Get Your Gear Gig-ready

Get your rig ready for action and prep for live performances with TG’S how to guide

If your next gig is your first in a while (and let’s face it, if you’re reading this in 2021, it probably is!), there’s a good chance your rig is going to need a little attention. Perhaps you’re one of the many new musicians who took up guitar playing during the pandemic, and you’re planning your first gig soon. Whatever your own situation, getting your gear ready for action and preparing to go live is a key part of the process.

Here, we take a look at the practical considerations for five different kinds of live gig and run you through what you need to know.

1 YOUR FIRST GIG Taking the first steps into live performance? Make it so your main focus is playing!

Prepare, prepare, prepare!

Forewarned is forearmed, as they say, and if this is your first time getting up and playing in front of people, you don’t want to be sweating about the small stuff. But you should probably consider it ahead of time! Take some time a week or two before your gig to think about all the gear you’re going to need to perform. At the bare minimum, that’s going to be your guitar, an amp and a tuner. Set up and run through your set, writing a check list of everything you need as you go. Treat your dry run like the gig where you won’t be able to borrow anything or reach into your drawer to grab it. Go through it with a fine tooth comb and consider everything you need to perform your songs. That’s plectrums, a strap, cables that work, batteries or power supplies for your pedals, cases to hold it all together and an extension cable with enough sockets to plug everything in. This way when you come to pack for the real thing, you’ll have everything you need.

Check your guitar

Chances are that during your practice, you’ll have noticed any issues with your gear. Twitchy jack sockets, scratchy pots, strange buzzes or anything else that shouldn’t be there will only be amplified when you’re playing at gig level. If you can fix your guitar yourself then do it; if not, get it booked in with a decent guitar repairer. This goes for your main guitar and any others you might need to switch to throughout your set, even if they’re backups, which brings us to...

Spares

Things can and - at some point - will go wrong at a gig. Patch cables seemingly get stage-fright and strings decide to show you up by choosing the exact moment you take a solo to give up the ghost. You can combat this with rigorous checking beforehand, but you also need to be ready for when your rig decides to go dead on you. That means spares. A spare guitar (if possible), tuned and ready to go is an excellent solution, but you should also pack some extra cables, strings, batteries, plectrums... If it’s easily lost, broken or has a limited lifespan, double-up!

2 OUTDOOR BUSKING Street performances require some extra considerations. Here’s how to get the best from busking...

Permission to band

Busking is a great way to gain some live experience, and possibly make some money while doing so! But, before you pack up your gear and park yourself in the nearest performance hotspot, you first need to make sure you have permission. Individual councils have their own rules on street performances, and the last thing you want is to get moved on mid-set, or even worse, blacklisted. So, check out your local council’s website and see what the rules are first.

Take the power pack

Your main gear considerations with busking are going to be powering your rig while keeping things portable. This will most likely mean streamlining your setup where possible, and thankfully there are plenty of amps out there designed to do exactly that. Check out combos such as the Roland Cube Street series, Blackstar Super Fly, Fender Acoustic Junior Go and many others for battery-powered combos that feature enough channels for your guitar, a mic and a connection for your phone for backing tracks. As well as this, they’ll often include on-board effects and even loopers that are usually footswitchable, and could save you needing to bring quite as many separate items and power supplies. Invest in some decent rechargeable batteries, and always have some spares ready.

Stable cables

Wireless options are great when you’re tethered to the grid, but out in the wild, you’re looking to conserve any power you can. So, while using wireless systems may seem like a good way of reducing your setup time and number of items you need to carry, switching on bluetooth for connecting your backing tracks, or even using a wireless system for your guitar or mic will eat up battery power and increase your chances of treating the crowd to the sound of silence.

Mic check

If you’re singing, you’ll be requiring a mic. Now, we understand that this is a street performance in a busy town centre being pumped through a small amp, but all that means is that you need to maximise the clarity of your gear. Get a decent gig-quality dynamic mic such as the Shure SM58, Audix i5, se Electronics V7 (there are many options!) and you’ll be sure that you’re giving yourself the best chance of being heard. A tight hyper or supercardioid pickup pattern will help reject unwanted noise in the mic and will also help reduce feedback. Don’t forget to kill the effects on your vocal mic if you intend talking to the crowd between songs.

Go mobile!

Chances are you’ll be arriving to your performance stuff - at least partially - on foot. Get your guitar in a gig bag, invest in a cover for your amp if you’re worried about it getting bashed-up, put your pedals on a pedalboard, and invest in a storage box for anything else you need to bring. A sack truck (a basic Diy-style trolley should be fine, but there many music-specific versions available too) combined with some bungee ties will enable you to move all your gear safely, and in one.

BUSKING IS A GREAT WAY TO GAIN SOME LIVE EXPERIENCE