Forget all this GAS just get a Classic Vibe and Peavey Bandit

[Eric***]

Respect for the Squier CV's! I've owned 4 of them--two Strats and two Teles--and still have both of the latter. All were an amazing value for the money. The Vintage Modified Squiers are great instruments for the money, as well. I have their Cabronita model with a Bigsby Trem that's sitting here in my office at work right now--it's going with me to our church praise band rehearsal tonight.

Cool, DVM. Do you play at your church regularly?

[duhvoodooman***]

Cool, DVM. Do you play at your church regularly?

Yeah, basically monthly for a little over a year. The assistant pastor at our church left about 3 years ago and we just managed to finally get a new seminary graduate to fill the long-open position. Up until the first assistant left, we had been doing separate traditional and contemporary Sunday services at the church (we're a Missouri Synod Lutheran church). With only a single pastor, we decided to go with traditional and blended (i.e. incorprating both traditional & contemporary elements) services on alternating Sundays. The contemporary music was handled primarily with a praise band of high school youth--unfortunately, most of them were the same age, so most of the band graduated & went off to college at the same time a year ago. So a new youth praise band is developing their repertoire, and an adult band was formed to help fill in. The youth band has been playing on the 2nd Sunday of each month and our adult band on the 4th Sunday. It's typically only two praise songs per service, so it's been pretty low stress.

That's about to change, though. With the hiring of the new assistant pastor, we'll be going back to weekly contemporary services come September, so each band will play twice a month, and the number of songs per service jumps up to five. We should be able to handle the first couple of months with our current rep list, which is about 35 songs. Gonna need to learn a bunch of new ones, though, going forward! We have four singers, two guitar players, a bassist, keyboardist (my daughter, also one of the singers) and drummer. I mostly play electric, but also some acoustic-electric on a few songs. Enjoying it immensely--if you can believe it, after playing guitar strictly for my own amusement/enjoyment since I was 15, I'm playing in my first band now! Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks??

[Eric***]

Enjoying it immensely--if you can believe it, after playing guitar strictly for my own amusement/enjoyment since I was 15, I'm playing in my first band now! Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks??

That's awesome, and it sounds like a really good situation without a ton of stress. I cut my teeth on the band thing in church and play on a couple of teams currently, alternating between two churches that need bassists.

Sounds like you have a lot of available personnel, which is a good sitation to be in (oddly uncommon). What sort of songs do you play? Tomlin, Redman, Hillsong stuff or more hymn-based?

[duhvoodooman***]

What sort of songs do you play? Tomlin, Redman, Hillsong stuff or more hymn-based?

Mostly the former, a few of the latter.

[Brian Krashpad]

Yeah, basically monthly for a little over a year. The assistant pastor at our church left about 3 years ago and we just managed to finally get a new seminary graduate to fill the long-open position. Up until the first assistant left, we had been doing separate traditional and contemporary Sunday services at the church (we're a Missouri Synod Lutheran church). With only a single pastor, we decided to go with traditional and blended (i.e. incorprating both traditional & contemporary elements) services on alternating Sundays. The contemporary music was handled primarily with a praise band of high school youth--unfortunately, most of them were the same age, so most of the band graduated & went off to college at the same time a year ago. So a new youth praise band is developing their repertoire, and an adult band was formed to help fill in. The youth band has been playing on the 2nd Sunday of each month and our adult band on the 4th Sunday. It's typically only two praise songs per service, so it's been pretty low stress.

That's about to change, though. With the hiring of the new assistant pastor, we'll be going back to weekly contemporary services come September, so each band will play twice a month, and the number of songs per service jumps up to five. We should be able to handle the first couple of months with our current rep list, which is about 35 songs. Gonna need to learn a bunch of new ones, though, going forward! We have four singers, two guitar players, a bassist, keyboardist (my daughter, also one of the singers) and drummer. I mostly play electric, but also some acoustic-electric on a few songs. Enjoying it immensely--if you can believe it, after playing guitar strictly for my own amusement/enjoyment since I was 15, I'm playing in my first band now! Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks??

Wow, that's outstanding! I play in a LCMS church too. Since we have 2 Sunday services one is trad and one blended. Unfortunately we are short on lead players, I'm pretty much it, though we have multiples at other slots, including several folks who can handle rhythm.

We do one Saturday night a month of all contemporary but it's tough getting people out. I wish we had an all-contemporary service weekly.