borntohang

Hard to argue otherwise, but I think they're mostly limited by the availability of OEM hardware. If they were wanting to get original reproductions of some of the more niche stuff then the cost would skyrocket at the kind of run numbers they do. I will say the pickups they use on the Airline guitars are superb - humbucker covers but they're actually some kind of single-coil underneath with a real bite and punch to them. A lot louder than my P90s and I wouldn't have guessed they were single-coils in my '59 at all until I spoke to them at the open day. I don't think they sell them individually or I'd have them in a few more of my other guitars!

Great guys and we've been using their stuff for about a year now: Map Bass, Airline 3P and Rivolta Mondata in the band. We do have a casual non-endorsement relationship with them so feel free to take this whole post with salt to taste, but I'm happy with the quality on all the stuff we got and none of it was special order or anything. Wouldn't be using or defending it otherwise. General thoughts on the Map Bass are that it's incredibly heavy but also possibly the deepest bass I've ever played. Get a lot of other players asking if I'm using a sub octave or something but it's just a very strong fundamental and a lot of output and low end. In fact there's so much low end that I struggled a bit to start with but after lowering the pickups it's now got a nice vintage growl to it. Still very high output and I have to severely rein the gain in on my pedals to keep it clean. We went up to the demo day they did last year with most of the range in and I was impressed with all the higher end stuff. Lot of nice decorative touches across the range that you wouldn't find on a Fender of similar price but the lower stuff definitely felt like it could do with a setup. They're very interesting guitars and get a lot of attention - lots of other players and audience members asking what they are.

Irregardless of Sting's continued popularity or lack thereof with the youth (and my personal feelings on his relative naffness...) it was just a 'nobody cares about bass players' joke. 🙂 I was originally playing bass on the tour until it was decided I was more useful on keyboards and guitars, so as I've mentioned it briefly in past threads this felt the more appropriate place to post. I'm not sure if we'll catch his set as we have an extremely tight schedule but although I'm not much of a fan would love to see him play in such a beautiful venue.

Thanks! We're actually on a strict no-drinks-no-drugs-no-fun rule for at least the first few weeks until we get into the rhythm of it. It's not a tour you can afford to mess up on so while we're a bit old and married for the party routine these days, we also don't want to go off on a bender through lack of excitement and end up screwing the proverbial goose.

It's just the one night we're doing with Sting and the rest are with Pink on her UK/EU tour, but yes it's a fantastic run. Going to be out for a full month but I think I'll just about cope.

Yes, for a given value of with. I'm not in the band but I've been working with them for about a year as a spare end playing either bass or guitar and keys depending on how big a show we're doing. Manager would have been before my time I'm afraid, but I'll pass the photos on. Ross looks much the same - I'd swear he hasn't aged since we were teenagers! He's still using that telecaster too.

Quite poss, although I wasn't playing with them back then and it's been a busy year! Who was the drummer?

I'm already planning to do a bit of a blog about it on here but the scriptwriters are really phoning it in this year and our schedule has become totally divorced from reality, so as stupid as it sounds this will actually be the most intimate show we're doing that week. Tuesday we're at Anfield, Wednesday we'll be driving to Belgium to open the main stage at Rock Werchter on Thursday afternoon, after which the van will head back to the UK while we fly out to Switzerland for this show, then hop back on another plane and hopefully get back just in time to play Wembley Saturday and Sunday nights. Then we're back off into Europe again for another two weeks. All starts to sound a bit daft when you type it all out like that doesn't it...

We stayed in the studio at Parr Street the week after Coldplay were in there tracking X&Y. They wouldn't tell us which room Chris and Gwyneth stayed in cause they knew we would make it weird. We managed to make it weird anyway but I appreciated the effort at discretion.

Sadly no Shaggy on this date. I'm actually playing guitar and organ for this show, but when I asked the guitarists nobody knew who Sting was and then the keyboardists just started talking to me about modular euroracks and other nonsense so I thought I'd tell you fellas instead. Anyway, get your important bass-playing questions in now and I'll get you the lowdown on all those crucial details: Do tortoise pickguards really sound better? What HPF do you use to make your rig cut through in the back room of the Dog and Duck? Where did your accent go? How do you stop having tantric sex??

Wilko played a venue I worked at a few years back before his illness and from what I saw backstage they don't leave home without at least a brick or two! An old mate of mine has been teching for Norm on both Blockheads and Wilko duties, which must be cool. I should really get in touch sometime and see if we can hook something up because I'd love to have a proper chat with him. On the Wilko date I saw him real close up in a 150 cap venue and the man just does not make mistakes.

That's a real shame, we played there last year and it was a great turnout and atmosphere apart from briefly having to bounce a Sir Richard Head III down the front. In a slightly weirder turn of events there were also a few people sketching in the audience who left their work onstage for us to take home, which I thought was kind of sweet. Absolute pig of a load in though!

Congrats on the new bass - pretty sure I was keeping an eye on that one myself but unfortunately I'm not in the market right now. It's a cool looking shape and I haven't seen them for sale over here before. Got any clips?

I've been using an Eastwood Map for the last year and get lots of questions about whether I'm running sub-octaves or anything in the background. Astoundingly deep and subby when you set it right but also very sensitive to playing position. I'd like to go to 32" scale just to get a bit more twang but in fairness between the single cut body and the two big mudbuckers it's not really a twangy design so I'm not sure how much difference it would make...

I want to try one next time I'm in the Eastwood shop for sure, but wish they'd done one with some different pickup options. I actually tried out the Baritone Tenor model and it would work quite nicely as a super-shorty in the right context.

Package tour is a classic move but you need at least a bit of a name outside of your local area to get promoters onside - they aren't going to want to put a big local act on as opener and if you're the supports then they may as well just use all locals with a guaranteed draw.

Keyboardist in a big jazz group - up to 14 of us depending on lineup. Blinding soloist; sensitive piano accompanist; brilliant mind for theory and arrangement; total and utter asswipe. Virulently racist, sexist, and many of the the other available 'ists' or 'phobes' in the dictionary; Everyone he had ever been in a band with was an idiot (ignoring the common denominator as per); regularly belittled his long-suffering business partner because of her religion; unseemly penchant for girls a third his age; demeaning comments about the relative 'phwoar' factor of his teenage students; total lack of situational awareness after three pints; delusions of grandeur etc etc etc. The list was fairly endless and compounded by his constant inability to hit cues or not screw up simple parts - he was brilliant you see, so he didn't need to practice or engage brain for anything less than a Metheny tune. Regularly turned up for weddings and photo shoots in scrubby t-shirts and bright orange trainers but luckily was so hidden behind stacks of vintage keyboards that often entire shows could pass without anyone realising he was back there. It ended fairly acrimoniously when three members approached me separately within a few days of each other to tell me that either he went or they did. One of them told me in no uncertain terms that, although he was a brilliant arranger and a massive asset to the group, if they had to bunk with him again on a tour he would be preparing a lively and engaging original composition arranged for his fists and the keyboardist's face. A day after that he turned up on another member's doorstep late at night panicking about band finances and how we would be dividing royalties when we got on Jools Holland, totally ignoring the fact that due to the huge running costs required to keep us on the road we weren't actually making any significant amount of money at any time in the near future and not to mention that Jools rarely books wedding bands regardless of the quality of their interstitial jazz-fusion widdlings. The whole thing collapsed pretty quickly after that and lo and behold he suddenly had another set of 'idiots' to complain about. Real shame because there were some great moments but can't say I miss it much.

The song is one of those 'funny once' things in the way most parody music that isn't Weird Al is, but Merle Hazard is a top tier stage name.

We've been using click for the last year I've been in a band - it's actually a click alongside some sequencing so it's a bit more structurally rigid than just a click you can improvise around, but there's some clever tricks that the drummer does with re-triggering to let us spin out certain sections. He's the only one with it in IEMs so honestly I haven't really noticed any difference between playing with click vs just playing with a drummer with a strong tempo. We're all transitioning to IEM soon and I'm thinking of asking for a bit of the click in mine just to test it out, but don't think it'll be as useful if two of us are following the click instead of each other.

Setting the master on full and controlling your volume from the gain pot is the easiest way to bypass a master volume circuit in a tube guitar amp. In theory gives you overdrive that's sensitive to changes from the guitar by winding back your volume pot. It's not an approach I would use for bass unless you're running into a tube amp and wanting power amp distortion.

That would be the sensible way to do it, but I like the sound of the preamp always in the chain! I get more compliments from sound techs regarding my sound than I ever did with my full rig and it's small enough to chuck in the bass bag. I'm seriously considering buying a second to run as a Wet/Dry rig.

I've used the VTDI straight into an amp for a few years now and had no major issues - the XLR routes out to front of house so they can do what they want with that signal, and then I just run into whatever bass rig is onstage and tweak the EQ appropriately for the room. The trick is finding your setting on the DI and then changing the amp settings to suit it rather than the other way round, or you end up chasing the soundman round with front of house tweaks vs your onstage tweaks... You have to have the confidence that it sounds good out front though. If you're not regularly playing through decent FoH rigs then into a poweramp or FRFR is 100% the way to go.

Some of our versions are probably closer to theirs than the album ones. I would happily do a Polysics trib but think that might be the only way to be even more niche than before.

I've briefly mentioned it on here before, but I think I've probably got a claim to most niche tribute on the board. I've been having fun with my DEVO tribute for a couple of years now; we're not regular and only average about a show a month except we tend to do them in two batches a year - one spring run and one autumn run. We're in an odd position as we tend to bomb at tribute festivals but our own shows can pull 200+ in the right town. I guess not many DEVO fans also want to be able to catch Noasis and The Killerz after our set... In musical terms we tend to go for attitude over accuracy so I scored a bunch of bootleg live sets and live footage when we were setting up so I could work on the synth sounds and arrangements. I think I listened to just about nothing else for about four months and to be honest I've only recently been able to get back into enjoying them as a band. Had to go total cold turkey except for when we played the sets!

Usually means at production cost or nearabouts. It's not a steal or anything but it's better than RRP. Companies tend not to just give out free guitars these days; it's a lot more common to borrow some kit for a tour or festival season. I think 'endorsement' would be a bit strong at the moment as I'm only a sessioneer with a band who have an arrangement with the manufacturers, but I've been using kit on long term loan from Eastwood, Hiwatt, and Ashdown. They've all been very generous for a low profile band and I've been really happy to be able to use their kit - got lucky with them really as we have personal relationships with various members of their teams that have developed into professional relationships. It does get weird seeing yourself pop up on Instagram or in their newsletters though!