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That's the thing with spares - you never ever need them, right up until the time you do

Nearly forgot to write a report We were back at the Cow & Telescope in Southend on Saturday night. We played out debut there a couple of months ago but we must have left a good impression as we were invited back for this prime Saturday before Xmas when another band had to pull out. Apparently a number of other bands requested the slot but the venue wanted us. I did wonder what sort of turn out it would be, given it was the Saturday before Xmas but also the first day of a long break at home for many people. My fears were unwarranted as we had a great turnout. And everyone was up for a proper party. Singing, dancing and joining in from the start. The usual Christmas songs went down well and our super-sub, Sophie, I reckon did her best yet with us. Fab night and back slaps all round.

Blue Nun day new order

If I’m being paid (which is why I gig most of the time) I’ll have two of everything. Two basses, amps, a selection of leads, spare strings, power cables, and a load of spares that may be needed. Having had some spectacular gear fails, it’s not something I enjoyed and don’t want to happen again.

I like and enjoy playing all my basses by various metrics so for me there is no underclass of bass in my collection - I happily gig any of my basses. Any that I wouldn't gig, I move on.

Not a bass, I know, but I always take a spare fridge - just in case my main one strikes and the beer's warm.

winner

Christmas Day featured me giving an interesting gift to Mrs Zero - a Vangoa EWI-100, which is an electronic wind instrument which can also be used as a MIDI controller. Can be set to flute or sax fingering (Mrs Zero doesn't play either but has messed around with a recorder, a penny whistle, and an ocarina) and has ten internal sounds which are more or less recognisable facsimiles of the instruments that they're supposed to be emulating. It's a similar concept to the Akai EWI but £40 instead of £400 (and not as sophisticated and probably somewhat flimsier). We had a quick play with the MIDI side of things and it works fine.

Christmas Day has come early for me today. I have been extremely lucky enough to acquire an absolute beauty of a bass from the master Alan Cringean of ACG. The piece is an absolute dream to play and the tone from it is exquisite. This one is the Finn version, 5 string with a 33 inch scale. Incredibly smooth, comfortable and a joy to play. The body core is black limba with the top wood being ebony with a blood wood accent. Headstock is ebony matched. The neck is 3 piece maple with a bloodwood fingerboard with ebony blocks. Stunning! Hardware is a Hipshot bridge with Gotoh tuners. The pickups are ACG SB70 single coils paired with a John East Uni-Pre 4 preamp. It plays incredible and the pics don’t do it justice. One tasty bass. Alan as usual was excellent and a gent as always. The craftsmanship is second to none. If you’ve ever been in two minds about committing to an ACG build then don’t. Have a good look at the website and the various options available to you and contact Alan. Now for the pics Cheers Stuart

Also just added for when the Gibson is too posh to gig…

I just made a bit of a revelation. Foam under pickups had disintegrated and pickup screws were poking out as pickups had dropped down. Readjusted pickup heights with some new foam and it’s a different beast. Used 3mm reference pressing on last fret as advised by emg and pickups are much prouder than before and MUCH higher output. String resonance doesn’t seem to be suffering as a result. Will head to local hardware place when it opens and try with the wire wool trick. Thanks!

I think a spare is good, professional practice to ensure 'the show must go on' and extenuate circumstances. If stinky poo can happen, then it probably will at some point. Oh, and in my experience literally nobody cares what bass you play.

I take two basses to the gig and if nothing goes wrong, I swap them over at half time. It took me a long time to work out that I could have double the fun at a gig. I don't care which bass I play - all my basses sound bassy. I've never had someone come up to me and say "you sounded better with the other bass".

Only played live twice, but my takes are: - main bass (possibly one of those 18V thingies from San Luis Obispo) - cricket bat (Hohner B2B, which is not only tiny and passive, but also very stable and trustworthy). Peace of mind.

Always have a spare with me, but never use it. My spare isn’t as good a bass as my main one, but good enough to use should it ever be needed. I probably subconsciously chose it to be like that to stop me being tempted to swap around during the show! I get using two or more basses if they are varied ( 4/5 string/fretted/fretless etc), but as I only use a standard 4 string I couldn’t be arsed to mess around on stage with similar instruments.

Not a fan of the Sire headstock, but despite that I thought the Z3/Z7 basses looked pretty good if you remove the oval scratchplate. This one would tempt me, and the one in 'rosegold' too, yum.

Arrived today from the USA...not to be used before Christmas ....ha

I’ve got a couple of those Markbass Bass Keeper things so I just Velcro my spare bass to the side of my amp. Saves taking up space onstage with a spare in a stand. As I dep quite a lot I find I’m often left with the small space that’s left once everyone else is in place so it comes in quite handy!

Sittin' On A Duck In The Bay ～ Otis Redding

I've wanted a Yamaha BB1200 ever since I learned what Yamaha BBs were. Well now I have one. A 1978 model in natural, it has honest wear and bumps on it being 45 years old but it's sound as a pound and an absolute joy to play - thin frets on an ebony board, wide but not too chunky neck, it feels lovely. Sounds great too, reverse P be reversin'. This makes me feel fancy, in a similar way that my Wunkay does. I truly feel like I own one of the cornerstone basses of history. It weighs 9 and a half pounds, not too shabby for a late 70s bass. Enough chat, I'm off to play it some more!

I've never carried a spare bass in nearly 40 of regular gigging. Strings, yes. Batteries, yes. Spare bass, no. The only things I've ever had go wrong apart from very rare string breakages, were amp/speaker related. I don't carry a spare one of those either, for the 2 or 3 failures in 2000+ (conservative guess) gigs

I've played bass 'live' for 43 years (30 - 100 gigs per year) and I've never once needed to use a spare bass. That isn't to say I never take one; for high profile important gigs I'll take a spare but for pub/club gigs I don't. Saying that, I look after my gear and attend to issues as soon as they show the first inkling and I change batteries regularly in active basses!

Exactly this! Whats the point of having several basses without the fun of playing them?

After years of carrying 2 basses I still do. You know exactly what will happen if I don't.... However, I now use a gig bag (instead of case) for the spare with a really big front pocket, so it acts as a carry for spare cables, plugs etc as well. So all my spares are in one easy carry.

I have not had a gear failure in 20 years, but still I take 2 of everything to every gig and they are all #1's. I can use either bass or either amp depending on what comes out of the car first. If one cab goes down the other can cover. I'm currently carrying 3 full sets of leads. IMO there's no point in playing a great #1 bass and then needing to use a POC backup. For me the backup has to be as good as the #1.

Make Wafer A Better Man - Willie Nelson

Got a great pic of MiniMert with that at the London Bass Guitar show in 2018 😎 In terms of backups I always take a spare bass and a spare amp these days. Sometimes the second bass gets an airing but depends on my mood and songs in the set etc 🤓

Do it!

Where The Rosé's Sown ～ Big Country

I ended up using my spare bass on a gig and it sounded better and I had more fun playing it than the other one, so, it became my main player. A £260 Squier P Bass… so I don’t know what I’d take as a spare now, another Squier? Still haven’t had the opportunity to gig the Ken Smith though… definitely can’t have that as a backup to the p bass 🤣

I gig around 30 times a year and also run the PA. I carry back ups for pretty much everything especially when we are further from home. I carried a spare bass for pretty much the first 10 years but I've never had a failure of a bass or broken a string so in the end I've stopped bothering unless I take my active bass. I have spare batteries for that but never trust batteries completely so a passive bass keeps it company.

Like most people, I always have a spare, that never leaves its case. I haven’t broken a string in decades. To be honest, now I’m making the move to tiny class D amps, I’m more likely to carry a spare one of those than anything else. I’ve had more trouble with amps than basses over the years.

Yeah i usually take two basses but touch wood have never needed back up. Ironically some of the biggest gigs I’ve done have been festivals, support slots and/or abroad where I’ve travelled light and only been able to take one bass anyway (a reliable one). But for my own gigs here I’ll also generally bring a spare amp head, spare cables and batteries etc. For a long time I was the only person in the band who thought to bring any spare bits.

My backup bass. Good enough to gig, and I have.

https://www.voosteq.com/model-n-channel/ New Neve Channel strip by VoosteQ, choice of pre-amp, comp, eq and 1073 console types. Lots of features. Limited-time intro offer $19.99 (£16.60 at current rate of exchange). Works with Apple and Windows. Check for DAW compatibility. (I took a flyer and it works fine so far with Reaper). 14-day free trial, no restrictions. Nice sound, flexible, slightly arty UI.

Oooh, that looks like it. Great job @Jonesy thank you very much! High level of muppetry on my part.

Down the Old Kent Road?

Backup bass stays off stage in its case. Backup is the operative word.

Having witnessed a few different versions of what goes on when an instrument fails mid-gig and not liked any of them, and also having had a near miss myself when I only had one bass with me (a passive P - nothing fancy), I now take two basses whenever it's feasible. Since making that decision, I've somewhat predictably never needed the spare and always just left it in the bag. It's either a cheapo that would just get me through rather than being any kind of pleasure to play, or it's essentially the same as the one I'm playing just in a different colour, so ultimately there's been either no desire or no benefit respectively to swap them over. When I used to take two basses to some gigs because one was in a different tuning with heavy strings on it, changing instruments always broke the flow of a relatively fast-paced set regardless of how well it was done. We eventually all switched to using Drop pedals because whilst they didn't sound quite as good (especially on bass) as a dedicated instrument for the lower tuning, the instant switch and very slight loss of quality was infinitely better for the performance and maintaining the attention of the audience than faffing about changing instruments. We always tried to keep it to a single physical change, too - swap to the alternate tuning and finish the set in it - so the pedals also allowed us to put those songs anywhere in the set. Personally, if I was considering swapping back and forth multiple times per set for reasons of tone, I'd first be spending some quality time with an EQ pedal seeing if I could get both instruments to sound close enough to the other that I didn't have to.

A spare string set and few batteries are always with me. But two instruments only if I need two (fretted 5 with a fretted 4 / fretless 4 / eub 5). If I needed a spare bass, another cab, and amp, as well as an fx board would be a must, then. But who would carry them?

Always carry a spare again now. Haven’t had a need to use it yet and hope I never do. I went through a phase of just carrying spare set of broken in cut strings (doddle to change and tune quickly), as I’d carried a spare bass for years and never needed it. It’s better to have peace of mind on the night.

I take two Fender Mustangs — Usually a black JMJ & a blue JMJ, but possibly two blue JMJs. They're set up identically with Chromes & I either play one for both sets or do one set with each.

I’ve taken a spare for a long long time, and have had cause to use the spare maybe three or four times ever. For me (though I don’t gig often these days) it’s still worth it for peace of mind, regardless of the very low likelihood of needing to use it. Think that comes down largely to your personality. I’d be fretting (pun very much intended) the whole night if I didn’t have the spare with me.

My worst has literally happened in the last 15 hours. how did I discover this purchase? when eBay sent a payment reminder. god love p*ssed me…

Recently traded Rick 4003 from 04. Duncans and Hipshot

Excellent 'moto' video.

Quality control is rubbish. How did that pass? Mind you, could've DPDs fault. Wouldn't put it pass them...

I always have a back up bass with me but it stays in the gig bag or, ideally if there is space, on the stand next to me. I generally pick one to play and stick with it although I've been known to change at half time if I'm feeling adventurous. But never mid-set. I was in a band once when I used to swap about from normal bass to EUB but that is a different scenario.

It depends, in my last band when I used to tour I’d take 2 US Precisions but for regular gigging it would be a US to gig and Mex as a backup. Now in my current band I’ll be taking 2 Squier Mustangs and gigging whichever is the same colour as the guitarist is using.