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Just had my annual sub taken automatically… the best value I’ll get all year. Basschat has been a part of my online life for nearly two decades (well, over one and a half). It has made me friends, got me at least one keeper bass (Sonic the Jazz) and informed me on a wide range of matters. So thank you Basschat and all behind the scenes who keep her afloat!🙏

I took the train up to London to play the Lexington, in what was a UK debut show for my main 3 piece. Network Rail prices have shot up and the journey was the usual hard effort. The onstage sound was not great and we struggled as a band to hit our stride. The footage I have seen was much more forgiving and a few people came up and commented which made the whole experience better. Our drummer and his girlfriend offered to take us back to Paddington but the drummer had been drinking so he dropped us 0.7 miles from our destination. We got the train with seconds to spare, purely because it was delayed. Up mega early for a First Aid at work course and definitely feeling like I had a late one. Outside the venue. Onstage

New arrival to the flock and with that I think I’m done… (maybe) Old Smoothie has finished my stable of where I’m wanting to be. 63 P with flats, cutlass with rounds, old smoothie with flats and a 93 stingray with rounds. That should cover everything I want. Oh wait!! Fretless doh!!! Here’s the triumvirate

Anyone else using old valve amps for bass? I bought this old beast right before the first lockdown as a DOA amp. It needed a full restoration (electronically). I finally got it finished and tried it out. Wasn’t expecting much, but it actually sounds great for bass. Balanced across all of the strings, and the G string sounds FAT, whereas I’m used to my Ampeg (PF-500) sounding a bit thin on that string. It’s a bit impractical to gig with (weight), but that aside, it’s a very cool amp for bass.

Played a pub in Horsham on Saturday that we did last year as part of a charity day. As a result we were booked for a paying gig on the day of the landlords birthday. Did the full two and half hour set. A few minor hiccups along the way but nobody but us seemed to notice and the landlord is keen to have us back. Sometimes it is worth doing the freebies with an eye to a paying gig. Less happily there is Covid in our house and I feel it is only a matter of time.

I keep a couple of the reusable handwarmer pouches in my kit for those situations. Back on topic, we had our first gig with the new drummer. Guido, originally from Sicily. It all went well, a few hiccups but no one but the band appeared to notice. Guido is considerably younger and better looking than most of us in the band, which is another bonus.

Will vary slightly depending on band. I only do functions but we are pretty much just indie pop rock so have never done uptown funk or get lucky type stuff. Client never gets to pick the set list. At most they can suggest 3 songs from our repertoire. If they want us to learn something we don't do then it's £100 per song. Any band worth it's salt will have live recordings of every song they do so that a dep can learn from those and avoid surprises on the night. We have a folder on google drive that we share with anyone who deps for us. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vYKwbcL6hY5ZeXbuSmDlhoTh0aPvlFBM

Ok...this post might get long and I will ramble (it's late, I'm tired and I've had a couple of glasses of a very nice red). I have two Lulls, a JAX-T4 and an NRT5; both oversized Thunderbird bodies (reverse/non-reverse), both have a pair of Lull Thunderbird pickups in them. (These were supposedly reverse engineered by Mike Lull from Gibson's 1950/60s lap-steel units.) Concerning tonality - and this is a point I've posted about previously and will continue to reiterate time and time again - while for me these basses deliver what I want, they do not sound significantly different from any of my other basses. (Other basses sport a variety of pickups; Warman, Delano, EMG, 80s DiMarzios, Bartolini.) From a design/visual perspective, the Lull pickups look right and work well with the overall aesthetic of the instrument(s) and the chrome hardware. That's it. It wouldn't unduly bother me if these basses were carrying P/J/MM/any other pickup. Remember that pickups are just one element in the entire signal chain; fresh strings make a difference, different amps/cabs/outboard kit makes a difference, even with the same settings a different person playing the instrument can make it sound different ('It's all in the hands.'). Going back to the OP, over the years, I've been fortunate enough to have owned about a dozen Thunderbirds; I was more in love with the shape (still am) than what pickups were in it. The shape was simply the epitome of cool and just throwing one over my left shoulder made my 50+ year old body feel like I was 20 again. It was like magic. Nobody in the circle of bands we gigged with played one and just popping open the case would make other bass players just go, 'F*cking hell, Paul that's lovely.' For these guys it seemed to be an aspirational bass to own (despite the rarity thing at the time, they weren't that popular and by consequence they really weren't that expensive - I was picking them up for £800-900 a pop, hence my ability to hoover up a load of them). I'm going to contradict myself here (a little) by saying out of all of these, only one seemed to excel, it just played better and went through several different sets of pots/caps before I was 100% happy with it, it just had something a bit extra going on. It was just a bit hotter, grittier (although this was in part down to the super-low action rattling off the frets). That said, all the others sounded more or less the same as each other and were distinctly underwhelming when you just pushed them (unaffected) into the front of an amp. I think from the perspective of musical instruments the whole original/copy thing is a subject for a whole different level of discussion. Despite not owning a single Gibson at the moment, I'll continue to vehemently defend my purchase choices over the past twenty-odd years. While the '60s models were the originals, I feel that Gibson is much like Ford; of the belief that every new iteration of product is (questionably) for the betterment of the design and functionality; it would be hard to deny the basses Gibson have mass-produced from the early 90s (when production restarted) have much in common with the 60s models, aside from looking similar and, like Epiphone now, are just copy/facsimiles of the original run(s). I really can't grasp what people really want from pickups to be honest. For me, I just don't care, it's more of a visual aesthetic. I put a Delano in my Precision because I liked that it looked different. I stuck EMGs in one of my Hamers because they were a good deal/cheap. I've put P90s, humbuckers and Strat pickups in basses to see what would happen (not much difference from pickups 'designed for bass' to be honest; end of the day they're just magnets with copper windings). I've screwed loads of different pickups into various old bodies, because they were just in my box of parts and the basses just made an acceptable noise. Time for bed.

At risk of looking or sounding like a bandwagoneer @Pea Turgh inspired me with his build of the design by @Phil Starrand this happened . . . Mine is built from MDF (bad choice) using a Fenton "200w" speaker from ebay. The seller claims the driver goes down to 35hz but doesn't supply a graph. I put a port in 'tuned' for around 38Hz and am quite happy with the bottom E provided by the arrangement. Overall the sound feels balanced and it's a very worthwhile project. I feel that the smaller speaker does provide more nuance on how I'm playing and is valuable even if it only provides evidence of my technical flaws. Luckily I had a handle and other bits lying about so it cost me the £30 for the driver.

If you have a professional approach and understand that function work is 100% about the crowd's enjoyment then it shouldn't be an issue. If you want to take the money, you have to be able to play a set list like this well and with enthusiasm. I play many of those songs at over 100 gigs a year and can still say I thoroughly enjoy what I do.

OK. I've also been outvoted and played numbers I'd rather not play, but they went down well with the audience, and the band played them well, so I have no problem with any song in those circumstances.

Basschat is absolutely cool !! I remember some years at other site "Talkbass" but i was put out from it for too much trolling, but never understood what i did wrong. I think Basschat is better.

Played a festival Bury way yesterday, couple of thousand people there, we were on just before the headliners. Took bass(es) and Helix, to get there and find there was no backline. No problem, straight into the PA, the monitors were good, onstage engineer about three feet to my right. A 45 minute set with a dep drummer (tho he's the drummer from our old originals band, the guitarist/singer and I have been playing with him for decades, on and off), went down well, but it was a bit chilly onstage (the wind was blowing right into the stage) and my hands were cold and slow for much of it. All good, tho, and the easiest of load-in/outs and setup.

I saw 'intermittent tinnitus' at a prog festival in the 90s. Great band!

I wasn't paying attention but the website hit 150k over the weekend. That's around 2k hits a week currently.

Some gear sales have stuck in my mind years later… Bought a Hohner Pianet keyboard - remember them?- from a young jazz musician. His name, Django Bates, on the receipt meant nothing, but I later saw him rise to fame in his field. I never forget a name…well, not that kind of name.😁 The guitar player of the Keys, 80s power pop combo produced by Joe Jackson, bought a Maine 50w combo from me. My wife insisted on him signing a single she had - sadly, he declined to perform the song in our kitchen! Finally, in 1981, I sold a PA system to an Oi! Band, or similar. They played me a song I still can’t get out of my heads that would have been a hit for the Angelic Upstarts. The chorus ran T-D-Ayyyy T-D-Ayyyy Taking…and driving…awayyyyyy! Catchy AF!👏

Well nearly got it.. Was initially looking at a P Bass but there just not my thing tonally. So looked for a 4 string Jazz to go with my Atelier 5 without spending £thousands.. This fits the bill. Have heard great things in as much as build quality etc. Didn't want to mod it, just pick it up and play.. I really like gold and white, not sure about the gold pick guard so will change that out for a dark brown tort maybe. I think these may be sought after in years to come maybe.? . Ill take it to rehearsal and see how it sounds through the Aguilar.. 😎

So a bit of an update but after stalking all the places that sell basses for the last 6 months, this little beauty turned up for sale and not only was it local to me, it was also a fellow Basschatter 😃 Just picked it up and its gorgeous and the exact bass I was after. So thank you @JamesTun for a gorgeous bass and great to meet you and chat bass. I think we could of carried on chatting for a few more hours 😆 With the whole family as well,

Actually have just remembered the first time I'd ever heard Living Next Door to Alice was at the aforementioned gig. Busking along root fifth and listening for the changes with the whole hall singing along. Was like taking candy from a baby. 😁 Enough to give you imposter syndrome - except it hadn't been invented then... Absolutely awful song. You'd never listen to it by choice.

My first amp (1981) was a T&B 50, the snakeskin covered one. Got it from a charity shop for £20, with a matching 2x12 cab. Gigged mine with a home-made 1x15, dunno how it really sounded but it impressed the f*** out of teenage me! It died when our drummer's basement (where we used to practice) flooded. The annoying thing (devastating at the time) was that I'd just left the band but hadn't picked my gear up yet.

I didn’t want to say anything based on the last pic but think that’s the right choice

New equipment (the glass holder)

If anyone doesn't like the material, all they have to do is say no. IMO that's a great list. Designed to do a good job. The dispiriting thing is when players accept the gig and they don't play the songs well or with no enthusiasm.

My MB4, with Wilkinson tuners and Warman pup, is a snarling beast and has now become my main gigging tool. Not only does it growl like an angry rottweiler with a deep tone that would make Brian Blessed take a respectful step back, but it's fun to play, not too heavy, looks good, and the boys in the band reckon its the best sounding of my basses. It's arguably the best combination of attributes and price of any new bass anywhere and a ripe platform for fun, cost effective modding. Were it not against God's law I'd marry it!

Valve socket holes cut and mounting holes drilled.

Maine - that's a name from the past. I had a Maine 2 x 12" Stage combo as the top half of my bass rig, on top of 2 x 15" Vitavox W bins. Very heavy and very loud I recall.

If its your first bass and you are not sure how well you are going to get on with it, I would absolutely not buy anything new. There are a lot of very good second hand deals around. If you are going to buy something new, don't buy it unless you have tried it in a shop. From your list, I have an EHB, whcih is great, but expensive, and I could absolutely not play a fender jazz 5 string as the necks are way too wide for me and never found they really worked for me. Also the use of a 5 string has very little to do with if you are playing metal or not - I tend to only play 5 strings, but don't play much metal, and probably if I did it would be 80s metal on a 4 string). Also what sort of metal are you playing slap to? Get something cheap, second hand, and play it until you can work out what it is you like / don't like about it, then get something a bit more expensive when you know what it is that you want. If I was in your position I wouldn't be looking at paying more than £200. Get a used Ibanez 305 if you want a 5 string or a squier jazz if you want a 4 string.

It's kind of sad that at pub gigs the Poundland funk pastiche that is Uptown funk always gets the nod over a genuine 70s/80s funk classic

I've been quite busy hence the long gap since my last update. As well as starting back clinically at work (Bedside critical care nurse) the band I'm in are doing our first performances since covid changed our world ... this has meant loads of practicing (I'm not all that experienced so for me it is simple stuff I need to get right ... and I will be gigging with twiggy so I'm getting used to a 5 string fretless) but also offered me a power challenge! I've taken to using a Helix Stomp with an Ashdown Ant, lovely sound but it ties me to mains power (Or a too costly battery/inverter combo). We are going to "entertain the troops" getting ready for a Pride march next week and we have a b'day party garden gig at the end of July ... for both, the presence of mains power is doubtful. So I did some research and have built, printed a case for and assembled a multi-effects device (I call it effectlåda) that runs off a USB power brick ... measurements so far indicate I should get about 10h out of it on a single charge; my first Amp was a Roland Micro Bass (now glad I didn't sell it!) which can run of batteries also so I'm now good for power, and for our setup it should be plenty loud enough. An added bonus (That I have been trying to implement for a while) is the ability to playback simple drum backing to some of our songs, in fact I can plug in my USB midi keyboard and select from a wide range of synth plugins (FluidSynth soundfont based/DX7/DX10/Etc) ... effectlåda runs patchbox os on a Raspberry pi, this offers a slightly modified version of the Moddevices software (Tho a couple of versions older and not as powerful) ... the audio quality is not quite on a par with my Stomp and the tuners I've found so far for the system are rather crap but the combo of effectlåda and micro bass will do the job nicely for our gigs. Despite all this I've still made some progress with twiggy. I've now put a set of Rotosound tru bass black tape wound strings (60-135) on her and OMG ... they sound glorious! I had a bit of a disaster as my "head" mounting system started to fail; I had to redesign/rebuild it ... I was very fortunate to be able to do this without sacrificing the strings ... phew! Once I've figured out how to capture audio with the effectlåda, I'll post some recordings up. I've also modified the way I mounted the saddles, cutting slots to hold them (used my baby CNC machine, which did a great job). This has had the dual benefit of lowering my saddle action and also much reduced the risk of a saddle slipping out and getting lost. I'm now starting to get concerned about twiggy's neck stability, I might try to install a truss rod but I think I may have made the neck too thin at the head end to give me sufficient depth ... but I am now starting to look at moving onto Flo proper. Given my experience with twiggy I feel that a B0 scale length of 780mm works well for me and whilst twiggy is a couple of inches longer than I had intended for Flo, I will probably use a very similar layout for Flo, but with higher quality wood and most likely off the shelf tuners. I've reconsidered my earlier idea of using a pulley system to take the tuners to the rear (Both shortening the length overall and allowing me to hide the tuners); twiggy is really nice and light but dows not sit easily on my knee and there is nowhere to rest my (R) forearm ... I'm pondering giving Flo a body shape like twiggy's but adding in a fold out stand (Like the Steinberger Spirit) or implement the ability to affix a "body expander", bolting it to the rear of the "body" section of Flo ... this could be wood or even 3D printed. S'manth x

If i could sing, play keys and / or bass pedals while playing some amazing bass then it would be Rush on the Farewell to Kings tour. Others would be with Kiss Alive II era. Genesis on the Seconds Out tour or Deep Purple on the California Jam gig. Dave

Played a beer festival in Llanmaes. Bloody awesome, went down a storm.

It was charming to see Bruce and Dave, themselves huge mega stars, suddenly look like little school boys who couldn't quite believe that they were on stage with Macca, an ex Beatle. They were totally in awe!

There's a lot of talk about boutique amps and a lot of money that can be spent on tubey stuff, but despite owning at one time or another the most expensive all-tube amps that both Mesa and Ampeg produce - silly money in the case of the former (north of £3000) - as well as loads of top end hybrid/non-tube gear by Aguilar, Mesa, PJB, Markbass etc (and don;t get me started on how many expensive cabs I've owned), without doubt the best bass tone I ever had was from an early 70's WEM 15" combo that cost me £300 🤔

I had a separate compressor - a dead good aguilar one. I was able to figure out how to use it, but the problem was, I didn't need to adjust the settings often enough to remember how to use it the next time if you see what I mean. I'm a one-knob type of person when it comes to compression it seems, so the one in my amp will usually suffice.