jrixn1

Some good advice above. I would add: learn to play double bass (if you don’t already) as it will open up a lot of opportunities.

You have to register as a sole trader if you earn more than £1000 per year, before deductible expenses. Eg a £60 pub gig every three weeks. https://www.gov.uk/set-up-sole-trader

You've confused people here, and perhaps the engineer too, with your unconventional setup. Instead, use a single DI box in the usual fashion to send to FOH. Request a monitor mix containing no bass. Then mix that with the bass from the DI box's 'thru' output yourself, using a two-channel headphone amp e.g. https://www.thomann.de/gb/millenium_hpa_in_ear.htm Put your EQ pedal between the DI box and the headphone amp.

Yes, yes, and yes. This is usually the point where I recommend an RCF 732-A... However... a powered speaker isn't the lightest option. If the lowest weight is the priority, look at Barefaced cabs, GR Bass cabs and combos, and the latest Markbass MB58R combos. (Although none of them is cheap.) A powered speaker also isn't the simplest option. You'll need at least a preamp pedal, and so then you'll probably need a power supply - so now you've got a small pedalboard setup which is an additional thing to be brought and plugged in at each gig. How loud do you need to be at your gigs - what style of music and what type of venues? I think you double on upright, if I recall from your recent posts - do you need separate EQ channels or can you get away with sharing one channel? If minimum weight and maximum simplicity were my criteria (and I didn't want to spend over £1000), the MarkBass MB58R P is only 10.5kg, and around £695. Plug straight in with a cable and that's it - pretty simple. There is no powered speaker at that weight of comparable quality and volume that I know of.

I've had Dunlops and Adagio flats go dull after a couple of years (which is, hmm, I guess... 100 hours of playing?). But I also have some 10-year-old La Bella DTF which are going just fine. Ed Friedland mentions in one of his videos that he has some La Bella from the 1980s or whatever - but then again he also seems to have dozens or hundreds of basses, so I don't know how much playtime those strings have had. I'm assuming it's playing, and not just existing, which would dull them.

GR Bass make active cabs; e.g. here's their 2x10: https://www.grbass.com/portfolio/at-210v-350-800-act/ 10kg is crazy! £1,325 though for the 800W version, and not in stock in the UK as far as I can see.

Barefaced did have such a product: https://barefacedaudio.com/products/fr800, which was a Big Baby 2 with a built-in 800W power amp. It was discontinued in 2019. Very expensive for what you got vs if you'd gone for RCF or QSC (even more so if £1,279 was the 2019 price).

If you mean they are not marketed specifically towards bassists - then I agree. Bassists are a very tiny percentage of their target market. Otherwise, there is nothing functional or feature-wise about powered speakers which means a bassist can't or shouldn't be using them. If anything, with DSP for crossover and speaker protection, they are more featured. Many including me have moved to powered speakers and sold our traditional bass amps and cabs. A bass-specific company would have an uphill battle against a PA company since the latter have decades more experience and an absolutely massive economy of scale advantage in terms of research and production.

I've had one with my double bass with piezo pickup. It is well-built and sounds good, which is the main thing. Personally, I didn't like the feel of the knobs, and I had no use for the boost footswitch, compressor, or brilliance control. Additionally, since I was doubling, I already had a tuner. So for me it wasn't a match, as it's quite large and expensive but I had no need for half of its features.

I've had a previous Headway model, the EDB-1. It's more of a blender e.g. when you have a single instrument which has both a piezo and a mic. It is less useful for switching between two separate instruments, as there is no footswitch. It's large and sort of awkwardly shaped - it won't fit on a small pedal board due to how long it is. The EBS layout is a lot simpler (i.e. better): top row for channel #1, bottow rom for channel #2 - the Headway should have 'ch.1 gain' where 'master' is, and 'ch.2 gain' where 'Mute' is. I find a variable HPF essential for preventing rumbly feedback when loudly amplifying a double bass - the Headway doesn't have one. Design-wise, its dotted-line signal paths and 'Dymo' aesthetic makes it look too much like an engineering project 🤓 BTW have a look at the EBS MicroBass 3, if you haven't already. (I'm not sponsored by EBS, honest!)

It has some upright-specific features, but that doesn't mean you couldn't use it with other instruments. EBS explain it better than I could: https://ebssweden.com/content2/effects/ebs-stanley-clarke-signature-acoustic-preamp/

Modularity? It's a lot easier to swap out an external preamp than a built-in one.

@Woodinblack @Kiwi Is that functionality working? I am getting adverts when logged in as a supporting member: My understanding is that I shouldn't be seeing adverts (it says paying a subscription would "remove all advertising" )

Yes, absolutely this. I have a Stanley Clarke preamp pedal - one channel for bass guitar, one for upright. I have a light overdrive pedal in front of the bass guitar channel. The Stanley Clarke goes straight into a powered speaker, and that's it. Compact, easy switching between instruments, HPFs, additional routing for taking a monitor feed and sending DI to a PA system if necessary.

It's a good, modular concept: the instrument and pedals provide the tone; the power amp and speaker have just the one job - to amplify it transparently. However, a GR Bass Pure 800 is, what, £680 - if you can find one in stock anywhere. A Big Baby 3 is £1,149, with a three-month lead time. That's £1,829. Instead, look into powered speakers (some people call them 'FRFR', so use that as a search term). An RCF 732-A is about £750 and you can get it on next-day delivery from any number of shops. The internal 700W RMS power amp benefits from DSP which handles crossover, phase control, and speaker protection. I used mine with various preamp pedals with no problem - just plug them in with a normal jack cable. The powered speaker has options for input level (mic or line); line level is fine - be careful with mic level as it will very loud. Other RCF powered speaker models to look into: HD 32-A, 932-A, 745-A. And from other manufacturers you have the QSC K12.2 and Yamaha DXR12/DXR15. Since moving to powered speakers I've had the best and most consistent sound ever - definitely never going back to a traditional bass amp.

Not Japanese, but mentioning as an option the Fender Nate Mendel which has the TV logo and is lightly roadworn. I've had one in the past and currently have a (non-US-pickups) CIJ PB62 - the Nate was great but I prefer the PB62.

One from today's news: "He allegedly punched William Thomas, a bass, because he left the podium in the wrong direction" 😬

I'm really happy with my Aquila Gold Springs Synthetic G+D & whatever their recommended matching A+E are called (NB not real gut). They come from Italy and FWIW I paid about £200 including import duty etc. I think other posters will have more experience and better recommendations than me though. If you go to jam sessions (which I highly recommend anyway for getting better at walking), you can ask to use the house bassist's bass - a good way to try out other types of bass, strings, and setup.

Yep, I have Portwest gloves. We have vans with rolling flight cases etc and the gloves prevent nips and splinters. Also just keeps your hands cleaner when coiling PA cables which have been on dirty floors and/or stood on all night.

I'm going to guess that the bass came with generic steel strings and a medium string height? Lower string height isn't necessarily better - it depends what works best for your particular bass, technique, tonal aspirations, and string choice. Spirocores with a lower string height is likely the most popular choice for jazz musicians; but some people like me prefer gut substitute (or real gut) with a higher string height for the tone and easier playability; or a combination, or something else. There is not just the one way to go. So as long as the setup currently isn't so bad that the instrument is holding you back, I would leave everything as it is, and concentrate on learning to walk. Then revisit this topic after some time (more than a month). Not sure about this. I've had my current modestly-priced hybrid Chinese bass for 10 years, and if the tone has improved it's because I've got better at playing it rather than the bass itself ageing like a fine wine.

Yes, it's a beautiful line! However I think I've distracted things by mentioning the leading line - which was really just an aside and not the point I was trying to make, which was that a chord with the 3rd in the bass is likely to sound good, not bad. Perhaps here is a better example, which isn't part of a leading line and is your bog-standard ii V I (there's your cycle of fifths). James Jamerson on Reach Out I'll Be There: In the third bar, he delays the root for a bar with the first inversion - sounds amazing. But JoeEvans reckons this is a clash, which is a part of his post I don't understand.

Yep absolutely - I'm just trying to understand what he's saying about an E note being a clash on a C chord.