Franticsmurf

Welcome to the site.

Early on in my social club ciruit 'career', I made the mistake of buying a book and winning. It didn't go down well.

And the bingo? 😃

Me too - from biro to Sharpie to jumbo marker. Sourcing a 1" paintbrush for next year. 😃 My personal experience of tech is that it's one more thing to go wrong. That said, a few years ago I was relying on crib notes on the setlist at an outdoor gig, and the three sheets of paper I was using blew away with a gist of wind. An iPad wouldn't have done that!

I can't compare it with the others mentioned here, but the EHX Bass Clone is my chorus of choice.

We played a venue and afterwards, as we were being paid, the entertainment sec told us about the band that had payed a couple of weeks before. "All they did were ABBA songs," he said. "The members hated it and we had to stop them halfway through the night." We were trying to leave but politely showed interest. "What were they called?" "Abbamania". 😂

Hi Pete, welcome to the site. I have a vague memory of seeing Here and Now in the Marquee many, many years ago.

Hi Tridimnaw, welcome to the site.

The first album I bought (actually, I asked for it for Xmas from Santa) was Sparks - Kimono My House. I still have it and listen to it. When I first got into music properly, I was being influenced by my mates who were slightly ahead of me. Deep Purple, Genesis, Tubeway Army and then Gary Numan. On the Top 30 radio programme I heard Wonderous Stories by Yes and Fanfare for the Common Man by ELP. Yes became (and remain) my favourite band. I went into and out of ELP fairly quickly. I love the idea of punk, which in the late seventies I was put off by the punks themselves. Through the 80s I disliked most of the top 30/40 tunes. With hindsight I think I was expected to as a teenager because listening back I find a lot of that stuff - The Police, Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, REM etc etc - really good now. Through the 90's when I was working on my first band, playing originals, I was very much in a prog/hippy/space rock place. I never really got into Britpop at the time but I ended up in a covers band playing it. Since I've been playing bass my tastes have changed although there were quite a few years when I played songs that I would never listen to outside the context of the band I was in. Being with other musicians that I respect has shown me new stuff from their collections (the sound guy with one of my bands, the Hulla band, is currently doing his own musical version of 12 Days of Christmas by sending us 1 song a day from his own eclectic collection). I think the biggest change for me hasn't been in my taste as such, but in being more receptive to new (to me) songs and bands. My collections (by which I mean songs on the iPod that I listen to a lot) includes jazz, prog, folk, punk, more prog, dance (I'm not sure of the sub genres but System 7, The Orb, Junkie XL), a little bit of prog, some pop ad classical. Oh, and some prog. My 15 year old self would have hated me for what is on the iPod. 😂

The most I've spent on a bass was just over £1k for a new Stringray 34HH a couple of years ago. But like many of the posters here I wouldn't buy new again - not because of the experience but because there are plenty of used bargains. My American P bass was a little less than £500 ('B' stock), my Sire S5 was £300ish, also 'B' stock. Add my HB Bass VI (less than £200) and I have three 'new-to-me' basses for the same price as the 'Ray. To answer the OP's question, I think there's now a psychological barrier for me at £1000. If I say it out loud it it sounds much more than when I see it written down and I can't justify the spend based on my level of skill and the frequency and level of gigs that I'm likely to be doing.

Welcome to the site.

One of the reasons I started playing headless bass. 😃 I still take it to gigs as a spare and if I know space will be tight.

+1 for the EHX Bass Clone.

My all time favourite Christmas song and what a great version. Thanks for sharing.

Yes, guilty as charged! Awkward gaps are designed to make us buy more pedals! 😂 I must stop following this thread. Every time I get my board just right*, I see someone else's with a pedal I hadn't thought of/is better than mine/is just right to fill an awkward gap. (*I have never got my board 'just right'.)

I was thinking more as a 'try before you buy' as these units have a range of different versions of, say, compression, chorus and octave. Once you've tweaked to get a sound close to the one you're after, you have an idea of the individual pedals you're looking for. I know he uses a Boss OC2 for octave and Ashdown amplification. Have a look for his 'Lockdown Licks' Youtube videos which may give you some more insight into his sound.

To add to @Phil Starr's post, if you're just dabbling to get a feel for IEM, try using a pair of Sony noise cancelling earbuds. I paid £10 for mine and they are all I use. The 'phones that came with the Gear4Music kit didn't give me any bass but the Sonys are great. (I'm not sponsored by Sony - yet. 😃)

Sorry to hear that. Try Amazon Warehouse - they sell returns and 'B' stock at lower prices. You have to keep looking but sometimes you can get a bargain. My Zoom MS60B was from there - returned unwanted and a third off. Talking of which, the MS60B or the B1-Four are multi effects with loads of different types and editing software for a computer which might be the solution to 'try before you buy'. The effects are modeled on individual pedals by different manufacturers and should give you an idea of what works for you.

Things have changed slightly from when I posted. In one band we have FOH sound and in this case I no longer use the P1. My bass DI signal goes from the amp to FOH, and the amp gives me and the drummer (who is not on IEM) a bass monitor which I can adjust without having to wave at our sound guy 😃. But my main monitor sound is a mix from the FOH desk which includes bass, lead vocals and my backing vocals, lead and rhythm guitar. The FOH signal goes into a Gear4Music wireless transmitter and I take a feed direct from the receiver into IEM. In the other band I use the P1 as I am mixing a feed of vocals from the PA desk and my bass. I split the signal from the board (content varies) with a small Behringer headphone distributor feeding the P1 and the amp. To be honest, the last couple of gigs with this band I've not bothered with the bass signal in the P1 as I'm getting enough volume from the rig for me to hear. The main reason I bought the P1 was to provide some protection for my hearing (it has a built in limiter). The singer at the time, who operated the desk, had a tendency to unplug his acoustic guitar without muting the channel and also to fiddle with the desk creating other unpredictable pops and bangs. He's no longer with the band now. 😃 I suspect going forward the P1 will be a standby at gigs and a means to practice quietly at home.

It's very difficult to answer as your sound as you describe it will probably be different to the sound I'm imagining by your description, although I understand what you're getting at. I'm a relative newb to pedals/sound too and in the last year or so I've been trying pedals, settings and pick ups to get my sound (admittedly, I am happy using effects as well as having a 'clean' sound). The three bands I play in each have a different requirement. Rather than buy, try and sell, where I've been unsure I've gone for a cheap option to get a feel for the effect before deciding if it's worth investigating further with a more expensive unit. Behringer make some great pedals at even better prices. As suggested above and if your budget allows try their compressor, chorus and octave to see if you can get close to the sound in your head. You then have the option to keep using them or replace them with different (better?) units and keep the Behringers as back-ups. I did this with filter pedals as it was something I didn't know much about. I ended up with an Eden Californiwah and a Sonicake Cry Bot, both relatively cheap. The Sonicake does what I want and is now a permanent fitting on the board. Is what you're hearing from real players a combination of their clean sound and mixing desk processing (the guy that does the sound in one of my bands adds a subtle compression to my signal for the PA) and/or the venue itself? Does the player have an 'always on' pedal hidden away (my compressor is always on so it doesn't really have to be on the board)? So many variables - and isn't the fun of bass playing partly about experimenting to get the right tone? 😃

I started off using a pair of JBL 104 powered monitors in my home studio. For the size (4.5" speaker) they were fine for the general recording and mixing I was doing. I only moved on (to M-Audio BX8s) because I had the chance of grabbing a pair for next to nothing from a mate. The 104s are now my PC monitor speakers and I occasional use them if I'm recording away from the studio.

Definitely welcome. I started on BC specifically to read the experiences of real users of kit before buying it. I like that there is a mix of backgrounds, levels of experience and genres here and some healthy disagreement and debate. It's such a valuable resource that I have benefited from and hopefully contributed to in some small way. I'm not so much interested in what the manufacturer says as what the sweating/freezing bass players say after the gear has helped them shine/let them down.

Hi Vasco, a fellow guitar convert here, too. Welcome to the site. 😃

I've done this in the past. And will probably do it again in the future. 😃

I believe this is now oookph in the metric era? 😃