BigRedX

Is it? Please explain how. Unless the pre-amp has been badly designed the gain control should be the first thing the input signal passes through. Whether you boost the signal before or after the input jack socket should make zero difference. And stop assuming that passive basses have a lower output than actives. This is not 100% true.

If you need this because it has better EQ centres than the tone controls on your amp then you have the wrong amp.

They should be exactly the same thing, unless you are using it to deliberately overload the input of the amp which is hardly likely to give you more clarity. You'll need to explain further because I am not convinced and think it's either marketing bullshit or listening with your eyes.

More grown up than a knob joke which is what most "boutique" pedal makes seem to go for.

In the days when I used to bi-amp my preferred crossover frequency was (IIRC) around 320Hz. Of course there is no "correct" answer use what your ears tell you sounds good. Mine was reached as being the optimum position where I could put a quite extreme chorus on the upper frequencies but still maintain enough low-end thump. It was also dictated by the cabs that I was using for each side of the signal - a 15" driver in a large cab for bass and 2x8" cab for the top end which was based on the dimensions of my favourite guitar amp of the time.

Or you could just set the gain and tone controls on your amp to get the same effect.

Probably better sound quality though…. And you can always tape over it if you get bored of the album you bought.

On Saturday Hurtsfall played at the OxJam festival in Beeston. Over 100 acts split across multiple venues, this is the 3rd year we've been asked to play. This time we were on at 3.30pm at The Berliner, the second band of the afternoon at that venue. Not the easiest of load-ins with the venue being very busy so there was nowhere really to leave our gear where it wasn't in someone way. However it turned out that lots of the people were there specifically to see us play which was very gratifying. Just about enough time between bands to get set up and line-checked. Technical problems of the previous weekend were behind us and we played well, and even felt brave enough to open with our newest song which most of our audience wouldn't have heard before. We're taking a break from gigging until the end of November to work on new material and for recording the album.

The handful of times I have been asked to play on someone else's recording, I have been chosen specifically for my sound and playing style. Therefore I turn up with the bass(es) required to replicate what they have heard me do previously. The most recent session I did was for Rodney Bakerr (Wax Trax! Records) where I used a 1960s Burns Sonic and a 5-string Gus G3.

All the members of The Terrortones had stage names and we used them from the moment we arrived at venue until we left. Also all our songs were registered with the PRS using our stage names. Mine was Wrex StClair

Which venue were you doing? We played The Berliner this year. We also brought our own passive DIs.

The pissed up people singing along to Wonderwall are not your audience and probably wouldn't have been Oasis' audience either before they became famous. Also most of them would be equally happy singing along with a playlist or DJ as they would with a covers band. That's just a fact of life. It's pointless worrying about them and the venues they congregate in. The fact that most musicians don't seem to have got, is that there is nothing extra special about live music per se. You are quite right that to typical pub goer wants something they know and if you are not going to supply that then if you want to be popular you have to be playing something reasonably catchy and give them something interesting to watch at the same time. Unsurprisingly that's not a bunch of middle-aged men staring at their instruments. You've also got to acknowledge that some genres are more popular at a grass-roots level than others and maybe decide if you want artistic integrity or popularity, and try a find a good compromise between the two. When I was starting out gigging, I deliberately moved from somewhere with an almost zero live music scene to somewhere that was far more healthy from both a band and an audience member's PoV. I know that other people have different priorities. As I said life is full of compromises.

My current band who are hardly a well-known Goth band manage an average of 2500 streams a month on Spotify alone. While that's split between 14 tracks about 75% of those streams come from our most popular 5 songs. I would suggest that we're not quite popular enough to headline without one or more other bands of at least an equivalent standing as support.

As I said before, if your band isn't based somewhere where there is an audience for your music then you need to go and play places where there is. And if you're a band going to play an unknown venue out of town do some research to make sure that it has an audience and one that is likely to be appreciative of what you do. If you are not based in at least a decent sized town then it would be naive to expect much of a local audience for any originals band. In the early days of The Terrortones after we'd called in a couple of favours due from Mr Venom's previous band, local gigs weren't that easy to come by. However there were plenty of venues and promotors in other parts of the country who wanted to put us on and were prepared to pay us enough to make the travelling worthwhile. It wasn't until we started putting on the monthly "Dick Venom Presents…" gigs where we would book someone better known in a compatible genre and play support that we started to build up a local following.

When they were still in Brooklyn I spent a couple of hours at the Sadowsky workshop trying all their demo models. IMO every single one sounded better with the pre-amp turned off.

I play the bass I'm going to be using with my band at the rehearsal and gig. IMO there's little point playing anything else. Once every 3 or 4 months I'll do a rehearsal with my backup bass to make sure that I can still play all the songs on it, and I haven't written anything new that can't be done on both basses.

Of course! You posted a stupid statement. Did you not expect to be taken to task for it?

Unless they are playing music that is only going to appeal to a very minority audience they must be doing something wrong. Maybe "headlining" before they have grown an audience that will support it. IMO until you have at least one album out that is selling and/or streaming well your band is not ready to headline a gig. You need to have 40-45 minutes of music that at least half the audience is going to be familiar with. The other thing is are they playing where the audiences are? These days for an unsigned or small-label band London is just another city with nothing that makes it any more or less special than any other city. Go where your audience is or at least where there are promotors for your genre. Otherwise you will end up playing the same few places to the same few people and run the possibility of outstaying your welcome.

It's a complete myth that originals bands' gigs are poorly attended. Over the past 25 years the originals bands I have been in have had no problem attracting audiences. And if they are it's down to the bands not being sufficiently entertaining musically or visually, and/or too disorganised or lazy to do the required promotion. And in those cases they only have themselves to blame.

But IME the biggest difference in the approach to getting a playing gigs is whether they are "standards" or music the performers of written themselves. The actual genre is a lot less important than that.

To the OP is this for covers or originals? There is a distinct difference between the ways for both venues and bands operate for each type of music.

It shouldn't make any difference. The whole point of a DI box is that it takes instrument and/or line-level signals and converts them to balanced line for the mixing desk. Whether the DI box is active or passive should make no difference to the impedance it presents to the input signal. IME a good passive DI is slightly more reliable since it doesn't require a power source or phantom power which may not be available, and doesn't cause problems when connected to equipment with non-standard earthing.

Not really, or at least no connections to start with. Our singer got all the gigs in his alter-ego of our manager. He simply contacted loads of similar but better-known bands through Facebook asking for supports and pulled in a couple of favours from local venues as a result of his last band. It paid off quite quickly as our 5th gig was a Psychobilly all-dayer with The Meteors headlining and we found ourselves playing an early evening slot rather than being on first at lunchtime. It also helped that we always put on a show visually and musically. After that the gig offers started coming in steadily from all over the country and we could have been gigging almost every Friday and Saturday night had the money and logistics been right. By contrast the covers band was happy to plod along doing roughly one gig a month at the same handful of local venues.

We've played quite a few places that have what looks like a vocal-only PA and it's always been fine. We're just a bit quieter than we would be normally. Also even it's a vocal only PA there's still at least one foldback wedge, and the one time there was no foldback we simply angled one of the main PA speakers towards us It probably helps that we don't have a drummer as this (and any additional synth parts) are supplied by the computer

My band are hardly a big set up. The typical venue size we play is around 100 capacity. Since we ditched backline completely last year our sound on stage and FoH has been more consistent and better.