BigRedX

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.

Unless you have basses that are completely identical in every way, your basses will feel different to play.

They are on offer in the UK because they have failed a German broadcast compliance test, and despite assurances from Line6 that a compliant update is on its way, 12 months on nothing has appeared. So long as you don't mind that this device has been essentially discontinued and you may run into problems if you intend to use it outside of the Uk, you will be fine.

Not exactly a supergroup but certainly far in excess of the sum of their parts: The Postal Service. Death Cab For Cutie have written and recorded a fair number of great songs, but when compared with their overall back catalogue the proportion of decent songs to filler is depressingly low. DNTEL have yet to create anything memorable apart from "(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan" which is The Postal Service in all but name.

Actually 4 if you count Tune Japan and Tune Korea as separate companies (which they are).

Or Tune

Not active until sometime in November IIRC. until then you will still need the relevant paperwork for travelling with it importing/exporting instruments with any kind of Rosewood in them.

Until maple gets added to the CITES list.

I don't either (legally I can, but I'm not very good at it so I don't), and it's never stopped me being in a band over the last 40 years. IME if you have plenty of other skills useful to the band, the other members will make allowances for the lack of driving. Although nearly all the bands I've been in that have had regular gigs that couldn't be reached easily and inexpensively by public transport or taxi have had dedicated band transport with a driver/roadie.

Given what I now know, I would have concentrated on the bass much earlier in my musical "career". I didn't buy my first bass guitar until 1980 when I had been playing various instruments for almost 6 years. Or gone straight to playing synths.

For the two bands I currently play in: I got into one through placing an ad on JMB. I was pretty specific about what I was looking for and my ad was answered by a band that exactly met those requirements. If you want to be bit broader in your musical approach then maybe place several ads each one tailor to a specific musical style? From the perspective of a band looking for a musician to complete a line-up it is my experience that musicians who claim to have a broad musical palette generally don't have a suitably in-depth understanding of specific genres unless they happen to be blues or dad-rock. For other band, I was a fan and was following them on Facebook, and so when they posted that they were looking for a replacement bassist, I sent them a message and the following weekend I had an audition. Before that it was answering ads in record shops, but then that was over 10 years ago!

But only if the music you want to play is written down.