Huge Hands

My best purchase this year? Forscore app on the iPad. Dusted off my boy's iPad which he doesn't use any more and paid £19.99 for the app. Has allowed me to scan all of my local concert band sheet music into the iPad. I also bought a cheap Joyo footpedal to turn the pages. It is dead easy to use and has transformed rehearsals as I am not spending ages frantically trying to find that one piece stuck to the back of another while the band starts playing. Playing my first actual concert with it on Saturday. Was dead easy to set up a playlist for the night and drag and drop the various scores into it. It now all clicks through the concert in order. Worst purchase? I guess the Joyo MA-10 practice amp. I can't complain too much as it was under £40 on offer on Amazon and it works as a practice amp in my home office, but it buzzes like mad unless you earth yourself on the strings and the sound is not to my liking. but I kept it and it does a job, so no major biggie.

I have both a Sire V7 (1st gen) and a 2001 ish 5 string Squier P5. I love them both, but I keep going back to the Squier due to the wider string spacing and it just feeling right in my hands. However, I had originally bought the P5 to strip and mod. Once I upgraded the pickups in it, I realised it was amazing and didn't want to spoil it, so bought a second one. Even before I stripped it, the neck was really unstable and has been a bit of a pig, resulting in an unhappy personal project bass. If you asked me based on the first one, I would say go for a a Squier. If the second one, I would say don't touch with a bargepole. I guess trying before committing is the best advice others have already given. ....and I have argued this point on other threads - although the Sire hardware on mine have always looked a bit toy-town and painted Halfords silver, they do the job and the guitar usually stays in tune, even in the gigbag. I've never felt to need to swap them out.

I've seen it happen with a few bands over the years - everyone is psyched up to rehearse and then someone pulls out at the last minute - do you all cancel (and potentially lose a rehearsal room booking deposit) or do you ask someone you know to sit in to save the time? For those that say "I don't rehearse" - not everyone has constant gigs lined up all the time and the getting together is part of the fun. In the cases I have seen this happen, it is usually because the rest of the band are disgruntled with an unreliable member, and hope the threat of this happening will get said member worried about their position in the band and sort themselves out, or as others have said, if they find someone gels while depping, they may just sack their current band member and go with the dep. I seem to remember this happening with a drummer once, but the dep was not so good and the plan backfired as it gave the original drummer more leeway to take the p*ss once he knew he was the best they had so far. Didn't take us much longer to find an even better one though....

I was about to say I have seen a few rockabilly guys do that over the years. However, I feel if I tried it with mine, with my weight, it would be an Ikea flatpack in seconds......

Mine all have bumps and chips in the top edge of the headstock, where I keep bumping it into things! On my Fender style basses, the farthest peg is usually bent in some way too. It is not through wanton-style rage rampages, I am just really clumsy! The first time I bent a peg was when I was a teenager - on a bus doorway through the gig-bag on my back...

Ha ha, I actually meant we wouldn't get away with sitting in those positions for a journey now in terms of cramp and DVT, but I know what you mean!

As a teenager I remember doing a gig in Stockton in the early 90's (we only lived in Gateshead so it wasn't that far). We borrowed a Sherpa van (the smallest one). I was in the middle seat, but even at 15 I was already my current 6'3". I think my Dad was our roadie on that gig so drove the van, but for him to change gear I had to sit diagonally with my feet in the passenger footwell and the bass player sat in the passenger seat next to me with his feet on the dashboard all the way. He was about 15 years older than me and a serving police officer, so I figured we'd be ok with that configuration if stopped, (but not so good if in a wreck). Thankfully we didn't but it was a challenge even for that short distance..... Wouldn't get away with it now.

I have Labella Deep Talkin' flats on most of my basses, but as other have alluded to, they are getting very expensive these days. As a DB player, you may be used to expensive string prices though! If you want to dip your toe into the flatwound world, I did buy some really cheap Harley Benton Flats from Thomann last year (about £13) and they seem quite good for what they are. I put a 4 string set on my HB 51 Precision copy and they seem fine, although feel a lighter gauge than the Labellas. (That could equally be me just being used to playing 5 strings nowadays) I did buy a 5 string set too, but they are still in the packet at the moment. Even with Thomann's £10 delivery charge from Germany, they still worked out quite cheap (although I had bought the guitar and strings together, so I passed the free delivery threshold). Just a thought if you are not sure you want to fork out that much as a trial.

i used to do pro sound in multiple venues in the late 90s/early noughties. We used a lot of Behringer outboard gear, such as quad gates and quad compressors. The running joke back then was everything seemed to cost £99, no matter the model! A lot of visiting engineers sniffed at the name, but they worked for our needs. We didn't need to hear noiseless perfection in a venue with 1500 drunk punters in it. We would get the occasional failure just out of warranty, but at £99 we were happy to chuck them in the bin and buy another one - which would have been a bigger issue if we had been using top of the range gear. 20 years on I now own a BD121 and a UMC-22 interface and am very happy with them, thank you very much.

I just checked that out myself. If you click "order form" it mentions no orders being taken due to the pandemic/ensuing backlog, so wonder if they are still active, or just bad at updating their website? I guess as the price is in US dollars, they are a US company? Did you have to pay import on them? Sorry for all the questions!

I have to be honest, I was being a bit lazy so just gave the dot locations a good hard rub with a dry cloth. I probably should have used something more liquid but couldn't think of anything I had that I was confident wouldn't dissolve the neck or something 🤣

Aaaaah - the classic "DFA" button or fader (Does F**k All). It is a classic often used control in the pro sound engineer's toolkit!

I don't know if this helps?

The strip that comes looks like a bog standard yellowy set of stickers you would get with any crafting pack. It does advise, and you will need, a pin (like a safety pin) to pick them up and lay them on. To my eyes, once on they are fairly inconspicuous unless you are looking closely for them, which is when you notice they can be a bit cock eyed, especially on the 12th fret double markers. When not glowing the colour is not too far away from an ebony fret dot (my bass has a rosewood fretboard). Put it this way, neither of my bands have so far noticed them as I have only so far been rehearsing in well lit spaces. I did buy the optional UV torch with mine and tried them in the dark when I first put them on - they do glow up well. I can't help but feel though that that there is probably a crafting shop that sells these for other purposes and they are a lot cheaper! I reckon there is enough in the pack for 2 basses but I think I will just keep these for replacing any ones that fall off. I think if you don't like them they would come off again fairly easily - as my 3rd fret neck marker can attest to.....

In my experience. a lot of these companies will use freelance installers costing them up to (and beyond) £500 a day to do things like specialist hanging and termination - which they will pass straight on to your bill. My experience is old and before a lot of the CAT5 stuff, but even so, if doing that properly it would be cut to length and crimped cables behind a wall plate, not just an off the shelf lead with a load of spare length left coiled behind your speaker. In the more extreme cases, it's all very well clipping a couple of speakers to a roof girder, but can it actually handle that weight with everything else it is holding up, secondary safety points etc etc..? When you factor in stuff like this and working at 4m height needing footed ladders or scaff towers, I can see how the labour charges are in that ballpark very quickly. However, if it was just to supply a couple of speakers on poles, a mixer and a few cables, I can see how that would be excessive.

Hi all, Just my 10p - that quote you have been given doesn't sound too different to a lot of professional install companies I have worked with, when you consider the potential labour in professionally (and safely) hanging speakers, running cables, termination etc. Obviously I'm reading between the lines here of what they have quoted you for. It may not be an issue in your old (but not that old) church, but I remember the conundrum of trying to find cable routes in centuries old churches without upsetting the historical purists! I would imagine they may have added some contingency for this kind of thing. Having said that, if you can only get cheaper kit for £6K, then the labour doesn't seem too much after all. I am just trying to give a balanced view here, not criticising. If you do go down the route of doing it yourself, hope it all goes well.

I bought some Glowtech ones after seeing them mentioned on another thread. The tiny side one on the 3rd fret fell off quite quickly, but the rest are solid. It was probably me not doing a proper cleaning job on the surfaces before applying. You need to have steady hands to get them spot on in the middle of a fret dot (mine on the fretboard were bigger than the Glowtech stickers) with out them looking cock-eyed.

Can I just say thanks to the OP for posting that vid, I don't think I would have seen it otherwise. I really like Kelsey's playing and enjoyed all 45 mins of it. Sure, he looked a bit mellow, but he was engaging and gave some good insight into his basses and stuff. I didn't think the interviewer had to try that hard? I enjoyed it, anyway....

I've been watching them for years but have never pulled the trigger as I couldn't justify that much outlay on something I won't play much. I've been hoping to get one cheap second hand but they seem to hold their value pretty steadily. There is a broken one on eBay for £30 (or there was yesterday) but not sure I want to try my rusty electronics skills on it! I know quite a few pro keyboard players that have them either to give them Hammond sounds on gigging, or just as a practice organ...

Another hugely influenced by Herbie here. I grew up listening to the double cassette version of War of The Worlds on constant repeat. I also personally think his playing on Space Oddity is one of the bass demonstrations, up there with Jamerson and all. I remember debating whether i should go to that particular bass bash, and didn't in the end. I'm sure it was clearly mentioned in the threads beforehand but I didn't know or realise he was going to be there and was absolutely gutted when I saw the photos and realised I had missed him. I live not too far from him and wondered if he might have ever walked past one of my gigs (especially the outdoor concert band ones) and heard me play. I just hope he was never at the local Scouts gang show when I made a pigs ear of trying to play Blue Mink's Banner Man...... RIP Herbie!

Braylon Lacy plays upright on most of Erykah Badu's NPR Tiny Desk. In fact, due to it's intimate nature, there are quite a lot of Tiny Desks with upright bass - you can get lost in there for hours....

A few years ago, when we were regularly doing that summer fete concert with no localised power, I did start looking at the battery powered QTX PA speakers on Amazon that were about £200- £400, depending on which size driver/power ratings you went for. We had some similar much more expensive PA speakers at work (but no more professional looking) called MiPro. If the QTXs were a copy of these, I thought they might work. The MiPros had 2 little 12V motorbike batteries in them and would last for almost 8 hours when new. I used to try them in our workshop with my bass (when I had it with me at work) just connected direct to the line in and it would be plenty loud, so I think with a proper pre-amp it would have more than done the gig. Added to this, you usually get at least one toy town quality plastic radio mic with it, so can use it as an impromptu PA for other things. I never did buy one as we stopped doing that fete but thought it was worth a punt on the Joyo to see if it would do it (for just £36 on offer). It wouldn't. However, I have now relocated it to its intended location in my home office (that sounds posh - it is actually a 6'x4' cupboard) and it will do the trick in there for practicing - unless the humming ground issue does my head in and I put my shoe through it...... EDIT - Just to add - I have a double bass and an acoustic bass guitar. It is amazing how loud jangling acoustic guitars / little violin ensembles can get to the point where you're making your fingers bleed and still can't hear yourself. I think I'd be looking at some form of amplification if you can.

Well, the Joyo turned up late on Saturday. It has a cute LED light up logo on the front, but I think that is about the only positive..... Only joking - in truth, if you mess around with it, you can get a fairly decent sound out of it. It won't rumble your trousers, but does sound like a bass sound. I ended up having Volume full up, tone off and gain as high as I could get it without distorting, but that probably only just got me to a level I was happy practicing with in a small room. At those levels I was getting hum when I didn't touch the strings and it would struggle with the low B string notes on my 5 string. I am pretty sure it would not be loud enough to keep up with my concert band, so using it portable with batteries will probably never be needed. It might work jamming along with one acoustic guitar, but I reckon that would be about it. In summary - it will be fine for what I bought it for - noodling along to stuff in my office, but I will have to accept it won't sound the greatest. I think if you have really sensitive neighbours this will be good as it will never produce anything that could shake the walls, but if you don't and have the cash and the room, playing a bigger rig on quiet would probably be a better choice than this. There you go, that's my review. I'll hold on to it for a while and see how much I use it.

I will try and let you know on the Joyo on Saturday if I can get to try it while hiding it from the missus. I liked the fact it could sit on the desk in my home office and not be too obvious. I also liked the fact it could be battery powered and even has strap buttons to wear it on a second strap! I have done a few gigs with the concert band at a fair in a field where we had to hire a generator for my amp. If this is loud enough sat on a resonant surface it could be an option for that (not that we have done that gig for about 4 years, but it is good to be prepared!) Thomann have it at £33 with £10 delivery, so that may be an option once the Amazon deal wears off. Looking at the vids on their site and the Amazon one I reckon it will be better for the less low end loving bass players put I reckon it should be good enough for noodling along on my own when I fancy a play along. Thanks for starting this thread and getting me to fritter away even more cash!

At the other end of the scale, there is the Joyo MA-10B. I wasn't looking for a small practice amp, but after seeing this thread, did a search on some of the other stuff and saw they are currently on 20% off on Amazon so only £36.79 with free shipping. I'm not expecting much, but decided to take a punt at that price. Arriving Saturday, or could be tomorrow if I had Prime. Mrs HH has Prime on her account,. but thought it would be safer to wait til Saturday and hope she's out when it arrives.....