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The Magic Roundabout - Alain Legrand

Before you leave home check all of your gear to make sure it works. Pack all of your gear up so you know exactly where everything is - a bag with separate compartments is a good purchase for this. However long the journey time is to the venue allow half again (it’s no problem being early and having a coffee whilst waiting for setup time). Make sure that whoever does the set lists takes into account the person in the band with the worst eyesight - they need to be seen when in the floor in semi darkness. And probably no need to mention this, be nice, to staff/sound-person/audience.

I've owned 5 Japanese Fenders and all of them have been excellent. (including a Japanese Squier from 1992). They have a reputation as having excellent quality control. Whichever one you choose I'm pretty sure it will be excellent. I never needed to change the pickups, as the ones installed were pretty good.

I love that this thread is 3 years old and the vote is basically 50/50, which as it happens I think is the correct answer . I switched to a 5 string headless Ibanez EH1505 which has multiscale neck bought about a year ago, really like the bass. I think one tries to weigh up the pro and cons of any innovation to conclude whether they are a net improvement. My conclusion / opinion : Headless is the way to go, better balance, lighter bass, same playable string length with shorter neck, good tuning, no obvious downside I have found yet Multiscale is of marginal benefit (if any) and for me has downsides, I'll probably prioritise other things in future purchases. I do like the way it looks though. For me, its a wash - I am 50/50 on it To elaborate - the downside of multiscale for me is subtle : the fan frets mean I feel like I am having to stretch / adjust my hand more at the extremities of the fret board particularly at the low end of the neck where I am already least comfortable and perhaps making it a bit more difficult to accurately position fingers at the fret. If you have huge hands, I guess this might not be an issue ! Worth bearing in mind I am an intermediate level player only, not super experienced. As other mentioned I would like to try the new Sire M6 as in my experience the necks on Sires are nice... my Ibanez will be hard to beat mind you

Two gigs for Hurtsfall this week. First on Thursday at Rough Trade in Nottingham Supporting the brilliant Miranda Sex Garden. Lovely air-conditioned venue which was a relief from the heat and also meant I could wear my normal stage gear rather than something that wasn't going to make me pass out due to heat stroke. Played to an audience who were largely unfamiliar with our music but it looks like we won them over, and consequently sold loads of CDs afterwards. As always here's some photos from the gig: Then on Saturday we were near Ellesmere on the Welsh border for Goths On A Field. The bands play inside a barn which could have meant it was like an oven, but luckily it turned out to be marginally cooler in barn than outside in the field. My sister (who last saw me play live in 1985) and her husband who live nearby came along and seemed to enjoy it almost as much as our usual Goth audience. Plenty of people up and dancing from the first song, and the new song we were playing for the very first time got a great response. Despite the fact that most of the audience must have seen us play before we still sold a decent amount of merch and we had a number of people saying that we were their favourite band of the weekend which given who else was playing was high praise indeed! No photos as yet, but I'm sure there will be some posted when everyone is back home later today or tomorrow. For both gigs I was using my Eastwood Hooky 6-strong bass going direct into the PA via a Line6 Helix. Footwear was a pair of black and silver Converse-style boots bought years ago from TK Maxx Next gig is back at Rough Trade on 26th July as part of the Nottingham Pride festival.

Tonex.

#1 - Paul @NancyJohnson #2 - Paul #2 @prowla #3 - Martin @Merton #4 - Matt @Wombat #5 - Andy @Wolverinebass #6 - Stevie @stevie #7 - Lozz @Lozz196 #8 - Matt @neepheid #9 - @bassace97 #10 - Robert @bass_dinger #11 - Christopher @chyc #12 - jaco @Geek99 ** #13 - Alan @WalMan #14 - Trevor @TrevorR #15 - John @jonno1981 #16 - Gary @cetera

Deep south style rockin'

I'm still staring at the picture

Hi all, I’ve been rehearsing with a drummer and guitarist to which it’s been forecasted that we will begin gigging in October. I’m absolutely buzzing for it. I picked up the bass for the first time in April and joined a 4 piece but they did not do well (drummer’s gear kept packing in and the guitarist was not very good so some time was lost between rehearsals looking for another guitarist so eventually I backed out as I was looking to develop and not spend time waiting for them to sort their stuff out) and I’ve currently got a good grasp of about 15-16 songs. A fairly small amount but 45-50 minutes worth of a setlist which we plan to do for pubs! Anyway, enough of me rambling. What is everyone’s advice when preparing for gigs? The drummer has a PA system and all the relevant equipment needed, but any tips and advice would be of much appreciation.

Brought a bass from Oli. Very pleasant experience, great communication and bass well packaged and as described. Thanks very much Oli, appreciate it!

@HellzeroI thought JV stood for Joint Venture?

This is great advice. The amount of hassle removed by consulting an expert is great. We recently played a new venue that the owner had spent thousands of pounds doing up. Alas he hadn’t spoken to a sound expert and the room was boomy and horrid. A few hundred would have made a world of difference.

Mine gave me great service for many years, until I got too old to lift it. Not quite as much bass as my Ampeg Portaflex but 10 times the weight!

Always thought those MB combos were a great idea where you could tilt back to hear them better. Dave

I think that will all work fine, along with the excellent advice above. You might also benefit from a couple of little monitors in your set-up, to allow band members to get a slightly different mix in different parts of the room, and to help manage mic feedback. The Thomann 'The Box' ones are great value.

The US suffix doesn't mean US built. Fender Japan made a version using alder for the body (and ash in some cases) and US spec hardware.