Leaderboard

Played at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on Monday night with Elton John tribute act I’m Still Standing, as part of a four date tour up there. Had a grand old time.

The Zoot Boudica "Wal-a-like" is £2,600.00 - £2,750.00 Also available in a left handed version at no extra cost. I'm not sure, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think a new commissioned Wal will set you back around £6,500.00 and they are currently quoting a 4 year wait as a deliver time. Regards, Mike.

New rig day! 🥳🥳🥳 Well, the head came yesterday, and I did a 5.5hr round trip first thing today to pick the cab up! Sounds absolutely incredible at house volume, so I can't wait to give it some beans at tonight's gig. The cab is 1200w 4ohm so will be able to make good use of all that juice. So excited 🤘😎

Up in the North-East, Sunday afternoon gigs are becoming the new Friday night for some reason. Doesn't work for me unfortunately as I have kids so I have to knock them back. I think generally the audience numbers have been dropping up here since the early 90s when I first starting gigging. Back then pubs were normally pretty full every weekend and there were a lot more Thursday night gigs too. Tribute bands, 80s bands and function bands still seem to do quite well though. Maybe it's just that people are a bit fed up with the classic rock that my band is doing. Funnily enough, I suggested to the band at the gig last night that we do a side project next year, playing stuff a bit less heavy. Didn't go down too well with the guitarists...🤣 Anyway, my gig last night. A lovely purpose built performance venue in Northumberland called Platform 1. Great in-house PA and lights and a proper stage! We had to mix our own sound but we use a Soundcraft ui16 with ipad mixers normally so just connected into their speakers(4 bass bins/4 tops and 3 monitors) and it was fine. The room was very live sounding but a great audience and no heavy lifting for a change.

My homage to Tap lives on my pedal board just to remind me..Things can always be worse?

Spoiler: there are a lot of them.

Spinal tap story, based around alternative band The Fall. The Fall's eccentric leader Mark E Smith used to play Spinal Tap movie a lot on the tour bus, which meant the rest of the band were forced to watch. One night bassist Steve Hanley played the main riff to a Spinal Tap song as a soundcheck. Mark E Smith said something like "That's good, save it for the next album". Steve assumed he was joking, and really recognised the riff as Spinal Tap. However, come the time to make the album Smith insisted that the riff was used as the basis of a song to the consternation of the rest of the band. (Spinal Tap "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight" > The Fall "Athlete Cured")

Ordered Wednesday, turned up earlier today. I love jazz basses and I also love G&L's saddle-lock bridges and their pickups, so when I saw this reduced by £70 I pulled the trigger... Good things: The colour - listed as Lake Placid Blue, this is more like an Ice Blue, and it's metallic, and looks the nuts. Much nicer than Fender's LPB. The back of the neck and headstock is also finished with a nice vintage amber tint. The sound - sounds like a jazz bass should. Rear pup has The Honk, blended with the front pup it rounds out beautifully for a really versatile tone. The bridge - these things are G&L's secret weapon. There is a protrusion under the bridge (downtown) which sits in the wood, sending lovely jazz vibrations through the body. Sustain and clarity for days, and also no dead spots around the 7th fret on any of the strings, maybe due in part to the headstock shape... Set up: Really, really good, straight out of the box. The action is just how I like it, had to tweak the tuning slightly, and the E string seems a little duller than the others, but very impressed with that side of things. The not so good things: A very small dent in the finish near the control panel. Nothing serious, I'll get over it. The binding - not real binding, but painted, and painted quite badly near the dusty end. Now I didn't know that quite a lot of manufacturers paint faux binding instead of installing the real thing, and that's OK I suppose (Its seems to be an aesthetic thing more than anything else) but really, whoever did this particular job needs to try again. Just not good enough, even for a far eastern instrument. Anyway, here are some pics.

We played at The Boston Music Rooms at Tuffnell Park last night. A bit of drama with a punch up outside. One of roadies was a witness and had to give the feds a statement. Made to feel really comfortable by the staff there. The sound engineer was filling in but was really good. He only soundchecked the drums and vox. He did my bass while I was getting my tone but didn't bother with guitars and keys. Told us to run a number and did it on the fly with great results. Could have done with a few more in but enough to make it worthwhile and create a racket. That's the end of the official tour, next Saturday afternoon we'll be doing the Red Dragon Festival at Llangollen.

Successful rehearsal. The ramp felt very natural under my fingers. Very happy!

Wednesday 18th May 21:00 Oil City Confidential: The Dr Feelgood Story (2009).

Nice post, love the fact that people see a YouTube video and think 'argument over'. Years of experimenting with bitsa Fender-alikes has taught me that wooden components explain a lot of the variance, it might be the idea of 'tone wood' per se, but different bodies and different necks can do very different things to the quality and quantity of what comes out of the PUPs 👍

How there can be any debate after this video beggars belief. I guess if people have a lot of money and credibility invested in the tonewood myth they feel they have to keep digging. More dignified to admit they've been wrong all along.

I used to try so hard NOT to sing “I am afraid of God, I am afraid of God, I am afraid of God, He calls me ‘Fred’!”

As someone who suffers from w@nker intolerance, I have a similar reaction to that phrase

OK, about that "chameleon" finish now that the new boxes are in hand. Same box in both pics:

Well, after a bit of selling I am very happy with my new bass. A beautifully built Manton Titon, direct from Robin at Manton Customs. It plays as good as it looks and has the tone I was looking for. I played it at the Bristol Guitar show recently and it "blew me away" so I have been getting to money together ever since. The Pictures and video are from the Manton site.

I love gigging………it keeps me sane and after 30 years of frontline emergency work shows me that there are still good people who celebrate happy events which balances out the horrors and sub humans that I have dealt with. My 3 band mates are from the same line of work and we all say the same thing…..gigging is the absolute polar experience to what we do as a day job. It’s something I do for me and the band is our little gentleman’s club without aprons and funny handshakes. For me, it adds the context to all the practice and I can’t imagine playing bass and not performing.

A Massage For You, Rudely ～ The Specials

Private party for a 40th. I don't think necessarily they really needed a band but we got them dancing once they had drunk enough so it went down ok, and paid well as it was a party. Down these ways, since the pandemic, we have had more people at our gigs, and they have been paying better for the first time in a decade

Eternal Phlegm ～ The Bangles

Depends on your perspextive ?

I once player bass for... Carlos Fandango and the Super Wide Wheels.

I completely understand this. However, how does this work in the context of a Les Paul, 335 and big bodied 175, all with the same pickups, controls etc. They don't appear to sound the same but maybe there's something else at play.

Try one that starts with an O, first, in keeping with the gist of the thread 😉

First Mule video up on YouTube.

The intonation on my fretless is fully adjustable, but for some reason it always sounds out of tune unless I’m playing an open string.

So I’ve been on a bit of a quest, and last week yielded these two fine basses from my fave 2013-16 range of Fender US Standards, a 2013 from our very own @vincbtand a 2014 from the ‘bay. Match very nicely with my fave 2015. All that was needed was A-String Retainers and Hipshot Drop-D Extenders. The 13 gets the gigging band, the 14 gets the classic rock band.

Is the right answer

Smash it up. Damned

Knead You Tonight - INXS

Definitely worth a try. However as has been said, neck profile, nut width, string spacing at the bridge etc can have a bigger effect on playing comfort than whether the bass is multi scale or not. For me, it took a couple of minutes to get used to fanned frets - I switch between fanned and non fanned basses regularly without issue. Also, my Dingwall Super PJ5 with a 35" scale low B feels like a noticeably shorter scale instrument than my Xotic 5 string jazz basses with a 34" scale across all strings. There's much more to playing comfort than just the scale length of the strings themselves.

"custom" must be part of the ad template for guitars in eBay. Many described as "custom" are either not at all in any way customised or custom made. Some are badly modified though. "Hand made". Yup, your Yamaha Pacifica was handmade. Well, someone picked it up by hand at some point in the production process. "Collection only DO NOT contact me asking about delivery". Items described like this are often located in a dragons backside, guarded by hungry dobermans in the hardest to reach part of some remote Scottish island. Or just some sh!thole somewhere around the country that's a pain to get to. Either way, if I'm willing to send a courier and pay the asking price and nobody else is biting why wouldn't you sell it? "Never gigged" what are you implying happens at gigs? Why would it be better if it just had the stuffing knocked out of it at home by your kids, but NEVER GIGGED. Why does it matter? It's either in good condition or it's not.

Er yes. I couldn’t agree more!

I've always thought the whole tone wood thing was a bit silly to be honest. Possibly justifiable in an acoustic instrument, but as far as I'm concerned makes absolutely no difference in fully electric instruments. It's all a bit emperor's new clothes.

I spent a little while last night setting a default envelope filter sound. It’s great - by setting a higher VCF attack speed you can get it sounding really bubbly and squelchy. Can anyone tell me how to add a clean blend, is it to do with the premix settings? (Ignore me, found it)

That always irritates me. If it isn't an Ibanez with a Gibson 'Open Book' headstock then I'm not listening. If it is an Ibanez with a Gibson 'Open book' headstock then I'm still not listening. There was no actual lawsuit! ... and breathe. 😁

First person to see will buy. Or else.

I hope they don't repeat the same jokes. A joke is only funny once. Being a band in their 60's provides a heap of potential new material.

Fantastic, sounds so good. I've never liked Mark King's voice (sorry Mark!), so even better than the originals, and a female vocal replacing Lindup just works brilliantly.