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Just a quick note to say..... fantastic day! Big thanks to @Hamster & @silverfoxnik for the organisation, Mrs Hamster for the refreshments and all the lovely people who turned out to support the day. Less people than before (poss due to date proximity of recent Bass/Guitar Show) but, as always, plenty of fantastic instruments and backline/fx to enjoy :) Thanks to Pete Stroud for an interesting and entertaining chat/demo of his lovely fretless basses too! Notable was the lack of younger players (or under the age of 40!) there.... and I wonder if that's something we can address or if they just aren't forum members? I know when I was a young player (late teens - twenties) I would have killed to have access to seeing, hearing and trying products I'd only ever seen in a magazine review. Now of course they see them online and on Youtube but nothing beats first hand listening, viewing and trying out... Anyway.... the best thing? Us.... we really are a very pleasant, amiable and ego-free bunch aren't we? A pleasure to share in the day with you all.... :)

That was a great day and another ‘well done’ to those who organise and book everything. Well done those who not only drove long distances to the event but had some b’s of drives home around the car park commonly known as M25. Makes my trip down the A3 feel like a pleasurable cruise. Thanks for listening to me people, I’m glad it entertained, humoured and informed on the bass on different levels.....

Ha ha, now three events in one year does not an award make! @cetera has made the point already but as a relative (to some of you anyway) newcomer to Basschat I have found the forum to be incredibly informative and personally (in a bass equipment sense) completely transformative. But by far the biggest surprise and delight, especially to an ingrained (albeit equal opportunities) misanthropist such as myself, has been the real sense of community (both on the forum and at the Bashes) and the lack of willy waving egoists. I’m not a good player and I’m even worse when it comes to bass tech, I have asked real novice questions over and over again and always received brilliant answers that were in no way patronising, impatient or finished with any sentences along the lines of ...you plug it in the input you tw4t! @cetera makes another important point about the lack of youngsters at the Bash and I think this applies to the forum too, I think part of the answer is in that very egoless nature of BC. Most forums and, well, the Internet as a whole really (at least the bits where people get to interact and discuss stuff), is about people venting from the safety of a keyboard in a bedroom, it’s about ego, conflict, competition and most importantly it’s all about f*** all. It takes time to mature into people able to communicate without preening about trying to make up for the gaping holes in ones character and personality that only slowly fill up with wisdom and knowledge over a lifetime. I’m afraid I think forums and meetings like ours will remain the preserve of folk our age simply by dint of the nature of maturing into an adult and developing a real interest in a subject. That being said there is something about being a bass player, a purveyor of low end frequency, that does seem to attract people from a noble seam. As I explained to a friend once at a reggae gig who commented that I was dancing at half the speed of the ‘chank, chank’ of the guitar, “Look at the bass player. The drumming is maths, the singer is ego, the guitarist (at least the lead) is a w4nk puffin. The bass player is what’s moving this entire audience.” Sorry went off on one there. Essentially I’d go, or at least attempt to go, to any and every Bass Bash I possibly could simply because I’ve never known a site or community like it and it flies in the face of everything I’ve ever learned about humans, so see you at the next one.

Mmmm, yeah, agree. I was saying to @Stingray5 when we were struggling with the World's Largest Car Park (aka the M25) while homeward bound - it seems that with guitarists (and I admit it, 'cos I am the guitarist in one band), there's always that gunslinger, competitive thing going on; bass players tend to be much more mutually supportive of one another - hanging together like the oppressed minority that we are.... Or as I told @Silvia Bluejay - drummers are psychos, guitarists are egomaniacs, singers are on another planet....bass players are the only sensible/sane ones!!

I don’t really do Facebook any more but I just want to say that your reviews are the best out there and you are such a fantastic player, an ambassador for the instrument and bass players everywhere. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - Dood = Basschat royalty! 👸🏻

It's like he's BassChatted but only ever skim-read the threads. As a result, the review lacks both heft and grunt. But let us not dwell upon the negatives for here is an opportunity for the forum to make some cash. BassChat should offer its services to retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers not only up and down the country but also on a global basis. I propose a two-tier programme: i) Proof-reading of reviews and press-releases with the intention of weeding out solecisms, cliches and egregious bull-poop ii) Regular industry seminars on 'How to Talk To Bass Players' emphasising - among other things - the importance of cheese puns The proof-reading would come in at £250 a pop for UK companies and £500 for multinationals. The seminars would cost £1500 per delegate inclusive of accommodation (shared room in local Travel Lodge). Supplementary payola deals whereby BC might shill worthless or sub-standard products would of course be both deniable and 'off the books' while running into the high four figures. Our integrity should never come cheap. There's no reward in merely mocking these businesses. We need to monetise our scorn. Let's slit them up like kippers. 'Thanks BC!' says a musical instrument retailer

Good to see you all today and return to a Bass Bash after may years! Good to see some old faces as well as some new, @MacDaddy, @obbm can you remember when the first bashes were up in Northampton? I recon about 2006/7 I have put my photos up on the basschat Facebook page , along with a few Facebook live streams I snuck in there when you weren't looking! The photos are public so you should be able to see them if you are not a facebooker! https://www.facebook.com/Basschat/

Guitarists reviewing basses is as insightful as Clarkson writing the forward in Greta Thunberg’s biography. 🙄

The Anderton's review reads like they've copy-pasted a sequence of posts from a slightly tedious BassChat thread: What do we think about the Precision? Frankly, I think we should sue their tits off for plagiarism.

Hello BassChatters! I'll keep this short and sweet, I'm hoping you can help me. Those who know me personally know that 2019 hasn't particularly been the easiest year. (An understatement even if I am sparing the details). I've more or less been off the radar for an extended period and it's time to start picking myself up again. I'm looking in to getting more in to the sorts of work I was busy doing before my world was turned upside down. This is where you all come in! I'd like to hear from you! If you have seen one of my reviews and liked it, hated it, or it has helped you purchase a piece of gear, I would love a short bit of feedback if that's ok? Ideally I would love it posted on my Facebook DanVeallBassist page but posting on this thread is also fine, if I can copy and paste / screen print it. https://www.facebook.com/pg/DanVeallBassist/reviews I thank you in advance, I genuinely really appreciate it. (Feel free to type 'Done' here too!)

Q: How many BassChatters does It take to change a lightbulb? A: It takes: Four to say they'd be all over it if only it was a 5 string lightbulb ... Six to ask how much the lightbulb weighs Fourteen to say all you really need is a Precision lightbulb Nine to say they used to have a lightbulb just like that, but it was an original '63 and how they regretted selling it Three to say how great the service is at Bass Direct and how if they were in the market for a lightbulb, that's where they'd go Seven to wonder how the lightbulb would sound if it had different capacitors Eleven to say that the bulbs are less bright with flats but that's how they like it Fifteen to say they have not changed their lightbulbs in over a decade ... Oh, and one to actually change the bulb .... 🙂

I think Action Man #5 has overdone his daily rum ration...

😁

Hi everyone - that was only my second meet (ever, not the year - well done @Frank Blank for the grand slam!) and it was again fab - I love meeting up and chatting with like-minded people. Well done to everyone who helped set up and organise such a great day @silverfoxnik @Hamster - yes attendance might have been a bit lower but the quality of the event and friendliness of all those in attendance means a lot more than just numbers! A huge thank you for the double header talk from Pete, both building basses and building a career - so insightful! I am left with a question - is it acceptable to covet thy neighbours bass - especially a purple shift Dingwall D-bird! @G-77 I'm already looking forward to next year (and it might be a bit less of a wait, fingers crossed!). I loved @cetera's idea of a brief bio on the basses on show - might steal that idea for next time! I think the bash is such a wonderful idea, not just for the camaradiery and conversation but also the chance to hear such an eclectic mix of gear without sales pressure or a trek across the country. I already find the year on year progression of GAS and techcreep fascinating! I had to steer clear of @Jabba The Hutt or else I would have had to do some serious arm twisting for the chance to own one of his amazing creations! I don't know what the answer is to the generational thing - unfortunately I am now in the 40+ bracket so can't comment - I think perhaps the forum does appeal to an older generation, maybe younger blood is happy cyberchatting to strangers? I know the facebook page is quieter than the forum in the months and weeks leading up to the bash, maybe a little paid advertising (less than £10 would promote an event to all the friends of friends automatically) might work - but on the other hand I think its more likely and attitude shift with a certain number of miles on the clock that brings us together... and so rewarding to see others benefit from your own experiements @GraemeRoss and it means you were onto something and not succumbing to marketing BS! I wonder if we could set up a 'quiet room' in future for some 'Chappers and the Captain' style gear reviews for widening the awareness of the forum and bash - could be a bit of fun if any of you like the idea of a new career on youtube! Any suggestions for potential future stars? I think after the 2019 Bass Show experiment there may be other low-end connousouirs looking for a more relevant day out! Must go now my 6 month old is stirring from an afternoon nap wanting to make up for a lack of Daddy time yesterday - looks like a family day out to Hampton Court Palace next Sunday might be needed to make up for it - what else is on nearby that day? wink wink!

So they could improve it, with a Kiogon wiring loom of course!

Makes you wonder why anybody ever bought one 😎😃

Dennis Dunaway (Alice Cooper band) was the bassist who influenced me most before I actually started playing bass..

Aside from the other various impossible things going on in this clip, this guy starts tap dancing whilst playing at about 1:05.

Bit more work on the neck today getting ready for fretting, which is a bit more complicated because of the binding. The ends of the tangs need to get trimmed, using some specialist clippers (which I forgot to photo), and you're left with this: The tang clipper works well, but leaves a little bit of tang down the middle middle which needs to be filed, or in my case dremmeled....a grinding wheel like this one does the job in a couple of seconds, and leaves a very smooth finish. Unlike most builders, I put finish on the fretboard before fretting. Once the frets are in it's difficult to stop the finish pooling around the frets themselves, which is the sort of thing that drives me bananas. I saw Jon Shuker do it this way, and if it's good enough for him, it's way way way way good enough for me. So I wiped on a coat of Liberon Finishing Oil (much the same as Boiled Linseed Oil, as @Christine suggested), and I'll do another coat tomorrow, then fret later in the week. I then starting looking at the body. Stupidly, I asked myself what @Pea Turgh would want. More lines! So I'm going to try and put binding around the F-holes. Not made easy by the fact that the top is already glued on. This may end in disaster😮

At least he's wearing pants....

#2 looks a bit sheepish.

An Open Letter To The Musical Equipment Industry Honoured Sirs and Madams The punning exchanges above are testament - were one required - to the pressing need to fully understand the mind of the Bass Player. BassChat enjoys the respect and affection of literally thousands of middle-aged men whose response to a sales pitch will either be 'Fvck off and die, shop boy' or 'Just take my money'. BassChat knows which buttons to press to elicit an almost Pavlovan response. You don't. The choice is yours: get slagged off by our members or do a deal with us. No threat intended, obvs. For more information contact: Mr Pedro Ped BassChat The Caravan C/O Burger King Clifton Moor Retail Park York YO30 4XZ

It's like why students feel teh need to get piercings, tattoos and dubious facial hair. They want to look as roadworn as us genuine boomers 🙂

Great video, and what a great guy & character too - gotta love Bootsy Thanks for sharing that link @Leonard Smalls

was it the fella who was slapping the Ashbury in the video I put up... now what was his name.... 😉

No one. I'm not even really a fan of the bass per Se. To me it's part of the overall sound of a band, not a standalone instrument. So there have been many bands I've liked over the years, and many a bass riff I've liked as part of the overall sound of those bands, but I've never been attracted to, or particularly inspired by the bass alone. In fact the opposite is probably true. I can't stand over the top Jacko type bass noodling. It just sounds like a load of pointless noise. For me the bass should be the solid underpinning of a band. A foundation which the whole band builds on. Maybe that's not very exciting, but most none muso's wouldn't, and probably even shouldn't notice a good bass player.

I just dug out the video i shot at the 2nd one in Northampton c2007 when we had more hair!, I recall this was the one where people were queuing at the door to get their gear in ! with @Dood

Best thing i’ve ever done apart from picking up the bass in the first place is learning to read. It’s allowed me to earn a living as a musician, playing with a number of different shows/acts/genres, sometimes with very little notice. I would estimate that about 95% of the work I get has come from being able to read. There’s literally NO downside to being able to do it.

Genius, he managed to sound like Lemmy on an acoustic fretless.

We had a great gig last night. We hadn't gigged for 6 weeks and the end of this band may be looming due to a few factors, so I had been thinking maybe life without this band wouldn't be so bad. Wrong! We had a brilliant night, great atmosphere, everyone up dancing and a good showing from a couple of the local scooter clubs. I was buzzing but my knees aren't thanking me today from all the dancing. Another thing that made it great was the new PA speakers we tried. We pay our own soundman who provides all the PA, we normally use subs, with tops and four floor monitors, all powered. Our soundman is getting on and has expressed his need to pack it all in soon, he has given us a deadline next year, one of the reasons the band may end. The subs are just too heavy. He bought some powered Yamaha speakers, I don't know which ones, and we tried them last night. He gets panicky about new stuff so I said I'd bring my amp in case they didn't put out enough bottom end and he ended up bringing the subs and it was all wired up just in case, and it put him at ease. He's a brilliant bloke, just gets a bit on edge sometimes. Well they were fantastic, incredible bottom end and clear mids and treble, so we now know we can gig with just a pair of tops with everything, including bass and drums, through them easily, obviously we'll still need floor monitors, but this has hopefully got him reconsidering jacking it in, as he's as much as part of the band as the rest. Someone in the crowd who was in another band came up to him to complement him on the sound and said it was the best sound from a band he'd heard in a long time. When our soundman told him my bass amp and and the subs weren't even on the chap had to come over and see as he couldn't believe it. To our soundman that's like someone coming up to me and complimenting me on my playing so hopefully he's back in the game. Our drummer who has arthritis issues in his shoulders said he may call it a day when John (soundman) quits as it hurts him to play now even didn't mention the arthritis last night and was quite positive about the future. So from trudging to a gig convincing myself the end was near and I'd be OK with it, to finishing the encores with everyone buzzing and looking to the future of the band in the space of three hours. Gigging is definitely a lifeblood and I need it 👍

Jameson & ' Arry, some one trick 😙

Marketing mumbo jumbo. Just play one. If you like it, buy it. If a bass can be used for a lot of styles of music then it is a versatile instrument provided the player is also versatile. it is a ‘one trick pony’ in the sense that it only has one pick up, so you can’t really get that back pickup on a Jazz bass sound. However a Precision can do a ‘modern sound’ with the right use of compression and EQ. So much ‘modern’ pop music is still recorded on a Precision. My Precision is more ‘old school’ sounding than my Jazz, but my Precision is forty years old and my Jazz is a Sadowsky, so it isn’t really a valid comparison to begin with.

First gig with our new lead guitarist and vocalist. He replaced a 14 year founding member. Initially I had my doubts. It was a private retirement party at Ron's Cozy Inn. I assumed it would be a group of uninterested friends & family. I was wrong. Great crowd and they were gracious and engaged us. Our new 25 year old guitarist had great stage presence and a real good feel for 70s style blues rock. Plenty of space for us in the bar. The place was brand new really a great looking room. The band was well lit , we looked good. The drummer from 80s hit makers The Bodeans was there and sat in on three Tom Petty songs. This was a 6-10 gig and a 40 minute commute. Good pay and good tips. Blue

Ok, I'll have a final stab at it! 😀 Your original question was "Is FRFR just a buzzword?" I would say that it IS a buzzword, in that it's bit of terminology that's only recently come into use, and is currently popular in marketing bass and guitar gear. Equipment that broadly matches the definition has been around for a long time, as the requirements are very similar to those that have always been needed for PA and acoustic instrument amplification. Essentially, if you were to play some finished pre-recorded music through this type of equipment, the music would still sound pretty much like it's supposed to. So while equipment with these characteristics has been around for a long time, nobody was calling it "FRFR" - that's a recent trend, ie it's a buzzword. However, it's not JUST a buzzword, because it actually means something specific in the context of electric guitar/bass amplification, which is a distinctly different approach to how amplifying these instruments has generally been done in the past. Since these instruments don't actually HAVE a 'natural' sound, you can amplify them any way you like as long as you like the result. The traditional approach to amplifying them (because it was easier) was to produce amplifiers/speakers for which you didn't worry too much about the frequency response, levels of distortion etc as long as users agreed that the end result was satisfactory. Indeed, lots of the gear used to produce what we now think of as 'classic' guitar/bass sounds was simply atrocious if viewed from the standpoint of technical accuracy - high levels of distortion, severely curtailed or wildly unbalanced frequency responses etc - but those technical flaws came to be regarded as desirable or essential elements of the guitar/bass sounds that people liked. More recently, it's become much more possible to reproduce these 'desirable flaws' of traditional guitar/bass gear accurately and in a controllable manner entirely within electronic circuitry (not going to start an analogue/digital debate here!). Having done so, what we then want is simply to amplify the result as accurately as possible. Handily, the right equipment for this then becomes very similar to what's already being used for PA. Attaching the term "FRFR" to this approach describes the difference between this strategy and the one traditionally used in the sphere of guitar/bass amplification. This seems to me to be a useful and meaningful distinction, and hence I would say that FRFR is not JUST a buzzword, even though it is one. Apologies for the massive wall of text - hope there may be something in it you find helpful or enlightening! Quite possibly not though! 😁

It reminds me of this

It's almost like he's never Basschatted

Obviously lots of mentions here for JJ (and with good reason!) but it's nice to see a couple of mentions for Paul Gray too, who doesn't normally seem to get much attention. Playing along with The Black Album was a big part of my early learning experience. And his predecessor in the Damned, Algy Ward, who I stood directly in front of at my second gig ever, crushed and in a storm of flying gob, admiring his Precision bass. Also various others that made chunky prominent riffs with biting bass sounds a big part of the music of that time - Foxton, Ali McMordie of SLF, Barry Adamson of Magazine - and for a wild card, how about Steve Smith of The Vapors?

Quite. The author has completely neglected to highlight the instrument's exceptional natural "heft."

I wondered what these basses would be like...he makes me think that they’re Shite.

I grew up in the late 70's and early 80's and having two older sisters, my house was full of great bassists such as Sting (The Police), Pino (Paul Young), John Taylor (Duran Duran), Paul Webb (Talk Talk), Derek Forbes (Simple Minds), Mark King (Level 42), Gary Garry Beers (Inxs) however the person to actually make me pick up the bass was Adam Clayton of U2. It was nothing to do with his bass playing, it was from simply seeing him at Live Aid in 85 and thinking I want to look like that cool dude

You could have tried these. https://modulusamplification.com/Fender-Speaker-Mounting-Screws-Mount-Screws-each-P5875267.aspx

Your dad = What a dude

You know how in some venues you seem to hear the distant strain of Duelling Banjos? My gig was like that.