Rosie C

Thanks! That's a fair bit closer than Derbyshire!

That's a real shame. Although I live in south wales, after my local luthier stopped taking in basses, Dave at bassbags has been my go-to guy for maintaining my double bass - most recently reaming the body for a new end pin.

You must eat your spinach! 😉

I too will take a look. A good battery powered bass amp has so far been out of my grasp. I have a Roland Cube Street Ex for my piano accordion & synth but it doesn't do the low end well enough for my jazz or my bass uke, and it's no good at all for my upright. The best I've managed so far is an Orange Crush-B with a Jackery camping power pack - but I'd rather not have mains leads playing outdoors.

There's an idea, I might bring my home-brew Erbauer drill battery powered pedal board.

Well, I pulled the trigger - ordered the Dimarzios from Thomann and my bass is with my local guitar technician. I've a couple of studio sessions coming up, so I'm looking forward to how they sound!

yes, I've been thinking about buying an Elf...

Welcome to BassChat!

I can imagine! The bit of my brain that manages low back pain is screaming "NO!!!!" but I'm just overriding those negative thoughts as they look so cool. Even if I didn't gig them, they'd look good in the corner of my practice room.

I need some!

I love the look of those speaker cabs. Is that how they came from the factory, or have they been 'ruggedised' ?

Sam Vimes Boots theory!

For the last few years I've played in a church band and it really was ideal for me: * 10am rehearsal, before the gig at 11am, home in time for lunch, no loading in the dark * large car park close to the back door for unloading * nice people, no drunks * free coffee and biscuits * fabulous acoustics 🙂

My last service included a send off for a pilgrim travelling to Rome, and the hymns were: Oh-Oh the deep, deep love of Jesus All for Jesus Brother, sister let me serve you Blessed now , O God the journey Brother, Sister stook in my head as an ear-worm for days afterwards! But that may be the last time I'll be playing bass in church as I've begun the process to convert to Catholicism. But I also play keys and I have an interest in early music, so I'm sure I'll still be involved in church music, just differently!

Yup. I'm an aspiring songwriter and I'd have been pretty pleased with myself with a couple of those Rick Beato AI songs. I will definitely have to up my game. Rick showed a song that was nearly completely machine generated, but I can imagine people feeding in their own lyrics, then have the AI system generate the tune & harmony, and learn to perform the song themselves, and it becomes a very blurred line between human and AI art.

For me it started at about age 14. A friend was front man boy in a high school band and they were short of a bass player. I played keys at the time, but he lent me his bass, and overnight I learned "Teenage Kicks". We rehearsed the next day and I was in. I still have the enthusiasm. It waxes and wanes though. I sing and play a bunch of other instruments. But it seems there's a shortage of bass players, especially upright players, so bands tend to want me to play bass. Also, since picking up the microphone I'm not content being in the shadows at the back, I like being up front. Lately I've had my own home studio though, so I multi track more than play in bands these days. My musical tastes moved away from pop/rock into classical then jazz then country, early music and most recently folk. I've no idea what that very first bass I played was. It was a four string, black gloss body with white scratch plate. My main bass now is an unbranded laminate upright that's had a fair bit of work done, and set up "just so".

Very nice. I tried to learn lute but without a teacher I didn't make much progress and ended up playing mandolin instead. One day I will build a lute though, and learn to play it!

Something like the Behringer Power Play would do what you need I think. I've used one for many years to amplify my double bass signal for my IEMs. https://www.thomann.co.uk/behringer_powerplay_p2.htm

Similar to wondering why my amp is silent, when the Speakon cable is still in my bag.

Have you considered a bass ukulele? They're very portable and have a great tone. Before I bought mine I was told it had a "double bass sound" and I didn't believe that, and arranged to meet up with an old band mate to try his - and I was amazed at the tone.

Bass recorder and piano accordion. The acoustic accordion has the very cool 'Stradella' button board which lays out the bass and chords in 4ths/5ths but of course just makes accordion sounds. But I also have a digital piano accordion which can generate bassoon, double bass etc., or drive a MIDI synth. The bass recorder isn't that low in pitch, there are great bass and contra bass which actually get low down. In the picture below is the great bass recorder I used to own...

We have a very good keys player who deps with us, and I make his life as easy as I can. He was particularly pleased that each way on our PA is colour coded, the XLR cables have matching colours and the mics have coloured leccy tape on them. It doesn't make me sing any better, but setting up & taking down is a whole lot easier.

... and Icicle Works for me, a fair few years ago. I only made it through the first song. AC/DC were also loud, we were right at the back of the arena and I had my orange builder's ear plugs. Not loud enough to leave, but loud enough to to wonder about the people at the front without hearing protection!

We did one, where the head lining band provided the PA and sound engineer. It was so loud I did the gig with my 19dB ACS IEMs and 30dB ear defenders over top. That was the last gig I did with that band. When the headliners came on they turned the levels up, and even outside the venue it was too loud to not have hearing protection. Me at the gig, looking p***ed...

For an extra £3 or so you can get a gel holder for them, and the 4 pictured above have diffuser gels fitted to spread the light more.