Boodang

The OP drops a bone with the barest morsel of meat on it and basschatters make a banquet out of it.... but I guess it is a place to chat about basses... even so!

Either practicing the bass feels like filling out a tax form or basschatters have very boring jobs with too much time on their hands to be participating in this thread..... now where did I put that password for SBL.

Well, as you put it so eloquently, who could argue with you.

I always use a Radial Stagebug SB 2. It's passive so no worries with psu's and circuitry not working at gigs (I know you're recording but if you use it later) and the transformer in it has a nice sound and difficult to overload. The di output is about 6 dB down as it's passive. About £80.

I got replaced in a band by a beat buddy.... either says a lot about me or my drumming, or both!

I'm not a professional, so for me it's as much about the social side as the playing. Consequently it has to be a comfortable environment to relax in. And that's not just extreme views or prejudices, but also something more mainstream if it was too preachy. An interesting debate where there are differing views is one thing but if it was constant it would take the fun out of playing.

Actually, that's just given me an idea, next time I'm asked to play in the low B territory I'll just plug in to a fart pedal... nobody would notice the difference, might even be an improvement on my usual playing!

5 string low B is just an indistinct fart! So I should have been more specific and said I hate 5 string strung low B..... and yes I have lost work because I won't play low B but also I'm more of a 4 string fretless guy so I just stick to what I'm good at. As it happens I do play a 5 string but high C.... and yep, get up the dusty end of the C string all the time, but then I'm not playing death metal.

Hihat for groove, ride for swing. And one of the reasons I mostly use a dry ride is to give some space. Drummers just tw@ting everything as hard as possible all the time is one of my pet hates but I wouldn't call that irrational.

Fair point. In which case I hate 5 string bass!

A bit like 5 string bass players who haven't first learnt how to play like Pastorius. Outrageous.

The acoustic bass.... part of the electric bass family!

I've told this before ages ago but it's my fav band breakup story so here goes... We had a song where the lyrics before the solo was 'call out my name'. The drummer and I had developed the habit of calling out 'w@nker' at this point, the vocalist not being our fav person (the reason at end of story). Well, on this occasion it's gets to that point in the song, I shout out said word with more gusto than normal, the drummer decides for some reason not to join in and the band goes unexpectedly quiet at this point. Much to the amusement of the audience the vocalist lunges at me during the solo while I try to keep playing the bassline and fending off the attack with the pointy end of my bass whist running around the drum kit as far as my lead will allow. At the end of the gig the vocalist just walks straight out. Apparently he stormed off in a huff but as he always left straight after the gig and never helped pack up the gesture was lost. He never returned and I, unfairly in my opinion, got the entire blame for the episode. The band didn't survive after failing to find another vocalist.

Well you learn something every day. Interestingly, wiki says 'double bass, possibly part of the violin family' and under viol 'Gamba contrabass, not to be confused with the double bass'. Possibly a good discussion for another nerdy thread. However, wiki does say the electric bass is the lowest pitch member of the guitar family.... and we all know that wiki is the font of all knowledge! PS I'm going to say that hating people not knowing their history is irrational just to get keep this post in topic! PPS I would say that hating people who hate people who call the electric bass a guitar is irrational except that it's entirely rational to call it a bass guitar.

Good point! It's a bass...... guitar! Not a double bass and part of the violin family.... it's a guitar, own it and be proud!

SM57s on instruments are great but 58s on vocals, not so much. Bought a warm audio wa19 and a vocalist friend of mine heard it in action and got rid of his beta. There's better alternatives to 58s these days. Edit; conversely, tried the WA in another band and the vocalist hated it. He said it was too clear and everybody could hear how bad he really was. We reverted back to the 58 to muddy up his vocal.

Came across a Hofner violin bass the other day in a shop. Have never played one before so gave it a go. I always thought they were crap (they still are!) but turns out they're a great slap machine (the salesman was horrified). Maybe could be Mark Kings next unexpected endorsement.

Irrational? Don't think so!

In my last blues band the guitarist starting wearing a hat that gave him that SRV look, so I can forgive him that as he did look cool (and had the 'LICKS' to back it up). Baseball caps I can't abide! Worked with a guy once who I never saw take off his baseball cap, day, night, restaurant, on a plane. On one occasion we were waiting for transport in an army canteen, he still wearing said cap as we eat, an army guy walks in, I can see the immediate rage in eyes, walks over, takes the cap and puts it straight in a bin. Brilliant. Should be made a standard policy.

Keyboard players who still have a left hand..... never employ them.

Definitely this. Thought I'd ruined my Sei custom as a five string low B, restrung it high C and it's awesome.

I've just bought an MXR Band of Gypsies '69 Psych series fuzz because it looked good..... and I don't even play guitar!

Behringer XR18; 16 input stagebox with six monitor and two main outputs. You can control the mix of the monitor outs with an app, so each person using one is in control of their own mix. Each musician has a DI which goes to FoH, the 'thru' goes to the XR18 and the monitors to the IEMs, the mix of which each member of the band controls via the app (doesn't work so well if you have more than 6 members!). Once you've set it up it pretty much stays the same and it's not so bad to cable up. In the old days, or when we're not using IEMs, we have an amp for each member of the band each side of the drums so at least we have a good mix of every instrument across the whole stage and vocal monitoring is this only major issue.

Where we can, we take control of our on stage sound. We give the FoH engineer DI's and tell him not to bother with foldback, then feed an XR18 stagebox which from which everyone uses IEMs and controls their own mix. For the most part the xr18 settings don't change now they're dialled in, so it's just a case of plugging everything in. And to make matters easier, we use cables rather than wireless.

You could always get a bypass switch fitted. Easy enough for a techie to do.