Rosie C

I'm booked at a northern workingmen's club next year for a solo singer-guitarist performance, and the first thing I thought was the reputation of the tough crowds, I shouldn't have read this topic, it didn't help!

For bass guitar, at small gigs, that's me: bass guitar->lead->amp. For double bass I have to have something or other in the line for impedance matching and something to prevent feedback, so a pedal board comes into play. If I'm using IEMs I have a pedal that splits the signal. But generally, the fewer things I have to carry around, the happier I am.

Thanks for the welcome! My everyday bass is a Squire jazz bass, with has a Fender fretless neck and chrome XLs and using just the neck pickup I get a reasonable sound from it. It doesn't have the "thump" of a double bass though

I did have one for a while, but I struggled to stop the strings - on my upright I rest the body against me and can pull the strings with my arm, but couldn't do that with a EUB. That said, I saw Hereford's Blackthorn Morris a few weeks ago and they have an EUB player and it looked awesome and definitely wasn't lacking in tone. Edit: here's the one I used to have...

I play with Innovation Rockabilly strings - they're synthetic and have a nice dark sound, and they're much easier on my hands than metal strings. I play big band music and have played a bit of bluegrass previously and they worked well for both of those. The only downside I've found is they're no good for bowing. https://www.thestringzone.co.uk/innovation-rock-a-billy-set

I usually play Innovation Rockabillies - easier on the hands and they have a nice deep tone. I can get an acceptable tone on bass guitar, but I get a lot of good audience response from upright so keep lugging it around!

I listed our baby grand for sale about six months ago. Although it's been regularly tuned and all working, there wasn't much interest. In the end we arranged to donate it to our local evangelist church.

I have two uprights - one has an adjustable bridge with a Realist Lifeline. The other has a Realist Copperhead. I have a little pedal board with a GEB-7 to help impedance match. That runs into a Markbass Mini Marcus 250 amp with a GR Bass AT110 cabinet. I bought a Fishman Platinum to replace the EQ pedal but soon after I stopped regular gigging. So I've not had a chance to really use it properly but initial impressions are that its good.

Thank you!

Boss OC3 octave/drive pedal. All seems to be working. Corroded on the underside due to my bengal cat peeing on it to punish me for some imagined slight. Cleaned since of course. Free to anyone who wants pay postage or collect from Chepstow area.

I always play with IEMs, but I have two amps for gigs without PA: Markbass Mini Marcus 250 with GR Bass AT110 - louder, lightweight, clean sound, valuable Orange Crush 35B - less loud, heavy, rougher sound, cheap I have back problems, and bad back days call for the Markbass, but for less glamorous venues I'll lug the Orange along. 35W doesn't seem much but I find it loud enough for smaller gigs.

I don't worry so much about how my gear looks. But the exception is I do find the audience tends to notice a double bass - especially as mine is white, so I tend to take it to gigs as much as I can as it gets attention that my bass guitars never get.

It started at a small festival, the first time I used the Stage Bug. The new 9v battery in my GEB-7 pedal went flat after only 30 minutes right in the middle of our set. Maybe it was faulty, but as the first time with the Stage Bug actually connected to a mixing desk, I harboured suspicions that the Stagebug was somehow drawing power from the pedal. I looked around for various alternative batteries but anything good seemed expensive. But, I found an article on the internet about using a drill battery and I had an Erbauer cordless drill and impact driver (https://www.screwfix.com/p/erbauer-ebcd18li-2-18v-2-x-2-0ah-li-ion-ext-cordless-combi-drill/785hf) with a couple of batteries and a mains charger. I found a guy on ebay who 3D prints connectors for the battery - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/194015784172 - the 4Ah battery fits straight on, the 2Ah needed a little modification. The battery is 18v, I found a pedal power supply that runs off 18v and has a bunch of 9v outputs: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07D8NTK6Y After that it was a just a bit of soldering. As a bonus, the pedal power supply has a USB socket too, so I can charge my phone. I should probably add that lithium batteries can be dangerous and I have no electronics qualifications, so while it worked for me, anyone copying this is on their own!

They're not cheap, but would one of the Realist "Docking Station" volume controls help? That would at least extend the range of pickup options.

Top of my list is a compressor pedal, probably a Boss CS-3 but I might stretch to a CP-1X. I just sold my Höfner bass so it might be ordered soon. Also one of those lithium power packs, something with a nice clean output to use with an amp. If I somehow come into a pile of cash, I'd love a Hagström H8 II.

This is about the third iteration of my home-made pedal board. Nothing fancy, just basic Boss pedals and a passive DI. The tuner has the handy side-effect of splitting out a signal for my IEMs. The EQ is mostly used to stop my upright feeding back. The pedal in the middle slot varies, but isn't ever tremolo when playing bass! I built the board for gigs with a PA, where I'm using IEMs - although I don't actually do any of those anymore. It runs from a cordless drill battery and I get 3-4 months use from a single charge.

I'm a bit late to this thread, but you're in South Wales as well, so I'll pitch in. I have a mandocello I wanted to play through a PA, but fitting a pickup was problematic. It has a fancy rosette glued in the sound hole which didn't help. The trapeze bridge didn't suit a pickup, and the end of the fretboard was the wrong size for a pickup. I didn't want to cut a hole in the body but in the end it gave more options, so we just went for it. The pickup is a K&K big shot pickup fitted on the inside. It's paired with a Fishman pre-amp from a guitar, cutting the holes for the pre-amp gave access to fit the pickup - I understand that involved two drumsticks and some blu-tack. Anyway, as I say I'm a bit late replying, and you did say you din't want to cut holes! But you're probably not far from me so there's always the possibility of popping along to try it.

Martin's Violin's in Caerphilly have worked on my double bass - doing general setup and fitting a pickup a couple of years ago.

I had similar - a faulty IEM amplifier, Thoman said they'd just send a replacement and to keep the faulty unit for 6 months in case the replacement developed a similar fault, then dispose of it.

Lugging a double bass is rarely fun, and I can't change my car without taking it along to check the size. But I love the "theatre" an upright adds to a performance, and I love the 'thump' that they have. I just have a cheap unbranded one, but it sounds pretty good.

It's the Widders Border Morris in Chepstow. I've only just joined - quite a new thing for me, but a lot of fun. So far I played recorder and mandocello with them, but I'll be taking my double bass along at some point. I love playing it but I'm getting a touch of arthritis in my hands lately and I find I know about it the day after playing double bass

It seems it's traditional to post an introduction. I've played bass since school in the 1980s when a friend loaned me a bass and said if I could play it I could join his band. I played on and off, only really rock covers, never going past the fifth fret until a few years ago when a friend dragged me along to his community jazz band. That was a bit of a step up, I moved on to double bass, joined a bluegrass band, but found the double bass too hard on my hands. I bought a Fender acoustic bass but found it very quiet, but that got me into mandolins, and the string instrument I actually play most at the moment is mandocello, which I've lately been playing in a Morris side, and also at our local church. I'm at kind of a crossroads with bass playing at the moment, not in a Robert Johnson way, but in a sort of "been there, done that" sort of frame of mind. Maybe this group will give me some enthusiasm.