BigRedX

How useful they are to you will depend on how accurate you need what you hear to be in terms to sound. Some musicians are incredibly precious about their on-stage sound and seemingly can't play properly unless it is as close to their perfect sound as possible. Others like myself just need to be able hear enough to be able to tell that they are in time and in tune with the other musicians and be able to tell where they are in the song.

The IEMs will be fed from whatever signal goes to the PA. Where that point is will depend on you and/or the PA engineer. Remember that your cab(s) colour the sound just as much as the amp so any PA feed that does not take your whole rig into account will not be any accurate representation of your bass sound. The musicians who benefit the most from IEMs are those who have completely ditched conventional amp and cab systems. They can provide a PA and IEM feed that completely captures all the signal processing that is part of their sound.

I made plywood cases for my guitars and synths in the 70s and 80s. All were almost as heavy as the instruments they were designed to contain. These days if you look hard enough there is almost always a suitable case already available. I personally won't be making any more myself.

I've done this for a previous band, in order to keep the gigs coming, but absolutely hated it. Even though they were all sufficiently competent to play their instruments to the required standard, it felt fake, and despite the fact that they were being paid they didn't make enough of an effort to look the part for the band. I'd be very reluctant to using session musicians for gigs again unless I was in a position where I was paying them so much I could also insist that they get some suitable stage attire, an appropriate haircut, and act on stage as though they were a proper part of the band.

There was a parody of him in one of the NME cartoons called Exodus C-Ornflakes

I quite enjoyed the occasional track by either band back in the 70s, and that where they belong. After Hotel California, Journey of the Sorcerer is probably The Eagles best known track even if most people aren't aware it's by them.

Probably at least half of them already are real bands.

So which bands do you think are made up?

TBH most players only really need 2.

Close... probably the only thing more pretentious and BS.

But I play pretentious BS music, so I need an instrument that reflects that.

I have friends who both changed their surname to something new when they get married. Neither liked either their own surname or the one that their partner had, so they saw it as an opportunity to pick a new name they both liked.

In the past: Black Lab Cabaret Voltaire Comsat Angels Danse Society Fra-Foa Freur/Underworld Furniture Pizzicato Five Plus-Tech Squeezebox Polysics Shiina Ringo Supercar These days: The Birthday Massacre The Last Cry The Pretty Things (with the passing of Phil May I don't expect there to be any new releases, but I can always hope that something previously unreleased turns up)

I'm off to oil the fingerboards on all my guitars and basses (except for the one with the lacquered maple board) and you can't stop me!!

Definitely not a RIM. If it was it would have a slotted headstock.

Loads probably... However I will give at least a cursory hearing to anything that is recommended to me, and if after a couple of songs I've not been grabbed that's it. There's a huge number of supposedly "influential" bands that I've never really got, and TBH it doesn't really bother me. There's already plenty of bands and music that I do like and I'm discovering more all the time. I'm not going to loose sleep because I've listened to a couple of tracks by a band and having decided it's not for me not listened to anything else by them.

We all had stage names in D!ck Venom & The Terrortones. We even did the PRS registrations for our songs with those pseudonyms.

This track has been growing on me all day. I think the only main difference between the Eurovision "live" and the Official Music Video version is that the lead vocals are much louder. This is what usually happens with the Eurovision performances. It is a "song" competition after all.

Is that a shot of Chernobyl in the background?

I used to own a bass which had provence both as an instrument in itself and from the previous owner (who had it from new). It was a 5-string fretless Overwater Original previously owned by Mickey Féat, a session player who had worked a lot with Mark Knopfler and Dave Gilmour as well as many others. Although there is no documented evidence to be found there is a good chance if he had played fretless bass on a recording between 1984 and the early 2000s it would have been on this instrument, and there are some fairly high-profile albums that he played on during this period. However as interesting as all this was, what was more important to me was the fact that this instrument was apparently the first low B 5-string bass that Overwater ever made, completed sometime in late 1983. While there are older examples of 5-string basses with low B-strings from Carl Thompson and Alembic, This bass and the 1985 fretted version that I also owned are the oldest that I have ever had hands-on experience with. Last time this subject came up I did ask if anyone on Basschat had an older 5-string bass and no-one came forward I also owned this 12-string Hohner electric guitar that may or may not have previously belonged to Captain Sensible: No mention of it's provenance was mentioned when I bought it, but on doing a Google search for more information about the guitar the ONLY other image of a similar instrument was one from when Captain Sensible was selling off some of his unused guitars. All the other Hohner 12-string guitars with the same model number are completely different to this example - having a black Telecaster shaped body and twin humbuckers. EDIT: I wasn't aware of any potential provenance of either instrument before I bought them. I only found out about the Overwater because I was already in touch with Chris May trying to find out how old my other bass was and he told me that it was the first they had made and who it had been made for.

Very much agree with this. If you are going to publicise a means of contact then you should be prepared use that means of contact to communicate with your potential customers, even if it's only an automated OoO reply or something encouraging you to phone instead. I'm self employed and because if I am in a situation where I am only available on my mobile I will not be in a position where I can easily deal with a reply to a customer's query, therefore I not longer give it out. When I first went self employed I publicised every means of contact, but as the business developed I have learned what works best for me and also best for servicing the needs of my customers, and having my mobile number as a means of business contact is not one of those things. If it had turned out that email was unsuitable or inconvenient I would have removed that from my contact details instead.

When I first got interested in music the bassists in all my favourite bands seemed to play Rickenbackers, Gibsons, or something custom probably made by John Birch. If I'd had the money for my dream bass back then it would most likely have been a 4001 shaped instrument with a JB logo on the headstock. I'm sure that some of the bassists in bands I like played Precisions but I just didn't remember them doing so, unlike their more visually interesting competition.

There was a Australian company making guitars with 3-D printed bodies with a similar cut-out style, but I can't find their web page any more. Edit: They are actually in NZ and their website is here

personally I wouldn't bother going custom for something based on a classic "off-the-peg" design like a J-bass. There are already a multitude of manufactures all doing their own take on this instrument, so unless you have very precise and specialised needs, there really ought to be something already available that will be perfect for you. I'd suggest a trip to one of the big mainstream retailers to try every J-type bass in the store, followed by outings to both Bass Direct and The Gallery to do the same. If you really can't find a ready made bass that suits you, then at least you will have a much better idea of what you want from a custom instrument.

Looks like a guitar to me - 6 strings. And also that it might just be a prop rather than a real playable instrument.