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I got a tattoo of the first bass I bought when I joined BC, then overwritten with each replacement, here’s the result.

I lift weights and look like an axe murderer, so they tend to bugger off if I start walking towards them. I have largely the same effect on single ladies, unfortunately.... 😕

Played a birthday party in a large function room of a pub. It was a timeless experience for a musician. How many have played to that exact crowd in that exact environment down through the years? Made me smile to reflect on this passion of ours, and made me realise how much I love it. Every part of it, from the hours of fiddling with effects at home, right through to the late night motorway drive back. Quite simply I'm where I should be.

I did a gig in Glasgow bar where one of the audience stood to the side of us while we were playing our first set, while nodding along with a serious look on his face. He did this for another couple of numbers, the sauntered off. Two songs into our second set, he reappeared, this time with a black padded holdall type thing. He then unzipped it and produced.. a saxophone!!! He then proceeded to parp along with us on the number we were playing, while us in the band were looking at each other quizzically. Turns out we all thought he must be a friend of someone in our band. Wghen the song finished, he put his saxophone bag into his holdall thing, and then disappeared out of the bar! All very odd!!

On the other hand, some of these bozos are sources of great band stories for the years to come. Last night is a case in point. I'm playing DB in a rockabilly trio (at The Oddfellows in Apsley, in case you know it), just about to start the third set, when a mid-40s lady walks up to me. Here we go, I think, do we play any Abba. She points at my DB and says, "Is that a harp?". OK, this is a wind-up, right? But she looks perfectly serious. No, I say, it's a double bass. "A double bass?" says she, "I didn't know about them." Yes, I reply, it's a double bass, and usually when people ask about it, that's because they think it's a cello. "No", she says, "I thought it was a harp. What does a harp look like, then?". I ask her if she's familiar with Guinness. She looks startled but says that she is. I tell her to picture the Guinness logo. "That's a harp", I say. She frowns, looks around for support, there's none forthcoming and my guitarist is now wetting himslef laughing, so off she totters to the toilet.

I can remedy that quick, but wanted to do the bass justice and not show my ugly mug

I suppose I`m quite lucky being on the originals scene, the only people who get up on stage are generally there to jump off of it. Every now & then we might get a bunch of people who decide to help out on the chorus of a song or two - we don`t really need the help to be honest - but it`s always good-natured. I`ve only ever got the hump with one guy, years ago, who spat at us thinking that was what you did at punk gigs - I hit him straight in the eye with the headstock of my bass then had a fight with him later. I had less patience when I was younger.

Bass Direct doing the LaBella low tension flats for £38 seems to be a good price

Usually between the Amuse-bouche and the Hors d'oeuvre as there's often a lot of dead time between the courses. Only yesterday I converted a guitar I rescued from a skip into an instrument suitable for all hand sizes with its 'gnats chuff' action and smooth frets. Whilst the sound of my Dremel did admittedly cut across the friendly conversations between Boris and Stephen (who were dining with me), I was bored stupid with their exhortations of 'man up'. Later, we all went out for a walk as Boris was interested in looking into ditches. Mods. the Boris and Stephen who were my house-guests were from our local skittles club, often come for tea on a Saturday night and are not the Boris and Stephen you may think. Fun fact: my surname is Barclay

... a marriage made in heaven. Warning: it may lead to Colin Moulding envy!

I spent ages lining up the bridge pickup surround in relation to the bridge. Unfortunately there is a slight gap top & bottom, but I’ll sort it out somehow at a later date. I then lined the neck pickup surround between the bridge pickup and neck. I used a forsner (?) bit as per @Andyjr1515’s bulk removal method. I tidied up a bit with a Stanley knife. I was going to borrow a router to clean it up, and also sort the bridge pickup widening, but I think I’ll buy a nice chisel and do it by hand instead. Popped the pickups in to see what they looked like - I’m quite happy with the way this is evolving!

Ooh, I’ve had fun with this tonight! I decided to assemble the parts first, then when I’m happy with it, pull it apart and do the neck refinish, possibly the body too. First up - get the neck on so I can line everything else up properly. I had to sand the inner edges of the neck pocket, as although the shape is luckily a perfect match, it was too tight to fit in. The neck ferrules I got off eBay were a bit small, and not quite high enough, so I popped some washers underneath to bring them flush with the body surface. Neck on! I used a straight bit of wood to held tightly against the neck edges to draw lines on the body. This got the bridge nicely lined up. Bridge on!

I love reading this thread, but don't post because I don't gig. However I did spend Friday installing a new sound desk at church, and this morning was its first outing so here, by way of a change, is a gentle story from the man in black at the back 🙂 Going from an analogue to a digital desk is a bit like 4 string to 5 string I'm told. You can do all the same stuff and more, but you have to change your muscle memory. Apart from turning the gain on the preacher to zero (no idea how, took a while to track down while he used another mic), the to-be-expected EQ-ing the wrong channel, and grabbing the kick-drum fader instead of the clarinet (twice! d-oh!!) it was OK. The best comment was from one chap who used to mix a lot. "Well it's no worse than you usually sound and I wouldn't have known any difference if I didn't know it was a new desk". I think it was meant as a compliment! Photo from the Friday before rehearsal.

To be fair, a well tanked crowd are almost always better than a stone cold sober one.........

A couple of gigs ago a punter wanted to high five me, while I was playing! 🙄

Without getting the scales out it feels around the 8.5lbs mark compared to other basses I own. I'm very impressed with it from in regards to playability. The neck is very slim which I really like. Plugged into a pre-amp for recording I'd describe it as 'hi-fi' sounding and I suppose it will come down to how you feel about EMG's which divide some people. I'm very pleased with it.

Mine looked a bit like this -

Hi everyone, This is Wolfgang from BITE Guitars. You guys have been sceptical but fair, thanks, I appreciate this. Yes, we do things differently, from the product design to our online configurator to the way we organize production. Whenever you do things differently, it's bound to raise eyebrows and questions. I'd be surprised if it didn't. So here are a few explanations. We are not in it for the quick buck, we do nothing on the cheap and we do not source in China. We try to be as transparent as possible, pls check out "Guitar Building 4.0" on our ABOUT US page. Our production is highly digitalized for consistent quality and still our head of production is a licensed luthier who also builds violins with the craftsmanship of his own hands (in Austria you need several years of training, a craftsman examination and a compulsory license to build guitars). Our basses were developed in cooperation with professionals from the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, the venerable luthier school in Hallstatt, and scrutinized and tested by the knowledgeable audience of the Guitar Summit's boutique area, notably trade journalists and bass professionals. Response was overwhelming and till this day we havn't had a single quality complaint. How many bass manufacturers employ graduate bass professionals to QC and test slap each instrument? We do anyway. A straight headstock like ours gives maximum firmness for output and sustain (unlike an angled one). As for straight headstocks, we all have grown to appreciate the 4-left tuner arrangement as industry standard. So why does BITE arrange its tuners 2-left-2-right? 4-left is a pretty crowded party. All 4-left shapes differ slightly between manufacturers for trademark reasons. There are clearly beautiful 4-left shapes out there, but elbowing our way into the 4-left crowd just didn't seem right to us, we wanted to create something of our own. Our headstock is almost an inch shorter than the ubiquitous 4-left headstock. Since our bodies are also a little reduced in size, the overall proportion between body and headstock is right. This counterweight is important for eliminating dead spots. In addition, our necks have a D-profile that players generally find pleasant and relaxing and that also adds strength along the entire neck and thus contributes to consistently strong output across the whole fretboard. Another reason for our headstock shape could be called contingency product planning. You don't want to go through trademark registration every time you add a product variation. Our headstock leaves enough space for adding a fifth or even a sixth machine head and also to flip it and reposition the logo for a left-handed version. To put our headstock in perspective, here's a video of Overdriver Duo (Brazilian sensation with over 2bn clicks and counting). It shows their Jawbone PJ from various angles. We are talking custom bass. Over a billion choices in custom quality, a fast and visualized online configurator, immediate ordering, worldwide direct shipping, zero tropical wood, high output pickups, etc. This is completely new terrritory in many aspects. It's impossible to offer all of this at entry level prices. Yes, but we meanwhile offer our pickups also with plain white and plain black covers. Why did we brand them in the first place? They are a proprietary development. We had Germany's foremost scientific pickup experts contributing, GITEC president Prof. Manfred Zollner, GITEC board member Tillmann Zwicker and renowned pickup physicist Helmuth Lemme. We finally achieved what we had in mind: passive pickups with a record output but still a clearly articulated growl that cuts through the mix even with tone rolled off, no muffled mud. Hear it for yourself in Nathan Navarro's review. For technical reasons and for easy use we focus our configurator on the most popular choices. We can do a lot more than that, ranging from special body finishes, including oil & wax, all the way to implementing special wiring ideas. Those are things that need a little interaction between you and us and require individual pricing, that's why we offer them separately in our SECRET MENU.

forgot to update this. Fitting how my last response was to @bassfan and eventually I ended up not having to stick nor twist... And the Modulus which i described as 😍 is now next to the jazz I was thinking about swapping.

My 63 P-bass. Originally belonged to a great friend and bandmate who tragically lost his life in road accident. I acquired the bass from his widow, who had unfortunately stored it in her loft, causing all the paint to peel off the body, and the frets turn green. I had it restored by Paulman in Huddersfield some 30 years ago, and it remains my Number One to this day.

I hope all goes well Sam and you are able to carry on playing bass.

I do have tats but, as I’m not from Glasgow, I call them moobs! 🤪 In all seriousness, this was a google image. I don’t have any tattoos, and at 58 I think the only meaningful bit of ink now would be my address.

Spot in. This is a recipe for better tattoos all around. I bet most of the “bad” tattoos are created when the customer demands and doesn’t listen to reasons why his/hers idea might not be the best. And it’s the artists job to make it work for both sides. Bad “artists” just do the tattoo anyway without any consideration to the detail/space ratio or the placement of a tattoo. And that’s not even touching of the subject of choosing the right technique for the design. Sadly, these days it’s pretty easy to get a bad tattoo. Especially, if one doesn’t do any research and doesn’t want to spend much money. ”Good tattoos aren’t cheap, cheap tattoos aren’t good”.

Mate of mine went to see Andy FL the other night in Morecambe and was talking to Dave Bronze, telling him I was a fan etc. He gave this to my pal to pass on to me!

Well, got a bit of paint on, first coat, it looks a bit more like a cab now. That Tuff Cab is weird stuff isn't it?! I decided to get some M6 tee nuts and put them on the outside of the cab as there are a few places we play that have old tile or concrete floors that are uneven, and the cabs I have at the moment wobble like mad. If I have them on the outside, I can put a bolt through the foot, a nut on the otherside and screw them into the cab, so I can unscrew them to level it. Anything sound wrong with that as an idea?

Telling someone to get to France? That's really out off line!

You should have told the guy to go stand at the back where it sounds fine!

I prefer the feel of flats (no I don't, I prefer the feel of round wounds!!), I like to feel the texture of the string against my fingers, but prefer the sound of the flats. Damn post made no sense, I meant to type that I prefer the feel of rounds, but the sound of flats. I'll give my fingers a damn good talking to.

Just to revive the thread, Dave was playing a Lakland Jazz (modified bridge?) with Andy FL at Wimborne last night through a MarkBass 18 plus head. He was excellent as always!

Just googled the LaBella Low tension flats and they look very interesting. Think i might try them on my Sandberg VM4 when current strings have worn out in next few weeks. Thanks for pointing them out. Dave

Well quite, I bet they’re a bit heavy for guitar 🎸😂

2 thoroughly enjoyable gigs this weekend. A Halloween birthday party and Wedding. Both very different both excellent with great crowds. Was our drummers first outing with his electric kit so was very different from the usual but sounding great. The punters seemed to love it, as did we 😃

Hi there. Thinking of swapping my super conpact out so i can use the tuner. What color combos can you do? Black and gold does look rather cool though. Also shouldn't you be updating tbe 1 to 3 now

So, gig day for this little venture is now just 4 weeks away and we started rehearsals about two weeks ago. Unknown to me at the time, the keys player shot a cheeky video of our first run through of Hammer To Fall on his phone which was propped up against the side of the PA. The performance was far from perfect, but it gives a good idea of what a thunderous beast the 'Deacy P' bass is. I absolutely love it.

Never used flats before putting Labellas on my Roadworn P. They are lovely👍

Fender flats work for me, around £25 a set, there are cheaper brands on eBay and many recomend Labella which I think are nearer £50 too.

It's a great quality bass - good fit and finish and the EMGs sound great - really punchy. Superb value for money.

There is no animosity between me and our guitarist whatsoever. Really just wondering about the thumb/finger technique. Tried to upload our first rehearsal. I think it sounds OK...thumb thing

The Cort headstock is at least to scale and is quite tasteful. This Bite one looks like this with tuners IMHO.