Ed_S

A tuner and a wireless kit. Ok, so I'm not an effects-loving bassist, but if the gig was that important then being in tune and free to move around on stage would best allow me to do my bit towards getting signed.

I recently bought the Lekato WS-80 set to keep in my gigbag and use for rehearsals. Been absolutely fine so far, had no problems working with my active Ibanez SRs and they last a couple of 3 hour rehearsals between charges. Because of the recessed jack socket on the SR I’ve needed to build a short extension patch, but I think that would likely be the same deal with the Boss and Line6 equivalents. Because the Lekato is very light and it hangs over the strap, it stays put without needing to have a pouch on the strap or pocket it.

My mum's LPs and tapes were stuff like Rainbow, Whitesnake, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Saxon, Meat Loaf, Status Quo, Queen, Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, ELO, Dire Straits. I still listen to and play all of those, so despite the fact that I was never paying particular attention to the bass in those formative years, and I've never been fussed about learning or replicating the exact lines of any of the bassists on those records since I started playing, I'm sure they must have influenced the way I play.

I swapped a pretty decent conventional 'square' 4x10 (Markbass 104HR) in our rehearsal space for a pair of One10s, and they're a completely capable replacement. I already had one which had been bought for me as a gift, so it made sense to just order another the same - otherwise I would have bought a Two10. It's a more controlled low end that I'm getting from the pair of One10s, but loads of low end isn't necessary or even all that helpful for the rock and metal I play, so keeping it under control just means you can hear everything else better; it's certainly no less loud and powerful a sound in context. Everyone who's heard them so far thinks they're an upgrade, and the guy who runs the studios was saying just last week that he reckons they're sounding 'bigger and more open' as they play in. I was sold on them after the first rehearsal so I let my Fender Rumble 500 combo go and ordered a Two10 to store at home and take out to gigs - same sound on stage as in rehearsal makes sense, and a single one-hand-carry package suits me better than multiple trips.

I realise this is quite out of character for a BC regular, but after saying all the way back in late July that I wouldn't be buying any more flats, I ended up buying some more flats. I spotted a comment somewhere about EB Slinky cobalt flats being 'flats for people who don't really like flats' or words to a similar end, and I thought that sounded like me so I should give them a go. I put them on my US Pro Jazz V and it turns out they feel a bit weird (though in a way I don't actually mind) but they sound rather good! As long as they don't corrode easily or change too drastically in a tonal sense, I could actually see them being on for a while.

Do you go through a 'Living In Quasi-Unused-Instrument Despair' (or LIQUID) phase before you get to that state? Must be sublime if you manage not to.

I don't know about an extensive collection in comparison to some, but I reckon I had more than the average. Moving back to playing only 5s made it relatively easy to justify selling the 4s, and then the 5s that I was less attached to started to look like clutter, and then lugging cabs that weren't Barefaced seemed pointless, and then it became a bit addictive and all the pedals and accessories that I'd never really needed to buy in the first place got moved on. In all, I must have shifted 60 pieces of gear since the pandemic struck, including 9 or 10 basses. Whilst I still have more than I can play at once, I reinvested the cash I got back into the hobby on a smaller number of nicer bits that I use much more often; a couple of similar Ibanez SR Premiums (main and backup) for gigging with, a proper Ray 5 for my own entertainment at home, and then a couple of new good quality gigbags and proper non-DIY pedalboards with cases. A financial break-even, but a much clearer and more focussed carry-on.

Having sworn I'd never bother with flats again, I found myself ordering a set of these for my American Professional Jazz V, which is the bass I tend to use for fingerstyle playing of lighter genres. I've previously tried Fender 9050s, D'Addario Chromes and Galli Jazz Flats, and these do feel quite different to all of those - especially the Galli strings which were smooth like glass. These remind me of some relatively expensive violin strings I used many years ago. I've only had them on for a couple of days, but at present I'm surprised by how much I'm enjoying them. The slightly grippy feel actually seems much more natural to me when sliding between notes than completely smooth alternatives, and the sound I'm getting so far is really clear and 'pure'. My J bass is naturally very bright sounding, so I've always had the tone backed off about half-way with rounds, and I still need some of that with these flats. Hopefully that means that if they do reduce in brightness as I play them in, I can gradually bring the tone up on the bass to get back to where I'm at now as I'd happily keep them sounding like this. But yeah, they feel odd... I just happen to be ok with it!

I've had regrets after gear purchases that haven't turned out the way I'd hoped, but they've generally been more to do with regretting that I no longer have the more suitable gear that I sold to fund the new thing rather than directly regretting buying the new thing itself. I do regret a custom build that didn't go all that well, but mainly because it was funded by close family as a gift for my 30th. I couldn't overlook the issues or pretend that I instantly (or indeed ever) got on with it, which was obviously a bit of a kick in the teeth all round.

To begin with, anonymous NPS rounds as fitted in the factory by Yamaha and Jackson. then, when I became a little more discerning... D'Addario EXL220-5 NPS D'Addario EPS220-5 ProSteel and then, when I moved back to 4s... D'Addario EPS190 ProSteels or Rotosound SM66 Swing Bass D'Addario EXL165 NPS and now I'm back on 5s... D'Addario EXL170-5 NPS Ernie Ball Regular Slinky Bass 5 (for the Stingray) Dunlop Super Bright DBSBN45125 NPS (for the Jazz when stringing through-body) So the boring truth of it is that I started not knowing enough to care, went through a steel rounds phase but eventually came back to NPS to save my frets, and I've moved to slightly thicker sets but not by much. I've tried Fender 9050, D'Addario Chrome and Galli Jazz flats, none of which did it for me. Swore I'd never bother with any more, but just ordered a set of Slinky cobalt flats as a final-final attempt. Fully expect it to be a waste of sixty quid, but we'll see. Tried DR and Elixir rounds, both of which I thought were fine but too expensive for no major benefit. Also tried to save money with a bulk buy of Warwick Red NPS, which was a mistake. Managed to use up most of them now, though, by either putting them on things I was selling, or shoving them in the front pockets of my gigbags on the basis that any string in one piece beats a broken one.

That’s the main thing! Mine thoughtfully saved me the effort of buying anything specifically for her… and just nicked my little Markbass 801 combo! 🙂

Oh aye, they’re fine in the grand scheme of things - I’ve just grown so used to the car-stereo sized varieties that anything any bigger or heavier seems quite novel.

I keep wondering whether to get one new while I still can, so that when I start to feel nostalgic for my first amp head (ok.. it was a HA2000 but near enough) I can take it out for a rehearsal and remind myself how light it wasn't. I did like that amp, though - it sounded good and for 120W into a nothing-special 8ohm 4x10 it was amazingly loud.

Personally I found the Elf to be pleasant in tone but lacking in power through a pair of One10s. I know a lot of people say they can gig with it, and absolutely fair play to them if it works in the context of their band, but it couldn't get loud enough for my purposes. Of the other amps mentioned, I've used Markbass CMD121p and Fender Rumble 500 combos and found both to be completely capable.

I started on a 4 but moved very quickly to 5 and stayed there for 10 years, then moved back to 4 for the next 10 years, and now I'm back to 5 again. The 4 had some advantages - I think some shapes just look 'right' as a 4, they're often a bit cheaper and lighter than the same 5, they're generally less expensive to restring, I always found them slightly more engaging to play due to having to think my way around the board, they were a bit easier to 'rock out' on, and I came to realise there was less chance of getting a bad FoH sound from venue sound techs when playing one, as they would usually see a 4 string P and instinctively know how to leave it sounding like a bass instead of trying too hard and making a mess. I never found myself unable to play a suitable part on a 4, so I reckon it's absolutely enough... but it's just not my preference right now.

Indeed - I was taking it as a given that any QR would be present in addition to a text URL, rather than in place of it. Just making the point that they don't always have to go to the same place, even if that's the default most of the time. The same technology does provide an answer to your question, though. Use the website address, then if you later decide that you don't want to maintain a website and just want visitors to land at FB you can forward the domain to the FB page. It's not the only answer, and it might not be the best answer for you, but it's an answer.

My thought was that it allows you to point to something totally different, like perhaps the website of a festival you're going to be playing, or your bandcamp page to buy new merch, or your YouTube channel for a new video, or whatever. The front person says "just scan our QR to take you straight to..." and it does, irrespective of when the business card, flyer etc. was printed. Obviously if you don't see any personal benefit to doing that, that's fine. I haven't personally gone the QR route, but one of our guitarists who does web stuff maintains the .com for our website, and I bought the .co.uk, .org.uk and .uk which currently forward to the Facebook, X and Bandcamp pages respectively, and ensure that if somebody types the 'wrong' address they still get something that leads them back to us. If I generated the QRs for those three domains and subsequently decided that I wanted .org.uk to point to whatever the new Meta Twitter thing was instead, then I'd change the forwarding, not the QR, meaning my existing cards and flyers were all still valid.

I'd stick to the main website address in human-readable text, and then for the QR just buy another cheap domain linked to the band, generate the QR code for that and use web forwarding in the hosting tools to point the 'QR domain' towards whatever made most sense at the time.

Both guitarists from another band playing on the same bill as us bought our shirts from the merch table and put them on to go and play their set. A nice gesture, but somebody wrote a review referring to them by our band name and tagging us etc. So wearing your own shirts on stage is probably better than another band who could conceivably be mistaken for you wearing your shirts on stage. Well.. unless they're significantly better than you 🙂 We have been known to wear our band shirts, but they've tended to be either a slightly different design or a colour that we don't sell as merch.

I employed TinyTone's services recently with similarly efficient and pleasing results. Amongst its laundry list of problems, my Harley Benton PJ5's tort guard started to spontaneously delaminate (if you can even call it that.. it's see-thru tort-patterned sticky-back-plastic on a weird orange top surface) so I sent them the peeling mess and they posted me a nice b/w/b replacement. Wouldn't hesitate to call on them again.

Anything else would be pants.

I had TT and TM superlight 4s before moving back to 5s and getting a Central. I'd say I liked the TT most out of the 4s as the superlight body (mine were both earlier cedar ones) didn't seem to convey a lot of natural low end but the TT just went with that and sounded like a Jazz, whereas the M pickup in the TM always seemed a bit overly twangy and I found myself continually trying to sort it out with the preamp EQ. The Central isn't a lot heavier but has what I'd call a more conventional tonal character unplugged, which then balances nicely with the quite lively pickup and preamp when you plug it in. I'd say they're quite different propositions.

The preamp in my Central doesn't pick up Radio 1 faintly in the background, whereas the preamp in my Stingray Special certainly does. Whoever thought that out needs an award of some variety. They're both really nice basses with a lot of crossover in the sound, but they smell totally different. The back of the neck on the MM has their gun wax thing going on, and the fretboard on the Sandberg has maybe a linseed oil (..reminds me of glazing putty) aroma.

I was exclusively into pointy 5s for most of the first 10 years of playing, then switched to conventional 4s for the next 10 years, then the pandemic hit and I went back to 5s again but this time conventional ones. Just the other day I pulled my very last remaining 4 from storage intending to sell it and finish the job, but every time I try, I end up deciding to keep it as it's a bitsa and worth very little. Maybe one day I'll get called to one of those mythical auditions you hear about where you're told that only a 4-string P will be acceptable, and I'll be glad I kept it. It's tuned BEAD so at least I'd have most of the right strings. Or maybe it'll just take up space until next time I fail to bring myself to move it on. And repeat. I'm back to 5 for all practical purposes, anyway.

I'm at about the 23 year mark as well, and my first real amp was a Commando 15 mk2. Thought I'd got the world, and in fairness it felt about that heavy with its single strap handle on the top. I was always convinced that handle was going to break, but somehow it never did. Great to see a 12 still in reasonable shape and getting a spruce-up to keep it out and about.