ivansc

relisted at 49p! If I still lived in Kenton I would go get it.... £150-200 for a clean up and tune. So long as the action and strings were OK-ish.

[quote name='TimR' timestamp='1442693343' post='2868857'] They're obviously good enough to get the gigs. Next time you see one of these bands, ask yourself, what is the magic ingredient they have. Study the way they interact with the crowd closely. A clue; it has nothing to do with the quality of the musicianship. [/quote] There is another aspect to this. Years ago when I first returned to the UK, I was working with a guitar and MIDI tracks on the pub circuit. A pub I had worked regularly changed hands. I went in and introduced myself to the landlord, showed him my name in the pub's diary as a regularly-booked act & offered to do a one-off "get acquainted" gig for him for £90. He replied that he had never paid more than £70 for music, even if it was a five piece band and h want about to start now. The pub went from being one of the more successful local music pubs to empty on the weekends in a couple of months because of the rubbish acts he had playing there.

[quote name='peteb' timestamp='1442662045' post='2868573'] Surely any professional player expecting to make a living playing in pubs (certainly in the UK) needs to have a word with himself and get a day job! Simple economics mean that a pub is not going to pay more than £200-£300 (at the most) and a share of that is not going to provide what most people would consider a half-decent living. The real problem is the number of ‘amateur’ bands that are just not good enough but still get plenty of work in pubs crowding out better bands and there are not enough good quality bands to displace them... [/quote] The only time I actually made a living out of pubs was when I reinvented myself as a singing guitarist. I was pulling in punters who bought beer, so I was paid accordingly. But you are right - anyone in a band expecting to make a living out of playing pubs is S.O.L. for the most part. Got to say that even now the band I am in locally makes a minimum £100 per man net. And we don't play any further than an hour drive from home. Mind you, even that is getting to be hard work these days!

[quote name='Raymondo' timestamp='1442650640' post='2868418'] I don't know Paul personally by the way...... Where in his post does it say how much he earns? maybe he earns twice as much as you per gig but wants to enjoy the music,maybe not. The point is this is a forum for BASSPLAYERS ...not PROFESSIONAL BASS PLAYERS ONLY.... I have earned a living from my bass and i have played part time for fun too. I don't hold with this " amateur bass players are taking gigs away from the pros'" nonsense....I've never taken a gig off john Deacon by offering to play Wembley for free ....I would have mind given the chance [/quote] Good point. Apologies to Paul for assuming he was a semi-pro/amateur. O.P. My comments about the amateurs diluting the paying gigs are based on what I see happening locally now. So many club venues moving over to "karaoke" solo acts because they can no longer find bands that can cut it! Scary.

(grin) For a while, a local pedal steel player used to "just happen to be in the neighbourhood" when I had a solo gig. He would come in smiling like crazy with steel guitar in one hand and fender twin in the other. "You dont mind if I join in, do you? I dont want paying or anything" Great, great player but I always thought it was a bit weird And it got even weirder on the nights I was doing all Soul and Motown......

PaulWarning: Having worked both sides of the Atlantic, I would have to say the standard of players I saw & worked with in the USA absolutely obliterated most of the pub and club bands I see in the UK today. Part of the problem is the number of people like yourself, who do it for the love of playing with no thought to the money aspect. You crowd out a lot of the bad bands, but also reduce the number of paying gigs a professional player can go after. There is a whole other level above lightly-rehearsed amateur bands where a good 4 hour show is perfectly do-able IF you put the time in to get road-hardened. Not easy, but then if you are working at that level it IS your job And 40 songs? When I was working solo in the UK I would play about 50 from a selection of over 300 I had rehearsed up well. Depended on the gig. Life is tough if you decide to make a living at music. FWIW I was making the same or better money as a 4 piece band when working solo, which is WHY I went solo. Paid the mortgage, but very hard work.

[quote name='Billy Apple' timestamp='1442342585' post='2866263'] The first Orange heads were built by Matt Mathias at Matamp and badged Orange. Orange was just a music store in London at the time selling mainly second hand gear. Matt was a purist and perfectionist who was not at all keen on hi-gain. It was one of the reasons Matt and Cliff Cooper fell out, as Cliff was pushing for more dirt. So vintage Orange will be cleaner. Plus all the older Orange stuff is 100% hand-wired and very reliable, unlike the new Chinese built printed circuit board stuff. I don't think you could even compare them, two totally different things. [/quote] And of course the chassis were both chromed and built like the proverbial brick shithouse. Oh and the internal chrome roll bars meant you could slap the head down on a bench to work on the underside with no risk of clobbering the valves/tubes. But the Orange Graphic heads did have a nasty habit of going into some sort of parasitic oscillation if you wound the treble up a bit too far.

FWIW Many years ago I worked for a local franchisor and was involved with training a bunch of the franchisees in the art of running a pawn shop and second hand shop, which of course is what CC is/was. The vast majority of them didnt have a clue about buying selling or anything else. As I have a background in Jewellery AND musical instruments, I became "the chap to call" on both jewellery and musical instruments for many of these franchisees. Sadly I don't think CC have that many knowledgeable people working for them these days. And of course, the harsh reality of any second hand business is that in order to make an actual after tax profit, you really DO need to strive for a "keystone" or cost+150% inclusive of 20% VAT. Sounds a huge margin but by the time you take out for stolen goods returned to their rightful owners - no matter how hard you try to avoid the scum, you WILL get caught occasionally - duff gear that the buyer forgot to check out properly when it came in, warranty repairs or refunds or replacements. (CC used to give 90 days on everything they sold) and of course the actual overhead of running the business you really dont see that much in the way of an actual profit. The part that used to bemuse me was that the franchisees HAD to have succeeded in amassing at least 500k pounds in order to buy into the franchise and actually set up & stock a shop. If it were me I would just carry on doing what I was doing that left me with half a mil going spare....

(grin) I once started an "incident" at a gig... Very early days of punk and my band were playing a local Labour club. All good fun and lots of that new-fangled pogo dancing, till one of the razorblade-and-safety-pin brigade spat at our bass player (my girlfriend) I jumped off the stage, guitar in hand, and laid into him, whilst his mates were trying to explain that in THEIR world spitting on someone was a sign of approval. Who knew? Like... WHO KNEW???!!!

Saw Deep Purple in a cinema in Cambridge in the fairly early days with Glover on bass and singing. The whole of the stage behind them was full of bass amps and 4x12 or 4x15 speakers. Ian Paice was right off to one side of the stage, Jon Lord you could hardly see on the other side, No sign of Blackmores amps at all. Bass was bloody thunderous. Same with Cosy Powells Hammer when my band opened for them in a smallish civic centre in either Harlow or Boreham Wood. By the mid seventies I had an Orange 120watt graphic head and a 2x15 parabolic reflector cabinet with Altec Lansing speakers in it. Played what is now the Hammersmith Apollo with that and nothing in the PA. I was definitely audible.

After 60 years of playing for pay I am down to a very few gigs a year with my 60s band, which now has NO original members left in it. I have the luxury of being able to turn up and play at an invitations only jam of a very high standard whenever I feel like it and use the house band, who are great players and LISTEN. But I am getting tempted to maybe start up a little band as well..... hard to let go the habits of a lifetime. But one thing that band will NOT be is a democracy. They never ever work. Someone has to be the responsible adult. (grin)

[quote name='Rich' timestamp='1442330542' post='2866092'] I know [i]exactly[/i] what you mean. I started off with a '65 Hofner Artist and graduated from there to a Columbus Jazz copy (plywood body etc). I jumped straight from that to a Wal. You can imagine what a simply gigantic quantum leap in quality and playability and sheer class that was! [/quote] My first bass was a 1962 Fender USA Precision. Couldn't afford the case so it travelled in its cardboard box. Bought it used in 1963 for sixty quid. Had to sell it in 1963. For sixty quid. Never had another bass I was happy with till I got given a P.O.S. Epiphone prototype Explorer bass, which morphed into my main gigging bass from 1983 to date! Finally got BACK to a 62 AVRI reissue a couple of month ago. Happy bunny. And this one does have a case! But I still have a soft spot for that Epi.

Hm. The LM III showed up... in a 2U rack sleeve! Think I need to either sell the sleeve and get a bag or buy a non-slip mat! The best laid plans of mice and men... shame I already cut my sorbethane balls in two......

[quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1441893481' post='2862705'] Fascinating - have you checked whether the bairn can actually have dual nationality? [/quote] Sure can. My daughter was born in Nashville - we registered the birth with the UK embassy at the time and she now holds 2 passports and dual nationality.

In my book, "pro" means it is your primary source of income. End of. A pro attitude is a different thing entirely. I know a lot of seasoned Pros who DONT have that, which is a shame.

I bought some really inexpensive sorbethane hemispheres on ebay for my monitors rather than the expensive iso stands and similar that poople recommend. Worked a treat. I have a MarkBass Little Mark III coming tomorrow in the post and already have my balls cut in half ready for this weekends gig.

So I guess all these guys have a bass player in their bands as well?

Anyone playing NYE in a little local pub cant really expect to make a ton of money. They can only sell so much booze even on NYE. Whilst thy likely can afford to pay a couple of hundred quid for a band, it is unlikely to be more. NYE is a night they too hope to make a decent amount of profit, just like we all do. If you work pubs you are essentially a beer salesman. If you cant increase the LLs bar takings significantly, you are not earning your keep. Which is one of the reasons I work clubs and function-type gigs on NYE. At least they have a decent budget in 90% of cases.

[quote name='PaulWarning' timestamp='1441122750' post='2856213'] I'll put up with most things if it gets the crowd going, if that doesn't float your boat maybe you should just rehearse and never do a gig, I would happily never do Nellie the Elephant but the crowd loves it, if they're pissed enough [/quote] One word: OLGA!

Assuming you wear stage gear, it might be an idea to change into your street clothes before attacking the gear. We usually do.