uk_lefty

Being told I made my band better by other band members and regular punters. I like the band I joined but feel we have grown over three and a half years. I'm allowed to play in my style, meaning I can embellish bass lines as much as I want to, and the guitarists give me the right space. We are a perfect fit for each other. The last bassist wasn't bad, he has his style and I have mine, though I think his heart is not fully in the kind of the music the band does whereas for me it's more suited.

I think I remember Brandoni selling off parts for fender type instruments and also Eko and Vox. Depends what you want.

I've had two fivers and a six that was so bad it's not worth any more... Moving on. Five string fretless Kramer Striker. A cheap bass off musicyo in the very early 2000s. I love it. It was my 18th birthday present and has been the only constant for me since. Lined rosewood board, beautiful. Upside down pointy headstock, metallic black paint... Its a good passive bass but needs decent strings and a good amp to get the best out of it. The pickups could do with upgrades, the coil tap is pretty crappy so would prefer a better single coil sound. It's part of me though and it still gets gigged. Sire vintage V7. I don't own this anymore and I'm kicking myself a bit. For a reasonable price you can get Ash body, maple neck and board, 70s pickup position, lefty, and a high quality pre amp that's dead easy to use. For a lefty that's mind blowing at the price point. I liked it a lot but felt guilty after spending so much on a new USA Stingray so I sold it to help downsize my gear and raise a few hundred quid. It had a great bright snappy zingyness to the tone and arrived set up amazingly. I tried to play this as a fiver rather than a four plus a few extra notes and was getting on well. I regret selling it but I still think my Mexican Fender jazz with bartolinis had a slightly more sophisticated tone though not the flexibility of the preamp. I'd happily have another Sire, particularly the 2nd gen with the satin necks.

I like the couriers who ask what day you will be in before setting their delivery schedules. Not foolproof but must surely be better than driving round hoping someone is in between 9 and 5 on a weekday.

Feeling your pain but with DPD. 1st August they had to collect an item I was returning to Andertons. Wife is in a ll day expecting them, sat in the living room where she can see anyone coming up the drive. I get a text "nobody was in. Want to rearrange?" So i call them and call out their BS "Oh he says he couldn't find your road" Well houses were built there from 1960 so it WILL be on even the oldest sat nav. I tell them they're having a giraffe. Within ten mins some rude oik is at my door to collect the parcel. Today DPD van hares up my cul de sac Road where children play and signs clearly warn of this. Parks ON my neighbours front garden, gives over the parcel then WHEEL SPINS off the grass and down the road. Builders filmed it all. Will ask them to upload this to DPDs Facebook and just ask them "what the actual fook?!"

My singer also hates being smashed in the back by loudness, he really needs to be able to hear himself I order to give a good performance. Sometimes boomy bass noises aren't always coming from the bass. One of my guitarists had a new amp and hadn't EQ'd it very well so it sounded like a big woolly badly EQ'd bass, and as our other guitarist who runs the PA said to him "stop playing the f'ing bass!" So it's not just the bassists responsibility, the other musos need to stay out of our sonic space.

Guitarists father?? Says it all.

Amazing how venue's hire you to do 2x sets of however many minutes which must start at a certain time but when you want them to turn off their ten year old "now" album or whatever it takes ages!!

Love a pointy headstock!! Let us know how the GZRs work out

If I had a pound for every time...!

We do it too. We don't play a single particular genre or era of music but it's all a mix of stuff we think will get people dancing. We play some disco classics, some dance songs and a few cover song ideas to see how people react. The silence or the sh!tty music supplied by the venue often clashes, far better bringing your own and as has been said before you're then providing constant entertainment rather than just the 2x band sets.

Audacity is good for editing mp3s of live performance/ rehearsals, didn't k ow I could use it to loop and slow down etc. Thanks!

You need fender tapewounds... They're black and sound amazing on a P bass. They're black too.

Lots of wise words in there! A visit from you may have saved me returning my wireless G75 to Andertons two weeks ago!

Do you have a male or female lead singer... Or both? It's a great function set but wondering how many my band could do with our male singer! We play functions but have more of a rock edge to our band, we are chasing the money!! But our male singer will do "piece of my heart", proud Mary, and "hit the road jack". We occasionally have a female singer come up and do a few numbers with us but now she's gone to uni we will have her less and less.

Mick I'll have a rummage around for any bits spare, they will go to you FOC

I have three basses, a practice amp, a gig rig, a multi fx and an electro acoustic guitar. I lust after: a fender jazz because I love em and I don't have a jazz at the moment, a Hofner because I'm a lefty and it's the law, a fretless probably jazz but could go ACG/ Zoot/ Shuker, there's an ibanez 5er I like but can't remember the model number, a fender Aerodyne jazz so I can give up my P but still have the best of a P and a J, 80's Aria basses, a Status headless, the Washburn status headless, a Hohner B2A with the EMG's and just try harder with the string spacing, an electric guitar, a valve head bass amp, a trace elliot rig... I don't think I'll buy much of any of it. I can't justify most of it. Buying my last expensive bass was an eye opener. I went USA Stingray over a USA Jazz because although I really, really loved the jazz the Stingray was the better gigging bass for what and how I play. If I was recording it would be valve amps and jazz basses but for gigs it's lightweight class D and a Stingray all the way! I'd love the time to do recording but I barely practice for my actively working band! While I like lots of different types of gear I prefer quality over quantity so I've looked at cheap jazzes and so on and I just tell myself it won't satisfy me like one day getting that USA jazz bass I want. Effects never worked out for me so I went good quality multi fx and I'm satisfied, I was always getting signal noise and pedals reacted differently with different basses, too frustrating buying and selling all the time. I really want an electric guitar because I am writing songs in order to set up a new band next year but 99% certain I will play bass in it so I keep looking at six strings but not buying. I also don't have the space for all my gear at the moment so space saving, rationalising down the gear hoard is a big thing for me and has been for a few years as my family grows. I am having an "office" built in my garage though so... 🤐

Woukdnt surprise me if it hadn't been plugged in properly in the first place! May have just been a shoddy connection or something? Anyway, it made a loud buzz through the monitor, there's video of me pointing to it for the sound man while missing a bv cue and then he runs on and plays with loads of cable by my feet.

As long as everyone knows what is going on in enough time before the gig I don't mind either bringing my own or borrowing. We do a charity festival each year, last year the organisers said they would provide amps if we needed. Our guitarists amp was knackered and he hadn't got the money to buy a new one. When we got there the stage was lined up with amps, seriously a whole line of guitar amps all across the stage, of varying quality. It was such an effort for them to allow him to use an amp, they gave him the crappest most unreliable one available and told him not to touch the settings. It's OK he will only use the clean channel he says. The bass amp looked like it had been salvaged from a WWI U boat wreck so I took my own up. We could barely move on stage for amps we weren't allowed to use! In the first song I moved my foot and managed to unplug a monitor and there was buzz coming through the PA. Had they been clear beforehand about what they would or would not lend out we could have made decisions like DI'ing the bass if there was no room, brining another guitar amp if we weren't allowed to use anything half decent...

They're constantly putting new used stock up on Facebook, maybe it moves so quick they can't update the main website?

Have a good play around with it and see what you like, see if you bond with the bass before sinking cash in to it. Some things may not need changing so you could save yourself some pennies, e.g. Lots of people change Sire tuners but I found them perfectly up to the job.

Nothing to add except they may have seemed like pro's to you but they wanted someone to hold down the low end and lock in with the drummer. I bet your mis-key was only noticed by the band and hardly anyone at all in the audience. Also from their point of view if 90% of what you did was correct and good enough then you're 90% towards the next dep with them in my view, just probably concentrate on the keys and watch where you step on stage 😊

I'd play bass on the ones where there's an 8linteresting bass line, a song that wouldn't be the same without it.

Agree with this. You can enforce chords with root notes and play counter melodies and so on under the guitar. It really adds something to have bass. If you really want the beat just ask the singer to tap her toes.