JTUK

A gig bag or softcase is NOT a flight case, ofm course, so as long as you take care how you load/pack it in your car... you should be ok for a couple of years until the zips or stitching gives up. Just treat them as little more than a padded wrap and they do ok.. Don't expect too much and be reasonable with your expectations

[quote name='xilddx' timestamp='1373540088' post='2138743'] Yep. Almost every pub/club small multi-band venue (100-200 punters) gig we play in London there is a house kit, usually a slightly battered Pearl Export or something like that, the sort of kit you get in rehearsal rooms. Drummers only need breakables usually. We often find a couple of guitar combos and a bass combo supplied too. Almost never a keys stand though for some reason. The PAs are usually pretty decent and full range, and there're at least two wedge monitors, some are flyers, some floor, usually a drum sidefill too. Stages are often small but you can fit an eight piece band on most of them. Desks are often old school, but there are usually a good number of channels, a couple we've played have digital desks. Usually have a built in stage DI panel, plenty of Behringer DI boxes, long enough XLR cables, etc. House sound engineers can be hit and miss but they're usually perfectly cool people who know what they're doing. [/quote] See...I'd have a HUGE problem with this spec. I understand that people know the place and the kit but I can think of many drummers who want what they want.. and the array and config of how they are going to use it. Crappy beaten up heads and hi hat stands...not to mention pedals are very specific to the player. Add in the bass player and then the sound from the monitors, the gtr in foldback..and whether to run Radio mics..etc etc .. Latest gig we did ..was actually a charity multi bill and we knew straight away that the decision to do it was wrong. Good cause and all that but what was in it for us. As far as I am concerned it was a favour paid but no drums through the monitors and you had a poor presentation of the sound on stage. We never got the lead vox right in the mons in our allottted time and so you come away thinking why do these things.. The P.A spec was decent and the engrs decent enough but you just don't have to the time to fix these things. We took along our backline and a 15 min turnaround is just not reasonable if that means the other gear has to come off as well. Gear share is one thing...but sharing what..?? do you trade the speed of turnaround for the downgrade in gear used..?? There comes a point when it is just not worth it all.......... IMO.

Necks are mostly wood so may well move. Funnily enough, the most stable neck was on a MM but then it wasn't the best neck to play. Decent mature necks will maybe need a tweak twice a year ( Winter and Summer ) and sometimes you can overcome this by tweaking the action alone. Never adjust the neck too much at a time..and let it settle before a fine re-adjustment. I never expose the neck or bass to 'extreme' temps..direct sunlight or leave it in a soft case. I may well lay the bass on the couch but will leave the headstock free... Where ever the neck has a tendency to move, I will lay the bass down the opposite way to counteract any stress or forces on it. I guess my basses live in room temps of 14-25 ish degrees

This is why we don't generally do them....and don't change what we do to accomoidate them. Of course, if they are mates we will have to do one or two things that we rather wouldn't... and also if they are mates...we will do it for a fair price but there has to be give on both sides. If they want us to turn up early, that is a cost....and everything gets more and more finicky. If you going to totally be at the beck and call,.... and some might want exactly that...then you need to factor in a cost there as well. It isn't an £800 gig unless it IS an £800 gig... I find corporate gigs are ok if they look after you well... but if they do that, they may also want their pound of flesh. You have to weigh up what you will do it for and what you will put up with... and this is why we tell them very quickly what WE will do for the money we quote. and then we are quite happy to say ok, get someone else. We never set the band up to do functions nad weddings ..if fact, the exact opposite... so as long as we can get decent money for parties, that is our middle ground. Fortunately, we don't get our gigs out of a book or catalogue and know mostly what we are getting into... The thing is not to be a slave to the gig...but then the money can be tempting...

Expecting a nice little product on the market in the next few months that will clean up... IMO.

I wouldn't be interested in playing anymore.

You get asked..and at least that way both parties know the score. If you want to do weddings just for the money, then think again. You need to be seemless and totally set up for it as you don't want to be the bad eggs spoiling the day and mother of the bride will be watching your every move. If you aren't good enough to justify £1000 plus..then think long and hard about whether it is for you and don't be suckered into doing them cheap for £500...unless very close family, etc ...as the wedding photiographer and disco will want more than that fee on their own... My opinion... MOSTLY, too much work for the money and you want to be on £200-300 per man excluding travel exes...

I iike the attitude... will it sell.. who cares..?

You need to know how much of an area will be affected by your lights and how much you want. A basic 4 bar of LEDS will run out of juice to light a stage larger than 4x3 mtrs. It will do ok..and you have light but you wont get a decent wash...so anything more that that sort of stage area and you will want 2 tripods of 4. Make sure they are DMX compatible and you will prorbaly get change from £500 if you get a package. We use Thomans own brand.. forget what it is called, Starville..?? and the light components are more than decent. It is the controller and stands that are a bit crap..but they are the easiest things to find and replace.. and if you buy two tripods, seperately...you'll get two basic floor pedals anyway. The stand gave up within months...but everything else is robust enough to keep going after 3 yrs of use.

Met a rep of theirs yesterday...top bloke, so this type of service doesn't surprise me.

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1373106226' post='2133740'] No, that's a mystery right enough. Incomprehensible. [/quote] LMAO..

A live bass mix is not going to be really tight and defined and you will be in mush territory easily enough. This is why you don't want to compound things and there is a reason why single coil basses have favour as they can be thinner at source and retain tone character well. You want a good clean signal without too much bass on it... you can dial it in later, but you don't get rid of it so quickly... Not for nothing are Fenders the bass of choice for so many. They do the job.

GREAT sax solo

Cool...good to hear. If it is worth doing, it is worth doing as good as poss.

[quote name='stingrayPete1977' timestamp='1373031714' post='2133013'] I guess if you haven't done a gig after best part of a year then something was wrong, could be lots of reasons other than you but either way it sounds like a dead end? Get in a new band and get out there [/quote] yep.. what have you lost..?? Make it a mission to get in a band that posts a gig before them... I agree, a text is crap... but it is more and more the dodgy way these days. Worked with a guy who was sacked from a big name band..and he said the accoutant sacked him. When this guy went right off on one...which is what I liked about him, funnily enough... and said that was a very poor pay-off for all the years he had put in..along with throwing back the cheque, calling it an insult etc etc .. The accountant calmly asked HIM what he thought was fair. He doubled the figure and put a few more thou on it...and the accountant wrote out the new cheque for that figure without batting an eyelid... Calm as you like... I don't know whether that is a good way or bad way.. but again the band leader was nowwhere near doing it face to face.

I think clanky sounds are part of your technique. I would suggest you are too heavy handed with either right or left hand.. Of course, this might be your desired effect but if you don't like it you either play softer and have a more 'refined' technique..or you raise the strings so you are not clanking them down onto the fretboard. An overly middy sound can also contribute to getting the clank.. but mostly I'd say technique.

My main concern is feeling that I am loose enough for the gig and am warmed up. This will take a weeks worth of practice/goofing around so I can do everything I want easily. I like adapt my parts on the fly so can't do this if I haven't played for a while. I'd hate the gig for that reason alone. As to what I run through... just shapes and things for co-ordination, really and an hour a day min. Not scared or precious about have 0ne day off in 7... but not close to the gig. If time is really tight then 20-30 mins is enough to keep me ticking over. I agree this might not be the most structured or best for long term goals but it keeps me interested enough.

Every gig has a different set... we are running in a new drummer... so that has its constraints atm... but we draw from a pool of around 60...altho it is realistically more like 40..but you have to run your eye over the set as we might include one we have done for ages... and you may need to brush up on it. The set lists are posted a few days prior to the gig for this reason.

It is not so much control over the engr or sound, so much, but a question of responsibility. I wouldn't say we are hard to work with at all... but then we aren't too impressed if things go wrong..when they could easily be right. I understand the engr might be at the gig for way too long..and needs a break. That is why there needs to be two. We like to have our views understood so the sound oputput is just as crucial as our playing. The playing we can do something about..the FOH, less so. So, what may come across as pricky or prima...is only about being vocal enough to get things as they should be..or could be. We might try and stipulate this and that... and we might be listened too. We would get involved in planning to help the show be as good as poss. We wouldn't like to think it is coming across as a bunch of stuck up so and so's. An example of this might be that we 'advise' the booker what P.A, lights and Generator/stage company as we have meet them before and they are just a known entity. There are too many things to go wrong...so you try and head them off. But...there may be a fine line between how this comes across so a good positive attitude helps

.[quote name='thisnameistaken' timestamp='1372953500' post='2132097'] Most* sound guys just want to get the night over with and go home, the last thing they care about is what the bass sounds like, that's why they'll spend an hour EQing the drums and probably under a minute on the bass. Even if you do get a post-EQ signal out to the desk most guys will pull out most of your signal anyway. Sadly most sound guys are rockers, and they're used to the bass sound in rock bands, so they think your role is purely to make the guitar sound bigger. In reality most bands have hopeless plodding bass players anyway so their beliefs are reinforced daily. Good luck getting anything better out of them. * I did say 'most'. [/quote] Not entirely unsympathetic to some points in this post. A few recent examples of gigs I attended and played. Name band and line-up in a classic setting... a refurbed church.. which will have its own problems but the bands can't be loud and heavy anyway and they aren't. Soundman has main vocal of main band waay too quiet and the bands vox and harmonies are more of a feature than most. I walked to various places in the hall to find that they were no better in any one spot..so couldn't resist asking the engr is that the best vox level he's got.. The P.A was Meyer and I've heard it sound good in the venue... The engr replied the monitors were too loud..??????? This same engr 'forgot' to move a drum monitor for the drummer..and the drummer asked a few times before he got up and moved it himself.. Did that look bad..?? IT DID..!! It also transpired that the desk was digital and he hadn't used one before. The other engr shipped in by the support had their own engr who when he found out the desk type..and he had no time on it..downloaded the manual on the way to the gig. Recent Fest...soundman spent 20-30 minutes on soundcheck..and the band ..who I knew, asked me if it was alright. I didn't want to put them off as they were nervy....so I said it was ok to start with, thinking the soundman would/should attend to tweaking it during the set... He didn't... everytime I looked back to see if he could see the band gestulating at the vox monitors, he was chatting away, blindly oblivious... Another one..our drummer got up and walked off stage and said there was no f***** kick in the FOH..let alone the monitors.to the Engr. This was in song 3 and he had asked from the stage 3 times.. The keys were mssing FOH most of the time. At least we made sure he wasn't on the gig this year. So, .. beware of one man P.A shows. We go with 2 man minimum crews and for any multi bills, you need a Stage manager

I would think that 30-90 would be easy to source across a few brands...but it is ages since I went looking. I think Elites were the brand but that would have been late 80's for me. The thing with light strings ...IMO..is that they must relate to a light touch from both the fretting and plucking hand otherwise you'll just overpower them...

[quote name='xilddx' timestamp='1372952527' post='2132082'] I couldn't understand what you wrote, your last few posts are very difficult to make sense of grammatically, I couldn't understand what you were trying to say. That's why I asked. OK? It's not a wind up, I am very interested, and it's an interesting subject. If you want to put across your opinions, do it legibly. Don't react like an impatient arsey f***er when I ask a simple question. I've been polite haven't I? Why do I deserve this petulant sh*t from you? [/quote] I thought your question was a bit intense..and you aren't above a little mischief if and when in the mood. Not a problem for me. but your opinion seems the complete opposite to mine.. I was happy to leave it at that...no point is going round in circles saying the same thing and ending up at the same place. As I say, its your gig..I assume it works for all the guys on it. It wouldn't work on mine.

[quote name='xilddx' timestamp='1372950979' post='2132065'] I'm not with you old egg, would you explain? [/quote] Not really..if you don't get it..you don't get it.. I think this thread is a reaction to another one anyway which probably hit a sore spot...so I take it as a bit of a wind-up, tbh. If you are happy with a POD ..then its your gig.

I don't think lab level patches amp up consistantly... You are hampered by that patch suiting that bass... change the bass..use another patch... but may have to tweak on the fly. Not sure how many times you get 10secs in a song to do that.. All this isn't silly stuff... but it is asking for more work.. It just seems like introducing so many variables to suit the fact that you can't/don't carry backline. It isn't a compromise for me. If i take my amp..then band know what they will get..as do I.. and if no bass thru the P.A, so do the audience. If we use bass in FOH...then the band still know they will GET me.. If we can bleed the bass into a mon mix, then all good, but not for 2 mon mixes... again that is asking for trouble. It is all about control for me...and an amp/cab will give it the most..IME.

[quote name='xilddx' timestamp='1372950184' post='2132057'] Thought that question would come up All the drummers I play with use an acoustic kit, sometimes augmented with a SPDS. leccy kits sound good but they are much more expensive if you want the feel of an acoustic kit and a flexible enough brain. The acoustic kits are nearly always miced. The fact is, there is not a comparable situation with drums like their is with bass and guitars. [b]Does your keys player rock up to gigs with a baby grand?[/b] [/quote] No, but it sounds like it... If you are talking about not mic'ing the kit,...??? apples and oranges..!! You want the feel of the drums ...or to FEEL the drums.?