Franticsmurf

Good luck, or break a leg, or 'raaaawwwk 'n' rolllllllllll'. Whichever works for you. 😃

This happened to me years ago with a cheap rechargeable (I forget the brand). I had tested it pre-gig and it was fine but it gave up the ghost towards the end of set 1. Every since I've used alkaline batteries and I've never had a problem.

Now you mention it, wasn't Enya's 'Orinico Flow' the start up tune for Radio 4 in the mornings? I sued to wake up to that, too. Never thought I was dead though. 🤣

Yes, I've read that too. There's a particular smell - a mix of rubber and a slightly metallic aroma - that immediately takes me back to when I was 10 and on the dentist having 6 teeth removed. It was the smell of the anaesthetic and the mask used to administer it. I still shudder as it was quite a traumatic experience.

I've never left a band on bad terms and only once did we have to ask someone to leave a band I was in. In such a tight community it should be obvious to all concerned that things aren't working and so the act of leaving/being asked to leave shouldn't really be a surprise. As has been said above, issues caught early enough can be addressed and as long as that is done in an adult manner, things should work out without the handbag moments, even if someone has to go. The only time we had a problem was with a bassist (I was the guitarist in the band) who couldn't see how his attitude of challenging everything and being late to rehearsals and gigs was a problem. The icing on the cake was when he refused to go back on to play an extended encore at a club gig and sat in the dressing room while we played another 30 minutes to a great crowd. He was asked to leave the following day and there was a hissy fit over returning my bass guitar to me (he didn't have his own) which was sorted with a visit to his house by the band. I hated every minute of it. The only positive from that episode was that having played bass for the encore, I played bass more often with that band and ended up being the full time bassist. And ultimately that led me here. 😃

I'm thinking perhaps get some long scale strings and create princess Leia Stereobuns?

They have been trimmed since the photo. But it could be useful to leave the string ends (or plait them) to discourage punters from getting too close to me during pub gigs. Or attach little LED fairy lights to them for that space rock/hippy/freak out effect. 😃

It turned up yesterday in this box. Nothing else in side and no packing paper. You may need to enlarge the photos to see it in the top left corner. After taking the original string holder off I couldn't figure out how to place it in such a way that it stayed on as described above and just started to think that you scamps on BassChat were having me on when I realised its an adapter, and that it fits over the existing string holder. If this isn't the correct way to fit it, it's the only way I can find that works. 😄

...anymore. 🤣

Me too. 😄

Yes, we used to be the 'on call' back-up band for a local pub (I knew the landlord from school). We were just starting out playing mostly originals so we were desperate for any gigs. We got a few through cancellations and we always treated it as a no pressure gig as we were there as a favour to the venue. As a new band, the venue policy was 'no weekend gigs until you have a following', but as the back-up band it was almost always a Friday or Saturday night gig. Good luck with your gig. No pressure! 😄

It's ordered now,so you can all laugh and say 'late April fool' or the equivalent. 😄

Oh no. Another purchase of something I didn't know I couldn't live without. 😂😂

Thanks. I'd certainly be interested but I can't see how string tension alone would do anything other than pivot the unit up and along the neck. 😀

I have a Spirit headless and it doesn't seem to be compatible with the existing unit as there's no obvious means to attach it to the headstock and still retain access to the truss rod (I was looking at the images on Thomann's website).

This is the problem I have with the festival band (the one that played 4 hours - see above). The BL is a Bruce Springsteen fan and gets a little carried away once the audience gets going. When I joined he was horrified by the suggestion of a break between sets as they used to play 3 hours or so straight through. But a lot of the band thanked me for insisting on it.

Same design as the ones fitted to my Ibanez EHB which are, as @LeftyJ just beat me to saying, Schaller S Locks. 😄

Glad it's not just me. 😀

The longest I've ever done was our festival band (The Hulla) gig at the end of June this year. Just over 4 hours with a 15 minute break half way. I remember thinking during the 3rd hour that I was running out of steam and just wanted it to stop. I played as complicated a bass part as I could that still fitted within 'Proud Mary' in order to try and get me out of the slump and it worked. The last hour was pretty much a non-stop dancing frenzy from the audience which gave us all the energy to continue. 😄

The Mustang Sally/Sex on Fire/Dakota type songs are useful to have in the back pocket should you need to inject a boost for a particular audience. In my experience all three will get a reaction in the right circumstances. It helps that being in South Wales, Dakota is a 'local song' (for local people) and has never failed to get a flagging crowd up on their feet when we've played it in the various bands I've been with. Similarly, I'm a Believer and (I apologise in advance) Sweet Caroline. Neither would fit in to the current band's style but I am tempted to get us to work on suitable arrangements because they would be useful lifeboats.

We made the mistake of playing bingo in a club to which we were the visiting band. We made the bigger mistake of winning. We nearly didn't get paid and there was very little love for the band that night. 😄

I've made three boards of various sizes using the plastic fascia/interior windowsill type plastic strips. Easy to cut, simple to glue together and I cover mine in black gaffa tape. Lightweight and none have let me down so far.

Looks like a good general list to me - covering a wide range of styles and therefore likely to appeal to a wide range of punters. As @asingardenof said, the next step depends on your target audience/gig. I'm in the process of finishing off a list with the new 3 piece and at this stage (with only a few of 'test' gigs under our belts) we're working through ideas without much thought for coherence. Our intention is to create a catalogue of 40-50 songs from which we can create more focussed setlists that will cater for the expected crowd/venue tastes. For example, we recently played a small festival where we chose an hour of upbeat rock spanning the 60's to the 2000's as the acts before us were all slow/relaxed/low key outfits and the audience ranged in age from 5 to 85. A previous pub gig for the guitarist's mate's birthday had us playing more modern rock - 80's to 2010's. All were taken from the same starting list of songs and some featured in both but with different sounds or arrangements. We were due to play at a charity gig in a back garden (cancelled due to the weather) and this would have been a much lower key affair with a list not much different to the festival, but played with less energy and volume. As we found, you may have a wide range of songs on paper but your arrangements may bring them a bit closer together in feel and style. We played a couple of Abba songs at the birthday gig but with a more simplified arrangement that brought them up to date.

Mid 90s for me, but the clubs were similar to the ones in the film. We used to play as a three piece or me and the singer as a duo in the South Wales valleys. The club buildings were lovely old places architecturally, often unchanged from when they were first built. Some of the audiences were similarly ancient. 😄 We were always on after the first bingo session of the night. Many of the clubs had a rule that members must not dance in the first half and we were often told not to play any upbeat dance music before the second session of bingo during our short break between sets. The second half would be the real test of how we were doing as we would find out how many people had endured the bingo to watch us. The bingo callers were characters, with each one having his (or very occasionally her) own style. They were as much performers as the acts were. There was one at a regular club gig who would start off quite clear and in the 30 minutes of so of the first session, degenerate into mumbled incoherence, at which point his assistant would repeat the calls. In the second session, the assistant would take over straight away with the original caller barely audible (and barely conscious) to one side. I remember one gig we played as a duo where we had to sit through the bingo in the audience because there was no changing room. For some reason we both got the giggles and stopped the bingo caller, who told us off with a stern 'we take our bingo seriously in this club'. Which, of course, made the giggles 10 times worse. At the end of the session, the whole audience got up and left as we went up on the stage. We were expecting to be paid off as the compare arrived but he had a quiet word, telling us to wait 5 minutes and sure enough, a whole new (and younger) audience turned up and we had a good night. I recently depped in an act the singer mentioned above was doing and went to a couple of the old venues. They were completely renovated and devoid of the character they had 30 years ago, and probably had half the membership.

+1 for the Columbus. I got it second hand but so long ago I forget what I paid. I was a guitarist at the time and needed it for recording demos. I found an old photo the other day of me playing it at a gig - I'd forgotten about that too but with the band I was in at the time I played guitar most of the time and the singer played bass, but occasionally I'd pick up the bass to give him a break. Great guitar - mine was sunburst.