Lozz196

Motörhead at Hammersmith Odeon 1985, their 10th Anniversary Party. They were deafening in the bar, with the doors shut, but in the venue part itself, well you know when a band is so loud you can’t hear yourself speak, well they were so loud I couldn’t hear myself think. And there were all these pilchards shouting louder, louder. I nearly became religious and prayed for quieter, quieter.

Covered in Skas

I saw The Stranglers supported by Wilko in about 2010 and thought the same, tho I did stay and watch all of The Stranglers set. Wilko/Norm had so much raw energy it was amazing.

Agree, in an old band I used our guitarists Roland Jazz/Chorus amp to record with, it sounded great.

Three things that will help us all on offering some advice & recommendations: Budget Type of music/band line-up Does it have to be lightweight gear

Sadly - as I love SLF - these aren’t the only things I’ve heard about Mr Burns that are less than appealing. Yet credit where credit is due, a mate of mine interviewed him for TV and he said he was the nicest guest he’d ever interviewed.

Thinking about this, and flipping it a 180, in my last band we quite often had people come to just see us.

Siouxsie & The Banshees, Hammersmith Odeon 1985. She’d broken her leg so was sat on a chair for the gig, fair play on that, but I was hoping that there would be some kind of performance & stage presence from the guitarist & bassist. No, they just stood there like statues, and to be honest it didn’t sound that good either so I de-camped to the pub over the road.

I loved Mouldy Old Dough when I was a kid.

Those frequencies are ideal for bass.

I think we’re fortunate in these times to be able to carry either a DI/Preamp pedal or small Class D amp as backup, certainly wasn’t possible in the 80s when I started gigging - and even if it had been I’m sure I’d have still spent the money said backup would have cost on lager & vindaloos.

Agree, I’m a child of the 60s so the 70s & 80s were my musical eras, when I watch Top of The Pops reruns on TV from the 70s that magical era had more than its fair share of rubbish.

I`d agree with the other posts, on a budget difficult to beat Vintage basses, they punch far above their weight in quality, playability and sound. My old Vintage Tony Butler Precision I`d put above a Mex Fender in terms of all three, at a fraction of the price.

Ironic......

Cant seem to reply on the above, but to answer the question Bas, it was a strange one. Before setting off for the gig I plugged in and tested the (passive Precision) bass as I always do, tuned it, all was ok. Got to the gig, plugged in on soundcheck, nothing. Tried different leads, nothing. Soundman opened it up and there was a shorting issue on the jack that he didn’t have the tools to fix. So I had to borrow a bass. Made worse by the fact that the first band on the bill had flown over from Germany and I was meant to be lending them my bass. So as said, lesson learned, only happened once to me, I don’t intend on it happening again.

The only time I ever needed a backup bass Was when I hadn’t brought one with me Lesson learned

That’s quite telling in itself.

Always worth having a backup. At Rebellion in 2019 I plugged into the provided - and obligatory - Ampeg SVT, got levels etc, all good. Waited til we were ready to go, got the go signal, turned up the volume on my bass, hit a note just to make sure, nothing. Luckily there was a spare SVT behind the stack. I could have DI’d via my Para Driver no problem, but just shows, a bit of gear can fail at any time.

Quite a lot of the time, on the punk/Oi scene I found that a lot of the newer bands coming through had a hunger and a desire, plus were bringing something fresh and new to the scene.

I saw it and thought it was pretty good, great to see them not taking themselves too seriously.

Plus 1 on both points there.

I’ve never had a bass with a reverse P pickup but to me it makes so much sense, tighter more focused sound on the thicker bassier strings, more lows on the thinner twangier strings. Interestingly we did a blind Precision bass shootout a few years back at the Herts Bass Bash, with the overall and runaway winner being a Mark Hoppus Sig Precision with reverse P pickup. It was up against some seriously expensive instruments but with a room full of bassists voting with their ears only it trounced the others.

Motown as well maybe, again low end & low mids make those great bass lines flow.