Leaderboard

I had three gigs Thursday through Saturday (local, Hull and East London) and a video shoot on the Sunday (Bristol). I was kind of relieved when Thursday AND Saturday's shows both got pulled / postponed. Friday night was a trek from Wiltshire all the way up to Hull for one show, that had been postponed 4 times during covid. With fuel prices at an all time high, it wasn't going to be lucrative but I've never been to Hull and I like playing places I haven't been to. The traffic was awful; at every point where there was an opportunity for a delay, there was one! The two main guys in the band are both about to launch solo albums so I wondered how well we'd all get on. I arrived ready for an argument, with anyone! However, the mood was great. The venue was The New Adelphi Club which has hosted everyone from Pulp to Adam Ant to Green Day over the years. The sound was superb, the lighting was the best I have ever seen it and everyone was super friendly. I didn't get to eat until after the show but a fan bought me dinner and the venue loaded us up on a decent rider so my only costs were fuel (ahem!). A great night and with the rest up on Saturday I didn't look too shattered for the video shoot on Sunday.

Just collected from " Chiliwailer" fantastic bass & easy transaction The short scale stock is increasing!!!!

On lead guitar again with a Rock’n’roll band. During setup the drummer found that the jack socket for the trigger cable had fallen inside the body of his electronic cymbal. I opened it up (14 screws!) and managed to gaffer-tape the PCB in place. This got us through the rather excellent gig, after which I nipped home with the cymbal and fixed it properly with a nut from my spares stash, and Mr Drummer picked it up on his way home. I love a good kit fix!

So in conclusion, guitarists and most people are gear snobs. So are us lot on here except when we are being open minded and not snobs. We are however real snobs/pedants about naming things correctly and socks.

So anyway - I made a thing: I think that constitutes a proof of concept - everything's nailed on, everything looks straight, everything seems to work. A couple of niggles - the tuners are very, very stiff - albeit I have not yet smothered them with grease as I don't want to risk oily splats on the unfinished wood. The other is something I didn't forsee - the ball ends on this set of strings (the old ones that were on this before I dismantled it) slip out of the tuners unless the ends are laid horizontal. Not too important - I've had bridges that did this before (the Gotoh on an Ibanez SR800 I had didn't like small balls!) and it's easy enough to place them flat. The ends on these strings are fairly small & rounded so it likely won't be a problem with other strings, but if push comes to shove I can slip washers over them like I did on my old Ibby! Very pleased with this so far, I have some ideas for reshaping the headstump, & I'm starting to think this could be quite special when it's done.

Not sure if these are rare or valuable, but I'm certain this one is mine now 1991 Leo Fender Signature L-2000

Woe betide the concert flautist deigning to present him or herself wielding a vulgar Boosey & Hawkes. A solid-silver Kessler & Sons, however, would pass muster without a further glance. Yes, people are people the World over.

Could we then program Super Trampa to play Dreamer?

Goin' Blind ～ Melvins

First gig in 3 weeks last night with my classic rock covers band "Fossil". A new venue for us(The Benton Ale House in North Tyneside) and a new start time of 8pm rather than the usual 9-9.30pm start. I was pleasantly surprised by the turn out and everyone stuck around even after we started playing! 😁 Got a lot of positive feedback and were asked to come back again. It was also nice to get back in the house an hour earlier than normal! 😊 We're off again next weekend but then back into the usual 2 gigs a weekend after that.

Here is a video of a trio I did as we were coming out of lock down the first time. I chose to use a £150 Harley Benton bass because I was looking for a certain vibe. I left the £2000 double bass and £5000 Wal at home. Nobody gave a s***. In my experience, gear snobbery is a sign of an amateur. Anyone who really understands what being a musician means will wait until they hear a player before judging them and will pretty much never comment on their gear. A poor player is a poor player, whatever instrument they are playing and a great player is a great player. This is not genre specific and applies to all settings including classical, jazz and everything else. It's the music that matters not the instruments.

Call me superstitious but does anybody else feel that if you have a great final practice, the gig seems to turn out below par? I HATE practicing for a gig the day before, I find it over-saturates slightly - I prefer to turn up to a gig feeling somewhat under-rehearsed so I concentrate more and any solos are a precise response to the mood/vibe of the gig. I had practice last night for a gig this evening and it went really, really well. So now I'm expecting to play a shocker later...

Well I don't see what your monkey snobbery has to do with bass snobbery.

In a former life as a guitarist, I was once told at the end of the version of 'Another Brick in the Wall' that "David Gilmour wouldn't have played it like that." To which I had to own up and admit that I wasn't David Gilmour. Rock star name snobbery? 😀

Being bored I attached a pointer made out of a post-it note to the top of my tuner and measured the rotation of the post required to go from pitch to slack. The E (.105) needed 1/8th of a full rotation, the G (.045) needed 3/16ths. The tuner post is 11.1mm diameter which stirred together I think gives: Note 1: This was with TI flats Note 2: I need to get out more

I put the DiMarzio set on my (full size) PJ and love them. Great colour too. 🙂

Big Log - Robert Plant

How about 5 little motors driving five little windlass' to tension the strings. Then you could program Trampa to tune it for you to to play a whole range of differently tuned songs.

I don't actually mind or care what other people are playing because at the end of the day, if they are out playing music and being creative and if that's all they can afford or it works for them or they are happy playing it then crack on. However, similar to Lozz196's comment on Page 1, I do have my own standards that I set myself. I've played for 35 years, had quite a bit of success and got to a standard of musicianship that I feel justifies me spending a certain amount of money or at least, treating myself to certain grade of instrument. Plus, having been pro, semi pro and a weekend warrior, I'm out there using the instrument rather than it sitting in my house looking pretty. I don't like expensive boutique basses and there is a limit on what I will spend but if I am going to buy a bass, then chances are its a Fender Jazz or Precision so it will be a US model or a US signature/re-issue. If its a Stingray then it will be a US model, a Warwick will be a German model. Saying that, a lot of my good basses I've bought second hand, be it my AVRI 75 Jazz bass, US Standard Precision and Jazz and all my Stingrays. My current good bass, a Stingray SR4 fretless was also secondhand. I also prefer Japanese Fender's and would sooner play one of them over a dearer US Fender. So I have my own personal standard that I feel I can justify owning but what others play then I couldn't care less.

Yeah I was aware the Mustang had a similar design to the 1976 Musicman version - however I wasn’t sure whether the Mustang was under CBS and Leo had already gone - in which case it was reprised on the Stingray. Cue lots of debate……. you also need a screwdriver to activate them on a Mustang (thumb screw for easy application on a Stingray). I’ve even activated them between songs, live it’s that easy!! Whatever the answer, it’s a great system as you can vary the pressure of each individual mute - they sound great recorded on a Stingray - very very thumpy!!

Nope. I arrive at a rehearsal knowing the material, so all we have to do is top and tail the songs. A good rehearsal equals a good gig in my experience.

A good place to start would be a pre-amp pedal of some sort, it's effectively an amp but without a power section. That way you'll get a more familiar, amp like tone through the PA. There's a million different pre-amp pedals on the market so go for one that has the type of sound you like. I don't think Eich make a pre-amp pedal but there's a shed load of pedals that will give you a similar clean tone that you get from the amp. Something like the Helix Stomp will cover more than you'll ever need although I got rid of mine because of option fatigue and replaced it with a simple pre-amp and compressor pedals as that suits my simple needs better. Although thinking about it, you may even be able to carry on using the Eich by running the DI into the desk. Just check that you can run the amp without a cab load first! There's wired and wireless in ear monitor options to explore and there's a couple of extensive threads on here that will answer all your questions. This is the obvious place to start...

I think it's more a case if you have a bad practice immediately before the gig, you make more effort during the gig. When I've directed plays, it's often been the case that a few days before opening, we have a shocker of a rehearsal. People have a tendency to "coast" once they think they've got it cracked in terms of their performance, which can then result in it going completely haywire. We also find, during the run of the show, that opening night is great, then it drops on the second night, as again, complacency sets in. The rest of the run then picks up again to the previous level. There will always be things that happen which you don't expect, but as long as you carry it as a "team" 99% of the time the audience won't notice* *I'm excluding the last song of our set on Friday night, where it was very noticable for most of our audience, apart from the lead singer/guitarist's wife! 🤣

Pick Up The Pizzas ～ Average White Bread

I fell out of love with this for quite some time, but just recently (since returning to gigging after lockdown) it’s my go to.

For years my criteria for a bass guitar were that it had to be affordable and versatile, i.e. suitable for a range of genres as the band I was in played all sorts of songs and all sorts of gigs. We were mostly in pubs to start with and the acoustics were almost always dodgy, so the sound was secondary. For the first 12 years of my bass gigging 'career', I didn't own any new basses and hadn't paid more than about £250 for the ones I had. As the gigs got better (and as I improved as a bass player) I started to invest in the sound aspect; better amp and speakers and a new Epiphone EB0. Finally I decided to buy a 'decent' instrument (a Sterling Ray34HH). I've never experienced bass snobbery although I've seen guitar snobbery aimed at our guitarist and on one occasion a case of band snobbery - we were gigging in a pub and another band was watching. Halfway through the set they decided to critique our backline for some reason. After a while our singer engaged with them along the lines of 'what's the matter guys'? to which the response was something like 'we'd never gig with that old kit'. So he asked them where they were gigging tonight. And where they were gigging tomorrow night. And next week. They walked off and later the landlord explained that they rehearsed in the pub but never actually played any gigs.

I've had this sitting around for years, waiting for me to decide what to do with it. It's not really a Rick copy beyond the body shape but that meant that the retailer, a fairly short lived UK online brand called Wesley, rapidly got a C&D letter from Old John Hall & panic-flogged all their stock of these for £99. And I bought one. It's called a Wesley Europa, and used to look a bit like this: It's a nicely-made through-neck bass with a 3-band active preamp, 2-way truss rod, flamed top & wooden body binding. It's also got one of the most inappropriate afterthought headstocks I've ever seen on a Rick-style thing - and I've seen a few. It's a nice-playing & decent-sounding bass, meaning I did gig this quite a lot when I first got it, which quickly highlighted a significant problem - the finish that's been used everywhere other than the nice, shiny top. It's basically had a thin coat of matt black applied onto bare wood over the entire body & neck - and this just comes off, on your hands, on your clothes, anything you lean it against - everywhere, any excuse! I don't have any pics of mine at the time but this is one that turned up on Ebay quite recently - mine looked just like this after a few weeks of use! So I temporarily retired it with a view to refinishing it and maybe making that headstock a bit more palatable. Dismantling it & removing what was left of the black 'finish' revealed a rather pretty neck-through construction underneath: It also left me with a dilemma regarding the headstock - I've re-shaped a few before with pleasing results but there's so little space to improve this, the best I could come up with design-wise was pretty much an Ibby Soundgear lookalike, which hardly seemed worth the effort. Hacking the bloody thing off was a more appealing idea but way more complex than I'd originally planned. So as is my wont, I got bored & wandered off, and years passed, as they do. Converting this to headless stayed in the back of my mind & probably about 10 years on, I started seeing affordable & potentially useable headless hardware in the form of cheapo Chinese individual bridge/tuner units. I'd previously thought about that 'Overlord Of Music' Hohner clone system, but that would involve routing (I don't have a router) and relocating or abandoning the battery compartment, which is directly behind the bridge. Anyway, I recently came across some nice looking individual units branded 'Guyker', hit the buy button, and this is what turned up in the post a few days later, direct from Weifang, China, for the princely sum of about £45 delivered. They look halfway decent & seem to be pretty well-made, I think the machined components are brass under the paint, not sure about the cast saddles etc. The lack of thrust bearings is a bit of a disappointment but with a sufficiency of lubricant they should hopefully be functional. Setup is likely to be a bit of a fiddle with the saddles needing to be positioned by hand then locked in place with small & inaccessible allen screws, but likely to be a do it once then forget it task. The head-end string retainer won't win any prizes for stylish design, but it's very solid & the two clamps per string certainly mean business. The plan is - obviously, I hope - to lop off the ugly bit (which I accept might be subjective) and re-shape what's left to be functional and not look like a complete bodge/mistake. I've previously been nonplussed by, and critical of 'headless' basses that retain a sort of vestigial flap where the head should be (Laurus springs to mind) but paradoxically, that is exactly what I intend doing with this! There's an element of necessity - the string clamp requires a bit of 'head' to be mounted on, and I also need to leave space for truss rod access. While it's tempting to make this as minimal as possible, the proportions of this bass mean that the tuners will overhang the end of the body by a good 2-3 cm so it's going to have to live on a wall hanger or neck-supporting stand, rather than be bunged in the corner. So my necessary flappy end bit will keep enough of the 'flare' of the old headstock to do that. Assuming I can cut straight. So now we come the the nailing stuff together & hacking bits off part - I haven't done anything like this in some considerable time and it's a bit daunting! First things first - position the tuner units accurately. I marked saddle travel positions from the original bridge on the body - the new units have a little more range and will be a few mm closer to the bridge pickup, as G string intonation was at the limit of its movement on the old bridge. Measuring from the 12th fret after marking the new saddle positions, the mid-point between them turns out to be bang-on 17". Which is reassuring! Having measured everything (hopefully!) accurately, I made a template for screw hole positions for the individual units, giving 20mm string spacing, same as the original. Using the same template I made a plate to sit under the tuners to conceal the old bridge mounting holes and the earth wire which will link the units. It's less than 1mm thick and should not adversely affect string height. A minor irritation with the tuners is the presence of a screw which sits proud of the base of each unit. It limits the travel of the ball-end retainer to stop the unit falling apart - but also stops it sitting flush on the top of the bass, which is irksome. So in order to make them screw down properly, I'll have to create a row of rebates for the heads to sit in. Lacking suitable tools it'll be down to my ancient Dremel knock-off, a steady(ish) hand and a sense of relief that the resulting mess will be covered by hardware. OK, time to work some wood - out with the blowtorch and nailgun, and onward!

I picked up a cab, an ebay purchase, at 2pm yesterday and drove straight to a gig, loaded in at 3.45, soundcheck at 4.30 and started the first set at 5. And the new cab sounded great! I'm sure others could beat a three hour 'purchase to gig' turn-round, but I was pretty chuffed by my experience.

je fais l'amour au jambon

Le lapin ne rentre pas dans le grille-pain. Je vais essayer ce marteau

just saw this Laurence taught me how to read music in London at what was Haringey Boys in 1983-85 in crouch end at the time he lived in Muswell hill. I still have the bass books he said i should buy and i still use them to this very day and the hand written notes scales he did for me after all these years. Without him i would not be able to play a note.

Having never owned a headless bass I am interested to know how much tension you need to get on the strings before locking and tuning, and as @Si600asks, how much movement is needed. Me, I like headstocks, stops my left hand falling off the end of the bass

I detest them. With the arthritis in my hands, the only way I can get them out is standing the bass upside down on its headstock and tackle it two-handed and police-style elbow headlock to stop the whole thing crashing onto the floor. Not a good look when you are trying to change instruments in the middle of a gig. Mind you, often gets more applause than my playing

I agree - when using foam under the strings (my fave is a piece of quite open textured foam that came with an extractor fan!) I cut it to taper down so that the G is barely muted at all, as I like to do accents on there. However with a light push it slides down further and mutes it more.

In one of my previous jobs, we used to apply a £1500 a$$hole tax to certain clients just because we'd end up spending so many extra hours dealing with their a$$holery

A Sunday early evening Bandeoke for me this weekend. A pub in somewhere called Wantage 🤷‍♂️. First time there, booked despite the landlord being somewhat sceptical, and it went down a storm. Another one on the list.

My main tone is the middle pickup soloed. Occasionally engage beast mode (all 3) if i'm cranking some drive too. Shameless pic from last week's gig:

I only play Alembics and look down on the rest of you mere mortals. Does that count as snobbery?

It's everywhere online, less prevalent in person (where it actually takes some bravery/bravado to be mean to someone). Do I do it? No. Let the playing to do the talking. I know fantastic players who play Squiers. I would also say that the quality gap between the bottom and the top has been shrinking for some time now. I would happily gig a Squier - if I found one that tickled my fancy. F'n hate whisky snobs too. "How dare you put ice in that Glenwhatsitsface!" - p!$$ off.