Rosie C

I usually play bass guitar at church (of course), but on a whim this morning I took my guitar-bodied-mandolin instead. I arrived at church to find the band leader was absent due to the floods and I was the only musician with an instrument. 4th Sunday is an informal service anyway and we sit in a circle, so a guitar worked OK. We cut the hymns down to two. O Worship the King started off badly - I think people are used to the piano playing the melody, but also I've not done this before and was 'leading' rather than 'accompanying'. It settled down by verse 3, and the final hymn, Majesty, Worship his Majesty went quite well.

That's what I do - my previous band had no interest in IEMs so I went my own way. A Boss tuner with 'output' and 'bypass' jacks on my pedalboard lets me split the signal to drive a Fischer personal IEM amp with ACS ambient IEMs.

It can do - my policy has both PLI and gear insurance. I'm paying about £75 a year as well, but we only do a handful of gigs each year, and they ask how many gigs you do. I have two accordions, a mandocello and a PA covered - total value about £4k.

I've just done it by downloading the images in each post, then editing the post to use the version I've just downloaded, which tend to be about 1/10th the size

Not when a random store loyalty card fits the holder and leaves the air con running while I'm out 😉

It may be I've not learned to use it properly yet, I've not really had a chance to play with it properly yet.

My latest pedal... completely unplanned, I visited a friend who'd been messed around by a ebay buyer claiming the pedal he'd bought didn't work. "Here you have it" my friend said and thrust the returned package at me. Needless to say, it works perfectly! Not quite as strong a flange as the Boss pedals I've used but quite a nice sound. Since taking the photo I've invested in a Mooer switch cap.

I have an Orange Crush 25B (25W, 8") and not only is it fine for practice, I use it for playing bass at church services and it's fine (C of E, nothing too energetic! 😉 )

I've been with Allianz until recently - they seem good as far as their customer service and price goes, but I've not had to claim from them yet. But, they've just sold their musician's policies to another company but are still underwriting them.

True, and from the Boss website: "Wireless carrier frequency 2.4GHz". That makes it fine for practice at home, but I doubt our PA has a signal particularly different to any other (it's a Fender Passport). In a pub setting anyone might have Bluetooth active - so I don't have confidence to use it live What I'd really like is a multi-channel system which can send my mic and guitar/mandolin signals to the PA, and bring my IEM feed back. That would be so neat... probably exists for professionals at a price around what my car's worth.

It's maybe not as neat as it looks, as much of it is hiding in a hole cut into the pedal board. But is one of these - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07D8NTK6Y/ currently out of stock but there are other similar ones. It takes in 18v and provides a bunch of 9v outputs. Here's a couple of photos from when I first built it where you can see the size of it...

Yes, EBS flat patch cables. I find them much easier to route, and on my other pedalboard they make the difference between 4 or 5 Boss pedals across.

An ebay buy - a CS-3 compressor to add to my bass pedalboard. Still quite minimal but it does what I need.

Congratulations and good luck with the adventures it will take you on!

I have a WL20 - generally works well, but if I use the Bluetooth channel on our PA it can drop out.

I'm not too bad if it's just plywood, PVA and screws, and sandpaper followed by grey primer hides things nicely! The cable is perfect, the blue fits in nicely.

OK, it isn't a bass pedalboard, instead it's for vocal and two mandolins. But with the arrival of an XLR patch lead from @Chienmortbb today, I finished it and I'm pretty pleased with it. Mostly plywood construction, set into the lid of an aluminium case. As with my bass pedalboard it runs from a Screwfix Erbauer cordless drill battery - about 6 hours from a 4Ah battery. The "MicMute" is new (since moving to a headset mic I can't just turn away from the mic) and there wasn't space on my old pedal board for it. The first version was flat, and I couldn't easily tap the pedals on the back row, so I made an angled plywood shelf. The shelf also helped hide the cabling and power distribution. The missing gap is in the hope that Santy Claws brings a Joyo "Oxford Sound" pedal 🤞 so I can take the mandolin straight into our PA rather than via my Orange amp.

Another excellent cable from @Chienmortbb - I needed an XLR patch lead at a particular length and with a right angle connector at a particular angle to finish off my pedal board and it didn't disappoint!

and of course "that's a big violin!" I've never had a problem with stage presence, certainly I get more reaction than when playing my jazz bass guitar. Often there are expectant "ooh" sounds from the audience as I drag the upright on-stage. Mine is painted white and has tribal artwork, so you can't really miss it.

We play a slightly different set every time - partly depending on the venue (we play pubs through to churches), whether children will be present. Adding a new tune every month. We also have summer and winter sets that we flip with the seasons.

I don't know much about this subject, beyond my piano teacher claiming that mothers tend to call children using a falling major third e.g Tom-my! and that feels like a fairly large gap, so a sixth or seventh sounds a lot.

I suffered random feedback problems with a Sennheiser E835, then I changed to a Sennheiser ME-3 headset mic - no problems since

Yes, no surprise that I play upright and fretless. When I came back from the course I interrogated the trombone player I used to sit next to at work, and sure enough - when he thought about it, he was doing the same intuitively.

A recorder teacher at a residential weekend. We were playing in a quartet, and she explained the importance of being aware if you had the third of the chord, and if you did to make sure you played a little sharp if it was a minor chord, and a little flat for a major chord. That blew my musical mind, opening up a world away from equal temperament.