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I got a phone call at 1440, whilst at home in West Wiltshire. "There's 2 tickets - VIP box, how soon can you get here? My brother in law (massive Foo Fighters fan) and I walked into the box at 1710. An amazing experience.

I had a last minute dep gig last night in a working men's club in the Welsh mining valleys. My mate, (ex-singer of the current band) has his own trio with him and a female singer fronting, and usually a second guitarist. No drums, 75% backing tracks and from previous experience I knew it would be largely busking with random songs and arrangements - it's why he was 'allowed' to leave the band (😀) as he could never stick to the set list and would change songs around on the fly, or even announce completely new ones to the consternation of the rest of us. It was a long drive in the rain but with the help of the lovely lady in the sat nav box, I arrived outside the club to recognise it as somewhere I'd played around 20 years ago with the same singer in a three piece band. Easy load in straight onto a large, well lit stage but the changing room had no lighting. The stage lighting for the acts was great - they even had some kind of laser projector (or a simulated one) which painted little red dots onto the stage. Several times during the gig I noticed that the other two had red dots on their foreheads as if they were being targeted by a sniper. It would have been amazing if they'd had a fog machine to highlight the light beams. I decided to use the gig to try out a couple of new pedals and my small TCE BAM200 head - I've used the head in rehearsals but not at gig volumes and as it's my spare for gigs, I thought I ought to make sure it was up to the job. I used my TE 1x12 and Warwick 1x12 cabs. I knew I'd be having to cut through some pretty full backing tracks so I had a recently acquired EHX Bass Soul Food pedal set to give a bit of grit. I was playing my Stingray 34HH and the combination worked as I had hoped. I also had IEM so I could hear the tracks and my singing (the bass wasn't going through the PA, by choice). The gig itself was ok. Right from the off there was a horrible rumbling buzz from the PA just low enough that we could get away it with once we'd found we couldn't identify the source. A few songs in I realised it wasn't in my IEM so it wasn't us. (It was a loose connection from the laptop the DJ had been using going through the house PA which hadn't been turned off - we got it fixed). I knew most of the songs, managed to busk most of the rest and managed to cope with the strange versions of songs the guitarist played (he tends to simplify some songs and for some reason changed the key of Hotel California on a whim). The only one that really threw me was 'American Pie' so rather than make pathetic off key noises as I tried to find the roots, I turned the volume down and did my best TOTP mime act. 😀 The audience were enjoying and interacting with us but there were only a few dancers, although there was a lot of singing along to the Eagles songs we played. As an aside, I used to love playing the working men's clubs in the Welsh valleys years ago as they were usually lovely old buildings with the original decor and fittings, nice changing rooms and polite audiences who appreciated (if not liked) what we were doing. Sadly a lot of these clubs have closed over the years, some not surviving Covid, and those that made it have been 'renovated' and had their charm removed or covered over with suspended ceilings. Last night's venue still had hints of its past but only if you looked hard. In the first photo below there's an ornate frame on the far wall. I suspect it once surrounded a large mirror which, along with others along both walls, would have made the place look larger.

Just back from a UK tour that took in Stoke, London, Swansea, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Bradford, Bilston and Blackpool. There was more but I am too tired to remember even my own name. Super fun but I have two weeks of Basschat to catch up on.

Aaaaand... American Original 50s Precision:

Lindisfarne Festival, Northumberland. Lively.

Hi all! Somehow I've ended up with these. Can't quite remember how it happened, but there you go. First up - American Original 60s Precision:

What a night!

mensinger cazpar 6

Short finals. Body and neck carving next.🥰

If you have Netflix, you may like to know that they've just added a bunch of new material including a 70-minute film about a gig at The Rainbow just shy of 50 years ago. The band is a bunch of proggers called Yes and the film is, of course, Yessongs. Apart from the sheer joy of seeing (and hearing) this after all these years, the film is well worth watching because the triple live album (which I wore out at the time) was a 'best of' from three consecutive nights at The Rainbow whereas the film is the recording of a single concert. At least half the songs in the film are therefore versions that I've never heard before - not wildly different, but enough so that it feels like getting into a time machine and going to one of their gigs. Sublime.

Wirebirds gig in Witney tonight, outside but with a hastily erected gazebo in case the few spots of rain as we were setting up came to anything, They didn't so we had a fair sized audience outside with us. No set list, we just let the guitarist start and bass and drums join in. Very enjoyable playing as a three piece - even when the PA broke down. It was the venue's kit, not ours, so we carried on with instrumental versions until a knowledgable member of the audience managed to coax it back into life. Played a bunch of familiar material from the last nine years with the band, plus at least one that neither the drummer nor I recognised, but bluffed our way through it. As always with this band, we were flying by the seat of our pants and often close to falling off the edge, but always managed to keep going. We used our new lights for the first time (there were no old lights!) and they made a real difference. Real party atmosphere outside a small bar in Witney. I think it's our fourth time there this summer. I played my 2010 US Standard Precision though an Orange Little Bass Thing and a Barefaced Super Compact. Plenty of volume and punch. Next gig is out near Swindon in a week's time.

It was amazing

Played Fulborn Sport and Social club with our old guy rock band, Dirty Hands. Played pretty well for my third gig…first one without any notes. Interesting crowd…most avoided the cover charge in the hall by sitting next door in the bar, but those in attendance had a good time! First time with this rig…24 fret jazz bass, dual showman head with 4 x12’s. Got a great sound.

NPD for me yesterday: the blue octave pedal in the middle. "The 85" by Laney. I'd previously tried their "Custard Factory" compressor but didn't get on with it. "The 85" is more intuitive; and the Anderton's product video on the Black Country pedals also helped. I tried out 4 others, but this was the one that sounded best with my G&L L2000 and Sire V7 fretless. The Sub 'n' Up and EBS Octabass were pretty close in the shoot out though. The Aguilar Octamizer and MXR288 octave deluxe were less close. The signal chain runs from top right to left. Switch to select the bass, tuner, compressor, octaver, chorus, preamp. I give the sound techs clean and driven signals from the preamp and let them decide how much of each to blend in. I'm often playing in 2 or 3 piece bands (worship rotas at church are proving a bit difficult) so having the 2 signals helps to fill things out. I'm hoping the octaver will similarly. I'm even thinking of putting it and the chorus after the preamp using the "thru" path, then they can have 3 signals - I probably need to talk that one through with them though!

Just got home from the gig. That was a long day!

After months of deliberation my father and I decided to give the BC110T a crack. Ultimate aim is to give ourselves the experience to build a 12", but that's another story. Instructions by @Phil Starrand @stevieare exemplary. Although the divergence from those instructions is minimal, we are doing things a little differently: You can see the wood is not plywood, but OSB. That just so happens to be the wood we had available. Once the box is done most likely we will finish with a hard epoxy or yacht varnish so that it looks amateur, but still is resilient to knocks. We haven't bought it yet, but we will swap out the Pulse10 driver for either the BN10-300X(8) or (Stevie's suggestion) the NTR10-2520E. Both of those woofers are more expensive than the Pulse10, but not by a huge amount. Their parameters are very similar to the Pulse10 where that's important, and they exceed in the others where that's preferable. I cannot really add to the instructions laid out in the mega thread on the topic. They're perfect. I will say that I'm super excited to make some noise at the end of the build, as well as during it. The table saw cut the wood like butter, and the cut was extremely accurate and true. The circular saw was equally straight with a jig, but it was much harder, with clamps and the like. In the end we cut the big panel down to smaller manageable chunks using the circular saw, and the table saw made the mm perfect cuts. The battens were from B&Q, and were cut using a mitre saw, pictured. Progress will be slow but I hope to keep this thread updated with developments. The battens have been dry mounted to the panels. We will save the gluing for a later date.

As some may know, I recently experienced a fire in my home. Very little survived the inferno, my EffektLada unit did not go unscathed! Pre-Fire Post-Fire I am going to strip down the HR Giger-esque remains and see if the guts are still working. But first a description of the unit. EffektLada A Raspberry Pi based multi F/X unit. It runs the open source MOD ecosystem software created by Mod for their Dwarf & Duo X units. A Pi4 is a little more powerful than the heart of the Mod Dwarf, so even tho it is running Pi OS (A general purpose operating system) it should still deliver comparable (or even slightly better) performance. Hardware Main core is a Raspberry Pi 4b with 8Gb RAM (A 4Gb should work well, I happened to have an 8Gb I could repurpose). (Cost apx £75) Audio card is a HiFiBerry DAC+ ADC Pro (Cost apx £55) There are also various interconnects and jack sockets. The housing is a custom 3D design/print. Software The foundation is Pi OS, a linux operating system specifically for the Pi. This is tweaked in a variety of ways (more later) to optimise it for real time management of audio. The magic is performed using Mod Host & Mod UI, which are both part of the Mod ecosystem. There is a similar system already in existence (And it heavily influenced EffektLada) called Patchbox OS, it runs a modified version of the Mod software called Modep. I configured EffektLada is a similar fashion, but with two key differences It uses a more recent version of Pi OS. It directly uses the Mod HOST and Mod UI software from Mod (Modep is a fork of these) so that it is possible to easily take advantage of improvements & bug fixes that Mod develop. As well as using EffektLada for FX processing (There are apx 600+ high quality plugins for it, think of these as a library of pedals from which you can construct a pedalboard ... all for free!) I intend to use MIDI, with a keyboard (and later some planned custom built MIDI controllers) to allow the generation of drum backing, sound effects and other bits and bobs for our gigs; given I'm already wired up with my bass rig, it makes sense to wrap this up in the one unit. The unit pictured was the first generation prototype, totally operated by its web interface. The rebuild will incorporate some foot switches and a small display to allow for on the fly switching amongst various patches/settings. I've started the delicate task of trying to extricate the innards of the melted unit and will post up more details with pix when I can. If the Pi is "baked" then this diary will have a long hiatus, PIs are nearly impossible to come by (Except at insane prices) in the aftermath of the chip supply chain issues following Covid.

I have heard that the Epiphone Vintage Pro Thunderbird is better than any of Gibsons current offerings. I know I've banged on about it lately but my super cheap 90s Encore that I spent a leisurely afternoon rolling the fretboard edges, bevelling, levelling, crowning and polishing the frets, sorted the nut and smoothed the edges/corners, in fact just rounded and smoothed any edge. It now feels as nice to play, if not nicer, as any high end bass I've played. A lot of what makes a high end bass expensive is the man hours put in to lift it above the machine finished budget models. Does it matter if your bass was made in Mexico by Mexicans or made in America by Mexicans? (that was tongue in cheek) And let's not forget in the late 70s/early 80s Japan were churning out stuff that embarrassed the likes of Gibson and Fender who'd sat on their laurels and let quality slide.

Snap! Well, half snap anyway. I just picked up a 50's P Bass in a trade for a Sax I wasn't using. Its absolutely mint and still had the plastic over the tuning pegs. I've just set it up and restrung it and love it. I prefer it to the 60's AO I had for a while.

Thanks both. I think it's actually Cherryburst and it's a 1996'er. It weighs in at just under 8 1/2lbs and I just love the sound of the 2eqs.

Vertebrae U2

Innuendo ～ Queen Possibly a tenuous deuce? 🤔

An increasingly rare outing for my hard rock band last night. We headlined a biker rally in Sunderland, it's the fourth time we've done it and it's normally one of my favourite gigs. Last night was no different with a great reaction from the crowd and us lot all having fun. When we've done this in the past I've always had trouble hearing myself (even once with my 2x Barefaced FR800s running very loud) but this year had a new sound crew and pa and the on stage sound was brilliant, as was FOH during my brief walk through the crowd. I took both of my QSCs, preparing for the worst, but didn't even plug them in. There wasn't much I could add to 6x 1x15" L'Acoustics tops, 4x 2x18" subs, 6x 2x12" wedges and a massive QSC 153 drum fill, biker rally indeed. I ended up using my Stingray, HX Stomp board and the obligatory wouldn't-be-a-sound-crew-gig-without-it Klark Teknik di. Really bad lighting and a tight turnaround meant that I didn't get any photos of us but here's some of the setup, the devastation at the end of the disco after us, and also a video of the excellent Thee Odd Shoes who were on before us. PXL_20220903_195655786.mp4

My board requirements seem to have settled down to four set ups. Two regular bands, one less frequent and one very occasional. The requirements for the two main ones are different so I run two boards, and the others get whatever I bung in the car. This is the latest set up for my main gigging band. It covers everything I need and is pretty settled. I still seem to change out the drive pedal, and the envelope filter on a fairly regular basis but otherwise this collection makes the noises I'm after. Powered by a Truetone CS7, and sat on a NUX Bumblebee, the switches getting the most action are the OC-5, American Sound, and the graphic eq. These boost or thicken the sound when the keys take a solo or just make things a bit filthy when the set gets lively. Everything else does a job on a specific song, or part of a song. Out of sight beneath the top level is a Behringer Bass BDI which gives a bit of sparkle and drive to my 'clean' or 'always on' sound.

I am working on the Answer Key video now....I will try my hardest to have it up by this weekend A BIG thank you to all those that subscribed...I am really touched by all this...These videos are very time-consuming but the responses here and other places where Ive posted this (not to mention with my Real Life friends and players) makes it all worthwhile

I thoroughly enjoyed the whole evening. Some very poignant moment, especially Taylor Hawkins' 16 year old son playing drums on 'My Hero'. I can only imagine the mixed emotions going on in that young lads head leading up to the gig but he did his dad proud.

I guess the poster who put Killing Joke, Mastodon and Voivoid as their top picks just forgot that they actually prefer Donald Fagen ?

The Cruisers, at Loddon Social Club in Norfolk. Audience: one. And two WAGs. and a couple that walked in and straight out again.

Emergency Exit punk gig last night. (freebie) Was a weird one. It was to honour a friend of the band who passed away during covid and the family asked if we would play as she was a big fan of the band. This was before i joined. Large fancy hotel gig with all the women wearing party frocks / dresses. That was a sign that we were not an ideal band for this kind of gig. 1st set was quiet with hardly anyone dancing but we were getting plenty of clapping, whistles and cheering after every song. (maybe not enough drink involved yet). 2nd set saw a big change with some songs filling the floor and then all of a sudden we were back to 5 or 6 dancers. By the end of the set we had quite a few back on the floor for most songs and we got an encore but it was hard work at the start. Using my trusty Sandberg Marlowe and my Mesa Mpulse and Subway 210/115 cabs. Hopefully we wont be asked to do that again. Dave

Most Fender Custom Shop basses are a farce, there are a few gems but the majority as simply of the quality you'd expect a standard factory run bass to be given the ludicrous prices. You can build a bass of equal if not better quality using off the shelf parts from Allparts, Warmoth and sometimes even their lower priced competitors and in doing so you not only get a much cheaper instrument of the same quality but you get to choose your own spec re wood, finish, hardware, electrics etc. I've picked up a few used CS models over the years, I have no idea why anyone would ever buy one new given the prices and the apparent lottery regarding good bass/bad bass

Three gigs for me this week. Tuesday was the acoustic duo's monthly gig at a local pub. Very humid night but we got some great requests, most of which we managed, although had to admit to not doing 'Rosanna' by Toto! Thursday was at Mansfield Palace Theatre, a great venue and sold out too. Our first band gig back after a summer break so we were all a bit worried but actually went okay. Some monitoring issues fortunately didn't manage to spoil it for us, and happy faces all around. I got a bit of an ache in my left hand, but think it's because I've not played 2 x1 hour sets for a while. Then last night we were at one of my favourite venues, Buxton Opera House. Played here many times and always loved it. Again, had some monitoring issues with the in ears ( not for me as still use a wedge - caveman etc.) but our great crew managed to get it sorted. Also some issues with the guitar and bass emitting a HF noise, which was eventually tracked down to the air con! Once turned off it was problem solved. Unfortunately for the capacity crowd it made for a rather sweaty evening, but went down a storm so all seemed fine. The venue staff are a pleasure to work with here, and we'll hopefully be back again in 2023. Tomorrow (Sunday) we are playing the Fields of Gold Festival at Ashton-Under-Lyne, Manchester. Hoping the weather is kind to us, as it's a long day - setting off at 8am. Plenty of bands on so should be a nice change for us.

Love Potion Number 9 - Tygers of Pan Tang Edit: What the hell, this needs sharing! 😎

And a little more done.... Before I start applying the final finish, I wanted to make sure everything fitted together properly so any adjustments could be made without creating more work! I've fitted threaded inserts for the pickup screws again - just something about them that I like but a minor detail. The strings for this bass are custom made by Newtone strings, this set is .105 to .025 so tuning E to C. I'm quite pleased how the tuner arrangement has worked out - the headstock isn't much bigger than the four string versions I've made before. I will use this headstock layout again on a longer scale 5 string at some point soon. I've played it acoustically and I'm really liking it! The pickup is and EMG 40TW so has a pull switch on the volume to split the coil and give a bit more variation to the sound for a single pickup bass. Next task is to fit the other hardware and electrics so I can finish the body. The neck then needs the frets dressing and I need to make a nut. No too far off so should be ready for the SW Bass Bash.

Its good when it all comes together. 😃

After moving my SBMM s-s 'Ray on, I went for a Starstream A2S based largely on Dan's review of the A1H below and after a good chat with him and the guys at Vox UK. Believe me, the Vox Artist is in a completely different league from both the 'budget' Starstream (which I bought first and sent back) and the 'Ray. Vox said that the Artist was made in Japan for parent company Korg as a limited 'premium' run to test/prepare the market for the cost-engineered version intended to sell in higher volumes. Even priced at its launch RRP of around £1400 the Vox would be value for money. For the £800 I paid, it's a steal. The quality is as good as it gets, IMHO the avant-garde design looks great as well as making complete sense in functional terms, and I love the choice of Aguilar AG 4-J70 pickups (the A1H has an AG-4M) and OBP-2 pre-amp. I went for black with the maple fretboard. Vox Starstream A1H review by Dan Veall

That ☝ is a Bobby Dazzler!

Since around the mid-90s 'Custom Shop' has simply been a term meaning 'our most overpriced items generally aimed at people who need to feel that the gear they own is better than the gear most people own'. It's the gear version of flying First Class, in real terms a high price for a small difference in process and emotions, but ultimately arriving at the same destination via the same process s everyone else 👍

What a night! Very emotional and utterly brilliant. It was a very cathartic experience. Dave Grohl , what a dude 💙

This was the cause of tinnitus in Reigate on Friday: (and yes, I know I need to sort matching grilles!)

I’ll be using this tomorrow although the Status is back at the mothership in Colchester getting some tlc so will be paired with a Flea jazz.

Ludicrously over priced paying for Fender CS name nonsense. Ive seen some custom shop jazzers selling for over 9 grand. Masterbuilt of course by Vincent Van Gogh or whatever his name is. Ive seen a Strat CS for sale on Thomann for 18 grand. The factory tour for the average worker stamping out metal parts all day long on 50 year old presses is not a pretty site.

Not last night but the night before. We had a gig in a local pub and I decided to take my old P Bass that I've had for 30-odd years as I'd not gigged it in a while and I really miss gigging with a simple P Bass. No names and no pack drill, but when we arrived the bar staff and most of the clientele were already one past the eight. We were told where to set up and that all windows and doors needed to be kept closed while we were playing. It was a bit stuffy but okay, we'd cope (I had my Beyoncé fan with me so I didn't mind too much). Sadly I drew the short straw and had to set up by the door to the beer garden which was in heavy use with smokers etc. all night. As a result I decided that I'd probably play without my pedalboard to keep the gangway clear. No major issues as apart from a bit of compression and maybe a bit of Octave I'd cope. It was a good gig and I played the P Bass all night, alternating with my Five String and it was just great fun, although all the time the P Bass was on its stand when I was playing the Fiver, and also when we took a break I was internally panicking in case anyone stole it. It was completely irrational but because it was close to the door I just couldn't relax and every time I've used it in similar circumstances I've been really worried about it (not that it's a vintage one or worth a great deal of money). It actually spoilt a good night for me and I don't think I'll use it again other than for recording or for functions when we have a stage and/or more space. Anyway, it was a good gig and I bought a kebab on the way home and ate it on a bench.

Here’s mine