BigRedX

I've gone the other way. My Helix is so much an essential part of my bass sound that it really doesn't matter which bass I play through it they all come out sounding very similar.

Depends on the construction of the guitar, scale-length and tuning and the amount of processing applied. The 28" scale Baritone guitar I had that was tuned B-B produced wonderfully rich sounding chords even in the first position. That was with a fairly clean sound. On the other hand the 30" A-A tuned guitar I tried was only useful for individual picked lines.

I had a very similar experience although in my case it was more down to the fact that my parents really didn't approve of pop/rock music. Had they thought otherwise I might have ended up with a Rickenbacker or something with a John Birch logo on the headstock. I ended up making my first electric guitar in the woodwork shop at school when I should have been studying for my A levels and was brought home at the end of the school year as a "fait accompli" much to my parent's disappointment. My first bass was bought out of my university grant money and still required that I eat frugally for month. When I finally had the kind of disposable income needed to fuel my musical instrument habit I went mad and spent a considerable amount of money on a fully equipped home studio and all the toys required to fill it. Most of it's gone now, but as I said it took 50+ years to properly scratch that itch.

This. Even if you make a loss in real terms think of it as the hire fee for all those years you've owned the bass. It will be a lot less than what it would have cost you to hire it for that length of time.

I'm in my 60s now and I've never let my age get in the way of playing the music I want. Up until the end of last year I was in 2 post-punk/goth influenced bands, both of which I joined when I was the same age you are now. I found one through a JMB ad that I placed. I was specific about the sort of music I wanted to play and the level of commitment that I was prepared to put in and that I expected from the band in return. It took almost a year to get a reply, but it was exactly the sort of band I was looking for and is the band that I am still playing with, albeit with only one of the members that was in the band I when joined. The second was a band that I was a fan of and was following on Facebook, so when they posted that they were looking for a replacement bass player I got in touch. For this one because the band was reasonably well-know within the genre they had several other people interested and there were additions held. I was the one chosen and the only reason I'm no longer with them now is that I decided to concentrate on the other band when the singer announced he was calling it a day. In both cases that fact that bands already knew who I was (my previous band had done gigs with both bands in the past) I think was an advantage when it came to auditions etc. So while you are looking go out there and and see some gigs by local bands playing the sort of music you want to play and get networking.

If this was me, I'd either leave it as it is, or sand the headstock back to the wood and do it again properly.

There's no harm in looking and while there are plenty of things I might like to own I don't actually need any of them. Having said that, it has taken just over 50 years of buying and selling along with several advancements in technology that have rendered many of the instruments I wanted when I was younger irrelevant, to get to this point.

I would never choose another pick that wasn't easily replaceable. I probably loose/misplace/wear down a couple every month and as a consequence buy mine in batches of 100 at a time.

Pretty much every amplified instrument benefits from some degree of signal processing. Your choice of amp and cab(s) is the same as any other effect. Otherwise there would be no point in having some many different brands of amplification. Stick your bass through a rig that did absolutely nothing but increase the amplitude of the input signal and everyone would complain that it made their bass sound bland and lifeless.

My first bass was a second-hand Burns Sonic. At the time it was the only bass I could afford and for over 10 years the only bass I owned. I used it on the demos that had CBS records interested in signing my band. It went through numerous modifications in order to keep it playable. However when I could finally afford something good it was replaced with a 5-string Overwater Original. After that it spent most of its time unplayed in its case. When my current band did their first set of recordings I used it on one song. We re-recorded that song recently and I used one of my Gus 5-strings instead, which sounded better. When I had my big clear out of instruments I thought long and hard about keeping it for sentimental reasons, but I ended up selling it. It didn't really fit with any of the music I've played over the past 30 years, and if I had kept it, it would have gone back in its case and into storage.

Looking at the prices of my usual supplier 250 cards matt laminated is under £20 so if your contact details change it's not a big deal to get new ones printed.

Whoever you pick make sure that their standard rate business cards are the normal size of 85 x 55 mm. IIRC one of the major budget printers of business cards has/had a different standard size which doesn't fit in the typical business card pocket in a wallet rendering them less useful. These days unless you want something fancy in terms of material or finishing, all the budget suppliers will be much of a muchness since all the cards will be digitally printed on similar digital presses and it's very difficult to get this wrong. I'd pick someone local and arrange a discount for collecting them in person. Otherwise if you don't want the hassle of picking them up yourself have a look at Flexpress who are usually very competitive for printing.

I'd post this on the Sound On Sound forum and see what response you get there.

When I'm not going wireless I use one of two leads OBBM made for me back in 2010. Before that I was using a couple of leads I made myself in 1979. I'm still using XLR cables I made up in the mid 90s. Get something made with decent quality components and don't abuse it and it will last you forever.

I'm the process of selling off the last of the guitars and basses that I no longer use regularly. At one point I had over 40. When I'm finished I'll have 5 or 6. I did the same with all my keyboards and MIDI sound modules. Now I have a single controller keyboard for programming my DAW. While it was nice to have a large musical instrument collection, IMO there's little point in owning things that I don't use and are unlikely to use any time soon. They are better off in the hands of people who will actually play them.

Here's mine showing the song that I am currently working on: This workspace is shared with my day job where I do graphic design for packaging hence the rather tidy nature of everything. Most of my programming is done with the mouse and QWERTY keyboard and the guitars, basses and controller keyboards normally only come out when I am actually doing recording for the purposes of making something for release to the public.

As I've said before how do you establish the monetary value of a piece of music? There are songs on my current band's forthcoming album that I have been working on over the last 40 years, and others that were written from start to finish in a single 3 hour practice session.

I have been delaying posting this because I was hoping to include photos but none have surfaced so far... Weird gig at the weekend. We played the Newark Festival, which I was disappointed to find was not the big "rock" event on Newark Showground happening on the same day, but a series of gigs spread around several pubs in the town. We were down to play early evening at The Castle & Falcon and due to our synth player being somewhat under the weather we arrived just as the band before us were finishing. Surprised to find that the actual stage was outdoors in the pub courtyard, which hadn't been mentioned at any point when we were being booked. I'm never quite sure of the effectiveness of these events for us since we're not a "conventional" band, and in the past some of the similar gigs we have played have been more than a bit "meh". However this was one of those exceptions. The audience seemed to be really up for our set of "melancholy bangers" and even more surprisingly we sold several T-shirts and CDs including a couple that we had the sign. Compare that to our previous gig where we were playing to our core audience and we sold just one T-shirt. Bit of a break now until the end of September which will give us a chance to work on some new material and recording for the album.

If you want more tonal variation buy a programable multi-effects pedal with a decent EQ section.

It's costing approximately £30 plus postage for a rewind. I don't have to worry about doing any soldering more fiddly than connecting the flying leads back to the selector switch and it will be re-wound with the correct gauge of wire and to the correct DC resistance as the original pickup. From what I recall when I was using this bass the middle pickup either on it's own or with one of the others was the setting I favoured for most of the bass sounds, so trying to sell the bass without the most important pickup working is likely to knock off more value than the cost of the rewind.

Even on a live recording you are unlikely to be hearing anything of the amp and cabs you can see on stage, but the processing that is being applied either by the PA or the recording process.

There is no right answer regarding types of string. Choose the ones that produce the sound and playing experience that you like. Don't make a big deal about it. Unless you aren't able to produce the correct bass tone for the type of music the band is playing no one will care apart from you.

But no humans other than Tech Bros were disadvantaged in the process, and they don't really count.

But how can anyone tell? There's only so many note combinations. Songwriters and composers come up with very similar tunes all the time. If I sign up to an AI music generator via VPN using a one-off email address, and then by the same method use an on-line stem separator. Convert the results into MIDI. Redo the bits I don't like, and keep the rest but using my very similar sounds, or me playing guitar or bass parts, there is no trail back to me and no way it can be proved that I didn't come up with the idea all by myself.

I did set up some patches for it on the BassPod I owned at the time that had additional gain to compensate, but the weedy sound was just one of the many reasons that this bass was completely unsuitable for me and ultimately it was simpler to sell it and buy something I could get on with.