underwood, a Realist and a Solstice or Raven Labs blender. The Fishman Platinum Bass pre-amp that Happy Jack recommends is also very popular and has more DB-friendly eq etc than the Sadowsky box. Not sure that the Sadowsky is best placed to buffer a piezo signal either and that's a key step in the chain.

[quote name='PaulKing' post='1288111' date='Jun 30 2011, 07:16 PM']Nice one Paul - thanks for the chance! Interesting to see how the band sound with new line up, Tim seems very happy .. and assures me there are no new tunes to catch me out. Hope not...[/quote] I had 6 cd's worth to learn when I joined so there's still plenty of old songs to worry about IMO!

Thanks for depping for me Paul! Tim thinks very highly of you. Hope the festival goes well. I'm on holiday so won't be able to attend either. I'm sure it'll be fun! Paul

As you will know, blues comes in many guises. It's worth trying to find a style or two that suit you all. I play in two bands, both blues but both very different. One plays west coast & Chicago blues doing tunes by people like Hollywood Fats, Kim Wilson, James Harmony, John Nemeth, William Clarke, etc. The other plays stuff by Little Milton, SRV, John Mayall, Otis Rush, Cream, etc. Find your own slant on it, get a good mix of tempo & grooves - not too many mid tempo shuffles - and make sure you have enough tunes people can shake their booty to!

Hope it goes well Jack. I'm playing myself so won't be able to catch you. We played the George last night and it was packed and jumpin'. Hope you get the same!

Yes, the PA point is very relevant. If you were to go through the PA, this immediately relegates your amp to being your monitor which means you need a smaller rig for those big gigs too. This is my preference as very loud stage volume (enough to fill a large room) is usually a problem for most of my gigs. I recognise that you need a good engineer and a PA with bass bins for this to work properly. So if it were me, I would sell everything apart from the SWR and buy a small powerful head and cabs as per my previous post. What to get? I don't have a wide experience with amps but I enjoy the very different flavours that my Mark Bass and Gallien-Krueger amps provide. I suggest seeing if there are some BCers near you with appropriate gear who would give you the chance to play through them. Good luck!

In helping you further with this, it would be good to know what styles of music you play, a rough budget, what basses you use and whether you are strong enough to haul conventional cabs around or would prefer the smaller lighter gear that is now available, albeit at extra cost. Ahead of this, I would generalise that you should get a powerful head (400-500w), a small cab and a larger cab. You then have to decide on whether the larger cab is at 4ohms so you extract maximum power from the amp or 8ohms leaving you the option of using both cabs together for your biggest gigs. I also agree with keeping the SWR at your rehearsal room. The answers to the questions above should help us suggest actual gear for you to go try out.

Nice work - very tasteful playing. Look forward to hearing more.

I would also have been happy to help but am already gigging that night. Hope your finger heals in time for you to do it.

Welcome Janice! Hope you find what you're looking for here on BC. My wife teaches ukelele at a local primary school and she has asked me to play upright with them at the summer fair in a few weeks. I can't wait!

Brilliant. Thanks for this AT.

Go for it! The best way is to throw yourself in at the deep end. If you can, record the gig & listen back later to see where the weaker bits were, identify any common problems etc.

It was a Modulus Graphite Quantum 6. I've been working my way down steadily ever since.

Church? That's how I got started on the bass. I was a below-average teenage guitar player not good enough for the church band when one Sunday, the bass player didn't turn up. A bass was found and pressed into my hands and the rest is history. Now I've got kids of my own and I run a youth band each week with 7-10 teenagers. I'm trying to help them get a set together for various church events - lots of Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman stuff. We've done a couple of events so far and its great to see them making progress and enjoying working together. The irony is that we don't have anyone to play the bass at the moment so I may have to be the oldest teenager in town for a while! Where's my hoodie? Just had a great time yesterday at an event for all the churches in Croydon, 1000 people in a marquee at Selhurst Park. They put together a gospel choir and a band from different churches across the town and I was honoured to be asked to do it. There's some great players out there and my funk muscles had a workout and are begging for more! Interesting to read about the big stacks you're using. I got my GK 700 and 4x10 out for this event which I hadn't used for about 4 years (my bad back = small combo usually) but quickly got to love the power of the big rig again. Perhaps my next purchase needs to be a big but lightweight cab.

Yes, I love 'em too. I have a 4 and really want a 5 in the future. I will trade or buy second-hand though, always do.

It was a good gig last night at George IV in Chiswick, only our second one with a new drummer. That meant a lot of nodding and cueing and failed lip-reading for me - I really should be better at it by now...... We went down well and there was a good crowd including our own Happy Jack. The night before, we were at Ain't Nothing But the Blues in Soho. There's a Behringer combo as the house bass amp which I use because you can't park near enough to make it practical to take a double bass and your own amp. After wrestling to carry it upstairs from the store room and struggling through the crowd, it packed up in the middle of set 2. I plugged into the PA between songs and got a much better sound so I know what I'll be doing next time! Glad of a rest today!

I'm at the George IV on Chiswick High Road with Gentleman Tim & The Contenders, one of our regular monthly gigs. Any Basschatters who come, please make yourself known! It would be good to meet you. To those also gigging tonight, I wish you all large appreciative crowds and (most of all) good drummers!

My old bass teacher, Laurence Canty, suggested using a lighter gauge on my fretless than on my fretted. The reasons are lost in the mists of time but are probably related to vibrato & expression. I've stuck with it for 20+ years now and it works for me. So, I use 0.40-0.95 D'Addario XLs. I might try the ProSteels next time.