krispn

Just wondering about this following a chat with a mate who was approached while busking and offered a tenner to play in a guys packed bar for a few hours over the edinburgh festival!

Is there a big regional difference between what bands get paid for pub gigs? I don't mean the gigs where you play your own originals but established music pubs. I joined a new band at the start of the year and there seems to be a consistent £60-£70 per member type payment/fee. My regular pub gig pays £70 per member (£280) per gig and a bit more if we're playing a longer set kike we do over the Edinburgh festival with the extended license - 22:00-01:45  - 4x45min sets.

Does this vary wildly and do the bigger cities get more, regional pub pay less? I've been lucky to play some bigger gigs with another project where the organisers were in the band and it was their primary business (a choir thing), they ran the whole event and the band got paid £400-£500 each for these bigger ticketed events - these were 'full house' 1800 seat theatre type gigs and often only happen annually mores the pity!

So it appears Edinburgh gig tend to pay on average £280 for a 4 piece but it can be venue specific

Email Dave Ellefson or hit him up on twitter. I'm sure he'd be happy to help - was he going for a particular weight/consistency QC etc.

Or ask PMT to get you one in to try when they're released. Money back 14 free rental and all that

Every bass will have some variance in relation to weight. Dingwall make a concerted effort to keep their basses under 4kg or at least that was the case with the Super P - it's pretty hard to give an exact figure for a full production run of a particular model what with wood being wood. Best thing to do is when you're buying one try a few in the shop and nab the one which best fit's your weight needs. Often as you've pointed out before you're happy to have a heavier bass of the balance is correct. 4.5kg is likely a good ball bark figure for a 5 string but by no means the standard.

The Fender amps following the revisions they made back around the 800Pro's and TB series are really good and I recall the promo/NAMM stuff alluded to the fct that Fender were losing ground in the bass amp realm. They put in some serious R&D and made some really good heads, didn't go with the class d and stuck to their guns. I got my TB600 for £300 ish plus a bit for P&P. I'd say it's one of the best amp bargains I've ever got. The Pro800 on FB is cheaper still at £250. There is one on here but its £375 I think - a good price but £250 is better.

The TB range have a classic fender tone stack with the 2-10-2 flat setting. Pull boost on the bass and treble. There is a drive channel which has gain and volume plus a blend between the and drive side. There is a semi para eq with a range from 80Hz-1kHz and a room balce to tweak the amp without having to re eq for a dark or bright room. Very versatile head.

Yeah I was gonna say I never had either of them loud enough to hear dirt (and that was at rehearsal and gig volumes) but I don't think that was the goal of the preamp. My TB has a separate drive section which does a great range of dirt and is very usable on the gig - I've been very happy with it. If I could just find a foot switch for it!!! I've seen the 800Pro, which is the solid state version, recently on a facebook group for £250 which considering the semi parametric EQ and the power section (same as the TB amps and power amps) is a cracking deal if one can handle the weight  - Talkbass guys seem to comapre them to the ThunderFunk amps. High praise indeed!

I’ve played through an m3 and the m6, two great sounding amps. I can’t really go into the minutiae of differences between the two but most folk will hear them for their similarities- quick and immediate power section good eq (with or without the voice control) and while it’s designed to play well with Mesa guitar amps of the era they were designed they’re just good all round amps. One thing I can’t really speak of is the drive or how much dirt you can get from the gain as it wasn’t a sound I was really aiming for. 

My main gigging amp from the Fender TB series has a similarly impressive power section but it’s voiced more classic fender however that power section is great and explains why the amp is 14kg! 

@fretmeister

especially if you have more than one P bass and want to offer yourself a little something different then these are a great shout. With my PBird I find on a gig I'm using maybe three settings over the night. This PBird really benefits from the ability to tweak the voicing just enough to have better tonal options than a classic taper tone control IMO. Obviously it's not a P pick up but the TS does offer me a few more options and it's worked out exactly as I had envisioned it would. It's the simplicity of recall too or knowing where your tone control is set.

The Duo6 does look pretty cool!

Cheers! Yeah I wasn’t consciously thinking about it until I did the recording and then recalled that folks might well start with wide open as the 1st position. 

Either way it’s pretty easy to figure out and should give an impression of why there’s a few folk singing the praises of these wee units.

If I may... Cuzzie has one of these in a traditional P bass and sets his more to the wide open side whereas I find in about position 3 or 4 (as I hope you can hear above) with the T bird pick up it adds more of that lower mids thing which isn’t a P bass but does add in that quality/character so I have best of both worlds. 

So following a bit of chat about the TSB10 I thought I'd post a quick run through of the unit which is fitted in my p bass. The bass is a bitsa P bass with a Mike Lull T Bird pick up so it's not gonna sound like your 'classic P bass' however as I've said before a TS can really offer a heap of usable tones in any single pick up bass.

I've repeated a bass part and on each pass I've gone from the TS in the 'tone rolled off' position and gone through each 'click' until hitting position 10 which bypassed the TS and is effectively just the pick up's natural voicing.

The bass has some eq and comp on it from my DAW which isn't really that important as the voicing of each setting still comes across. This is the kinda setting I like to use whan playing along and learning stuff at home via headphones

Apologies for the slight clipping as I wasn’t aware I might have been pushing too much signal so not the greatest recording ever! 

Tone off - 0 - 0:26

Pos.1 0:28 - 0:54

Pos.2 0:57 - 1:23

Pos.3 1:25 - 1:53

Pos.4 1:54 - 2:21

Pos.5 2:22 - 2:50

Pos.6 2:51 - 3:18

Pos.7 3:20 - 3:47

Pos.8 3:47 - 4:14

Pos.9 4:15 Effectively 'bypassed'

On 05/08/2019 at 00:22, Jonse said:

I finally dialed in my sansamp exactly how I wanted this morning and then used it for 8 hours at band practice. I will take it to my grave. 

Quality

I should add I'm not entirely confident which rounds are on the JMJ I think it was the set the guy had on them when I bought it (used) and they were rounds. I did use the Fender flats (which I believe came as standard) which I like but I also really enjoy GHS Precision flats as well but Iuse them on another P bass. I will likely succumb and get the Mustang specific LaBella's as it would be remiss not to at some point!

Labella mustang flats are different gauges and might well be a more natural feel and fit. I’ve put roundwounds on mine and it sounds equally as pleasing. The tone knob does a great job in taking off that top end and if you’re wanting to keep some of the high end but not be too clanky it works as expected...which can’t be said for all tone controls!

Bit of a cop out there 😀

I know you’ve been using a lot of filter pedals and comparing them recently for instance so it would be useful to have some audio showcasing your experiences but I’m sure others will step up to the challenge. 

I think this thread would really benefit from audio comparisons. It’s much easier to ‘hear’ differences or similarities and as @Al Krow has quite the collection I’d be up for hearing his examples to keep the ball rolling. 

GB will be posted down this week. 👍🏽

The Sadowsky preamp was originally designed by Alex Aguilar so knowing him it’s likely a bass boost at 40Hz and a treble boost at 4kHz. I’m not sure if there’s much difference between the OBP-1 and the Sadowsky pre which on paper appear to be similar.  One cool feature on Sadowsky basses is the passive tone which can still be used in active mode. Great feature to have even if it might sound counter intuitive. 

4 minutes ago, dave_bass5 said:

Just reading through this and that post gave me the impression he was talking about in general, not just a personal thing. 

Its a strange comment to make without more info. Talking about P, PJ, Jazz, all fo them etc?. Very open to interpretation. 

OK

This guy rates his bass better for him at gigs than at home. Who’s really that bothered? 😀

Just his take on it. He never said it was crap just it sounded better to him louder with the band. Maybe his home rig just doesn’t sound as good as his live rig? 

Sometimes gear just sounds ‘better’ in context. The classic tale of a bedroom bass sound not cutting it live once it’s in context - the classic, pleasing to the ear smile eq might be great at home but not so suitable with a band, some amp/cab combinations just sound better the louder they’re pushed. Not all gear but often some amps/cabs just needs to be running at a bit of volume to really come into their own. I know running my amp into a 600w cab with the amp barely at bedroom/neighbour friendly volume does not sound as good as that cab running up at stage volumes but my wee 100w practice amp sounds better for home use and just struggled once it’s up to its limit. 

I think the importance of mids (those low ones and the mid ones) has been done to death but the folks need to make their own mistakes and figure stuff out for themselves and I mean that in general terms not specific to the OP. I had an issue with our singer who does ‘the sound’ and when he was ready to listen (i.e. when he couldn’t fix a feedback issue) he had no choice to take take on some advice which worked for the benefit of the band and perhaps to the detriment of his ego. Next thing he’s asking advice on getting the drums sounding punchier! I think he was glad not to have the responsibility of it all plus it sounded better to his ears. 

Min terms of the plan b approach I was simply thinking running the rig in a rehearsal to make sure it works ok not as a full low end back line as you’d have to sort that out in the venue. Be good to try it on a gig if it wasn’t ‘essential’ to the life sound. Could help reinforce the tops like you say. 

So are you wanting to use your cabs as subs? Effectively running the bass and kick drum to a mixer and sending those two feeds to be your subs on the boxpark gig?

It's one of those set up's you guys could try in a rehearsal room to see how it worked (I appreciate the volumes levels will differ from small room to open air gig as will the effect of the room on the lows and overall sound.

Might just be worth hiring in the right kit for the job and taking out those additional 'risks' - adding in more cables, mixers etc. In saying that reverse engineering a solution might well work but you'd wanna be actually using it in the context at least once to make sure everything works as planned - when there's more stuff to go wrong it usually can and you don't wanna be finding out at your soundcheck that it's a bad idea!

3 minutes ago, Jean-Luc Pickguard said:

Yep - my JMJ is sublime, but then I'd been wanting a daphne blue mustang with lollipop tuners for ages so its pretty much perfect to me.

But once you get over the colour and the tuners it’s got a great feel and sound. Should be on the list as a consideration. 

6 hours ago, Low End Bee said:

I'm having a day off next Wednesday and I'm going to try all the Mustang varieties.

No doubt I'll end up with the expensive option.

 

Be sure and try the JMJ!

It does feel like there can be a misconception about lows and low end the boosting in is a good thing but it’s such a powerful thing. The singer and default sound man (I refer to him as a volume guy not sound guy for reasons which would be apparent in the room!!) and he will later in a gig start to nudge the bass into the sub in the regular venue we play and I’ve had a word that it ruins the sound.  I’ve tried to suggest some more useful eq nudges that might ‘punch’ rather than swamp the bass/low end