Leaderboard

Wroot Rocks on Saturday, packed hall, absolutely drenched with sweat by the end of the set, played well, sounded ace Northern Kin festival on Sunday, we were first on but still plenty in the big top, so cool to play on such a big stage with a big PA. They had an ampeg SVT and fridge for our bassist, sounded cool. I don't have a pic from the audience perspective. This is just after sound check

Had one on Friday but not had chance to report as i was busy rest of weekend. Considering I'd been on holiday for two weeks and we'd had one very short and loose rehearsal 4 days before it didn't go down too badly. In fact they kept asking for more in second set to the point we ended up doing a first 45 followed by a second 80! Some generous positive feedback from a mixture of punters and other muso's from other bands. Hopefully will be back there next year.

A very big thank you to Mike and everyone that helped put this event on - your effort is genuinely appreciated. It was so nice to get together with everyone again and catch up. It's not just about basses as over lunch we: We cured old age pains that make you go arrrggghh when you sit down or get up (just requires rhubarb crumble) We shared a recipe for the perfect salad dressing# Ate some very nice food. Went back for more. And went back for more again..... For anyone that hasn't been to this before, put it in your diary for next year. It is such a friendly event in a beautiful setting. I'm looking forward to the next one already!!

That can't have been easy to play with the neck joined in the middle like that..! ... ...

More theatre dates for me last weekend, Friday night was in Telford & then we moved onto Stockport Plaza Saturday, A fantastic old theatre with beautiful decor….

Here's how it looks now with the filled pickup cavity. Ive put a strip of tape across the top of the pickup too, to stop any stray 'clicks' when I dig in a bit. I'm going to stop guffing about with it now it sounds great and does everything I wanted it to. The End

Really interesting and useful (for muppets like me) exposition on various options for fooling around on a single chord

Here is the link to the FOC website our friend Richard created for the last Bash, which now contains yesterday's pic's as well. He hasn't had time to do an edit and is away for a few days now so everything is there - including some blurred images where the autofocus on his camera has focussed on the wrong thing. You can view and/or copy whatever you want from here: https://bigfatswbassbash.weebly.com/

I live in hope of a Performer reissue. Having played Stub's yesterday, I am more hooked than ever.

Most kind Stew but honestly no need. Despite the lower than average turnout, today's event broke even because we made enough money in 2019 to cover the hall booking for 2020 and then the hall didn't charge us anything for postponing until this year.

Had a fun afternoon playing at the Manchester Food and Drink festival. Apparently my playing was improved no end by not drinking a copious amount of beer beforehand. Not sure that's a trend to be encouraged 🤣

And here it is with my other basses. The green P Bass is currently up for sale as I really don't need it, but the more I play it the more I am having doubts...

The ever expanding family

-

£1 per raffle ticket

It's a ruby red 4003s, heavily customised. I swapped out the white pickguard / TRC for black and removed that awful pickup cover. Other than that I added the zero mod thumb rest and put a racing stipe on it. The strings are neon red but the camera snap doesn't do them justice. I know there's not a lot of Ric love on BC but it's a great bass.

For all those that couldn’t make it this year, you can still be the “King of Cool “ and order a T shirt from @scrumpymike while stock lasts. I was lucky enough not only to get a T shirt, but to come home with something Tele shaped as well, time to start saving for next year !!!

I finally got in a rehearsal room with my new combo yesterday. Played with a drummer and a guitarist (the louder of our two guitarists couldn’t make it). Disclaimer. I’ve recently come back to playing after 22 years. Back then I played a few pub gigs with an 160 watt Peavey TNT combo. No other experience to speak of. I’m super happy with the studio 15. It dealt easily with the situation. I mostly played with the pre gain at around 3 o’clock , volume just before 12 and the volume on my Bruce Thomas profile P Bass about 3/4 It was plenty load enough and sounded fantastic to me and the others. We recorded a couple of tracks onto a zoom multitrack recorder with the amp miked up and a couple of tracks using the zoom’s build in mics in the middle of the room. Listening back today the sound good and the bass sounds clear and the loudest thing in the room. I’m very happy with my bargain purchase.

Inspired by my last licence plate 3 string cbg I decided to build something 'different'. 30.9" scale, flat ebony fretless board (10mm thick) , hollow body, parallel neck and as small a headstock as possible. . Stainless inserts and a 'mistake' in drilling the the bolt holes despite using a pillar drill. Note the anti neck dive fitment, 1 lb of lead! 20mm neck depth and 48mm width (easy using the planer-thicknesser). 48mm neck width results in 13.5mm string spacing. From using the 3 string cbg I hoped that this would be playable (if not the design will let me replace the neck with a conventional taper one). Extended neck join and angle to get neck tilt with shim. Next time I will set the neck support block in at an angle in the body (or rout an angled pocket). Those with sharp eyes will notice the little infill at near the fingerboard end. Careful measurements can fail when user stupidity intervenes in simple mathematics! Wanting to keep the headstock as thick as possible, get the maximum break angle (and not cut / carve / rout a Fender type headstock thinning) I copied this sunken method that I found on another guitar build. If anyone does use it remember to make the depressions large enough to get a box spanner or socket over the machine head bushing nut. These did, just! Self made ebony nut, made with rat tail file, really pleased with how that turned out. Cavity for recessed piezo pre amp control panel. Due to this 'design' evolving rather than being planned correctly (ironic that my professional career relied on planning to prevent p**s poor performance) I ended up routing the recess after assembling the body shell. Much easier if done before. Body is sapele, 60mm wide, 20mm depth. Bridge with stainless adjusters. Angled machine heads to reduce turning moment (and hopefully help with neck dive). Machines are from Retrovibe, 20:1, excellent quality and fairly lightweight. Good price as well. Neck dive has been averted, all up weight is 7.9Lb Joyo piezo pre amp, chosen beacuse of price and features (£24, 5 band eq, tuner and phase. It also had a piezo undersaddle rod thrown in). Bought direct from Joyo so no risk of a 'knock off'. Finish is Tru-Oil. Very easy to use and get a 'glossy' finish. The neck is so stiff that I have had to (for the first time ever in any bass I have owned) use the truss rod to add relief. If you build one be aware that not all USA licence plates are the same thickness, some are very flimsy, some are steel, others aluminium. The Colorado plate was easy to use, the Nebraska one was 'buckled', difficult to get flat and eliminate buzzing / vibrations. Strung with some status flats I had lying around it is quite a 'fun' thing. The box format is surprisingly loud acoustically, string spacing is tight and playing it requires finesse (not my normal right hand technique). Will hopefully post some sound clips, I am pleased with it, it has a jazzy EUB, double bass vibe, plenty of string growl as well.

"C'MON TAUNTON, LEMME HEAR YOU MAKE SOME FACKIN NOISE!!"

Getting close now 🙂

Just saw this over at TB- A new, but not yet officially announced, Euro Series - Euro RST. Key features seem to be the roasted maple necks, empress wood as body wood (aka paulownia, known to be very light), the three new finishes and Aguilar humbuckers and Aguilar OBP-2 preamp. The latter makes sense thanks to Korg's recent acquisition of Aguilar. https://www.guitarcenter.com/Spector/Euro-4-RST-Electric-Bass.gc What do you think?

That wasn't Norm, it was Santa Claus recruiting for more Elves, as most of last years have gone back to Greenland.....

Loving @Norm's beard progress btw! 😁

A few cents is not much. "According to Ellis, when two notes are played together, a difference of 2 cents is noticeable, and a difference of 5 cents is heard as out of tune." It could well be cheap strings, but it might not be. Have you checked the intonation? I check after every change of strings. The 12th fret harmonic and fretted note at 12th fret should all be in tune. If it's still noticeably out of tune near the nut, then the nut probably is a bit high and needs careful re-cutting. Virtually no instrument will be spot on for every fret, everywhere.

Mikey Way Mustang? Passive humbucker right in the sweet spot. Shouldn’t be too expensive but becoming rare as rocking horse poo. Reverb has one up in the states at an extremely ambitious $1050 ish.

I do like a bit of Electric Wizard. Today I'm enjoying some YOB

I was impressed by our singer/guitarist. He's early 20s but very confident and did a great job with the crowd, even got them clapping and singing along. He understands that the best way to convince a crowd the band is really good is to tell them they are!

To be clear, I've never so much as laid my eyes on either a 1024 or a 2024, but I have enough performance experience to know that differences in feel are worth noticing even when there's no difference in sonic result. I've performed unamplified in many different venues. Sometimes the space's acoustics make it a breeze to perform there and sometimes the acoustics make the whole thing a struggle: sometimes there's no bloom to the sound; sometimes, to overcome a soupy acoustic, your articulation needs to be more crisp. From the audience's point of view, the resulting sound is no different, but the pleasure of performing in the different venues varies enormously, as compensating takes effort and sucks up your attention. So when I imagine a very talented bassist faced with a 424 and a 1024 and a 2024, I'm sure they'll make all three of them sound wonderful, their personal tone transcending each instrument's limitations, but I would also expect them to prefer the one that requires less effort from them, the one where the instrument almost feels like its playing itself. Just because the Indonesian Yamaha factory is good – and I wish my Squier P had been made there – does not mean that there won't be perceptible differences in the MIJ version, even if it's hard to put them into words.

Sorry, its guest list only

It's a tweaked Woolly Mammoth clone I built, with partial success (some of the tweaking worked, others didn't ). I wasn't using it, so I lobbed it into the raffle pile.

Hi Guys. After much testing, gigs, and playing in three different bands I have a happy result. On the advice of Kirby, our guitarist, I bought a Tonebone ABY unit. I have this connected to the amps. The Mesa going to the bottom cab and the LMIII going to the top cab. The LMIII needed polarity change on the pedal. Both cabs set to 4ohm. The result is an incredibly versatile rig that gives me exactly the tone and power that I'm after regardless of the venue. I could not be more pleased. I don't have the rig playing that loud but the versatility of tone and the fact that if any amp or cab craps out at a gig I can keep on playing is priceless. I have now ordered a single 1x10 cab from Barefaced to use as the top cab at smaller gigs. I am seriously pleased with the set-up. Thanks again for all your kind advice. Cheers, Bob

IME trying to work out the exact amount payable in VAT and duties on something you've imported from another country is a fool's errand. It's far simpler to take the price of the item, the cost of shipping add them together and then put another 25% of that total on top. This should adequately cover you from the complexities of trying to find the correct commodity code and then working out if duty is payable on top of VAT or VAT on top of duty and finally the addition of the courier's clearance fees. TBH if you need to work out the price to the exact £, you probably shouldn't be importing it in the first place. My advice has always been that only items which are impossible to get without having to import yourself them from their country of origin are worth the hassle. Trying to save a few pounds on a new Fender or similar mass produced instrument that already has an official UK importer/distributor will generally end in tears and/or disappointment. As for trying to sneak an instrument through customs at the airport - don't even think about it. While everyone has success stories to tell, you won't be so pleased when customs seize your newly bought bass and hit you with a fine as well as the import taxes before you can get it back.

I have an old bootleg of a KISS show in the 70's where at the very end of the gig the drum riser goes up 30ft in the air with lots of pyro exploding around it. As the explosions and audience noise fades and the rest of the band have obviously left the stage you can just hear drummer Peter Criss shouting (picked up by his mic) "Get me down!!! Get me the fukk down!!!" 😂🤣

A slightly alcohol fuelled but rockin' set on Saturday in Basingstoke. Despite being a little more lubricated than I am normally, another bass player was straight up afterwards to ask me what strings I used. Our keyboard player was off with his other band earning proper money but I am loving this band. All good players who rehearse.

I cut the control plate from the mirrored pick guard yesterday. It’s really hard to get the bevelled edge right and it needs a bit more filing around the curve. It’s not as good as a proper metal plate but it’s getting there. I also double and triple checked the bridge position and marked the hole centres with a bradawl along with the holes for the control plate. I’m pretty happy with the positioning now. I just need to actually drill the holes now but I must make sure I use the right sized drill bit.

I didn't like the Katana bass in the '80s, but they look a little better without the oddly shaped pickguard.

Personal highlights: 1. The food. Obvs. 2. Seeing all you fabulous folks again 3. @Jabba_the_gut's (as always) beautiful instruments. Sir, I continue to be in complete awe of your handiwork. 4. Finally getting my hands on a real 80s Fender Performer bass (courtesy of @Stub Mandrel) and very definitely not being disappointed. I already wanted one, now I'm desperate..! 5. The absolutely incredible sound of the latest BC 112 cabs. Sonic perfection and an absolute credit to all involved in their development. 6. The whole day, really. Fabulous. Massive thanks to the Scrumpy Krew for all your hard work. We are not worthy.

Private party in the garden of a lovely Victorian house. Great audience, free bar and fantastic food. Plus the hosts son Lewis came and played 2 numbers with us - so cool

And much as I like my Abarth, I've also got a Subaru Legacy estate which fits a Markbass 2x10 and 4x10 plus 6u amp rack, 2 foot square pedal board and 2 basses in the boot with the boots cover on and rear seats up. So there's lots of motors that'll do it... I'd say get the coolest,like this Packard Pro-Street hearse!

The basses that I built in the past three years

Sadly had to sell a few over the last couple of years bur, for a time, these were a lot of fun