BassedinBucks

Just bought a lovely Sadowsky from Mark, top bloke to deal with! It was well packaged and arrived very quickly; very good comms too! Buy with confidence, many thanks.

Is that the Peter Barton from The Animals who lives in Clitheroe? Runs Peter Barton Management? Or different one?

Even though it's a great bassline, Disco Inferno is an uncomfortable song for me after seeing occasional fires in nightclubs around the world where many have died, trapped inside by locked exit doors. Also, Police, Don't Stand So Close To Me makes me feel queasy, we don't play it, but it just doesn't seem right anymore when I hear it.

I think I need to get out more! I haven't heard of the majority of these bands, and that's the problem with working from home, I had a very enjoyable few hours pasting the names into You Tube to have a listen and there are some great bands listed that I have made a note of. Thanks all!

Bought an EHX Bass Mono Synth pedal from Colin, great price, good comms, well packaged and very fast delivery. Great to do business with, many thanks

Blimey! You've been lucky! All advice that you will find on the internet will tell you that your amp must have a higher power rating than your speakers, usually it says at least a third more power, but up to double. If you look at active PA speakers you will see that the power amp in them is usually between 1.6 times to twice the power rating of the cones. You need headroom in your amp that exceeds the power rating of your cones else you could blow the voice coils; this will happen if you run your amp/system very loud for a long period, at a quieter volume you may get away with just some distortion but no damage. Good amps often have a limiter in them to prevent overworking the amp and over-driving the speakers. I just Googled 'what power amp for my speakers' and the first result produced this; POWER The industry says, buy a PA power amplifier that can deliver power equal to twice the speaker’s program power rating. This means that a speaker with a “nominal impedance” of 8 ohms and a program rating of 350 watts will need a power amplifier that can deliver 700 watts into an 8-ohm load. For a stereo pair of speakers, the amplifier should be rated at 700 watts per channel into 8 ohms. HEADROOM Extra “headroom” will help you so that only clean, undistorted signal gets to your speakers. Headroom is the difference between the normal operating level of an amplifier, and the maximum level that the amp can pass without distorting. Music has wide variations in dynamic range; without enough headroom, you could find that your gear will clip and distort

The sound signal that gets amplified from guitar is a sine wave; when you overdrive it using the input gain on the amp you clip the top and bottom of the sine wave so that it flattens (or squares it), this distorts the signal and in addition to affecting the sound quality, it causes the amp to overheat a bit. But most damage is done to the drivers in the cab. The overdriven signal creates more higher pitched harmonics which are not present in the original guitar sound source and the crossover in the cab sends these to the tweeter particularly where it will quickly burn out the voice coil; it can also fry the larger cones if the speaker is driven at high volume for long enough. The same can happen if you use an under-powered amp to drive a high powered speaker; the speaker 'demands' more power from the amp and that will damage both amp and speakers; generally, you should use an amp with higher Watt rating than your speakers. And avoid red clip lights everywhere along your entire signal processing path, from guitar to amp, to desk, to FOH speakers - everything green, except vox is nice with a tiny bit of blinking amber.

From all of the comments, this is clearly a Marmite thing! I have two different experiences. I have run lots of beer festivals and usually put 8 local bands on including the band I'm in on each day, with 20 mins turnaround time between them, 50-60 min sets. I supply the full back line and it is all my own good quality gear, even cymbals and snare if drummers want to travel light, and I have never had any breakage or damage ever (a valve went on one of my Fender guitar amps once, that's it). All bands play for free because these events are fund raisers, but they get as much free beer as they want, so can go home in a taxi with minimal gear. And they all ask to come back year after year because the events are so good with very appreciative large audiences of up to 1,500 and a superb PA, stage and light show. I provide a Berg Forte HP amp and two Vanderkley cabs for the bass and always set the gain for each player so that it won't clip, and ask them not to adjust it which has always been respected, but the amp does have protection overrides built in. The PA is massive and does all the work. I have also run sound and stage at several very large festivals (up to 40,000) where we put a top quality full back line on stage hired from pro outlets; the bands there are famous and get paid highly, some have surprisingly little respect for the gear and complain about everything, others are absolutely charming and grateful for everything; the charming ones tend to be the older stars and celebs, some of the young ones have a very unrefined attitude to stage crew, equipment and the crowd; I wouldn't ever want to lend my personal gear to them.

That's sad but true. Maybe Eric Clapton or Ed Sheeran would be a more widely known guitarists than Hendrix, even amongst millennials. As for bass players, maybe Sting might be well known? I bet the same difficulty in choosing a keyboard player or drummer may apply, kids these days only seem to know the lead singer of the latest boy band who's been hogging the front page or tweeting the most.

We use the plastic storage boxes from 'Really Useful Box' company, for anything up to nine of us in a function band at big events we will take five large boxes with all the music cables (XLRs and instruments) for musicians , power cables, the PA and all the lighting. For an individual performer maybe try the 18 litre size (currently doing them for £9 in Tescos). They are waterproof, you can stack them. You can keep your mic in it, spare bits and pieces and strings, tools, torch etc. Drape a bit of black cloth over it and put your amp on it when playing and put all your valuables in it and they will be safe too.

Look up all the up-coming beer festivals in a 20 mile radius over the summer and ask for a slot. If you are new, go for an afternoon slot; if they like you then you will be invited back and probably given a later slot in the evening. Many will be fund-raisers at football/rugby clubs and schools so they don't pay you but will give you a couple of free beers each. You get to play in front of a large appreciative crowd for about 50 mins and will meet many other bands. There is a PA all set up and a sound engineer so usually you just plug and play if it's well run. Great experience and good to get your band known. Make sure your friends take loads of photos of you and see if you can get some full-length video clips of your best songs to put on You Tube. This will help you develop your 'brand' and also review the material you are playing; you will know straight away what is most popular. Then set up a band page on Facebook and put all your photos and video clips on it. Once you start adding photos of gigs in pubs and private parties, you will have all the promo material you need to then approach more pubs and clubs.

I agree with a lot of the comments above, but would add a slightly different perspective which reflects the path I would take. It all depends on a couple of things; what can you reasonably afford and how serious are you about your future in music and performing. If you can afford it and you are serious about many years of playing and performing, then I would go for the best quality that you can afford. And I wouldn't bother with one mic for rehearsals and one for live, just get one good mic and use it every time you play. If you have a limited budget and are not sure that you will continue playing much in the future, all the above advice from previous posters is the route to take. So, if you want a middle of the road mic, get a Shure SM58 (alternative would be a Sennheiser e835 or e845). The drummer could opt for an SM57 which has exactly the same capsule in it and works well for vocals, but if he doesn't continue as a singer, he has a great snare or tom mic. If your budget extends to more than the £80 for the above, I'd recommend a Shure Beta 58a at about £130. I'd particularly recommend a Beta mic for the drummer because they have very high feedback rejection and a supercardiod pattern which will reduce noise bleed from the drums. Don't buy any of these second hand on eBay or similar because most are cheap fake Chinese mics, buy it new and look after it, they will last you a life time and if you keep the packaging and receipt, you will more than likely get two thirds of your money back if you sell to another musician you know. If you do get the chance before you buy anything, try to borrow a couple of different mics from friends and try them. I run sound and stage at many large festivals and mainly use Beta 58 and Sennheiser e945 mics (about £170) for vocals. I prefer the Sennheisers on most voices and many musicians have said after their set that they had always used Beta 58 mics but loved the Sennheiser. Having said that, I've never had any musician get grumpy when they've seen that there are six Beta 58s on stage for them, they are excellent quality and always a pleasure to run the mixing desk with.

Yep! Exactly what I thought about my version - good enough to fill a dance floor, but if the chap above turned up and played it after me, the crowd would realise I'd been bluffing!

How spooky! I was watching this then realised that I bought your book on Amazon last week, it's brilliant thanks. After 40 years of being a guitarist and bassist in numerous bands, I've decided to actually learn to read music (the book is: Reading Music for Bass Players).

Great transcription, and superb playing! Many thanks.