Franticsmurf

Thanks. I'd certainly be interested but I can't see how string tension alone would do anything other than pivot the unit up and along the neck. 😀

I have a Spirit headless and it doesn't seem to be compatible with the existing unit as there's no obvious means to attach it to the headstock and still retain access to the truss rod (I was looking at the images on Thomann's website).

This is the problem I have with the festival band (the one that played 4 hours - see above). The BL is a Bruce Springsteen fan and gets a little carried away once the audience gets going. When I joined he was horrified by the suggestion of a break between sets as they used to play 3 hours or so straight through. But a lot of the band thanked me for insisting on it.

Same design as the ones fitted to my Ibanez EHB which are, as @LeftyJ just beat me to saying, Schaller S Locks. 😄

Glad it's not just me. 😀

The longest I've ever done was our festival band (The Hulla) gig at the end of June this year. Just over 4 hours with a 15 minute break half way. I remember thinking during the 3rd hour that I was running out of steam and just wanted it to stop. I played as complicated a bass part as I could that still fitted within 'Proud Mary' in order to try and get me out of the slump and it worked. The last hour was pretty much a non-stop dancing frenzy from the audience which gave us all the energy to continue. 😄

The Mustang Sally/Sex on Fire/Dakota type songs are useful to have in the back pocket should you need to inject a boost for a particular audience. In my experience all three will get a reaction in the right circumstances. It helps that being in South Wales, Dakota is a 'local song' (for local people) and has never failed to get a flagging crowd up on their feet when we've played it in the various bands I've been with. Similarly, I'm a Believer and (I apologise in advance) Sweet Caroline. Neither would fit in to the current band's style but I am tempted to get us to work on suitable arrangements because they would be useful lifeboats.

We made the mistake of playing bingo in a club to which we were the visiting band. We made the bigger mistake of winning. We nearly didn't get paid and there was very little love for the band that night. 😄

I've made three boards of various sizes using the plastic fascia/interior windowsill type plastic strips. Easy to cut, simple to glue together and I cover mine in black gaffa tape. Lightweight and none have let me down so far.

Looks like a good general list to me - covering a wide range of styles and therefore likely to appeal to a wide range of punters. As @asingardenof said, the next step depends on your target audience/gig. I'm in the process of finishing off a list with the new 3 piece and at this stage (with only a few of 'test' gigs under our belts) we're working through ideas without much thought for coherence. Our intention is to create a catalogue of 40-50 songs from which we can create more focussed setlists that will cater for the expected crowd/venue tastes. For example, we recently played a small festival where we chose an hour of upbeat rock spanning the 60's to the 2000's as the acts before us were all slow/relaxed/low key outfits and the audience ranged in age from 5 to 85. A previous pub gig for the guitarist's mate's birthday had us playing more modern rock - 80's to 2010's. All were taken from the same starting list of songs and some featured in both but with different sounds or arrangements. We were due to play at a charity gig in a back garden (cancelled due to the weather) and this would have been a much lower key affair with a list not much different to the festival, but played with less energy and volume. As we found, you may have a wide range of songs on paper but your arrangements may bring them a bit closer together in feel and style. We played a couple of Abba songs at the birthday gig but with a more simplified arrangement that brought them up to date.

Mid 90s for me, but the clubs were similar to the ones in the film. We used to play as a three piece or me and the singer as a duo in the South Wales valleys. The club buildings were lovely old places architecturally, often unchanged from when they were first built. Some of the audiences were similarly ancient. 😄 We were always on after the first bingo session of the night. Many of the clubs had a rule that members must not dance in the first half and we were often told not to play any upbeat dance music before the second session of bingo during our short break between sets. The second half would be the real test of how we were doing as we would find out how many people had endured the bingo to watch us. The bingo callers were characters, with each one having his (or very occasionally her) own style. They were as much performers as the acts were. There was one at a regular club gig who would start off quite clear and in the 30 minutes of so of the first session, degenerate into mumbled incoherence, at which point his assistant would repeat the calls. In the second session, the assistant would take over straight away with the original caller barely audible (and barely conscious) to one side. I remember one gig we played as a duo where we had to sit through the bingo in the audience because there was no changing room. For some reason we both got the giggles and stopped the bingo caller, who told us off with a stern 'we take our bingo seriously in this club'. Which, of course, made the giggles 10 times worse. At the end of the session, the whole audience got up and left as we went up on the stage. We were expecting to be paid off as the compare arrived but he had a quiet word, telling us to wait 5 minutes and sure enough, a whole new (and younger) audience turned up and we had a good night. I recently depped in an act the singer mentioned above was doing and went to a couple of the old venues. They were completely renovated and devoid of the character they had 30 years ago, and probably had half the membership.

+1 for the Columbus. I got it second hand but so long ago I forget what I paid. I was a guitarist at the time and needed it for recording demos. I found an old photo the other day of me playing it at a gig - I'd forgotten about that too but with the band I was in at the time I played guitar most of the time and the singer played bass, but occasionally I'd pick up the bass to give him a break. Great guitar - mine was sunburst.

Fortunately, it's rare that I have to learn new songs quickly - I'm rubbish at it. Repetition and crib notes work for me in those situations. The crib notes are mostly the chord/root notes of anything I'm not too sure about (an instrumental break, solo or key change for example) that doesn't follow the 'normal' structure of the song in question. I find listening to the originals when driving, walking etc helps familiarise myself with the song itself - even if I know the song I'll listen to it with my bass player ears. And watch your fellow musicians to spot the changes and chords (I've done this a lot with a guitarist I used to work with). Be up front with the band and tell them of any songs you're having problems with. And good luck. 😄

Don't worry, the Basschat emergency first responders are on their way. Just breath normally and try not to panic - you'll be fine. 🤣

I'm glad it's not just me. 😄 If it's been more than a couple of weeks I have to run through them just to get the details right although it's surprising how quickly the muscle memory kicks in once I've started playing them.

Love the video. 😄

Our sound guy has just set up a router so he can use his iPad. At the last couple of outdoor gigs he was out front wandering about and sorting the sound from the audience perspective.

In the Hulla band we use an X32. We have a sound guy who has put the time in at rehearsals and on his own to learn the desk. The band has 13 members and everything goes through FOH so with vocals that's 18 channels, and when the drums are mic'd an extra 4 or 5 channels. I'm not familiar with the XR18 but the X32 has snapshots of the settings (I think they're called scenes) and we have several set up for various regular venues. Without a dedicated sound engineer I think it would be overkill, or at least too complicated to run properly but for our set up it's brilliant. I have my own IEM monitor mix which means I have done away with back line for this band. The desk also records audio directly to a USB stick so we have a rough demo for practising to.

The last one we had knocked politely on the door and announced itself before commencing the shake. 🤣

I do this before a couple of songs, but I use the mute function of my tuner pedal so that no one else has to hear me.

Tuner (for that 'in tune' effect), EHX Bass Clone chorus, Behringer Phase Shifter, Laney Digbeth pre-amp. This is the pedal line up I use for the Hulla Band, although I'm actually using a Plethora X3 for the chorus and phase because I also occasionally use flange and I have an always on compressor in the line.

If those are accurate representations of the material, it will be an interesting album. 😄 My influences are probably as varied (though different) but if I was looking for musicians to work with, I'd try either and focus it down to the specifics that the music resembles ('Early Peter Gabriel meets Animal Kwackers'), or a more general 'rock', 'classical', 'EDM' label. I would keep the wider influences for the next conversation, with examples of the material.

I was in a band where the guitarist played the riff from a song we didn't play between songs and the audience started chanting for the song. The chanting continued after each of the following few songs before we ended the set. The rest of the band were not pleased with him and he left shortly after. I've been in several line-ups where the guitarist (in my experience always the guitarist) either noodles between songs and/or during the set up, sound check and even when the rest of us have left the stage for a pre-performance beer. It is extremely unprofessional, usually unwanted from the audience and very annoying. It always seem to be to be an attention seeking thing.

You have to have the bad ones to appreciate the good ones. Most of my 'bad ones' (and there have been more than a few) have turned into anecdotes and stories we now laugh about. Even if it is a kind of hysterical 'glad that's over' kind of laughter.

And still not my choice of music to listen to other than to learn the styles. But yes, so much fun to play. A particular eye opener was the Abba stuff. I'd heard it, of course, and everyone says how good Benny and Bjorn were at writing, but only when I started listening carefully did I realise how complex the arrangements were and how cleverly they were crafted to end up sounding simple. And some great bass lines. I learnt how to play the classic disco octave riff so that I could play Does Your Mother Know and Gimme Gimme Gimme. Now I slip it in to other songs if we're having a laugh. Sadly that band didn't last for various personnel reasons but the trio I'm with now are getting a lot of pressure from me to play Does Your Mother Know and Waterloo.