BigRedX

Also remember that the people who post outside of the for-sale section tend to be more interested in "less conventional" basses. So proportion of us playing basses with a string count other than 4 will be much higher. In the same way that the only people I know using flats are either on here or those haven't changed their strings since they bought their bass in the 60s or 70s.

It was be useful if people replying to this topic could say when they were at school. I suspect almost all the positive music lesson experiences will have occurred for those whose education came after the mid 80s.

That's very true. In the days when I had an office job working alongside other people I finally, after a couple years, managed to persuade some of my colleagues to come and see my current band play. What struck me the following Monday was the number of people telling me that they were surprised at how good the band was - as though they hadn't noticed my drive for perfection with the artwork I produced in my job, and therefore why should the band be any different? Unfortunately, the fact that they enjoyed the gig wasn't enough for them the go and see us play again. On the other hand before that, most of the audience I been playing to was made up of musicians from other local bands, and they tend to be the worst audience ever - either bitching about how crap they think your band, is or seething with jealousy because you're getting more attention then their band is. I had to admit I've been guilty of that in the past. luckily for the last 15 or so years I've played in bands that have been entertaining enough to generate our own decent following without having to rely on friends, acquaintances and work colleagues in order to have a decent sized audience.

The next gig for both my bands (Hurtsfall and In Isolation) is Goth At Brewery in Whitby on Saturday 27th April as part of the Whitby Goth Weekend: It's an afternoon gig at the Brewery (opposite Whitby Abbey), with Hurtsfall opening at 2.00pm, In Isolation on at 4.00 and sandwiched between us Chaos Bleak (also from Nottingham) at 3.00. For those who don't know, this is a very popular event and if you're not there early you'll probably have to watch and listen from the courtyard - although this will only be a problem if the weather ins't very good, in which case there is all the more reason to arrive in time to get a place inside! BTW this is a free gig.

Thanks! It was pretty nerve-wracking on the way in as we could see our predicted ETA getting ever closer to when we were supposed to be starting our set. Once we'd got to the other side of the Thames it was easier going but we were nearly thwarted by a bus broken down in the middle of a junction were we needed to turn left. Next gig for both my bands is WGW which should be a lot easier as most of us are there from at least Friday (the gig is on Saturday afternoon) and the only challenge will not getting too drunk the night before when we go and see Westenra and Auger play.

I play in two goth bands. Party? What's that? In all seriousness there's no way I could play most of the songs I use then Bass VI for on a standard 4-string bass.

Hurtsfall were in London at the New Cross Inn supporting Ghost Dance on Saturday. There were good and bad bits... I've never played a gig south of the river and I won't be in a hurry to do it again. The last 5 miles took about three and half hours to drive, although much of this time we were completely stationary. I've seen heavy traffic in London before but this was ridiculous! Instead of turning up just before load-in we arrived 10 minutes before our advertised playing time, just as the first band were finishing. No time to do anything except load the gear in set it up , a quick line check and then straight into the set. No time to get changed or relax for a moment, although Sam, or singer, managed to sneak off and get into his spangly trousers while were sorting out DIs with the PA engineer. However as a result of all the delays and the real possibility that we might arrive too late to play the energy on stage was electric and we stormed through the set. The song we'd chosen to open with at this gig, the somewhat prophetic "Lost Souls (Driving At Night)" which can be a bit hit and miss live just came alive in a way that it hasn't really before, and the new song which we'd stumbled through on Wednesday was played with the sort of authority that normally only comes after a lot of gigs. Apart from a few friends of our singer (he's originally from London) none of the audience knew who we were, but there were plenty of nice things being said afterwards and we sold a lot of merch and fended off questions about when the album will be out (later this year - honest). The drive home despite a large section of the M11 being closed was a piece of cake in comparison to our journey in... Obligatory gig photo, apologies for my appearance, but there was no time to get changed so I'm still wearing my comfortable travelling clothes rather than my gigging clothes.

A couple of photos from Wednesday's gig: Getting ready for tonight's gig supporting Ghost Dance in London now.

Just realised I haven't put up a poster for tomorrow night's Hurtsfall gig: The line-up has changed somewhat since this was produced. It's now: Ghost Dance Hurtsfall Katolik We're on at 8.35. Tickets are £17 or £20 on the door.

Depends on the band, music and the individual song. There is no right or wrong answer.

These days if you have the right tools, making a neck is no more difficult than any other part of guitar construction. When I made my guitar back in late 70s I bought a ready made neck mostly because buying a truss rod or a suitable saw for cutting fret slots was near to impossible. Stephen Delft was doing a series of articles in International Musician magazine and he made his own truss rod from scratch, and modified a saw by filing the set off, and while the school metalwork shop probably had the facilities it would have taken too much time and the guitar wouldn't have been complete before the end of the school year. I'd made a balalaika the year before where did make the neck (it was a neck-through construction and the string tension was low enough for me to dispense with a truss rod), but the narrowest saw available to me was still too wide for the frets to fit snugly and most had to also be glued into place. Of course now I can order a ready-made truss rod and all the right tools on line, so if I was going to build a guitar or bass I wouldn't think twice about making the neck.

Pre-EQ, but get the PA engineer up on stage to hear what your bass sounds like to you through your amp and cab(s) so they know what sort of sound to be aiming for FoH.

Mid week gig at The Chapel in Nottingham supporting Empathy Test and Black Nail Cabaret. Flag Promotions always know how to put together a great gig line-up and look after the bands, even when pre-gig ticket sales looked like being a bit slow. In the end it wasn't a bad turnout for a school night and most of the audience were in early to see us. Not the best gig that we've played, there were a couple of technical issues the most perplexing of which was the complete change in sound on stage from the sound check to the gig, despite being first on and last to sound check. We had no fold back at all for half of the first song and it took another two before the stage mix was close to what we have had during the sound check. This has happened more than once at this venue and beginning to wonder if there is some kind of user error the part of the PA engineer there. Anyway the audience didn't seem to notice that anything was amiss, and we got plenty of positive comments afterwards. We're in London at the New Cross Inn supporting Ghost Dance on Saturday, and then WGW...

No. As others have said both the band and the audience have to earn an encore. AFAIAC as a band member if I want to play a song it's in the main set. It's not put aside to persuade the audience to get you to come back on. An encore is a bonus and a "thank you" for both the audience and the band. A lot of the time even for well-known bands there is an expectation that the band will be back and shouts for more are minimal because the audience thinks they are not needed. Personally I think it's pathetic. As an audience member I'll only shout for more if I actually want to band to come back on, and if they don't I might be disappointed, but I'll also respect their decision not to play another song.

One band is mostly concentrating on writing and recording our next album, but we still have a number of decent gigs lined up including WGW and Infest. The other band has already done some pretty good gigs this year including HRH Goth 2 at the Leicester O2 Academy, and last night's gig opening for Empathy Test. Coming up we have WGW (as well), and places on several other festivals later in the year booked already. We have our London debut this weekend. It helps that both bands fit into the post-punk/goth genre which has a good number of decent promotors and venues especially up north. One of the best gigs is Carpe Noctum in Leeds which is so popular that unless a band drops out, neither of my bands are likely to be playing there before 2025!

I've dep'd once. About a year after I had left the dad-rock covers band I used play with I got a phone call from one of the guitarists asking if I could help them out for a gig in two weeks time as their replacement bassist had injured himself and was unable to do it. Since the evening in question was one of the rare weekends when I didn't already have a Terrortones gig, I said yes on the understanding that the set would only be made up of songs that I had played before with them, and that they send it through as soon as possible so I had plenty of time to familiarise myself with them again. Less than a week before the gig after further prompting the set list finally materialised and while it was all songs I had done with them before, rather than being numbers from the last time we gigged, it was years since I had played a lot of them and some I'd only done once or twice before they were dropped from the set. On questioning this, it turned out that their current singer couldn't do the gig either, and a previous vocalist had been enlisted. The resulting set was made up of all the songs I had ever played with them that he could also sing. It took me several evenings of hard work to get everything to an acceptable standard. I hadn't played some of the songs for such a long time that I was essentially learning them afresh. The gig went OK, but ultimately it wasn't a very pleasant experience for me. Too much hard work for too little fun. I won't be doing it again any time soon.

I looked at getting mine converted to a 5-string but it wasn't really cost-effective, so I sold it (to someone in Japan IIRC). If money was no object then maybe I's reconsider, but I'd probably just have some more Gus basses instead!

Last week, I went completely by chance past the Gibson Garage on the way to somewhere more interesting. Back in the 20th century I would have probably been sidetracked and spent an hour or two drilling over the instruments. This time I simply glanced at what was visible in the widows and went on my way. Until they make a 5-string Thunderbird that is essentially a 64 model with an extra string, I'm unlikely to be interested in anything they produce.

The Tokai Talbo Bass which has a similar construction with a hollow aluminium body weighs the same as a typical wooden bodied bass. Mine was full of the sort of foam you find in cushions in an attempt to prevent the hollow body inducing feedback, although @Bassassin has reported it's not very effective when using high-gain sounds.

There's a back one level and forward to the next unread topic links at the end of every thread, are they not sufficient? IMO the phone browsing experience is very poor, but there are more important missing bits of interface than the ones you mention.

How big is your pedalboard?

It might be worth mentioning that many multi-effects units have a built-in audio interface so you don't need a separate device for recording. I do all my recording using the Line6 Helix which has options for outputting the processed and direct sound via separate channels. This allows me to monitor (and record if I want) the processed sound while also recording the direct sound which I can then process later using either the Helix Native plug-in or any other effects in my DAW. Then I can tweak the sound to fit better into the track without being stuck with the original sound or needing to re-record if I want a different sound.

I use either my Gus G3 or the Eastwood Hooky into my Helix with headphones. The choice of bass is down to which band I'm practicing for. I see no point in having a different bass and effects set-up for home use as the one I'll be using at gigs or in the rehearsal room. The use of headphones over my FRFR cab is simply down to noise considerations. I know the sound of the headphones well enough to know that what I program on the Helix will be very close to perfect when I get into the rehearsal room, and it's just a question of some final EQ and level tweaks. I also practice standing up as that's how I'll be playing at the gig.

When I was in The Terrortones, once a month we would put on a "Dick Venom Presents..." gig at a local venue. Mr Venom would pick a better known band in a compatible genre to us and we would play support. Very useful for building up our gig "CV" that let us claim we had shared the bill with numerous well-respected bands which would open doors for gigs elsewhere. It also gave us a low-pressure local gig where we could try out our newly written songs. This ran very successfully for a couple years, but eventually its success contributed to its downfall. It had got to the point where we were often attracting a bigger audience than the headliners. It was rather embarrassing to see a significant number of people leave after we had played and not stay to see the supposedly better-know main act who had often cost quite a bit of money to get to play. This in turn was the secondary problem where the venue was now too small for the event, but booking better-known bands and hiring a bigger venue was a massive step up in terms of the amount of money we would need to front to make it happen, and the financial side just got too risky.

Only for us old farts. Anyone born after 1979 has the possibility of buying something both usable and interesting for not a lot of money.