uk_lefty

I guess I did this but it wasn't as straightforward as simply a better opportunity. I had become really close friends with the band over the five years and felt really bad about leaving, but I had to. There were lots of contributing factors:

Set list barely changed in five years;

Arguments over what to put in the set list, which links to it being more about what some of the guys wanted to play Vs what worked for our audience;

Playing random gigs hours away for little or no pay, but not happy about playing for good money forty minutes from home;

Rehearsal time being spent mostly on waiting for singer and drummer to arrive, forty mins drummer set up, then fag break, then a little bit of rehearsal before next fag break;

Being awkward with gig enquiries, only wanting to do the same gigs for people they already knew... So we spend all our gigs playing the same set to the same people;

All of those things built up and led me to quit. The final straw for me was a gig being booked on a date everyone knew I was away. With no rehearsal. I found out about the gig through a Facebook post. So I wished them luck with the gig and advised they get a dep because I was, as in the diary and as I had answered when asked, away at a friend's wedding. I auditioned for another band, got the gig, then quit the first band. It was the best thing I could have done. 

I am now setting up an 80s band with the guitarist from band number 1, four years or so after quitting. He and and another have come to a handful of my gigs. The story among the first band is that I was never available for gigs and I was holding them back... Well, if you count missing one gig because we had a baby due around that time and another because someone booked and announced a gig despite knowing I was away... Anyhow, all water under the bridge. I saw the one who had the biggest issue with it all a few weeks back and it's all good. 

The silly thing is with the first band I was really close with them all. It's just that two of four of them were great friends but not great band mates. 

That is a work of art.

11 hours ago, rasher80 said:

https://ebay.us/m/fdM1nW

 

Ibanez Artcore with a weird looking dent on the rear body... shame as it's one bass I never got round to trying

That dent is odd, and no mention of it in the description!  It's a nice looking bass for sure.

https://ebay.us/m/hwxR17

Interesting looking bass! I have no idea if the price is right, just a quirky looking thing. 

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

Withdrawn.... I've used it at a couple of gigs recently and it's just too good to part with. Need to either get the Headrush MX5 to a comparable point or settle on this... So it may come back up in future!

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. 

10 hours ago, mario_buoninfante said:

And I have one for sale, in case that's what you're after @uk_lefty  

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 

14 hours ago, Bonin-in-the boneyard said:

Here she is 😃

 

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

1 hour ago, LeftyJ said:

For the minor sum of only 2500 GBP you can be the owner of that lush Ibanez MC924 in the for sale section 

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.

On 18/09/2025 at 16:55, RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE said:

Does this power up if you plug into the computer via usb-c ? 

Sorry for the late reply, I can see the Q has already been answered. These can take batteries if you want one less cable to worry about. It comes with a UK power supply.

20 minutes ago, Royaly T said:

I'd never judge an amp at a rehearsal studio, they get so much abuse.  which TC amp was it?

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.

1 hour ago, police squad said:

one and only Chesney Hawkes

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

5 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

Message In A Bottle is from 1979 and Born to Run from 1975!

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. 

14 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

Following house and house influenced records were all number 1 in the UK charts in the 80s. 

 

Jack Your Body by Steve "Silk" Hurley

Pump Up The Volume by MARRS

Theme From S'Express by S'Express

Doctorin' The Tardis by The Timelords

The Only Way Is Up by Yazz

Back To Life by Soul II Soul

 

And there were plenty more that made the top 20. Hardly niche.

Fair point 

14 hours ago, ProjeKtWEREWOLF said:

Does anyone have experience of the 5 string version? 

 

I have a v5 4 string, and love it, but I need another 5! 

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. 

3 hours ago, BigRedX said:

 

"The 80s" is a very broad church ranging from "New Romantic" and synth-pop via jangly guitar bands all the way through to acid house. Of course most people tend to forget about anything post 1985 unless the band had already had hits before then.

 

The problem I have with bands like the one in the clip above is that for me music in the 80s was as much about the image of the artists as it was about the songs. If the music is going to be performed by a bunch of beardy old blokes in crap shirts then it doesn't matter how well they have nailed the sound, the audience would be better off someone playing the records.

 

I hope the OP is taking note...

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.