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Personally i don't like that new string twang which seems to last a couple of weeks of daily playing. Much prefer the worn in sound. I try to change strings if there is a period of not gigging for a week or so just to have an opportunity to "age" them. Unfortunately got so many gigs at the moment this won't happen so the DR Low Beams that have been on the Jazz for the last year will just have to keep going.

Not much choice locally so its an easy decision. I say easy but not pleasurable. It seems to take forever to setup and whilst the chap is pleasant enough he seems to know his own mind and not be too bothered about his customers opinions. After having 2 previous sessions at the same place where he'd made my bass sound like an angry wasp i got very uptight and suggested he just plug me straight into the desk - i couldn't work out how the sound he'd recorded was nothing like that coming from my amp. For some reason he insisted on keeping the same setup - guess what - same results. Fortunatley i was able to have the tracks seperated and then took the project home and re-recorded the bass on my £130 USB interface and it sounds about a million times better.

I saw them at Koko - maybe 4 years ago. Sort out your "space" early where you want to watch the band from as the venue has a lot of awkward spots where the sound gets affected. Have a ball.

This is a post for someone who doesn't use it live but does when recording

Crikey. There are some beauties on here. At the moment i am using 3 Jazz basses for gigs. Two are US Fenders and one in a US Hamer Cruise with outrageous bridge. This is a Highway 1 with an Audere Pre-amp. Its the goto bass as covers a lot of tonal options. This one is the Hamer with the crazy bridge. Insane build quality. My favourite. This is the backup American Standard (wanted an Olympic White one for ages)

Can of worms indeed. Main problem is that there is no real substitute for testing in a live situation and its hard to simulate that at home without pissing off the neighbours.

I've got an onboard Audere JZ3 on one bass and outboard Sadowsky pre-amp for other basses. Had them both for years now and very reliable and high quality. Its down to what you prefer.

Thank you folks and yes, i should of been more explicit in my initial question regarding PuP height and string height. Will look at the suggested article. There are so many factors. I'd like to find an optimum setting for playing finger style, with my nail (like with a Plectrum but using my nail instead) and for slap (some of the cover tunes we do are slap lines). Thing is at home generally most settings are ok and its only during a gig when you notice, for example, a lack of top/bottom end when in the mix.

Hello folks For reasons unknown i decided to experiment with string height on my basses. Some of the basses were too thumpy/boomy whilst others were not thumpy enough in gig situations. The difficulty is that at home and through headphones almost any height sounds ok but this isn't the case on gigs. So questions is: is there such thing as the "correct" string height? If so, what is it? Is it determined by playing style? What if you play lots of different styles? Typically my amp is flat and don't use effects or pedals. All advice welcome. Thank you

Awful, terrible. Very posh venue but proved that money can't buy class. Best mans speech staring at his notes "Can't fuc...g read this. Hey can you all shut the fu.k up!" whilst wobbling over the guitartists pedal board. He put his glass of champagne on top of the key players Nord and when the guitarist went to move it the guy got a bit aggressive. Everyone looked embarrased - it was cringe worthy. That set the tone for the evening.

Tuning sharp. Why would you do that?

I'm not saying as you'll be hassling for a gig...

Lack of options? Loyalty? Misguided belief that it will get better? Could be a million reasons. Its a really good idea to flesh out what each members notion of commitment and direction for the band will be before getting involved in musical endeavours. Otherwise start your own band on the condition that you are the all powerful and everyone must obey. Good luck with that.

Don't like all this someone is better than somone else rubbish. There's a lot more to being a good band member than shredding loads of notes and slap soloing over jazz tunes FFS. A band is the sum of its individual components. Much rather hear two quality notes at the right time than two hundred meaningless attention seeking notes ruining any potential melody,feel or groove.

You might just need to reconfigure the soundcard. If its working on some applications thats normally a good sign :-) Unfortunately i am not an expert with Line 6 but i had a similar thing with a soundcard and i just needed to go into a rarely used config option and change the monitor device settings.

Band rehearsals are pretty rare after being the same core unit for over 8 years and building up a catalogue of stuff. Probably about one full band rehearsal every 2/3 months. We do about 80/90 gigs a year. Practice pretty much every night at home often on material for other projects/writing/bass jam tracks etc. Cubase, some good headphones and a great little Focuswrite soundcard have been a revolution in terms of the flexibility afforded for different types of practice.

NYE should be one of the best paid gigs of the year and th venue should offer you free refreshments as a matter of courtesy. I know i live in a dreamland but how difficult is it when you run an establishment selling beverages to provide a few for free to the band?

Having recently read a thread on Synth bass i got interested and started to mess with a midi keyboard and Cubase. Can definitely do some interesting things with the Synth that you can't do with a "proper" bass. https://soundcloud.com/bottome/life-for-the-living

Its not your combination but i can vouch for the RS212 (and a RS210 cab with it for bigger gigs). I use a Little Mark head, similar power and class D type output to the Aguilar and its quite a full sound when running at 8ohms with one cab. Depending on your gigs, type of band etc you may want an additional cab for bigger gigs.

Lots of variable in this scenario. Things that could be a factor in no particular order: [list] [*]Where you stand relative to your cabs [*]Volume of other members of the band [*]EQ Squeezing - where guitars and keys have too much bottom end and blur your sound [*]Your own volume relative to others in the band [*]Your EQ [/list] Do you ever get the chance to stand and listen as if from the perspective of the audience?

When you get the gig arrive on time, be polite and try to follow the timings as required by the venue. Clean up after yourselves (glasses, bottles, needles etc) when finished. Getting one gig is pretty easy but repeat gigs is the secret.

We split the money equally after deducting a commission for whoever got the gig. We all agreed this years ago and its worked well.

During a session a guitarist once said "which solo did you prefer?" to me and the drummer. We looked at each other and burst out laughing. No words were needed.

Am i the only one who has completely lost interest in the whole recording shenanigans by the time the last bass part has been done? Hours and hours endlessly making minor tweaks to tracks that you have spent hours and hours recording is hard work.

[quote name='ambient' timestamp='1404243895' post='2490792'] So you've played and recorded the bass parts, now they're mixing, arranging and producing it ? [/quote] I'd say you got off lightly. You shouldn't have to do much to the bass track if it has been recorded properly. Hanging around listening to endless overdubs!