chris_b

I put a set of GHS flats on my Cort Jazz. Improved the sound a lot.

I have a 6 year old set of D'Addario NYXL's on my Sadowsky Jazz. They have just enough top end to help the definition and the rest is a nice warm thump.

Unless you are stuck on a Fender, I'd suggest checking out a good used Lakland Skyline. The 55-02's are a lot of bass for the money and have legendary B strings.

That'll teach me not to do mental arithmetic!!

In the beginning, every waking hour. Now, never, unless I have to work up a set for a gig.

No doubt all the LFSys cabs sound good, but the Goodwood is practically the same size (6cm narrower, and 3kg lighter) than your BB2. is that enough of a saving to warrant the outlay on a new cab?

Buy the bass that feels the best in your hands and has the look you want. If it has neck dive, replace the tuners with licenced HipShots, if it doesn't sound great, and it probably won't, they always cut corners on pickups, replace them. It won't be the cheapest bass in town any more, but it will be a much improved one. I have a £250 Cort Jazz and instead of replacing the pickups I use an outboard preamp. I haven't wasted any money on modding, I can resell the preamp and it gets me 90% of the way to a decent sound.

What would Green Day do? I reckon they'd do what Dave Grohl, Solomon Burke and Ozzy did when illness and injury happened. . . . they did the gig sitting down. If the bar stool is the wrong image, get one of those outsized thrones and plonk it in the middle of the stage. The show must go on!!

You can hang the strap over your right shoulder, but the bass might slide off. If it were me I'd just perch on a bar stool.

Precision guy here. I bought mine in 1969 and still have it. My taste hasn't changed much. After switching to 5's I played a couple of different basses, but in 2011 found a great deal on a Mike Lull PJ5, which has been my #1 ever since. A set of TI flats and a lump of foam finish it off nicely.

I'm a Grand master. I guess that means I've spent even less time practising, or living a life, than you!!

A few years ago, I was fired by a drummer and it wasn't even his band. I complained to the band leader but she was so intimidated by this guy that she wouldn't talk to him about it! Even more years ago I was being screwed around by a band leader. He started cancelling gigs, then started cancelling gigs and not bothering to tell me!! I told him to shove it and I'd never play with him again, and haven't. It was a shame because that was a very good band!

The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Kinks, Pretty Things and Animals were a bad influence on everyone in the 60's, and I was going to the party. I was going to be rich, cool and famous. In any order! The Spanish guitar my parents bought me had an action you could fly a plane under. I couldn't press all 6 strings down at the same time, so no chords, just single notes. A friend and I got together to play songs and all I could do was single notes. He showed me the bass lines and hey presto, turns out I could do that. The penny dropped and my course was set. An electric bass (Framus Star Bass, small body) followed the next year, an amp and my first band followed the year after. Two years after that I was a professional musician. Many decades have passed and I'm still fired up every time I pick up my basses (Sadowsky and Mike Lull).

A great bass tone comes from how well the bass is made and the quality of the components. Cheap pickups will never sound good. The bass that ticks the quality materials, quality manufacturing and quality components boxes will get you the best tone, across all strings. The 3 best basses I've discovered so far are Sadowsky (Japanese, US and German models), Mike Lull basses and US Lakland 55-94's. . . . the Lakland Skylines are also worth a look. Don't rush this. Take your time. You have a great budget. Buy a good used bass and get much more bass for your money.

A couple of years ago I managed to book a gig on my daughters wedding day! To be fair she hadn't written it in the diary. I knew there was going to be a wedding, but I had no idea of the date!. It's the wife's job to keep track of all that stuff. The clash was noticed a couple of months before the big day, so a dep could be found, but I'm still regularly ticked off over that one!!

Props to Nile and Jerry for realising that it's pointless to try to make CHIC v2 sound exactly the same as v1. Jerry playing CHIC lines his own way was always going to be the best solution.

Nah. Others may have different outcomes, but if I'm selling, it means my current #1 is better, so no chance of becoming a #1 bass.

The CHIC band leader, CHIC songwriter, CHIC founder member, CHIC repertoire. . . . I think we can give him that. And Jerry Barnes is a monster player.

I learnt very quickly not to write my charts in red ink!!!! I was looking at an empty page.

Yep. I regularly get, "You're really going looking like that?"

The band I was in at school band had a trumpet, trombone and sax and my first pro band had 2 sax's, trumpet and a baritone. I've played many times with single sax players as well. If they're good players I love them. You usually find guitarists playing at normal volumes in bands with brass players. . . which is a bonus! Sadly, these days, it's pretty uneconomical to run brass sections if you want to make money out of gigging. Apart from the money aspect, I've had nothing but positive experiences with brass players.

I was 17 and took the frets out of my first bass, a Framus Star Bass, because I wanted more of a double bass sound. I took the bass to a gig that night and, for some reason, decided to wear sunglasses. It was so dark I couldn't see a thing and was far too cool to take the glasses off! I made so many mistakes that ,at the end of the gig, the rest of the band gave me a huge thumbs down. I've never gigged wearing sunglasses since!

True, but I didn't see any excessive cone movement before I used the Thumpinator. I assumed the amp had an internal HPF (which many do) which was doing the job for me.

None of us will get bigger than this. A few years ago I played with an ex-ELO guitarist. ELO were playing a packed Wembley Stadium. The keys player was first on stage and had to press a button on the keys which kicked off a preprogrammed introduction and the first song. The whole band would join in at various points. It was pitch dark on stage, about 70,000 people started cheering and the keys player hit the delete button! That was it. No backup, no introduction and no first song.

I bought a flight cased Peavey 215. The seller helped me load it into my hatchback, but when I got home I found it was so heavy I couldn't get it out of the boot!! In the end a neighbour had to help. I was very red faced after this one. There were 2 gigs, one was called Blues On The Farm and the other was called Blues At The Farm. I went to the wrong one! I turned up at Blues On The Farm in Billericay to discover I was the only person there. The band was waiting for me at Blues At The Farm, in frigging Chichester, 156 km, a 2+hr drive and 4 counties away!!!! It was a festival and fortunately the 2 bands after us were already there and didn't mind going on early!!