The band I gigged with often does shows with multiple bands, and often shares bass and drum setups. (Never guitar setups, though -- wonder why?) In fact, I usually bring my amp to gigs and have been actively discouraged from using it. Anyhow, we did an early evening outdoor show today booked by the guitarist, and I asked him should I bring my amp, because it would handle a outdoor gig. He said, "No, there'll be some sort of amp available. just bring your bass." So after dealing with this frustration that last time, I took him at his word, and just brought my basses.
What was awaiting me when I arrived was an old "vintage" Randall amp that looked like it could be impressive -- basically a combo/refrigerator with 6 -10s in it and lots of knobs on it. LOTS of knobs, like reverb, tremelo, depth, speed . . . all laid out like a twin reverb. Yeah, it must've been a guitar amp! The high gain jack for the clean channel was missing, so I had to go into the effects channel. But no matter how I adjusted the tone controls, I couldn't get anything near what kind of sound I like. It was all thin, with no bottom-and-boom. Bummer!
The drummer ended up with a set of shells that lacked an anchor point for the bass drum and hardware. As a result, we ended up doing our set with me shooting distorted farts from this amp and the drummer chasing his bass drum and high hat all over the riser.
So, I don't know how our drummer decides to avoid this in the future, but I've decided that I'm going to have to insist on using my own amp setup, unless I've heard the "shared" one and it's just excellent. It's not like my setup is a load; it's modular, stacks up and rolls on its casters, and can be set up in five minutes or less. And I know how to dial in what I want, when I want it.
But then again, nobody really cares what the bass sounds like. Should I?
What was awaiting me when I arrived was an old "vintage" Randall amp that looked like it could be impressive -- basically a combo/refrigerator with 6 -10s in it and lots of knobs on it. LOTS of knobs, like reverb, tremelo, depth, speed . . . all laid out like a twin reverb. Yeah, it must've been a guitar amp! The high gain jack for the clean channel was missing, so I had to go into the effects channel. But no matter how I adjusted the tone controls, I couldn't get anything near what kind of sound I like. It was all thin, with no bottom-and-boom. Bummer!
The drummer ended up with a set of shells that lacked an anchor point for the bass drum and hardware. As a result, we ended up doing our set with me shooting distorted farts from this amp and the drummer chasing his bass drum and high hat all over the riser.
So, I don't know how our drummer decides to avoid this in the future, but I've decided that I'm going to have to insist on using my own amp setup, unless I've heard the "shared" one and it's just excellent. It's not like my setup is a load; it's modular, stacks up and rolls on its casters, and can be set up in five minutes or less. And I know how to dial in what I want, when I want it.
But then again, nobody really cares what the bass sounds like. Should I?
