Happy Jack

Now have a cuppa.

I'll get no bonus points for cheapness, but for me the first stop would always be a Radial Bigshot unit (several flavours to choose from). In one band the setlist has me switching between DB and EB several times in each set, and my Bigshot is invaluable. It's passive so I have no cables or batteries to worry about. I've got two inputs with an adjustable gain on one of them so that I can balance up the signals as between the two instruments. There's a separate Tuner Out. Switches are Toggle between inputs, and Mute. There's also a Ground Lift / Phase switch. Like all Radial kit this thing would survive having a Chieftain tank driven over it. If you don't fancy paying the thick end of £100 for one, they're very safe pre-owned buys.

Can't agree. The money is an important aspect of it for sure, and both ways - i.e. for both venue and performer - but there are genuinely other factors here. The guitar/vocals guy and the drummer from my main band also go out as an acoustic duo (guitar & cajon) and have actually taken gigs away from the main band. That's cool. The gigs concerned are venues that were either too small or too bad acoustically (or both) for a 4-piece rock band, but which work well for an acoustic 2-piece. In truth, I don't miss playing those places.

Coming at this from a slightly different angle, for me a gig can only count as 'great' if it's memorable. It doesn't matter how well I played or whether or not the magic happened if a month later I've forgotten all about it. The gigs that stick in my mind are the ones that we, the band, will still be talking and laughing about in the pub after rehearsal years later. As musical events some were good and some were bad, for all sorts of reasons, but they're the ones we look back at. One recent gig wasn't necessarily a great musical performance by the band, but it has already entered Junkyard Dogs folklore as "The Gig That Had Everything" ... multiple satnav fails on the way there, a fuse blowing halfway through the final set, more silicon boobies and 6" stilettos than you could shake a stick at, broken guitar strings twice in one set, being asked if I'd ever heard of a guy called Keith Moon who was the Lead Drummer in The Who, having my photo taken by an under-dressed lady who said I looked just like "a young Bruce Willis" (I'm 61), the band being trapped on stage at the end of the gig because there were 200 drunken (but well-behaved) punters ramming the pub and we literally could not get out. All this and more.

Which Oasis album did you play on?

Which would rather rule out this gig. Completely.

I suppose it depends on your conception ...

It's reading posts like this that truly underlines how little I understand about what's going on inside the expensive boxes I buy.

"The belt pack is simply a Redeemer guitar buffer in a convenient box to make buffering any guitar or bass easy." Is this actually a preamp?

Don't mean to derail this, but the best bass I ever played that I didn't own ... I immediately bought it!

Gary Kemp on bass ...

Does it count if the wall is alongside you? Eagle-eyed West London musicians will probably recognise this spot ...

A full graphite Status neck on a P-bass is a wonderful thing. Tight, punchy, lots of other adjectives too. Can't comment on carbon-reinforced necks, I'm afraid.

I saw that Jacqueline du Pre woman play one and she made it look dead easy ...

The clip-on tuners are great and I use them extensively ... but not at gigs! They disappear way too easily ("disappear" as in go walkies and never come back) and they look ugly as sin. My Korg DTR2000 on the other hand looks really cool, and with a fly lead left dangling from it, can also be used by the guitarists in the band. Where space is short, or there's no need for me to bring that particular rack case, I always use a pedal tuner. First choice is the Pitchblack, but increasingly the only pedal I take to gigs is my Valetone Dapper.

That's always a tricky one. You know it's supposed to be a drop-out for bass & drums but drummist keeps playing ... do you show solidarity and keep playing (thereby enraging the guitards) or do you drop out as intended and (possibly) leave the drummer to be humiliated? My approach is always to drop out as planned; plenty of drop-out moments sound fine with just the drums.

Howard?

I actually started to get trolley GAS ... no, seriously, stop laughing ... and came up with https://www.sitebox.ltd.uk/clarke-cst12-industrial-sack-truck-oclarke_6500185?paid=googlepaidproducts&gclid=Cj0KCQjw0PTXBRCGARIsAKNYfG15YVWAjE6e5U9jhnKD4qWopfRbEjIUDHizjKwf5HHJoH089U7QP2UaAjCeEALw_wcB Luckily, I had the sense to ask what the (unladen) trolley weighed before I bought it. 21Kg. Ah, right, so now I need a trolley to move around my trolley ... perhaps not.

I can see the value of castors for a touring band playing big/biggish venues, but for pub gigs I'd expect them to be a complete PITA. Pavements, steps, narrow doorways, etc. and never a ramp in sight. For the rare occasions where wheels are helpful, a folding sack trolley is a much neater solution. https://www.screwfix.com/p/folding-sack-truck-80kg/1209P?tc=DX2&ds_kid=92700021630478358&ds_rl=1249481&ds_rl=1245250&gclid=Cj0KCQjw0PTXBRCGARIsAKNYfG2PvQb2hNpiOsZnHjbqOGN05zeoWKIKXhgnNAWgCG1M6v57VSM12MQaAhsjEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds&dclid=CLm3q8-qjNsCFYZh0wodHXIMAQ https://www.safetyshop.com/super-compact-sack-trucks.html?LGWCODE=37490;144151;6391&gclid=Cj0KCQjw0PTXBRCGARIsAKNYfG1Ao6UqMfAsUe26OccbHR0gsuoVSAOneRw3sdTVvXpVtqURu1MKDVcaAiv7EALw_wcB https://handle-it.com/products/folding_van_truck?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=googlepla&variant=308171637&gclid=Cj0KCQjw0PTXBRCGARIsAKNYfG1b4E3YnROczNn79YM2sUMPii4tE3Ms_83e54Qjhrm6CI9-T7VcE3EaAupOEALw_wcB

But in London I still think that the relative handful of genuinely good music pubs are the best call. Saturday night was an almost perfect illustration of my theory regarding the audience self-selecting. We started off playing to an empty dancefloor in a huge but only quarter-filled pub. We finished like this:

I still have my t-shirt ...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Bass-guitar/282958553522?hash=item41e1a4e1b2:g:mNcAAOSw9V5a8sG6