Woodinblack

Quite local pub last night for an early evening gig (or 7-10). Setup and found I forgot the iPad so dashed home to get it, seeing as I had already setup everything. Looked like it was going to be a quiet night, there were actually 2 people in the room when we started!

Luckily after a song, another group of 6 people came in and then some more afterwards. By song 5 it was actually pretty busy, although it is a fairly small room. 

The drum kit lights had broken so I put my aliexpress bar light across the front and it worked really well.

All in all a good gig and the last we need to do christmas songs for!

4 hours ago, ead said:

 

What is this "justification" of which you speak?

Its the only thing that stops me from filling the house!

But I did ask Chris about it,. and I still think about it

4 hours ago, ead said:

I had this on an Alpher bass:

 

I was so tempted to custom make a 5 string version of that but could never pluck up the justification!

On 22/12/2025 at 18:01, deepbass5 said:

I've Been playing along to Deborah Bonhams version of Superstition, as it is best version I have played and its been years. so found it on Spotify then checking her out on the tube I came across this. How do ya get these three in the same place.

 

https://youtu.be/Q5gc9Yk6OPc?si=8ojqcIw2klDubyv5

Surprised the could hear the bass player on stage without only 2 CTM300s and 8x10 stacks!

well, that is pretty unpleasant. i nneed to do some updates to advertising, which I have not been on due to the house medical issues, but I will look into it

I wasn't aware you would be getting any adverts

Just now, Al Krow said:

 

Before folk start wondering, the XE sounds like an old Jag model to me? Time for a bit of Xmas XS? 😅

Oh yes, XS. Which sounds more like a Jag to me! What was wrong with PS - they have a PS-5 and 6, could this not be the 7?

36 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

 

Just had a quick play on with pitch shift set to -2 semis fully wet, and GX10 seems to comfortably handle taking down the low E by a couple of semis in terms of a usable-in-the-mix bass. What are you finding with the ME-90B?

Oh its more like a wammy effect, in fact it is only available on the footpedal, but it is too electronic to use as a clean bass sound.

There is a song I do that is downtuned which is just bass and vocals for the verse, this wouldn't work for that, its not an 'in the mix' song, it is effecgtively a solo bass sound, which the XE-1 can do.

7 hours ago, Al Krow said:

Being able to assign the expression pedal to dictate the amount of gain on drive patches to take it from mild to full-on drive is also very neat. 

Yeh, thats the same on the ME-90B as you would expect (same company), just that the pitch shift isn't in the same league as the XE-1, certainly not up to a couple of semitones below a drop D as a solo instrument live.

Well, this was a bit of a change. We had our last gig before christmas today, a short 2 hour one on a sunday afternoon at one of our local pubs, a pub owned by the guy who gives us our free practice space. We were going to get the other christmas song sorted but the guitarist was ill on thursday, so we didn't.

I was looking forward to it - short, in the evening and local. The last two gigs hadn't been great, the one before last I had covid (didn't realise at the time, but felt really bad), then the last one my wife had a heart attack while I was away and ended up in A&E until 2 and visiting every day of the next week, still dealing with the fallout from that. So a chance for a gig that didn't have that would be great.

2 hours before we were ready to go and setup for the gig, got a message from the guitarist, who had said yesterday he was good for both christmas songs that he was too ill to come.

Quick panic, not enough time to arrange anything. Asked the drummer who is in another group, but they couldn't cover - we really didn't want to let this landlord down at this short notice.

The singer contacted the keyboard player who left about a year ago and he agreed to cover, so we quickly packed and headed down there, huddled over an iPad working out what we could play without the guitar. Turns out as it is only a 2 hour gig, we had more than enough songs we thought we could do ok.

The pub was heaving, wasn't really expecting that. Set up, the first 2 songs went through fine so got a bit more confidence and after about 5 songs people came to the front dancing. Had a brief 10 minute break and back on. Some of the songs were a bit.. creative and we did moondance and I think he was a fifth out from where i was, but you know, jazz! Some of the songs however went really well, and the last run of 5 (ie, last song and 2 encores) songs was just solid dancing from everywhere and we did nail them.

Packing up and the landlord came over, really happy with how it went, and loads of people thanking us for a great evening, so came away happy. And honestly even when things were going wrong in some songs, I enjoyed it just fine. In fact, I haven't enjoyed a gig as much for a while, it was just fun. Although maybe if i am going to play guitar on a song I should run through it at least once beforehand!

Oh - I played the bongo 5, the light up acrylic bass, a indie tribal guitar, all through the dwarf and a bam200 to the PA.

Shoes provided by solivair, my old pair that are broken, as my feet are still sensitive for how ripped apart they got trying to walk in my new pair!

pm'd

7 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

And in answer to my own question, have managed to get some decently usable pitch shift patches on my GX10 ( and making me ponder whether to hold onto my dedicated Boss pitch shift pedals - OC5, XS-1 and XS-100?)

So is your GX10 pitch shift s good as the XS-1 (and 100)?

On 18/12/2025 at 21:55, Mudpup said:

The singer/guitarist was inacapable of learning any new songs on his own and coming to rehearsals with them semi prepared, that was driving me nuts. You know when you've all agreed to learn a song, everyone does their homework and then someone shows up at a rehearsal and asks what key its in or what version is it?

Sadly all too well, and I have been thinking about that a lot recently!

27 minutes ago, bassbora said:

I was looking at this pedal more like a functional tool rather than a box that makes sounds.  

You can rest assured it makes no sounds unless you do!

Yes. Some pedals come with a dose of regret or a realisation that you don't really need one (mostly synth pedals), but some are pretty essential.

6 minutes ago, bassbora said:

Very curious about the XS-1 pedal.  Mostly to just change key, up or down 1-2 steps and nothing more than that.  How are you guys finding it?  I does it cope in a band setting?

Absolutely perfect, it is a great pedal for a band setting. I wouldn't record a drop D bass downtuned by 3 semitones, but in a band it is not an issue. It is really good when you are doing a song and the singer wants to knock it down a couple of semitones. There are some songs that it is easy enough on a 5 string, but if it is a song in drop D (like most of the metal songs), it is a pain without this.

18 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

 

Why..? I don't understand this perpetual need for 'change'. If it's Good, it's Good. New stuff, old stuff... Nothing needs to be 'changed' just for 'changes' sake, does it..? 

Clearly something did as the company collapsed.

11 minutes ago, BassAgent said:

Except for John Stirratt, Chris Wood, Tame Impala, Tina Weymouth, Robbie Shakespeare, Flabba Holt, Dale Davis, JMJ, Max Oleartchik of Big Thief... Need more?

I didn't know half of those, so googling them showed all of them except Max Oleatchik with a different bass (almost all a fender) as the first image. I don't think it is enough to keep a band going that half a list of people quoted as being players of a brand I didn't know and they were playing something else anyway. In fact thinking about it, I have never seen a group who actually play one of those basses, in fact thinking about it, i have never seen one of those basses outside a shop. One shop. 

1 hour ago, Muzz said:

 I've been using a pair of £62 Lekato MS-02s - super light, tiny and handy, battery lasts hours (never got down to even half the charge lights on them with 4-hour gigs (start to finish)), 5ms latency, no dropouts and even a stereo option that, as mentioned above, 

Thats the one I use instead of the U4, although mine cost me £32! But the switch can be a bit intermittent, sometimes the quality can slip and after a lot of gigs and practices the receiver battery life is starting to get close to the end of our gigs if I forget to plug it in at half time.

1 hour ago, Al Krow said:

Our lovely, and very capable, little desk has 6 monitor outputs, not quite enough for us to go down the stereo route which would require 4 x 2 = 8 monitor outs for our 4 piece set up. Has going stereo really improved your gigging experience, Woody? If so, maybe something for me to consider for my crew down the line at some point!

Absolutely - I wouldn't want to go back to mono. In my metal group we have P16 so you connect via the network like plug and you can adjust your own personal mix. Live, there are only 2 of us with IEMs, so I just use two channels of that.

1 hour ago, Al Krow said:

Is the U45 a decent step up from the U4 for you? 

No, I didn't have a problem with range or bandwidth, its just mono.

10 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Drummer has recently got a Swiff WX520 from Ali Express (they're currently just under £75) which he's really liking.

Oh interesting - I have a U4, but I have been using the cheap £20 wireless because it is stereo and having got used to stereo it is hard to go back to mono. I hadn't seen those, I was trying to find something that was stereo that was somewhere between the £20 and £300 range!

5 hours ago, Reggaebass said:

I was watching a series on Netflix last night and briefly caught a song in it that I’d never heard before , I instantly liked the Bassline and found out that it’s Talking Heads and psycho Killer

Agreed with others it is actualy a surprise a bass player not knowing that song, but I suppose everyone has to hear something the first time some time!

I wouldn't (and didn't when we did it) play it as an open A, but I think she does, but also bends the previous note so it is not on pitch

5 hours ago, Burns-bass said:

 

Nobody should work for free, not even students. You’re effectively telling them they’re not deserving of being paid.

I never said anything about not paying them - I think artists should support artists.

I mean you could quite easily get a group of art students making a video for an AI song to show off their work, and that would be the same thing.

I think I would still prefer to try talking to the video class of an art college to get something like that done, then everyone gets something out of it!

you can remove photos, you just have to remove them from the photo section down the bottom.