Rosie C

Although quite simple - root-5 with a run here and there, but I found the bass lines a lot of fun to play. No drummer in our band, so the bass and banjo were the rhythm section. I played on upright too, which always adds a bit of theatre.

I played in a bluegrass band in 2022-23 - mostly bluegrass but some country music too - Johnny Cash, etc. I was surprised that here in South Wales there are a lot of bands playing Americana and it was fairly easy to get bookings and decent audiences. Just a couple of weeks ago we went to see Texas Tick Fever who do a range of Americana styles and the venue was packed.

I did a gig on recorder last Saturday - through the house PA in a music bar to a pretty good reception. I didn't do three blind mice. I've a try-out next week with a folk dance outfit on treble recorder, so lunchtime 'recorder club' in 1978-9 has actually served me pretty well.

My upright is sub-£1000, it's a white-painted plywood model. It is probably this one, though I bought it second hand: https://www.thomann.de/gb/thomann_kontrabass_rockabilly_weiss.htm I only play it pizz, and use it for bluegrass, jazz and worship music. It has had a pro setup, decent strings & pickup. I had to have a new end pin fitted after the original one self-destructed. I wouldn't pay anymore unless I moved over to classical or wanted to return to bowing. I actually like that it's plywood and not worth much as it's regularly gigged and I don't worry too much about it.

I'd not heard of this creation and it has me confused. Is a regular bass guitar 2 octaves below a regular 6-string, and the VI sits in between?

Going back a LOT of years, we always finished our rock DJ set with Freebird. Happy days!

I note that @solo4652 doesn't want to alter the bass, but for anyone else who doesn't mind a bit of engineering and modification, this is how I did my EUB. The stand was off-the-shelf and has a lot of adjustment.

My favourite is WSM Radio, home of 'Grand Ole Opry'. Live isn't so good with the time zone differences, but there's an on-demand archive on their website https://wsmradio.com Closer to home, Absolute Country on DAB is always guaranteed to cheer me up when doing cooking, housework, etc.

Sound advice! I got into a rut, sold all but one bass, and my big amps. But kept my favourite jazz bass and a half-decent practice amp. A year on I'm playing regularly again.

It's similar at our local high school - great teachers and very good facilities. Very different to my own experience in the 1980s!

Oh, I'd forgotten that. While high school music lessons were a waste of time for me, we played recorder at junior school age 8 or 9. They must have worked as I still play recorder now - though admittedly now I play it through a rack-mount chorus unit and a PA muhahahahaha!

I use a Boss VE-8, though I'm not sure I'd recommend it. It works really well for acoustic guitar-type instruments with chorus and acoustic enhancement. The looper is useful and it provides phantom power for my condenser mic. The vocal enhance (apparently a compressor and EQ) works well with my voice. But the vocal accompaniment are all a bit robotic - although the doubling and octave are better than the others. It draws a fair amount of power - I use it with a 4Ah lithium drill battery which lasts about 24 hours. Edit: this matches with a couple of reviews I read - that the TC Helicon is better for vocal, the VE-8 better for guitar.

I'm with you on burgers and pizza! 😉

Ah, but that is my favourite shape! I have an SG-shaped mandocello being built right now, and a Hagstrom H8 is top of my list of must-have basses!

Pentangle is my band of choice this week...

Although my 1980s music lessons weren't up to much, what I've seen of my local high school's provision is very much better. They have a big band, show choir, practice rooms, recording studio, and help with loan instruments and free instruments lessons for kids who couldn't otherwise afford it.

We did music in the first and second year at school, with a horrible teacher and it was all just classical. In the third year we had to choose either music or art, and I took art. Meanwhile I was playing bass in a high school band. One day I was at school and was given a message to go to see the head of music. He explained he needed a bassist for the end of year musical, that I wasn't good enough (!!) but I was the best he had and would I like 1:1 lessons with him to get up to scratch. The rest is history 😎

We didn't quite go that far, but the next step was to have been cut the headstock down and move the 'A' tuning machine onto the underside, like a MusicMan.

I developed neck/back pain playing bass during lockdown - playing all day when I was suddenly home a lot. Initially I bought a Hofner violin bass which was super light. But I yearned for my jazz bass and different straps didn't help. In the end I sat down with my friendly local guitar technician to look at the weight. We identified: the steel clover leaf style tuners were really heavy, but could be replaced with alloy/nylon units the sexy high-mass bridge really wasn't helping and could be replaced with a bent plate type wood could be machined from underneath the fingerboard We removed around 1.5lbs in weight - with a lot of that coming off the end of the neck so it helped weight distribution. Of course this is just a cheap Squier whose value is more emotional to me than financial. I maybe wouldn't do it to a valuable instrument, but it completely changed this instrument.

No, no, no... until our band can afford a 7.5 tonne truck with tail lift and staff I'm not even considering anything like that!

Ah, my back hurts just thinking about anything bigger than 6U !

We're currently going down the rack route - our last couple of gigs have had way too many cables cluttering up the stage. Our first finished cabinet gathers together two phantom power units, a mic pre-amp and a chorus unit. 4U is probably out limit, keeping things down to 5 or 6kg max.

Not quite a gig, but last night I performed two songs at our local folk club - the first time I've sung publicly since 'ambulance day' in December after I had trouble breathing, needed an ambulance, and lost my voice for a month. I think I sang well and it felt so good to be 'back' !

Likewise, sciatica stops me standing for a full set, so I have a K&M double bass stool, but sit on it for playing bass, mandocello and vocals. But having seen this... that looks so perfectly natural, I'll have to have a think about a speaker-cab-seat !