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Idle 5 Mins, Quick Gumtree search - 'Bass Guitar, 15 Miles, Low to High'... Ibanez GSR200 - Got one of them... Don't need another... Black - Yours is Walnut Brown with Flats for Fingers... 'Rock' Black - Could use them Dunlop Lemmy Roundwounds, ya took of when puttin' the Flats on, Shame to waste a £25 set of strings...What and have this one for Playin' with a Pick?... What a great idea... 8 Miles - That's Local... £60 - Cheap, Don't need it... but I wonder if they'll take a cheaky offer of £50?... Oh! They would! GAS : Collect Tommorow - Fingers Crossed...

NBD! Warwick Thumb NT 5 from 1995 with wenge neck & 18V 3-band MEC preamp.

Well, it was in 2011 that due to a relationship breakdown and mid-life crisis I decided to learn to play the bass aged 53. Since then I have been on an amazing musical journey. I make no apologies for using the cheesy old word 'journey', because that is what it has been! I booked in for lessons with a wonderful teacher called Mark Shilvock who inspired and encouraged me from day 1. Within 6 months I had joined my first (dreadful!) band. Since then I have been through various bands, and jammed at open mics and blues clubs with varying degrees of success. Kept my eyes and ears open for any opportunity and never said no to anything. For example, I played in a rather dubious Rolling Stones covers band for a while, but this got me an invitation to dep with a somewhat better Stones trib band that actually went out for money!! So when I retired from my day job in 2018, I spent the whole of that summer playing with the Stones trib band and earning a bit of cash to substitute my meagre pension. Meanwhile also playing for another band that did early 60's covers and occasionally did the odd wedding or retirement home gig (prefect demographic for what we did). Just before lockdown I had been invited to join another band that did mainly originals. This was a bit of a departure for me. We did a couple of small, unpaid gigs and then lockdown struck. I felt very discouraged for a while and didn't touch my bass for months. The only positive thing about this was that the mild arthritis in my hands vastly improved and various pains and strange lumps on my knuckles disappeared! Anyway, due to the persistence of the band leader of the originals band, I resumed practising and now we are booked in to do some recording in the first week of June. This will be a new experience for me. I'm really looking forward to it, and not as nervous as I might have been a couple of years ago. With all that has happened over the past year, I realise it's not worth worrying what the sound engineer might think of you, even if he did play with a famous band before they were famous 🙂 And of course I am so glad I joined Basschat as soon as I started learning bass. I have met so many inspiring and helpful people at bass bashes and the London Bass Guitar Show. And interacted with helpful and humourous people on here that I have never met IRL. I couldn't possibly thank them all as the list would be too long and I'd be bound to miss out someone important. So just to name check two. KevB, my 'bass mentor', who has become a genuine friend. And the late lamented BarneyG43 - lovely Colin who is no longer with us, but who was always encouraging, a great bass player and a huge personality. Finally, to anyone starting out, whatever their age, I would just say - stick with it, you are in for a hell of a ride!! 🙂

My idea of double thumbing is much more fun 🙂

I've been meaning to post my own tale of woe for some time now - so I was about to post to Jakester's thread but ended up venting at too much length... Didn't want to thread-jack so please forgive the possibly unnecessary new topic. I joined an originals band about three or four years ago which until that point had been a keys/gtr/vocal doing a small number of originals and classy covers that were facilitated by the singer's excellent voice. Things were going really well - I knew a few low level promoters and local radio folks so we managed to get some ok gigs and coverage and we had lots of new songs coming through, turning us into a 99% originals band. A couple of us worked tirelessly to get radio play, social media traction and gigs despite an ever changing mission statement from the singer: "I'm sick of doing sh!tty support gigs" one week but then "I want to do a load of pub gigs locally" the next... a period of "I just want to go out and do some solo slots at open mics"... followed by "I don't want to do gigs at all" the next month. We booked some studio time and put down five songs, although it took two years to actually get three of them "released" on Spotify etc - which should have been a warning sign in itself, in retrospect. In the year prior to lockdown the singer's output dropped considerably and so we went from her bringing in chords, lyrics and melodies for each song to band members working up sketches which she would put words and melodies on top of. We got some great songs out of this process and did some more recording. We're lucky to have access to a nice sounding room and I've got loads of recording gear so we took over the drummer's house for a weekend and got another clutch of recordings in the bag. I ended up doing endless mixes of two of these tracks - interminable back and forth finessing things until we eventually put one of them out. Within days, the singer sent a message out to say that she didn't really like this song and that she "couldn't really get behind it" - you can imagine how this sat with me after the hours of work I'd put in, similarly the guitarist, who'd put a video together for it and who had worked with me submitting it to all the usual radio shows, blogs and other places your average, bottom-of-the-ladder indie band has to plumb. Of note, this song was the first of our releases to have a joint writing credit. We, at length, managed to get over this blip and started working up songs in rehearsal. After spending a few sessions on a new one and having it ready to record, we were again told "I can't really get behind this one" - again, a song that had begun as band composition. This caused major ructions and as we were already into lockdown at this point most communication was taking place via texts and group chats. I had my suspicions about this being related to the singer perceiving a loss of her status as sole songwriter and indeed she sent us some messages about being uncomfortable with our creative process and with collaboration being difficult for her as she "received her songs from the ether" - seemingly unaware of the masses of work we all put into crafting her contributions into finished songs. But at the same time she was at pains to point out that we were not just a backing band - without being able to clarify how this curious creative relationship could go forward. The drummer managed to get us all to agree to a meeting to get things straightened out. Within hours, the singer sent a message "dissolving this iteration of the band" and explaining that she wanted to keep the band name for herself and that she expected to be able to use all the songs and material recorded thus far on her Spotify and social media accounts. I balked at this latter point and made it clear that any songs or recordings I'd contributed to were off-limits. I felt quite bad about this at the time but over the following 6 months it has proven to be a shrewd move. The three of us immediately decided to continue as a new band and in looking at the contributions that we'd had rejected and even some of the finished songs, realized that we had a decent clutch of music that we'd actually written without the singer's input and have been going about re-purposing them with new lyrics and melodies. The eye-opener has been how much more productive and positive the band has been. For someone who endlessly posted on social media about positivity and the need to exclude negative people from one's life, it seems that our original singer was an astonishingly negative and stymieing presence. We all live close to each other and the band members, spouses and children all remain in contact which makes it even harder when the singer is heard to say that she regards the preceding four years as an entirely negative experience and a waste of time - although I wonder if she'd feel this way if she'd walked away with all twenty-odd songs as she'd intended... I've glossed over many, many minor and not-so-minor niggles here: the hours put into researching, sourcing and incorporating -and subsequently discarding- flavours of the month such as loopers, Ableton, IEMs etc; trying to maintain relationships with promoters and presenters when it was belatedly decided that a particular gig or session was not going to happen; the endless hours dedicated to promoting the band and hustling gigs; the irritation of spending entire rehearsals teasing a song out of a tiny half-idea while having more fully-realized contributions summarily dismissed - in truth, all the sorts of mundane things that eat away at most bands in the end. I do find it amusing that our potentially excellent band was preemptively derailed by the sorts of issues that seem to destroy bands *after* they've achieved some degree of success - one wonders how much social media played into this: that sad sort of non-fame that comes from having an instantly contactable audience of friends and fans. Friends who never seemed able to get to the gigs, I might add 🤐 If you've read this far, thank you - I've been meaning to vent for some time and I think there is something to be gained by sharing these tales of misery. Not that I'm miserable now - the new band is far more creative and fun and the future looks pretty bright. I do enjoy reading stories about unreasonable band members though so I hope others here have something to moan about too...

Sometimes it just has to be done. I had to go and measure up for something in the garden today. Before ordering online I thought I'd quickly check the Facebook selling pages to see if anything suitable for my garden needs was being offered. It was, although I'm sure a Crafter Cruiser P bass for £20 wasn't what I was after. I pick it up tomorrow on the way home from work. 😄

Thank you all so much for the advice. I knew the BC posse would come through for me. The band are going to start using IEM at our next gig(only cheap Gear4music). What it boils down to is the rest of the band are mates as well, I really don’t want to let them down and in turn the audience. We all work in the emergency services and that’s how we met so we all have the same sick sense of humour lol. They are ultra supportive as they have all been in other bands and playing longer than me. I will stay away from the Dutch courage. I have started a spares bag with batteries, strings, tape etc and got a double gig bag so I can take two basses. I think I am finding my practising on my own frustrating as I need to start picking up and remembering some musical cues from the rest of the band. I use ultimate guitar backing tracks but they are not always the same as we do a song. We have our first of our post lockdown practices in a week to get ready for some gigs in July and August. I can read music from my brass band days but not as quick on the bass clef as the treble and I do not know the note positions on the fretboard as fluently as I would like. This is a work in progress. I will stay away from using any form of written music aid on stage as per everyone’s advice. I absolutely love to gig as it’s the complete opposite of my day job as you can imagine and really good for my mental health which has suffered after 30 yrs of witnessing some not very nice stuff. I really appreciate the tips and advice.

I know he’s pretty full with work, but Shuker’s finishing is absolutely stunning. Flips, crackles, sparkles, wet look glass finishes and even practically invisible matt finishes. He’s a talented chap, not just one of the best luthiers out there, he even goes as far as designing his own top notch electronics when needed too.

Yes - this one was transcribed solely for the purpose of putting something on the website that began with X. Geddy Lee's bass part for the tune 'Xanadu' from the 1977 Rush album, 'A Farewell To Kings'. Note: the recording plays slightly sharp - legend has it that the tubular bells that the band used on the track were out of tune so the band tunes sharp to compensate. Whatever the truth of it, it is challenging little read and will test your concentration. https://bilbosbassbites.co.uk/xanadu-rush/

That bloke playing 'Dean Town' is getting on my nerves...His head nodding doesn't groove at all. It really needs quantizing.

Initial look of disbelief, something like “surely not - mines pretty good” I stone walled and said, no I’m sorry it’s inferior. I honestly didn’t mean to be rude, hopefully I wasn’t! She rolled her eyes and walked away - if only I played ball I probably could have had a conversation with her, but no - I am a plonker. She really is a very nice lady and it’s a great bass

i remember a grown up i know telling every one (1964 / 67 ? ) "the Trinidadians were playing real live music ( Pan ) calypso out side of a pub & giving away free food" the location was not east london ,, the revelation according to Godfrey

Yes, subtle gold, like this:

I’ve been playing the 1024 all this week, and with the RM500 on the same settings, the low end output is surprisingly higher than my US jazz and the Sandberg in passive mode, and all of them have the same labella LTF’s fitted, the bass is so much deeper, so nice

Unfortunately that's becoming more and more dominant. Probably not the place to have it, but there's an interesting debate as to whether the internet has done more harm than good. Imo, no matter how advanced the technology, humans will always be humans (I.e extremely flawed).

I am incredibly late to the party here, but I'd like to wade in with a few points. Firstly, Neil Murray. On Basschat. stinky poo a brick! At 34 I feel like I've been a Whitesnake fan all of my life, from listening in the back of the car as a kid, through to seeing Live... In the Still of the Night in 2006 and playing (or trying to play) some of Mr Murray's basslines note for note in bands and failed bands and wannabe bands and rehearsals etc. Indeed my Spotify account reminded me last year that I was in the top 5% of listeners to Whitesnake... Yeah, trying to flipping learn THAT version of Ain't no Love in the Heart of the City (which I'm still getting to grips with) and FFYL which well... Now I've got a bloody good reference point. That'll keep me going! Very interesting to hear from the man himself about what went and goes into writing those types of iconic lines then and why they aren't necessarily the same now. Food for thought for a covers band bassist! Now, being a player for the last 15 years all started with seeing Live... ITSOTN standing in front of Marco Mendoza and Reb Beach, watching and listening to them tear through the set with Mssrs Coverdale, Aldridge, Aldrich and Drury, singing my throat out, being thoroughly inspired.... and then buying a bass the very next day (a gold Wesley PJ!) but in my naivety assumed THAT was THE band I've been listening to all of my life. It didn't immediately dawn on me that band members could be replaced! I too was secretly astounded to learn it was Mr Murray on bass for the 5 times I saw WWRY (yes dear of course I don't mind seeing it again) - I waited at the stage door for the musicians rather than the cast! (Didn't get to meet any of the musicians though, sadly) So maybe in truth and reality, I owe the last 15 years as a bass player, the highs, lows, blisters, miles driven, suspensions ruined, adrenaline highs, bank balance lows etc. to Neil Murray? If that's true then THANK YOU! I think I've found that post-covid motivation I've been looking for. PS... came to the internet looking for a Neil Murray book having read Bernie Marsden's book in a day...

We’ll meet again - Vera Lynn (sincere apologies)

I can’t speak for you or anyone else, but once I started making charts to use whilst playing, I found it quite difficult to do without them. I’d say practice, practice, practice and try and get through the set without them. You’ll be thankful for it when you can.

Don’t take liquid courage before the gig. You will feel better if you do but your playing won’t benefit from it.

So anyway, from the ridiculous to the sublime.... The first P Bass was packed off from whence it came and the very next day I had a meeting in Cardiff and happened (ahem) to find myself arriving about an hour early, so a visit to PMT was in order. PMT isn't usually my first port of call, especially for online orders but I've always found the guys in Bristol particularly accommodating and have been on tot eh Cardiff store a few times. I always find the store a bit lacking in the Bass department but I knew they had another American Professional in stock in my favoured colour scheme. After playing on it for five minutes I really really liked it but was still very wary given the issues with the first bass. Fortunately, Gavin who was looking after me was game enough to see if the truss rod would adjust properly and was then kind enough to let me adjust the saddles to get closer to the sort of action I prefer. After 15 minutes or so of fettling I fell in love with it and decided it was coming home with me. I love the colour (Mystic Surf Green), I love the neck and the dark rosewood fingerboard and it plays beautifully. What's more, it's very light too. It couldn't be more different to the first one I tried and really is in my opinion a vast step up from some of the more recent US Fenders over the last 10 years or so. My thanks to PMT too and especially Gavin who really went the extra mile for me.

It's varnished, does that help?

And the winner is......

Your going to make me take a trip-hop ride and I’ll regret it In the morning 😂🤣

I got this sorted in the end - I'll give a quick description of how I fixed it in case it can help anyone else. The bridge ground wire comes out against the side of the bridge post insert nearest the G string, and the wire is simply held in place by the friction of being sandwiched between insert and wood. My wire had come away for whatever reason. The fix was like this: Pull the ground wire out completely through the f hole (you can just about see the hole through which it gets to the bridge post). Remove the insert - I just put half a wooden dowel in the hole and screwed in the post, and it came out easily. Feed a stiff wire through the insert hole and on through the small ground wire hole, hook it out through the f hole and use it to pull the ground wire back through. Press the insert back into the hole, making sure that the ground wire makes contact properly. Job done!

Rocket Cathedrals - Be Bop Deluxe ( There you go Phil.... )

Up the junction - Squeeze (obviously...required very little thought). JOOI does somebody have shares in BBD sales??

I've got one, it is fantastic. I would say it is now My go to bass (And I have some nice Status, G&L, Fender, JD etc.) It looks great, Sounds great (Active or Passive), plays great & is nice and light.

A bit of background - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_system_(Jamaican) 😎

We had a resident sound (Neville Enchanter) in 1971/2 in Harrow - he came from North London & had, I think, been running for about four or five years prior to that .............. 😎 This is the usual Beeb stuff, half arsed and badly thought through - I can't seriously believe that someone actually thought proper sound systems didn't happen until the 80's ....

Rotosound have brass balls and straight silk following the wrapping especially on ball end and are more blue than turquoise : Alembic have chrome balls and more thick silk and really turquoise : So definitely Alembic CX-3 as shown on the two above photos taken right now with a correct colour balance. These are nickel strings with pressure wound technology that makes them feel softer to the touch and pliant as you said @MoJo. They also have a tendency to rust very quickly without affecting the tone, which is quite balanced : really good strings.

Not something you see too often nowadays...

In my last band we agreed that all of the songs were written by all of us, irrespective of how much or how little input there was from each of us. The end result of the songs was only because of our individual inputs so it was decided that we all wrote them. As our singer put it, if we had a song that made us 10 million quid a third of that should be enough, and if all of our songs amounted to nothing then a third of that equally should be enough.

If you use charts to learn/rehearse the song then gradually wean yourself off the chart before that song goes to gig. I start with a 'full' chart... then a summarized version, then no chart at all. I don't take any charts on stage, but I do allow a few 'cheats' on the set list.... the left half of the A4 for the song titles, the right half for some notes on two or three songs which I have a mental block on.

Or glare at the guitarist ........as if it was their mistake!

Not a band but a group I'm involved with perfectly demonstrated the issues around use of social media for 'communication' and 'chat'. Someone takes a 'view' on what someone 'meant' and it gets toxic pretty quickly.

Dun stuff.

Frighteningly familiar unfortunately...it's a shame when egos get in the way of what we're in this for - the love of making music. I'm about to embark in a new project with some local musicians - I'm trying to make it clear that there is no room for inflated egos, it's OUR band and we won't be the backing band for guitar solos and singers.

Bloomin' youngsters.. ...