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Gear doesn't have to be gigged to justify having. There's no rule or special virtue about that. In fact plenty of us might be between bands or have ceased being in a band altogether. Does that mean we should sell all our gear? If it's sitting around not getting played at all, whether at home, in the studio or live, it's only at that point I think "yup this should be with someone else". But as long as it gets used and you get enjoyment, creativity or simple pleasure from playing it; in my books that's plenty.

And to the next scary bit - cutting and gluing the ebony blocks. The process was straightforward but needed to be quite accurate. Not only does the ebony have to be cut spot on, but because of the radius, it needs to be certain that the middle is proud of the fretboard but the sides set into the fretboard so, when attacking it with the radius block to smooth them flush, I don't sand into fresh air. Here's 6 done and 4 to go: And here's all 10 in place: I'm going to leave it on the template until I've sanded them flush - in the event that any or them are flawed, it then would be a simple job to rout out the ebony with the index pin still in the right place and re-do. In the meantime, I popped across to Neil's and took some profile and depth measurements from his favourite playing neck: Every bass has its own feel, but making the new one to similar profile and measurements should make it have a comforting familiarity when Neil gets to play it

Well the deko Stingray alike has arrived and well i`ve managed to find the reason for being a deko, a badly cut nut, ive set it up, played it and its perfectly fine even the B string is ok, quite happy for £43

Total miming should be compulsory for some acts, Florence and the machine for a start.

Having just sold my passive FRFR cabinets, I am hoping to soon join the powered FRFR collective! Exciting times ahead I am sure.

Hello Pete, as you quite rightly said, this is a huge area, likely to mildly upset the connoisseur by relating my experience. I’m no Milt Hinton, but I have recorded in a fair few studios, so I have formed an opinion which I transiently consider sensible (I.e. I may change my mind next week). I started out by being very particular about mic placements and now I’m of the school of thought of “stick the best mic you have a foot-and-a-bit away from my bridge and I will try to play my socks off”. That seems to work for me at the moment. Depending on your personality trait, you may also augment your chances of success by bribing/threatening the engineer. I feel being friendly works best... what I find very important is to keep your cans at a minimum volume on one ear only, so you can hear yourself playing “in the real world” which is essential for tone and intonation. your problem really lies on the mixing afterwards, when the bass may keep being pushed further and further back...you may want to keep the threats for that phase.... all of this may well be a load of rubbish of course. Most of all, have fun!

Sometimes good things come from bad auditions. I've been trying to find a band desperate enough to want me, and had some ...interesting... experiences. Audition 1: answered an ad on JMB for a blues group. I tell them how long I've been playing - not all that long - as I want to be honest up front. I do a bit of recruiting in the day job, and know how narked I get when confronted with bovine manure. Better to be straight with them from the off. Anyway, he replies, telling me that there's a drummer lined up, plus someone on blues harp and maybe keys too. Could I learn a couple of songs and pop round for a twang? Rightio. I turn up at the BL's house and am treated to half an hour's talking about his guitar collection before we get down to business. He's provided an amp - an ancient Vox gee-tar amp that didn't look much younger than me. Hm. I'd have brought the Eden if I'd known. But I crank the low end and off we go. He's hunched over his chord chart and doesn't look up. With no drummer to lock in with, some eye contact might have been helpful. He then chases me out of the house before his wife gets back. Hmmmm. Then about a week later, I get a 'thanks but no thanks' email. Meh. Think I dodged a bullet there. Audition 2: answered an ad on JMB for a rock covers band. Again, I'm up front about my level of experience. I get their set list - wow! Fabulous! - and learn half a dozen songs, as requested. Then the audition's brought forward a week. Great. But I rock up at the appointed time - to a studio this time - to find that the BL was struggling with one of the songs I'd learnt and had to teach the singer one of the others. Oh dear. But the rest sounded good, although at the end of the evening, they said they thought it was beyond me to learn everything on the list before their next gig. They were quite decent about it though, so fair enough. Audition 3: answered an ad on JMB for another rock covers band. As before, I make it clear how much I do and don't know. I learn the requested songs and turn up to a slightly less-than-ideal studio - bare wooden floor, no sound insulation and a PA that didn't look much more powerful than my home stereo. As I'm getting set up, a guitarist walks in; he's being auditioned too. He sets up his backline - a lovely Marshall valve amp. Then the BL arrives and sets up his backline. Then off we go. The PA just about copes, but after the first song, the BL says to me, 'it needs much more bass'. Well, I was standing in front of the amp and I could hear it OK, which meant he certainly could from the other side of the room. But no sweat, up went the volume to just under half and we launched into the next song. Jesus. My amp was making the room shake. I went to turn it down and the BL said ‘no, leave it, it’s just right’. The guitarist turned up his amp as it was being drowned by mine. Not wanting to be left out, the BL did the same and we went into song number three. This time, the weedy studio PA was completely overwhelmed; all I could do was lock in with the drummer and hope for the best. Then things started to go south when the BL started playing something a bit different before stopping to tell us that we needed to follow him. By now the volume was up well past 11 and the only way to follow him was by lip-reading. The next song fell apart when he missed out an eight-bar sequence from the intro. By now, the negative vibes were starting to creep in. At the end of the evening, the BL thanked us for coming and said ‘we’ll have a chat and we'll let you know’ in a sarky voice. So much for that, then. The guitarist and I compared notes outside and we both reckoned we wouldn’t hear from them again. We swapped numbers though, and decided we’d look at doing something together if it didn’t go anywhere. After a week of radio silence, I pinged the guitarist a text and as expected, he hadn’t heard anything either. He then asked me if I was still up for getting together, as he had another guitarist and a singer who were interested. Oh, was I ever. So a few days later, the three of us (the singer couldn’t make it) assembled in a very nice studio in Cranfield. What a difference! No attitude, a lot of fun and some great songs to play. The Stooges, Black Sabbath, the Undertones, Tears For Fears, the Cult… all good stuff. Plus some originals that the guitarist had written that needed basslines added. I had a whale of a time, and when we decided to make a go of it at the end of the evening, I was on cloud nine. So I did join a band from a terrible audition. Just not the one I originally went for!

Take that responsibility ! i joined up with a new formed band and after the first gig we had terrible PA sound issues , so when I asked who knew how to run it they all shrugged the shoulders and said the PA came from a previous band split and a different guy used to run it 😂 So took all the kit , hired a hall for a couple of hours and played with all the kit and worked a simple solution with desk , amps and speakers , sound checks take a 2 minute blast of roadhouse blues 👍 In the land of the blind , the one eyed man is king 😉

Get 2 layers of foam that are half thickness and cut right through one then put it on top of the uncut one...

...followed by gagging and a sack over the head for a finish

Not much cop if he couldn't even get your name right.

Am I the only one who read this topic title as Guest Beer at gigs? Wishful thinking or dementia, I fear

I play in a duo where I sing and play guitar. I also play bass and do bv in a 4 piece playing "red dirt" country (modern alternative country from Texas/Oklahoma). The singer who does some solo gigs called and wanted to use a duo at a bar-b-que place, but the guitarist didn't like the money offered so the singer asked me to back him on guitar. Did the gig, got more money than expected and free ribs. Singer called said he missed the bass, getting more money, so now the guitarist is in, it'll be a 3 piece for the next 3 gigs. Same money for me. So.....either he really missed the bass, or he likes the other guy better on guitar (he is good). I don't care. I'm getting money for nothin' and my ribs for free!

A bit of a whim purchase this one as it really hasn’t been the best of years but I was on the Eastwood site and saw some cheap ex-demo stock. I’ve always liked the natural finish on a flying V and really liked the look of this one. Eastwood’s always seem to play well and be great value for money (at least all the ones I’ve tried do) so I took the plunge. Amazing customer service from Eastwood as always, although DHL could probably warrant a thread on its own in terms of how they tried to deliver it. 30.5” scale, fairly lightweight body with a pretty thunderous sound. No, you can’t sit down with it but standing up, you can release your inner Rock God. And yes, I am probably old enough to know better!

I really must get round to watching the last two episodes, I'm really glad it's not like the good old days though, when I had to sit though the whole of the Old Grey Whistle in the hope of seeing the odd good act, at least we've got fast forward buttons now, count your blessing you youngsters

Well after several gigs and a couple of rehearsals with my new QUILTER BASS BLOCK 800 I am as pleased as punch. I am now using it at all gigs. Way too good to have as a back-up. A fellow player was very impressed with my sound last Saturday night (and surprised at the price). Quizzed me about the amp, took photos and went off to buy one. A great range of usuable musical bass tones, plenty of punch. Simply marvellous ever player should have one

It looks like this might be a thing folks, I'm going to try and put decent pilot together with @SpondonBassed by the end of the month, so we'll see where it goes from there. I'll PM people individually to sort out the specifics. Thanks to everyone for showing an interest in this and feel free to keep posting any ideas in the mean time, but it's not the end of the world if this thread sinks, I'll be sure to bump it once the episodes out! 😁

Ah fair enough, I think I'm just defining slickness with a different threshold but I totally agree with that. I'm a freelance audio engineer on-top of my part-time day job, I'm not just a hobbyist, the last job I did was for the "The 8th Asian Awards" and I've done a tone of audio restoration work and production on different podcasts. Plus I'm a fairly eloquent and charismatic fellow too on the sly, 😜🤣 so i'm up for putting a pilot together if folk are cool with that? Personally I think https://appear.in/ is the way to go for the first punt, it's like Skype or google hangouts but with less delay and better audio. That's if everyone's cool with me capturing all the audio at my end to minimize fuss for this first pop at it. If we want to go for better audio after then; we could use something like http://www.pamela.biz/ and everyone capture audio at their ends and we comp it afterwords but that means we'd have to use Skype. If no one objects to me kinda taking the rains for the pilot would you @SpondonBassed be up for co-hosting? We could do a few segments and then interview @Chownybass? Providing your still up for it Chowny? Then once its all recorded I'll do a rough edit and possibly pass it to you @project_c to do a QC listen through to catch anything I've missed? Then if you'd pass it back to me I'll master the audio and bosh; post it up here and see what folk reckon, get some feedback on if we should/how to proceed with it? If it get's "green lit" then figure out who's going to run the Libsyn and the admin side of things. What do folk think? I by no means wish to dictate what should happen to everyone, I want it to be BC's podcast not mine. You just posted this after I'd typed up my previous gambit so for the record I'm up for traveling too if in-person would be a preference but it's definitely less doable if we'd like to make it regular. I'm in Manchester not sure where everyone else is?

I'm finally in a band with a great drummer AND a guitarist who can play quietly and I'm very grateful for that. Those who say they have to play loudly 'to get my sound' are talking crap, basically. Even rock bands can sound 'heavy' without being really loud. My view is that some people like to be loud to direct attention away from their playing, paradoxically.

Yes indeed missed by many a band. One huge problem is with certain musicians who are under the mysterious spell of thinking that things only sound good when REALLY loud. "My valve amp sounds better cranked" and "I can't get the tone out of my kit if I play lightly" I have heard oh so often. Thing is, I agree that certain equipment does indeed sound awesome loud, but are totally overkill for 90% of gigs. That Marshall 100W and 4x12 cabinet doesn't start to do that beautiful compression characteristic until the valves are working hard and the speaker cones are near their limits. By that point, the volume is tinnitus incurring. So, for the most part, that kit is the wrong kit for the job at the Dog and Duck on a Friday night.

I remember my Thunder 1A as being a solid and great sounding bass. The biggest downside of them was their weight though. Bloody heavy basses, but when they sound like that, you can manage. The cachet is coming from people of a certain age, who bought & used them as their first/second instruments, and went on to use them in our first bands. Add to the fact that they have the Matsumoku history, and better build quality than some of the other "budget" instruments of the time, and now that people of a certain age have a bit more time available and a bit more disposable income, then prices start to rise. Yes, I would have another one, purely for nostalgia purposes, but it'd have to be at the right price. Saying that, I always wanted a through neck Thunder II or III.

Nope. Everything I buy is to be gigged, as often as possible.

Behringer Microphone, only had a couple of Behringer things before and they were terrible. This was so cheap I thought I was worth a go. Seems to keep up with lead vocalists Shure, in fact he was amazed by the quality. In a recording studio you may well see the difference but it’s fine at the dog and duck on a Friday.

Yes, that's really rather lovely!

Thanks, AD. I deliberately didn’t listen to yours before I posted, but I’ve given it a listen since. That’s quite a bass tone, and I love the percussion.

Sold Andy some P-bass chrome bits. Super to deal with, instant payment, great comms. True BC'er. Many thanks Andy, looks great on your P! 😀

You missed off the bit where dood stated combo jack (as in both 1/4" and XLR)...

That's looking really good mate! I'll have to send you mine for my build 😁

My Spector NS-5XL and my Atelier Z M265 custom basses. I already had high expectations as they are top of the line instruments but what I got in both instances exceeded these expectations on a level I hadn't felt before. Past the obvious quality of these instruments they probably have that extra magic in them for me that I rarely felt before.

Er... less worser?

If we're talking sound, then a real drummer will sound better than a machine. There's other alternatives to machines though. This is my current squeeze, live loops: https://soundcloud.com/user-331350717/spookwaffe

Re: mic choice, don’t be afraid to try an omni small diaphragm condenser (one in Happy Jack’s video looks to be an Earthworks one). Mic doesn’t need to be physically big to have a big and deep sound... maybe quite the opposite

Now that’s a difficult question to answer because I tend to choose instruments I buy very quickly, the one I’m going to purchase ‘becomes apparent’ almost straight away. In all honesty thei was very little difference between the Talman and the Jaguar, I was equally impressed with both, but the Talman was in cream, which I’d never buy and the Jaguar was black which I’ll always go for over any other colour but the ergonomics of the Jaguar just suited me more than the Talman. The Jaguar just felt ‘right’, it is comfortable, light and I just felt at home with it. I was impressed with the Talman, however I was smitten with the Jaguar. You are right, the look of the Jaguar is lovely, I really don’t like the look of the Talman headstock, again, aesthetics but with the basses being similarly priced things like that tip the balance. I loved the matte neck on the Jaguar, I think I’m right in saying the neck on the Jaguar feels a little rounder too... I’m waffling, I just preferred the Jaguar for mostly undefinable reasons!

I come from an orchestral background originally and playing with dynamics (as written of course) is a BIG THING. It's not especially difficult to play most instruments softly or loudly and things in between. However, to most 'rock' bands I have played in this is a complete mystery. There is one volume and it is loud. Why is this so difficult to understand? Even some quite rocky songs have some subtlety but not once the average pub band has got hold of it. That quiet middle eight is just as thrashed through as the chorus. Even otherwise excellent musicians seem to struggle with this. Is it me?

My guitarist bought a jaguar brand new, the red pj one, for his home studio and for his teenage son to learn on. He also picked up a trace Elliot blx for next to nothing too! I've not had chance to play the jaguar through an amp but it feels and looks like a very well made instrument, think he got it new for less than £200. I wouldn't change a thing on it. He plays very expensive guitars and is smitten with his stock squier bass, if anyone would be picky about it he would.

You could ping the main man himself, he has his own section on talkbass. https://www.talkbass.com/forums/ask-justin-meldal-johnsen.194/ A wider question around the differences in his signature to the production models already in the market would likely get you a response.

I'm a big fan too. Used to have a rack mounted VT2 but now have the pedal version which allows me swap valves around depending on the gig, etc

DHA addiction I would guess

When we recorded our album the engineer put about four different microphones near the bass in various positions and had a feed from the bridge piezo. He then used a mix of whatever sounded best. All I had to worry about was playing

That's easy - you get 4X as much room for your railway in the same physical space with N gauge. Question answered, no need for a podcast.

It totally is! I'm very lucky to work with some really talented drummers and my 'function band' drummer knows how to set his kit for tone rather than volume. He has also played (like me) in metal bands and used a different kit accordingly that was better suited to keeping up with big stacks and crazy bass rigs!

I didn't read the whole thread so I might be guilty of repeating. I started playing at 38. I am now 54 and gig regularly - have done for most of that time. Here is some random advice that springs to mind. - Set up your bass so you can pick it up, flick a switch and practice. Reduce the number of impediments to practice to the absolute minimum. - The first few weeks and months is the bad bit. There is a 'hump' to get over. If you want to do it you will but you'll need to dig in. Eventually it starts to make some sense and you can play stuff. - There are loads of good books, YouTube videos and stuff in these forums. You should use them all but when you are starting out and you will be overwhelmed and clueless a few quid spent on a teacher is a good investment. - If in doubt, learn the bass parts from LOTS of existing songs. Try to do it by ear. Apply the theory I hope you have learned. Choose different genres. - You don't have to buy expensive equipment but buy something half decent that you actually want to play. Equally well, expect your tastes to mature and you'll want something else/different in time. - It doesn't matter if it's a P/J/MM or whatever. Equipment will never make you better but practice will. "Your tone" is a luxury. In tune will do. - Aim to find a band and play some gigs as soon as you can. It's terrifying to start with but nothing will teach you quicker. Don't be ashamed of being a beginner - if you need time to learn the parts, say so. - Some people really benefit from open mic nights and the like. Some people (me!) can't think of anything worse. - Always aim to find musicians better than you not worse. - You don't have as much free time at 40 as you would at 14. Pick your battles. Aim to practice every day but you can't and don't have to learn everything. If you don't want to learn slap then don't learn it. - Dedicate some time to learning music theory. It's good for you! - Buy a tuner - You're probably going to meet some strange people you wouldn't have done otherwise...

I know JMB gets some bad press here, but I've played getting on for 200 gigs over the last few years with a band I found there, it's not just flakes and fantasists, there are some good people there as well.

Mid 2018 family pic, pre ACG, which should arrive in a month or so I think. L-R Bass Collection Jive fretless, 2006 CIJ Mustang, 1971 Precision, Lakland US custom 44-94, Lakland Skyline 55-01. Si

Looks like something a `certain gentleman` has bodged up.