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Well the story starts from my Sei. Some might know that I sold it. To Carlsim on BC who is a total gent and a very cool guy. Said bass was posted too Carl. Carl then got in contact with me. I posted in my advert that the preamp was a a UNI Pre. I meant to say it was a U Retro Deluxe but I advertised it wrong. My fault of course. Well after a few PMs back and forth Carl worked out that it wasn't either. It was actually a J Retro Deluxe. BUT the bell plate when it was fitted was not installed, so I presumed it was a U Retro Deluxe. Confusion much so. Anyway it was a pain in the derrière for Carl because he had paid for a bass that wasn't what he expected. So I sent him some money to get the Preamp that he wanted which he wanted being the UNI pre.lets hope it fits we/he said.But all was cool. John East sent him a Uni pre and bless Carl. He un installed the J Retro and then fitted the Uni pre which he is happy with. Carl after a few PMs sent the preamp direct to John I spoke to John East about this situation through numerous emails and on the phone throughout this situation which he always answered. I then spoke to John about getting a new Jazz bell plate for said J Retro. He said on the phone that he had a plate no probs. Now this is where John East is not just one of the greatest designers of possibly one of the best preamps for a bass on the market, but one of the most easy to get hold of nicest guys and one on one its like talking to your next door neighbour . I spoke to him and he said to send him the preamp, he would give me a free plate from his stock that has a slight blemish, he would then rewire the preamp and fit new knobs.! FOR FREE.!! all I have to do is cover the postage.. I don't really need to add much to this. I dont want want to endorse asking John to give away free stuff, but what a guy and what a gesture. For me first off this is what BC is about . Honesty, communication, and wanting other bass players to be happy with what you have sold them. But really its a big up to John East. What a gentleman..

Providing a facility for people to argue about planks of wood with strings on (Basschat)

For someone who doesn't read music.!!. This guy is sometimes accused of over playing. My take is when the notes hes playing are this creative I really dont care. As long as the cat can groove. And groove he can. Musical director for Chaka Khan. Some of his fills are soooooo gospel/shout and just magic. I also love that he really emphasises on finger style. Rarely double thumb and slap are used. When he does slap, its just thumb/slap and its used in context and for a certain part. He dwarfs that MTD 6 string. What a fantastic bass player this guy is. a joy to watch and hear IMO.

Fixed.

Logo now done just need to fix it on..........😀

Continuing my quest to further stress test the floorboards of my mancave, I got this today. It's lived in a full flight case for most of it's close on thirty years and as a result has fared far better than many of the others I've looked at (the 'rubberised' cases tend to have chunks missing out of them looking like they've been nibbled around the edges). Some of the grey/silver paint has worn where it's been slid in and out of the flight case and there's a very slight nick out of one of the corners but other than that it's in fine fettle. The front and back panels are immaculate with all switches, knobs, lights and sliders present and correct and working. It really is in superb nick and sounds great. No scratchy pots, all switches and sliders operate smoothly and with a quality feel to them. No unwelcome buzzing or hissing and the always on fan just spins away quietly in the background. My MkIV is the quietest running amp I've ever heard and this is just the same. So I've got the MkIV, the Series 6 and an SMX (and an Elf). Just on the lookout for a pristine MkV AH250 now and then I think I'd better call it a day. 😁

Musicman Boggo

Bannerman's in Edinburgh last night. Great venue but I really didn't like the sound. It seemed like everything was on the edge of feedback. It went well anyway, and I got a curry and a night in a hotel out of it

Played our album launch Thursday night at 229 in London. Put the night on ourselves and had a banger of a night. Went totally overkill on rig, but had a good crowd and played 4 tracks live we hadn't played before, 1 track we haven't done in about 4 years and 2 we were comfy with. Played reasonably and we're tight enough and importantly the crowd seemed to dig it. Took waaay too much rig with me though as there was foh. Band: Gévaudan https://gevaudan.bandcamp.com/album/iter

Bloody brilliant. A week long huge exhibition for the town of Montlucon. 4 enormous exhibition tents displaying local businesses. We played in the grande salle with all the bars and restaurants. We should have been booked to play tonight but as I was playing another gig tonight with a jazzy RnB band, they gave us the Friday instead. Had about 500-600 there for the off and kept them all there until the end of a no break 2 hour set. Very grateful bar owners shaking our hands afterwards as it seems the bands on the three previous nights had all cleared the place by 10pm. Really enjoyable gig.

I think you've confused us with www.asschat.co.uk it's an easy mistake to make.

@drTStingray There's no anti Musicman agenda, we're just having a bit of fun. Puerile perhaps but nothing malicious 😀 But for the record, I personally don't like brown basses. That includes sunburst. I don't like brown shoes either, brown brogues in particular are awful. They look like Crocs. But not everything brown upsets me, I regularly eat my own substantial weight in Dairy milk and gravy is the food of the gods. Oh, and Newcastle brown ale. But toilet humour I can do. But that's just me and my misguided opinions!

Quite so. At age 14 my school music teacher pulled his annual private scam of drafting some of us into the school orchestra. This involved him renting various clapped out POS instruments out to us for a fiver a term each, all of which money went into his own pocket. I got a violin with strings so far off the board you could have used it for a cheese slicer. Naturally, I struggled. My parents were convinced that lessons were the answer so off I plodded. It did nothing for my technique but I developed a wretched set of calluses and a profound hatred for the violin. In the end I flatly refused to continue and there was a bit of a scene at school. Shame, really. It was the 1970's and with a violin I could have been a folk-rock muso and had my pick of those pale, ethereal girls who used to wear purple loons and stick a finger in their ear and warble away about faerie queens and shït like that. In such small ways are our lives changed forever.

Got my stuff from blue aran to make speaker 011 (which I picked up today), Got the speaker and the tuf paint, and the handle. One of these parts doesn't seem quite right though...

Seeing as Lennon had Clapton lined up as a potential replacement for Harrison, perhaps the opposite could now take place - reform Cream, but with Starkey on drums and McCartney on bass. A sort of semi skimmed Cream?

Just use it as an excuse to buy a short-scale anyway - this is Basschat after all!!! Elise Trouw uses a Mustang. All the cool kids do. I might buy one “for one of my kids”.

My once-a-year band had a weekend of debauchery 2 years ago and produced some ridiculous mobile phone footage, which I've finally edited together. Luckily The Weeds are never in a hurry!

Evening all, Last night, I fulfilled a long held musical goal of mine; namely, I attended a clinic held by Jeff Berlin at GuitarGuitar Glasgow. It was something of a drive to get there from Northumberland, being a 300 mile round trip and faced with torrential rain on the way back, but I would do it all again. I hope that I can collect my thoughts here to advise my fellow bassists on why I found this clinic so enjoyable and informative. First, a small precis in which I will explain how I ended up here. I have played bass since I was 13 years old, though when I was about 24 I hit a short slump and picked up a guitar. I never enjoyed myself like I did on a bass and I felt the urge to go back to playing bass. I had always loved the music and playing of Jeff Berlin and I knew he was a respected teacher, but I knew little of what he taught and advocated. I felt like I needed to really change the way I looked at my own playing and what I could do to improve and I ended up seeking out information on the way that Jeff taught. I felt like my playing had hit a plateau for years ago, and despite transcribing ever-more difficult pieces, I felt like I wasn't getting any better or worse as a player. At the age of 27, I picked up the bass again and began to follow what Jeff would refer to as 'music only' education. Following that, I took strides forward in my playing and improved at a rate that I hadn't done since I was a teenager. It was both a musical liberation and rebirth for me. In time, I came to chat with Jeff online and I took part in his reading course and the conference Q&A sessions that were held for the first to buy into that course (which taught me to read music, perhaps my biggest musical failing). Jeff became a friend and I knew that, if he ever did come to the United Kingdom, I would go and see his clinic or show come hell or high water. So, enough about my own journey to this point. I went to that clinic knowing what to expect, though what I want to do is put you in the shoes of one of the forty of fifty people there who perhaps didn't know exactly what they would hear. Entry to the event was ticketed, but free, and was sponsored by Cort guitars. Jeff was funny and warm, breaking the ice and putting everyone at ease. I could feel the room relax as he started talking and he was the perfect host. Although the venue surprisingly did not have any chairs to hand, we were all happy to remain standing and we did so, utterly captivated for around 90 minutes. Jeff kicked us off with a solo piece, asking the audience to name four notes. He then proceeded to improvise a beautiful piece based on that four note progression and he would refer to that four note phrase on a number of times when he played. When he clicked that chorus pedal on, I could not help but grin. The tone and the playing was sublime. I felt as though magic was happening in front of me. Further on through the clinic, Jeff played 'Runaway Train' from his 2000 album 'In Harmony's Way'. He later treated us to an improvisation on a theme from Beethoven's 9th, which had me floored. However, Jeff did not make his playing the focus of the event. Instead, he invited members of the audience to take a seat next to him and would ask them to play something. What followed was straightforward, honest advice that measurably improved the playing of everyone who came up. As Jeff advised and corrected each player, he would ask us in the audience if we could hear an improvement in the music being played and we all replied positively. I appreciate that it must be nerve wracking to sit in that chair in front of your peers to be critiqued by one of the luminaries of our instrument. Like I said, Jeff is so warm and friendly, so adept at putting the student at ease, that every player quickly settled down and started to improve. In focusing his attention on that player in that moment, Jeff demonstrated the sound academic principles he has so long advocated and how they can reap reward for anyone who follows them. As the members of the audience continued to come up, Jeff held two demonstrations that were paticularly impactful and really had the room engrossed. He invited a lady up from the audience who was not a musician and had her take the Cort Rithimic bass provided for the guests. Jeff had her play an E in straight quarter notes, demonstrating that everyone has a sense of time adequate to become a musician. Jeff improvised a piece over her bass line and there and then, not only did she become a musician but she was backing Jeff Berlin in a clinic to a room full of people! The highlight of the educational side of the clinic for me was when Jeff called up a guy who been playing for 25 years but didn't read music. Jeff called for someone to grab a load of sheet music from his gigbag. It was in fact, package 1 of his five part reading course (he did not mention this in attempt to make a sale but I think he could have done so, as it is a great course). Jeff then asked his guest to identify the notes on the page, if he could, and as they worked them ou together, the guest played two bars of his first etude read from the page. As per a show of hands earlier in the clinic, there were a lot of non-readers and rockers in there. I looked around the room and there were smiles all around me as this guy played slowly, out of time, as he read each note. Every mistake was addressed and corrected and the guest had just read his first music, in front of a crowd of strangers. I am not lying when I say that the room was on tenterhooks between every note and you could have heard a pin drop. The round of applause that followed was utterly heartfelt. I left that clinic feeling better about myself as a player, inspired to continue reading, inspired to continue trying to improve. I am sure everyone there felt that same inspiration as me. This really was a clinic for everyone, as there was no barrier to entry. It wasn't just for academic musicians, jazz or fusion players. There was something for everyone; advice that transcends your level of playing and cuts to core of what is at the foundation of being a good musician. Therefore, I would recommend players of all genres, of all levels of skill and experience, to seek out these clinics where they can. Following the event, my brother and I said hello to Jeff. He recognised me from the chats we had had online and asked me why I hadn't introduced myself sooner. He signed the back of my Cort Rithimic bass and we took some photos. I will post these below. I am holding my Rithimic and my brother is holding his 1991 Ken Smith BT5. My brother is also a big fan of Jeff Berlin and a huge fan and supporter of great music in general, so it was really cool to go on this trip with him. I would like to thank Jeff for putting on a really great clinic and for being a gracious host, Cort guitars for sponsoring this clinic tour and to GuitarGuitar Glasgow for giving us an excellent venue. [

If you missed this on Beeb 4 last night, it's on I Player, for once, a good look at the genre.......... 😎

😮 You are one sick little puppy!! 😂

I started the site in about 2002 as Bassworld and since then it’s evolved and changed lots of times and had different names along the way! I’ll write a full history of the site at some point for the history books! It’s quite a story actually for a few reasons, up to and including an FBI takedown!

Have you seen THIS? Works UK to UK too.

I'll/We'll be interested/excited /inspired to hear/see /perceive the reply

Barn dances are great fun, especially if the audience doesn't what they're doing- you just stand there whilst the caller teaches them! If you do one on guitar your brain will become addled by every conceivable combination of D, G and A when a Bm comes along ITS THE HARDEST CHORD IN THE WORLD!

You're absolutely 100% right. The Musicman Bongo bears absolutely NO resemblance to a toilet seat whatsoever. I can't see anything remotely loo-seat-like about it: EDIT: Sorry, it appears I'm wrong, the Music Man actually concede this on their own website: http://blog.music-man.com/artists/the-bongo-bass-buyers-guide/

Lots of good lightweight cabs out there, Barefaced and Vanderkley will get lots of mentions. However finding a "good" lightweight Class D head is a different ball game IMO. I've tried loads and I've yet to try anything that really comes up to scratch. Don't be fooled by the Trace Elliot stickers on the Elf - it doesn't have the same heft that you experienced from the classic stuff. The company is now based in the US so you won't get the same easy to access customer service that you got when they were based in the UK. I wasn't impressed with the TC gear. The Genz Benz gear which everybody was talking about a few years ago has seemingly fallen from grace since the company was bought out by Gibson (I believe). You'll undoubtedly get recommendations for the Genzler. I didn't get any inspiration from the Darkglass but I do know that some people swear blind by them, especially if you like a heavy modern, rock tone.. Ashdown are coming back into popularity - dirt cheap, excellent customer service, a presence on this forum and good products mean you get a lot for your buck. If it were my money and I had to buy a Class D head I'd certainly think about a EBS - general consensus that the Customer Service is excellent.

I'll go with.. May you Never - John Martyn Don't Give Up - Peter Gabriel ( and Kate Bush ) Hit me with your Rhythm Stick - Ian Dury and the Blockheads But there's thousands more 🙂

Hello J Mac, The short answer is yes; it will work. Bear in mind that you will have to change the port sizes from Phil's original, as that was specifically designed to suit the Beyma driver. Don't worry about that. I & several others can do the calcs needed. In a 30 litre cab the Celestion will produce a slightly warm sounding bass, but with reduced bass output in the low bass below 100Hz. If your project is a get-you-going sort of idea and the special price is important then go for it. Phil has said elsewhere that the cab dimensions result in a volume over 30 litres, to account for the space taken up by the Beyma and it's ports. Going by his dimensions of 350 x 450 x 236mm internal, you get just over 37 litres. Once a 12" driver is installed and the ports fitted that will result in a net volume of about 33 litres. If the Celestion from a fellow Basschatter doesn't work out, then there is an alternative in the Fane Sovereign 12 300 @ £70 from bluearan.co.uk. Chienmortbb should be along later with some details.

Haven’t read all the replies but you want flats and play up at the end of the neck, nowhere near the controls. If it works for Family Man, then it works.😉

Hopefully I've listed myself properly,if not someone might be able to tidy up my feeble listing attempt

I am sure Phil would answer soon enough but there are few 12” speakers at a reasonable price that would work well in a 30 litre cabinet. However, if you can wait a few hours I will model it for you.

It's crazy - the policy should be that they don't waste people's time. FWIW the jobs I applied for can't possibly have been internal candidates as they were entry level, but maybe they wanted to pay a sixth former sod all instead as the salary isn't disclosed.

I’m just seeing how it goes

Paul Weller's lost a lot of weight...

My thoughts - I am often wrong so treat with caution. Short answer - you are limited by how many clamps you have. if you are skilled and confident and have maybe 24 clamps do it in 2 stages. Otherwise you'll have to do it in more and smaller stages . I've done 2 now. If I were to do another one,for perfect results I would do some initial preparation then glue it in one go - it will then pull together correctly. To do it like this will need a lot of clamps - you'd need to clamp in 3 planes, in maybe 8 locations per plane - so 24 clamps, though not all need be super long. You would also need to work quickly so do several dry assemblies first as practice. So you'd need to be reasonably experienced and confident, and it could potentially get a bit hairy. Open time for PVA on timber like this is not super long. So I would 1) First glue up the back and its braces and input panel, and front and single brace, giving completed front and back assemblies. Be careful, use long reach clamps, check everything goes down properly. This is pretty straightforward - practice first. 2) Glue the reinforcing ring/circle to the top and bottom panels - easy, make sure you stick them on the insides though 3) Pour glue into a bowl, stiff paintbrush to apply, big clear work bench, huge stack of clamps, someone to help pass clamps and apply glue super quickly. Glue all ends, channels, edges. Two coats, work really quickly. Knock together with rubber mallet, then gently pull it together in all 3 planes.

Why are most Basschatters so modest about sharing the names of their bands? I'd love to know especially if the chance to come and see some of your bands comes up!

I applied for a job with the Government a few years ago when I was in my late 40s. The job was verifying COMAH (Control of Major Accident Hazards) registered sites were complying with the requirements of their license. I've been involved in Oil, Gas, Petrochemicals and Pharmaceuticals since leaving school and visited my first major faciity at the age of 16. I'm a Chartered Engineer with over 30 years experience in this field. I thought I could make a contribution to society by doing this and I'd become disillusioned with the working methods of my clients anyway, The job was advertised with a salary about 60% of my last salaried position - although I'd been working on a self employed basis at more than double the salary for a few years. It took over 2 hours to do the online application. Within minutes of submission I got a rejection stating that I had insufficient experience. I did check that they'd read my application and CV and apparently they had. I got the distinct impression they had already selected an in house candidate and were advertising the role because they were obliged to. If they'd said I had insufficient experience of something in particular, or an element of the job that I'd misunderstood I'd have just accepted it, but the stated reason was so clearly incorrect I was gobsmacked. Their loss.

only spotted them last week because some nicey smashy deejay on radiocaroline.co.uk has played this recently a few times

loads on the yewtewbs - heres on for starters

I don't believe many of these rooms are *Currently* as tidy as these photos, mine *certainly* is not. It looked like this shortly after painting it. It's got a few things on the walls and a lot more junk in it now. It's a really small room, I'm crammed into the corner with my phone over my head to make the picture, but it's MY room, MINE! You can just barely see my two tiny self built (from kits) tube amps, a 3W 2 tuber and a 5W 3 tuber. I love them, they scream.

You folks are so....tidy !

EV ELX200 15SP I believe it is called, a mid priced sub. But we actually used to have the Alto TS series, incl sub and I can’t say they were significantly worse than pur current EV setup.

Hello Sir!