T-Bay

How easy is it to pick up for a complete novice? A mate is selling one and I often fancied a go.

Lost two today following the announcement, one would be during the time I am supposed to self isolate so at least we don’t have to disappoint them.

We are due to play for a 80th birthday in 6 weeks time. Chances of that one going ahead? I won’t be booking the rehearsal room for the week before just yet.

I think of lot of people off of here would pay to see Blue though! I know I would.

I used to work in medical research. I worked in the UK and the Netherlands on lung cancer treatments and semi synthetic antibiotics. Specifically I used to help bioengineer novel proteins. Then took a missive career change and am now workIng with kids with a wide range of disabilities and still do a bit of lab work whilst planning and overseeing trips to various places around the world for a wide range of special needs kids. In addition I help run music groups and clubs for the same group of kids. It’s a nice mix as I still have the science side but also other things to keep my mind busy.

I have a cheap clip on one, a cheap one on my board and have used a TU3, they all worked ok. The clip on type can be a little more temperamental, but I found that if you just shifted up an octave they were better. The cheap pedal was a tenner off AliExpress and matches the Boss performance wise.

I have never seen one of those before, it looks aftermarket. But ,any basses of that age will have small changes/ additions.

This^^^^^^ I have tried all sorts in the pursuit of perfection, my go to bass is now a Squier with a few sensible upgrades. It owes me a couple of hundred quid max, and would be less than £700 if everything on it was bought brand new. It also means I don’t worry if it gets a ding or two and I am not paranoid about using it at gigs.

I have a small personal monitor that sits on a mic stand (with adaptor). It’s a Mackay copy and for £130ish works brilliantly. It has also been used as an amp for my semi acoustic bass and did that surprisingly well.

That is gorgeous!

The 1000w is probably over the top but makes it a lot more flexible, not sure what they have done to the new ones but they seem a bit more ‘tame’ than the originals. Not so much terror as mild nervousness.

Without getting into the technicalities (because people like Bill do it so much better), what I would say is that I continually get comments about my compact and midget setup. Before a gig it’s usually along the lines of ‘where is the rest of it?’ Or ‘is that your rehearsal rig?’ And afterwards it’s ‘kin ell! How is something that small that loud?’. I run them from an Orange terror 1000w head. I don’t think I ever got the dial more than a third of the way around in a gig. I messed about around two thirds when we turned up early for a sound check for a small festival last year and our drummer could hear it a mile away on the access road. I know there is more to good sound than volume, but they also seem to have an amazingly flat response across the range. How do they do it? No idea, but I love them.

Mustang Sally, that should never be covered, nor should the original be played fir that matter.

Weirdly I am the oldest in both the bands I play in, but whilst the others want to play 60s and 70s stuff, I would much rather playing 80s-2000s stuff. Age is a mind thing as much as anything else. I am still firmly a stupid teenager in my brain.

The sex pistols - I was a weird 10 year old Iron Maiden - Paul Di’Anno years - when I realised I didn’t like the chart music my class mates were listening to. Bob Mould - in Sugar/ Husker Du/ solo - just amazing wall of noise sound on Beaster that has never been bettered in my opinion. Tilted is the single most perfect song ever for me. My top 10 swings and changes on a daily basis but rarely is Tilted ever challenged for top spot.

Beck - Loser, I remember hearing the single and thinking it was one of the worst things I had ever heard. Over a period of a few years it gradually worked its way into head and I love Beck now.

Sweet little machine at Feeder last year. They were brilliant but more importantly their sound was superb whereas Feeder’s sound was awful - kick drum overload x100

Sit down - James I like it but was a little resistant on putting it in the set as I didn’t think it would be popular. How wrong I was, it’s an absolute guaranteed floor filler.

Even cheaper off AliExpress (how can it be cheaper sent from Half way round the world? But there you go). I paid £2 posted last time and that was enough to do a couple of basses.

We have the joy and despair of a mate with the most amazing ear for music. Why joy and despair? Joy on the rare gig he can make when we know we will sound as good as we possibly can, despair that we have to try and get close to that when he isn’t there.

Not sure Dana will ever be classic rock to me 😁😁

Repeat booking yesterday - 3rd year in a row and bonus was a very talented mate agreed to do some solos for the Christmas songs - on his flute. Sounds strange but worked a great in rehearsal. So cue the first big solo and out guitarist/ vocalist announces him, we all turn to look at him and he isn’t there! He is in the crowd chatting to someone. He is always a bit random so we are used to it but we took the mick mercilessly. 100+ up dancing the whole time so all was good, asked back for next year.

If you think you aren’t good enough then you really need to join a band. I know this sounds crazy, but nothing has forced/ encouraged me to improve more than knowing I needed to be gig ready. I have now been playing 3 years and 2 months, my first gig was two months after first starting. I was out of my comfort zone big time, but worked hard and it went very well overall. We were booked again, and again and will be playing there in three weeks time so I can’t have been too bad! Be honest and tell any prospective band where you are technically if they ask, I think as long as you are ok then personality is at least as important in most bands.

Work with one set of band mates, work with the friends/ partners of the other.

Actually that makes far more sense to me. It seems strange as a right hander that it’s my left seemingly doing the complex stuff. Sadly short of inventing a time machine there is no way of determining whether it would in fact be easier to learn to play on a left handed bass.