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Just finished putting this together using a warmoth body and neck. Warmoth Alder body with 60's pickup spacing Warmoth maple neck with ebony fretboard Vintage Gotoh reverse tuners Tonerider pickups Nitrocellulose lacquer finish in surf green with a light tint top coat to simulate ageing. Light relic with plenty of good old lacquer checking. I'm waiting for the neck pickup cover to arrive but both covers will be fitted, at least temporarily, once I have them. It sounds fantastic but weighs a fair bit due to the steel rods in the neck and the vintage tuners. It's manageable though.

I’m using a 10” Wizzy for most of my DB gigs these days but it needs raising from the floor a bit. The Mrs asked me to get her a kitchen hop up which come in two sizes. She got the small one and I got the large. I’ve just finished putting an MDF plate on the top to locate the cab and I’m rather pleased with the results. I’ll now make another one to Genzler dimensions. It folds down to not a lot.

Just yo say another big box of Thomann loveliness arrived at the specified time . Excellent delivery time, excellent communications. Never had a problem before, and this was no different

Reaper, I think it is the most intuitive of the DAW's out there, there are online tutorials for just anything you could wish for, their updates always seem stable and it is a fraction of the price of other DAW's

I showed my wife and she said have you fixed the oven yet

Rough Trade in Nottingham last night. Absolutely rammed and they went nuts. I think it made a few people a bit nervous RE Covid, but it was so, so good to play what felt like a normal show. Probably the tightest we've ever been too. So cathartic If you get booked to play here be wary of the load in. They've pedestrianised the whole street. Every muscle hurts this morning We've had to move tonight's gig to another venue due to the landlord at the original place getting covid, hopefully it'll work out

An eclectic bunch but all 4 string fretted. Shorties on the bottom, JMJ Mustang, Dano Longhorn and Mickey Way Mustang. Longies on the top, Status CW Sig, 2010 Ric 4003 and 2013 EBMM Sterling 4H.

Just had a look in an old photo album and here's a couple of pics from '78 taken at Alan Gordons...we didn't use the amp equipped room very often...this would have been after the Iron Maiden event. Wish I still had that 70s P though...mind you it was about as heavy as boat a anchor! Note the HH gear!

I do this for a living and while owning all the industry standard software (and a decent computer to run it on) can speed up the process it doesn't actually help with coming up with decent ideas in the first place. In the same way owning a bass guitar without being able to play it doesn't make you a bassist. My most successful poster from a creative PoV, and one that has been considered worthy of a place in the Victoria & Albert Museum permanent collection, was created using a couple of sheets of cheap WH Smith rub-down letters and a drawing pen.

Many genres, far from being less biased against older performers, are biased against the younger. Who wants to see an 18-year old singing real blues, even Jazz. There is a sense that, even if the performance is outstanding, the emotion and experience underlying it is lacking, that the performer is going through the motions. Of course, this isn't always the case, plenty of 18-year olds have had enough emotional upheaval to last most of us a lifetime, and there's probably a few rugged and rusty old blues performers who've actually had very little, but either way there is a perceived authenticity that come with age and the absence of youth and beauty in some genres. I am currently working very hard on losing my youth and beauty, and am going to take the blues world by storm in about 7 years. Watch this space 👍

If you've got a decent idea Word or even Paint will be fine. If you don't, even owning the whole Adobe Creative Suite won't help you.

Well 'shit just got real', as they say. I've just dug out my old router and marked the top for surgery. The whole reversed P is moved towards the neck a tad to still retain bottom end on the EA side and to gain clearance in the scratchplate to the edge. The EA side is about 10mm further from the the 12th fret than my Precision and the DG side is about 50mm closer. Hopefully the result will be a slightly more focused bottom end, with a fuller, rounder top end. Basically a straight flip of the two pickups but then moved the whole unit about 5mm or so towards the neck. I'll leave the 5mm sliver of wood between routes on the DG side to give the pickup ring some support. Here goes. 🙈

Neat. If you stick a sink plunger and food mixer whisk to the front of the hop-up, you can have hours of fun shouting "Exterminate" at gigs 😊

I've recently decided to simplify and the results have been superb. I've got rid of most of my pedals and just got a few top quality pedals. Boss TU3 Tuner. It just works reliably. Orange Fur Coat. I never use the octave function but the fuzz is nasty. Two Notes Le Bass. Really nice warmth to the clean channel, which I'm using as a boost and the dirty channel has a really nice distortion. The fusion setting sounds huge. The Origin Cali76 CB just does a superb job of keeping levels in check and giving a great tone.

Ibanez & Columbus versions would absolutely not have been the same instruments, despite looking similar. Ibanez was a Fujigen product and Columbus was probably Chushin or the collaborative group I mentioned earlier. Big difference in quality, there are other details but Fujigen never used ply for bodies so this definitely wasn't an Ibanez.

The dodgy logo isn't a transfer - it has been hand drawn, possibly with model airplane paint or india ink. It might have stated out with an Ibanez or Columbus logo on the headstock - like this one:

I definitely used one in Leytonstone, good shout @Urban Bassman, I found this

It was the Alan Gordon rehrarsal rooms. I thought they were nearer to Leyton but it was a long time ago. Alan Gordon also had a shop in Walthamstow. HH Amps in one room and the rest were basically garage sized rooms with padded walls! I used be there on a Sunday with some mates from school, making a frightful racket in the late 70's and on one occasion Maiden were there too in the room next to us, their van was parked up outside stuffed with flight cases with Iron Maiden stenciled on them. They were a few years older than us and looked much harder! so we only exchanged grunts as we moved our meger kit. We couldn't hear ourselves either, but that was probably a good thing 😂.

Great basses if you have back or shoulder issues........and if you want to travel and noddle on a bass. Here's my fretless 4 stringer.

Low to midrange early 70s Japanese shortscale plywood Tele type, manufacturer unclear but none of the 'big' names - possibly a Matsumoto Gakki Seizou Kumiai collaborative build, but no-one really knows with this sort of early copy-era stuff. As far as this example's concerned - ghastly boot-polish refin & a non-original bridge, where somebody has inexplicably replaced a Tele-style two saddle unit with an infinitely more useless EB-0 type. Things like this may have been sold branded Jedson, but Teisco never made anything remotely like it, in fact by the time this was made they were long-gone.

My latest creation. 😊

So, I've just acquired a used R-400 off here. Based on first impressions at home and subject to tomorrow night's gig, I have the feeling that I'll be giving wateroftyne a big virtual pat on the back for spreading the word about HandBox on here. My main amp is a Mesa Subway TT-800 and I'm pleasantly surprised by how close the relatively simple R-400 gets me to the satisfying sounds I've dialled in to the highly-sophisticated TT-800. Leaving control of the mids to the 'Contour' pot works unexpectedly well and having the 'Crunch' at the top end of the gain control plus the 'Drive' and 'Bright' buttons comes close to achieving the different voicings that the TT-800 relies on 2 channels to deliver. The only thing I can find to criticise is the absence of 4 rubber feet on the side of the box opposite the carry handle, but that's an easy fix. The added nice touch for me is that, being half Polish, supporting Leszek's stuff - albeit indirectly so far - gives me extra satisfaction 🙂

I was terrified of turning thirty as I was convinced that I had no chance of making it in the music industry past that age. Nothing that has happened in the 27 years since has made a dent in that opinion. 😂

How about these: https://www.rautiaguitars.net/multi-coil-bass-pickups.html

That is interesting, I lived round the corner to Leyton Midland Road in the mid-80s. I think the studios were still there then. I also bought a Peavey bass combo from Allan Gordon's shop in Walthamstow. Served me well that amp.

it was the one about the Wal rebuild I think a very special save

Vienna - Ultravox

My Mum and Dad was pretty weird

Here's a live online stream from 7 months ago!

Btw the guitarist looks very much like Karl Burns from The Fall !

I could learn a thing or five from your cabling underneath the board. Excellent work maestro!

yeah thats the place lol...grim would be an understatement.

I like that green bass a lot!!!

Having owned both, I would recommend going for the 800. Its power delivery is effortless and it copes easily with loud rock band gigs without PA support. The 500 is great and plenty loud enough for most situations but I did have to swap it out for my ABM on a gig with the same loud rock band, it couldn’t quite keep up without PA support. There’s very little in it at lower volumes though, they both sound great.

Pop music derived from rock n roll was always music for teens done by teens (ideally). That type of music is not aimed at older folk and it is light and fun, simple and easy to play (generalising). So if you’re looking at the original question through the prism of “pop” music, yes many of these bands etc will have had their best (most successful) years before they turned 30. As others have said, other art forms and even music styles, do not have that age constraint and often the better stuff is produced post 30 as artists develop.

James Lomenzo new bass player in Megadeath

Well, someone got a real bargain. Sold for £1220. Says a lot about the market at the moment.

Starting the day with some mellow Alton Ellis

I saw them all many times back in the day..Blue cats, Deltas, Restless, Polecats etc etc etc and I must admit I dont remember seeing anyone do what you are describing. Although to be fair I can't remember what I did yesterday so...........😂

I didn't start playing, let alone writing songs until I was 33, so I guess it must all be crap then. All hail the sad, delusional old fool, can't even call himself a has been because he never was, playing a ridiculous game of catch up he'll never win. Sometimes I do wonder how utterly awesome I would have been if I started playing on my teens. Mere competence is the best my dessicated brain can achieve, lest I forget my PIN number.

My Black Highway one Fender P! Did a few cosmetic mods after I recieved it,as I don't like Badass bridges on a P bass. I have put on a vintage Grooved bridge for old school deep woody tone (As Leo intended) I also procured a reliced Tort pick guard from a Limelight build, this matches the roadworn Nitro finish it has and is very classy. These are USA basses, but finished and assembled in Mexico. The parts are all USA except the tuners which are the same s you get on standard Mex fenders. I hate cheap tuners, so i bought and added some Hipshot tuners which are very high quality and much more reassuring. I have toyed with replacing the "Greasebucket" circuit with a Kiagon Loom, but the USA standard pickup sounds fantastic, and I dont mind the fact it doesn't get as boomy with the tone all the way off. It's getting a lovely amount of roadwear which these basses were designed to do, much cooler to put on your own than the cookie cutter roadworns that superseded these basses. I've also got a lovely set of TI flats, my only gripe is the very white looking neck/headstock but hey ho! It sounds and feels great, is very well made and very very light too 😁

I felt really guilty for liking Karma Chameleon when it came out, as it wasn’t punk. The deftness of youth methinks.

U2 did two of their best albums in their 30's Achtung Baby and Zooropa.

Time to drop one of my favourites ☝️

Couple of things: * It's only to be expected that musicians working in rock and pop might feel uneasy at the prospect of hitting thirty. For one thing, we live in a society which widely venerates youth and beauty, and beautiful youth. Pop music and its deriving genres amplify this societal foolishness but one can't get away from the sad fact that a pretty face sells product. Next up, the characteristics associated with hormone-drenched youth - impulsiveness, wild emotional swings, excessive focus on the 'now', idealism, a consuming desire for friendship and lurve - look a bit odd (if not sinister) when exhibited by someone over thirty. Then there's the commercial aspect. It's much easier for a record company or manager to slit a bunch of kids up like a kipper compared to a bunch of wary, older types (though not always). So, signing young people and throwing them away when they get older is a music industry thing. Point of comparison: the vibrant and highly profitable South Korean music industry makes ours look like a playgroup run by social workers. The Korean pop moguls sign 14 year-old kids off the street for their looks, formally train them in pop music and image, put them on a salary, squeeze the life out of them for a few years then dump them at 21 or 22 years-old for being geriatric. * The confining nature of pop music (repetitious songwriting, simplistic musical formulas, trite melodies, stale harmonies) means that if you're any good with your voice or your instrument you'll have reached the industry standard fairly early on in your career and no one will encourage you to go any further. You might be bored mindless but nobody will let you make the Jazz album or write the string quartet or even slightly subvert the audience's expectations by dallying with another pop genre. That's why Anthrax had to shelve the Reggae album. Of course, in musical forms other than pop we find that performers and composers are more free to experiment and to develop as musicians and artists than are pop stars; the walls of the pop 'cage' fall away. Likewise age is far less of an impediment. Indeed, in Folk, Classical, Jazz (and even some supposedly 'rock' genres like Blues) age is a draw rather than a turn-off. When a celebrated violinist takes the stage at the age of 84 no one cries 'Where's your stick, Grandad?' or comments unfavourably upon his wrinkled hands. OK, some critics might bimble on about 'missing the fire of youth' but critics are ar5eholes. TLDR: Pop's a game for young people, no getting round it. Other genres of music offer the aspiring musician a longer shelf-life.

I played a couple of deps for a Led Zeppelin tribute band (complete with wigs for the singer and guitarist) over the weekend, my first gigs for 17 months. I had two weeks to learn a two hour set (featuring a few songs with arrangements based on various obscure live versions) with a couple of jams with the guitarist and drummer. The first time I met the singer was on Friday night, an hour before we went on stage. The first gig on Friday featured a keys player (so I was offstage while they did Stairway, Kashmir, No Quarter, etc) and went down pretty well, but a bit hairy at times. The Saturday night gig (no keys) to a sold out crowd in a small club near Liverpool was great. A very appreciative audience, we played great and I got to channel my inner JPJ. Great fun for someone like me who cut my teeth on Led Zep / JPJ and as a bonus I got to gig my recently re-acquired old 70s P bass for the first time in nearly 35 years!