rushbo

I eat as little as possible prior to a gig, following an incident at an all you can eat Mexican restaurant, some time in the early nineties. My bandmates availed themselves of the tasty treats on offer with great gusto, meaning that they were all bloated, tired and borderline nauseous for the show. The van ride home was no picnic, either... Post gig curries were responsible for there being a bit more Rushbo than I'd have liked, and having lost a chunk of weight, I'm now a bit more conscious about what I eat, especially late at night My post gig "feast" might be a bowl of cereal or, if I'm feeling saucy, cheese on toast. All accompanied by a mug of tea and some terrible TV.

I'm generally not a fan of headless basses, but that looks lush.

Truth x

That BG250 was a steal! I got one with a footswitch for £150 and I thought I'd made out like a bandit... If you're happy to look beyond the branding of almost any piece of musical equipment, there are bargains to be had. As someone who regularly gigs with what some would consider to be "low end" gear, I wholeheartedly approve. Good work fella!

The smell of pie and chips wafting gently from the backline would be a massive distraction. I love pie. And chips.

For a couple of the bands I play with, it's Converse all the way. For the Roxy Music tribute, its either Chelsea boots or Cuban heels. I'm pushing 60, so the day may soon be upon me where I have to wear something more... orthopaedic, shall we say. When that dreadful day arrives, I'll need to make some serious decisions about performing live. Things I have learned from gigging: At least one member of the band must bring a roll of gaffa (black), a set of screwdrivers, a hammer and a Stanley knife to every gig. Mostly for repairs. Sometimes for self defence. Bring a spare. The thing you never bring a spare of, will eventually fail at the highest profile gig you will ever play. Make sure everyone is using THE SAME SETLIST. Think you play better when you've had a few beers? No you don't. If a lead can be gaffa taped to something, then gaffa tape it to something. I speak from experience. The minute you put a drink on stage, someone will kick it over. At a gig, at least one of your carefully programmed effects will sound nothing like it's ever sounded before. In a bad way. There are others, but I've made myself feel sad writing that list out.

That is an astonishing likeness.

On my rare forays up the dusty end of my bolt-on neck, I can't say I've ever been hindered by the join. Hindered by unfamiliarity with the terrain perhaps, but never the build of the instrument. My preference would always be for a bolt on, and that's not just because I'm a Precision bass fanboy. I enjoy tinkering with basses and having the ability to swap bits around is a real boon. And unlike everyone else on here, I have bust a neck beyond repair. After a lot of swearing and a browse through the pages of eBay I was able to give the bass a new lease of life with a new neck fairly easily. I've had some lovely basses with set necks, including a gorgeous Spector 5 string, and I can't say that made any difference to how I played it. Would I buy an instrument with a set neck today? Yep. If I liked the instrument, I'd buy it regardless of how the long pointy thing is connected to the funny looking, jigsaw piece shaped thing. However, I have to admit that a nicely done neck to body join is a very sexy thing indeed. Find an instrument you love to play and play it. My main bass is a combination of an Indonesian Squier P/J body with a left handed, Mexi Fender neck. Every time I see it, I find it incredibly difficult to not pick it up and have a twang on it. Resale value: £0.00. Sh!ts I could give: 0.

My main gigging bass is a bitsa PJ, with a Squier body and an inverted Mexican Jazz bass neck. The pups are Entwistles- my favourites. What really works on this bass is that I've fitted a three way pick up selector switch, so I can go from 70s thump to 80s twang really quickly. I'd recommend that mod to anyone who is having doubts about the PJ configuration.

That sounds like a good deal... I love cheap basses. I've had a few and honourable mentions go to Harley Benton and Retrovibe. If I had £400 to spend on a budget bass, I be looking for a secondhand Indonesian Squier P/J. I've had two or three of these and the quality is great - equally as good as a Mexi Fender, in my experience. They used to go for around £100-£120, but people have got wise to how great they are, but they are still incredible value. Solidly made, versatile basses - that goes for the Indo Squier Jazz and Precision basses, too. Get one of those and a secondhand Zoom B3 and you'll still have change for a couple of good quality leads and a gig bag.

A rhythm and blues band I was in a few years back, played lots of shows with Dr Feelgood, including one at the Robin II in Bilston. About 30 minutes before we were due to start our set, I was putting our merch stand together. As we couldnt put our backdrop on the stage, I thought it would be a great idea to have it behind the merch table. So, I nimbly jumped on a bar stool (in my cuban heels) to pin the backdrop to the wall and almost immediately, not-so-nimbly, fell off onto my right arm. It hurt, but I could still move it. "This is a good sign" I thought. We got through our set, but as I was breaking my rig down, my arm really started to hurt. I drove (!) home and thought about going to A&E, then in typical dumbass man style, I decided that a couple of paracetamol and a good night's sleep would sort it. Nope. I took myself off to A&E bright and early the next morning. Diagnosis: fractured right arm. I was in plaster for a week, which just happened to coincide with two other gigs and my week off from work. Oh what fun. Usually when I tell this story, I try to impress people with the line "Did I ever tell you about the time I played a gig with a broken arm..?"

Another lengthy story - this time about my stint in a proper, leather trouser wearin', rockin' band. It was a Tuesday night and probably drizzling outside. Not that we would have known as our lock-up was untroubled by natural light…or ventilation. But we liked it that way. We were halfway through one of our thinly veiled excuses for a wah-wah freakout, when in runs the owner of the lock up in a state of high excitement. He told us that a band had pulled out of a gig at a local venue that very night, and that there was a big rock audience there just waiting to be entertained. Excited by the opportunity to play to real people, we loaded our gear into the back of the van and set off. We pulled into the venues' car park which was FULL of expensive and opulently chromed motorbikes. While we unloaded the van, we noticed that no one seemed to be having a lot of fun – in fact there was a really sombre air in the place. Wait a minute…why are all these guys wearing black armbands? Yep. It was a wake. We’d been tricked into playing a bikers wake. No wonder the other band had pulled out. Nervously, we set up the gear. Occasionally a glass smashed and voices were raised. This was not going to be a good night for anyone, especially us. I dutifully set up my trusty bass, taking care to put it into dropped D tuning for our first, epic number. Satisfied, I left the stage and hid in the toilet for about 20 minutes. It was in there that I heard the sound of music…not ‘Led Zeppelin IV’ which had been playing on a loop since our arrival, but a Bluesy jam. I left the safety of the urinal, only to find three bikers had ‘borrowed’ our gear and were jamming away in the key of A. All apart from the guy on the bass – sorry, MY bass, who was looking bemused. I jumped on stage and told him the Bass was in a weird tuning and maybe I should carry on from here. I strapped it on and ploughed through ten minutes of aimless twelve bar noodling. After that, we had a few minutes before showtime, so I raced to the bar to get something to steady my nerves. It was there I met the erstwhile Bassist who told me the back story to the gig. Apparently, the wake was for a biker in a local chapter who had come off his bike in ‘dubious circumstances’. ‘See them?’ he pointed at a group in the corner. ‘They reckon he was killed by them’. He pointed to an equally dour looking bunch. ‘But they…’ he pointed to a third group ‘reckon it was them’. He pointed to a fourth. ‘So why aren’t they beating each other up?’ I asked, nervously. ‘Truce’ he replied. ‘Until midnight tonight’. I checked my watch. 10.50pm. Yikes. I quickly shared this information with my bandmates and we ran on stage to get this over with. We waited patiently for ‘Stairway To Heaven’ to finish as we thought we’d be beaten up if we interrupted that. Finally, we caught our breath and lurched into song number one. And so it began…. The first song had a great ‘car crash’ ending where we all played the final chord over and over, finishing off with a highly choreographed KA-BLAMM! accompanied by a heroic, Iggy-esque leap into the air. One person clapped. It was the bloke on the sound desk. We raced through an hours worth of material in 50 minutes. It was at this gig we realised that almost all of our songs had the words ‘Death’, ‘Ghost’ or ‘Murder’ in the lyrics, which were hastily changed on the fly by our quick thinking and terrified lead vocalist. After a few songs, even the sound guy stopped clapping and the only noises we heard between songs were the gritting of teeth, glasses breaking and the odd scuffle…and the occasional muted sob from our drummer. At 11.45, we finished. As the last chord rang around the room, we started yanking out jack leads and tossing equipment into the back of the van. As we were frenziedly throwing stuff off the stage, a large biker collared our drummer. He gesticulated sharply to the aged piano to the right of the stage. ‘Ay mate, d’yow play piano?’ Relieved that it wasn’t a death threat, he smiled and shook his head. ‘Y’ow can’t play the f*ckin’ drums either’ came the less than friendly retort. I have to admit that even under the shadow of doom, that made me laugh…under my breath, of course. By 11.58, we were all in the van, bloodied but unbowed and we raced out of the car park. It was a while before anyone could speak, so the usual post gig autopsy would have to wait until another, less stressful night. About two miles down the road, we passed a fleet of Police cars racing in the opposite direction, blue lights flashing. I checked my watch. The time was 12.04.

How true. In the mid nineties, I was a member of Britain's third most popular pagan rock band (stop sniggering...) and we played a cute little festival on a farm in Bridlington. All the power came via a single extension cord which had to be plugged into a barn owned by a neighbouring farmer who had wisely buggered off for the day. We had a power breaker, but as the barn was going to be locked once we'd plugged in, if the device tripped, we'd have no electricity. And just to make life interesting, it had been raining and although we were playing in a "covered" outhouse, there were holes in the roof large enough to land a helicopter through. So, everything was wet, or at the very least, moist. The sensible option would have been to crank out the acoustic guitars. We didn't. By a miracle, no one died, but two members of the band had to sleep in the van as their tent (and pretty much everything they had bought with them) was absolutely soaked/ruined. Top gig tho'.

Sorry, this is a bit of a long one, but it is eventful... It’s 1990 and my Birmingham based indie band thought it would be a great idea to travel up to Bolton for a gig, on a Thursday night in January. When we set off, a few non-threatening flakes of snow pitter-pattered on the windscreen, but spirits were high. We got to the venue, climbed the stairs (of course) to the stage area and got busy setting up. Eventually, we caught sight of the landlord of the pub- a pimpled youth who looked too young to get served in a bar let alone run one. He was accompanied by an elderly lady we took to be his mother and a barmaid in her early twenties. After a while, Andy, our lead singer/guitarist went up to the baby-faced barman and asked where the PA was. Babyface pointed to two speakers, suspended from the ceiling. ‘Those are speakers’ said Andy, confused… Babyface was adamant that we should have bought a PA amp and stomped off to try and find us something ‘from out the back’. After about twenty minutes, he emerged with a desk mounted microphone about the size of a telephone directory with a curved horn protruding from it…the kind of thing a 1920s taxi controller would use. When we pointed out that Andy would have to lie on the floor and sing with one finger on the ‘talk’ button, Babyface seemed to think this was a viable option. After a while he came back with the kind of microphone that came free with a 1970s music centre. The lead was about five feet long and held together with sticky tape. To make it work, it had to be plugged into the spare input on Andy’s guitar amp which gave the vocals a certain ‘Stephen Hawking’ timbre. We also had to gaffa tape it to a cymbal stand. It was at this point, I decided to drink heavily… We struggled through our hour long set, said ‘Thank you Bolton and goodnight’ and I trotted off to see Babyface for our fee. ‘You ain’t finished. Play for another half hour or ya dunt get paid’ came the reply. I relayed this information to my colleagues and unsurprisingly it was greeted with less than joy. After a brief discussion, we decided that rather than repeat numbers we had already played, we would play the Velvet Undergrounds’ ‘Sweet Jane’ for 30 minutes exactly. I decided I needed something to make this ordeal slightly more palatable and marched to the bar and ordered two large whiskeys which I downed in about 20 seconds. Now, I was ready. Andy decided he was just going to sing and left his guitar on the stand and improvised often profane variations on one of Lou Reeds’ finest works, whilst glaring at Babyface, who seemed oblivious to it all. By now, I was steaming drunk and barely capable of playing the incredibly simple bass line. Occasionally, I would stop to steady myself on the drumkit or reach forward and steal the drinks from the table of two nice young girls, who looked at me like I was a basket case. Our drummer and guitarist diligently plugged away with murder in their eyes. Half way through the song and feeling slightly unwell, I decided I needed a rest and found a suitable place for a lie down…a ‘bench’ about 18” wide. Perfect! I gingerly manoeuvred myself into a horizontal position and continued to plunk away whilst grinning inanely and looking at the ceiling. Something felt wrong…and then it occurred to me that I was lying on the railing at the top of the staircase and to my immediate right was a thirty-foot drop to the ground floor. With all the elegance I could muster, I got back into an upright position and after EXACTLY 30 minutes, in the middle of a chorus, Andy yelled ‘STOP!’ and walked straight over to the bar for the fee. But Babyface was nowhere to be seen. Andy asked the barmaid where he was, and she opened the door to the stockroom…there was Babyface in the middle of a passionate and noisy clinch with the woman we took to be his mother. It was at that moment I decided I needed another drink. Whilst at the bar, I was slapped hard on the back by a drooling drunk – obviously feeling I was a kindred spirit – and with his face about an inch from mine he yelled that we were ‘the best thing he’d seen since Hendrix!’ Given that he looked about 30, he was either a precocious gig-goer or, more likely, King of the B*llsh*tters. Anyway, he bought me a drink and then fell down most of the stairs. The journey back was hell. At one point, three of the lads decided they needed a toilet break. Rather than pull into a service station, Andy immediately wrenched the van to the side of the road and flung open the doors. By now, the light scattering of snowflakes had turned into a blizzard and we were ankle deep in white slush. On leaving the van, the three intrepid travellers had to go down a fairly modest incline to get to the nearest tree to relieve themselves against. All well and good on the way down, but due to the weather conditions and the inebriated state they found themselves in, no one could get back to the van. They would get halfway up and then slip down like contestants on some unholy episode of ‘Total Wipeout’. I was alerted to their plight by the screams and profanities which shattered the peaceful night air. I fell out of the van to see what the commotion was, to be greeted by the sight of three soaking, mudsplattered figures yelling at me for assistance. I am not proud of this, BassChat, but I laughed so much at their condition, I was completely incapable of reaching down and pulling them up. Eventually, they scrambled back to the van and one of them punched me. Mercifully, I was the first to be dropped off at home. So, at six thirty in the morning – half an hour before I had to get up to go to work – I extracted myself woozily from the van, steadied myself against a rather lovely Oak tree on the traffic island in the middle of my street and puked over my Chelsea boots. Full of self loathing and feeling like I had moments to live, I brought my gaze upwards from my ruined footwear to be greeted by the faces of the postman, the milkman and my next door neighbour, just arriving home from the nightshift. That’s showbiz.

A close friend of mine (cough, splutter) once did exactly that. £100 later, I have it on very good authority that he never wound the truss rod like a m*****f****r ever again. Now every time he gingerly inserts his Allen key into the appropriate slot, I - sorry - "he" holds his breath a little bit and pulls a face.

Yep - I'm happy to do the basic stuff. I've replaced a fret or two, swapped pickups and a few other more "serious" bits and pieces, too. My basses are far from "boutique," so I'm happy to wade in, knowing I'm not going to slash thousands off the kids' inheritance if I put a dink or a scratch on one of them. I think it's more to do with having the confidence to do it, than having the skill.

In the days when I used multiple pedals, my annoyance with my set-up was driven by my overwhelming desire to fiddle with stuff. I was never satisfied with the functionality of my board, which even at the height of my madness, was never more than 8 or 9 stompboxes nailed to a plank. I was frustrated with the lack of uniformity, which meant that every time I did attempt to find the "perfect" combination and signal path, I had to prepare myself for a long and dreary game of techno-Tetris, which I never seemed to win. I love the idea of having a board full of weird and wonderful novelty boxes, but in practice, it was detrimental to my mental health. And my bank balance. I now use a modified Zoom B3* which ticks all the boxes that I need to be ticked. I can tweak it on the fly if I want to. But I've never wanted or needed to. And the fact that I can't shuffle gizmos about on a daily basis is incredibly liberating. Your Mileage May Vary as they say on the internet. Sadly, my DIY patch changing pedal seems to contravene a lot of rules and regulations outlined in this thread. Do I have to pay a fine? * And a Behringer BDI21. Sorry.

A few years ago, I was putting up the bands backdrop prior to a show, while perched precariously on a bar stool in my Cuban heels. Inevitably, I fell off, fracturing a bone in my right arm. Thanks to adrenaline and stupidity, I managed to get through the gig, but I spent the next week in a cast. Rock and Roll?

These are great basses. I've had one for about 10 years and it still gets gigged. Of course, I had to tinker with it and I pulled out the active stuff (and sold it to a lovely chap on this very forum) and replaced it with a pair of passive Entwistle pickups and it sounds gorgeous. The neck is lovely - somewhere between a P and a J. They only lasted about 2-3 years in production, which is a shame. They don't go for much money currently, so someone might get a bargain.

I had to google "kimble gun." Now I want one. Thanks, Bunion.

I bought one of these from Thomann, a couple of years back: Pop your combo on this and hey presto! - it's off the floor, and the noise it makes is closer to your ears, so you can actually hear it, without having to crank the volume up to Lemmyesque levels. It's perfect for those gigs where it's impractical to bring another cab to stick underneath your amp and has made a huge difference to my onstage volume. Because I'm a classy chap, I bought a couple of metres of cheap black fabric to cover the legs as although the unit is incredibly sturdy (the spec says it'll cope with 136 kg and I don't doubt that for a moment), it does look a little like you're balancing your priceless Mesa Boogie combo on your moms old coffee table, otherwise.