Leaderboard

Some of you might find this useful/interesting..... When i opened up my future impact pedal out of curiosity to see what was inside, i was shocked to find mostly (continental brand) fresh air! Here you can see that the lower half of the pedal is almost exactly, approximately an MXR BEF worth of space!! So i formulated a plan to Design and 3D print an enclosure, into which i can re-house the innards of the Future impact, to make a much more pedalboard friendly footprint. I began by removing the knobs from the outside and the circuit boards from the inside of the case I then laser scanned the inside of the case to generate an STL that can be used to replicate the Mounting features/holes in the new design. I copied all of the internal/external features from the STL, but moved the foot switches as close to the circuit board as i could on the inside. I didn't put in any small holes for the screws, as i thought these would be better aligned using the actual circuit boards as a template. I printed the 1st Prototype ove night last night and assembled it this morning. Everything went together great and still functioned perfectly. I was able to reduce the length of the enclosure from 155mm to 101mm, and i think there's room for further improvement on that. The finished prototype unit. And here it is re-installed on the board. I plan to tweak the design and print another next week if i get a chance. Some of the changes will include reducing the length of the housing even further, moving the on/off switch more central to get it away from the encoder, adding a feature to recess display protector of some kind, branding/lettering. I'm open to suggestions for additional improvements. For now, its printed in PLA, but once the design is finalises, ill be printing it it Black Nylon which will stand up to pedalboard life a bit better. Once the design is complete, im happy to share the STL so you can print it yourselves, or £ven print a few and ship them out to those interested. *Any FI owners that's capable of cool graphic designs can have one for free if they develop the artwork (2 colors)

I enjoyed it. I think some people appear to have missed the point - the programme was about "bass" not bass players, bass guitars, bass guitarists, bass playing icons, just bass. Hence Dizzee Rascal talking about "drum and bass". And The Marcels. And other things "bass". I thought it was an entertaining hour for a mainstream audience, not a 23 part series for purists, professionals, specialists and nerds. And I like Tina too.

OK - I won't hijack my own thread, but it's this game-changing Gillett Contour 6 string Electric in Rocklite Sundari It's been doing the shows over the past couple of months - it's the first full 'top back and sides' use of Rocklite Sundari worldwide - and now it's in my sticky mitts The cutaways are natural walnut. The top back and sides are artificial - the Rocklite Sundari (which aims to be an alternative to Rosewood, now highly regulated and restricted in use and sale). Just look at that grain! I'll do a proper run through when I get a moment on the 'Other Instruments' bit and on Guitarchat but suffice to say I am VERY excited.

If I could afford a custom build for pure self-indulgence it would be a GMR Bassforce fretless 5 - I love my fretted 5 and fretless 4. It would probably cost a lot less than £3k. They deserve to cost much more than they do. The most I've ever spent on a bass was US$2000 for my 1966 Gibson EB-2. Worth every cent. But I'd agree as said above, if it was me I'd go into someplace with a good second-hand range and try everything until I picked one up and it said "I love you". That's how I chose my first bass, the GMR 5 - I went into Promenade Music in Morecambe, knowing only that I wanted a 5, with a budget of £500. Two hours and two cups of coffee later I came out with the love of my life 🙂

OK - so far so good. It flew to Philadelphia; then flew to Louisville in Kentucky to get checked out by US Customs; and they've released it as OK to be forwarded to James in Hawaii!!!! It only stayed in the customs warehouse for 12 hours - which, considering the poor devils in US Customs haven't been paid for now well over a month now due to the big-heartedness of Mr Trump - ain't bad! James should get it by the end of Friday their time Only finger biting bit left is...is he going to like it...

I thought it was fab! Even the bit where they shoe-horned in the Most Influential Band Ever That Everyone Likes Except me* went 'So P*** McFrogchorus had been listening to soul records and decided instead of nicking ideas off of Chuck Berry he'd nick them off Motown instead...' Paraphrasing obvs.. Mr Rascal was a great addition also. I'm disappointed they left out Meghan Trainor though..

It was great stuff, a programme about bass and a much needed one about music. Whats not to like if you are even a little bit into music? Oh sorry I forgot, someone's favorite or "most influential" bassist was not included.

I play in ‘The ELO Experience’, mainly in theatres and the occasional festival / outdoor event. Been doing it now for around 10 years. Wasn’t my first taste of tribute bands, having previously played for a Neil Diamond act. Prior to that I had no working knowledge of tribute bands, and at first found it more than a little strange. Still surprises me that people will buy cds and merchandise for a tribute act, but there you go. Downsides for me - playing mostly the same set everywhere, as the punters obviously want to hear most of the big songs. Also the theatre environment can be a bit lacking in gig vibe, which we do our best to overcome. However, the upsides far outweigh this - our audiences come to the gigs knowing and loving the songs, and their response to us doing them is genuinely heartwarming. We have quite a few who come to many of our gigs up and down the UK, and their dedication is much appreciated. Most of the theatres and venues usually have decent crew, dressing rooms and sometimes PA systems for us to utilise, and when I do gigs with other bands in venues without these it can be a bit of a reminder how nice theatres are. Also doing theatre gigs, we are usually done by 10pm! I haven’t seen many other tribute acts, the first being a Stones band (either The Counterfeit Stones or the Rolling Clones ?) many years ago who were excellent, and The Bootleg Beatles who were fantastic. To be honest, if it wasn’t for the emergence and acceptance of tribute bands, as a bassist in my 60’s now I’d probably be struggling to be still playing for a living so long may it continue! 🙂

I've just written 9 songs called "Cars". They're not very good, but Gary Numan only wrote one, so I think that makes me a winner. 👍 And that's 10 all together. 😁

For Whom the Bell Tolls - The Bee Gees and Metallica.

Playing in a RHCP band, we had to play "Under the bridge". By the second verse, a lot of people were singing. So our singer points the mic to the audience and guitar stops... the roar of the venue singing together made the hair in my arms stand up. Hard to describe, but there was something really intense about having all those people singing back at us. I don't get that in our originals bands

Gosh. I thought it was light entertainment. Silly me.

I'm with Andy on this one (again)! I think Yammy must have been on an away-day sharing design ideas with Aria and Markbass.

I prefer the bass line on Domino but yes I also now enjoy playing Domino too.

Hey mate. I play in an acdc covers band and just played the Hard rock last Friday through Shock city productions. They have bands on there almost every Friday night. They looked after us well. Maybe give them a shout when you are up and running? We don`t really look like the band: I gotta wear glasses as I can`t see my hand in front of my face without them and we have a female singer that doesn`t look a bit like Bon! We do have an Angus with a school uniform though! We concentrate more on creating the songs as the band played them. We used to do pubs where we sometimes died on our derrière but now do about 1 gig a month but they are more tailored to a target audience. We are supporting Brian Downeys Live and dangerous next month in Prestwick then playing Bonfest later on in the year up in Kirremuir.

Have you not got a fantasy set? I've had one for a few years now. I add to it sometimes and other times I drop numbers from the shortlist but I have a core of popular songs that I like. I put the tunes onto random play with the bass turned down and play through a few songs at a time without pause. It sharpens me up on the intros doing so. I do need to work with live musicians though. Recordings are inflexible carbon-copy-every-time propositions. The repetitive aspect can hit you at some point and you might wish you never had to play some of them again but then isn't that what happens to working musicians anyway? After a bit, that goes away and you can often find yourself rediscovering an old favourite from a completely different point of view. I have about forty songs (covers) in my set. I'm happy with that number for my own practice but it leaves room to learn new songs in order to satisfy a role in another band down the line. Bear in mind that I have not been in a band since 1987.

Andy, thank you for being a pioneer ...I tried it @ Gillett, ordered immediately! Have visited the CNC partner...wow...will be finished in a couple of weeks...cant wait ...I also have the 4 string Slimline Contour Bass, which I and my band love...check them out We bass players should take Rocklite seriously as a recyclable alternative...expect more innovation

For Prog fans who love things in groups of 7.. 7/4 time (Not many knew that)

Some in the flesh photos from NAMM

Fantastic! "The Future Compact" is born!

I'm in agreement with many of the above - the Stuart Copeland episode was much better, more informative. Tina's programme I found a little bit, well, trivial. Seemed to be a lot more about her than SC's, and as has been said, his career could fill hours by itself. The hour skirted around the edges, when there was far more to say. The should have used Stuart's hour as the template and followed that! We saw Stuart drumming a fair bit in his show - don't think we say Tina play once, bar the odd vintage clip......🙄

Slap bass playing needs to lock in supertight with the drums and is best heard in funk, where BPM average 90 -115. To my ears slapping at speeds of 130 BPM goes against what slap was originally meant for; getting down and dirty to on the dancefloor! That superfast way of playing is as self indulgent, unlistenable and ultimately pointless as guitar shredding.

I think i'm going to do an instagram vid with my bass strap as long as it will go, all on the low E and with a pick... And distortion..

Caught up on iPlayer the other night. Have to say, I too much preferred the drums episode, simply because SC (who's energy and enthusiasm I loved) focused on what the drums bring to music, and how they got there - marching bands to jazz to rock n roll and jazz's lasting influence. It was also much less about him. While the bass episode started off like that, it soon lost interest, and we got the evolution of Paul McCartney's choice of bass rather than, as others have pointed out, the evolution of upright players to electric bass via the Fender Precision - love or hate them, their historical importance is far greater than Hofners, which only seemed to be there because Tina W has one and that's a like to McCartney. No explanation of what the bass brings to the band or the music. Bit like Almost Famous, what does the bass player bring? Er...the bass... Happy that it featured bass in a wider context, but again, without explaining the role of bass, this seemed a little redundant. But I loved the bit with the DJ on his Amiga. Dizzy Rascal didn't seem to add much other than "I really like the bass" - he even admitted that he had nothing to do with the bass drop on the song of his that featured. Mind you, there were a lot of guitarists talking about bass players, whereas the drum show had a lot of drummers talking about drummers. Still, entertaining, if not especially enlightening for me. Oddly, I got an e-mail from my dad about it, who loved the bass one and was left indifferent by the drums. It may help if you don't have a special interest in bass to begin with

The Hug & Pint, Ivory Blacks, The Blue Arrow

It was watchable, to a point. The production and research staff clearly couldn't be bothered to do their job properly. Basics like the fact the electric bass had been around before the 60's and the Fender P bass was almost 10 years old by 1960. It wasn't as good as Steward Copeland's film about drums. From the description of the guitar film it's seems to be more about effects pedals than the guitar itself. Fairly standard for what passes as TV these days, chopping and changing and a lack of attention to detail and facts.

Thing is it was about influential people involved with bass. Love or loath the Beatles, it's personal taste, but to say Macca was not influential is simply wrong. "Shoe horned in"? Get real, that's like saying you don't like Buddy Rich so he was not an influential drummer.

N.Hayashi who designed all the iconic Aria Pro II guitars and basses in the late 70s and early 80s now runs Atlansia.

Yes, they're one of the biggest names in bass amps. Rightly so. That should give them a competitive advantage over quite a few of their competitors (distribution, etc). BUT they've tried to break into pedals a couple of times, both times they've left common sense out of the designs! They could and should be producing better. I'll reserve final judgement until I hear they're latest offerings, but from initial look they're lacking in features, oversized and WAY overpriced. Time will tell how they're received, but jumping straight in at the pricey end doesn't seem a smart move to me.

No 'Tubby The Tuba'..... no proper bass programme......

Blink 182. Can't find anymore.....terrible example! 😁

I bought the live album The Road Goes Ever On . The track lasts 17 minutes. It's a beaut. Love Felix's bass / basslines

Faulty logic. We all forget or lose something from time to time. You're being a heartless bastard. 😁 No, actually, I reflected on it, and you're right. 😎

Immediately after replying to fleabag, I took two bags for life out to the car to sit in the boot until needed. Mrs Zero does that anyway. Now all I need to do is remember them to take them out of the boot if I go shopping.

Can't resist sharing this pic by the excellent Andy Hibbs from the Aynsley Lister guitar weekend.

I cannot separate that tune from the sound and image of Brian Walden

I used to enjoy listening to the snippet of Nantucket Sleigh Ride by Mountain on Weekend World. This was before I knew who Mountain were coz I'd have been about 8 at the time.. When I heard the whole song some years later and it got to the Weekend World bit I was chuffed to bits and bought the album. Their other stuff was pants though. Still love that song!

The terrific fretless line on Bergerac was the work of Mr Foster also.

Three different "The Power of Loves" in the charts during 1985 alone!

Haha, I'll look it up!

Still with them yes, six years now, longest I've been with any band. All over the country, really enjoying it. In fact we've just released the dates for the first half of 2019 then over the water in the second half of the year. Bring 'em on! Thanks for the mention

Perhaps they should have had Sting do the bass programme and Andy Summers do the guitar programme, then have a fourth programme in the series which examines the nature of a band, with all three presenting it and ambulances in attendance.

That pioneer of the looper pedal, Ed Sheeran!

I think it was Mo Foster on the Minder theme

No but I do know who acted in it, who wrote the feem tune, who sang the feem tune...

I’ve just joined a Magnum tribute band, which hasn’t done a gig yet but still getting a load of interest. Great players with an excellent singer and a keys player who has a bit of history with the original band (played / wrote on the singer’s first solo album), so all pretty exciting and can’t wait to start gigging. The main issue we’ve had so far seems to be to ensure that we avoid copyright issues with the merch / website, etc. We have had a few messages of support passed on from the main band (as well as advice on copyright), which is really good of them. It is a bit of a strange one for me as it was never a band that I really listened to and a bit of a bizarre thing to get a text message out of the blue asking me to join. I have a couple of friends who were in a Foo Fighters tribute that did make decent money and years ago I was asked to join a U2 band that did really well, but I doubt that Magnum is a tribute that will make big money – it is probably a bit too much of a niche band for that – but still seems to have enough fans out there to be viable. Hopefully it will help to raise my profile again as well as get to play decent size gigs, so who knows where it might lead to? So far, it’s all good…

I think Lee Sklar has the answer...