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A couple of tribute bands over the last couple of nights First on Thursday night were The Musical Box at the De Montfort Hall Leicester recreating the 1973 Genesis Live album that was recorded there. As usual absolutely impeccable! A few extra tracks thrown in from Nursery Cryme and Foxtrot. The strange bit was the "warm up" act which was the MB bass player, and I think the keys and drummer playing some original "progish" "music" - good in places, but a bit "out there" for a fairly large audience, getting polite applause. The Musical Box though, wow! Supper's Ready was immense! Tonight was The Devout, a Depeche Mode tribute. All credit to them for the nearly 3 hour set, but tbh I could have happily lost the first hour and a half of album tracks and skipped straight to the stuff everyone knew. Very good band and a great tribute. It did take the sound man about 6 songs to get the vocals up to audible level though, and I strongly suspect the guitar parts were mimed and very low in the mix. I barely recognised My Own Personal Cheeses. I've had a good couple of nights out though. Very enjoyable

He said so himself in an interview - the Jag was the only active fretted 4-string he had at the time, so that's what he used on the gig to start with. Remember, he only had a few days to prepare! He got the custom P's with the Thunderbird pickups later. I agree he didn't sound like Entwistle, but he'd have sounded even less like him had he played his Fiesta Red P with flats!

I’m pretty sure Bootsy also uses band pass on some of the parts on the Parliament stuff, certainly sounds like it in places.

Once upon a time I would have agreed with you, but the MXR Bass Envelope Filter is band pass (with dry volume and FX volume knobs) and it is glorious.

While we've veered off onto the subject of John Entwistle... My current band briefly used a rehearsal space earlier this year that had one of John Entwistle's old bass rigs - the guy who owned the space bought it when a lot of stuff was auctioned off after Entwistle's death. It was separate Ashown pre and power amps in a rack case going into a big Ashdown cabinet (6x10" I think). It sounded absolutely sh*t. I was not entirely surprised as I've always found Ashdown gear to be woolly and underpowered crap, but was suprised someone like John Entwistle would have played it. Turns out the missing ingredient was the big stack of effects units that sat between the pre-amp and power amp (or in the effects loop when he was using a combined pre and power model of amp).

I'm sure some purists will be throwing rocks at their computer screens, shouting "Heretic!", but for me, an instrument is for playing. If your reversible mods make you like the playability/sound more, then go ahead and mod it and play the heck out of it!

As long as you keep the original parts it’s all reversible! The reason there are so many after market parts is down to people “upgrading”

I wish they'd bring the shape/intensity controls and 4 band eq from the HA3000 back in a micro head format.

You own it. Do whatever it takes to make it the instrument you actually want.

Have you considered writing and recording your own stuff? Not for public consumption (necessarily), just for the craic. I started doing this a couple of years ago and really enjoy it. I am more than aware that the world is not waiting for what I have to say. But I am hugely enjoying the process.

Provisional Otis Jay Blues Band line-up for a gig on 1st May at Forest Arts Centre, New Milton. All very welcome! We sold out last year, so 🤞 Singer and harmonica player are on loan, but like Marcus Rashford are playing up a storm.🎤🎺 On 2nd May, the remaining trio will be going forward with… shock horrow … a girl singer. Watch this space!

I've been on the hunt for a big Acoustic rig for a long time, something like a 360 or 370 head into the matching cabinet with an 18" speaker in the weird, back facing configuration. They seem to be as rare as hen's teeth in Europe, so I've been using an Acoustic 136 combo as my main amp for a while now. Then the successor to those two big Acoustic rigs popped up on this forum. So now I'm the proud owner of a massive, impractical but wonderful sounding Acoustic 320/408 combo thanks to @Skinner. The 408 has four 15" speakers, and it's another of Acoustic's unusual configurations - two conventionally mounted, forward facing speakers, plus two mounted horizontally to face each other in the middle portion of the cab. The beast had it's first full rehearsal this week, and the most interesting thing is how much bottom end the cabinet chucks out. It seems to generate some unusually low frequencies that are audible and sit perfectly under the two lead guitar sounds in our post punk/new wave influenced outfit. Meanwhile, it also puts out the middly clank sound of a Rickenbacker that sits in a tonal gap that the lead guitars also don't occupy. First gig with it at London's Lexington next week - all I have to do is work out how on earth I'm going to transport it to the venue!

This magic Bagman.?

Hello All, I recently bought a 78 Fender P bass which seems like a nice instrument. As far as I can tell it’s pretty much original although the chrome is disappearing from the volume and tone controls and the electrics need looking at, nothing drastic just some buzzing which might indicate a loose connection of some sort. I have been mulling over changing a few things like the pots and wiring, possibly the black pick guard as I much prefer a tort one with a sunburst finish, and maybe even the pick ups. I appreciate that most people will buy an old instrument and keep it as close to original as possible, but I’m not that precious and would like the instrument to play and sound as good as it possibly can. Anything I change will be kept in case I decide to sell the bass on at some point and I suppose if it is ever sold then a new owner could reverse any changes that I might decide to make. Any advice or thoughts please?

Honestly John I think it’s really good - obviously I’m a fan of the GK sound, although it’s not the ‘be all & end all’ of bass tone for me or anything like that, I just really liked the GK amp presets on modellers like the Stomp/Tonex etc because it’s super easy to work with and get a really nice tone without much messing about at all. If you want to borrow it for a couple of days during the week mate just pop down to Chester le St and your welcome to take it away and have a tinker with it mate, just get it me back by Friday dinnertime so I can put my board together for the weekends gigs 😁 It’s miles better than any of the digital models I’ve heard, but having never owned a GK amp I can’t say how close it is to the actual amp, but best thing you can do is borrow it and see what you think - I really rate it but YMMV and all that, I can’t see you disliking it if you like the GK sound.

I love the amps and cabs. The 410HL is an awesome cab too.

That could be one of the most hilariously inaccurate things I've ever read. Pino never sounded anything like Entwistle. Ever. Pino is brilliant as a fusion player but as a rock player? Nope. His tone is way too smooth for that band. Don't even get me started on Jon "iced gem hair" Button. He plays even more sparsely than Pino did. Which just doesn't work. The band died in 2002 with Entwistle.