Jack

That's a huge downer but thanks for posting your experiences.

This rack is about 8 years old now, the only thing I've ever changed is the router. Gator gr4s, mixer, media player, power bar, shelf, captive cables and a router (now a Mikrotik hap ax2).

With all the interest in small combos, busking amps, and frfr stuff, I thought that this was an interesting products launch recently. Spark Live I know they're brand new, but has anyone had any experience yet? I'm tempted to have one as a house practice amp, as well as small pa when needed. My Thomann Six Mix runs out of steam on bass guitar duties, but the Spark sounds great on the Andertons video.

Do you have a link to the duo page?

After two great gigs last weekend I'm back on my losing streak as of Saturday. A local agent who's a semi big deal wanted to try us out and booked us into a local club. We questioned the choice of booking twice, as we really didn't think a bouncy pop punk band would go down well (two of us have played the club in previous bands and it's very much not a pop punk venue) but the agent insisted we'd be a riot. Anyway, on chatting to the secretary it seems that we're the punchline to a bad joke. There's some bad blood between the agent and the club and now he's purposefully sending them bands they'll hate. Last week it was a band from Wales who had to charge £1200 by the time a hire van was filled with diesel and hotel rooms were booked. (This is in Gateshead) The committee were angry and vowing never to work with him again as we were setting up. Not the best welcome. At half time I went to the toilet. A man came in after me and spoke to a guy who was already in there before me. "Alright John, didn't realise you were in tonight" "Yeah we're upstairs, apparently the band are shit" "Yeah you're not missing much mate, they're awful". The sad thing was, we weren't awful. I've been in and been to see enough awful bands, we were good! Let's just say we weren't the right fit. Oh well, the money was about double a decent pub gig... Ebmm Stingray, Helix, IEM. Thinking about becoming a wedding DJ.

You can score a G&L Tribute LB100 (quite traditional) or SB2 (punchier and growlier) for very cheap these days.

Saturday was my newish pop punk band playing a birthday party at a tiny bar in the wilds of County Durham. Good gig, and a real trial by fire for our hastily-recruited new drummer who outdid himself. Very happy all around. This project is struggling to find its feet a little and so it was really nice to have a good gig. We have a medley in C that seems to get longer every gig. It's for songs that we have tried to turn into pop punk versions but they haven't quite worked, if there are any salvageable bits that do work we add them to a medley. The crowd simply would not let us transition out of 'Country Roads' to the point where I was able to just tap the root notes and pick up my phone. Oh well, if they're happy... Joke's on them though, it's 'Mysterious Girl' next in line, much better song. Rig was my Fender P, into a HX Stomp, into my IEMs. Sunday was a farewell gig to my indie rock band after 6 years of being my main project. Mostly family and friends of our two guitarists in attendance. They're the full on mods with the scooters and the haircuts to prove it, so we packed the tiny tiny pub when you put all of them lot on top of the locals. Rig was, funnily enough, my Fender P into a HX Stomp (well the car was already packed) but GET THIS, no IEMs for this band so I used my QSC K12.2 behind me as backline. Sore throat from the night before meant my dodgy backing vocals weren't needed and also we've already sold our subwoofer so I felt a little more ooomph wouldn't go amiss.

We supported The Futureheads last summer.* * We played a pub that is owned by one of The Futureheads and after we finished he came on stage, said thanks to the band over the microphone, and then switched the jukebox on. So technically that was a DJ set from a member of The Futureheads, so we did absolutely, unequivocally support them last summer.

We played a small gig last night that was a farewell to my indie band, wrapping up after 6 years. The venue was maybe 5m by 15m so not a large place. Our pa was our guitarist's pair of RCF 715s. I chose to use my QSC K12.2 behind me as a traditional 'amp' rather than as a wedge, just in case there wasn't enough bass from the pa, but it sounded fine. To be honest I felt the kick drum was a little lacking,but I could probably have fixed that if I really tried. A good no-sub experience all around. https://www.facebook.com/100002035809426/videos/426055013791392/ https://www.facebook.com/100002035809426/videos/1245536366603778/

If there's no money involved, then you're the product my friend. My wife sells candles and my sister is a piercer. It's the way that small businesses run these days. Not because that's what the business wants, but because that's what the customer wants. Both my wife and my sister run really high end businesses. It's £30 for a candle and £100-£2500 for a piercing. Serious money moving around with serious people. They both regularly get messages on social media that say things like "how much for [product]" or "open?". How many of us get similar messages from venues or clients? Don't blame the businesses for opening channels that customers demand. On a more specific note (and not directed at you specifically). I opened this thread with the want to find out if there was some sort of systematic issue with contacting Bass Bros. Maybe the owner was sick, maybe they had shut down, maybe someone had sent them £3k and not received a bass, maybe not and my message was just stuck in a junk folder. We've all seen people like Dave Funk just stop messaging people back and that is not what has happened in this case. Can we please NOT use this thread to attack what I'm sure is a wonderful small business? We all need more people trading in more good basses. Once my (very) minor issue has been sorted I have had a great exchange with Will. EDIT - And if anyone runs a business themselves that would benefit from a custom candle or you want some metal shoved through your skin, please give me a shout? Support small businesses!

Just a note to say that Will was alerted to this post and responded to my email (which had gone to their junk folder) within about 5 minutes. Excellent work. It's most likely my fault as I emailed them rather than using their web form. Maybe the lesson here is for me to do what I'm supposed to do rather than doing it wrong and then wondering why it hasn't worked.

Thanks all, I will try Whatsapp. At least that way they will have to tell me that my Spector is a hideous piece of unsellable trash that they wouldn't dare hang on their walls.

Anyone had an email from BassBros recently? Wondering if they are ignoring me specifically or if I can stop taking this personally. I inquired about them selling one of my Spectors for me, then chased it a week later saying that I would specifically trade in against another Spector they have listed. Nothing either time. I tried calling once (just once, I'm a millennial) and didn't get an answer either. Thank you for helping me with my first world problem.

I own some Gorilla ones and they're fine. Although after buying a K&M microphone stand I'd buy their speaker stands if I needed another pair.

Quite agree. I've never once had an issue in a pub or in a festival-in-a-field type scenario (we play a lot of scooter and biker rallies) but every single hotel or rugby club is a nightmare. It's not dependent on the gear you bring, it's down to where you're bringing it to. My Shure (still on the 'non-plus) handles it all just fine, Amoon wireless bugs from one guitar is always the first to go, followed shortly by the G50 from the other guitar. It's one of the reasons I went analogue for IEMs. This used to be really solid advice but it matters less and less these days. The first iphone which had 5.8ghz was the iphone 5, released in 2012. There's plenty going on in there now. 2.4 has more than enough bandwidth for what we need and a longer range (especially if not in direct line of sight), so there's pros and cons to both. The best thing to do is take a wifi scanner, space out your own devices, and run wired when you can. My pop punk band has a wireless mic, 3 wireless instrument systems, a tablet and 3 phones wirelessly connected to the mixer (admittedly not all all the time) and 2 digital wireless IEMs. We can make it work. But I still take an ethernet cable and laptop for the corporate gigs. 😉

Nice to see Will Wheaton keeping busy.

My first step towards what's now called frfr was a pedal board preamp into a power amp and then a hifi ish 3 way Dr bass cabinet. Worked great, and I left the rig at home when a good pa was provided.

Looks great with the tort. White seems like an odd choice. I think aged white or black would both look brilliant (as evidently does tort) but the proper white guard on what's essentially an aged white makes it look like a smoker who needs to paint their radiator.

I take it as her being quiet and him trying to fill the space. I guess we're not there to get a vibe on it.

Agree. Sometimes I quite like the silliness, but I'm really hoping we get some bass stuff on Andertons 2 before long.

I dunno. For years I had the MXR M80 at the end of my board. Yes it was the proper preamp when I started to work towards going ampless, but even before that it was useful. It helped bring shared or rented backline that wasn't to my taste into line, it was a great DI to the pa when we weren't providing our own system and it let me use the amp entirely as I saw fit when we were. Always nice to have more eq there if you need it, can always be turned off it you don't. That particular preamp had a distortion channel. Maybe you want to use one to boost your slap or fingerstyle so it's the same volume as pick playing? I can think of many reasons. Maybe multi effects units can do all of thsoe things too, but up until the current generation I didn't feel as though I could make fast changes on the fly with multi effects. Hell, they still aren't as fast or as clear as 'one knob one function' analogue pedals.

Bill I'm sorry but that just isn't the case. The tops are pushed and the sub is idling. Different for a reggae band maybe.

Interesting. I quite like Yungblud, Mrs Jack loves him and has been to a few gigs and is going to a book signing in a bit.

Outdoors maybe but my indie band has a pair of 732s and a pair of 705iis. Indoors we just use one sub, it easily outpaces both tops. Excuse the fan photo nicked from Facebook, normally I purposefully try to not photograph the pa and cables. The guitarists both have amps on stage, but I just have a (usually highpassed) wedge, the one sub is doing it all.