Lozz196

Best to always have spares. You can`t cover everything as taking an extra of everything along is impractical, but spare bass, leads, batteries, strings, Preamp/DI pedal is essential imv. The only people I`ve seen need a spare bass have been those where the electrics have packed up for some reason, never to do with string breakage. One was at The Rebellion Festival in front of some 1000 people - luckily one of the other bands lent the guy a bass, but if your sound is dependent on something specific, well have a spare just in case.

Not local, but Pat Collier of Perry Vale Studios in South London is well worth the trip. He specialises in guitar based music and works very fast too. We chose him for our last album as when we wanted to record it we tasked ourself with listening to various bands/albums to get an idea of what we wanted, and invariably it was Pat who had produced our faves. He`s doing our next one too.

Well I have it a lot gainier and twangier than the clip shows but yes, it`s a great pedal and the amount of people I actually get coming up to me and complimenting my sound since I`ve used the PD is quite amazing in itself. Using the SVT settings live really does do [i]that[/i] sound.

Hi Pete, was up your way last Sat, and have another due at the end of the month. Northamptons always been pretty good for punk/rock gigs imv.

Pretty much spot on there Al. Re the Para Driver, I have both v1 & v2 and if the Rumble and Air Filters are left alone the two are almost identical (the mids go higher on v1, but only to the same freq as the treble). What sold me on it was this youtube clip, at 1:58 where the SVT style setting is demoed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WByH0uiVnI4

Tonehammer plus Precision equals vintagey excellentness. Not sure about the funk aspects, though but for the rest, a perfect amp.

I`ve seen bands come on to instrumental music of their own, the theme to The Flintstones, the theme to The Godfather, things like that. All great but to me I always think that the impact should come from the band itself, hit `em hard & fast and tell `em you mean business with your own music.

Excellent news, Blue. Help/advice? You`ve been doing this for so long now you don`t need any, just enjoy it like you would any other gig. I always try to maintain that each gig is the same, where I have to give 100% the whole time. The only difference between gigs is how many people get that 100%, but irrespective of how many, they all deserve it. Of course it doesn`t really work like that, but that`s what I try to go by. We all get excited by bigger gigs.

I had the BDDI v2 pedal for not very long, it just didn`t fit well for me. I was expecting the core sound to be like the v1, just with adjustable mids but to me it really didn`t sound like that at all. Nothing wrong with it of course, not everyone can like every pedal. Thats why I`ve chosen the Para Driver as it does exactly what I want, which is the BDDI v1 sound with adjustable mids. Anyway, back on track, I think Mudpup is spot on, the VT will get very close to the BDDI sound, but the BDDI would be unlikely to get as near to the VT sound.

Markbass imo lends itself very nicely to Precision basses, a nice warm yet clear sound. You can pretty much get the sound wanted with just the filters as mrn1989 says. I`ve had a good few Markbass amps and was impressed with them. I had the TC BH250 for a while and that`s a nice little amp, plenty powerful with an efficient cab, and of course on-board tuner and compression never hurt. I know there are a lot of comments about TCs "true" power rating but this little amp certainly held its own. Hartke HA3500 - used them a couple of times and found them fine with the tube emulation on full, but a bit sterile without it. Fender Rumble - not used the heads but have had a couple of the smaller combos, again, pair very well with a Precision (well they should do really, shouldn`t they).

The roughness of the venues was why I suggested an Ashdown ABM 410 which can be got for under £200. Rock-solid, no cloth grill, decent sound, no worries with over-exuberance.

I`ve had both, and having also had a few Ampeg amps imo the SCR has a more Ampeg eq/sound to it. With the scrambler set low you can get some great sounds from it, however set too high and again, imo, it`s pretty unusable. On to the VT - our old producer was Ampeg nuts, and he raved about the sounds I got from it. It is very versatile due to the Character, Bite and Speaker Emulation so many great sound can be drawn from it. If I had to choose I`d probably pick the VT as found it more versatile an smaller/lighter. If however I wanted a pure undriven warm Ampeg tone then the SCR. But my current choice is the Sansamp Para Driver - it has sweepable adjustable Mids, so I get the Sansamp BDDI tone but without that Mid-scoop, so I still cut through in the mix.

Def the best value row of numbers in a while

[quote name='Marc S' timestamp='1494342416' post='3295148'] Yes, Bruce Foxton certainly switched from guitar to bass. And what a bass player [/quote] Same with Paul McCartney, Jean Jaques Burnell and Duff McKagan

Just think how many times guitarists will have a laugh at at the "no one notices the bassist" or" what does the bass do again" jokes. It`s banter, the world has enough real problems to be concerned about, join in and escape the real issues of the world for a while.

Yep, I`ve got into some really good bands purely by watching them as we`ve been on the same bill. If I`d been playing Jonny Big B*ll*x and the evening being all about me I might not have seen them. And that would have been my loss, not theirs.

Steve Jones also did a very - if very basic - good job on Never Mind The Bollocks. Without his steam-roller bass just playing the root notes I doubt the album would have had had the same impact. Whilst I like Glen Matlocks more elaborate playing on Sp*nk, the simplicity of NMTB is hard to beat.

Providing you get a good monitor mix you should be fine Ian, I wouldn`t want to use the 115 combo on its own for a 300 - 400 venue tho. I also find that Ashdown cabs are a bit on the bassy side, so what comes from the combo on-stage will have more low end than what goes FOH. Something to bear in mind. Through my old Barefaced Big Twin II I had my ABMs bass control at midday - for the same sound through my array of Ashdown cabs I have it at 10 o`clock.

At the start of the gig, a quick check after about 3 numbers to see how much my ham-fisted hitting has put it out, then as & when if needed, I can usually hear it when it`s gone out so easy enough fix.