SimonK

It's funny how although we know that it is the speaker & cab that actually moves the air that our ear subsequently detects, as musicians/guitarists/bass players we get so fixated with other things that we stray away from the basic principle that if the speaker & cab is crap, it doesn't matter what you plug into it, the sound will be crap! If we chose gear with our ears rather than heart we would probably all be rocking the most expensive cabs and somewhat cheaper basses... One thing I would say, however, is if you want to cut through a mix and get maximum volume for size of cab I would go for a 4x10 over a 1x15 every time. The maths shows it will be about twice as loud (as mentioned above, 176 sq in for a 1x15, 315 for 4x10) and to my subjective ear I think they cut through mixes better (but accept others will have different views on this one point). I think if you look around there are plenty of people down-sizing and getting rid of 4x10s given the apparent new craze for 2x10s and 2x12s.

It's funny, we always do the 4/4 "Celtic" version of Be Thou My Vision and when someone tried to do it 3/4 the other week I got totally confused! Our "set" list this week is: City on a Hill Here I Am to Worship Living Hope O Praise the Name My Lighthouse Probably fretless on the middle three while the first and last have slappage and maybe even Fuzz potential!

Yes it's a momentary mute that allows me to switch basses without pops, and also keep the tuner in line which I find particularly helpful with the fretless especially if the monitor mix is less than ideal (looking down to check that what I think is a G actually is a G!!). Also have a Line6 G30 wireless mounted under the board next to the 1 spot pro power supply. Putting the wireless under the board does not seem to affect reception and frees up some space - albeit space isn't a problem this week!

Just got the song list for this week and am going with a stripped down pedalboard. The GEB-7 will hopefully provide some instant slap tone, and the Muff is there for aspirational purposes!

Awesome - thank you - I will see if I can find something that fits.

I started putting loop (soft) on the pedals many years ago and now have all my pedals coated in them, which is fine if pedal boards come without pre-applied velcro as you can put it on whichever way you want, but now I have my eye on the D'Addario expandable boards and these come with pre-applied loop velcro (so the wrong way round for me): https://www.daddario.com/xpnd-pedalboard/ At the moment it's stopping me ordering the board as I'm not sure how easy it will be to get off, and I don't want to destroy a new pedalboard before I've even had the chance to use it!

That would be amazing if you have one!

Here's my shelves. I keep moving things on and off the actual pedalboards which is why none of the boxes are quite the right size!

Does anyone know where to get the green and red caps for the gain and master volume knobs? I'm almost at the point of buying another TE just to strip for parts! Likewise I've lost a port-cap as well?

...if you are going to build a speaker enclosure (and you don't already have a degree in acoustics) best to binge watch Barefaced Audio's youtube channel - Alex is very good at explaining everything, and also answers emails!

You are welcome to bring a bass along and give it a try if you want, although that might scare the rest of the slimming world group! You probably know my sister & brother in law - Phil & Tany - who are at Above Bar. I've moved away from DI boxes and use class D heads as they almost all have decent DI's built in and give you the option of plugging in a cab if you ever need to. We are toying with the idea of going IEM at St Lukes - we do so already for the drummer - but have had a bit of a PA splurge recently so arguing for any more is a bit difficult at the moment (yes that is a new sub next to the bass amp)!

Indeed, which is why "my" amp is the tiny Aguilar that is near as dammit to the TE sound wise, and I can hold it in one hand. These Trace combos I am putting together are definitely for staying in church, and good luck to anyone who wants to try to steal them!

Small world - if you are meaning St Lukes! You will probably have seen the little procession of bass amps recently. This is because I have a friend who is an electronics whizz so we have been buying old, broken, amps and fixing them up. While we sell most of them I put the ones I like in church for a bit until something better comes along. That's why there was an Ashdown Mag 300 for six months or so until I donated it to another church that needed a bass amp. Then we had a Trace GP7 with a 1x15, but after I found a Trace 4x10 missing its amp (for £50!) we switched the GP7 out of the smaller combo and into the one in the picture above. I'm waiting for a suitably priced GP11 or 12 to come along at which point I will probably give the GP7 back to its original speaker. My personal current rig is an Aguilar 350 into a Trace 2103x and 1518 which I had in church over Christmas while I was getting the Trace combo sorted. However, I'm not convinced my stack sounds much better than the GP7 and 4x10!

The "right" way is the way that motivates the player. I did a sports coaching course a few years back and it was really stressed that if kids are not enjoying the sport they will stop playing. I think same goes for music. Perhaps what is reflected above is that it is more fun (mostly!) to play with other people, and thus easier to learn quickly due to the motivation, whereas practicing on your own is harder from a motivational perspective.

If you are on a budget I would consider how much weight you are happy to deal with. If you generally have good transport options you can get some absolutely killer second hand rigs that will be more than loud enough in a band. I'm a big fan of the older Trace Elliot stuff, which yes is heavy, but it sounds great and is loud. The saying used to be that there are Watts, and there are Trace Elliot Watts, although this reflects Trace reporting continuous rather than peak power. Just looking on ebay at the moment there is a 300W GP12 1210 for £300 which isn't a bad price and will be louder than most drummers. If you have £600 (although I would try to knock it down a bit) there is a AH250 stack although I used to have a near identical amp and got rid of it due to weight (but the built in black light is very cool!). The other thing to remember is that speaker area makes a big difference. For instance a 4x10 cab gives you an area of 315ish square inches while a 1x15 only 176, so for the same Wattage 4x10 is much louder.

I agree if you have good control over the dynamics of your playing and don't mind the occasional bum note really sticking out: that moment where you see someone in the front row cringe because you decide to randomly pop your G string and it comes through somewhat louder than you intended!

The best reason for getting a compressor is to stop the sound engineer sticking their own on your channel and squishing you out of existence. Generally if you show them you have one, and they are not getting crazy peaks at the board, they will leave you alone. I use the Keeley compressor pro set to "auto on" so I don't have to worry about attack or release, but can monitor the peaks on the LED strip. Ratio less than 4:1 and both threshold & gain according to volume and peaks, and then no need to touch it further!

A friend of mine at University was wooing a classical pianist. As he was also a pianist but couldn't read music he asked her for "lessons", but his game was up when she caught him looking out of the window while playing, but remembering where to turn the page! Turns out he has a phenomenal ear and doesn't really need theory because his head/mind/ear can do it for him. Irritatingly he switched from keys to bass in a funk band on the spur of the moment having never really played bass before... Proved to me that natural ability and a good ear have a big part, if not the main part, to play. Theory can make up for not having the natural ability (as in my case) but irritatingly no amount of practice or theory can make up for a good ear. That's why playing with other people, and learning to hear how music works, is so important.

I knew I would like this community, and hopefully it is a bit more "English" than all the Americans on Talkbass who can't help mixing politics into their discussions (and for the record I only want to talk about music here - I can get the politics/theology elsewhere!). Here was this week's rather abnormal setup for me. Next week will be back to bass duties on the rather lovely Trace in the background (I can tell you the story of how I rescued it from certain death at another time!):

Hi all - just joined this forum as for some reason I had been on the US centred talkbass for years without twigging there was a UK one! However, the US one does have tons of church musicians to chat to, which is one of my main musical outlets at the moment. Last two weeks we've been without a drummer so somehow they convinced me to play Cajon instead, which this morning was with just keys plus a bunch of singers. Worked fine during the four or five songs until they threw in the classic Welsh "Guide me o thou great redeemer" at the end of the service when our keyboard player suddenly went all organist on me. There were so many pauses between, and even within, verses that after one or two practices before the service I just gave up on this one and joined the congregation! Next week back to full band and playing bass again!

Me too - 1997 & 1998 I played full time in a function band touring Europe. Thing is we were in a a couple vans, carried our own PA, and although it was fun for a bit, as an 18 & 19 year old I remember looking at one guy who was in his 30s and had been doing it for ten plus years, and while he was an excellent musician, I didn't want to be him ten years later. So I went to University, and have played music pretty much ever since, but also with a job that pays! I suppose if we had been doing bigger gigs with someone else carrying things and running the PA it may have been different, but very very few people get gigs like that.

Reveals my insecurity about playing fretless - allows me to keep tuners on permanently just to reassure myself from time to time, but can still mute as needed!