All Activity

Typical of the G&L story...now they've closed they're getting the advertising they always needed 🤷

That's good to know. Music retailers are going bust all over the place at the moment. Good luck with the new business structure.

Years ago I was playing in a country rock band. We’d been booked by a rugby club somewhere near Doncaster to play in the bar after a big local derby match. As we were setting up our pedal steel player let us know he’d forgotten his instrument! He played it on around 80% of our songs, so pretty key to our sound. Around the same time we noticed a distinct lack of punters too - apparently the home team had been given a thrashing so their supporters had either gone home in a huff or ventured into town to drink away their disappointment. We kept quiet about our own problem, and sure enough the club steward shuffled over and apologised for the lack of an audience, offering us most of our fee to go home! We tried not to look too relieved as we packed down. 😂

Yes. We play 2 or 3 venues that have sporadic audiences. I don't think you can ever work out exactly why. Unfortunately our drummer is a bit headstrong and if we play a new venue and it has a poor attendance his mind is made up and "We're not going back there!". Unless it's a gig he organised, in which case we should give it another go... To a point where we were continually asked to turn down at a gig last year, for some reason the bass was hitting some natural frequencies and all the glasses were rattling. He's not going back there either - even though we played there before with no problems, and the place is under new management. I'm beginning to think he doesn't want to gig unless it's to his freinds. Which is why I left the last band.

Yeah that would probably be the best way. We just had a big folder of our Church songs in ChordPro format which I just added. And yes you can do all those things easily. You can also set up a transpose button, meaning when I change I just hit the plus or minus symbol to go up or down keys quickly.

Thanks Phil. I didn't suggest any stick plus sub systems because the OP said he was old school and also because they can get pretty spendy, but you're right. FBT, HK, RCF and others offer excellent options. I'd add that one capable sub will always beat two less able ones. I find I need only one for probably 80% of the gigs I do (I sometimes wonder whether it was worth my buying two when one sits at home for much of the time). The RCF 8003 is very good, although it's a bit of a lump to carry around. The 905 is a little easier on the back. A pair on NXL24s plus a single 905 would be a pretty tasty rig and would come in under the OP's budget.

I think sometimes, it's just the time of the month and year. This Saturday just gone at a regular venue was rather quiet compared to usual. We put it down as the last weekend before payday, compounded by it being the first month after the summer holidays.

I spent years getting paid to "untrain" managers from using that technique. For what it's worth although too late in this case, The "sh1t sandwich" feedback method has several significant disadvantages. One major issue is that it often fails to achieve its intended purpose because of negativity bias; people are more likely to remember and focus on the negative feedback while disregarding the positive comments that frame it, rendering the praise ineffective. This can lead to recipients feeling that the positive feedback is insincere or merely a tactic to soften the blow, which undermines trust and makes the compliments seem fake. As a result, the positive feedback may be dismissed entirely, and the negative feedback may be perceived as more severe than intended. It'll be interesting to see what happens. If he's ex-military it might work.

Hi all, I’d like to step in and clarify things directly, as I can see some understandable confusion here. Bass Bags Ltd (the company) went into liquidation, but the Bass Bags brand, stock, and team were acquired by Strings Centre Ltd, which is now running the business. We are trading as Bass Bags (a Strings Centre brand) and continuing to serve musicians exactly as before. Like many UK retailers, we’ve faced tough trading conditions in recent years — Covid, Brexit, and wider global pressures (including the war in Ukraine) have all made it challenging. Closing Bass Bags Ltd was a restructuring step, but it has allowed us to protect the brand, keep the same team together, and continue looking after our customers. For me, Bass Bags has never just been a company name — it’s our team, a small family of people who share their expertise to make a living. We’re musicians and craftspeople ourselves, and we take things personally when it comes to our customers. That hasn’t changed, and it never will. To be absolutely clear: The same team is here looking after customers, just as we always have. No customer orders, hires, or repairs have been affected. We’re fully operational, continuing to support players across the UK and beyond. We’d always prefer people to pick up the phone and speak to us directly rather than speculate online — but I completely understand the concerns and wanted to set the record straight here. If anyone would like to talk to me directly, please feel free to get in touch: 📞 01332 840391 📧 [email protected] Thanks to everyone who has supported us over the years. We remain committed to delivering the same reliable service that Bass Bags has been known for since the beginning. David (Bass Bags / Strings Centre Ltd)

I once played a duo gig in a bar with just one drunk customer. He started howling like a dog over the music and couldn't take it any more. So I went over to him, picked him up (he was only little) and threw him into the street. He, did eventually, crawl back in to his seat at the bar. ...we weren't asked to come back 🤣

It's important to be aware of how the sound you create sits in the mix. If you're running through the PA, you can pretty well set your on stage sound however you like it, but not if you're depending on backline - wholly or partially - to feed the room. That sumptuous bass sound you hear close up to your rig can be woolly/boomy and indistinct at distance. I often find I have to cut lows and boost low mids to get a sound that works in context, even to the extent that the bass sounds a bit honky to me on stage. That's probably one of the many reasons P basses are so popular...

It's definitely a neck-off job. Depending on the design it's sometimes easier to convert to bolt-on and add a shim, or you can reset the angle and glue it back on. Check out twoodfrd on Youtube, he has a bunch of great videos about neck resets and the geometry involved (he's more fly-on-the-wall than how-to, so you have the just watch a bunch to figure stuff out, but he's brilliant).

IMO it doesn't matter if you are playing to just the bar staff and half of the other band on the bill or an adoring audience of several thousand. You have to give it everything. If you can't do that then maybe live performance isn't for you. I've played my share of poorly attended gigs, and you never know if one of the two people who aren't venue staff or in one of the other bands is going to be someone important who will open the doors to better gigs, as has also happened to me.

First proper rehearsal (after the initial meet and jam session) with the new covers band went really well, and we've very easily agreed on a couple of simple rules of engagement; [1] we want to make the singer sound as good as possible, so we'll play it where he needs to sing it and if it ultimately doesn't suit then we won't waste time on it, and [2] nobody has to play anything they hate. Plan is to get an initial set together and do some open mics to see what response we get, but the main drive behind it is that we play what we like and have fun doing it. With that in mind we went down the initial list, booted the couple I just wasn't going to have anything to do with, swapped some others with better suited songs by the same band, added some to look at which are my influence and they'd never heard of before, self-assigned some homework which are their influence and I'd never heard of before, and even chopped up and reordered a tune on the spot to get rid of a keyboard solo and make 'our' version. We have a better list for next time and it feels like everyone is pulling in the same direction. It's been ages since I've had to explain my odd (so I'm told) musical ways to new people, so that was fun, but they had to understand that keys / notes / dots / tabs / chord charts / number systems are all meaningless to me - I play by ear, have no idea which notes I'm playing, 'know' a song if I can literally hear it in my head, really don't care which key you move it to.. etc. It felt like one of those initial dating conversations where you start to question whether it'd be easier to just stay single than go over all this again, but at least they know now!

There are loads of wiring diagrams on Schaller's Megaswitch website. It's a bit awkward to navigait, but once you're figured out what set-up you're after it should make sense.

You'll have heard of Mayones though, Fame is their more budget friendly line and only sold through DV24/7 😎 My pal John has played a Fame Baphomet for a good few year now, swears by it 👍

Was it the Dragonflii in Pontypool by any chance? Great little pub but we had a similar issue with attendance :-)

This was my TE combo on cab tower.