gjones

Fooled Again and Warpaint. We never did play them to an audience, as the band broke up due to the members other commitments. Richie Kotzen plays all the bass on his solo stuff and is pretty darn good.

I joined a newly created, classic rock band, a couple of years ago. I hadn't played that style of music before but knew a lot of the set from my teenage years. It was more difficult for the guitarists than myself but to recreate some of those songs, to a decent standard, wasn't a piece of cake for me. They had a couple of Richie Kotzen tunes in the set, with basslines that were definitely not easy. There was also a Gary Moore, called Wild Frontier, that never repeated itself twice, which took forever to learn. Hopefully the band you're playing with will stick to the AC/DC, Rainbow, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Thin Lizzy end of the classic rock spectrum.

Bill Paterson is a nice fella. He came up to me at an afternoon gig I was playing at The Virgin Hotel in Edinburgh a few months ago, to say how much he enjoyed the music. The band I was playing with were definitely' background music' and I suspect he wanted to assure us, due to the lack of response from the posh clientele, that somebody appreciated us.

My band used to play Tito and Turantula's 'Strange Face Of Love'. Tito and Turantula are a Mexican/American goth band who were the house band at 'The Titty Twister' bar in From Dusk Til Dawn (think Sema Hayak's dance with the Boa Constrictor). I used to love playing it but it tended to leave the audience a bit shell shocked and confused, considering that most of the rest of the set were danceable crowd pleaser stuff.

My full time band rarely rehearse, other than to figure out a key for the singer, and the other bands I play with usually just send me a text to say, 'Are you free next Thursday and if you are here's 30 songs to learn'. I actually enjoy rehearsing but my recent experience of rehearsals, with new bands, is that bands that rehearse a lot never gig.

I have a friend who was a pro touring sound engineer, about ten years ago, and she used to get paid £150 per day plus £50 per diems every day (to pay for food, drink). The last tour she was on was with a Grammy winning act. I assume touring musicians would be on a similar rate.

I've only ever bought one bass brand new and that cost me £1900. Usually though I let other people buy the bass brand new and then buy it off them for half the original price once they've got bored with it.

I wonder if he bought it? As a teenager in the eighties, I had the 90 watt Cobra combo above and the Stingray 150 watt 2x10 combo. The Stingray combo sounded rubbish, mainly due to the speakers not being up to the job which farted like a hippo if you added any bass to your sound. I once hooked it up to a decent 2x15 cab and the amp sounded pretty good. Eventually I sold it and bought a Peavey 150 watt TNT combo which was much, much better.

We're heading to a soulless future. The sad thing is that most people (consumers) won't give a f*ck. The guy's voice and the script on this video is probably computer generated as well.

He's also selling 8 planks for £99,999. Total bargain. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/186277462129?itmmeta=01HXFJGRWSRR35X6DGTD3YX7WD&hash=item2b5f008071:g:cL0AAOSwkH5luT55

I prefer Jazz necks but I have a MIJ P bass with a 57 style neck (wide but shallow) which I also really like. I have a Precision Elite which has a neck which is wide, but not particularly shallow, which I'm not very fond of. I also have a USA Stingray which has a wide and quite deep neck that I'm not too keen on. I'm selling it because I just bought a Sterling SUB Stingray4, which has a lovely Jazz style neck and which I prefer to the USA version.

Money is the root of all evil. If you were all playing for nothing and everybody was happy, I would recommend you ask for the money, that's being put behind the bar, to be paid to the charity of the landlord's choice (possibly The Landlord's Benevolent Society). Problem sorted. No need to thank me.....

I bought this Mighty Mite bass in 1984 secondhand and it played many a gig with me over the years (probably over 1000) . The body has been binned but I used the pickups and neck to create a very nice Precision which I still play regularly.

It's a difficult genre to pinpoint. Some Springsteen can fit the category, some Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Band, The Delines. It's somewhere between country and rock, n, roll. It's one of those, 'I know it when I hear it genres'.

Sold an original Marshall Bluesbreaker pedal for £80 to a guitarist I know. Checking ebay a few months later I saw them going for £500.......duh!

Just recently bought a Musicman Sterling Sub Series Ray 4, from Gear4music. It had an insignificant dent on the back so was sold as B stock, reduced to £230 from £419. I prefer the Jazz Bass style neck on the Sterling to the neck on my USA Stingray and it sounds just as a Stingray should with it's 2 band EQ.

It's the earth wire, which stops buzzing, and should be connected to your wiring loom as show in the diagram below.

I assume there are no monitors onstage, or if there are other band members have nabbed them? I usually don't go through a PA without some form of onstage amp, as my experience of onstage monitors is that they're either to loud or too quiet. I rarely have an issue with feedback though as, although the amp is pointing directly at me, it's usually pretty quiet onstage and I don't use a lot of high end in my sound. If your amp is feeding back try turning the high end down until it stops, you only need it for monitoring and turning the high end down on your amp won't affect your front of house sound. Alternatively, just don't bend over your amp

Everybody sounds like they're trying too hard.

My understanding is that if your amp is digital then you keep the gain down and the master up full. Digital amps are supposed to be noiseless so even with the master up full there should be no hiss. You then use the gain as a volume. If it's analogue it's the other way around to prevent hiss. Personally, with my digital amps, I just treat them like they were analogue. None of them have any tube overdrive and I have a clean sound, so it doesn't really matter.

I saw Anthony Jackson playing in a dive bar in New York back in 2006, when I was on a trip there. I had no idea who he was, other than he was great (and so were the rest of the musicians). They were so good that when I came back home I did some detective work to figure out who they actually were (the guitarist was Mike Stern who used to be in the Miles Davis band).

The singer in the band I'm in is 66 and has had some serious health issues. She seems as keen as ever, and still sounds great, but I feel the writing is on the wall for the band (especially as gigs will be on hold for a while, as she has an operation due in June). We've been gigging for over 20 years without a hitch until now. I've formed other bands over the last few years but lack of commitment, from other band members. has meant they fizzled out eventually - or I left in a huff. I'm no spring chicken either (61 last December) and I don't really want to join a band of similarly aged old codgers, who just want to kill time fiddling about in a band until they get carted off to the care home. Maybe I should call it a day, sell all my gear, and buy a Ferrari (Do Ferrari make mobility scooters?).

I've played a few gigs with my Rumble 100 V3 but it was with a quiet drummer in both the bands I played with. I have a Super Compact and if I was unsure if the Rumble could do a gig, I would just take the compact and a decent amp instead. Is there any reason why you don't want to take your Super Compact?

I once did the same with an Ashdown combo. I used it as a speaker cab for a long time. I even replaced the speaker with a more powerful one. It served me well for a couple of years. But make sure you're getting a very good deal and try it out at a decent volume before you buy. If it's being sold for more than £100 though, I wouldn't bother, as you'll have trouble selling it on.