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Hey gang! A couple of years ago I played two shows at Newcastle Arena, as part of the house band for Sunday for Sammy. It was lots of fun - two sell out shows of 5,000 each, and I got to play with the likes of Trevor Horn and Ralph McTell. Here's the last diary thread if you're interested. With it being a biennial thing, the time has come around again: 23rd February is the date - afternoon and evening shows, and a slightly larger crowd (7,000 at each show, I think). The shows have basically become a Tyneside equivalent of the Royal Command Performance, with music and comedy lots of local slebs (the Auf Wiedershehen Pet cast, etc.), visits from AC/DC's Brian Johnson, Mark Knopfler amongst others, and more 'national' faces (hence Trevor Horn, Ralph McTell). This is the 10th show in 20 years, and the second to be held at the Arena after 16 years at Newcastle City Hall. It's a HUGE production, which is also shot for DVD release. By nature of the show, plans can be a bit liquid which means it can get interesting, so I'm going to post a diary sort-of thing here as it all unfolds. To complicate things, the line-up is top secret until the last minute so I can't post any details of the show, songs, or names of guests. Apologies in advance. The core band for 2020 is largely the same as 2018 - Bass, drums, guitar (John Ashton, who worked with Arctic Monkeys and The Last Shadow Puppets), 3x female BVs (Including Lorraine Crosby, who duetted with Meat Loaf on 'I'd Do Anything for Love', brass section (headed up by John Waugh from The 1975). One change to the line-up is that Jamie, the usual keys player and MD, isn't available so Alan Clark (Dire Straits) is taking the reins. The band don't exist outside of these shows - I play with the drummer and other sax player occasionally, but that's it. With 3 weeks to go, I'm aware of 13 songs that are in the frame, in keys that are subject to change. I've familiarised myself with them already - some I knew, some I didn't. No nightmares so far. One of the tunes might even need a bit of slap on it. I'd better remind myself how to do that. What I don't know is any specific arrangements... yet. We've got a solid week of band rehearsals before the show, so I'll post more updates & pics etc. when it begins to happen. In the meantime, here's little video from the last gig, and a photo of my little bit of the stage.

New Bass Ukulele Day!!! 😎 For my birthday this year (which was actually the 2nd of January delivery from China combined with hold ups at customs has delayed this a bit) my lovely wife has generously bought me this wee beasty. It's a Musoo MiNi 5 string solid body electric bass ukulele that she purchased through Amazon. She actually ordered the bolt on version but they had run out of stock so the supplier offered a free upgrade to the neck through model (about £50 difference) - thank you very much! I'm having a lot of fun with it so far. I even took it to work with me this morning to play in the car on my lunch break (with a headphone amp plugged into the car stereo). It's not without its flaws as you might expect from a budget, Chinese made instrument (the fret ends were literally like razor blades before I filed them down - five minutes of playing after I first unpacked it and my left hand was like raw hamburger 😣). After sorting that though I'm actually very impressed. Lovely smooth satin finish on the neck, a comfortable profile and the intonation is surprisingly spot on too. It's very quiet acoustically (which is actually an advantage as it doesn't annoy my wife too much) but sounds really good plugged in and there's a decent range of tones to be had from the 3 band eq.

Played a gig in Saaaaaaafend a few years back and the venue had a drum riser that wasn't quite big enough for our drummers kit, during the first song one of his cymbal stands fell and the cymbal edge guillotined straight through the master stage power cable and shorted out the entire venue! The power running through said cable must have been pretty immense as the edge of his cymbal (A fairly thick Sabian AAX I seem to remember) looked like someone had taken an arc-welder to it. Proper smelted!

My tribute to one of the greatest bass players of all time in one of his most beautiful and technical basslines. Hope you like it! https://youtu.be/vouzfGzXaOw

Slade dummer Don Powell departs Dave Hill's Slade, starts Don Powell's Slade https://www.loudersound.com/news/slade-dummer-don-powell-departs-dave-hills-slade-starts-don-powells-slade

Just a quick pic of my new (2016) VM4. Loving it!

Amps....? Cabs.....? Nah can't remember them.

I would also pop a screengrab of the email on the Ibanez UK page - that's a big claim to make regarding Ibanez' QC and would be interesting to see what they make of it https://www.facebook.com/ibanezuk/

3 pages and not mention of Bootsy Collins ! Have we been taking too much sugar ? Fixed !

Bit more progress on my build.... Ready for the edges to be sanded flush and then rounded over. Rebated handle with backing/damping behind. Ditto for the back connection panel

Sting, obviously. One of the most irritating people on the entire planet.

The almighty Lemmy, of course. No need for a picture. If you don't know him, you know nothing about bass. Period.

I love that this was edited by one of the mods As a flag waving, T-shirt wearing techy I'll bite. Mic that rig up and pump it through a really good Class D, Neo speakered, festival sized PA rig and it'd sound just as good. So it isn't class D or lightweight neo speakers, it is something else. I'll tell you my theory, in the olden days speakers and amps were designed to enhance your bass sound (guitar sound even more so but this is Basschat) They didn't need to be clean and undistorted they just had to sound good. People built cabs and tried them out with bass and the ones that sounded best or most popular got made and sold. Theory wasn't really worked out until the 70's and didn't get through to instrument amp design until much later. The truth is we don't much like uncoloured sound for bass and most of us aren't very good at finding the eq to achieve it so a nice old Trace that gives us the Trace sound sounds better to us than our own attempts to recreate it. The second thing is that we like things that are loud, too loud to be sensible but there is joy in just cranking up an old monolith of a speaker with an amp with the frequency response curve of the Cairngorms. Sensibly we'd scrap the backline, use in-ears or at least floor monitors and let the PA do it's job but for some that's no fun. There's also a lot of self delusion, I used to have fun in my old rear wheel drive cars with cross ply tyres sliding round bends double declutching because the synchromesh was rubbish but I can't really pretend those cars were 'better' than those I drive now. One day soon the computer modelling will be so good we won't be able to tell the difference but that is still a little way away. Until then if you love an old Peavey stack and don't mind shifting it then the important thing isn't technical perfection so go for it and enjoy.

I must have done this one on these pages before but I once spent a frantic five minutes at the start of a set with no sound coming from my amp or the PA. Frontman had to make awkward banter whilst I checked everything. Amp on, bass on full, everything connected up, sound man on stage, he checks everything, still nothing..., drummer comes over and investigates too, still nothing... guy at the front of the crowd enquires as to whether a cable is required between my bass and amp... 🤦‍♂️

I thought I'd start a thread for people to admit their, hopefully humorous, bass face-palm moments. This is inspired by what I did last night. I got my acoustic bass guitar out of its bag ready for a rehearsal today - prior to an unplugged gig we've got in March. The strings felt like they needed a bit of a clean. So, I said to the wife, "Have we any isopropyl alcohol anywhere?" She replied, "No, but you can use some of my vodka if you want". Five minutes later I go back to the room where she's watching television. "The good news is; it doesn't leave a stain and evoporates quickly". I'd only gone and knocked the open bottle over and most of it poured over the table and on to the floor. An extra Norman Wisdom touch was that next doors' dog was with me. I give her respite from their teething toddler. Being part Laborador she moves like stinky poo off a shovel if there's any hint of food or drink. I reckon she got a couple of generous doubles before I restrained her. Problem is, she'll expect that every time now and sit by the booze cupboard howling. The bass strings now feel much better though.

It's the different factories that made them. MIJ Fenders & Squiers were originally made by Fujigen Gakki, who, as I understand it, have exclusive use of "Made In Japan" on their Fender products. CIJs were sourced from at least two other factories, Dyna Gakki and Tokai Gakki. I think MIJs largely stopped in the late 90s, so most recent Japanese Fenders will have been CIJ, with as far as I know, an occasional MIJ/Fujigen batch from time to time. There's not any quality differentiation between the factories. This was the case while Fender Japan was operated by Kanda Shokai/Yamano Gakki, I know that relationship came to an end a few years ago, but I don't know who's responsible for current Japanese Fenders.

I hope you will let them know that.

Are you sure you wouldn't rather be having beer spilt on you at a half full Dog & Duck while pished up punters fall into the PA speakers?

I think you should call them. Ibanez are distributed in the Uk by Headstock distribution and their contact number is: 0121 508 6666

I went from HH guitar head to Cobra 90, because I could not afford a Trace Elliot and Carlsbro had a good reputation for bass gear back in the day. Put it through a Laney 4x10 and was very happy. To be honest I didn't know or care about the gearhead side of things until Basstalk or whatever this place was called then. Now I know exactly why the basses I like are crap, the amps and cabs I love are rubbush, the strings I prefer are garbage and my taste in effects is risible. Which is nice.

Ms E Spalding

Taxi... Just some proud dad photos of #16 finished. Big thanks to Stevie, Phil, Chienmortbb and all involved in the design. Also thanks to funkle and all the other posters on this thread enabling me to actually have some idea how to build it! My build was pretty much as described. Finished with 4 coats of Tuffcab pro, Grille background is 3 coats of Fascinating Finishes Aerosol Grey Acid Etch primer. Final weight came out at 14.5kg per the bathroom scales. Artwork for the grille courtesy of my 11 year old daughter.

They are great , this is another i really like 🙂

I feel your pain but would let it go, it’s a very long time since eBay feedback meant anything because no matter how dishonest/crap/rude you have been, you can always get a negative feedback removed. As a business eBay want to keep the money moving, and too much negative feedback slows things down and lowers sale prices. There are better ways to spend your time than fighting a losing battle with them.

Folks on the gear page reckon Early MIJ = export to USA Early CIJ = only for Japanese market https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/cij-vs-mij-whats-the-difference.113300/

I should really get around to contributing to this thread being a bit of a reggaemon but i have been running on a Jamaican time frame, 😂....better irie than never My old reggae covers band has recently reformed, new singer (female), new horns (forgot how loud trombonists are). Very early days, 4 rehearsals so far and around 10 tunes......oddly mostly ska at this stage. I've played various reggae esq music between 2008-2015 from covers of the usual classics and also not so well known, a bit of 50/60's trad ska with a jazz flavour, bit of two tone ska depping for Too hot, heavy loud UK Roots dub being the live backing band for our friend Daddy Teacha who's worked with Vibronics, Iration Steppas, and Alpha & Omega among many, and also providing billions of classic riddims for our Jamaican friend 'Goldman' and his live Tiger style sets...20 seconds of a riddim, 'pull upppppppp'.... next riddim followed by Sleng Teng for two hours (ad nauseum).....long set list with songs lasting the average length of a Napalm death song! Then had 4 years off doing soul/funktion band stuff and a bit of grunge rock to play a bit of my youth.....but now back to the vibe i love ......the sweet reggae.....here is a nice tune we're nicking for the set, we'll do a version of a version of a version...simple B line but the sum of the parts are very nice:

Ouch

Arturo Bassick, so cool he even has Bass in his surname!

Yep, as I've mentioned on other threads, I use one every week to DI into the PA so I don't have to lug or risk inebriated idiots punters resting / spilling drinks on top of my amp. As Bilbo says, it's sensitive & takes a little fine-tuning, but sounds ace once you've tweaked it to suit. Also works very well with the Eden Glowplug pedal, which has a 12AX7 valve to 'warm up' the tone. ( @lozkerr has one of these too). Recommended

Er ... Roger Waters?

Aaron Beam of Red Fang....plus their videos are normally pretty amazing!

Oben thor :

Fir those who use lemon oil to clean / nourish your rosewood and ebony fingerboards, you know how a small 1oz bottle of lemon oil polish from Dunlop is around £5-6? Well, you can get a 16oz bottle from TK Maxx for £5.99!! Bargain or what??? I've just grabbed a bottle from my local branch.

Fernanda Lira from Nervosa 🤘

Reggae jazz bass, and rig😎

Its me : Dave !

Record producing, song writing, sometime lead singing bass player and all around superstar. . . . Willie Dixon

I was tempted to order, but I really want to try it first. I find it very odd that GAK have them in stock, whereas all the other companies are showing stock not due until the end of Feb or the beginning of March. Very odd, as in I don't believe it.

I beat the profanity filter!

No, this is what a Jazz sounds like: 🤩

Tina!

Sometimes I forget to breathe. But never for too long, obviously. So far.....

Been saying it for ages - class D just doesn't compete with your vintage A/B...