Leaderboard

Boxing Day gig for The Bonnevilles at the Anker Inn in Weddington, on the borders of Nuneaton. Rather empty when we started - and it was an early start, at 6pm. We had a guest singer to do the inter-set break - she's become a regular fixture at our gigs, through doing open mics that our BL runs. She used backing tracks off her phone until the last song, when we accompanied her for "Creep". The second set had rather more of an audience, with a few of them dancing. Our guest singer came back on towards the end of our set to do "Sweet Child O' Mine". It was during that that I noticed that my wireless was showing battery low, so while she was getting back off the stage (it might only be 15cm high but it's a real stage) I switched wirelesses. Then we had a couple more songs, and into the final one, "Tulane". We were about 3/4 of the way through when the guitar cut out. The drummer and I carried on playing, singer carried on singing, guitarist was going over his pedalboard and amp trying to find the problem, singer did the band introduction for all of us, and then, just after he'd introduced the guitarist, the guitar suddenly burst back into life (guitarist told me afterwards he had no idea what had happened, it just started working again) and we finished off. Antoniotsai dragon 5-string -> Lekato and M-Vave wirelesses -> Zoom MS-60B+ -> Tecamp Puma 900 -> GR Bass AT212. The usual Caravelle memory foam trainers.

Really wasn’t looking forward to tonight, but it turned out way better than expected. We were told that 44 tickets had been sold beforehand, but clearly some folk just turned up on spec and I counted about 70 bodies. A promoter for a local event came to see us, stayed for both sets and seemed genuinely impressed. A couple of senior moments, as ever, but mostly on point. The last time I played this venue I couldn’t hear myself and had a good old moan about it on BC. Some bright spark (I’m thinking @Beedster but I could be wrong) suggested this set up, rather than stacked, for potentially better monitoring: Absolute genius! Whilst not crystal clear, it was near enough - I thank you 🙏 way of the future. As you can see, it was my usual Phil Jones rig, Maruszczyk Elwood L fretless plus pedals (mini Pitch Black, Sadowsky SPB2, MXR M87 & Tech21 VTDI).

Just re-read your OP and noticed ‘read tab fluently’. I think that’s quite unusual, but unfortunately not that useful (in this context). With one tribute band I have had the keyboard player send me the ‘bass pad’ in standard notation, to learn before the gig; otherwise I’ve been expected to learn the set myself.

Not many bass related pressies for me, but I did get some dosh and have just spent it on..... Xvive a58 - this means instead of standing perfectly still a few meters away from my amp, I can stay still up to 30 meters away from my amp. Gator pro go ultimate gig bag - should keep things nice and comfy when out and about. Some plectrums - wanted to try a few different gauges/types. I'm probably most curious about the felt one I have on the way!

Thanks for everyone's help, it has been super helpful and I do really appreciate it. As a side note, my daughter has taken up bass and as a first bass, I bought her the HB Mustang and I am super impressed with quality of it, it is a really good bass for the money, in fact way better for the money than expected. So I'm going to take the plungexand buy the HB MV-5PJ. For just over £200, I cant really go wrong as a tester into the world of 5 string bass.

I bought an Ibanez srx 5 and it was so wide that it was painful to play. I gave up on 5s then I bought a sire v7/5 which is very tightly spaced and it is almost capable of playing itself. my philosophy for 5 is this: 1. don’t try and use the b 2. if something can be played more easily using the B above fret 4 then do it. There are no prizes for making your life harder, suffering is not a virtue 3. avoid open strings by using the B - no open E, play across from B, fret 5 you have to know what you want from your 5 in order to be able to get its best value