Rabbie

Hire or borrow from a Swiss player. DB players are great guys. When I have flown, I have hired, and boy am I glad. I had a Chadwick folding bass too, which I bought because I had had flying gigs and almost instantly as soon as I got it, my flying gigs stopped...so I don’t know how it is to fly with. I took it oodles of uk gigs though and it was a great instrument and a talking point pre and post gigs, so if you think of flying often you may want to look at Charlie’s site foldingbass.com, Charlie is a real gent to deal with. I also had an eminence folding bass: it sounds great but I missed the rest of the body so I sold it after only a couple of months, but it is a quality instrument. As you’ll have guessed, none of this is cheap, apart from borrowing, or hiring a ply bass, so I would go for that if it’s a one-off. All the very very best.

Anything Leroy Vinnegar has ever recorded. There were/are much flashier players out there but Leroy will pin you to the ground. And then of course my favourite Milt Hinton and the unbelievable master Ray Brown. That alone is about 200 years of practice....takes time and patience. But it’s great fun. All the very very best.

Magic. I may well make use of it, thanks to the awesome TJP I’m getting to try one out and see. This forum is great!

Good to know. How do these things sound Rev?

If you are dealing with Bas, please note: he is probably the MOST HONEST person in the world. Such a nice nice nice nice person to deal with. He was about to buy an amp of mine at a very good price, but first he made sure I knew I could still return it to the shop and get a full refund, hence making me much more money and depriving himself of a great deal... Even by Basschat's awesome standards, that's pretty special!

Thomas is a legend. You will be very happy with your Duke.

After many years and oodles of ££££ spent on guts, I had an epiphany (driven by the bank account shortages) and changed to Spiro Mitts. Yes they sound very twangy at first but once they break in they are great and they force you to learn to play dynamically I think. With guts I just dug in all the time with high action. With Spiros I’m down to the normal 9-11mm and I can play hard or soft, mute a lot more and dare I say sound almost gutt-ish at times. Of course I never bow, so if you do a lot of arco people say they are not so good (yet some philharmonic orchestras apparently use them). In a nutshell, a bit like yourself, I’ve been playing for a while and have come to the conclusion that any shortcomings in my sound are not due to the string choice, but my fingers. Hope you are well anyway and all the very best.

Nah, it’s ebony. The bass is at the luthier just now and we are having a think about what is worthwhile doing, so I’ll post an update when it’s done. PS - there are a few great quality plys out there with excellent ebony boards on them actually. I have owned a vintage Hofner ply which was outstanding quality, and a Duke which was also superb. I have played a Kay and an American Standard on the road and again they were truly professional plys. This one unfortunately isn’t as good, but again I didn’t spend anything on it so may be worth fixing. It certainly would be nice to have for the gigs on which I don’t fancy taking my already quite battered carved bass to.

Wowser, you guys must be loud! I used to have a Duke and play big tents and festivals sometimes and it was a great bass. The rockabilly type pickup system you use gives it loads of thump before feedback but it’s not really the “ your bass only louder” scenario, so I don’t think that the tone colouring of an SVT is too much of a problem. I used an SVT plus 8x10 as a back line once and I was frightened by the power! I used to own a Genz Benz 9.0 but I guess you want even more power so I guess the options you suggest should be awesome. For cabs I’d say get Greenboy (Tricky audio in the U.K.). I had a fearless 15 and it was so good, much louder than the 2x12 it replaced. They also make 2x15s and thet must be a monster. They can make whatever combinations you need probably. My question is: why not declutter and have the band invest in in-ear monitoring and the kind of system which would suit you all? I’m not at all up to speed on those because I never used one and nowadays I can only put up with low stage volume and small ensembles. I look forward to learning from the other suggestions you’ll get as it seems an interesting challenge: play at loud volumes and still sound like a DB.

Francis is a great great person to deal with. We had a brief string loan situation and he was a dream in terms of honesty and communication.