mattpbass

Welcome Chris, I live in Derby, gigging and teaching bass. I worked in East Mill in Belper for years (when it was offices rather than a mill, I’m not that old!)!

Agreed, I hate the furry feel of Pau Ferro, I would never choose it over rosewood or maple.

It has be tied to an individual unless the band is its own legal entity (ie a limited company etc). But it can be a business account that is “person name trading as band name”.

In the last 3/4 years. I’ve opened a couple of accounts with different app-based banks, it couldn’t have been simpler or more streamlined.

Digital/online/app-based/mobile/challenger banks, I don’t think anyone has settled on exactly which of these. You do obviously still have to go through an ID process though, although it’s fairly easy, I think I opened the band account with my driving licence and a video statement.

If you don’t want it going through your personal account, set up a separate account for the band with someone like Starling and make all payments in/out of that. 10 minute job to get one up and running.

Precisely what my pub band does, a couple of us are full time musicians, and the others have higher earning jobs, so we don’t split band income equally. It kind of has to be like that otherwise I could’t commit to tying up dates where I could be earning way more gigging with the function band. But does rely on being good mates / trusting each other to make that work.

Yeah I think you find yourself in a tricky middle ground; standard pub rock covers you can probably find someone easily enough, but anything else means more prep work/time for the dep which then pushes the financial demands higher. Which is much the same as my “for fun” band, our set is too niche to have someone just walk in and play it, and we are too cheap to be able to pay someone for the time to learn it! 😅

There’s no harm in trying! I suppose another question is even if the budget is there can you actually find a good dep (or two!) any easier than you can find a good permanent guitarist?

I get the situation and economics of it, I’m just saying I think you’ll find it difficult. I have a foot in both worlds, I’m in a busy professional function band, and a pub band with old mates. For the function band, getting good deps is no issue because the budget is there, for the pub band unavailability means a cancelled gig.

Deps are common place in the function world but you’re looking at players used to individual fees of £200-300 (or more). I don’t know any decent players who would look at a 30 song set for £80 as a one-off, I certainly wouldn’t. But for a friend where there is potential for repeat local work etc you might have a chance of attracting someone.

It’s certainly true that a valve amp of a quoted wattage will sound significantly louder than the equivalent solid state amp of the same quoted wattage.

I worked as a Fender dealer for a time, Burgundy Mist and Penny are not very similar at all other than both being metallic colours. As others have said Penny is a copper colour.

https://aguilaramp.com/blogs/news/introducing-the-new-tone-hammer-and-ag-series-amplifiers I suppose it sort of alludes to IRs, without actually mentioning them. 😅