uk_lefty

Auditioning a singer turns out to be harder than you think... We've still not done it. Undeterred we will continue with the guitarists friend providing vocals for now while we get the songs tight. We had a vote on the rest of the songs to learn, each band member given a list of 80 songs and a scale of 1-5 to score the songs. 1 = I'd rather quit than play this; 5 = we absolutely MUST do this. There was some interesting patterns in the data, but it has given us a solid top 10 to work through next. Practice tonight. Can't wait

This is quite long... Basically, these are really good if you're a beginner in the world of IEM. Just in case anyone is wondering what these are like... A few weeks back Thomann were doing a deal on IEM kits. Not huge discounts but enough to tempt me into it. I have said in the past that I wouldn't go IEM, I felt I would feel disconnected, not be able to hear the audience feedback, we'd have nobody to check if FOH sound was any good... Well, curiosity got the better of me. I bought some Sure SE215 earphones for £85 and the T-Bone IEM 75 for £125. These were the special offer prices and the exchange rates are the time. Thomann threw in some cleaning kit for the earphones, I also didn't realise that the T-Bone system came with its own earphones. I tried the earphones at home, I've heard so much about custom molds, number of drivers... These just sounded bl00dy good plugged into my multi-fx. They're comfortable, with memory foam squishy bits to stick in your ear hole and moulded plastic to sit snug within the ear. Cannot fault them. I tested them out on a recent gig where we had a pro sound engineer at the venue and a big stage. I don't have a wireless for the bass anymore so just a long lead, but I could wander around freely. The T-Bone is dead easy to set up, I just put it on top of my amp so it had good lone of sight to my receiver. The receiver is a nice little unit that clips to your belt or guitar strap, takes two AA batteries that had no problem in a 2hr gig. I didn't get to test the range over more than five metres but it was fine for that. Sound quality... What I noticed was that by using this set up I still got enough ambient noise through that I could hear the audience and didn't feel disconnected. In my ears I needed to turn the volume up to a sweet spot where I got all the instruments through the earphones, I started off dead low and turned up slowly, initially thinking I had one of the guitars missing from the mic but I just needed to get to the right spot. Through the gig I had the vocals absolutely crystal clear and I wasn't straining to hear lead guitar or backing vox as I sometimes do with monitor mixes. I was able to have my bass amp a lot lower on stage volume than usual too. After the gig my head felt so much clearer than when I play with a monitor mix and custom earplugs. It felt like a real game changer. I played the next week at a gig without IEMs just to feel the difference and for this weekend both gigs will go through IEMs. I'm pretty sure that the T-Bone and Sure set up is akin to playing a Harley Benton bass through a Fender Rumble 15. It's great for its price point, very usable, but more expensive kit will bring out more nuance. Right now, I don't need that nuance, I'm just enjoying what I've got! Transportation-wise I just received a £20 flight case off Amazon that I've been able to get the set up into very snug.

Still looking... 346 views but no replies

This sounds like something I should do. Would save me a lot of cash in the long run!

Third session with the drummer and guitarist, second with our multi instrumentalist sax/ keys player. It's coming together nicely, of course song endings where the originals have fade outs and tricky bridge sections are a bit ragged but the core foundations of all the songs on the list are there. Meeting up every second week feels good for learning songs thoroughly and at our own pace. Having a live sax player in the room doing "the heat is on", "Maneater" and "careless whisper" is just bliss. Singer options are drying up, we really only have one so we are putting a lot of hope into this one guy... Having said that, the guitarist's girlfriend has sung at the last two sessions. She's never sang with a band before or through a mic and though she's sometimes a bit flat, etc. she is better than a lot of cover band singers I hear. So we always have her on hand! We are going to book a gig in for early January to put fire under our feet to get sorted with a solid set list and get tighter as a unit. There's a venue we know well, we will offer to do it for free on a random night so it's kind of a soft launch/ pressurised rehearsal.

Yeah I had the Hohner quite a few years back... I am hoping for an Aria SB to appear for the right price or even an old headless Status

Hi, the one for sale is mine. Depending on whereabouts you're located you're welcome to have a go on it before committing (or not) to buying

There isn't a "wow" emoji.... That is special!

Yeah, it's a fine looking bass but that's brand new Status money so.........

I know this is not the wanted section but being left-handed is a bit niche so... I've started up an 80s band, but this time it's going to last! So, I'm on the lookout for an 80s style bass: Status, Washburn Status, Aria SB, Ibanez Musician or something similar... If anyone has anything they are considering selling, or knows of something up for sale somewhere please let me know!

I have spent a short time this morning playing some mid to late 70's Fender p basses. On both the controls were "backwards" i.e. the volume pot worked in the opposite direction to how it works on a modern bass. I assume this is correct as it was on both the basses I tried and that's just how it was back then? Both sounded lovely and felt incredible.

Could be a BG250 or something like that? It's a toneprint loaded one, one of the cheaper ones they brought out in the last few years. Agree with you on the abuse, I had a low opinion of Ashdowns from using abused MAGs in rehearsal rooms, but for years now I've been Ashdowns all the way.

Written by 80s legend Nik Kershaw, kind of qualifies it

Dammit!!!! Oh well, lucky we've only been doing one of those songs. Message in a Bottle is the song I like to use to test drummers and guitarists, see how they approach it. Thanks for that, better getting the info now than during a gig!!

This is our initial list: Bruce Springsteen: Dancing in the Dark Bonnie Tyler: Holding out for a Hero Whitney Houston: I wanna dance with somebody The Police: Message in a Bottle U2: With or without you Flock of Seagulls: I ran so far away Billy Idol: Rebel yell Hall and Oates: Man Eater Glen Frey: the Heat is On Huey Lewis: the Power of Love Some songs might get swapped out for others... E.g. Dancing in the Dark may get swapped for Born to Run to get more sax involved.

Is anybody out there using a Headrush MX5 for bass? I got hold of one a few months back and it's a great tool for home use, especially as I can put guitar through it too. I have been using a Boss ME-90B for quite some time and I enjoy it's simplicity, but sometimes wish I had presets and some more options. In the past I had an HX Stomp and found I was spending too much time on my PC editing sounds as opposed to making music. The MX5 is great because the touch screen and intuitive menus just make it so easy to use. Creating new rigs and tweaking rigs is easy, far easier than on anything I've used before. The sound quality is great at home but I am probably going to try at a gig tomorrow. While there are few options on here for specific effects and amps it feels sufficient to me. And being able to blend in guitar amps and effects, do parallel processing and stack effects in crazy ways, it makes it really flexible. I'm so impressed I'm thinking to keep hold of this and maybe even upgrade to one of the bigger Headrush units in future. However, I've been down this road with every shiny new toy and it ends up on the marketplace within a year or two. I'd be keen to hear any tips and tricks from any other MX5 users.

Fair point

Yes! I had the V7 and the old V9. Excellent, excellent basses. I preferred the V7 with the maple board over the V9 with ebony. The V7 was really good for having a 'controlled' sound when your dynamics change... I mean, if you pop the string you got a good sound that didn't give a massive volume spike. Such good basses, I'd take another one any time.

Certainly!!! We will have a broad set list but it's not going to go crazy, so no obscure b-sides for the beard-strokers, it's all got to be big hits that people will sing along to, no off-kilter genres like acid house... No disrespect to acid house of course, but it's quite niche compared to Whitney Houston and Bruce Springsteen. As for the image, the first question I got back from the guitarist when I messaged him about the band was "can we dress like Miami Vice?" The answer was a massive YES! I asked the sax/ keys guy if he would be up for dressing the part too and his response was "I can go to 80s theme nights wearing my ordinary clothes, I just roll the sleeves of my blazer up" said in a knowing tone that inferred he is very much 80s style in his ordinary clothes.

So I thought it would be interesting (decide for yourself how interesting!) to document the setup of a new band... Read on if you want to, or don't if you don't. I've always wanted to have an 80s covers band. Ideally I would be the lead singer and bassist, alas my vocal chops just aren't there. I tried once in the past to set up a band using people found on joinmyband and other sources and it wasn't a great experience but a valuable one. Earlier this year my main band, a 2000s covers band, had a hiatus and the drummer and I cooked up a scheme to do something as a side project. This is one of the big lessons I learned a few years back: work with at least one person you already know! Well, that makes bass and drums... I contacted a guitarist I was in a band with four or five years back, I love his style and attitude and we have remained friends loosely keeping in touch, he was excited to join in. In the middle of August we met up with a handful of songs to bash through. I found it a real struggle to sing and play, my voice was knackered at the end of it, but we agreed we had something that worked and if we had a singer and ideally a keys or sax player we could really have something worth progressing. I got too excited and advertised for a singer much earlier than I had wanted to. I got a handful of responses: a guy aged 28 who sings modern metal, a classic rock vocalist in a covers band id heard of, a female singer who recently left an indie band, and a lady who only wants to do backing vox as she doesn't want to fully commit. I have not yet met the singers, we want to get the songs tight first. But we have rejected two of them already! Now, the lost of songs we are working on is a handful of "male" songs and two "female" songs. The classic rock singer contacted me to say words to the effect: "you do realise that Holding Out for a Hero is written for a girl??? You know it's about a Man???" That told me all I needed to know about this person. Didn't say "hey I might tweak the words" which I'm happy with, just basically came across a bit old fashioned and hinted he could be difficult to work with. Luckily, the recordings of heard of his vocals weren't great so I was comfortable saying we had better fit singers already. Also, he didn't notice, or at least raise, that "I wanna dance with somebody" is also a female perspective song. I have no issue if a man or woman wants to change the gender perspective of a song, or keep it. But we had not at this point said we want a male singer, or we want a female singer. We just wanted a good singer and to do good songs, so we have a mix. Anyways, onwards and upwards. In the meantime we wanted to get the songs tight but also I kept hearing sax in a lot of the great songs of the decade so I advertised for a sax player. I got a great response from a guy local to where we rehearse who plays sax and keys. I sent him the long-list of possible songs and five mins later got a reply of "f me that's my childhood!" And I just knew he would do for us. This week we met up again and invited our sax and keys player. We also had a friend come along to sing so I could concentrate on bass and arrangements. Magic happened. We did two or three runs through of each song, had a ten minute break for a chat. We instantly bonded with our new multi-instrumentalist: a decent person, a proper musician, and he LOVES the genre. There are still details to work out such as better transition to solos, proper endings of all these fade out songs, but we were really solid and the keys and or sax just really added something. It felt special. We will meet again in a few weeks' time, now with a handful more songs that really prominently feature the sax. Our best candidate for singer isn't available until mid October so hopefully we can be really tight by then and ready for him. I'm getting quite excited about this side project! Playing with a drummer and guitarist I know really helps, and striking gold with a chap who plays sax and keys is just sheer good fortune. More to come soon....

My local rehearsal spot has some kind of TC amp in there. I hate it. It's underpowered and it either goes "booooom" with indistinct bass or it disappears. I wouldn't buy one, but I am aware there is brand heritage that is sadly not being lived up to.