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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.

Just keep buying more expensive bits of kit; you'll become numb to the guilt eventually.

Here's my latest addition, a 2010 Standard in Lake Placid Blue. I was really lucky with this one. It was bought off eBay so you never know what you're going to get, but the body is almost immaculate (just 2 tiny knocks) and the truss rod works perfectly. There was an issue with the jack when it arrived, but the seller refunded me a few quid off so I went ahead and ordered the obligatory KioGon loom 😁 Mods include the aforementioned KioGon Loom, tort guard, rolled fretboard, fine-sanded neck (now glass smooth) and shim to get the action super low. A deep polish, a fretboard soak in lemon oil and she's as good as new. Plays really nice, sounds really good, looks fantastic. Happy days! 😁

I've gone through the same process of having expensive gear but then finding that I'm just as happy with cheap and cheerful gear. 3 years ago my 4 gigging basses would have cost between £1000 and £1500 new, 3 of which were bought new. Then a wrist injury forced me to move exclusively to short scale basses. A few months of chopping and changing later and I now have 4 short scales that I was gigging before leaving my band a few weeks ago. Of these the cheapest was a used Ibanez that I paid £50 for (and it's a cracking bass in its own right too) and the most expensive was around £600. But my favourite bass at the minute, indeed one of my favourite basses I've ever owned in more than 30 years of playing cost less than £150 new. Admittedly it's had some hardware upgrades and new pots, but even they don't add up to more than another £50 on top. The neck just feels right in my hands, the sound is great, it resonates brilliantly and best of all I found that I wasn't precious about it on more rowdy gigs. This is a bass that gives me as much, if not more, of a buzz than basses costing 10 times as much. And there's an additional satisfaction from playing it and getting disapproving looks from the cork sniffing muso brigade! These days with precision machinery and manufacturing techniques there are some truly fantastic inexpensive basses around, stuff that performs as well as basses costing many times more. Obviously there's still some lower quality basses at the bottom end of the market, but over the years I've played a few duffers with 4 figure price tags too. Which leads me to conclude that the price of a bass is only ever indicative of its cost. Nothing more. There's good and bad at all price points.

I just bought myself one of the Fender Vintera Mustang basses to add to my selection. It's the first short scale instrument I've owned, and it's fun to use. I find myself playing more "busily" than I would on a standard scale length bass. When I got the bass, the Pau Ferro fingerboard looked pretty dry and anaemic. So, Ioosened off the strings and set about dressing the fingerboard. I scraped the board with a single edged razor blade to smooth off any raised grain in the wood, then buffed the board with super fine steel wool. The next stage was to apply lemon oil. This was left on the wood overnight to really soak in to the pores. In the morning I wiped off any excess left over. The end result is a board which now looks dark and lustrous, and feels super smooth to the touch. I've also received a set of medium scale La Bella flatwound strings to use (I got medium scale as short scale strings would only be usable on top loading short scale basses. The Vintera has the traditional "through body" stringing, so needs a slightly longer string length to accommodate this). I've also got a Nordstrand NM4 to use if I want (I mat also fit a couple of solid shaft CTS pots too, and a switch craft jack - just because I have a few unused ones in my "bass bits" stash at home. Oh, and the Hipshot lollipop tuners that come with the Bass are very cool!! Fingerboard - before, and after.

I found back a photo of my original Rybski fretless totally handmade in Poland and dated on the 4th of August 1987...

What kind of attitude is that? This place'd be a wilderness within a week if we all thought like that... 😀

Twerp

Have you thought of setting up a "go fund me " page ? They are very trendy I believe ;you might be able to afford a decent practice amp then. I'd send in a couple of bottle tops and a pack of 51 playing cards to help raise funds......I lost the 7 of clubs down the back of the sofa

'Might have been you'??? F^*£ me, you fold easily under cross examination! 😄 You could ask for a second opinion from @skankdelvar 's lawyer -- but be careful. He sued my mum's bungalow (and contents) off me for 'looking at him in a funny way'. 😬

Flea’s line on ‘sir psycho sexy’ is a tone to chase: and also an honorary mention to the wah solo on ‘Coffee Shop’: and I’ve always been partial to Sleeper’s ‘Sale of the century’

A bad gig is a paid rehearsal at the very least, and if you're part of a band, then a night out with your mates. A good gig is a cool experience as a musician, and if its a paid gig so much the better. Both are better than not doing it.

I started off on the cheap stuff as you do, and as I got older and had more disposable income I acquired expensive gear. All of that’s now gone, and I’m currently using Squier, MIM and self built / modded basses, which I gig regularly. My view is that they’re tools to do a job, and a £300-400 bass will do that job perfectly adequately for me, so that’s all I need.

Carrrrrrrrllllllll.....

The plan was to visit Mark and the boys at Bass Direct to try and buy a US Lakland Jazz they have advertised. That was the plan. What happened was, well, basically my head got turned by a spotless 2011 4003 in my favourite colour scheme and once I plugged it in and heard that Ric "fizz" it was only ever going to finish up one way. The Lakland was lovely but left me feeling completely underwhelmed. It was a gorgeous piece of work and the build quality was superb, but I just didn't feel anything from it. It was (as they say) me, not the Lakland. I need to change the strings but it's a real beauty and fills a gap I didn't know needed filling in my collection. All in all, a worthwhile trip.

Volute anyone?

Dr Mondeaux > Teebs

My blues rock trio are playing at the Bull in Colchester this Friday - first time there. Why not treat 'The Wife' to a romantic night of wailing guitar solos?!

It's been done!

I still think a toilet seat would be nice.

I can't understand this hair shirt mentality of feeling guilty that you have nice things that you actually use. I admit that I have occasionally rolled my eyes when hearing about certain guys who used to be on here who had tens of thousands of pounds of gear, but have only ever played three gigs or so. However, if you are doing two paid gigs a month, then you are certainly justified in owning a few expensive / genuinely nice basses, etc. A bass player who plays with some friends of mine paid nearly £4k for a 4 string Alembic 25 years or so ago. He has gigged it pretty much every month since then, so it certainly doesn't owe him anything. It sounds great and has the added bonus of people like me remembering him as 'the guy with the Alembic', even before I had ever met him! He could have bought something much cheaper, but why should he? He knew that he was always going to get his money's worth from it. If you are going to worry about such things, then don't fall victim of GAS and spend money on gear you are not going to use. But for me, its always worth investing in the best gear you can afford if you are going to use it regularly...

Cheers, we played on Saturday night in London (The Cavendish Arms, nr Vauxhall). Debuted a few new songs including two originals and a couple of covers (Dylan's Dont think twice and Carter family's No Depression) Loving the Mustang still

I sense I'm passed 'peak gear' (famous last words!) helped by being on the Gear Abstinence Challenge 2020! I think gear falls into 2 categories: - stuff we 'use' and that includes both home use or use for gigging; - stuff that we simply enjoy having i.e. 'collectables'; and if these give us pleasure and we can afford it then why not? No different to any other pleasure giving hobbies / pastimes e.g. vinyl records, foreign holidays etc IMO pretty arrogant for gigging bass players, me included, to say that one use, gigging, has more value than another e.g home use, right? I have a couple of collectables that don't get used that much, a Ken Smith and a BBNE2, but I love having them both; and some gear that I have hardly used to date (basically a number of pedals, but a couple of specialist basses in that mix too) with good intentions to get around to using when time permits! Most of my kit I've managed to pick up in very good used condition and should hopefully retain their value. But I know that ALL of my gear gives me immensely more pleasure than cash sitting in a building society account earning virtually no interest. So any guilt? None.

Nope. I've not owned "cheap/beginner/average" gear since I was in my school band and buying gear from the money I made on Saturday and summer jobs. I believe we should always buy the best gear our budget can afford. IMO the price is the least important part of an instrument. Find a good bass, one that feels and sounds better than your current bass, then if the price is right, buy it. I play all my gigs, whatever the money, with a couple of rrp £2500 - £3000 basses and I don't see anything odd or wrong in doing that. If my budget fell off a cliff I'd carry on with a Sire, Squier etc, but there's no bragging points in cheap or expensive basses. You just need to play the best one for you. The one that makes you sound as good as you can be.

For me it's a no. My Shuker's were custom made for me, so when I play anything else it doesn't feel the same or as good. I bought them to play so I gig them regardless of the gig

Very sorry to hear this sad news. I was never particularly a Budgie fan, but well aware of the bands and musicians they influenced. I was playing an open mic night in Cardiff a couple of years back, with a singer-guitarist pal and our mate who's a drummer It went pretty well, and our singer went & sat down next to an old bloke sat watching us, started chatting away. Turns out, it was Burke, and I hadn't recognised him He said "well played lads" "Really enjoyed your mini set". We had a chat, and our guitarist had actually played with him several times before Burke was a really decent sort of guy - not at all a sufferer of "rock star syndrome", no sense of self importance or ego Hope he carries on for as long as possible - really hope he can get chance to record those unheard Budgie songs

If that were James Jamersons Bass there would be a lot of people banging on about how “the gunk makes the funk”.

I've been fancying doing something different for a while ever since seeing the thread on the headless T-bird that didn't get off the ground. I managed to get hold of a very cheap new Paulownia Explorer body off the bay, I know that's probably not everyone's cup of tea but it was only £25. I had a pair of Warman humbuckers that were bought for a different project so decided to use these. Paulownia isn't a very chisel friendly wood and as I don't own a router that had to be the chosen route, the pups fit that's all that matters. I had bought some time ago a Jackson alike neck from Tommo Richards off here so decided to chop its head off and go headless (I've a headless flying vee). Ebay provided the cheap (limited budget) hardware and now its all systems go. Its in its mock up stages now and needs some relief behind the bridges but it's coming along, John (KiOgon) has provided a pair of on off switches for the pickups that will be rear mounted and hopefully it will be getting a blowtorch finish. Enough babble here's the progress pics.

TL;DR -- we had a power cut but managed it anyway. As per my status update, I was in the studio with Train To Skaville this weekend. Set-up on Saturday afternoon, recording Sat evening and all day yesterday. Or at least, that was the plan. The idea was to record 3 takes of each song 'live' as a band and patch up or cut/paste any hiccups after. We put 3 songs in the can on Saturday evening and had another 12 planned for Sunday. All was going well and we were blasting through take 2 of Rancid's "Time Bomb" when Ciara put the lights out... We waited for a while -- "anyone want tea while we w... oh boIIocks" -- until a google revealed that half of Wiltshire was fecked and we were looking at probably a 6 hour wait. Hold on, says Gil the keys, I know a bloke who hires generators... could we make that work? A quick scout around the control room and some fag packet work and yeah, if we just plug in the bare bones of what we need and forget most of the rack gear then why not? Jim from Powerline turns up with his trailer genny and ten miles of electric spaghetti, and much plugging and trailing and swearing and we're back in business. We finished all the songs as planned, a bit later than planned but with a sense of triumph in the face of adversity. What a TOTALLY BRILLIANT weekend. Here's engineer-producer Steve in the moodily-lit control room. The live room wasn't much brighter

From 1974, Alphonso Johnson has a bit of a wah noodle on this (excellent) track from around 2:20... If you can listen to this without tapping a foot and/or nodding along then there really is something amiss!

I have some expensive basses, which I bought partly because Of GAS and partly because, if I buy them secondhand, it's a better investment than just parking the money in the bank. I'm always aware that I'm playing some very nice basses, in some pretty unsalubrious, establishments. But the only time somebody accused me of overkill with my choice of instrument, was when somebody accused me of playing a Pino Pallidino, Signature Precision, at a gig where we were being paid via a pass around bucket (I was actually playing a Classic Vibe Squier ).

No, it wasn't his first bass. Here is the answer of the man himself after having seen the photo : "Hey Tony, thanks a lot!!! You made my day. That's a very early work of mine but not one of the first ones. I build it for Tomek at the time he was a member of Polish fuzzion band "Set Off" Wow again it brought some of the best memories of my life. Thanks again!!! Cheers from Nashville Tennessee Rybski"

I find myself in something of a dichotomy over this. I guess I am in a fortunate position in that I don't have to worry about what I spend on gear - generally speaking, if I want something I will buy it. But I am also a dyed in the wool tightwad and do sometimes reflect upon the cost of stuff. I'll spend good money on something if I think it is worth it but not for the sake of it. I wanted a decent lightweight 5 string Precision bass and found that my best realistic chance of one was to get a Maruszczyk Jake 5 made to my specs which, at £1500, is the most I have paid for a bass. I believe that is fantastic value as it is a corker. But I also have a MM Sterling 5 that sits in the case as backup, modded so that it sounds just like the Jake. It occured to me that this was a lot of bass hanging around doing nothing so after tussling with my inner tightwad over this for a few years I have now bought a cheaper 5 string that can sit in its case as my 'get out of jail free' bass and am currently getting the Sterling 5 put back to stock to sell it. That should release a few hundred pounds back into my account. No doubt to fuel more spuriously necessary purchases.

Ah, sad news. I've always loved Budgie. So glad I got to see them a few times with the revolving door of guitar players they had toward the end! It's comforting to read him taking it so calmly. And that's quite a magnificent beard he's got himself.

Paul McCartney. I even was looking at Wal, a Ricky and a Hofner as my first bass... although they were obviously beyond my means as a youngster. (Although when I did have the opportunity to buy a new Wal I didn't as they just didn't appeal in the same way... wish I'd bought one though, I think the quotation I got back from Electric Wood was about a grand). Anyway, Macca is a great person to learn from - especially if you follow through the albums. I progressed like he did I guess... from Love Me Do... through to things like Penny Lane. I bought the big white book that has got the whole Beatles catalogue (from the original albums at least), fully scored and learned pretty much all my basics from that. As for bass players now, I don't really have any heros as such... I just like what I like, picking and choosing bits from different players to build my own style I guess.

I've had bouts of this over the years, and now have got over it (I think!). Was happily settled on using Musicman basses for ever when an accident made using lighter instruments a necessity. Kept a couple of MM's for a while, but ended up selling them as knew I'd never be able to use them in anger again. Still got my 63 Precision which is reasonably light but don't use it much, as the gigs I do mean that I can't keep an eye on it all the time - so there will always be a bit of guilt there I think. I do like guitars as well, and have a fair few tasty instruments which will rarely see the light of day but any guilt is offset by the pleasure I get from owning them and noodling at home. As I don't have any other expensive pleasures then I'm damned if they're going to be guilty ones. 😄

People who can't focus. So if you've got a good thing going on a particular style of music they gave a billion suggestions "this Django Rheinhardt track will be amazing, then what about this by Slipknot? And playing Disco inferno straight after will bring the house down!!" for a blues band... People who are over enthusiastic, just in the process of dodging this particular bullet... The guy who has every bit of kit, owns 12 guitars, keyboards, has the recording software, can trigger samples if we all chip in hundreds to buy the kit and he takes a week off work to program it, but can't keep time or play basic parts on chosen instrument, thinks their vocals are "OK" but mails round a sample of an entire song that would make a cat jump out a window and not land on its feet

Are these powered? I assume not, as powered don't specify impedance. If that's the case you can't link the tops and subs, you have to separately power them, using an electronic crossover to send the lows to the subs amp, the rest to the tops amp. Also, be aware the the way you see 99 out of 100 bands set up their PA, with the mains above the subs. is incorrect. The mains should be pole mounted to the front left and front right, the subs placed together, preferably next to a wall to one side.

Agreed I tried a bit harder....

Frets on and I flippin love it! 🙂 Thank you very much Bass Gallery Martin! Apparently it was fretted to start with anyway.

Band member spouses/partners/mates at auditions. Nothing good ever comes of these things. Mega no-no.

I move the following motion: That any band follower or random 'friend' who sits in on rehearsals be henceforth referred to as a 'Carl', this irrespective of their gender. Example: 'There this Carl who keeps turning up every week. She's quite cute but between every f*cking song she asks us if she can get us some tea from the machine and frankly it's a bit off-putting'.

Just spoke to Dave, to make sure I understood what the situation was. "Carl has always been sort of associated with the band, without ever playing with us. We were simply trying to help out a good friend", he said. I asked if Carl would be at future rehearsals. "He may well be - he's a good friend of ours. He sits at the back and doesn't usually say anything. Is that a problem?". Not really the answers I was wanting to hear. I wouldn't want Carl to be at rehearsal, but the band can't quite see that. I can't think of any other band I've been in that starts with me stipulating who can/can't be at rehearsal. And, furthermore, what happens if he does turn up? I flounce off?! I said to Dave that I don't think the whole situation was handled well and that, on reflection, this isn't the right band for me long-term. I've offered to dep for them while they keep looking for a permanent bassist. "So, will you be OK attending our regular rehearsals?" asks Dave. "No", I said.

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?