Muzz

On the upside, I like the binding (tho how much cooler would that have been following the curve of the raised centrepiece/thinner wings?) and the bound fretboard and markers...they've missed a trick (given the whole mirror thing) not using chrome hardware (inc pickups covers and rings) for a proper black-and-silver look, tho. Oh, and Gene's syrup gets more and more bum-clenching every time I see it; it's about as convincing as a Cristiano Ronaldo penalty claim...

I bow to no man in my appreciation of the Thunderbird; it's a gloriously impractical bass, designed by a 50s car designer, and I love them (3-point bridges aside, obv), but this isn't great. In addition to the fact that it's a slab of a thing (again, part of the Thunderbird charm for me is the thinner wings - the slabby ones remind me of cheap copies (tho even the Epi ones have the thinner wings)), it's wrong on all the levels already mentioned; the paucity of real GS provenance, etc, but the telling detail is that scratchplate logo: I note Gene doesn't have the confidence to put his mug/makeup on there as a logo, just some generic skull and crossed guitar/bass...pffft. Oh, and I'm not buying the 'more to come' line, either; if you're starting some kind of artist-based dynastic line of products, why start with such a poorly un-iconic one? Bah, and definitely humbug; I'm pooh-poohing the whole enterprise... Edit: Just watched that review video, and I agree about the wobbly finish; for £2.5k, you'd think they could've painted it better...oh, and I can make any bass, including my £30-delivered Harley Benton, sound like that. Double-pffffttt...

On the HB tuners thing, I've got one HB bass (one of the 55P things), and it's OK as a bass (tho remarkable for the price I paid for it: Next To Nowt inc.shipping) and I played a few gigs with it (including one posh gig at Manchester Cricket Ground where the cost of a ticket was at least five times the price of the bass), but one day (luckily not on a gig) one of the tuners just let go, by which I mean just sheared off while turning it. Never had that happen to a bass before, and it's clearly one of the places where costs were cut. I've not replaced the tuners yet, so I don't trust it enough to gig with any more. One day I might pimp it and use it again.

Now here's a coincidence; SWMBO reminded yesterday that we had tickets to go see a couple of bands at Rebellion in Manchester last night, and both bands (the Picture Books and the support, whose name sadly eludes me right now) were two piece bands (guitar and drums) without a bassist. The support band used a good deal of octave on the guitar (kinda like Royal Blood, but the other way round) to add bass into the mix, but the Picture Books didn't, and for their stuff really didn't need to. They do have a very unusual drummer, tho, with lots of biiiig booming toms, very little snare and no cymbals at all (no hihat, even). Both bands were very different in terms of music than the norm (but still firmly in the Rock camp), but both were very good, and well worth seeing... So in terms of the original OP question...no, not all the time... Actually, thinking on, one of my favourite gigs of the last few years was the Cadillac Three at the Ritz in Manchester, and they don't have a bass player per se - they have a drummer, guitarist/singer and a sit-down lap steel bloke who takes care of the bottom end (and other duties) - he was using two 810 Orange rigs, and sounded glorious...

The Marquee, in any of its incarnations...

Well, you'd think/hope, but hearing from a couple of people who went to other nights (rubbish in Sheffield, better in Nottingham, that kind of thing), it might have been not getting the hang of the new non-backline/in-ears hoohah. I went all over the Stalls, hoping it was just where I was standing, but nope, rubbish everywhere. Even standing just behind the engineer at the desk... As I say, an extreme example (given JJB's distinctive sound), but very much the trend these days. Maybe it's the mismanagement of the new line array-style PAs? I dunno...

I'm in a similar position (I think we last rehearsed around the same time...it was certainly before lockdown), and the drummer and I get an email with a list of new songs (the BL/geetard/singist sends it; we're definitely not an anarcho-syndicalist commune with a bi-monthly ratification officer...more like North Korea, to be honest 🙂) with Youtube links to a particular version, sometimes with key changes mentioned* (last one was 21 new songs to 'freshen the set up'...with about ten days notice), we turn up and play em. It's not as drastic as it sounds, as we're a trio, so most songs get filtered through how we sound anyway, we have a superb (reading) drummer, and we've been playing together for more than 10 years, so we all know each others game inside out. Plus the BL/singist/geetard does a lot of solo stuff, so at least he's done most of them before on his tod. EDIT: I should mention that we're not exactly playing prog here; there's a limit to the complexity of what we do... No-one's ever noticed, and it's really good fun launching into a brand new song for the first time with the other two; it definitely keeps you on your toes (see 'Whaddya mean, it's in G?' below...😀) I'm not sure it'd work quite as well with more people, but it's made me a bit allergic to rehearsals - I've left side projects when, after four rehearsals, people were still bimbling about and agonizing and fretting (SWIDT?) and we were nowhere near a gig... * Sometimes not...which is fun on the night; first time playing a song live, and Whoops, you're transposing already...eeeekkkk... 😕🙂

It's been a while since I've heard a really distinctive (aka non-vaguely scoopy mushy) bass sound at a gig of the size of the Apollo (1500?) and up - even longer for an arena...possibly Rush about six years ago. For some reason, lately the trend is for PA Chimps to EQ the kick to sound like a cannon, and the bass to be a subsonic rumble, regardless of the band. I've walked out of the last half-dozen arena-sized gigs (including the Foos at the Cricket Ground (not a music venue, the worst sound I've encountered), Alterbridge et al at the MEN (just painfully, pointlessly loud) and that Johnny Depp ego trip band at the MEN), mostly because the sound was so poor. I went to see The Stranglers at the Apollo last month, and had it not been a rare evening out with SWMBO, I'd have buggered off from there, too - the PA Chimp managed to make even JJB's sound scooped and vaguely subsonic*. I've heard it was better on other dates on the tour, but if you can make JJB sound like a scoopy mess, you're going some... All very grumpy, I know, but the point being the bassist in each case may as well have been miming; in fact, if they'd had a well-produced backing track it would have been preferable sonically to the PAC's efforts on the night... Smaller gigs are a different matter; I've still encountered that cannon/mush mix, but less frequently, and places like the Ritz are generally better than most; I've seldom heard a bad mix in there. Best sound in a long long time was at Night & Day Cafe (150), when Elbow did a charity gig late last year; they were the quietest band I've seen in a good while (quieter than most pub bands), but sounded superb, bass and all. * The whole band had dropped the backline and moved to in-ears; it might have sounded fine to him, but out front it was sooo disappointing...

More than 4 strings. More than 9 1/2 lbs More than 40mm nut. Jazzes, including the plethora of Jazz copies. Most other things fall into preferences (like maple boards; I have a couple of non-maple boards), and things I can live with/change, along the lines of covers (I can always take them off and bin them), bridges, pickups and EQ... Other than that, I'm dead easy to please... 😀

I've no real skin in the game, never having owned an Ashdown cab (other than a VS212 briefly, which was underwhelming to say the least), but the OP judging 6x10 stack against a single 210 is a bit of a mismatch.... I'd say that moving to any FRFR cab (tho the BF 210 isn't one of those) would be the same as Lozz says above, tho: it's a bit of a different playing field than more voiced cabs, and needs some adjustment.

The last time I had a matching amp and cab from a manufacturer's POV was an SVT and 810, back when I could be bothered to shift them. Having said that, I also had a Peavey Mk.VI head for when the SVT (inevitably, and fairly frequently) went bang, and I liked that, too. For the last twenty-plus years I've mixed and matched, driven by various factors like what sounded good, and, increasingly, what I can be bothered to shift around.

I believe for a small uplift you can request the nibbling to be done by free-range gerbils, if that's the issue...

Which pays into the situation (from probably five years ago now) when our BL/singist/geetard had a side gig playing old people's homes...I'd imagined he'd had to learn a whole new setlist, but the majority of requests he got were for Beatles and Stones-era songs...

Bugger...quoted meself instead of editing...as you were, sorry about that...

Tim, the title of the thread is 'I hate gigging'...it's not really a surprise how much moaning is on here, is it?

On the Dad Rock thing; a good friend and ex/sometimes BL of mine is in a well-regarded (rightly; they're very, very good at what they do*) Status Quo Trib, and yeah, they travel to gigs, but that's as much because they play to big audiences, whether at festivals or their own gigs, and their calendar's booked solid this year. We played (the old originals band; we were the only non-Quo band on, to some bemusement from the audience) on the bill at a Quo Festival in Glasgow last year, and both nights the venue was full. There's a sizeable audience out there for all sorts of music, even something like Quo, which has been considered 'unfashionable' and sniggered at in various places for decades now, if you're prepared to seek it out and cultivate it. I suspect lots of people that might have sniggered would kill for their following, even as a Trib... * Which is, as the saying goes, a lot harder than it looks...well, it should be, after all...

So, is this tour Primus pretty much playing Rush? I wouldn't mind seeing Primus as Primus, but from the videos I've seen, there's Rush tribute bands out there doing a better job...

We've just lost 20 or so gigs after a falling out with the venue which had us booked through to the end of the year and I'm gutted. IME with the band I've done most gigs with in the last decade, the poor gigs are few and far between, even reading some of the grim stories above I'd still persevere, tho as I say, some notable car crashes aside*, that's not been my experience with this band... * And mostly due to external factors, like the agent that mis-booked us (a guitar/acoustic trio) as a 7-piece soul band for a NYE gig once...

And this is the key to Volume Wars, which we've all experienced, I'm sure...after triggering my tinnitus from a gig years ago where a dep geetard put his 112 combo on a bar stool just behind me, and turned up and up, I (belatedly, unfortunately, in the second set) pointed the thing at his head and hey presto, he turned it down, I do this all the time now...happens with 412 users who stand directly in front of their cab in rehearsals so it's projecting mostly below waist height; get them to stand across the room and suddenly they're managing their volume levels better...

Well, the much anticipated/dreaded Paddys Night debacle didn't turn out half as rowdy as I'd feared; France won (so Ireland didn't, tho it was interesting to see a bunch of Ireland rugby fans cheering for England for a while), and the place wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be - I suspect the Paddy's Day crowd had caned it on Thursday and Friday, so it was a more normal crowd. Still packed, still a queue out the doors, but not the mayhem I'd anticipated... Few new songs thrown in by the BL: 'Do you know Tennessee Whiskey?' 'Erm, I've heard it.' 'In A. Two, three, four...' All good, tho - a slightly shorter gig, thanks to the rugby (two sets rather than the usual three), paid and home in good time. Even got parked outside for nowt (a major achievement in the centre of Manchester). Good to be back.

No pic, sadly, but Satdy night's rig was a Fender Rumble 100 (with proper Eminence in it) popped onto a windowsill behind me, all the bass cut, and DI'd into the house PA. Sounded great with all sorts of tones from the Helix...

Pretty shady, to be honest.

I thought my Shukerbird had the worst upper fret access of anything I'd ever encountered, but it appears we have a new winner...

I've always found writing my part for originals much easier than learning covers (for a given value of 'cover', obv - some straightforward i,iv,v stuff is obviously easy), although I did have an odd experience over the last couple of years when we revived a 30-year old originals band for a few one-off gigs, and I had to re-learn my original bass parts I hadn't played in three decades; there was an amount of 'What was I doing/thinking there?' going on... Interesting covers can stretch you out of your comfort zone (in fact I'm always pleased to have to do this) and expand your skill set more readily than originals...plus there's the additional challenge of making an interesting cover out of the source material which works with the band members available...this is made trickier by the fact that my main covers band is a trio...case in point; we have La Vida Loca on the potential new songs set (picked by the geeetarist/singist/BL); I'm dying to rehearse this and hear how he's got this in his head for acountic/bass/drums... 🙂 I do love both, though...