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The Band Lead Bag


Les

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11 hours ago, DaytonaRik said:

Similarly I'll always take 2 basses to a gig - it takes 5 secs to swap a bass out if a string breaks or worse happens

 

I've had the E machinehead break twice on my bass. Once 10 years ago and once a year ago. I've swapped them all out with better quality ones now, seems it was fairly common issue with the Ibanez. After the first time when I had to restring my bass to be EAD on the fly, and play an entire gig on 3 strings I now take a spare bass to gigs. 

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Previous Guitarist.    Eh bought one of those vintage cloth looking leads like yours and it was dead cheap.

 

Me.    (Oh god here we go)

Me     Nice one,  thinking should stop him asking to borrow mine as I have been wireless for a while

 

End of  night

 

Guitarist.  This new lead is crap can’t wrap it up curls in all directions. Why doesn’t yours do that

 

Me.            Because I bought a good one and not something that looks like I stole the cable from my grandmothers 1930s iron

 

Guitarist.    Oh well I’ll Chuck it in the pa leads case and use yours then as you don’t use many leads these days.😩

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On 11/10/2021 at 16:03, DaytonaRik said:

Does anyone else carry a spare mixer?

I carry the bands spare mixer. We mainly plug into mains or generator supplies, so I went for a small mixer that could also run on batteries. We've needed it twice in the last couple of gigging years, both times because of generator problems.

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On 12/10/2021 at 07:35, uk_lefty said:

I used to play (field) hockey quite seriously as a goalie. I "retired" a long time ago but still play a bit not in goal for fun. As soon as anyone finds out about my past I am volunteered as gk for every game, especially very low standard teams travelling goodness knows where. Keep your secret a secret or you will never be free of your past!

I still do but the problem wkth goalies is either too many or not enough, and we're in the too many phase at the moment, with 9 for 5 teams! 

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On 13/10/2021 at 09:50, TimR said:

 

I've had the E machinehead break twice on my bass. Once 10 years ago and once a year ago. I've swapped them all out with better quality ones now, seems it was fairly common issue with the Ibanez. After the first time when I had to restring my bass to be EAD on the fly, and play an entire gig on 3 strings I now take a spare bass to gigs. 

you use more than ONE string?

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I also supply the PA and the best thing I did was to stop buying black leads.  I make my own cables so have a selection of red, blue, green, and yellow leads.   It is very obvious which ones are mine, it is much easier which packing down as we don't have a mass of black spaghetti to untangle and it makes trouble shooting much easier.  I can tell at a glance which speaker or monitor is plugged in where.

I'm staring at 20m of orange balanced cable right now trying to decide if I need 2x10m or a 15m and 5m.

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2 hours ago, keving said:

I also supply the PA and the best thing I did was to stop buying black leads.  I make my own cables so have a selection of red, blue, green, and yellow leads.   It is very obvious which ones are mine, it is much easier which packing down as we don't have a mass of black spaghetti to untangle and it makes trouble shooting much easier.  I can tell at a glance which speaker or monitor is plugged in where.

I'm staring at 20m of orange balanced cable right now trying to decide if I need 2x10m or a 15m and 5m.

 

I'd say, for completeness, really you need light orange for the 5m and dark orange for the 15m. 

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I'm not in favour of any hardware that stands out on stage. Just looks cluttered amd distracting on photographs. 

 

Even all my multiway extension leads are in Black.

 

You can get cable-tie labels that you write on for the ends of leads and numbers to identify them.

 

I once played with a guitarist who wanted 8 guitars on stage with him and the PA mixer, because people would want to see his gear. This left nowhere for him to stand. This was on a stage with wings. 

Edited by TimR
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12 minutes ago, TimR said:

I once played with a guitarist who wanted 8 guitars on stage with him and the PA mixer, because people would want to see his gear. This left nowhere for him to stand. This was on a stage with wings. 

 

A guitarist with an ego, who would have thought it 😂

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13 minutes ago, Bassybert said:

 

A guitarist with an ego, who would have thought it 😂

Ha.

 

It seems from theatre. If its not an actor, prop or scenery, it shouldn't be seen by the audience (or at least distract from the performance).

 

While the audience are thinking why the hell has the guitarist got so many guitars they're not focusing on the act.

 

Same with white extension leads. Just looks amateurish, like someone just grabbed a lead from their home office or off a shelf at B&Q.

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12 minutes ago, TimR said:

Same with white extension leads. Just looks amateurish, like someone just grabbed a lead from their home office or off a shelf at B&Q.

 

I always go with black extensions and 13amp power cables - white extension cables/sockets do my fruit in!  With audio leads I'm in two minds...part of me says keep it discreet and hidden - the other parts says that everyone know's you have cables so don't worry about it.  

 

Edited by DaytonaRik
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4 hours ago, keving said:

I also supply the PA and the best thing I did was to stop buying black leads.  I make my own cables so have a selection of red, blue, green, and yellow leads. 

I did this a few years ago and it makes life loads easier. No arguing over who's identical black lead is who's and no scrabbling for black leads in the inky black darkness of a rock club stage. Having coloured leads on stage might not be as slick looking as basic black, but I'm happy to make that trade. 

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Our guitarist owns the PA. Once he has set up all his guitars and pedals etc, he then moves to setting up the PA.

 

It's frustrating because by the time he gets to that point I'll have set up my bass gear and lights before he arrives, then carried in and positioned all the speakers and stand around waiting until he instructs me which cable to plug in where. Issuing speaker cables first and only moving to mic cables after the speaker cables are in and finally to power leads.

 

Just give me the bag and I'll do the power leads when I put the speakers out.

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1 hour ago, TimR said:

Our guitarist owns the PA. Once he has set up all his guitars and pedals etc, he then moves to setting up the PA.

 

Sounds like a disaster waiting happen!!! I've always found that the best approach was start at the back and move forwards - kit and any upstage lighting, backline, PA/front lighting, pedal boards then wedges and vocal mics.  You may decide to put the PA in place if you're waiting for something else but we always leave downstage stuff until the backline, kit and upstage lights are placed.  It just avoids accidents.  Reverse the process to strike the stage and always, always, ALWAYS leave guitars in cases until they're absolutely needed.

 

Edited by DaytonaRik
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2 minutes ago, DaytonaRik said:

 

... and always, always, ALWAYS leave guitars in cases until they're absolutely needed.

 

 

And not because a guitard wants to have a 100w Marshall/Les Paul fuelled w**k-fest in front of the bar staff and 6 people who got there early!!!!

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1 hour ago, DaytonaRik said:

 

And not because a guitard wants to have a 100w Marshall/Les Paul fuelled w**k-fest in front of the bar staff and 6 people who got there early!!!!

There's a special place in Hell for ANY musician who noodles away aimlessly at soundchecks. How long does it take you to get a noise you like?  Is the minuscule performance area in the Dog and Trumpet significantly different from the minuscule performance area in the Dog and Trampette? You may need to do a little low-level tweakage, on your gizmos and doodads,  but there's absolutely no need to whizz through all four sides of "Tales from Topographic Oceans" just to check your delay repeats, while the rest of the band glare at you with murder in their eyes, hoping that the Grand Lord of Electricity gives you a potent, but non-life threatening reminder of your selfishness and mortality.

Edited by rushbo
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5 hours ago, TimR said:

I'm not in favour of any hardware that stands out on stage. Just looks cluttered amd distracting on photographs. 

 

Even all my multiway extension leads are in Black.

 

You can get cable-tie labels that you write on for the ends of leads and numbers to identify them.

 

I once played with a guitarist who wanted 8 guitars on stage with him and the PA mixer, because people would want to see his gear. This left nowhere for him to stand. This was on a stage with wings. 

I've played on that stage, it's the Red Bull one...

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11 hours ago, DaytonaRik said:

Definitely  good call re different colour for inputs and outputs - I think I'll get 100m of a different colour for monitor/speaker feeds 👍🏻

 

 

I've got orange for XLR to TRS (Behringer mixer to previous active speakers) and green for TRS to XLR (monitor out to active monitor). And incidentally, I always finds it helps to remember that the pins point the way that the signal's going. And as I want a slightly shorter mic lead, I'm going purple this time.

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10 hours ago, DaytonaRik said:

 

I always go with black extensions and 13amp power cables - white extension cables/sockets do my fruit in!  With audio leads I'm in two minds...part of me says keep it discreet and hidden - the other parts says that everyone know's you have cables so don't worry about it.  

 

 

I know that I can find the white extensions when I pack up. I also tuck them away behind my amp so they're not that visible. I can also write on them with non-special permanent marker to identify them. The big reel extension cable is black.

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On 10/10/2021 at 11:21, Les said:

Then I filled another bag with the walking wounded, weirdo's and stuff that was worth keeping just in case.

 

Guess which fookin bag I picked up and took to our first gig back after the apocalypse 😔 ?

 

I knew this reminded me of something. The bottle of milk and the sandwiches in the fridge when Tom Cruise has his eyes swapped in "Minority Report".

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