Lo-E

I played in a band that worked that way, more or less. The bandleader had a binder with about 80 songs in it and he mostly knew all of them but he didn’t really know any of them. He didn’t like to rehearse and the band had a revolving lineup anyway so even if we rehearsed there was little guarantee that the people who rehearsed would actually be playing the show. He would call out songs, we’d be expected to know them - in whatever slightly wrong iteration he played them - and if we didn’t know it he usually didn’t notice. I got increasingly frustrated until the guitarist, a good friend of mine from outside the band, told me: “You’re thinking about this all wrong. Just jump in and hang on. The audience is having fun. They don’t care. Play, get paid and go home.” He was right, of course. We ended up playing every Saturday at a club in Harlem. It wasn’t a really big room but we always had a good crowd, they always had fun and we always left with some money in our pockets. I lasted the summer before deciding I’d rather play with a band that actually sounded tight but I got a lot of good ear training while I stuck around.

I neglected to mention that the band in Brooklyn also prioritizes drinking and smoking at rehearsals…. a further nuisance. The rehearsal actually went quite well. We have a new drummer (better than the last and an old friend of mine with whom I’ve played many shows) and that put the rest of the band on their best behaviour. There was no drinking and only one smoke break. It’s f’in amazing how much more productive a rehearsal can be when everyone is sober and paying attention! I still smelled like cigarettes when I got home but it was better than usual. I’ve known these guys for years and shared bills with them when I played in other bands. I’m fairly new to the group and the drummer just joined but we sound tighter than I remember them sounding in a long time. I think the 3rd will be a good show. I played the Ric, as planned, and plugged straight into the PA as the bass amp in the room wasn’t working. Shockingly, the PA did a pretty respectable job of amplifying the bass so it wasn’t a struggle. The Ric still feels weird. I have a week to get re-acclimated.

A good two hours in a hired room. Five new original tunes to be worked into the set for an upcoming gig on the 2nd. Punk/pop originals. Many rehearsal rooms in NYC are pretty run down but this place is plush; top-shelf gear, really good sounding rooms with good PA and a crew that actually knows their stuff. The bass rig was a Bergantino head and 3x10 cabinet. Very uptown stuff. It’s a pleasure to play there. Our bandleader/songwriter’s songs aren’t overly complex so the new songs came together quickly and we’ll clean them up further at one more rehearsal before the show. One of the guitarists had to miss our last rehearsal so it was good to have the whole band at this one. I took out the Rickenbacker again after a long stint of playing Fenders and I always need a little time to get used to the Ric and its quirks so I had to really pay attention to what I was doing. I mostly pulled it off…. Tonight I’ll be rehearsing with a different band in Brooklyn for a show on the 3rd. Their studio is a dump and a nuisance to get to so it will be a very different experience than last night’s. They’re nice folks, though, so it’s all good. I’ll stick with the Rickenbacker until both shows are over so my brain doesn’t break.

Well, that worked out rather nicely, didn’t it?

This looks like fun. Are you going to scrap the PCBs and make tag boards, print new PCBs or wire it up point-to-point?

I’m sorry to read that that was your experience there. I’m based in the US and I’ve been a TB member since 2009 and I’ve encountered very little jerkery, all things considered, and haven’t really found humor to be squelched in any meaningful way. …but that’s just my experience and you and I might have just been reading entirely different threads. I’ve mostly found TB to be a pretty welcoming community. I spend a lot of time on there. Sure, there are some jerks…. there are jerks everywhere if you look for them. Even if you don’t! I’ve been a member here since 2015 although I haven’t been around much lately. I can’t say I’ve found much to complain about here, either. Nice bunch of folks, all around. Another good, slightly different community. Perhaps your experience on TB is a reflection of the whole world being under a lot of stress. I sense it a lot more on social media than I do on forums but it does seem like an awful lot of people are squaring up for a fight; any fight, really. I just try to steer clear of all that mess and I try to cut a little extra slack on the internet where people’s intentions are sometimes not as obvious as we assume they are.

I saw them open for Rush (I think it was Rush) sometime in the early 1980s and they were great. Normally, at that time in my life, that would have spurred me to go to the nearest record shop and buy up their back catalog but it didn’t. That makes me wonder what went wrong; I do remember enjoying their show but I didn’t go and buy their records. Now I’m going to have to revisit their material and see if it strikes a chord with me or not.

A dear friend (and great bassist) who lives in a small Manhattan apartment called me during the summer to ask if I wanted to buy his 1967 Ampeg SB-12. He had realized that, with his bad back, he had only used his lightweight rig for the past several years and he didn’t want the Ampeg to languish in his closet. He offered it to me at a very generous price and, naturally, I said yes. To be honest, this was the best purchase of the last several years.

This sounds to me like the obvious first choice. A pickup you already know you like for that price is a pretty low-risk experiment. It will sound different on a long scale bass, of course, but how different, really? If you hate it you can always sell it here on BC for a few pounds less and you haven’t lost much but if you love it you’ve gotten one hell of a bargain.

Here in the US, the Duncan SCPB-3 is a popular p’up for those looking for a fatter, more aggressive scpb sound. To my ears it sits somewhere in between a scpb and a regular split p. The larger magnets give it a fair amount of heft. I suspect that the Duncan SCPB-1 might be a marginal improvement to what you have now but will probably sound pretty similar. Even very inexpensive pickups are pretty well made and sound pretty good these days. I’m not sure the scpb-1 - which is also trying to emulate the classic pickup - will be much of a departure from what you have. It might be a little better made but I doubt it will sound much different. How easy is it to get Fralin pickups in the UK? One of Lindy Fralin’s scpb pickups with a 5% overwind might be just what you’re looking for. It will be fatter than a typical scpb but still retain the essential scpb character.

Really enjoyable! An enclosed, heated rooftop bar "battle of the bands" in Bushwick, Brooklyn. We were the old guys playing with a bunch of much younger bands. Our singer entered us in the contest on a lark. We played rings around the other bands and then the judges chose the band that had three very attractive young women in it. So it goes!! It doesn't matter; We had a lot of fun. The venue's management and staff, the sound crew, the video crew and, especially, the members of other bands were all really, really nice with no exceptions. It was a very fun crowd and a nice scene to fall into. Hopefully we'll play with some of these folks again.

Elvis Costello - Pump It Up

I started doing my own setups in the early 1990s and followed soon after with nut replacement, then fret work. Complete re-frets with extensive fingerboard dressing: no problem. I already had a background in electronics so that’s never been much of a problem. These various skills were learned one at a time; Each time I payed a lot of money to a “craftsman” who did a disappointing job for me I swore to myself I’d figure it out on my own and never be taken in again. I’d find cheap, beater instruments to make my mistakes on and learn. Thankfully, I found a number of genuine craftsmen in the area who were very generous with advice and whom I can still turn to when I’m stumped. I also enjoyed restoring amps and cabinets but I’ve never designed my own.

If I waited to take an uncluttered pic of any of my workbenches it would be an awfully long wait. Forever comes to mind.

I haven’t yet but I keep eyeing up the fretless options - probably a dozen or so of them! For those prices it seems worth taking a chance to use up parts from the parts drawer and throw a beater bass together.

I wouldn’t say I’ve lost any sleep over any that I’ve sold but there are a few I miss a little: 1980 Ibanez Musician 8-string - was never very useful to me but it was awfully cool 1976 Ibanez “Silver Series” P-bass copy with P/J pickups - sold to a friend for next to nothing because his son was learning to play. I didn’t realize at the time what a good bass it was. His son became an excellent player so I don’t feel too bad about it Mid-1980s ESP fretless P-bass with P/J pickups - kept the neck and sold the body. Big mistake; it was better on that body than any it’s been on since Out of more than a dozen instruments I’ve sold these are the only ones I miss, and not really that much, so I guess I’m doing alright.

Foul Smelling Oxen

75/25 for me. I think there’s a lot of material that sounds better with a pick but my pick playing is crap so I’ll only use one when I think I need to. The more grown up approach would be for me to face the problem head-on and work at my pick playing until it improved but I never laid any claims to being a grownup.

This is wonderful, practical advice. I’ve carried a small case - my “crash kit” - to about 20 years worth of gigs and it has evolved over time as my needs at gigs have changed. It always contains a spare of every type of cable that might fail (instrument {1 short, 1 long}, speaker {speakon and 1/4”}, XLR, AC mains extension), batteries, some basic tools, torch, extra tuner, strings, some strings for the guitarist (believe me: he didn’t remember to bring any), gaffer’s tape, markers, a direct box, drum key, spare hi-hat clutch (believe me: the one at the club slips), and on and on…. Believe it or not, the case is not all that big but it has bailed me and my band mates out of more trouble than you could possibly imagine. Bunion’s advice re: pedals is also wise. I can’t imagine you’d need a noise suppression pedal for any reason unless you’re planning to play with gobs of effects. A tuner pedal is nice. Since the advent of affordable, accurate headstock tuners I don’t even carry a tuner pedal anymore. What I often do carry, though, is a spare micro head. There are a lot of clubs here in NYC that don’t take good care of their gear and I’ve had to deal with a lot of backline heads that weren’t working right. A spare mini head is good insurance. It’s certainly not necessary, though. You can add it to your list as you start gigging more often. Spare strap…. Good one, Bunion! In all these years, that’s never occurred to me!

Hah! I put that on the list because it’s the kind of advice nobody will ever think to give you when you first start out. The first time I wrote a set list in colored marker (I can’t remember now if it was red or blue - probably blue), I put it on the stage floor and we ran through a sound check under fluorescent work light. Later, we started the show under colored stage lighting and I was looking down at a blank page!! The colored lighting canceled the colored ink and it simply disappeared! It had never occurred to me that this could happen. Why would it? It would have been nice if someone had warned me, so now I’m paying that forward.

Rule #1: Have fun Rule #2: Write your set list in black ink on white paper - no colored ink! Rule #3: If you mess up just keep playing Rule #4: See rule #1

Sometime in late 1989 or early 1990 I had a bass teacher who had just bought an SWR Redhead combo. It was the first time I had ever heard of SWR and I just LOVED it. Shortly afterwards I found a used Studio 220 and found that, while I really liked the tone, it was underpowered and not nearly punchy enough for a rock context. I traded up for some Ampeg gear and then moved through lots of other things over the years. About 3 or 4 years ago I was visiting a local guitar shop and saw a Groove Tubes preamp. The GT preamp was nothing more than a preamp version of the Studio 220, manufactured by SWR whose factory was right across the street from Groove Tubes! Paired with a 1,000W power amp I finally, after 25 years, had the tone of my Studio 220 along with enough power to complete with a loud drummer! It didn’t replace my other gear but it’s a great option to have along with my more aggressive sounding amps. Congratulations on your new/old SWR preamp! I hope it turns out to be as much fun for you as mine has for me!

With a single plywood top I strongly recommend skinning it with a layer of 1/4” (or 6mm) finish plywood, masonite or hardboard. Screw it down but don’t glue it. Any time the top gets chewed up you can quickly and easily replace the top layer, preserving the main top. Another option is to double up the main top with a second layer of 3/4” plywood that stops a few inches shy of the back of the bench. This will create a shallow tool tray along the back and you can then cover the added top with 1/4” plywood as I mentioned above.

I don’t have any multi-scale instruments but I think it’s a great idea. Those that I’ve tried required almost no adjustment on my part and felt really natural to play. I’m not so sure I see it as a solution to a problem, per se, as much as I see it as just another approach to design.