JTUK

Its simple... you charge what you think you are worth..and then you have to be able to justify that cost. If you ask for £1000 and you are not very good, then you deserve all the trouble you may recieve...as that will get round quicker than anything and probably cost you more in the end. Some areas and client basses can and will pay more, but even then the question of value for money will be a factor. It is not enough to turn up with matching outfits and have nice tidy stage craft with matching plus sockets to the decor...you may have to fulfil this criteria but that alone will not get you booked if you can't cut it elsewhere. It is ok packing a pub out with your mates, but that isn't any good to the next venue where those mates can't or don't get to... All these are things that we might have to factor in when hustling for work.. and means you need to know your market or where you might stand in that venues line-up. You don't want any awkward dates any more than the booker does. And asking for going rates doesn't really get you anywhere....your outfit may be far above a certain standard to apply...or far below it. The pointers in cash terms on this thread are valid as regards what those guys get... that is all.

Not sure it would cost £5k.. but I'd have one made and I already know what it will look like and what elecs I need...I only just have to commit to a deposit. The balance..?? maybe a DB750 but I am well served with amps atm..so that wouldn't get many outings.. so difficult to decide on that one. But the bass..?? that is sorted.

[quote name='vinbob' timestamp='1334740287' post='1620398'] Hi, thanks for all the advice again. If i was to buy the head i was looking at The ashdown Mag 300 head could i put it with the ashdown 2 x10 cab or maybe even a peavey 2 x 10 cab? [/quote] yes... both consider that an amp putting out 300watts in a 210 will likely blow it up so get an 8ohm 210..then the amp will only be able to drive it at around 180 watts..that is still pushing some cabs though if that is a big bass sound, IMO. That is why you use 2x210 for louds gigs..it makes the cab impedance of 2 8ohms cabs =4 ohms and therefore allows 300watts output And also, don't forget, that a lot of amps can not drive below 4 ohms...so if you use 1 cab, it needs to be able to take the full power at 4 ohms.... I am not sure you'll be able to get many 4 ohms 210 anyway..maybe EBS..??

[quote name='The Dark Lord' timestamp='1334737726' post='1620344'] If you look at my original post, you'll see that we haven't done parties before - so, can we not be excused for not knowing what the going rate is? This thread ..... and this other similar one [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/173663-whats-the-going-rate-for-a-5-piece-covers-band/page__fromsearch__1"]http://basschat.co.u...__fromsearch__1[/url] have been very helpful. [/quote] The questions you ask seems to indicate you haven't done much of anything in this regard..maybe..?? Not that that in itself is such a bad thing, but it might not be too useful if you try and achieve others fees without knowing how they justify those fees...and that is mostly knowing the standard that they play and pitch at.. Plenty of bands round here who have all the admin down and hit you with contracts ect etc and all very correct, but then don't actually play that well... In pubs and clubs it is about numbers through the doors that tend to drink and subsidise the bar.. Parties ..and you might be part of the venue/food/extras cost..and you'll maybe find the band/music will be the smallest single apart. Some weddings for example..might run into £10-15k and then they go and spend £500 on a band and baulk at anything much higher....which is VERY risky, IMO.

The recent TV show on Sky Arts had a decent bass tone...and considering the limitations of 3 piece, worked pretty well. Technique-wise..pretty limited altho it works for him as he is the band writer as well..so it has to fit. If that is your style/techique outside of that gig, then you are going to find a lot of stuff pretty hard to cover.

The thing is..if you have to ask what you should charge then you don't seem to know your own worth. We set a figure, might move a tad on it, but mostly we expect them to take it or leave it.

Not much to interest me.... oh well.

If the amp is 250 watts then that is all it will produce into its lowest impedance...so 250watts into 4 ohms is typical spec. If the single cab is 8ohms..then you are probably only delivering 180 watts or less..and that is the amp flat out...!! Your amp is your first concern in this case ..but the cab will be a close second... as running 300watts at 8ohms with a more powerful amp into that cab will be fraught and not something I would do..for sure. As I said, you are asking too much of your rig if you are needing lots more volume. And the thing to remember, IMO, with cheaper amps is that they get worst the more you push them.

My first thought is that your rig isn't going to give you more volume.. so you need a bigger amp as you are running to its limits into the impendence.. and will probably need another cab.

Interesting..... you have to go with what the market will bear to some extent. In my region we have just stepped 20 miles west and you can get whole new rates for pubs. Today I have just taken a 1hr festival slot at £200 to get the £300 pub gigs... so a loss-leader, from our POV, in this regard as we know the rest of the bill are mostly going to be more expensive, but I hope the punt will work. We aren't any better at £300 than we are a £200, or for the £900 plus we would charge for a wedding, decent function playing-wise, I would hope, but then that is just us. Some venues will pay £2-300 for a duo which I find a bit galling, in all honesty, but then that is THEIR rate and they have sold it..worked it and presumably continue to get it. Anyone can stiff a client once but you'll not do it too often if you aren't perceived as worth it. Sometimes you can't put a rate purely down to how good you think you are... but hopefully this levels out over time.

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1334618917' post='1618831'] Why would you play a 4 string bass? It's got 1 string missing!! I only carry 1 bass so, as there's nothing you can play on a 4 that can't be played on a 5, and it doesn’t work the other way around, I only play 5’s. [/quote] agree... and I don't see the point in chopping and changing so it is 5's all the way for me. But you need to be committed and sure and when I got my first 5 I hardly picked up the 4's which made it easy for me to sell them..but then I knew the 5's were for me before I even got one...and then when I'd put in so much hard work on the switch there was no way back anyway..and nor did I want to go back either.

2x210 = old dudes.. 1x410 = fit young dude

You wont know which you prefer unless you test both.... but I'd go with the Wizards every day and twice on Sundays.

No..But I've used a couple of Glocks rigs in general and the kit is normally very good. Not that fussed about the cabs aesthetically myself as they are typically very chunky but they worked with the amp well. I would not think it is a fair comparison if you are talking about the EBS Classic NEO up against the Glock cab but then you may be able to get almost 2 Classics for the price of one of those other cabs in the test and that will be a different solution 2 cabs of this sort paired should always be way better than one IME.

Have to say I would have missed it too... so I tuned in and switched over after a couple of tracks. Never did anything for me whatsoever in the first place so not missing anything.. I am out of this thread..

No problem with mixed cabs...but it would help to stay with the same maker, IMO. I am going to keep the AE's for a while...as they are a light solution to some places I play. but I might swap them for a pair of ceramics if the trade crops up... They don't fit very well in my car boot as it happens as they are just a tad too deep for both.. but then they are compact enough to go on a back seat Just think aloud atm.. and in no rush at all. Still prefer the 2xDB210 combination though and that remains my No 1 rig. I just scope out the venue more now as to which one I want to carry. Top gigs get the top rig tho...

Couple of places round here decided they would cap payment at £100 PLUS 10% of bar takings. Nobody plays there anymore unless the venue likes them enough to pay their own rate. One of those bands would charge £250 min and they don't pull in anything like you would have to do to get £150 of bar takings at 10%... But what they have effectively done is trash their monthly line-up of bands as no one will take the £100 deal.. only desperate and not very good bands, IMO.

[quote name='cheddatom' timestamp='1334572444' post='1617673'] I didn't mean to be derogatory about covers bands. They can be "good" but their priority is to entertain their audience, where as my priority is the music. A[/quote] We play covers at this time..but an original set is in progress............. but I don't see the difference, tbh. We play the songs we want to play and there are loads of songs we wont go near..as they are the songs that most other bands will fill their set with. But it is our decision and we will live or die on the back of our set. I am quite happy with our standing on our local circuit and the quality of gigs we do... But you have to cut your cloth the way you see fit..it is no use charging £500 for a pub set when a LL can get a band to do it for far far less. or you can..you just wont work too much.

[quote name='Lozz196' timestamp='1334556990' post='1617437'] One of the pubs my band played at, who regularly paid us £300 when we played, even though the set fee was £200, admitted they did so because we generated high revenue over the bar. £5000 of revenue that is. I like this way of doing things - tell a band they definitely get £200, but pay them more if the pub has a good night on the tills. Another place we play prints out an EPOS till receipt, and gives you a set percentage of the bar takings. [/quote] We don't mind doing this sort of deal if the LL or venue think they are taking a risk and it gets us in the door of a new place.... ..but our bottom line is £200 whatever

[quote name='shizznit' timestamp='1334564921' post='1617519'] This is a topic no doubt that has been discussed on BC many times before, but allow me to vent! I went out for a meal with my girlfriend on Saturday night and she wanted to catch some live music after we had eaten. I took her to a well known live music venue in Cardiff and as we walked in a 5-piece covers band were setting up. Sorted! Soon afterwards they started to play their first set. Apart from being horrifically loud for the size of the venue they were simply just awful. The singers voice was very weak, flat and forgot his lyrics, the drummer knew only two beat patterns for every song they played, the bass player didn’t know that he was playing the wrong notes for at least 2 bars before realising on quite a few songs and the guitar player…well…he was actually pretty good to be fair! Sometimes a band can have a bad night (we all do), but you can tell that they are simply crap anyway. I am not focussing so much on their ability or talent, but more on how much my girlfriend (along with many others) enjoyed their performance despite being so bad. I really struggled to enjoy the evening hearing so many monumental mistakes being made or lack of effort to at least play the song vaguely similar to the original. I have got to a stage whereby I am very pensive about going out to see a live band in town…covers bands to be precise. Most of my live work at the moment is with covers bands and we do put a lot of effort in to study the songs and get them sounding tight and as precise to the original song as possible. And yet, we are struggling to get into well paid venues in the area such as this one and a bunch of plebs can walk in to play a bunch of songs very poorly and get away with it. I couldn’t help but feel a bit gutted and a tad bit angry. As a musician I can be hyper critical (and often I am) about other performing musicians. But, the bigger thing for me is that punters will enjoy a poor band as equally as a good one. Most folks at the venue are not musicians and don’t pick up on the mistakes or bad musicianship. I’m fine with that…as long as they have a great night who cares really, but I go out to perform to my best ability so that the punters can enjoy their evening. Is my hard work to achieve that noticeable? As I get older and more experienced with my musical endeavours I find it harder to enjoy myself at a gig for these reasons. This kills me because above all else I am a music fan and I want to enjoy live music, but I do have a competitive nature. I think you gain that on the covers circuit after a while because you are all fighting to get the best gig in town. But, it does really vex me when I watch a band in venues with high exposure that we can’t get into that are not good enough for the fee they are paid and the punters big them up. I need to relax more and let it go over my head, but I can't help feel that the punters deserve better even though they might not know it. [/quote] Yep...this is quite common... I honestly don't know how some bands get gigs. I think venues have to take some responsibility as well as they book these bands...and after establishing a venue as worth it just to pop in, they then go and book atrocious bands who might scare people away. anyway, old news round here. I was recently talking to a friend when one of these said bands gtrs came over and got chatting ..and he was saying they are finding it hard after a good few years on the circuit. He thought bashing out endless Blues based songs as a 4 piece band with endless solos with his repeated licks and tricks was enough and that the music scene was dead..well, he was adding more nails into that coffin. They REALLY should have broken up ages ago. I think there are too many venues and bands that will work too cheap... ( fine line and all that ) if the pub/venue has to fill up their dates and takes chances...then the standard invariably drops a few times. It doesn't take long to kill a venue.

[quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1334562461' post='1617480'] Had a look on the Newtone website - look really interesting (and they're British!), especially the Platinum Bass type. Anyone had any experience with these? At £25 a set (3 times the price of the Legacies) I'm conservative with trying out new strings, but these look really interesting. [/quote] I use the Diamond series with individual taper winds on each string.. VERY clean metal out of the pack and I noticed that straight away, so don't know the Platinum series tho. I am going to order some more Diamonds today..thanks for the reminder.

[quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1334562078' post='1617476'] Dud strings? Never had one of those, what makes them 'dud'? [/quote] In the last 18months or so, I've had a dud set new out of the pack... and by dud I mean a couple of strings were less bright that the rest so in effect writing off that set... so I tried to clean them up and one of the strings adopted a series of kinks and therefore was never straight even when tensioned... this made the string unresponsive so I had to take that set straight off and bin them, pretty much. Other sets have been ok out of the pack but did not clean up at all well....so I cleaned up a set of Ken Smiths and put them on. So, in summary, I could no longer justify the extra monies on sets of string that served me so well in previous times.. but have just been a waste of time and money lately. And because of these experiences and the high previuous standards, I am not willing to go back to them and see that I was just unlucky. I could accpet the odd dud now and again... IF they still cleaned up as well..which they always used to. I've still got sets that have been on and off 3 or 4 times ..so if I can get them to fit my new peg configs, I might clean up a few just to hamer home the point. There is no point me paying nigh on £40 for a 5 string set and getting a month out of them... they have to clean up a few times. By contrast, the strings I am using now...look way cleaner after nearly 4 months..which is an unheard of period of time on a bass for me...and sound pretty damn good as well. They were never as bright out of the pack...but they don't dull as quick either.

[quote name='warwickhunt' timestamp='1334518038' post='1617159'] I was getting £200 for a 4/5 piece playing pub covers 20 years ago... still getting that now! Market forces dictate that pubs around here can't pay much more than £200-£250 and many bands are getting £150. Saying that I wouldn't do a Private function for less than £500; nothing to do with the extra work involved in getting to the venue early and soundchecking before a guest is anywhere in sight... I just hate Weddings/Birthdays/Private parties (in fact if I had my way it would be a minimum of £1000 ). [/quote] Exactly correct. You can charge more but risk charging yourself out of the market so you have to know what the market rate tends to be. We do a couple of pubs at £200 as we try and support them as friends as much as anything else and they are good venues for us. We only play 5 pubs anyway IIRC, and use them as free advertising Parties start at £500 alho mates rates are cheaper as the one whose mate it is generally waives his fee.. Weddings start at £900 for basically a 2x1 hr set ..we don't play longer than that ever and also I don't really want to do functions anyway...

It depends what you think you are worth.... and how many hours you are expected to be there for. If you are doing 2x45 ... and you don't have to be there early or late..and therefore pub sort of hours, then £150 plus. Our two guys do a duo pub set for £140 and use it to set up gigs for the full band. As for the agent..go and see his other acts and have a chat... you'll also see the sort of standard the agent works to..