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In shocking news, the 72 year-old muso fails to trash his own legacy but instead emerges triumphant. F**k me, he can still sing.

I have replies to remarks of the sort, but the cuss filter would likely remove them. Being a Mod doesn't stop me having an opinion, nor from posting comment, 'humorous' or otherwise. Lighten up, lad; lighten up.

Hi folks, Had a Gumtree alert on my phone whilst practising last Sunday. Vintage brand Stingray active bass copy for £160. Looked good. ( You know how it is... I had bought a Fender Champion 100 twin amp the week before from a Gumtree ad, so once they have your number, they send you similar flavour ads). Fine by me, Contacted the guy, and he's only a few miles down the road...makes it easier for me to nip out, do the deal and sneak it past Wifey. It's a no brainer! Or so I thought. Wifey taps me on the shoulder, "Col, I need the car to take the grandkids out". Plan B. Need to wheel out my 100cc scooter once she drives off. Just hope I can carry the axe on two wheels. Challenge on. Coast clear and I whizz over to the sellers village. Pull over at the village pub and phone for closer directions. I ask him " I don't wish to offend, but d'you mind if I wear a mask?" " No probs bud". Next I am knocking on his door, he answers and hands me the bass, he is wearing rubber gloves. The bass looks great, still got the sellophane on the pickguard... but I need to play it. Then the guy says " d'you mind if you stay outside and I wheel an amp over to the porch?' " Course not mate, pays to be careful" Next thing he wheels over a Marshall stack as tall as me, and throws a cable over the top. So here I am standing in his front garden hooked up to this powerhouse of an amp. His neighbours are tending their lawns, washing their cars, kids riding bikes etc. Perfect urban summer scene about to be ripped apart by yours truly. (I have snuck the volume of this 300w Goliath up to five. Bit of Beatles "come together" riff followed by Sniff and the tears "driver's seat". Then distort on full treble for The Stranglers "Down in the sewer" for some real dirt. All the birds have fled the trees. Somewhere a baby is crying, and many dogs are barking... People are staring at me...think it's time to stop. " I'll take it mate" I hand it back and pay up, he returns it clad in bin liners. He says smiling " I recognised "come together, I'm a real Beatles fan". I would have liked to chatted to him for longer as I love all things Beatles too, but I need to stow this axe before Wifey gets home. Manage to balance it ok between my knees on the scooter, but to my horror the car is outside our house. Luckily the garage door is up, so I ride straight in and stow my booty. Just need to wait for her to shower later and I can retrieve my new bass and get it in the rack. Mission accomplished, but it was my wierdest buying experience ever. Good to know that other discerning folks are respecting the covid restrictions seriously though. Cheers Col.

So I decided that even though I build for fun/hobby, I want to be able to add a logo to my instruments. I think it looks cool, it gives "identity" to my builds and it helps people see what I did and did not build/mod. So a crash course in Inkscape further and I came up with this: Infinite Bass, clearly a take on the Bass Cleff and the Infinity sign. Will be adding the logo to all basses from now on, starting wth the fretless and shortscale basses I built earlier this year, and also on the Modern 5 I am doing now. Not really a build diary, but I still wanted to share

This week is in between two sessions of family commitments so I am trying to get it to final finish stages so that it can be hardening off ready for final polishing while I'm distracted again next week. Spent a fair bit of time sorting the neck angle to get the action right. This included a number of email discussions with P as I'm not familiar with the string tensions on a bouzouki which affects both the pull on the neck but also on the bridge. I also have experimented a bit with a set of phosphor bronze strings - which I would usually fit to an acoustic - and a set of nickel wound strings which P usually fits to his other bouzouki - and both have different tensions which then changes that pull. It's another clamber up the learning curve on this build! But it's close - it has a decent action, everything appears to be stable and sounds great. I'll finalise everything when I've levelled and re-crowned the frets over the next couple of days. I also fitted the side dots. I've fitted Luminlay dots - not because P necessarily needs their soft glow-in-the-dark ability, but because their black-sleeved dots really set things off - especially when you have that black/white/black demarcation line. Here's one going in: And here they are after trimming and a quick scrape. See what I mean about that black surround? : And lastly for today, I got two of the strings moved across to correct my calculation error in terms of the gaps between two of the pairs of strings. This entailed plugging two of the holes with a pair of bridge pins with their tops taken off and then re-drilling 1.2mm further over and re-tapering: So tomorrow is finishing the heel carve, fitting the heel cap and final neck sanding. If I get time, I'll also level and re-crown the frets and sort a truss-rod cover. Then the neck finishing can start

I'd love to see some adverts from some of the big amp companies showing complete nobodies. I think it would be a great marketing move. "This is Dave, he's just like you. Down the dog and duck. He doesn't play Wembley. He's playing through a sensible, appropriate setup - and sounds great because of it." - And Dave didn't go with whoever would give him some gear for free or a big discount.

For those of you who are interested in the outcome we chose candidate #1 after a second audition. Much less nervous this time and he has a better feel for the songs. #2 was again technically very good but #1 edged it on presence and getting a good tone from a studio amp.

My current rehearsal room rig. 2 Acoustic 370 amps and 2 408 (4x15) cabs.

I have been making short little vids recently of my processes and tooling i built this compound radius jig recently to speed up making necks , by spending a little time on making pattern followers it will will reproduce a neck the same every time VID-20200812-WA0000.mp4

True, but you CAN hide a lot of mistakes that way. 🤨

Sound is all about the brain interpreting vibration. It doesn't matter how it got there.

It's going to take a while to get the bass up to London from Taunton (with enormous and very generous assistance from those West Country twins @Woodinblack and @stewblack) so in the meantime here are the photos that the vendor sent me. I was very taken with the beautiful Hofner Senator leaning against a complete Vox T60 + matching cab. Turns out he bought them all new in 1963 ... Don't yet understand the two strap buttons, but I'm sure I will. Note that the finish is completely rattan-proof. This is not actually the first bass that I've owned with eight tuners. Unlined board ... mmmmmmmmmmmm. No, I don't know where or how I'm going to hang this thing either. The Case Of Doom. That makes me want to take a nap.

I think that you might be confusing intervals with scale degrees. Intervals simply describe the distance between two notes whereas scale degrees are relative to the tonic (root) — an E in a C scale/chord will always be the 3rd degree but the distance between E - C (ascending) is a minor 6th. A good trick for realising the inversion of an interval is to subtract the interval from 9, i.e. the inversion of a 6th is a 3rd, the inversion of a 7th is a 2nd etc. Also, a major interval will become minor once inverted and vice a versa (except for 4th's/5th's which are perfect).

I play pubs and clubs. The idea of turning up at the Dog & Duck and saying, "I didn't bother to bring any backline, where's the venue's PA and sound guy?" is so preposterous that there's really no need to take the subject any further. Like everything else in music (and most things in life), it's horses for courses. If you only play big, well-organised gigs with excellent PAs, experienced sound guys, and superb monitoring, the why would you bother to haul around a valve head plus a 410? That's not a good description of my musical life.

https://www.tribeguitars.store/shob-signature-active

It's this little thing - I use an Android tablet for all my setlists, chord charts and sheet music. My software of choice for reading dots is Mobile Sheets Pro. I have no complaints, but turning the page or setting automatic scroll can be a pain. These two little pedals, once paired and connected via Bluetooth, allow me to flip that page with my toes! I am so happy it's embarrassing.

I mixed for him once at the Watchfield festival. With musicians as good as that it's the easiest job in the world. He's a total gentleman too.

A bit of faffing around reveals the 2020 version runs at 140 BPM whereas the original release is allegedly 148 BPM. Which goes someway to explaining why I thought 'Is this a bit slow?' when I first heard it. Also, checking out the waveforms reveals the bass is just microscopically behind the beat for the intro but subsequently settles down. This performance isn't maybe quite as driving as the original but (IMO) once it gets going it grooves like a motherf**ker.

I don't think any flats will give you the cut of roundwounds, but the supple tone of Thomastik Jazz flats is the closest I have found to what you are describing. To me ,they are the flats that a devoted roundwound player could learn to love. I certainly have. They're much more articulate than traditional-sounding flats, and have a low tension-feel to them like you want. They've got a really nice rubbery midrange to them that is very pleasing to the ear. You could play dub reggae on them or heavy rock and they will give you a great rendition of some classic tones . Very versatile and thoroughly recommended.

My corner in the rehearsal room: Musicman HD130 & Ampeg Isovent Sunn 200s & Acoustic 301 RW O))) (200s replica) & Musicman 1x15 / EV 1x15

Bargain! I've still got the Dunlop flats on it and I'm liking them very much. I've also got some Newtone nickels on the way to try. With the flats.... (Yes it's not the original arrangement!!). It's a little quiet as I have no idea what I'm doing with video. It was a longer clip but the postman rang the bell so I had to cut it.

Just snagged one on eBay for £230. Excited.

So anyway ... I bought it. Now, where's my supertanker?

What could possibly be more important than winding up guitarists?

Ah so that's how he gets such a warm tone.

For bands doing pubs, clubs and the occasional party I'm not convinced backline amps will be disappearing all that soon where I'm from. It relies on someone in the band owning a PA that will take everything in the band, shared ownership is fraught with problems. In ears maybe ok for actual monitoring, but for out front in the venues I've mostly played the PA will only take vocal so you have to have your own amp. I don't know of any band around my way that has gone down the IEM route.

UPDATE: Ordred yesters at about half eleven... Arrived today! So looks like they aim to get letter size jiffys out in time for the afternoon post collection. Plastic Washers are proper 'All Parts' items, not some ill fitting odd thing and for less than some eBay stuff. Recommend Chas @ CDGuitars... Good price 'n great service...

I don’t mind a bit of fan noise. Not that we have many fans if I’m honest, but a ripple of warm applause is quite encouraging.

I like this. A sweet little bass line from John Giblin from the 1981 Phil Collins album 'Face Value'. The tune is called 'I'm Not Moving' and is only about 2:30 long. The bass line is absolutely perfect for the song and is full of humour. https://bilbosbassbites.co.uk/im-not-moving-phil-collins/

One high spot of my music career- the band I was in went on stage after the Spencer Davis Group in Nottingham in the 60s. (Err, but approx 24 hours after - they had been there the previous night.......😇)

I used to love playing this in a band with a real Hammond. There’s that magic moment when the keys come in. I could play that bassline all night just for that moment.

That was a top quality day out! Getting to see Santana and Clapton with my Dad was pretty special 😁

I was listening to Let There Be Rock and it occurred to me that it is one of the rarest of things. The perfect album. Each successive track sounded like the best song on the album. So I contacted a guy I know who plays like Angus and sings like Bon and said how about it? I have recruited an unfussy drummer and a guitarist who is strictly rhythm - he doesn't want to make it cry or sing. We're learning (separately) all of LTBR and Powerage (the high points in their career for me) and are going to put on a gig when the bug passes. Just for fun, like.

No work for me at present so playing with different rigs as I plod on trying to learn new tricks. This compact but fierce little rig is an Elf on a 2x8 on a 1x12. Light, bijoux and loud.

Nope. I love it. OK, it’s not difficult but I love the way it drives the song. It’s only boring if you’re bored.

I thought as much. It sounds like the bass is breathing. It is bloody marvellous.