gjones

Who EQs the bass at the desk. It should be pretty easy to roll off the treble and mids and create a thicker sound. If your bass is active you should be able to EQ it before it goes into the desk to get a thicker sound.

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1462658322' post='3044782'] Regardless,from the responses here, the consensus leans toward,20 songs for a traditional audition is questionable.IMO Blue [/quote] That wasn't an audition, that was a gig. We had no audition......or rehearsal. I suppose I should have been flattered that they felt I wouldn't need one.

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1462617959' post='3044386'] For a typical 3-4 song audition, of course not. For a 20 song audition,yes. The band would have to be paying a lot of money for me to make an exception. Blue [/quote] I agree. 20 songs is a set.

[quote name='anaxcrosswords' timestamp='1462457078' post='3043168'] Have just spent a week learning – but far from mastering – 20 new (to me) songs for audition tonight. Thankfully most are thump-alongs, but there are a couple of trickier ones and I suppose the hardest thing is remembering arrangements, especially because the audio cues I hear on original recordings won't be anything like what I get at audition. Although the set list was sent a week ago my rehearsal time is governed by work; mercifully I work from home, but all in I'm guessing I've been able to devote about 10 hours to it. So different from the old band where our typical introduction of ONE new song gave each of us about a month before we first rehearsed it together. 20 in one week is quite a stretch. Anyone else had a similar monster task and how much fear factor came into play? [/quote] I learnt 34 songs in a week.......phew (well I created cheat sheets). In the end I'd got the date wrong and turned up in the venue with my bass and cheat sheets a week early. In the end it turned out I actually had 2 weeks to learn 34 songs.

[quote name='bigevilman' timestamp='1462656731' post='3044774'] Not fussed about weight (still the sunnie4 side of 30!). Seen the fender TV combos - they look and sound nice! [/quote] I had a TV15. It's very pretty, very heavy, sounds quite like an Ashdown (I quite like ashdown gear) and it's pretty rare. I'd recommend a Hartke HA350, as they are pretty decent heads and are really cheap. Spend your money on the cab because a cheap cab can make an expensive amp sound pants.

I have a set on the way.

My brother is a guitar player. He occasionally deps on bass and plays with a pick. I like the sound but feel you have more control over damping when you play with your fingers.

[quote name='JapanAxe' timestamp='1462134672' post='3040577'] WTF? Full story! [/quote] Never join a band where the majority of members are more interested in the concept of 'being in a band', than the actual reality of 'being in a band' (ie gigging or recording). In the two years I was with the band, 13 members came and went. I decided it was time to leave after the shambolic recording session, where there was never more than two people in the studio at once and I had to play to a click track, because the drummer hadn't bothered to turn up.

I quit a fake band. It had a website, a facebook site, a twitter site, mystery 'band members' (in fact so it had so many 'band members' that I never got to see all of them in the same room together) and it never gigged. It never rehearsed either, which is irritating when you're paying a standing order, every month for 2 years, for a rehearsal room nobody ever rehearses in.

[quote name='casapete' timestamp='1462101776' post='3040230'] Ronnie Wood had played bass on a couple of albums with Jeff Beck and toured with him prior to forming The Faces with Rod. Just sayin'.... [/quote] It's not his bass playing I'm referring to, it's his daily alcohol/pharmaceutical intake (I mean you know you've got a problem, when Keith Richards starts lecturing you on your drug and alcohol use).

When I first bought 'Every Picture tells A Story', I remember being flabbergasted at how loose and shambolic the whole feel of the album was. I thought to myself. 'they all sound like they're drunk'. I was so shocked and disappointed (especially by the bass playing on Maggie May), I didn't play the album again for a year. A year later I thought I'd give the album another chance and this time I was charmed by the ragged, looseness of the playing. And by the way, according to interviews Rod has made over the years, my first impression was spot on, they were all totally pished when they made the album. Edit: and looking at the musicians who played on that track, it was Ronnie Wood playing bass. Which explains a lot.

I owned one of these, from about 1976. It sounded crap, hissed like crazy and was underpowered. It were orrible. http://youtu.be/1_CbWxi1qAs

Tonight I played at a venue my band gigs regularly at. I had refitted the J-retro to my jazz bass, after going passive for a while, and it made a huge difference to the sound. Just goes to show, that you can never rely on the sound engineer to get a good bass sound from a passive bass. Sometimes you need to EQ it yourself first , pre DI box, to ensure you get the sound your looking for.

I think the trick is to stop thinking of the tone of your bass in isolation and start thinking of the tone in the context of a band. I can only really judge a bass, once I've listened to it in the mix at a gig or rehearsal.

Hm mmm....reading some of these posts makes me realise that the better paying venues always require an invoice to be sent to their central office before a payment is made. It stops managers pocketing the difference in what they pay you and what head office allocates them for bands

There's a venue in my city that declares proudly, on it's website, that all the entry money goes to the band. I know that isn't the case because he pays us far less than the ticket takings over the 3 hours that we are playing. It has a capacity of 140 people, they charge £5 entry and there is usually a queue trying to get in. The place is packed yet we get the same fee every time we play. He also expects us to pay for the sound engineer and the hire of the venue PA, out of our fee (he doesn't mention that on the bloody website). The guy is a musician (well a drummer) himself, so you would think he would have a bit of sympathy for his fellow musicians; obviously not. By the way...... I played a venue in Orkney, that put a bucket around, at the end of the night I took a quick look, and there was significantly more money in the bucket than we were actually being paid. The swines!!

Fitting a John East J-retro to a Jazz Bass gives you a multitude of sounds at your fingertips (if you want them). They are great and allow you to EQ a bog standard Jazz to sound like any bass you want; from a P bass to a Stingray and everything in between. I found the sound I was looking for pretty quickly and left it at those settings. I would occasionally make minor adjustments to suit the room.

[quote name='Muppet' timestamp='1460794237' post='3028731'] We did this at a festival a couple of years ago. Everything went straight to the PA and we wore headphones, as did the audience. All you could hear without the headphones was the drums. It was sh*te. [/quote] If the drums aren't silent, what's the point?

You have to have it set at 'Past 24 hrs' or 'Past week' etc. If you have it set at 'new since my last visit' you may see nothing at all.

I bought Brian's GK MB500. Received it in no time at all, packed very well. Highly recommended for an easy and painfree transaction. Thanks Brian.

There's lighter gear out there. A barefaced, lightweight cab and a class D head would fit the bill. I have a 1st generation compact and a class D Ashdown MiBass head. I can put the head in my gig bag, with my bass, and walk to the gig. I have a GK MB500 on the way, which is even lighter than the Ashdown. Those TC Electronic cabs/combos are not particularly lightweight. Although they do have their own wheels and a handle. I had a TC Classic 450, which I wasn't a big fan of. The thing I specifically disliked about it was that the low mid control was particularly ineffective (ie it didn't seem to have much of an effect on the sound). Low mid gives definition and punch and that's what I thought the head lacked. In the end I sold it and bought the Ashdown, which had a low mid control that actually worked.

Frankly the action on that bass looks fine to me. If you wanted it lower you could shim it I suppose. But I'm not a huge fan of an action so low that the strings look like they're painted on the neck.

Keith Moon's playing, always reminds me of a drum kit falling down a flight of stairs.