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You'd have to tune it sharp though

I’d be down for this.

Sunday afternoon saw our (Rascallion) first live performance since August last year (long story!). The event (outdoors at a local pub) had originally been billed as "Country Music Day", featuring a local female solo acoustic singer followed by us, so we'd worked up a set featuring a few of the more country-adjacent tunes we've not done for a while, and added the 6/8 at 49 BPM delights of "Tennessee Whiskey" to our usual CCR / Eagles / Petty / Stones country-rockesque fare. Sometime over the last month, the event then morphed into a combined Sausage & Cider Festival and SSAFA Fundraiser, but we decided to stick to what we'd already put together, and it mostly went OK despite rehearsals being sporadic due to various members being ill or otherwise unavailable. After Meg had entertained the crowd (and us) with two sets of country classics plus a few very good (and in one case very funny / raucous) originals, it was our turn to spoil everybody's afternoon. Apart from a number of on-the-hoof arrangement changes courtesy of Mr Singer (OK, maybe he was just testing out our recovery skills, but I suspect not... ), a couple of the carefully-crafted intros we'd worked up at rehearsal on Wednesday going to pot as various folks piled in before they should have done (think we need a few more counting lessons... ), and a few other minor moments by all of us, seems we got away with it judging by the amount of applause, outbreaks of (possibly cider-induced) dancing, and complimentary comments at the end! Used my 1997 CIJ Jazz, faithful old Ashdown MAG300-C210T combo (acquired from @karlfer of this parish about 15 years ago, and which doesn't get to see much action these days), plus the usual board of Micro Thumpinator > NUX tuner > Ampeg OptoComp > Ampeg Scrambler > Ampeg Liquifier > Ashdown 12-band Graphic EQ/DI > Behringer DI600P DI. I somehow contrived to play the whole of the first set and a chunk of the second with the sub-harmonic engaged on the amp having omitted to disengage it after our last rehearsal, but I don't think anybody noticed. 🤫 Anyway, that's hopefully got the rust knocked off prior to our next gig this coming Saturday at our spiritual home of Anderby Village Hall. Might have some videos to put up later, if I can manage to get them off Mr Rhythm Guitar's phone at rehearsal, but in the meantime here's the setup, and a combined "Post Your Pedalboard / Footwear" shot.

I recently created a large playlist of Vulfpeck, Fearless Flyers and Cory Wong tracks. Liking the 'this American life' feel. Also, curiously liking Khruangbin for their light, easy listening (I'm obviously getting old!) ambient feel.

This doesn't really help the OP, but for my points: In the concert band I play in, I have moved from using paper sheet music to an iPad. It is a game changer, but I have to be very careful with the angle of my stand as it sometimes ends up sitting in a position that is on the varifocal divide between far and short lens, so can get a bit blurry if you look at it from the wrong angle. In my late 40s, my back is already shot, so although I use pedals, they have to be pre-set before a gig and switched by foot only as I can't bend down far enough to change settings on the fly!

I have a John East J-Retro fitted to my Jazz Bass. I love a bit of low mid, which I feel gives punch and definition. When I go through a, front of house, PA I will turn up the low mids on my Jazz to prevent the sound engineer giving me a muddy sound out front. Of course I could change the whole character of my bass, with various options available with the J-Retro, but I mostly keep things pretty simple. I also like the ability to walk out into the room, while the band is playing, and change my tone to suit the room, without touching my amp controls.

Again, varifocal lenses are the answer here, a different prescription for different areas of the lens, no magnifying effect up close at all. Talk to your optician. Edit -> there's nothing happening here which hundreds of millions of people haven't gone through already. Your optician will be your best source of advice.

It's really useful to have a volume control that doesn't affect the tone.

How did it go Trevor?

The problem is that at the end of their useful life 9V PP3 batteries tend to 'fall off a cliff' in higher current use. Hence the familiar rapid onset of fartiness halfway through a set. They usually show well above 9V off load even when fairly well discharged. What really matters is the on load voltage. A better quality battery e.g. a good alkaline one, will go to a lower on load voltage before it suddenly drops. The load varies between preamp designs. A preamp taking a smaller current will cause less voltage drop and therefore work with a weaker battery. They can also recover a bit when unused. So the voltage level a gig or two before the battery fails depends on the quality of the battery, the preamp current requirement and the frequency of use. This graph is at an unrealistic 100mA discharge rate. Much lower rates would be found in mist of our applications (except old school digital effects). The theoretical ideal would be to measure the voltage with the preamp on and keep records for each battery brand until you know when it's likely to fail. Thinking about it, a sensible compromise would be to use older batteries for practice/rehearsal and keep fresher ones for gigs. You could keep track of which batteries are freshest by measuring their voltage. I'll probably start doing this! P.S. I have an active Hohner with a red LED for power on. The LED probably uses more power than the preamp...

It’s almost counter~intuitive but HPF is the bassists and sound tech’s friend.

Hi John, thanks for offering to help out, they are non latching momentary switches allowing some basic programming. A double tap saves the settings

Fender suggest 0.38, so I think you're in the region. I'd echo what @Woodwind says - the foundation of a good setup is getting the relief right. You can tinker with the saddle height, but if the relief isn't right you can't overcome that with saddle adjustment.

Saturday night was in a school hall playing bass for the local concert band and it's 25th anniversary concert. Was good fun but a total sweat box, especially when the band committee insisted we all walked on stage in full uniform - ie shirt, tie, trousers and heavy band blazers. Luckily the jackets came straight off when we got on stage.....

As I recall, on turning it on, switch 1 is active. It disengages if pushed but then won’t engage (I need to double check). I’m sure it does click but will confirm when I get home later. i had a quick look before going to work this morning and noticed the spring on S1 is too short and not in contact with the pad. S3 is in contact. Pics attached. I may well take you up on the offer 😃👍 Thanks.

Hurtsfall played the Nottingham Craft Beer Festival in Sneinton Market on Saturday. If you are not playing covers these events can be a bit hit-or-miss and on top of that we were the last band playing that day, so we didn't really know what to expect. Sneinton Market is currently the "happening" area in Nottingham where all the interesting independent shops are situated in units in the old market buildings. On arrival we discovered that the beer festival had taken up the whole of the Avenues area and was entry by ticket only. However to allow people to still use the shops you could get in but didn't get a wristband which was required in order to buy beer. As performers we all got wristbands but I don't recall being asked to show mine before being served. There were two stages - one outdoors where unfortunately the performers seemed to be mostly ignored and also had to compete with all the other music - there appeared to be at least one DJ set up on every avenue, and the other in The Grove where we were playing. Probably the most convoluted load-in so far this year. There was only one entrance and some of the avenues were blocked off half way along the length meaning that getting all the gear to the venue involved not only negotiating all the beer festival attendees but also doubling back on yourself to get around all the blockages. Certainly not as easy as the last time we played at The Grove when it was possible to park directly outside the venue. Thirty minute turnaround between performers, whilst someone played on the other stage. No time for a proper sound check, set up, just one verse to make sure we could hear everything in the monitors and a couple of minutes to get changed and then we were on. Luckily there was nothing "miss" about this event. The venue was packed (that's not that difficult as it is really tiny) and it appeared that quite a few people had come specifically to see us play. Cue dancing, singing along to the songs and cheering in between. We even got our first proper encore. I'm a firm believer in both bands and the audience have to deserve an encore. None of this coming back on stage just because a couple of your mates have shouted "more". We were technically past the live music curfew but the sound engineer said do one more and so we did. Even sold some merch afterwards although at this sort of event you don't really expect to. Load out was much easier as the festival was over by the time we had everything packed up and we were able to leave by a much more direct route. As usual here's a couple of photos: Next gigs are on 10th July Supporting Miranda Sex Garden at Rough Trade in Nottingham, followed by Goths On A Field festival on Saturday 12th.

This is pretty much what I do on my one active bass. I tend to prefer passives but this approach works for me.

OK hold on... there seems to be some people waking up angry this morning for no reason.... vain seems to be being mentioned a lot....quit playing etc etc.... I'm the least vain person out there I wear prescription glasses for driving as its my longer vision that is slightly off, so that takes care of that. I can then see perfectly. Close up I'm absolutely fine, what I'm not fine with is tiny small pedal displays on my zoom ms60b+ which is the size of a normal boss pedal on a dark stage with awkward colour contrasts, and the angle it is shown. So I have the juxtaposition of the glasses would probably be fine for reading the pedal and set list, but absolutely awful for playing the bass, as it would look all out of perspective, ie a lot closer to me and larger than it actually is. The question is/was relating to what ideas/tricks/methods do people use when father time starts catching up. Ie larger screen displays, higher screens, audio cues, different straps.. .. Etc

The Maiden Years on Planet Rock from 9 til 10 am, can't wait til Saturday

Lots of people appear to think that the starting point for active controls is that they should be maxed out, and that seems to be why Stingrays for example have a reputation in some quarters as being ridiculously bright and trebley. They're only ridiculously bright if you turn the treble up to a ridiculous setting! You should always start with the controls centred and work slowly from there. In practice I usually end up with a slight bass boost, then on a 2 band eq I'll use the treble like a tone control to brighten/darken to suit the song. This often means my treble ends up below centre in a 'cut' poisition. If you have a 3 band then the Mid control is your "poke through the mix" control. Turn the mids up to be more prominent in the mix, turn them back to sit back inside it. Nothing wrong in changing that from song to song either. When I have a 3 band I do tend more to set the treble once and then leave it alone, and then the Mid becomes my 'tone' control instead. No point in making things unnecessarily complicated.

Is it the Programmable BDDI? I will admit to being ignorantly of the circuitry involved in the Sansamp BDDI, I will contact Tech 21 for more info. Some questions, when working normally, does the switch normally give a definite click when pushed? If not then they use some form or electronic switching. To stay true to their analogue circuitry, they are probably used IC based analogue switches. In the early days, these were frowned upon by the HiFi fraternity but they do allow simpler all along designs and the use of momentary switches rather than mechanically latched ones. This should improve reliability. I am based in the Conurbation (Poole), so happy to have a look at it.

I took the train from Manchester to Lancaster with a 4x12 cab once.