Muzz

Function band work: 2 x Shuker Horns Zoom B3 ACS Custom In-ears Rawk band work: Shukerbird and 1 Shuker Horn Mesa Walkabout BF Super Twin That's it.

Jazz basses. All of them: the real ones, and the 250 million copies, from SX to Alembic or Fodera. Nope. Singlecuts are a sitting down bass to me. Oh, and yeah, the top horn on a Corvette - a non-playing mate said to me when I showed him my new Corvette "It looks like a nob" and, puerile and throwaway as the line was, I sold the bass a short while afterwards...I just couldn't unsee it...Bongos and bog seats are the same, unfortunately, because I've played a couple of Bongos, and really liked them... I'm sooooo shallow...

It'd all depend on your budget, but I'd echo the comments above - these days a good 212 (or 2 112s) will cover an awful lot of ground - Barefaced, Berg, Vanderkley, TKS, etc are all popular around these parts, and for good reasons... I play in a busy function band covering all sorts of genres, and also in a loud (2x Marshall half stack) rawk band, and a single 38lb BF 212 cab does it all for me.

I have a laptop rucksack kinda thing, I've had it a few years. It fits the Magellan (insert your sensibly-sized Class D head of choice here) plus leads, power leads, small toolkit, batteries, wireless, etc, etc...

Yup, while they're both very talented, I wouldn't stop and listen for more than a few seconds. Now a 9 minute drum solo in the street? Now you're talking...

I've had a couple of 8s and a 12, and the 12 was definitely more of a handful to play: big, heavy and with a wiiiide neck. It was a Dean Rhapsody, and it had 8 saddles (so did the Dean 8), so intonation was...good. Not perfect, but then that jangle and slight dissonance is part of the sound IMO. I also had a Washburn B20-8 back in the day, and that was terrible: a very odd triangular neck, a propensity to snap strings because of some very extreme break angles with the '4 tuners at each end' hoohah, and the worst neck dive of any bass I've ever picked up...and I like Thunderbirds... I keep yearning for another 8 or 12, but to be honest, in our band setup, the B3 Pitch Shift adding an octave up, and some chorus gets it close enough once everyone else is playing. There's some latency, but I can live with that - it's certainly not something I even register when I'm on stage. I'd be inclined to buy the ESP and just replace the bridge (Schaller do a very good 8-string bridge)...in fact, I just might... EDIT: I might add that the build quality of the Deans was very good: there's a lot of tension in a 12 string neck, and this was solid as a rock... EDIT 2...ummm, ignore the Spoiler things: I was mis-clicking there...

The Magellan doesn't have separate Bass/Mid/Treble EQ controls, but the two gain stages, volumes and filters can give very very different tones at the push of a button. Definitely worth a look.

Fantastic - love this bassline (I risked being totally ostracised by all my full-on rocker mates when I bought Bangs and Crashes, the 12" remixes of the Go West stuff, back in the day...) , and that was bob on... :0)

Oh, yeah - possibly because I like a ring to a bass, so I buy the ones which ring and sustain, tho only the very terrible ones didn't. I did own a 78 Jazz once which had all the sustain of a cowpat hitting a wall, but it was horrible in many other ways. Apart from the monetary appreciation...

This. And I'd agree with 'You can mute to reduce sustain, but you can't add it if it's not there'.

Yep...I'd imagine ski jumping for the first time is similar...

You clearly have more restraint than me Chris...

I liked the couple I've played...although when I popped into PMT recently, they're £1250 these days...

I had a Streamliner for a long while, too - the Magellan's much more versatile. And the power section's much better. And I'm not using that word, either I had three AE112s - I didn't like them at all with the tweeters on, but when I turned them off, they were brilliant. I only moved them on because even though they were only 30-something lbs each, three of them were 90+lbs in total, and that's more than I was prepared to hump around the place. And before anyone chips in, I thought "Well, I can use one or two of them for smaller gigs", but once I'd heard three of them together, I never quite managed to resist taking all three to every gig...

That's very very brave (I did the same thing a while ago with a US SUB MM4, and I was cacking myself even with that) and it looks fantastic....

Oooo, I might give one of those a go...thanks for that

I have a Walkabout and I use it in the Rawk band (and sometimes with the function band, when I'm in the mood). I've had an M-Pulse, too, and a previous Walkabout that WoT and I kinda pinged backwards and forwards until we both made up our minds It's a fantastic amp, close enough for me to full-on valve warmth whilst being a practical size/weight. And with a Barefaced Super Twin, it goes really, really loud...the Rawk band has two half-stack Marshall guitards who live in the Spinal Tap 'mine goes up to eleven' kinda territory, and it's more than enough. 300w my derrière, as Jim Royle might say... I've never fancied the weight of the Mesa cabs, and their new prices are astronomical, so that rules them out. I've got a Magellan, too, which has a verrry similar Class D power section as the Subway, and that's very good, too. Much more versatile for the function band stuff. And smaller and lighter. I have to say I'd try a Handbox if they sold them anywhere I could, because they sound very interesting, but they'd have to be very, very good to prise the Walkabout from me these days... EDIT: Oh, and on the 2 ohm thing, I ran the Walkabout with three 8 ohm Berg 112s quite a lot (possibly the best sound I've ever had), and it never even warmed up...

Yup, all my basses have one. It's as low as I need to go. Despite what the guitard might think...

Yep, a similar list to many of the above - the 'definitely nevers' are: Heavy cabs (over 40lb) or amps (over 15lbs) or basses (over 8.5lbs). Anything Rickenbacker or anything Jazz-shaped (and I'm conscious the latter rules out 40% of boutique basses) Anything with a rosewood board (there's another 40% of basses ruled out) 5 strings and up (tho I'm definitely not ruling out 8 or 12s - they're not in the current wants, but they're in the 'never say never' list) Anything wider than a 1.5" nut... It occurs to me that this thread could turn into a very active swapshop...

I've always played it in standard, it's an easy enough riff...no complaints from anyone. I had a monster BEAD bass for a while, but I never really used it much, so I moved it on. Oh, and I don't like 5s...as for the guitarist telling me stuff I should do, I generally smile, nod, and just get on with it. They usually find something else to worry about quite quickly...

Posh hotel, very good money, first set 9:30 - 10:15, second set 10:45 -11:30. Packed up and home by 12:05am. Bingo.

AFAICR (my paperwork is dreadful), it'll be 55 this year with two bands, although the bulk of those is with the trio. To answer the latest question above, the trio function work is mostly from the website/recommendations, with a spattering of agency stuff when it's slowed down a bit. The other band stuff is good old-fashioned phoning landlords...

Good luck getting that sentence over to a good proportion of our punters: "You play an elephant with what?"

The function band I'm in has a very very eclectic mix of songs on the setlist (Daft Punk, Johnny Cash, Bon Jovi, The Smiths, RHCP, The Police, Modjo, Stevie Wonder, Nirvana, Erasure, anyone? ) , so we encourage potential customers to visit the website and browse the setlist to see what they'd like us to play. We also have a variation on the setlist depending on whether we go out as a trio (most common these days) or a four piece, which can bring in keyboards. We get a lot of bookings from recommendations and people who've seen us, we get people who are interested coming down to see us when we do pubs, and we get 'blind' bookings straight from the website, so we don't really agonise about it, to be honest. I think an online presence of some sort that you can direct people to is essential these days. You don't exist if you aren't online to some extent. Songs choices are based on what we like, what punters want to hear, and what works for whatever venue/occasion we're playing. Not necessarily in that order, and not all three are mutually inclusive Oh, and if anyone asks? "Allsorts...wait and see." With a smile. HTH

Try one of the newer Class D amps (Magellan, Mesa Subway, etc) - they're an evolutionary step up in terms of performance. I've had LMs and Streamliners and all sorts, and there's a difference.