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Outdoor gig, normally enjoyable. It was a bit more overcast than last week so audience was down a bit but still more than I expected. We had dragged a lot of pre-pandemic forgotten songs back, and also brought another 3 new songs forward as we had played this venue a few months ago. First half was good, good reaction, did one of the new songs and a few of the old songs, nothing really bad. Played my Maruschyck, that I had stopped playing as I had put coated strings on and it had messed the setup so much that it was lifeless and buzzy - I put it on a hanger for a few months, and took it off the hanger last week and it was fine - no idea how that happens., Second half did the other new songs, one seemed to go down well, one less so. BUt there were quite a few mistakes in common songs we do, left a verse out of one song, then about half an hour messed up one song so bad it couldn't be recovered, so the confidence was completely gone. Got through the rest of the songs, and it wasn't pleasant. Afterwards the drummer decided to quit at christmas so the guitarist decided to quit then and there. So that looked like it for the group. However, this morning, things are back on track, but we have to make sure that this doesn't happen. I mean it shouldn't happen, the new songs and the recovered songs were fine, this was a song we had been doing for 4 years or so and had done it loads of times.

Bunkfest, or more accurately Bunkfest Fringe, last night. Depping gig, for 'The Soul Seniors' featuring @Happy Jack of this parish doing his maiden gig on keys. We were playing on a covered stage in a pub car park. There was a Sound Engineer, but he was doing the job at at a few places so was flitting between venues. This was my first gig in a couple of years, and TBH I felt it. You can be as prepared as possible - practicing and rehearsals - but onstage in front of a crowd is different. It took a couple of songs for me to feel at ease, then I started to enjoy it. The songs helped, classic soul, with a bit of funk, and disco, great basslines for a bassist to play. I had a couple of 'lapses of concentration' but nothing major. Fortunately I was rescued by the band when I missed an end cue and kept playing, it ended up sounding like an intentional break 😆

Yesterday we made our third visit to The Crossroads Tavern, Alfreton, Derbyshire. It’s the old town post office converted into a bar, and their slot for live music is Sunday afternoon. We enjoy playing there, the crowd is always lively and enthusiastic. By the time we finish, 6.30 ish, most of the bar is bladdered and singing along. But, within 15 minutes most of them have gone. Some to the curry house next door, some on busses back to Derby and Nottingham and others just shamble off into the distance. Another fun afternoon, only mildly spoiled by a wheel falling off my trolley.

Saturday night, private party for a friend of the signer. Bringing our own PA gear except some speakers in situ. Sound issues all over, sadly. The room was small and there was some weird reverb on the bass notes. If I played a note that would usually go "dum" and end in this place it would go "dumMmMmmmmWhooooomph". Worse still notes below A caused a swelling mush of low end. The singer couldn't hear his monitor, and I usually rely on that monitor too. Still, nice crowd of people enjoying themselves and celebrating their friends birthday. Once more we had a request for a song I've never learned but the band had played years back before I joined, so I had to busk my way through... Made harder by the singers notes being chords for a guitar with a capo at the 2nd fret, quite hard to do on the fly! But we got through. Don't know about anyone else but if I make even small mistakes it haunts me forever. I don't know if the audience notices at all but it bothers me a lot. Plenty to work on in rehearsals this week!

For Fender-style instruments the only reason that "budget" versions would be inferior is because there is slightly less time and attention to detail spent on final finishing and quality control. Remember that these instruments were designed to be made cheaply and easily using 1940s technology operated by (relatively) unskilled labour. With modern CNC machines and a little bit of care at the finishing stage any manufacturer should be able to churn out perfect examples every time. The question we should really be asking is why the "pro" versions are so expensive.

And so it began ... Note the soot stains on the parts of the housing lying by the hacksaw, these are the inside surfaces illustrating how much smoke got into the case! After removing the bottom of the housing, the Pi came out no problem. Further nibbling away at the housing and the audio card was nearly ready to come out. The interconnects were next (and this picture shows why the top of the case had such a funky topology) I cleaned up the Pi & audio card using alcohol and a cotton bud, trying to get as much as the residue off as I could. The Pi uses a micro SD card as its "disk drive", this appeared intact and running all of the diagnostics on it from a linux computer, no errors were reported ... a hopeful sign! I powered on the Pi, the usual boot up sequence of the LEDs occurred ... a really hopeful sign. The Pi uses a micro HDMI port for display and I don't have one of those adapters any more so I'm not sure if it actually started up OK. I was unable to find it on the list of WiFi networks when I did a scan; I thought it was last configured to act as a WiFi access point so I could connect to it in the absence of any other WiFi system, possibilities are: It may not have started up correctly. I may not have configured the WiFi the way I thought I had. The WiFi electronics may be fried. I think I can pick up the necessary adapter cheaply whcih will allow me to connect the Pi to a monitor/keyboard/mouse and check out the problem, hopefully it is 2. Next step (if it works) will be to attach the audio card, see if it is recognised and then try to hook up some in and out jacks to see if it will process any sound. I'm visiting my makerspace (With it's Aladdins cave of equipment and components) later today so will have a chance to try that there . S'manth x

I’m in the House Band that’s done a Sunday Jam for the last twenty five years , and sometimes the Sunday jam will be the most enjoyable gig of the week. Certainly the case last night. Oh there were some moments of horror , no jam is complete without both extremes , but there was certainly some great playing , and a great case of fun. Here’s a bunch of the usual suspects.

Played last night at the final night of a local rock festival. It was our fist proper gig since last November when we opened for the Wildhearts and even then one of our guitarists missed that through COVID... Anyhoo, the venue was jammed. Very sweaty and very much like a pre-pandemic gig. There ended up being a mosh pit in the last song that spilled over on to the stage resulting a large semi-naked man crashing into me, also bashing the jack socket in my Vigier Excess, resulting in the jack socket falling out of the bass with the lead still attached! The bass was somehow still working, albeit with the loose lead and jack socket hanging from the bass, so I just kept playing until the end of the song (and with that the gig). Inspected the bass when I got home and discovered that the problem was that the nut that holds the jack socket in place must have been knocked loose and then fell off. An easy fix. I've had the bass for 18 years now and it has always been used as a 'workhorse' bass rather than a 'boutique' bass, so it has had a few bashes and knocks over the years. All being said, it was a pretty fun gig and the band are looking to finally get things going again after a period of job changes, house purchases, engagements, marriages and kids over the last couple of years which tend to happen to people in their 30s.

We played at the 'Fields of Gold' festival last night, in Ashton under Lyne on the outskirts of Manchester. Small 3 day festival that was originally a 2 day event but they bolted on the Sunday too. Was a bit disappointed that the regular MC Bez of Happy Mondays wasn't doing it this year, as would have loved to meet him. Not a great turn out, maybe due to the lousy weather forecast which turned out to be wrong. A very balmy evening with the rain holding off until we were nearly home. There were some great bands on, including 'Stax of Soul', a brilliant 9 piece soul band featuring our very own @thunderthumbs on bass duties. They have a 4 piece horn section - two trumpets, tenor and baritone saxes and sounding so good. Lovely guys too. After a lot of confusion regarding arrival and set up times, we went on (for the first time in the band's history) without a proper soundcheck, just a line check to make sure everything was on. Very nerve racking for the first few songs, but the sound techs did a great job. All in all an enjoyable do, and a nice change from our usual theatre stuff.

At this point I want to apologise to @Happy Jackfor unwittingly turning this into a thread about ironing. The relevance to the original topic is fragile at best. But when ironing, make sure you always go close to the edge.

Aaaaand... American Original 50s Precision:

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:

Quick shot of my 3 on the wall, Euro Bolt in Metalic Blue sparkle, 2004 Legend in Amber Maple top, NS2000 from 1999 neck is incredible on that one, neck through in Translucent Red. They all sound different with them all having their own pickups and preamps. replaced the hardware on the NS2000 & Legend. The Euro Bolt can be made to sound really aggressive depending on the setting of the tone pump, all enjoyable to play.

Hurtsfall at the (Old) Angel in Nottingham. The sound is always a bit hit and miss in a room that is taller than it is wide, but by ditching the backline entirely and putting everything straight into the PA made balancing everything up much easier. Also the fact that we use very little in the way of massively overdriven sounds gave us a much better definition to the mix than the other bands. New song went (almost) flawlessly - I did have to stop the intro after out singer started talking over it as it's quite subtle if we don't get the downbeat we're all over the place for the first verse. Otherwise form a performance PoV this could have been the best gig we have done post Covid. A couple of action shots:

Nice little gig in a local WMC at the weekend. Some of these places are feeling the pinch already so it was nice to see a decent crowd as the night went on. https://www.facebook.com/molly.moo.1044186/videos/2026015460919710/

Had a bad mistake last week doing Into the Valley by Skids. Bass E string detuned to D for it. Bass starts and after a couple of bars the guitar joins in for another 2 bars. That was fine until i went to the next line a bar early causing the guitarist to get lost and the drummer couldn't come in with his cues. At one point myself and guitarist were on different bars, he stopped and i just kept playing the intro riff until they came back in. That's the worst start i've had in many years. Some of the audience who had been drinking a fair bit said to me at the end of the night that they thought i was having a wee bass solo 😂 Happy days but it's live music and sometimes things go a little astray 😀 Dave

Saturday night was the second visit this year to the The Portreath Arms, in Portreath. Nice friendly crowd and all went well. Even got them up and dancing. My set-up was my recently acquired MM Sterling, strung with DRs (why did I ever sell the previous three?) into a Sansamp Flyrig into a Markbass Nano (set flat) into a BF One 10. Great tone, nice and growly. As we don't have drummer it was more than loud enough. Landlady very pleased and wants us back again. Problem is it was the last gig for a while as the guitarist is starting a new job and needs to devote his energies to that for the foreseeable future. Sad in a way as it was finally all coming together. I think the motivation is there to continue but time will tell. In the meantime I shall be visiting the local Jam nights to try and meet a few more musos.

A high proportion of an audience won't even know the difference between bass, lead and rhythm guitar. Even more won't know what brand you're playing. And even more won't have a clue how much they cost.

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.

https://archive.org/details/the-taylor-hawkins-tribute-concert-live-from-wembley-stadium

That explains me then. The latter of course, not the former.

a pro player will sound good using almost any gear, just as a poor player will sound rubbish not matter how expensive their gear is

Is it just to be used as an onstage monitor? The Fender Rumble 100 V3 is a great little amp. It's small, very light but loud enough to be used on it's own, with quiet drummers. I bought mine used for £165. I use it for small gigs,where it would be overkill to bring my big rig and as an onstage monitor for louder shows, where I'm going through the FOH PA.

Standard function job. Birthday party, slow burner, but we got there eventually, I was tired from a solo acoustic gig the previous night and didn’t play my best. We had three hour long sets and the manager was a bit fussy over volume, which was annoying in a room with the acoustics of a giant toilet. The necks on both my basses moved during the very hot evening. Afterwards we discovered that the radiators were on!!! My basses had been sat next to them and the inevitable happened. IMG_0533.MOV

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.

It’s a section of lyrics from Yours Is No Disgrace, IIRC.

The upper end Squiers deliver a great bang to buck ratio. I was thankful they did VM and CV versions, the vintage originals fetch silly money , and the Custom Shop ones are still pretty pricey. There was a Mexican run but they’re long out of issue and hard to find. I’m still surprised at the time I spend goofing around on mine , no regrets whatsoever.

I'm a pro in the sense that I earn money from playing pubs and I have no other discernable income. And I play a £120 P bass clone.

The Chicken ～ Pee Wee Pastorius

Playing in an originals band, we never have these issues. Normally because there is no audience there.

Secondhand Mark Bass CMD 121P.

Beat me to it! I’ve also got a Rumble 100v3 and it’s a wonderful combo. Bought mine s/h too, and I've used it on small / medium gigs with both electric and electro acoustic basses. Sounds great, and unbelievably lightweight, with a good XLR DI. Not too big for home use either.

Ok that's convinced me. I like the red/ebony A1H version that Dan's playing in the video, and upon investigating, it turned out there was literally one red A1H left - a refurbished unit for £718. Can't dither in those circumstances. Slept on it and then put the order in first thing this morning. Vox have a 30 day free returns policy so nothing to lose.

I've got a vintage pro because I went in to PMT to buy a Gibson and thought I'll just try that Epiphone to see how much better the Gibson is. I'm glad I did, saved me £1200

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.

I’ve had my SM58 pick up my cab off-axis and cause a rumble through the PA. The low cut filter helps (if you have one on your channel strips). On the odd occasion we have had the luxury of a sound man, so I get him to turn my mic up when it is needed (I’m only allowed to do a bit of backing vocals) and mute the rest of the time. The main singer’s SM58 Beta seems more resistant to off-axis interference but they are quite a bit more expensive. I used to use an AKG D5 and that was even worse for off axis interference. The right mic and careful placement can help but it is difficult to avoid this kind of stuff if, like us, you get to play in cramped conditions like most pubs and village halls.

I have only owned one iron in my adult life. I used it to smash the window to my flat so I could get in after locking myself out (it was in a box of pointless objects which had never made it into the flat). Otherwise I never found a use for it.

John Entwistle tried to record My Generation on a Dano but the final recording is a simplified solo played on a Fender Jazz with La Bella flats.

I've stuck my short scale SX Precision bass up for sale 😊

I have one (BG250 208) as my practice amp. It had an outing to summer school recently and was fine for the big hall I played in.

I don’t think that I ever posted this. Quite a rare vid of me playing my RBX - and with a plectrum no less! And a laugh of a time signature too! Quite a cool line up on this one - Gaz especially… monster vocalist.