BigRedX

I don't know where in the country you are, but here in Nottingham while the kinds of opportunities for gigs have changed since I moved here in 1980 there is very little difference in the numbers of gigs available for originals bands and IME these gigs are now far easier to come by. Back in the early 80s in Nottingham there were almost no weekend gigs available for originals bands, and from what I saw from gigging out of town that pattern was repeated throughout the country. If you wanted a gig it was Monday to Thursday only and also you would have to take into account hiring a PA system as none of the venues had their own. This started to change in the late 90s when some venues had the occasional weekend slot for originals bands and in-house PA systems were beginning to appear. Nowadays mid-week gigs are almost unheard of and unless one of the bands playing has a couple of popular albums out and consequently a decent following you'll be struggling to get an audience. One of my bands did a Wednesday night gig in November, and while we managed to get a decent sized audience and came away with a profit, it required a lot of work on social media and with friends on our part. Also it couldn't compare with the turn-out the following Saturday at the same venue when my other band was supporting a minor synth-pop band from the 80s and the promotor was turning away punters who didn't have tickets because the venue was rammed. IME changes in work culture have made going out on a "school night" much harder than it used to be, with punters saving their money and energy just for the weekend.

You are perfectly right. I'm probably being a bitter old man, but: Personally I think there is too much music available nowadays. The figure being headlined is 60,000 new tracks being uploaded to Spotify every day. Various attempts to to debunk this have resulted in revisions down to between 5000 and 40,000 track daily. However, just 5,000 tracks a day is staggering, considering that in the days of vinyl there were probably significantly less than 1000 new singles and albums each week (That's just a guesstimate - I have been unable to find any serious stats on this if anyone has them please post). This combined with the dwindling number of listeners prepared to buy recorded music, means that there is an ever growing number of songs vying for an ever shrinking audience's attention. When anyone with a computer, an internet connection and $50 can produce and album and upload it to all the download and streaming sites, it's not surprising at lots more people are doing it. Unfortunately all that "background noise" makes it much harder for listeners to find new music that they like. And as a listener in the 70s when I started getting into music beyond what was on TotP, my sources were John Peel and Alan Freeman on Radio 1. I'd probably hate at least half of what they were playing and be indifferent to a lot of the rest, but there would be a handful of new records played every week (out of the 120 or so I'd heard) that I would like enough to consider buying. By contrast last week I listened to a 500 track modern post-punk/goth playlist on Spotify. That's 500 songs in specific genres that I really like. However I found less than 10 new bands that I enjoyed enough to warrant further listening. What particularly struck me was how derivative and how poorly recorded much of it was. I've always been worried that my band's home-produced recordings weren't up to scratch, and while so far we've not managed to emulate Trevor Horn or Martin Rushent, by comparison with most of what I heard we are doing pretty well. When someone like myself is struggling to find interesting new music from curated playlists what chance do most casual listeners have? Also when you consider that if my band puts out a single we are in effect competing with every other song ever released for listeners. In the days of releases on vinyl and CD a single (unless it was very popular) had a life of no more than 3-4 months, so it was only ever competing with a few thousand other songs at any one time. These days Spotify and other on-line sources have to apply negative weighting to streams of "back catalogue" tracks otherwise hardly any new music would make the current charts. It's not the cost of living that is crushing new music. It is the sheer amount of music available

G4M and other retailers who do this are contravening UK consumer law regarding the sale of electrical equipment. If enough people complained maybe they would sort themselves out and start supplying equipment with the correct mains connectors as standard. IMO external PSUs with their tiny non-locking connectors and flimsy cables are bad enough for reliability without adding yet another poorly fitting adaptor to the equation.

And as I said in a previous post those genuinely driven to create will find ways to do it irrespective of circumstances.

I hope it fits the Epiphone version of the EB3 is a long scale bass.

The Epiphone EB0 and EB3 are different scale lengths. Does a single case fit both?

Plenty of them. They're not the same ones from 10-15 years ago, but if your band is sufficiently entertaining you should have no problem getting gigs. The trick is to make the gigs you do count. That means either financially or those that allow you to grow your audience. I could probably be out gigging with one or the other of the two bands I play in every weekend if we took everything we were offered, but both bands have chosen to be more selective, so at the moment we are sticking to genre-specific supports and "festivals". Having said that we already have 10 gigs booked (and more promised that just need finalising) for this year, all of which are decently paid, and/or will put us in front of a good-sized receptive audience who may not have seen us play before.

Essentially yes. The body colour is also unique to the SBV-800MF. There may be more differences (like neck profile etc.) but without having both versions to hand I wouldn't know. The other signature SVB - the BJ5B (BlueJeans Model) was completely different to all the other SBVs.

Miki Furukawa of J-Rock band Supercar has her own signature version, the SBV-800MF.

The re-issues like the one in the OP are 34". However the original 60s models are 31½".

For those people who absolutely HAVE to create music (or anything else) will always find ways of avoiding the obstacles in their way. IMO anything that discourages the casual dabbler who has heard a Coldplay or Sleaford Mods album and decides to have a go, is a good thing. There are far too many musicians playing in uninspiring bands, and if they want to have a bit of fun in the privacy of a rehearsal room that's fine, but lets not have them clogging up venues, Bandcamp and Spotify. I think that too many posters on here appear to have forgotten what it was like to be in their first originals band. You don't need half the stuff that older musicians seem to to think is absolutely necessary, and many other things are far cheaper in real terms than they were in the 60s, 70s and 80s. If you want to do something badly enough you will work out ways of doing it within your financial constraints. Firstly almost no originals band needs the hassle and expense of PA ownership. All the venues worth playing on the originals circuit have in-house PA systems and if you want to play somewhere different that doesn't it is still possible to hire a system for the gig. In 50 years of playing in originals bands I been two that had their own PA and in both cases that is because we had our own dedicated rehearsal space. The PA was primarily rehearsals and only used for gigs on a handful of occasions. These days everyone thinks they need personal transport but actually you can get a long way (pun intended) without car ownership. In my first few bands hardly anyone could actually drive and if they did, only a couple of them owned cars which were invariable tiny and unreliable. For local gigs we walked or used public transport. For out of town gigs we would hire a car or a van and if none of the band could actually drive we'd have at a least one fan who could and would be happy to drive for us. Remember that all the decent out of town gigs your band would most likely be supporting so all you'd need to take would be instruments amp heads and drum breakables. A four-piece band plus that fits into a typical car. It might not be comfortable but it gets you to the gig and back. If you put on a decent show you'll soon get better gigs with better pay and be able to think about buying a cheap van. I still go to local gigs by taxi. It's cheaper than the running and parking costs for the evening (especially if the gig goes on past midnight) and taxi drivers have no problem stopping in the middle of the street directly outside the venue while I load in/out. As has been said plenty of other aspects of being in a band are much cheaper in real terms than they used to be. Instruments and equipment are a fraction of the price for the same level of quality. In fact unless you buy something dodgy direct from China you are very unlikely to be saddled with the sort of unplayable crap that was all most musicians could afford when starting out right up to the end of the 80s. And recording (if you're not doing it yourself) is ridiculously cheap these days. For my first 3 forays into proper recording studios, we had to watch every minute on the clock otherwise we might not be able to settle the bill at the end, and there were always "hidden extras" like the cost of the tape, both master and multi-track, that you used. Back when I started gigging there were all sorts of free or cheap resources available to those of us who were prepared to put the effort in tracking them down. And they still exist if you can put in the time networking to find them. Four out of the first 5 recording sessions for The Terrortones were absolutely free because they were either part of some training initiative, the studio owner liked us enough to offer us a couple of free sessions when the studio would otherwise be empty, or paid for by the record label who were putting out a compilation album with the band on. Maybe the challenges that face originals bands these days are different to those when I was first recording and gigging, but anyone really committed to getting their music heard will find ways around them. You do have to be living and breathing and dreaming about music 24 hours a day 7 days a week if you want to treat it as anything other than a hobby, but IME that has aways been the case.

I know it's not entirely serious but, IMO the most important band member is the main song writer irrespective of what instrument they play.

It also helps if you play it on a short scale bass like Andy Fraser did, and not a 36" scale Overwater like I tried...

Not in my experience. It was by far the oldest member of The Terrortones, but since I was writing most of the music, was in good health and didn't have any problem doing gigs all over the country, my age was never really a factor. In a lot ways if you are of any age where bringing up kids is no longer a concern and you might be considering winding down your employment hours, being in a band is a lot easier with regards to other commitments. The last time I was able to put as much effort into being in a band was in the 80s when I was unemployed. After The Terrortones stopped gigging I had no problem finding another band (or two) to play in - one where the rest of the band are of a similar age and another where there is a much wider range of ages. Plenty of people to be in bands with. You just need to right attitude.

Unless you want to write and play chart-orientated pop music, age is no longer any sort of barrier(unless being old in itself actually impacting on your ability to play and create). A few months before my 50th birthday I joined what has turned out to be my most successful originals band (and I've been in bands since I was 15). We were gigging all over the country and released two EPs, a mini album and a full-length album. I had to quit the covers band I was also in, because the originals band was more active (and better paid). Now in my 60s I'm in two different originals bands with a busy gigging schedules (both have gigs up to the end of 2024 already in the diary). One band which is relatively new are currently recording our debut album. The other who are more established are writing songs for our 4th. Both of my current bands are post-punk/goth influenced so obviously much of our audience and fellow bands are of a similar age, but there are a lot of much younger people in the audiences and a significant number of bands with members in their 20s playing gigs with us. Age is only a barrier if you let it be one.

Also note that the Kramer has has the pickups repositioned on that new body. This has the "neck" pickup in roughly the P-bass position whereas it would have originally been much closer to the neck.

"Stiffness" and "tension" are not the same thing. What we should really be measuring is "compliance".

But is only accurate for D'Addario strings.

TBH I don't think I've ever heard a Bass Guitar being called that unless it actually had a "Fender" logo on the headstock. When I was getting into music in the early 70s the bands I liked were more likely to be be sporting bass guitars by Rickenbacker or Gibson as they were Fender.

One of my bands do this: It's mostly D with the occasional A and C, so dead easy to play. I just have to remember to count the bars of 2/4 to come in in the right place. My other band has just released our own composition Christmas song called "December Snow": We don't have any gigs coming up so we won't be playing it live. Maybe in December 2024? However we massively changed the structure of the song once the lyrics had been written, so I'd have to relearn the bass part from scratch as what's on the final mix only has a passing resemblance to what I originally recorded.

If I want to show photos from Facebook posts I save them onto my computer and then re-host them somewhere more universally accessible. Regarding Spotify payments - it's not a fixed amount per play. From looking at my data from this year the amount depends on both when and where the stream occurred. In the UK earlier this year I was getting several months of over 0.5¢ per stream. Last month each US-based stream was only worth 0.2¢. However extrapolating my figures to 1 millions streams would have netted me around $5000 after my aggregator has taken their cut. And that's only for the "mechanicals". One of my bands has managed to get a song onto a fairly popular Goth playlist which is currently getting 50-100 streams a day. If it's still getting that kind of attention this time next year that will give a far better indication of what a decent amount of streams pays. Of course the real money is in the performance royalties for the songwriters, and streaming even from the better paying services is minuscule compared with what a couple of plays on National Radio will bring it. Best get writing those Christmas songs....

All I have bought this year are two sets of strings for my Eastwood Hooky Bass.

He’d use whatever was the cheapest.

Thanks everyone! "December Snow" is now available on all the major download and streaming platforms. Also we have an animated lyric video to go with it:

Also the only USB-A to USB-B cable I have is the one that came with the Helix. I have a load of other USB cables but no others with that particular combination of connectors.