Embarrassing rookie errors….

[Merton]

Couldn’t understand why I was getting no difference with my preamp set to “bypass” or “on. Spent the whole gig perplexed and convinced my hearing was shot.

Nope, plugged into the “thru” output not the “effect” output. 😀

[Jack]

At one point I had two matching 4u Gator racks. One had my bass rig in (a wireless and Helix). I needed this rack for every gig we played. The other housed my mixer and bluetooth music player. I only needed this rack when we were providing our own sound. Guess who showed up to a festival an hour away from my house with the one, wrong rack? 

 

I've long since moved on from the Helix but the mixer rack is still in use and still has several large '2' stickers on it just so I can tell it apart from the long gone '1' rack with the Helix in. Hey, at least I learned my lesson to label things clearly. 

 

[Wombat]

Off topic but what did you move on to the Helix to?

[Mrbigstuff]

Gigging in shorts. A great idea until you see how silly you look in the photos. Especially as a short ar$e

[Jack]

26 minutes ago, Wombat said:

Off topic but what did you move on to the Helix to?

Bought a Stomp as a backup, then realised I only ever used the Stomp as it was enough so I sold the full fat Helix, then realised the Stomp wasn't enough so swapped the Stomp for a Quad Cortex. 

 

As ever much time and money was spent for little, if any, gain. 

[Hellzero]

It started a bit like @Skinnyman with my first ever fiver, a brand new Hohner The Jack V.

 

I proudly came to the rehearsal with that one and only bass and started to tune it EADGD instead of BEADG with the factory fitted strings, even if I found the strings very hard on the fingers, I kept going on until the G string broke in a loud snap very slightly injuring my left hand that was on the neck.

 

No more rehearsal that evening, but beer drinking instead...

 

I had to wait for a month to receive a brand new set from the local store, hey it was 1989 so the store was not stocking fiver bass string sets at all, and certainly not double ball type.

[Buddster]

Excuse the non bass anecdote, but it was an embarrassing rookie error. (and excuse the name drop...) 

 

While still a studio assistant early '80s, I had to run a session for Heaven 17 who were recording some demos. 

The engineer who I mainly worked with had a line in cheeky phrases that he could get away with and would always get a laugh. 

So we ran through a lead vocal with Glen Gregory. No issues, all fine. 

However, I thought I'd try a cheeky remark, you know, as you do when you think you're above your station. 

 

"that was great Glen, thanks. If you'd lke to leave your name and number in the bin on the way out" 

 

It didn't really go down as well as expected! 

I was rather embarrassed, but had to balls it out. 

[Combed20]

We were recording our album and I was tracking. Went for a take, and silence. Checked lead to pedal, checked pedal, checked lead coming out of pedal. Engineer started making checks his end. Turned out I'd turned down the volume knob on my bass. 

[tauzero]

Went on for the second half of a gig and silence from my bass. Backup bass - also silence. Swapped wireless to the spare and got sound. When I got home, I tested the suspect wireless and it was perfect. My conclusion was that after unplugging the two dongles to save batteries on the bass and the effects pedal, I had plugged them back in without looking to check that the one marked "Tx" in big friendly letters was on the bass and the one marked "Rx" was on the pedal.

 

As bassist, I am of course the default sound engineer. With another band at another gig, we started the second set and all was well (we thought) until somebody told me that they couldn't hear the vocals out front. The channel mute switches only worked on the FOH, not the monitors.

 

Turned up at one gig with what I thought was my bass amp, then found that I'd picked up the wrong silver case and had a case of microphones. I did have a spare amp with me, but sadly no means of connecting said amp to the cab, so that was a dash back home to get the amp.

 

And I've done the wrong venue thing as well, fortunately only about five miles from where I should have been.