Franticsmurf

A couple more: The first one happened to a drummer I was briefly in a band with. His first gig was in his school assembly and he had a very basic kit consisting of a snare, kick, hi-hat and one crash cymbal. He didn't have a stand for the crash, so he tied it to the stage lighting rig with a loooong piece of string. In the first song, he hit the crash with some vigour and watched as it swung away from him. And then watched with horror as it swung back towards him with equal vigour. The pendulum effect, I believe it is called. Second one happened to me in my previous life as a GITarist. The band I was in were asked to play as part of a multi band line up for a charity night at a large club. It had a lovely stage and between songs the curtain would come down so the bands could swap over. We played, it was good. We finished and as I went to get my little effects board, the curtains closed - behind me. Guitar and effects board in hand and in front of several hundred people, I desperately tried to find the split in the curtains. Did I achieve this with style and coolness? No. I flapped and swished the curtain, pulled at the folds, paced up and down the stage. Just me. Finally one of the band members opened the gap in the curtains to let me through.

We supported an ex 'Stars in Their Eyes' Roy Orbison act at a holiday camp. His band were great - we got on really well and they allowed us to use their gear rather than set up two set of kit on the stage. But 'Roy' was a bit of a drama queen. Fortunately we'd met the band before him and they warned us. Basically, his voice was gone and he couldn't hit the highs. The guitarist was covering for him but 'Roy' had run out of bookings. They told us that he was telling everyone he was off to America, but in fact he was off back to his day job. They hated him. Sure enough, when he turned up he explained to us that this was his last gig and he was touring the states. Then he proceeded to slag off his band with them in the dressing room with us. It was rather embarrassing but to their great credit the band put on a good show. They even allowed us to take the headline slot to end the night after persuading 'Roy' that they could make a night of it as they had accommodation booked at the camp.

We ended the first half of a very quiet and sober pub gig (a last minute booking through an agent) with 'Knocking on Heaven's Door', only to be informed by the landlord that we were playing a wake. At the end of a decent gig in West Wales, we were asked to play a further 30 minutes for extra money. At the time I was playing rhythm guitar in that 4 piece line up, but the bassist was using all my gear as I played bass in the trio version. He decided he didn't want to do the extra set and sat in the dressing room while we emerged as a trio with me on bass. As he was having a lift home with me, he didn't get to leave early. We played for more than 30 minutes and, of course, he didn't get any of the extra cash. The journey home was very quiet. The following day he was encouraged to leave. We went on stage at a holiday park immediately after the children's entertainer, and for about 20 minutes played rock classics to an audience of hyperactive 5-8 year olds who were wondering where 'Bradley Bear' was. One of the best audience reactions we've every had from a noise point of view, but the dancing was a bit dodgy. 😀 We opened to a club audience only to see a woman dancing with a short, bald headed guy. No problems, except she was wearing a pink PVC/shiny skin tight outfit (and she was a large lady) and he was barely as tall as her shoulders. I couldn't look as I was in danger of dissolving into laughter so I looked to my band mates for help. Alas, they had already succumbed to the hysterics. There was a long intro to the first song as the singer couldn't sing.

I have the HB version. Great guitar, I've gigged it but in the 13 piece Hulla band there's not a lot of room for the extended range. String spacing is tight (as you'd expect) and I found swapping between four and six in a gig a little challenging. I guess you've read through the dedicated thread - some good string recommendations there. But as this is the Abstinence thread - don't do it. Just say no. Four strings is more than enough. 😀

Meanwhile, in a little rehearsal hall in deepest Gower last night... Soundman: "Thou hast no top end upon thy bass tone, and your sound distorteth." Franticsmurf: "But I'm going through my Ampeg pre-amp pedal with the treble boost engaged, using the bridge pick-up on my Sterling HH and I have a clean tone dialed in." Soundman: "Nevertheless, thy sound is atrocious and offends my ears." Franticsmurf: "Let me apply my 35 years of experience and wiggle this lead." There follows the sound of a thousand Welsh dragons roaring and gnashing their teeth, amplified tenfold for all to hear. Soundman: "Ha! Thy socket hath demons, and they have been purged from thy instrument. Now thy sound is like nectar and ye may be accepted once more into the mix." A minor niggle of a crackly jack socket and pick-up selector has finally manifested itself as an intermittent problem that will need fixing by someone with better electronics skills than me. My Sterling is off to the doctors. The rest of the rehearsal was great - 1st week back after the New Year and we blew the cobwebs away with a random selection from the back catalogue. As usual with the Hulla band, rehearsals are a mix of frustration (there is a tendency to play a song through and move on without addressing any minor issues), tea (tea is served early on) and a lot of fun (as we don't take ourselves too seriously). The offending bass and minimalist pedal board.

Me too, at my first gig as a dedicated bassist (I played guitar for several years before seeing the light). I remember learning Midnight Hour and a bunch of other tunes (Mustang Sally etc) at the singer/guitarist's house. On the night, he announced the song as 'a Wilson Pickett number' (without mentioning the title) and I didn't know it was by Mr Pickett, so I missed the first few notes as I desperately tried to figure out what was being played. 😀

Do you have my Pentax K1000, which was stolen at that gig? 🤣

Sign me up for 'Black Sword'. I saw the Hammersmith Odeon date of that tour, with Moorcock reading excerpts from the books and Lemmy showing up for a guest sport at the end.

Mine was on the bass board for ages when the band was working up a rock and pop set. I ended up using it for a few gigs where I was playing rhythm guitar.

Big jumps along the fretboard, a particular liking for playing up at the dusty end (no dust on my end!) and dark stages (or stage lights glaring in my eyes) means that I have relatively large side markers. It doesn't affect the sound of the bass like a duff note would and most punters can't see them.

100% agree.

It's moments like these (not the messing up but being able to laugh at the messing up) that make playing in bands so enjoyable for me. It's difficult to describe. I have a photo that sums up why I love playing in a band, and it's not unlike this one above.

Oh, that is lovely. I had my GAS under control until just now. 😢

As an ex-guitarist, I always had a spare guitar to hand and more often than not I'd swap guitars between sets anyway. Last year I had a string of rhythm guitar deps and always had two on call.

I'm using a Gear4Music WPM200. It was the cheapest unit I could find when I was looking to try out IEM a few years ago and the drummer in the trio I was in was already using one. We shared the transmitter just for vocals. It does everyting I want it to and I like the sound so I haven't felt the need to upgrade. I tried a couple of different earbuds and I'm currently using a pair of KZ ZS10 Pros on the recommendation of a fellow BCer.

The P16 is on a stand to one side of me but the wireless link gives me the freedom to move about so I'm not tied to it. At some gigs, there isn't much room on stage (we're a 13 piece) and I can leave the P16 out of the way. The alternative, which I have tried, is a headphone extension cable which tends to pull on the phones and which I am expert in treading on/tripping over. 😀

I started with a Behringer P2 hardwired and soon fell foul of all those little wires dangling around. Wireless was the obvious solution. Our band uses a Behrindger X32 and I had a personal mix from one of the aux outs for about a year and it was great. But then I discovered the P16 and, as has been said above, it is a game changer. I have mine fed with the pre-fade mix so effectively I have my own mix which I can adjust accordingly. The Ultranet (Cat5) cable is thin and runs alongside my DI and Mic cables. My wireless set up comes from the phones out of the P16.

I'd certainly recommend the dedicated thread elsewhere on BC for a range of opinions, advice and information. But my personal experience is as @Phil Starr says. It took me probably 6 months of building up confidence in what I was hearing through the 'phones, getting the mix right and getting the technical side right (finding the right 'phones and buds). I would not go back to physical monitors now for the main band (The Hulla) I play in. I can hear an improvement in my backing vocals now I can hear myself properly, I feel my bass playing has improved now I can hear clearly what's going on and I'm playing with the actual sound I spent ages and ££s getting right rather than a muffled version through old monitor speakers. I would add that in my experience having a dedicated sound engineer has made the process of switching to IEM much easier as I've been able to work with him to refine the mix I'm hearing. The rest of the band, with two exceptions, are not using IEM but I don't think it will be long before the majority see the light. In bands where I dep, I tend to plug in to the headphone socket on the desk so that I can hear the vocals through my IEM and use different earbuds so that some of the backline sound comes through. It's not ideal but in the circumstances I can get a decent enough balance. In both cases there is a very valuable bonus in that I can manage the volumes and protect my hearing.

I'd just like to register my thanks to @neepheid for his sterling work last year, and to @Richard R for stepping up this year. And to sign up for a bass gear free 2025. (That funny noise in the background is the rest of my band sniggering 😀).

I've tried several pedal tuners but the TU300 is the one I keep coming back to. And the BDI21 is my always-in-the-bag back up for gigs where I'm going through FOH.

I set mine to just below the red clipping level when playing 'normally' - i.e. the red LED does not show, or shows very briefly now and again. With a pedal or two and an active Sterling HH, the gain control is between 2pm and 4pm depending on whether I use a pick or not.

No one is irreplaceable and I know that there are better bass players than me from a technical point of view out there. In the Hulla band there is one person who I've been working with so she can dep for me if the need arises. If I were to leave the band tomorrow, they would not be without a competent bass player. While I've never actually been 'replaced' without my consent in any band, I have moved on from bands who have continued with new bassists with little disruption. However, I'd like to think that bassists who have stepped into my shoes do not bring the same overall package - I'm thinking about style, creativity, experience, ideas and social skills in addition to playing skills. I remain friends in some form with most of the musicians I've played with in the past.

The band I was in from the 90s to Covid got to the stage where the B/L singer guitarist decided we didn't need to rehearse as we were playing regularly enough. I could see what he was saying but, of course, it didn't take into account new materiel or changes to existing songs. Both of these were infrequent and when they did happen, it was very often done on the fly - in the van on the way to the gig, at the soundcheck and sometimes during the gig itself ("we'll try xxxx, it's in C, follow me...") which the B/L thought made him a true professional and the rest of us, as we walked away, told him it made him a true amateur. I liked the social element of the rehearsal, and, as has been said, that feeling of having 'nailed it' as a group. In the distant past in my first band playing originals, a lot of the creativity came from the interaction in a rehearsal and I believe an element of creativity should be in the covers a band plays to give them a character that sets them apart from other cover bands versions.

If I make mistakes during a gig, it's usually a concentration thing and for me that means it's normally during a relatively simple piece. My bass 'upbringing' was in a trio where I had to be busy when the guitarist/singer went into solo mode. As a result, I tend to struggle more on the simpler lines as my mind tells me I can do this with my eyes closed while the rest of me does it's upmost to prove my mind wrong. 😀 I've missed the classic runs in Crazy Little Thing Called Love, played half a verse out of sync with the guitarist when I was singing 'How Long' (although the jury is still out on who actually instigated the half verse error), and dropped enough notes to fill an experimental jazz set. But as has also been pointed out, usually no one in the audience knows and most wouldn't care as long as the song carries on. I agree with those who have said it's better to play nothing than to play the wrong notes - I've done this and will continue to do it if I have to. Also I have done the 'repeat the mistake' trick and as long as the original error isn't too horrendous, it does work quite well. I now play with a band of mixed live gigging experience and skills and one of the things I tell them (mainly as humour to diffuse last minute nerves) is that if they make a mistake, to immediately stare at someone else to make it look as if that person is at fault. In the world of bands that I play in, perfection is an admirable goal but not an absolute requirement.

Last night was the annual Crown Court Xmas party gig for the Hulla band (our singist is a barrister therein). Always a good gig and not just because the buffet is superb. It's a nice hotel venue and a decent crowd who were all up for a dance and sing along. The setlist was long and varied (there were 40 songs listed) so I had two basses to cover the rocky stuff (Squier PJ) and more mellow songs (Ibanez AGBV200A hollow body) with a planned change over just after half time. However, the buffet arrived early and we stopped about a third of the way in to the set. Our singist occasionally gets a little carried away and can forget some of the arrangements - he has a tendency to start songs himself that have been rehearsed with different intros etc, so I was trying to anticipate an appropriate intro that would give me time to swap guitars. In the end I settled on 'I Love To Boogie' which I guessed (correctly) he would start with a complete verse of just him and guitar. There were the inevitable free jazz improvisations - for some reason I chose to modify the key change in 'Love Story' (yes, Taylor Swift forms a part of our repertoire) and the requested 'I Want It That Way' at the end was not working with the bassline I'd learnt from the original (in the end I just stopped playing as I couldn't find an easy re-entry point) but overall it was one of the best performances of the band as a whole and I was happy with my part in that. I always enjoy Hulla gigs as we have a lot of fun on and off stage and the atmosphere i unlike any other band I've played in. Kit list: A Squier PJ in Lake Placid Blue - a very recent addition to the fold - and my pre-aged Ibanez AGBV200A hollow body both plugged into a Zoom B6 (I love that I can swap between two inputs). I use the B6 in rehearsals to narrow down a set of sounds for a specific set and by the time of last night's gig I had the PJ going into a patch based around and SVT emulation with very slight grit and the option of adding flanger (Dakota) or chorus. I had a second patch which was basically the same SVT sound with a slight gain increase and reduction in bass EQ/boost in mid EQ so I could cut through the mix during a bass break in 'Seven Nights'. The Ibanez had a patch based on the AC370 acoustic amp and for a couple of songs I had a patch based on a TE400 amp for a more bassy feel. The B6 was DI'd into the X32 desk (we have a dedicated sound man) and I monitored through a Behringer P16 linked by Ultranet to the desk. I get a pre-fade mix that I have mixed to give me what I need. That was feeding a wireless IEM. Footwear: A matched pair of Skechers SN52635s modified to improve bass response and using a custom loaded impulse response model - or so the shoe salesman told me. 😀