Gottastopbuyinggear

If this were me then I’d definitely try putting bass through your existing PA, using both speakers, to see whether that's up to the job. Assuming it is but you absolutely have to have something for gigs where you need a smaller footprint then I’d definitely be thinking hard about something like the RCF 735 that others have mentioned. There’s no reason why you can’t feed that from the main out connections on the front of your existing mixer so you wouldn’t necessarily have to buy a new mixer yet. Then your upgrade path is another 735 in the future, and a passive mixer, which would let you get rid of the existing PA. One other question - I’m guessing that somewhere along the line, or in your future plans, is something bigger than the acoustic duo, as your Ashdown rig is probably overkill for that? If that’s the case then the 735's would be more appropriate for a bigger band, so would make sense from that point of view. If not then perhaps looking at a smaller bass rig along with smaller active speakers could make some sense?

In my limited experience (two gigs cancelled this year due to band member illness) the pubs are pleased that you bother to let them know and don't just fail to turn up on the night! In our case, and bearing in mind that we do this for fun and any income from gigging is a bonus, we offered to rebook for a reduced fee. We also did our best to find another band, but were only able to for one of the gigs. We’ve since played one of the pubs again and they didn't take up our offer of a reduced fee which was nice.

I had my PF500 attached to the 15” version of that cab for a while and it fitted okay (both bought new in 2015), though I vaguely recall you had to flip it in the right direction as it would only go in one way. The mounting holes are different, but you should be able to blank off the existing holes with nuts, bolts and washers, which is what I’ve done. I think the holes are pre-drilled and covered by plastic plugs on the inside, and you just need to punch through the tolex.

With all due respect to TH, given the three options in the original post I’m guessing that a barefaced cab north of a grand is probably not going to be an option? For what it’s worth, Alex, I have a TS210 which we use as a monitor in our pub band, where we use Yamaha DBR12s as mains and just put keys and vocals through the PA. A bit different from your situation, I know. I was a bit disappointed with the Alto - the way I set it up (high pass filter taking out everything below about 100Hz, and compression to take out the peaks) it sounds okay, but it’s only just loud enough as a monitor for the keys player and his backing vocals, and the peak light is almost constantly on. The Yamaha’s are barely ticking over at similar volume. I wouldn’t consider putting bass through it, though a pair for guitar and vocals as an acoustic duo would probably be fine. I don’t think you’ll be able to daisy chain your bass cab from any of the common active speakers. What PA and bass gear do you use at the moment, and do you have a budget in mind?

Good result! Despite what I said above I do think that successful retailers in general know that unhappy customers are unlikely to be repeat customers, so if you let them know you’re unhappy then they'll quite often try to sort it out.

I think most consumers, shop assistants, and perhaps the smaller Ebay shops just don’t know the law. I may be being cynical but I think the larger shops will know very well, but in many cases are relying on Joe public's lack of knowledge, and capitalising on that by not briefing their own junior staff very well. Or maybe I amjust a cynical old git. My new year resolution will be to be less cynical. Yeah, like that's ever going to happen 😁

Distance selling regulations state that you are entitled to receiving a refund of the basic delivery costs (but not any extra you’ve paid for expedited delivery). Consumer rights act says you are entitled to be reimbursed reasonable costs for return of a faulty item. I’m not sure, however, how this applies to non UK sellers, but the consumer rights act is the enactment in UK law of an EU directive so I’d at least try a few times with Thomann on the basis that it probably does apply. The only reason I know anything about the distance selling regulations is that I was alerted to the new regulations when returning an online purchase to a high street shop. Since that I’ve had several debates with other high street shops, many of which will argue the toss about it and claim that it’s “discretionary”. Funny that - I always thought the law was the law...

Ah, hang on a sec... I’ve just looked at the PF500 manual and it seems I’m wrong about the aux in. The bad news is that it only goes through to the headphones output, so it won’t come out of the speaker. The good(ish?) news is that you could still plug the SR16 into it and practice through headphones. So it’s back to needing a mixer if you want to try this. It’s probably not an ideal set up, but for practice is worth a try. With a mixer like the Behringer one I suggested above then you’ll need a pair of quarter inch mono to mono jacks to connect the SR16 main outputs into inputs 2 and 3 on the mixer. You can plug your bass into the line in, though I don’t think that’ll be brilliant as it’s not really meant for an instrument input. Connect either the left or right main out to the input of the Ampeg.

I think you have an Ampeg PF500? In that case you don’t need a mixer, as the PF500 has an aux in on the front panel. You'll just need a cable with a stereo 3.5mm jack at the Ampeg end, and either two quarter inch mono jacks or one stereo jack at the SR16 end (I can’t remember what sockets it has). I’ve not done this with my PF500, but have done with a GK MB200 and it worked quite well - in fact I ran a complete backing track, minus bass, through it to audition a keyboard player, and it was fine - sounded better than the cr*ppy PA in the rehearsal room actually! Make sure you start with the SR16 volume off and turn it up slowly - I think the aux input goes straight into the power amp section and isn’t affected by the master volume, so you'll need to go carefully. The XLR on the Ampeg is purely for output, so if you did ever want to go for practice through headphones then you'd need to take that output into a mixer (with an XLR to mono jack cable) and also plug the SR16 into the mixer with the appropriate jack to jack cable.

Another thing you could consider if you have a PC is Toontrack EZ Drummer, which I think is a little cheaper than a new SR16 and has much better sounds, a library of patterns, and is arguably a lot easier to use when setting up your own patterns. I do still have my old SR16, but I never use it now - I’m just a bit of a hoarder! Either way you’re going to need a small mixer as TheGreek suggests. I’ve used one of the Behringer 502 models in the past for exactly this and it worked fine. if you want something more like an effect pedal then there are some accompaniment pedals out there (I can’t remember the name but Gear4Music were selling one off very cheaply only a few days ago) but I get the impression they’re aimed more at guitarists as they offer bass and drums accompaniment. I assume (?) you could just use the drum part, but even then I’d imagine the number of patterns/styles would be pretty limited. Personally I’ve gone the whole hog down the PC route and use IK Multimedia's Amplitube for practice using headphones (keeps the rest of the family happy!), though if you have an amp with some form of DI out then you could do the same with a small mixer.

That’s a really logical, sensible, answer. However I’m secretly disappointed that it’s not just bass player excess!

And I always thought those were to compensate when you didn’t have, say, a huge great 8x10 right behind you!

Good grief - my whole band usually has to set up in a smaller space than that, and we're a five piece! What's that between the stack and your pedal board - it's not a butt kicker type thing is it?!

Oh, no need to worry there. I make most bass lines my own - the more difficult the original, the more I make it my own! Seriously, though, I'm not really into copying stuff note for note - as a band we definitely put our own stamp on stuff, so I tend to start with something more or less based on the original but adapt it to what feels right as we get used to the song. In this case I think the B D E seems instinctively right (certainly safe), but I was interested to find out whether anyone else was hearing the C or if it's just my dodgy hearing.

No, not a personal declaration, but the Spencer Davis Group song. Someone in my band suggested we try it - I had a quick listen and we jammed it last night, and it was one of those rare moments where it came together immediately and sounded (to me) absolutely brilliant first time. The thing is, I can't work out what the bass line actually is... I had a better listen today, and a quick look on the tab sites and YouTube where what little material I could find seems to be in agreement that the main riff is B D E (E string 7th fret, A string 5th and then 7th fret) and then to open E, but I can't reconcile that with what I'm hearing. In the intro I think I'm hearing C D open E for the first few bars at least, but when it gets going it possibly sounds more B D E. I'm not sure it really matters - I've tried playing various combinations of B D B Open E, C D E Open E, even C D B Open E and they all sound fine - but I'm interested to know what other people hear and play, and whether anyone has a more definitive answer?

I'm guessing you prefer to buy new rather than used? I’d say don’t be put off by the stories about PF500's failing - those problems were sorted ages ago. I have one from about 2015 and it’s a great amp for the price, which incidentally hasn’t changed in the last couple of years. Depending on what sort of music you play and whether you gig or not I’d also suggest the GK MB200 might be worth looking at. I also have one of those, and I’d be happy to gig it with my pub band (Edit: to be fair, in my case I’d only do that if using both my 12” cabs), despite the fact that I have to keep up with a pretty loud drummer. It doesn’t have the same headroom as the Ampeg, though it’s not far off.

Yep. I saw them in Cardiff earlier in the month, and it was pretty much as Woodinblack and T-Bay said. Black Honey were okay, though the bass was fairly mushy. At The Drive In were just a wall of mush at any point where it wasn't just guitar alone, and Royal Blood sounded surprisingly good considering the bass problems with the support bands. Not knowing anything about At The Drive In I'm not sure whether the singer's comment along the lines of "you can tell everyone you saw this crap band" was just self-deprecation, a comment about how they've been received so far on the tour, or a symptom of something else going on.

I play some triplet stuff, including the Jean Genie intro, with two fingers. Took a little while to get it fluid, but with the usual start-slow-and-build-up approach it wasn't too difficult. I'd suggest practicing by continuously playing up and down a scale (or any pattern of notes) in triplet groups, especially over the transitions between different strings. Also, if you're going for true alternate i-m-i-m-i-m picking, try playing both even and odd numbers of notes (in triplet groups) on each string so you get used to transitioning between strings on both the index and middle fingers. Alternatively for transitioning down the strings (G to D, for example) you might find raking is helpful. One other thing that I found is that playing higher up the fretboard (if it's an option given the song) makes life easier, although that might just be a personal thing. I've been trying to learn Hit Me With Your Rhythym Stick, starting out by playing the main intro bit which is down on the first to fourth frets. When I started to learn the verse, which is played higher up, I found for some reason that it was a lot easier. I'm not up to full speed yet, but I'm getting there with practice. My biggest progress on that was when Basschat was upgraded and so out of action for most of the weekend, which just goes to show I usually spend too much time on the forum and not enough time practicing!

[quote name='JapanAxe' timestamp='1510264343' post='3405231'] Learning material for bands has led me to discover a lot of great music that I may not otherwise have heard, so I have ended up with less of a disconnect than when I started! [/quote] This! [quote name='mikel' timestamp='1510308996' post='3405440'] I like the music we play, because I love playing the songs. They have grooves and rhythms I would never have got into If I had stuck to only playing the music I like listening to. [/quote] ...and a bit of this too! When I first started playing bass (a few years ago), I played along to a lot of blues and blues rock stuff because I was familiar with it, and understood it, from playing guitar (I do listen to a lot of other types of music - I'm just crap on guitar!). Since being in bands, even though it's not exactly a hugely diverse range of styles, my listening tastes have diversified, and I've found that it's a bit of a circle - I learn to play something with the band that's a little bit different for me, listen around that and find some more stuff, then learn to play a bit of that, and so on.

[quote name='thebrig' timestamp='1510060564' post='3403607'] I usually get to the venue first to set my rig up, then sit and have a pint while I wait for the drummer to set up. But whats even more annoying than our drummer taking ages to set up, he is always late, the last gig we arranged to be there and set up at 7.30pm for a 9.15pm start, he turned up 8.25pm which left us very little time to do a sound check. [/quote] Our drummer routinely turns up two hours in advance of start time so no problem there. Biggest issue I have with him is the first stomp he'll do on his kick pedal when he's setting up - invariably does it when I'm right next to his kit but with my back turned so don't see it coming, and it scares the hell out of me every time!

It takes "me" about 5 minutes to set up - one speaker on top of the other, amp on top, pedal board (battery powered) on the floor, plug everything in... It then takes me anything up to an hour to set the PA up, because most of the rest of the band "don't understand that technical stuff", so I've volunteered to do it. The PA is spread among the band for storage, so we usually have a mixture of band members arriving late with their designated bits of kit, and one or more of "I've forgotten my mic stand", "Have you got a spare mic cable?", "Have you got a spare mic?", "Has anyone got a mains extension"... To be fair things have got a bit more slick of late, but (bearing in mind that I don't sing) there was a time when I was routinely taking 2 mics and mic stands to every gig just in case! Even though the agreement is that people bring their own mic and instrument cables I still bring enough to cover everyone, and I quite often end up using mine as I get fed up waiting for people to get the knots out of theirs, which they've hastily stuffed into their bags at the end of the last gig rather than coiling up in a nice neat OCD fashion as I would. Which brings me on to the time spent to pack up, which usually extends to the following morning for me, when I get up and re-coil all the cables that my band mates have packed up for me! Ooh, that ended up a bit cathartic! And don't get me started on the lights - I move on to setting them up when the PA's done...

[quote name='Bobthedog' timestamp='1509789155' post='3401607'] Way over the top, but then again I see no point in a leather bag. I use a Gator G-PG Bass gig bag for my basses, including my Roscoe Signature and have no concerns re damage. The UK cost appears to be between £ 110 and £ 130 dependent on where you shop. Amazon link for reference: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gator-G-PG-BASS-Pro-Go-Bass-Guitars/dp/B00I6JGOBG [/quote] I can recommend the Gator G-PG bags - I have both this one and the dual. If you’re interested in them then it’s worth keeping an eye on Amazon's prices. The dual bag seems to come down to about £135 when Amazon have it in stock themselves, and I bought the single one linked above a bit earlier in the year for £102, though I’ve not kept an eye on the price since.

I’m no expert, having only played the LaBella 760's and D'addario Chromes, but I’m not sure that I’d jump straight on the La Bellas if you want a middy tone - they’re pretty deep and thuddy. I think the Chromes might be more to your liking, but it’d be interesting to see what others say.

If you’re also DIY inclined in the electronics area then try the fdeck HPF pre. I built one from this layout: http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/hpf-technology-hpf-pre-2.html

[quote name='Lozz196' timestamp='1509657012' post='3400701'] Hmmmm, difficult one, I had one in 2011 and it was great, 3 hour rehearsals, hour long gigs, day long recording sessions no problems. Moved it on. Fast forward a couple of years, bought another, didn`t make it through the first rehearsal before a burning smell and smoke made guest appearances. If you get a good one they`re great, but it rather put me off of them. Not heard of any issues re the 800 version though, so may be a safer bet. [/quote] Do you happen to know the year of manufacture of the one that failed? I recall reading that the issues were resolved some years ago. I have one from 2015 and it’s been fine.