Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Just curious what ESSENTIAL items you guys have in your gig bag (mine is a gator bag).

I thought I had ALL the basses (no pun intended) covered with the stuff in my gig bag...tape, battery tester, cable tester, flashlight, tool kit, strings, cables, guitar stand, etc.
BUT..........as crazy as it sounds, at my last gig on Friday, I opened up my bass case ready to strap on and discovered NO STRAP!
Not sure what happened....but there I was an hour before the gig with no strap in sight.

Anyway, the guitar players house was about 20 minutes (vs mine which was about 40 minutes away) so the wives made a quick trip and grabbed a spare.
Girls being girls and wives being wives....the 20 minute trip (40 round trip) turned into an hour and 10 minutes so we had to start the first set (with me sitting on a bar stool).

So.......guess what the newest item to become a standard part of my emergency gig bag is....A STRAP (with proper strap locks in place).


Anyone else have any MUST HAVE emergency items that should be put in the bag?

I also have a spare power strip (with a long cord), a spare power cord (the kind that plugs into the back of the instrument), and a towel or two (in case somebody else isn't careful with his/her water/soda/whatever around the stage). IMO, these are in that 'must have' category.

Yes I've also done the dreaded "no strap" routine, it's something you feel is always there with your bass - but then you realise you were playing your bass at home a few nights previous and it got left behind. It was only at a rehearsal though and I ended up borrowing a spare off our guitarist. I take 2 basses to gigs with me so the odds of leaving both straps behind are very slim.

In my gig bag is a spare 9 volt battery for my active Sandberg bass, I also have a small Korg Tuner in there as well.