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Sorry, I'm really slow getting to this thread. So cards on the table here - I'm transgender, currently transitioning & I run the Transgender group for a large oil multinational & do global training on trans awareness. I'm also the person that did the Vickibass thread about transgender however many years ago it was if anyone else was around then. So few bits - I have never come across a single trans (short for transgender) person that would be offended by the term gender neutral - its normally used to describe toilets etc that anyone can use, for instance, rather than a person though. I can't honestly see any thing to worry about here or why the person got offended - if you've got the band's facebook please ping me I'd love to have a look in context. Despite all the BS in the press about how easy it is to offend transgender people, its really not, we're the same as everyone else. Sure 1% of transactivists will make a sh*t load of noise about something but that's no different to the 1% or anti trans activists (except a few of those are editors for big publications so more easily get an audience) - the 98% of people are entirely reasonable, just want to get on with their lives without hassle and are more than tolerant if someone calls them a he instead of she. Frankly I couldn't give a toss, I don't need anyone to validate me thanks The extremely low level of education around transgender is frankly the thing that causes almost all the issues to be honest as people jump to conclusions that are completely untrue - its the same as transvestism -"Tranny" - or it's a lifestyle choice are the two most common; both completely incorrect along with all the other rubbish that gets bandied about about shared spaces with women, self declaration of gender, trans people in sports etc. I have a hastily put together website of debranded material http://www.transknowledge.co.uk that I've created for work - feel free to have a look or not whatever you feel like. Likewise I'm more than happy to discuss anything about it and believe me, I won't be offended, I give away a box of chocolates on my courses to anyone that can ask a question so politically incorrect and offensive that I won't answer it - I've given away one in 2 years, so have a go if you like Bobbi PS - Hung Like Hanratty?? - amateurs -spend a morning reading through the trans posts on mumsnet if you want to be offended

Seeing as it’s a day after Transgender Day Of Visibility and I did nothing because I am recovering from surgery, i’ll bite. I’m transgender and the sound technician’s stance and pretty much everything following that confuses me. No alternative sound technician contingency at the venue is equally just as unprofessional... That being said the cis (look it up if unfamiliar) world gets away with all sorts of slurs against trans people and once in a while trans people just... snap... Mumsnet or Newspapers or Newspaper Comments sections are a great example of what anonymity + entitled + whiny cis fear and loathing leads to... So, apparently on these places trans ppl want to destroy society... actually yeah, I do kinda want want to wreck it all... but that’s not because trans people are trans, but because there are forces out there that want to eradicate non-conforming people from existence by any means possible and our/their survival mandates we want to make sure a society is made where that cannot happen, that starts with being pretty hard on slurs. Sometimes people overreact, sometimes people don’t react enough; I probably should do more. If I stumble upon anti-trans attitude I just roll my eyes and say, “oh gawd, the cis are at it again..” (seriously there are some dumb folk out there) and move on. Normally I’d not go looking, sometimes it’s unavoidable -- I never read the newspaper comments sections. Last time I did Ugh. Now I’m the dumb one for letting their stuff affect me. I won’t share any gory details about my life before transition (it’s textbook) but after entering the Scottish NHS Gender Reassignment pathway a few years ago with years of waiting, years of tests, then years of medication, interim procedures and dreadfully dreary therapy (mostly consisting of “are you sure? No... are you really really sure?) Gatekeeping upon gatekeeping: following adams-apple removal in December, I had Vaginoplasty (aka “have you have ‘the op?’” — a question I am under no obligation to answer) last month by one of the UK’s preeminent urologists and reassignment surgeons in Brighton... I am midway through 12 weeks of recovery, I am sore (but now not walking like I have a tennis ball stuffed up my bottom) and able to refurb Trace cabs. The gubbiment gave me my Gender Recognition Certificate and I changed my Birth Certificate. Passports, Banks, Taxes, Council Tax, Lang Registery ownership sets... it all just glides into place as life becomes more normal, yeah, i’m very happy I went through it all. When this surgery is healed I get facial feminisation performed this year (again, I am under zero obligation to tell people this, but it’s all part of the journey). You know, all that progress really chills one out. Waiting months and years between anything happening really messes with a person. I’ve been there. I’m still confused about the sound tech, the band description is not offensive to me, (just really really unimaginative, dull and a bit stupid — typical of clueless Cis folk being a bit free with their privilege) but I don’t experience much of the anti Trans hate or the TERFy/Gender Critical nonsense first hand because I go stealth and I mostly pass, so maybe they had enough or had a bad day so something snapped — I’m lucky and privilege allows me to disappear into the cis world. I am so far into transition that most people just assume I’m yet another angry woman with a precision bass... and truth be known I am just another anonymous punk bassist so being trans is... or rather was for me a major all encompassing and now rapidly normalising transitionary process; transition for me is a series of corrections so I can get on with life. That’s apparently normal, but I know it feels so out of reach for the person waiting… waiting… as time bloody passes and that’s gonna skew ones sensibility. That’s really it. when I come across anti trans stuff, like mumsnet in real life I generally just oppose their view without outing myself or offering a show and tell because it’s not really anyone’s business.. Backfiring Irony aside, (I keep going back to check: it’s a really lame band description) I cannot see why someone else could not run the faders, it’s not really difficult. all I can say is trans people’s experiences are not uniform or the same (despite clinically me describing my experience as “textbook” earlier - ha!) trans people all have wildly divergent experiences and psychologically can cope with different levels of stuff, some trans people are comfy in transition, some are not (that’s not for anyone to judge), some trans people go for “the works” and to ascend into heteronormativity, some don’t, some trans people don’t regard themselves as trans once they have gotten through the meat grinder of the NHS or the WPATH protocols. Some trans ppl even play the bass! I want my chocolate now...

Piers Morgan howling about Greg's doing vegan sausage rolls... I dunno, maybe the band in question had been being Richards for a while and this was the last straw. Bit like the news stories around the last time we were blowing up bits of the middle east that were all 'muslims complaining about the English flag!!' And it turned out it was so much the flag as it was the constant abuse and harassment by the flag's owners... And yay, there's nearly enough of Us to do my idea of an all-trans Ramones tribute band called 'The Tramones'!

haha - well that's easy - I was telling them that I finally decided to transition after something happened and I found myself at the curbside on a blind bend/humpback bridge where huge lorries from the landfill always screamed along and very nearly took the final easy step - it was either transition or finally give in - and they asked what the "something" was. I didn't want to tell them as it was to do with my family. More gory details here is you're bored or suffering from insomnia https://www.transknowledge.co.uk/suicide.html and no you don't get chocolates for asking that one again

Something like this perhaps? The word on the street is that it's looking for a new home...

After rekindling my love for G&L with an SB-2 I thought it prudent to cheese off the wife some more by buying a 2000 USA L2500. In surprisingly good condition. After a setup, bit of a clean and new strings she sounds and feels just like my old one

I can't resist it; I've been playing my Performer on and off all day. Here are some photos and comments on my Fender Performer, this is the made in Japan version, alledgedly the American ones were superior but it's hard to see where they could make improvements. It sounds great, feels great and looks great. Despite being standard scale length it looks like the neck goes on forever. A radical makeover for the Fender logo may have dented sales. The headstock was shared with the even more unconventional Katana guitars and basses. The body that was radical in 1987 now looks ace and is super comfortable. Controls are deceptively simple, three-way selector and two volume controls but the tone control is a Fender TBX so the range of sounds is wide, but always lively. Unique appearance of the pickups; I suspect they have a split-coil like a P-bass inside the assymetrical lozenge-shaped case. Open back but very smooth tuners. Micro-tilt neck and note the tiny cover for accessing the jack socket - not a battery compartment, this is not an active bass. A fully sealed jack socket, rather than the usual skeleton socket. The neck is thinner than a typical Telecaster, compared here with a Hohner B2. I'd love to see or hear about other examples of these beautiful instruments!

Lead bass, rhythm bass, and um, bass bass. Can't see the problem...

I was intending to call mine Transition Vamp 😉

Cool. My friend uses a fair amount of Noll stuff and I'll ask him to get a Mixpot for us to play with. So far I've just been using a standard passive front end control set into the preamp inputs. Personally, I generally prefer two volume controls to vol-blend, and these days I tend to embrace pickup loading as a natural and often good sounding deal. But as usual, that just depends. In some builds I use conductive plastic or cermet pots, and I have used stepped attenuators in some tube preamps where signal/noise was well better than 110dB. Yep, pots continue to be a major thorn in the paw, no doubt. I've also looked at using digital encoders, which may not please purists but do offer some tangible advantages. My friend has asked me about active blends and I'll probably get around to that soon. On my new fretless I'm looking at trying discrete signal paths all the way from the pickups to two amps, and also at a clean/dirty split with a blend function for that instead. I'm always interested to hear what does or doesn't work for others though, as my wants and needs are far from typical.

Showcase TV Sunday 7th April 18:30 Gillett's electro acoustic basses will be featured during this episode.

All of my preamps have signal/noise ratio and distortion specs comparable to most good commercial bass amps. Headroom is sometimes not as good, mostly due to 9V powering, but still more than good enough IMHO. Job one is a vanishingly low noise floor and anything that fails that is not going into my builds in the long term. Each bass has a different onboard preamp format and my main two players came from a luthier who explicitly wants me to experiment a lot. So right now I have my DIY'er oriented open source "filter" one in my fretted 5 string bass, and my modular 2 + 1 band boards in my new fretless. The fretless features outboard power and can easily be configured to a Ric-O-Sound sort of format since I used a 4 pin XLR output. Most of my amps have variable high pass filters and a single band full parametric EQ. I see those as mostly tools for room correction, but the HPF interacts greatly with my onboard bass control and allows bass peaking at a wide variety of frequencies, which can have other useful applications than just avoiding room nodes, aka unwanted boom or dead zones. Bass, mid, and treble controls are all crafted to interact in musically beneficial ways. Neither the onboard set or the ones in the amp are "better", and the idea is that the sum of the parts is greater than the individual bits might suggest. At this point I'm just s retired tech/hobbiest, but I have done a couple of commercial designs for my luthier friend. Right now they only are available in his basses, but he expects that to change sooner than later. I have nothing to do with the marketing, and am wrapping up pre-production building after having done several runs of around ten boards at a time. The most popular format at NAMM over the last couple of years has proven to be active bass and mids coupled with a standard passive treble control - this is my friend's standard offering for his Jazz Bass oriented active bass builds these days. When you switch into passive mode the tone control is just like a stock Fender format, more or less. We're currently working on at least three different active treble control modules, some of which may keep the passive one in play as well. Most of the amp builds are detailed over on Talkbass, and there is also a brief overview here: http://passinwind.com/DIY.html

Hello inspector! It was moved from elsewhere into the wanted forum. I’ll have a full report on your desk by the morning Over and out

Now come on Bob you can't leave it like that without telling us what the box of chocolate question was!?

Courtesy of Audio Hertz on Facebook:

Well this is mine, very thin neck, doddle to play, great sound. Stunning looks.

... 7 years later 😉

The 13th South East Bass Bash will be on Sunday 20 October 2019 At Jubilee High School, Surrey, School Lane, Addlestone, Surrey KT15 1TE Get the date in your diaries!

I'm in my mid fourties now and after playing for thirty odd years (mostly) off and on, when someone asks me about playing bass, I always say I learned how to play the slow fun way as opposed to the quick hard way. What I mean by the quick hard way is the discipline of theory... the chops, the scales, arpeggios, chords, the sight reading and all of that. I kind of wanted the chops but have ultimately been scared away by the musical constriction I've seen in a couple of my friends, (one good friend of mine is a seriously fabulous scouse flamenco guitarist who, by his own admission, couldn't string three power chords together to save his life... although he can probably still wing a better performance on the bass than I could with practice). I couldn't help but pick up a bit of theory along the way, major & minor scales and the triads (best ten minutes of bass theory ever) but for me, the slow fun way has always been been hearing a song and thinking... "Yeah, if I could play that the bassline to that song, I'd be a happy bass player" When you master that new song, that's the joy... and that's what I'd like you to share with me chronologically. The songs you've aspired to play as your bass playing progressed. The lines gets maybe more intricate, nuanced, simple or complicated, but as soon as you've mastered that one song you never thought you could , you've already set your sights on another song that's a little bit more... whatever it is that you want. That IMO is what I mean my fun. It really doesn't matter what genre or level of playing ability. I'd love to hear from dicsiplined players with fabulous chops and players just starting out... I don't really care how good a player you are, just put those benchmark songs in the order that you learned them. I'll start with the first bass line I think I ever remember wanting to learn as an angsty teenager and finish it with the last I remember being reasonably proud to master. I'm going to keep it to half a dozen but there was obviously lots more inbetween. Louie Louie - Kingsmen We've Got A Bigger Problem Now - Dead Kennedys The Thrill is Gone (live) - BB King (was atributed to Wille Dixon on that Blues Collection album but I'm not convinced it's him) Take The Power Back - Rage Against The Machine Cake - I Will Survive Man Who Sold The World - David Bowie Message To Society - Wally Coco (you'll have to google it) OK, stinky poo, half a dozen was harder than I thought. I deleted quite few (I must have played and forgotten hundreds of songs), but the list is in a sort of cronoligical order. Please tell me yours, I'm looking for inspiration... nothing serious and just for fun. P.S. next on the list is Scott Walker - The Old Man's Back Again.

Er...(facetious post)

Go ahead Andy. I'm going to be using it as a Croquet Bat on it's days off

I’ll get my own damn chocolate! you can have some, though, and cheers on your journey too. ps transition vamp is brilliant... I can never think up good band names

Brass bands do have their place.... Yorkshire!

Now I'm very Liberal but honestly the idea of you three in one band is a step too far, not because of the trans thing, I just don't fancy a band with three bass players!

Haha! 😂 Well, that’s actually one of the reasons you’re now in possession of a rather lovely BBNE2 😉 The Sadowsky pre is my fave for the following reasons: 1. I love boost only pres. Cant remember ever cutting bass on a preamp. 2. Pull to passive. Amazing option and sometimes it sounds right for a recording. 3. Battery. I’ve had my Sadowsky pre for 7 years, I think I’ve changed the battery once. It’s crazy! 4. TONE CONTROL. Please - all circuit builders - just give me a tone control with your active circuit any day. Literally the important thing to me. 5. That ‘Sadowsky magic’. Probably gonnna get hate for this one. The FET nature and perfect choice of EQ points kill for me. There’s something about the fets in the circuit that seem to do things I’ve not heard from any other active circuit. Any other tone shaping I do is simply between pickup selection and my hands. That makes the biggest difference to me and is the biggest ‘eq’ I find.

These bassists playing with mid cut smiley face EQ, just out of curiosity, did they all have short fair hair, red braces and a Status/Alembic /Jaydee bass?

I can guarantee that that is not the definition. In fact it is almost the opposite definition. A snowflake is literally 'someone who gets annoyed about different things than me'

Indeedy do-dah!

A smiling happy robot with a fine pair of jugs, no less. S.P.

This one...

<DUCKS> Actually the reality is closer to this:

Yes and no. What we've done so far for the Magnum tribute is to take the arrangement from a live performance from the 'classic' period as a template, but not stick slavishly to it. For example, the arrangement for Midnight just didn't work, so we combined the live version with the single one. As far as I'm concerned it's a tribute rather than a copy and I've approached the bass parts as what I would play if I actually got the call to play for Magnum. If you saw the clip I posted above, the guitar player very obviously isn't playing the same part for the solo as Tony Clarkin, but hopefully it is sympathetic to the original.

That's exactly what I have on my Ander van der End JB5 - it's a great combination!

The exact opposite of someone who says "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" .

I started climbing the Spector ladder so to speak about 8 or so years ago, starting with a Performer (unusually with the curved body), then on to a NS2000/4, finally on to a ReBop Dlx. The Performer was great. I bought it used for £150 and couldn't fault it, so when I saw the NS for £225 I had to buy it. I figured if the entry level bass was so good, the next step up would be even better. It was! The NS is really something special and not just for the price. Beautiful construction, sounds awesome and plays great. So, thinking along the same lines as the step up from Performer, I saw the ReBop, guessed it would be another step up and be unbelievable. It wasn't. Don't get me wrong, it was a great bit of kit, really well built, great sound etc etc. but... It found itself permanently living on its stand with the NS always taking preference as my go-to bass. I eventually sold it and can honestly say I haven't missed it at all. That was about 6 years ago and in the meantime I've owned and sold another NS2000, a few Warwicks (I've kept my 90s Corvette), Fender P & Jazz's, a Sire (meh), a Maruszczyk (awesome just not for me) and eventually hit on Sandbergs, which are, for me, better than anything else I've owned. Truthfully, the ReBop put a stop to my Spector journey. Had I loved it I would have likely gone on to try the US basses, but unfortunately it had the opposite effect. As with all these things, every bass is different so I may just have bought the "wrong" one (the other NS2000 I bought and sold didn't tickle me as much as the one I've kept, I've also had a Sandberg KT Basic that didn't do it for me either), but it just didn't feel particularly special. It did look awesome on its stand though

So, what was the... Oh bugger.

I think one of the most interesting combos around that I'd like to try if I had to have one bass is two Jazz pickups with an MM in-between, as used by Atelier Z. I'd like to be able to flick a switch to go from both J pups to the single MM.

Nice and portable rig; AG700 + DB112*2 and my 69 JB

The venues you play at have PRS licenses. 3 - 4.2% of gross box office goes to PRS (along with the set list the band performed) and this is then paid out to the songwriters/publishers.

I have used Howard/BassDoc for about 30 years and still do to this day. Never ever had a problem from running repairs, set ups right through to full builds. He has had many of my basses in that time, most fairly expensive fender type things and I have never had an issue. Sorry to hear anyone has, irrelevant of the sums of money involved, and I am sure things can be sorted directly without a public execution on here. Surprised its a General Discussion topic tbh.

Tweeted. I'll create the Facebook event now.

oops failed every month so far this year

Dare I suggest Magnum might work well alongside a Marillion tribute?

Well, it all turned out swimmingly. Skizofrenik played a decent punky set, and I had a good long chat with Henry Cluney - who was very amiable and happy to yap about any old muck. The young lad bass player from Skizofrenik was determined to show me his ancient Peavey bass amp that he'd recently picked up for £60, and which had reached about 200degC by the end of their set. Good sounding old bus of a thing, though. I did recommend that he took a backup amp out on tour with him. xSLF got up and blasted through pretty much the Hanx album, with a couple of more obscure tunes thrown in for good measure. "My granny wears old boots", for example. Good banter, and sounded great, though personally I think they should get a singer on board - Henry isn't quite the man for the job. Could do with speeding up a couple of tunes a little, too, to the sort of tempo of aforesaid Hanx. Being an SLF fan of old, I had a whale of a time. Henry name-checked our band a couple of times, and thanked us for them hijacking our gig. So, we were an hour late getting on, but the crowd were nicely warmed up and we had a tremendous gig. And then we had another good one in Aberdeen on Saturday night, at a venue we've not played before. Best weekend for a while.

I also use a G30 with no noise. Everything off the same power supply. BUT I had noise added in a different room when using the same setup. Only when using the G30 and only when using the shared power supply. It really depends on your power supply and the quality of the wiring in the room, I have found.

Designed by.... I love it!

First gig for the Magnum tribute band (A Storyteller’s Night) last night, supporting the excellent Backstreet Thunder in Rotherham. All went really well: great crowd reaction, lots of positive comments (both from the audience on the night and on social media) and quite a few came specially to see us (some from as far away as South Wales and from Co Durham). Clip of ‘How Far Jerusalem’, filmed by a student of the guitar player – a bit up close and personal but gives an idea of how it went…

Finally, my work here is done. It was the normal story for me, woodwork went more (or less) smoothly, finishing was a nightmare. Anyway, at third attempt I am very, very, very happy with how it's turned out. I really like the 33" scale - with careful positioning of the bridge the overall reach is probably 2 inches less than a standard Fender 34". The weight is just under 8 lbs, so very light for a jazz, but the balance is absolutely perfect - it sits naturally about 30 degrees above horizontal. The finish is like double cream, silky smooth, really incredibly smooth, but matte at the same time. It really makes you want to touch it....or even...no enough. Get on with the specs....... Scale: 33" Shape: Slightly undersized Jazz Body wood: Alder (no weight relief) Neck wood: Maple, flatsawn Fretboard: Rosewood Pickups: House of Tone '62 PJ set, installed with the P pickup reversed Electronics: Passive, 500k pots Tuners: Ultralites Bridge: Wilkinson Other: Mother of Pearl Blocks, white plastic binding Weight: 7lb 14oz (3.65kg) Balance: Absolutely spot on Colour: Vintage White (1:2 General Finshes Snow White & Antique White) Finish: General Finishes High Performance clear coat, sprayed with HVLP Strings: D'Addario XL Nickel wound 45-105 Other than for the purposes of set up, I haven't really had the chance to play it yet. I like to get proper photos does immediately (before I drop it), then I just haven't had the chance. First impressions though are very very positive, particularly of the P pickup, which sounds massive! More dets to follow. Anyway, here are some studio shots..... And a few I took at home....