Callumjord

Hi there, I am playing my first outdoor show in 2 weeks time at my towns Christmas light show. We are on at 4pm and are the last band playing before the lights are switched on. I am a bit worried/nervous about keeping warm (mainly my hands) and yet still feeling comfortable to play and not feel restricted (ie no gloves or big winter jackets), it generally tends to get very cold around that time of day up in the north of Scotland. Any advice would be great.

I just picked up a chord OC 50 off eBay. It arrived yesterday and I have a day off tomorrow. Can't wait to give it a try. I was using the octave on the zoom ms60b and while it's ok you can't hold a note for too long with out it jumping all over the place.

Was playing around a little bit more and found that when you are on the patch list you can setup a number different patches A,B & C etc and jump between the lot. This came in really handy at a gig last night and was able to jump from a simple compressor patch through to an octave/envelope filter patch all with the power of my foot, no bending over

First time giving this a go. Is there any rules on what instruments that we are allowed to use? can we use anything else besides a bass?

Ah right, does it require any setting up after you have connected them or does it automatically detect each other? I'm thinking about hooking mine up to a tech 21 midi mouse. Something small and simple.

Hi Folks, I am wondering if anybody has set up the Zoom MS60B to be used by an external Midi controller? I love my Zoom to death but I hate having to bend down at gigs all the time to change presets. All I really want to have is an external controller that I could use to scroll up and down different patches and also maybe scroll through the signal chain to turn on/off different effects in the patch. Thanks

The only band I actually like that doesn't have a bass player is animals as leaders. https://youtu.be/-DzKjuYh5ZM

My main amp is a line 6 150 combo, personally I think it's great. Huge range of different sounds and great eq section with low and hi mids. The compression on it however isn't that great but you should not have a problem if you are running your pedal board into it. For me personally the "rock" ampeg sound is the best one to use, the "clean" Eden sound really lacks punch, the rnb flip top is great for old 60s songs. The Brit, distortion and synth aren't the best either. But the ampeg tone really seems to work for me. It's a great piece of kit for what it is and its size. It's built very well and handles getting thrown around.

Some great advice here, my function band has just been booked for a couple of weddings for next year and we have been having discussions about payment and potential contracts. One of our weddings is on the isle of Skye, which is going to be a full weekend trip driving down from moray. Would you include the cost of renting a van, fuel, food and hotel/BnB in the price for such an event? I am tempted to figure out the cost of all that before hand and ask that to be covered in advanced and the rest of our fee 2 weeks before the event.

Personally for me it all depends on the gig, venue and for how long I am playing. If it's a short 2 hour gig at a dive bar I'd be more inclined to take my vintage musicman copy, if I am playing a 3-4 hour wedding I'd be more inclined to take my Yamaha as its more versatile and looks more expensive. There is no real right answer here and really just depends on the person and what you are happy with.

[quote name='Grangur' timestamp='1469356736' post='3097585'] You've had her for 10 years. You must like her? If you have a successful bass, why change it? New tuners won't rock your world. Pups would change the sound, but you might not like it. Fret-dress and set-up, maybe. But on the set-up side, you can't beat learning to have the skills to be able to make any tweeks yourself as and when they're needed. From a pro-luthier you'll only get the "one-size fits all" approach to a setup. You're looking for more variety in the sound for the new gigs? OK, what would you like to add to the sound? What function do you want to improve/add? Maybe a plug in pre or compressor might do it? [/quote] Yea I really do like her, she was my first serious instrument. Got her when I was 15 and decided that I was a bass player. Well I am doing a lot of celidh music, along with my function band and also some heavier music so having the ability to coil split the pickups individually would be great, I really like the single coil jazz bass sound when doing the celidh and full humbuckers when playing heavier. It is mainly the versatility of the pickups and being able to combine different single coil and humbucker sounds that I am after.

So here I have my trusted Yamaha RBX775, next year I will have had her for 10 years! I have recently been thinking about taking her to get a professional setup and some minor work, new nut and a fret re dress. I have then had a thought about properly sprucing her up and throwing on a set of hipshot tuners, new pickups and a new preamp to make her a lot more versatile, as I have now started to play a lot more various gigs. I have been looking into the Seymour Duncan NYC pickups as they have great reviews, great tones and seam rather versatile. However on board pre amps I am not to sure about. I find myself not really using the onboard eq on any of my basses but I love the sound of an active bass. However, I would rather change the pickup selector to a volume blend. Ideally I would like to have a series/single coil switch for each pickup and just a volume and blend. That way there would have to be no drilling/routing done. Does anybody have any alternative suggestions/advice that would help? Also, If anybody could recommend any guitar shops/luthiers in the North of Scotland that would be able to do this work that would be great. I have no experience when it comes to this type of work and would rather leave it in the hands of a professional. Cheers,

Personally I would say a bit of both, while you might not personally enjoy the songs on the set lists you can easily make them your own. That way the songs will mean a little more to you and the audience will be glad that they are seeing a live band play something different and unique as appose to seeing a band play a dj set.

I have a sansamp svt pedal that I use as my "always on" pre amp pedal that I use in conjunction with my line 6 lowdown. However, I use the rock amp svt on my lowdown as my main bass tone (although I set the eq flat) and then I use the sansamp as a "Fat compressor" and use the pedals eq to enhance my sound then use the eq on my amp to adjust my sound to get it right in the ball park.

Thanks a lot for the advice, lots of solid advice here, We have a couple of gigs lined up for the rest of the year but its roughly sitting at 3 so far, we are hoping that the word of mouth will spread and we will get more booked before the end of the year. We do have a Facebook page set up, we had a youtube channel as well but we found that we got more response and views just by the Facebook page alone. I have suggested that we turn up to some low key acoustic open mic nights and then suggest to the landlords/owners that we are also a fully working covers band with own PA/equipment

I have recently joined a covers/function band and after being together for a while jamming and building up our set lists we are now at a point were we are wanting to get out there and start gigging. We have set up a Facebook page, recorded ourselves playing through a couple of songs. We have been booked for two birthday parties but we have been looking around for more gigs to play but this has been unsuccessful. The last function band I joined luckily had a bit of a reputation and was always booked about once or twice a month without actively looking. So, how do you guys go about getting booked for gigs?

Ive tried a lot of mooers out recently and I genuinely think that they are hitting the nail on the head in terms of what a "low budget" pedal should be. Love there compact size and the fact they have catered to bass players as well. I think that their sub octave pedal is brilliant, tracking on it is great compared to others of the same price and has held up at gigs and band practice. If I am correct I am pretty sure Devin Townsend is getting his own signature mooer delay pedal. I just wish tone city would offer us bass players some pedals, they seem to be getting rave reviews from Andertons.

You won't regret it. Enjoy all the fun hours you will have playing with effects and signal paths. The unit will give you hours of fun

I don't have experience with the HD 500 but I use the HD bean as my practise rig at home. The bass expansion IMO isn't really worth it tbh, I only use the SVT amp sim. The effects are great and the routing gives you a huge range of playability, I am not sure about the XT's routing. With the realise of the Helix I would probably save up and go for that instead as the amp sims and effects on that are far better than the HD. You might not notice a huge difference in terms of sound difference between the HD and XT

Strung my vintage musicman with some pro steels 135 set, had them on for about 2 weeks now and have been put through their paces at band practise, sweaty pub gig and daily practise. Still got that "fresh out the bag" sound and have really helped me punch through the mix live. Oh, I managed to pick them up online for a great deal, around £24 a set, think I will be sticking with these for a while. Heads up to D'addario for making some great strings

I'm currently running my eq pedal as a "slap/boost" at the moment, running it straight after my compressor. Although, I am wanting to try some other boost pedals and see how they work out. Has anybody placed an eq pedal between the amp and cab to remove any boomy/boxy frequencys?

Yea that's what a plan to do when I upgrade my gig rig, currently it's a tech 21 vt into a line 6 lowdown combo but my plan is to use this pre amp into a 500watt class D amp into a 2x10. So the rig would be more of a hybrid, all tube warmth from the pre amp and have the portability of a small class D

Wow, I had never heard of these pedals before. They look and sound fantastic,absolute bargain at the price as well! I'll hopefully soon be getting my hands on one of these. Has anybody tried swapping the tubes with different ones? Also has anyone plugged it directly into the power section of an amp?

Overly pointy guitars (Jackson, LTD etc) Gold Hardware Tortoise shell pickguard Old Style fender bridges (would rather have a mono rail system) Input jacks that are not side mounted Square heels Explorer type bodies

Finally have a sorted out my first pedal board, has been gigged the past 2 weekends in some medium sized pub gigs and I can say that I am fairly happy with it. Although, the CS3 is away to be replaced with a better compressor and a Zoom MS60b is to be added.