BigRedX

As a seller, I've encountered the maximum parcel size problem before when I tried to ship a guitar to an Argos address. There was no information from Argos itself and first I knew of it was when the guitar was delivered back to my address about 2 weeks after I sent it. Tracking showed that it had two delivery attempts that were refused before the courier gave up and brought it back. Since then I've simply removed the "click and collect" option from all my auctions irrespective of the size and weight of the item. I can't be bothered with the hassle.

I would completely agree from a presentation/visual aspect, but when you look at the price Vs a standard 4 page book and double-sided tray inset in an all-clear jewel case, it becomes much harder to justify the cost.

In the 45 years I've been playing in bands I think I have joined or formed bands by pretty much every method mentioned in the OP. I never actually actually answered an ad in NME or MM, but I did find a singer for one of the bands I was in by that method (after weeding out numerous weirdos first). A lot of the time one band would morph into another. I spent all of the 90s in a band that went through 4 different names, numerous line-ups including a 12 month period when I left the band and swapping from bass to guitar in the later incarnations, but with the style of music being played remaining consistent and I think when we finally split we were still playing at least one song from our first set. My first band formed in the mid 70s was just a bunch of friends from school who all had similar tastes in non-mainstream music and some degree of musical ability. The two bands I play in now... I found one through a Facebook post, although I was already a fan and they knew of me through gigs we had done together when I was playing with The Terrortones. The other is a morph from a band I joined through the JMB web site (although again they knew of me from previous bands I had been in).

A re-press on vinyl might be worth it if your cover artwork is fantastic and somewhat limited by the small size of CD packaging. Just make sure it is of high enough quality to actually look good when blown up to 300 x 300 mm.

IME audience surveys are about as much use as those Facebook event posts where people say that they are coming to your gig. At best you can expect 25% of those who want to buy a product in a particular format will actual shell out their money when said product becomes available. Even something that should be simple like basing T-shirt sizes on your audience demographic falls down because no mater how many skinny hipsters come to see your band on a regular basis, the vast majority of people who buy band T-shirts are size Large and bigger.

When The Terrortones released our second EP on vinyl back in 2013 it was new and different and the lead times were about the same as those for CD manufacture. The quality and production times were much better than the last time I made a record back in the early 80s when it could take several months from the cutting session to actually getting your single or album; and when you did the pressing was really thin and already full of pops, clicks and crackles that weren't part of the music. From what I have seen recently vinyl is starting to plateau. Production times are ever increasing unless you are prepared to pay a considerable premium, and from what I've heard the quality of the pressings is starting to come down as the pressing plants struggle to keep up with the volumes being produced. When the audio quality of vinyl is already below that of a CD, it cannot afford to be anything but the best possible for that medium. Without new pressing plants capable of high volume, high quality and low cost pressings, vinyl will eventually flounder as it reverts back to the bad old days of the late 70s and early 80s. Having said that as an artist, right now, I'd be stupid not to at least consider vinyl when it comes to releasing music even if it's just so that I can sell over-priced crap to hipsters. After all a sale is a sale irrespective of the medium, and unless you go mad with the packaging the mark up for an album on vinyl is much greater than that on CD. You do need to consider your audience though. I've done gigs where I have only sold CDs - at one we sold every CD we brought with us but not a single record on vinyl. I've also done gigs where most of the sales were vinyl although at these we've always sold CDs too. What I have discovered is that if you are selling vinyl you need to include a CD version in the package, as for many potential customers a download code is not sufficient. As an audience member/customer, I'd always go for CDs first and foremost. It's easy to transfer to my computer and then on to all my other digital devices. I'll buy a record on vinyl only if it comes with a CD version or at least an uncompressed/lossless download. However as soon as I have got my download and checked it's OK the vinyl will be up for sale "as new" on Discogs as I have no need to keep archaic physical formats.

1U space pretty much means Class D only and there are very few available in that size that are any good. Making another 1U space available gives you a lot more options, and as has been said power conditioners are pretty much irrelevant in the UK where our mains supply is far more reliable and consistent than the US.

Compared with $50 to get your album on all the major download and steaming services, producing a CD is expensive. However it's still cheaper than the alternative physical media. However remember that there is a big difference in longevity between a manufactured, glass-mastered CD and a CDR. I have CDRs from less than 10 years ago that are no longer readable. So while it might be tempting to go for a low-cost short-run CDR, they really do not last as well as a proper CD.

Unfortunately multi-fold cardboard sleeves add another 25-50% to the production costs.

IMO the feasibility of not using a rig on stage is all down to how good the PA and monitoring is. I can think of only a couple of gigs I've played in the last 3 years where having a bass rig has been essential for hearing the bass guitar on-stage and FoH.

As other have said it very much depends on the genre and the age of your audience. What I have found though is that you need to be gigging in order to sell physical product, and you sell most of it at gigs. I did the figures for The Terrortones once and it was something like just under 90% of all music sales were physical product - CDs, records and cassettes - at gigs. Next came on-line sales of physical product, and very distant last was downloads and streams from all sources. Now that we've stopped gigging we sell about 10 CD and records a year, and no downloads only streaming. If you are after reviews bear in mind that some places will only consider your release for review if it's on CD or vinyl (or cassette) as they use it as a way of weeding out artists who show less commitment to their music. After all anyone with a recording and $50 can realise a download only album so it's hardly a big deal any more.

Played Electrowerx in Islington last night. Second on the bill of 4 bands all with massively different line-ups (we were by far the most conventional and that's saying something). Reasonably big stage although by the time it came for us to set up there wasn't much room left. These days I have an FRFR cab for on-stage monitoring, but decided that trying to find somewhere for it on stage and then having to move it for the opening band was going to be too m much hassle. So I simply gave the PA engineer a DI feed from my Helix and asked for some bass in the wedge in front of me. Had half a song soundcheck to get the mix right and we were done. Absolutely no problems. That's the second gig I've done recently where I haven't bothered with any dedicated speakers for my bass on stage and both myself and the rest of the band have had no problem hearing it. I'm seriously considering not taking the FRFR to any of the larger gigs any more. It's one less thing to go in the van and on stage, and cuts down my stage set-up time by about 50%.

IMO it depends on the bass, the nature of the break (and what caused it) and the quality of the repair.

What sort of stage do you call "bigger"? IME once you get to something the size of Camden Underworld on-stage rigs are virtually useless unless you spend the entire gig stood a few feet directly in front of them. What you hear through the PA foldback is likely to be louder. Big rigs for big bands are completely for show. The bass will be DI'd so at the most the pre-amp of just one of the amps will be doing anything you can hear FoH, and if the band aren't on IEM then they'll still hear more from the monitors then they can for the backline.

Remember that if your bass goes through the PA the your speaker cab(s) are making a negligible contribution to the FoH sound.

So where else would you prefer the show to be held? Some anonymous shed outside Birmingham where there’s flip all else to do once you’ve exhausted the possibilities of the show? At least in London there are plenty of other attractions and entertainments if the show turns out to be dull. If you can’t see that your are probably already dead inside.

I've played Charlie Jones' Crimson Plexiglass bass (the one with the plexiglass neck and body) and it's pretty horrible. Big, clunky and heavy and up close it doesn't look particularly good; none of the interior surfaces have been polished so it's full of very distracting opaque regions which ruins the overall effect of having an instrument made out of a transparent material. Fine for a video shoot, so long as you could take it off or sit down between takes but I wouldn't want to do even a 30 minute gig with it. Plexiglass is fine for guitars with their smaller bodies, the Shaftesbury branded Dan Armstrong guitar I tried in the 70s was no heavier than a typical Les Paul, however the extra material required for a standard P or J bass body makes it much heavier. The best acrylic bass I've played was surprisingly one of the cheap Wesley branded models that we prevalent on eBay about 15 years ago. I picked up a purple acrylic J-style bass which had been defretted, second hand for £70. It has a much smaller (and slightly thinner) body than a standard J shape which allows it to be a similar weight to a typical wooden-bodied bass. The body shape also allowed a 24 "fret" neck and decent access to the upper reaches of the fingerboard - both pluses IMO. Also these instruments came in variety of transparent colours as well as clear and IIRC there were both 4 and 5-string versions available. The body would make a great starting point for someone wanting to make a decent plexiglass/acrylic bass that didn't weigh a stupid amount.

The headstock shape difference is simply because one is the Gibson style headstock and other a Epiphone one, surely? And AFAICS the pickup is simply a more modern, higher output version of one of the originals that JC liked. Not a massive difference then.

I have zero interest in my signature bass appealing to anyone other than me. The whole point of having a signature instrument is that it provides something that is not already available or easily achievable with DIY mods. That's why I mostly fail to understand what is "signature" about most Fender signature instruments.

The Jack Casady is weird because it as actually a signature version of a signature bass (Les Paul). Does anyone know what makes the Jack Casady version different from the original Les Paul Signature Bass, other than one has a Gibson logo and the other has an Epiphone one on the headstock?

A Bass VI derived from the Gus Guitars G3 30" Baritone design, but with a wider neck (closer to classical guitar neck measurements than standard electric guitar width as found on most bass VIs). Three single coil pickups each routable to one of two outputs. Master volume control for each output.

IMO the ugliness and lack of stage presence of the male members of the band was far more offensive than the music.

I've owned one signature bass and was interested in buying another. However in neither case was I even remotely interested in the players for whom these bases were originally designed, but rather I liked the specifications of the basses themselves. The bass I owned was the Yamaha BJ5B, which was the signature bass for Terry And The Blue Jeans - a Japanese surf band of whom I was vaguely aware as at the time I was playing in band that had surf music among our various influences. What attracted me to the bass though was the fact that it was the only way of getting a Yamaha SBV shaped bass in a 5-string variant. The bass itself was incredibly rare being made in a limited edition of only 50 but luckily one came up for sale second hand on the Ishibashi web site. When the bass arrived it turned out to be essentially a Yamaha TRB5 with an SBV shape. It was massive and heavy, and too big to use on most of the stages we played without being a danger to both the other band members and any audience down the front. I used it at a handful of gigs we played on bigger and higher stages and then sold it on to someone in Sweden at a small loss. The bass I was interested in buying was the Reverend Rumblefish Brad Houser. I had no idea who Brad House was before I saw this bass, and having listened to some of his music I can honestly say I am not particularly impressed by it. However it was a Rumblefish 5-string bass with humbucking pickups, based on what I liked and what I didn't like about my Rumblefish 5L bass, it should have been a marked improvement. Unfortunately they only made a few more of these (79) than the Yamaha and combined with Rumblefish basses having a massively enthusiastic following in the US I was never able to track one down to actually own.

Saturday with In Isolation supporting Toyah at The Rescue Rooms in Nottingham. Nice big stage and great sound both on stage and FoH, and other than having to go on at 7.15 in order for Toyah's set to be over for the 10.00pm live music curfew it couldn't be faulted. Interesting to see that Toyah's band were all in-ears and no backline. The guitarist was using a Axe-FX, and the bassist a Kemper rack unit, although I have to say that I wan't massively impressed with the bass guitar sound FoH - there was a lot of synth bass on the backing and the keyboards that he had to compete with. Proper dressing room back-stage complete with snacks and a fridge full of drinks. Also interesting to see that Toyah's backing band all turned up individually in their own cars with their gear and apart from having their own sound engineer didn't have any road crew.

IME at any one time you've either got the inspiration or you haven't. Also IME if you don't have the inspiration, there's no point in forcing it and it's probably a sign that you should move on to something new musically.