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Damn!

Hometown gig in a converted church that I've played before, nicer onstage sound than previous times. A few mistakes but a well received generally enjoyable gig. I've used a Peavey vb2 810 fridge for my last 3 gigs, this one and the 2 previous tour supports we did. The fridge was purchased for the usual blue book £100 for a non Ampeg 810: it's the 3rd 8x10 I've owned and I maintain that despite science going in the opposite direction they can be a good, cheap viable solution for certain situations. Obviously it wouldn't have worked when I was doing pub / club covers and probably not ideal for everyone. When I found out the bookings we had this year I either had to get an additional 2x12 neo GK cab or go on a different tangent. I flogged the GK and bought the fridge for half of what I got for it...I can rethink things in the future if needed. Fair to say that the 810 with the GK head is like a 3.5 litre v8 ticking over and never gets shouty; the volume is at the volume of the drumkit ( I'm enjoying playing with a more energetic drummer after playing with a sedate one for a few years) and one guitarist plays big chords while the other plays a bass 6. So I need to really ground the music, giving an illusion of being an octave below the bass 6. The tilt and roll drill with the fridge is pretty workable too, I struggle more with 4x10s tbh. My first gig with LaBella flats. Not wild about them on their own but great in the band mix, really full and consistent. The higher tension seems to work well too, nice to play.

It's through gaining more of an interest in the acoustic side of things that I was recently looking at Uke basses also. I wouldn't have even looked if I was sticking firmly to playing electric bass. It may be something I will invest in at a future time. It would be good to have a resource of info here though.

That's very kind of you and much appreciated. I have my bass and an acoustic preamp DI box sorted. I'm sure I'll have more stuff to wonder about and look into in due course though!

I did Bas, the warmth of the P-Bass and Ashdown combined nicely with the more clinical sharpness of steel rounds & Sansamp, was ideal for my then punk band.

Wow, I'm impressed at this zombie thread resurrection! 6 years have passed and the world has been through Covid and back! Was a time I still used backline and had moved on from a fab little Alain Caron combo, still one of the very best ever combos IMHO, to Barefaced cabs & DG amps. Gah...it's all FoH, digital desks and IEMs these days for me 😅 @Lozz196 you played a P-bass and got a "to-die for" tone from your rig and little Sansamp pedal if I remember correctly?

@Bassassin would doubtless know in a heartbeat

Hi all, Unusual request, just looking for some advice please. I've joined a jam band with an old friend and we're at the point where we're going to start shopping for gigs. Out of the 5 of us, 2 of us (me being one of them) have played in plenty of gigging bands before and we have hundreds if not thousands under our belts between us. The drummer and the singer haven't gigged before but they are sorted. The issue is with the acoustic guitarist. He's a nice fella and a great player but never left the bedroom. Currently they own a nice selection of acoustic guitars and that's it. No stage gear to speak of. I even had to show him how to plug into the amp at the rehearsal space, no joke he had the instrument cable from the guitar in the speaker output of the head. Have any of you ever played acoustic guitar in a band or been in band with someone who has? Advice for what gear you need to be able to actually do that? I would lend him my Fishman Platinum Pro, but once I've done that once I'll be doing it at every gig and I don't want to start a precedent. We have a full pa setup so he could go ampless and then rely on the wedges I suppose. I get the impression that most acoustic guitar amps are relatively flat anyway? Or do nice-but-mid-range acoustics benefit from some tone sweetening? So is it just a plain DI box then to get the guitar into the mixer? I think that all of his guitars have built in preamps and tuners, so just a passive DI would work. But then wouldn't it be nice to have some eq and feedback fighting options on the floor? Or a better tuner? Do the inbuilt ones on guitars work on loud stages under bright lights? What's a good budget acoustic guitar amp? Or preamp pedal? I have seen the Sonicake ones that look alright but they don't have a tuner. Do multi effect pedals work well with acoustics? It occurs to me that something like a Mooer/NUX/Valeton 'hx-stomp-alike' might be a good solution to this? I don't even know how to ask an intelligent question on this as you might have guessed. I own an electro acoustic and if I had to play it live I'd just plug into the quad cortex or the aforementioned Fishman, but that's because I already own those solutions and I'm not an acoustic guitarist by trade. I'm trying to remember back to when I've shared a bill with acoustic guitarists or when we've worked weddings and I've had them through my desk and pa as the first acts. I think most of them have had some sort of pedalboard, mostly with looper pedals, but I guess that's not appropriate for a band. I guess what I'm asking is: for a player who has been playing for a long time but who is brand new to playing live (and who is on a tight budget) should we go amp or pedal board? If so what are some good cheap options in those categories? Is there anything else here that I haven't thought of? Thanks in advance.

Electric Soup, 90s and 00s indie classics, hence the yellow bucket hat you can see poking out at the back. No car-crashes, good fun gig. Punters were sat at tables due to where we had to set up in the pub, but we had people dancing at times at the back. The BH800 worked well with the tone prints meaning I didn't have to take 2 extra FX pedals. Shuker 3 -> Getaria wireless -> TC Electronics BH800 -> Orange 4x10 isobaric cab (+ DI from amp into PA for FOH volume control). Footwear, maroon creepers.

Exactly, quite an ignorant statement to make , I could name many reggae bass players that I’d guess a lot of people wouldn’t know, it doesn’t make them ignorant, it’s just something they’ve never looked into or it’s not their genre

Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves - Eurythmics ft Aretha

I went to the tip today with a load of polystyrene. No one asked for it. I Didn't even ask for it, it came around a cupboard my daughter bought. If you wanted it, too late, it's gone.

Hi, I can’t tell you anything about it but it looks pretty cool to me , im sure someone will be along soon with info

A double report, because I was lazy last weekend. Last Saturday, played with Nine Lives at the Grampian Bar in Torry, Aberdeen. First time playing there. It wasn't very busy - maybe 15 folk in at any one time. Thankfully there was a table of folk who stayed for most of the gig and were well into it, plus my best mate came down for the first half and Mrs. Neepheid joined us later on after an earlier social engagement. Still, it was one of those when you wonder if the pub made any money at all. Gear for that one was Yamaha night - the SB500S (even in its unfinished state having only a bridge pickup) followed by the BB1200 (which I forgot to photograph, oops). Amplification by Mark Bass as per usual. Fast forward to last night, Nine Lives again and back to a favourite haunt, the Balaclava in Fraserburgh. Gig didn't get off to the best of starts - while the drummer and I were loading our gear into the pub he suddenly realised that he'd left the mixing desk at home - he had changed cars in order to service the brakes on his usual motor and left it in there by mistake. Thankfully he only lives half an hour away from the venue, and we were mercifully early, so he bombed it home while we set up everything around the missing mixing desk so it would just be plug in and go, debagged his drums to save a bit of time there etc. Despite all that hoohah, we still somehow managed to be ready 10 mins before kick off. And it was a cracking night! Maybe because it was a pay weekend, the pub was busy and we had plenty of dancers and singers enjoying the tunes. Much better night than last weekend, that's for sure. Played well, some bloops but easily recovered and acknowledged with winks, smiles and funny faces. I played my Epiphone Mike Dirnt signature G-3 the whole night - sorry, backup bass, but I was just having too much fun with my new toy. It's a bloody terrific bass, a joy to play and sounded immense - cut through the mix like a knife in all pickup settings. Had a whale of a time playing it. Usual amplification.

I had to watch. I thought the drummer was playing on top of a hot tub. Goodness Gracious...

That is a bit of a stretch, I'd have thought Joy Division etc. occupy a pretty small niche in the wider scheme of things, while the only New Order song anyone is likely to recognise outside a very particular age/race/location demographic features a sequenced synth bassline. I think we all tend to overinflate the general importance of our own influences and heroes. Someone replied earlier saying they'd not heard of any of the bassists I'd listed even though it included one who played on the global best-selling album of all time, plus another who played on the bestselling jazz album of all time. Again though that seems perfectly reasonable, there's an awful lot of music out there and what we grow up with tends to dominate our perception.

The kits you linked look quite affordable. It looks like the tricky bits have already been done for you: the neck is fretted and the body routed. I guess you really just need to finish the body (oil finishes are easier to apply and are a bit more forgiving than paint/lacquer) and then screw it together. In other words it looks like a relatively easy job to end up with a working guitar at the end of it.