Huge Hands

I can remember getting a similar band when I was a in-house sound engineer and trying to throw everything at it. I borrowed every mic/stand I could and tried to close mic everything, even though we had 20 mins turn around between gigs.. Problem was, I was used to pro-brass players setting their own mics up. We flung a load of mics on stands out and ran off to FOH to do a line check...when the curtain went up - they hadn't touched them! We ended up with mics pointing down, up, left, right, but not at the instruments! I ended up having to do an ambient mix from the best mics I had. In a way, it probably worked better than close mic'ing. They also obviously weren't used to working with monitors and hearing themselves. When the first song ended, the vocalist/compare started to talk and ended up putting his hands over his ears so we killed that monitor straight away.... This was a 1200+ seat venue, and a gentle reinforcement certainly worked fine in a room that size. I don't think you would need too much equipment - perhaps just a bit more practice with what you have? Perhaps mic the vocalists and put the guide they use (most likely piano) only with their voices in the monitor? If the guitarist is having issues (wow you found a quiet guitarist?) stick a mic on his amp to give you a "boost" option FOH and only permit one trusted soul to have control of that.... Finally - where are you based? The concert band I play in would kill to have 4 trombones and four trumpets right now....

I used to play in a band where the guitarist insisted on counting in all songs with his foot, a'la Herman Munster stomping on a broken floorboard. It was because he liked to kick them all off with a little widdle, or rhythmn, and then have us all join in. Problem was his thumping, as well as being really embarrassingly loud, never matched the pace of his playing, so you just had to hope you could get the beat from his avant guarde widdly slide before it took off.

Shows how times have moved on that the owner of a music shop doesn't know what a euphonium is.....

I feel a mini bass bash coming on....😉

As a former FOH engineer, I would say this: I used to always initially push to go pre-EQ as you never knew what silly things bass players would do mid gig to hear themselves on stage which might cause problems with resonance or mush out front.. However, if a bass player made a fuss about a "unique sound" or wanted post EQ, I would usually understand and go that way. A lot of bass players didn't have a clue what I was talking about or would say "it's up to you". In my experience (and only my experience) 90% of bass players are in a certain tonal range that you can hear and easily recreate FOH. I used to mainly use EQ to suit the room and never really used it to override a players tone and boost or cut a sound to try and change it. The perceived sound is often made more by the mix of the overall band along with room resonances etc, not because some devillish sound control freak is purposely changing your tone. Of course there are some hopeless sound engineers that will leave a compressor across your channel and not hear it has totally taken all the bite out of it, or not hear the signal is clipping, or the line has gone one-legged. Those guys just can't be helped. A bit like the bass players that turn up with home made pedals that output DC V to your hired backline, or don't understand the laws of headroom on a signal.....

I think a lot of it is governed by PRS. I used to work in a shop about 25 years ago where all of the musak was supplied by Rediffusion and was really poor cover versions of middle of the road pop. I'm assuming they had a set list of songs that they paid PRS for and imagine they got discounted because it was poor copies and not the originals. With only a 60min max cassette, it used to wear thin after several 8hr shifts. That's how I'm surprised @Leonard Smalls could just pick and choose (albeit Mozart stuff is so old it is probably licence exempt) unless the Garden Centre has a blanket PRS licence? I seem to remember @cetera had something to do with PRS - I'm sure he could advise how it all works - he'd certainly be a lot more up to date than me!

Liked this. Thought his Moog sound and solo was very reminiscent of Sean Martin who he used to play with in Snarky Puppy. Also good to see Captain Birdseye grooving along in the audience.....

That is lush. I didn't know AGC did painted bodies. GLWTS.

I recently bought 5x Gotoh GB707's from these guys: Swift delivery with no issues. They are based in the UK, so might be able to help if the model you want is not listed? https://www.gluedtomusic.com/ NB: I am not affiliated in any way.

I used to play in a covers band (not tribute) where someone would pick a song to do. We liked to do obscure stuff, not the obvious hits. I would usually roughly have heard the track before but not recently and we would turn up to rehearsal and jam our way through it a few times. I would only then go away and really listen to the original to see how the lines I came up with compared to the original. It wasn't just me, most of the band worked like this. It meant that often we would come up with our own arrangements that we felt were better. Other times, I would realise I had been overplaying, and the original bassists lines fit the song much better. Sometimes the band member who suggested the song would moan I wasn't playing the iconic riff, so I would learn the original and play that. I know this approach would wind a lot of bands up, but we were all fairly democratic and happy to spend the time and it really worked for us. We used to do a killer version (IMHO) of St James Infirmary in the style of House of the Rising Sun. My argument was that in the old days a studio bassist would usually have played on record, but a different touring bassist would do his version and then evolve it out on the road. In some cases, the later live versions were much better so why stick note for note to the recording? (I do admit some were much worse!)

I don't know if this helps at all, but the large concert band I'm in use something called Muzodo. They use it to log gigs and send out availability requests, not sure about the set list bit. The language of it suggests to me it was designed for brass/concert bands rather than small rock gigging bands, but you never know. I'm not an admin, I just respond "yes, no or maybe" if I'm available so that's as much as I know about it, so can't comment on interoperability or anything, but it might be worth a look if you don't get any better responses? EDIT for corrected spelling of app.

I bought a cheap Harley Benton 5 string ex-deco that sits in my lounge. It is great for quickly picking up and working something out if an idea comes into your head, or a song on the TV, or the missus starts warbling and you want to play along. If I want to practice properly, I plug in my gigging bass - as the body size and strings/string spacing make the feel a lot different - as others have said.. It came with cheap zingy brass strings on it which would make horrible finger noises when trying to move around the neck. I put black nylon wrapped Roto 88s on mine, which are great but feel like the brake cables @jbu09 was on about. I tried to pedal some bass notes under a violin duo/flute trio thing as my DB was out for repair, and it couldn't even be loud enough with those in a small church setting, so wouldn't advise gigging acoustically, but it is great when noodling by yourself on the settee. I recently has a tuning post snap on it, but that's another thread - all sorted now.

I've lost gigs because I'm 6'3" overweight and ginger, and stuck out like a sore thumb against their backdrop of cool rock tight jeans and shades. Shorta***es! (I also refuse to wear stereotypical bass player hats). I recently got asked to turn up to help audition a drummer for a new band because the bass player wasn't available for that night. I was told it would be jamming 12 bars, but he started shouting out classic rock numbers at me that I'd heard plenty of times but never/rarely played. It was seat of the pants stuff! Shame I can't commit due to upcoming surgery - as they offered me the gig too!

Ok, I know it sounds like I'm talking to myself on my own thread, but I thought I'd update for reference in case anyone else is thinking of doing this. After a bit of measuring and looking at the various site specs, I plumped for a set of Gotoh GB707 tuners. The bushings were a much more snug fit but everything went in easily without any problems or modifications once I'd found a 15mm spanner to get the nuts off. I've attached a couple of photos. The tuners look a little on the wonk compared to each other - they are all in the original holes, so the originals were the same! The string windings have been tidied since the photo - this was my attempt to put the same strings back on to test without messing about! Although they fit through the same headstock holes, the winding posts are a lot wider too, so gives a sense of much better quality All in all, it is £50 of tuners on a guitar that cost me £70, but I'm happy with it and it means my lounge bass still lives. There you go....hello? Oh yes, that's right - I'm talking to myself.... 😀

For anyone else that may be interested in this, I found this site: https://www.stewmac.com/Hardware_and_Parts/Tuning_Machines/Electric_Bass_Tuning_Machines/ I think they are based in the US, meaning it would probably involve import taxes so probably won't buy from here, but each item has a full measurement drawing for the tuning peg. Time to get the old ruler out!