Do not bring that bass again... please

[Jack]

As a trained scientist I would point out that one anomalous result doesn't point to a trend. As a very untrained bassist and frankly laughable sound guy I've learned that often bad sound isn't anybodys fault. 

 

As an aside, I've once been asked not to bring a particular bass again. My drummer politely suggested that my electric blue musicman bongo didn't fit the look of our indie rock covers band. He was right. 

Edited October 1, 2022 by Jack

[dclaassen]

45 minutes ago, Jack said:

As a trained scientist I would point out that one anomalous result doesn't point to a trend. As a very untrained bassist and frankly laughable sound guy I've learned that often bad sound isn't anybodys fault. 

 

As an aside, I've once been asked not to bring a particular bass again. My drummer politely suggested that my electric blue musicman bongo didn't fit the look of our indie rock covers band. He was right. 

This always amuses me. Unless you are in a serious covers band…who cares. I have never watched a band performing and thought “gee, that bass sounds wonderful, but does not fit the aesthetic of the group”.

 

I did, however, appreciate while watching “Jersey Boys” that they changed guitar brands at the appropriate time.

Edited October 1, 2022 by dclaassen

[Bolo]

1 hour ago, Jack said:

. My drummer politely suggested that my electric blue musicman bongo didn't fit the look of our indie rock covers band. He was right. 

I don't know, is it very Indie to conform to the opinions of the masses?

[Jack]

1 hour ago, dclaassen said:

This always amuses me. Unless you are in a serious covers band…who cares. I have never watched a band performing and thought “gee, that bass sounds wonderful, but does not fit the aesthetic of the group”.

 

I did, however, appreciate while watching “Jersey Boys” that they changed guitar brands at the appropriate time.

Well I'm not sure how one defines 'serious' but they/we put a lot of effort into the look and I'm the only non-mod in real life in the group. There's a big backdrop with a Vespa and a few union jacks on the stage. I don't have the sideburns or the t shirt with the bullseye on it so I do try and make the effort. 

 

For reference the other guitars are a Paisley telecaster and a 335, both into vintage appropriate fender and vox amps. A bongo into a helix DID stand out a bit.

Edited October 1, 2022 by Jack

[chris_b]

I welcome comments.

 

The band that said, "Don't bring that bass, again." They were right and I learnt a good lesson that day. The guy who told me, on an outdoor gig, he could hear my bass loud and clear in the next road. Yesss! The guy who told me, "I can't hear the bass when you play up the neck." The guy who, a few years ago, came up and complemented me on my shirts from gigs we used to play 30 years ago. All good info.

 

Every now and then someone can make you stop and think. We can all make iffy decisions, without realising it. Sometimes we need to be told. We just need to be able to filter the gems from the nonsense. 

[paul_5]

I’m of the opinion that if a band wants me to play a specific bass for the look of it, the band should buy that instrument. I’m not paying to go to work!

 

Just my cantankerous opinion.

Edited October 1, 2022 by paul_5

[dclaassen]

4 hours ago, Jack said:

Well I'm not sure how one defines 'serious' but they/we put a lot of effort into the look and I'm the only non-mod in real life in the group. There's a big backdrop with a Vespa and a few union jacks on the stage. I don't have the sideburns or the t shirt with the bullseye on it so I do try and make the effort. 

 

For reference the other guitars are a Paisley telecaster and a 335, both into vintage appropriate fender and vox amps. A bongo into a helix DID stand out a bit.

I get your point!:)

[paul_5]

4 hours ago, Jack said:

Well I'm not sure how one defines 'serious' but they/we put a lot of effort into the look and I'm the only non-mod in real life in the group. There's a big backdrop with a Vespa and a few union jacks on the stage. I don't have the sideburns or the t shirt with the bullseye on it so I do try and make the effort. 

 

For reference the other guitars are a Paisley telecaster and a 335, both into vintage appropriate fender and vox amps. A bongo into a helix DID stand out a bit.

just stick a cardboard cutout of a Rickenbacker over the top and carry on!  

[Tim2291]

Most other musicians and producers get confused and feel threatened if the bassist doesn't bring a Fender jazz or p bass. I literally have a Mexican jazz bass I take every time I play. People are impressed I have it... It then stays on its stand and I play my 18v active ibanez on everything because its fsr more verstile 😂😅

[adamg67]

I got told not to use my 5 string for rehearsals and jams because the guitarist couldn't work out what I was playing because of the extra string. He maybe might have had a point if he'd been playing to stuff I was coming up with but that never happened, I was coming up with lines to his guitar parts, and you could tell whether they sounded good by whether or not they sounded good.

 

Sadly that was the least of the problems so I did a bit of "it's not you it's me" and left.

[WinterMute]

You need one of these in your rig.

 

[Rich]

I saw a gig by 'The Commitments' a few years ago. The band consisted of several of the film band-members, including Mickah the nutcase drummer except he was on lead vocals. No Andrew Strong alas. I don't know who the bass player was but someone should have told him that his Alembic Mark King bass (yes, he was wearing it under his chin) and huge Trace stack were totally out of place. Lovely kit, but in that setting it looked and sounded absurd. 

[SteveXFR]

An invaluable piece of advice given to me by a great bassist "if you hit the wrong note, throw the guitarist an angry look. If you come in on the wrong beat, give the drummer a dirty look"

[Alien]

On 30/09/2022 at 10:55, warwickhunt said:

I did a gig and the in-house engineer seemed to have the hump with me from the off and he was unhappy with everything I had brought and played through.  He was complaining that my cab was causing masses of bottom end boom in the room... I politely pointed out that at the time I was simply going from bass to HIS DI and my amp was still on stand by; any issues were down to him/his PA.  Oh I felt smug but I swear he didn't even put me through the PA during the gig.

And you probably sounded better for it.  I've worked with a few soundmen who've got no business going near a PA system.  Numpties!

 

[Geek99]

On 30/09/2022 at 09:13, franzbassist said:

I was once told not to play a 5 string as it wasn't a real bass.....

They’re right - just one string away from being a guitar :🤢

[SamIAm]

20 minutes ago, Geek99 said:

They’re right - just one string away from being a guitar :🤢

Wouldn’t that mean a lot of basses are no strings away from being ukuleles? 🤣

[jimmyb625]

When I joined the band I'm with, they did say I couldn't use my 5 string Bongo, which was probably a fair call given the overall look of the band. I did use it for some recording though.

[Bolo]

6 hours ago, jimmyb625 said:

When I joined the band I'm with, they did say I couldn't use my 5 string Bongo, which was probably a fair call given the overall look of the band. I did use it for some recording though.

What is the band aesthetic? As the Op called his Mod band 'indie' which is a fair bit away from how I would describe that.

[Jack]

8 hours ago, jimmyb625 said:

When I joined the band I'm with, they did say I couldn't use my 5 string Bongo, which was probably a fair call given the overall look of the band. I did use it for some recording though.

 

2 hours ago, Bolo said:

What is the band aesthetic? As the Op called his Mod band 'indie' which is a fair bit away from how I would describe that.

I'm not the op, which was about 2 Yamaha basses and sounds not looks. However, I did say that I was asked. I believe op was told. 

[Rich]

11 hours ago, Geek99 said:

They’re right - just one string away from being a guitar :🤢

But they are guitars... bass guitars. Even Leo said so 

[SteveXFR]

I'll be taking my new fuzz to practice tonight. I'm not convinced by this one myself so I may be told to not take it again. 

[jimmyb625]

3 hours ago, Bolo said:

What is the band aesthetic? As the Op called his Mod band 'indie' which is a fair bit away from how I would describe that.

We're Americana/Country/Folk, so quite "traditional" in that sense. There's a photo of the album cover in the "where are you playing next thread" so I don't clog up this one.

[Dan Dare]

On 01/10/2022 at 10:28, Jack said:

As a very untrained bassist and frankly laughable sound guy I've learned that often bad sound isn't anybodys fault. 

 

Come again? It may not be one individual's fault (several people may be conspiring to make it bad), but it doesn't just happen. Not learning how eq, gain, etc works is definitely the fault of those who don't/won't do so.

 

One of the biggest obstacles to a good band sound is each player insisting on using "their tone". The sound(s) they like might be pleasing in isolation, but combine them at any volume, especially if you fail to take account of room acoustics and the result can be a mess. It's part of the job of being a musician to understand these things and know how to compensate for them.

 

At a dep' gig, the singer/guitar player was struggling with the mixer at soundcheck and it sounded appalling. I looked over his shoulder and the gains were all over the place. I suggested he set them properly and he said "What do you mean?". I set them correctly, adjusted the eq and all was fine. To his credit, he said "Oh. You do know what you're talking about" and asked me what I'd done, so I showed him.

Edited October 2, 2022 by Dan Dare

[lozkerr]

On 30/09/2022 at 10:50, Rich said:

We're an easy target. I remember getting blamed for some weird feedback at one gig, turned out to be the hearing aid loop.

Had something similar at my last gig. Weird jangling sound coming through the PA at soundcheck  that just had to be coming from my rig. Even when I unplugged my DI and it didn't stop 🙄

 

It turned out to be caused by some wi-fi widget that was plugged into someone's laptop. 

[Jack]

5 hours ago, Dan Dare said:

 

Come again? It may not be one individual's fault (several people may be conspiring to make it bad), but it doesn't just happen. Not learning how eq, gain, etc works is definitely the fault of those who don't/won't do so.

 

One of the biggest obstacles to a good band sound is each player insisting on using "their tone". The sound(s) they like might be pleasing in isolation, but combine them at any volume, especially if you fail to take account of room acoustics and the result can be a mess. It's part of the job of being a musician to understand these things and know how to compensate for them.

 

At a dep' gig, the singer/guitar player was struggling with the mixer at soundcheck and it sounded appalling. I looked over his shoulder and the gains were all over the place. I suggested he set them properly and he said "What do you mean?". I set them correctly, adjusted the eq and all was fine. To his credit, he said "Oh. You do know what you're talking about" and asked me what I'd done, so I showed him.

I think that you're right when you say that often bad sound is user error (god knows that's been me once or twice in the early days of my sound career!) but wrong when you say that it doesn't just happen as well. Perhaps I should have said "nothing that can be done" rather than "nobody's fault". There are posts in this very thread about hearing aid induction loops or wifi widgets and ok yes they may technically have been somebody's fault, but not anybody in the band and there was nothing that could be done to fix it no matter one's level of soundman ability.

 

I've had a gig where we've been told there's house PA, then I double checked a few days before on facebook to be told there's a "full yamaha and rcf system that bands use all the time" then we get there to find there is indeed a full system, minus the mixer. Which we should have brought. Obviously. Maybe that's the venue's fault for not explaining, maybe it's ours for not bringing a backup anyway, but either way there was nothing that could be done to get great sound at that time. We plugged the main vocal mic directly into one top speaker, turned the stage amps up to match the drum kit, and played. I can also think of a gig where any time anything was plugged into any other socket apart from one there was horrific buzz. My singer had a socket tester and we carried a line transformer/isolator but nothing could be done to fix it. There were serious compromises to get the whole band into one socket, resulting in a less-than-perfect sound. I could go on, as could practically everyone else here who's ever gigged.