BigRedX

Are you going to need to walk any distance with the gig bag on your back?

If so you are going to need to try it out yourself. No matter what anyone else says, what suits some people might not suit yourself depending on your height and build. Loads of people like the Mono bags but my M80 is massively uncomfortable for me to walk any distance with it on, as the bottom of the case slaps against the backs of my legs. It's fine for over one shoulder going from the band transport into the venue, but no use for the 30 minute walk to the rehearsal room, which for me was one of the reasons to have a gig bag rather than a hard case.

I'd also be wary about the "advantages" of lots of pockets space to carry other items. IME they tend to make what is an already heavy gig bag unwieldy.

Whatever you choose, your best bet is to buy on line and then you can return it if it isn't right for you

2 hours ago, warwickhunt said:

 

There is/could be an argument that the sound you are creating is 'your' sound and it is what you want the audience to hear, they have no say in how it should be... good or bad.    

 

I suppose it's a bit like your Helix generated tone that is sculpted by you, to your exacting spec.  The audience don't get to choose how that sounds, indeed you are reliant on the FOH for the final tone and I've seen many PA set ups that are a dog's dinner (hired in pub/club); we've all read that subs need to be placed 'x' distance apart or located next/on top of each other... yet I see more 15" mid/tops mounted on poles above 15" subs 20 feet apart.    However, we digress back to another BC favourite!  LOL

I've played in bands where various members seem to want it sound like the recording on stage, and I have a admit that in the past I was like that too, but now I've realised that so long as I can tell I'm in tune and in time with the rest of the band, that will do me. IMO it's more important to sound good FoH because the audience are the people who are hopefully going to say nice things about the band on social media, buy our merch, and come back and see us play again. If it sounds great on stage too, that's a bonus, but it's the great songs that fire me up for a performance not a perfect on-stage sound. We spend as much time working on the band mix in the rehearsal room as do practicing playing the songs together, so getting a good FoH sound is generally fairly easy. During the sound check I'll go out front and make some suggestions if I think there are obvious problems with the band's overall sound, but in a way I'm lucky in that I play both "bass" and "guitar" parts with my Bass VI and once the "guitar" sounds right the bass will be right too.

1 hour ago, police squad said:

actually that's a really good point

do the venues you play at, charge for using the kit

No it's normally part of the lighting rig and the projector will be hung from the celling with the lights. There might be a charge as part of the venue hire for the person/people running it (PA and lights), but all the gigs we do are through a promotor so they deal with that side. We just turn up and play.

Personally I wouldn't consider using projection of any sort at venues that didn't already have the required kit installed as part of the house system. 

37 minutes ago, warwickhunt said:

Saying all of that, if you put 2 (or more) cabs together and you like what you hear, then that is an absolute result which nobody can argue with because it is what YOU are wanting to achieve/hear.  

But that only works if your rig is a stage prop or just for personal monitoring (with the FoH supplied via the PA).

However, if you rely on your rig to project your bass sound into the whole venue, then what sounds awesome when you are stood next to it may well sound entirely different out in the audience and not necessarily in a good way due to the different dispersal characteristics and the drivers and the cabs they are contained in.

Thanks! It's an Eastwood Hooky Bass VI going through a Line6 Helix with Compression, Chorus and the Roland Jazz Chorus Combo SIM (something that would be completely unsuitable for bass in real life) plus whatever additional studio trickery was applied by our synth player during the mix.

15 hours ago, police squad said:

The click track is on an ipad, some tracks are just a click and have no set length (drummer stops and starts) and some tracks have some keyboard augmentations on them and so are a set track

We only do gigs in venues that supply the PA and light systems, so proper venues but some have smaller stage areas than other

For example we recently played The Horn in St Albans. Fantastic PA and soundman but somewhat cramped on stage. 

Chinnery's in Southend is similar but a bigger stage

 

Thanks for chipping in on this too, it is much appreciated

So for some songs the click is just for setting the tempo and nothing else. Do these songs always have the same structure and length? If not that will lead to synchronisation issues with the video.

If you are only playing places with in-house PA and lights then you'll find that most of the venues that could support video projection will already have some sort of system installed that is appropriate for the size of the venue. You may find that some of the older set-ups will result in people on stage casting shows and obscuring parts of the screen, and you'll have to decide if this is an acceptable compromise for your performance or if at those venues you would be better off with no back projections.

Unless you can find someone to produce all the imagery and videos it's probably going to take several months to implement, so I'd start by asking all the venues that you are playing in the meantime how their projection system works and what inputs are available and what formats they support. That will give you an idea on how to proceed. You could test the water by getting the venues to project your band logo while you play. We have one that is included in our technical rider in various formats, and if it gets lost, our singer has copies on his phone that can be emailed, texted or AirDropped to the lighting engineer while we are setting up.

Here's a couple of shots of my band with our logo projected onto a screen behind us. This first one is from a fairly small venue and as you can see we are obscuring part of the screen and projection:

Of course that's not a problem if you play somewhere big:

What is generating your click and what else does it do?

Backing track? What application runs that?

Have you thought about what visuals you want and how they are going to be produced? Remember that anything you don't produce yourself will be subject to copyright and usage fees.

What sorts of venues are you playing? Ones where you have to supply the PA and lights or ones where that is provided by the venue? IME most venues with in-house PA and lighting systems also have a projector installed, all you have to do is find out what connection facilities they have and include yours as part of your technical rider.

Projection technology has moved on massively from what Franticsmurf is talking about. We supported a band earlier this month who ran video projections with the projector set up on stage just in front of the screen. Here's a photo of the stage set up:

The projector is the grey white box in the middle of the stage and was positioned level with the rack on the left and still filled the screen with video. However, if you have a drum kit that might limit your options on smaller stages. 

How much synchronisation do you want between the band performance and projections?

1 hour ago, Cat Burrito said:

That makes sense. I nearly messaged you as I know you have more experience with backing tracks. It was frustrating but we worked around it. We aimed to research it and come back better informed. That makes sense. My theory (as someone who isn't into tech) was that Nick's iPad is ancient and the desk wasn't reading it. We used my more modern one at the next gig and there was no problem. I'll pass your answer on to Nick from the group as I really don't want that happening again. 

We had exactly this problem when we played Whitby last year at The Brewery. Being the first band on and the last to set up with all three bands using lots of DIs we ended up being routed through channels on the desk that were rarely used. The backing was a bit weedy sounding on stage, no kick drum and all very upper mids, so I stepped off to go and ask the PA engineer, if something could be done, and then realised it sounded even worse FoH. Turns out that the channels it was going through had the bass very aggressively rolled off. As soon as the EQ was reset to flat it sounded much better, and we were able to get a much better sound very quickly after that.

And it's probably just as well you didn't try and get in touch as I was in the middle of setting up for my own gig and generally don't bother with any kind of social media when I'm gigging. I only carry a phone for emergency calls or texts if there is a problem getting to or back from the gig and since this time the venue was 10 minutes walk from where we were staying and everyone I might want to contact was in the audience, I didn't even bother bringing it to the gig!

Next Hurtsfall gig is Carpe Noctum at The Lending Room in Leeds.

We'll be supporting Faces Of Sarah.

Tickets £9.05 (including booking fee)

On 25/04/2025 at 21:12, super al said:

One of our guitarists is in a covers band which means we're fighting against the fact that he's booked up months in advance (after a lil' pushback he has now asked them not to book so many gigs).

There's not many opportunities for an originals band in Salisbury especially when the main pub for bands won't even return your calls, emails, messages.

We're a bit lazy 😂, we should be trying Southampton, Winchester, Bournemouth and Swindon but we're in our 50s and too old for this lark!

It's great fun though, I love it 😃 

1. In the Terrortones we had a guitarist who thought he could be in multiple bands including covers band. We simply booked so many gigs in advance that he wasn't available to play for anyone other than us.

2. So go to the venue in person early on a gig night and speak to the person who puts on bands. Alternatively have a look at who's playing there in the next few months and get in touch with the bands or the promotor asking them for a support. My band gets a lot of gigs like that.

3. Yes you should. We'll play anywhere within a 3 hour drive of Nottingham (and yes it does help to be centrally located) and we'll get further if either the promotor can put us up or pay enough for us to book a hotel. I'm in my 60s and will only stop gigging when I am no longer physically capable which I hope is still a long, long time away.

New single out now from all the usual downloaded and streaming sites

There's also a poptastic remix by Matt Pop:

6 minutes ago, Kev said:

Sincerely hope none of the members crying IP Theft have ever bought a cheap bass copy before  

No. Never. In the days when I couldn't afford much I bought a Burns Sonic Bass because I thought it looked way more interesting than the P and J copies.

A singer with an exceptional voice and range who knows how to connect with the audience.

No guitarist.

Catchy songs and the ability to put on a great performance when we play live:

Late to report but I've been in Whitby for the April Goth Weekend.

We played the Shadow Factory event at The Crafty Cove on Friday night with bright new things Social Youth Cult and local stars Westenra. Sold out gig which wasn't that surprising given the line-up. The Crafty Cove is an interesting venue, being a shop during the day and a night club in the evening. When we arrived to load in they were still putting all the clothing racks away. Sound checks nearly over-ran mostly because Social Youth Cult had been told that backline would be provided and then discovered that what was in the venue wasn't very suitable and neither us or Westenra use any that they could have borrowed. Finally got everything sorted minutes before the doors opened. 

Despite the sound check hiccups Social Youth Cult were even better than when I saw them in October and their sound is veering towards Bauhaus rather than their previous Joy Division heavy influences. It could have been a hard act to follow but I think we managed it. There were some interesting glitches: I managed to hit my bass so hard during the breakdown in "Adore Me" that the wireless transmitter dropped out of the jack socket. Luckily I spotted it before someone trod on it and was able to plug it back in only missing the first bar of the next verse. Our singer forget all the lyrics to the first verse of "Tilting" and the foot switch for the backing was doing some weird things that required manual intervention at the computer. Despite all of that we went down really well and sold an unfeasible amount of T-shirts and CDs including loads of copies of our brand new single "Robert Smith's Eyes".

Obligatory photos:

Next gig is Carpe Noctum on 10th May at The Lending Room in Leeds supporting Faces Of Sarah.

On 25/04/2025 at 10:47, Cat Burrito said:

For some reason we had a virtually non-existent kick drum and barely audible count ins, coupled with ear bleedingly loud keyboard washes!

I suspect your backing had been put through a rarely used channel on a digital desk which had previous been used for something that needed to be aggressively band-passed. We've encountered this a few times, and re-setting the EQ on the channel in question to flat has always sorted it out.

IME unless it's for noodling at home only, or you have the budget for something expensive with a very large body you are going to have to use it with amplification. This brings with it all the issues of handling noise and depending on the volume required possibly also feedback. Also a lot of the less expensive "acoustic" basses don't sound that great when amplified. I agree that image could be an important factor here, but on the few occasions that I have played "acoustic" gigs I've just used a decent short-scale solid body bass with the treble rolled off and it sounded fine. If image was more important I'd look for a cheap hollow-body with magnetic pickups.

I think that much of the problem with modern electronics with surface mount components is that while they can in theory be repaired at a component level, this is no longer possible for your typical hobbyist with some electrical knowledge and a soldering iron.

We've just had to turn down two potentially very good gigs in May and July due to prior commitments which is a pity.

However we do have following now confirmed:

25th April: Whitby Goth Weekend, The Cove, Whitby

10th May: Carpe Noctum, The Lending Room, Leeds

24th May: Re:Vamped Weekend, 1 In 12 Club, Bradford

25th May: Dot To Dot Festival, The Chapel, Nottingham

12th July: Goths On A Field, Bridge Farm, Ellesmere

14th August: Twisted Firestarter (Infest Warm Up), Rebellion, Manchester

And several more lined up between now and the end of August that I'm not allowed to announce yet.

We also have our next single out on Friday 25th April on all streaming and download platforms and as a limited edition CD that can be bought at our gigs.

7 hours ago, tauzero said:

The body looks very Strat too, but without the pickup cutouts. That was what was puzzling me.

The neck and bridge/tailpiece are almost certainly from a Kay/Top Twenty bass. I wonder if the body is off something like a Futurama where pickups were part of the scratch plate and didn't need routing into the body? 

16 hours ago, super al said:

The joys of being in a band that plays originals is you get the weekends off as well as the rest of the week!

I don't get this. I play originals and my band could be out almost every weekend if we took everything that was offered and our synth player didn't have family commitments. As it is we have at least two gigs a month for the next 4 months. In between gigs we are writing and rehearsing new songs or recording for our album.

I use it on one song. It occurs in a section of minimal instrumentation where the bass is doing the main part and it took at lot of tweaking in the rehearsal room to get the right balance of all the parameters. I wouldn't fancy doing it without a programmable multi-effects unit as the distortion setting are completely different to the ones I use without the reverb.

12 hours ago, Geek99 said:

I have a clone and I like the bass but I’m not over fond of the bright sound. 

Can you not make it less bright using the tone controls on your amp?

Basically ever since electronic devices stopped being made solely with discrete components and moved over to ICs everything has the potential to become obsolete, and even then you're not safe. These days there are a limited number of valve manufacturers and many of them are in countries we probably shouldn't be doing business with. There's also the problem of improved quality of modern components which may now be too good to be suitable replacements in vintage gear to relies on the fact that it was built with components from the 60s and 70s that have 10-15% tolerance and a modern <5% tolerance component will make it sound different. And of course when that component fails it is no longer possible to find out other than by trial and error what the actual value was.

As has been said already don't buy equipment that doesn't do what you want out of the box on the promise of some future update that may never materialise. I've done this once and won't do it again. A very expensive digital mixer that had several dedicated front panel controls that did nothing other than bring up a message saying that their function would be implemented at a future date. That didn't happen. However those functions that were there when I bought it carried on working for over 20 years and I can't complain about that.

I've been working with digital music equipment for over 45 years now and have plenty of time to get used to the fact that once one of these devices stops working it will either be impossible or too expensive and take too long to fix. I have now moved most of my high-tech gear into my computer and only buy from one manufacturer. I have no plug-in incompatibilities because apart from two I only use those that come with my DAW (Logic) and while they are convenient neither are essential.