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I hope she gets better soon.

My blues rock trio Toredown played at the Shamrock pub in Ipswich last night. Only tiny but our favourite place to play, with slight uncertainty as it was the first time since a change of ownership. A lot of people came just to see us and a lot of new people stayed to watch us - we played very well, went down brilliantly, loads of the new faces came up at the end - has to be one of the most enjoyable gigs I've ever had. Guitarist Alan feeds on this and his playing was incandescent New owners loved us and asked if we could play there every month. We don't think we should or could but certainly we'll play there more regularly. A12 shut on the way home, diverted through country lanes, home at 2am, but it couldn't take the shine off the night really.

Played a private party on the South Gower Coast last night. This was the view as we set up: By the time we went on, it was dark and very cold, with a wind coming in off the sea. It took a couple of songs for me to even be able to feel my fingers. Slow start with a small but ultimately appreciative audience, including some sheep in the field behind the marquee. The PA took care of the heavy lifting, so the Trace and BAM200 were for monitoring only and I DI'd the Ray34HH via my Laney Digbeth pre-amp.

Second of three gigs this year for our (very) occasional country band ‘The Fork Handles’. Venue was a British Legion club in a small town just outside Hull. Must admit I didn’t count on them selling all the tickets, so when I arrived at 7pm the place was already heaving. Tiny stage, house PA not ideally situated for us and a new drummer didn’t manage to put the mockers on the night, with plenty of smiling faces all around. Some dodgy moments here and there of course, but overall one of those small good time gigs that I will never tire of. Used my Dano Longhorn into a GK / Barefaced Compact set up, and had plenty of warm bottom end sound. (No pics I’m afraid, although if any surface from the punters I’ll add them later.)

Last night our drummer did his first gig with a Roland electric kit but normal cymbals. The drum sound was so much more manageable, more space on stage, less stage volume and just an overall much better sound. The gig itself was good as always, the Horn in St Albans is a decent venue and with live bands playing late and free entry it gets a decent crowd.

My 3 P Basses spot the odd one out

It's the end of another month of music making inspired by last months winner @Doctor J We have another fine selection for your listening enjoyment , so spare a little time and post 3 votes to show your preferences. The compositions were done using the following picture as the starting point. The entries are as follows .... 1 @Dad3353 It all started innocently enough. A fun day out in the fresh alpine air... 2 @NickD The picture suggested getting the hell out of somewhere, sharpish like, so I went for a simple rock & roll (ish) ditty about just that. I did initially have environmentally specific references in the lyrics (snow & such), but replaced them to generalise it a bit. 3 @Leonard Smalls Having been reminded of the film about the Jamaican bobsleigh team, and inspired by the recent thread on drum and bass, here's a bit of Caribbean-tinged DnB. With lots of bass! 4 @Nicko I imagine the lady in the picture is experiencing the same fear which our new PM will experience as she tries to solve the countries problems. With the current economic situation in the country reminding me of the late 70s and early 80s I though I'd do some English Ska. 5 @Nail Soup Picture is someone sliding, so I (eventually) thought of slide guitar. I only really use a slide on my cigar box guitar, made with my on fair hands a few years ago. So Cigar box slide it is. 6 @Doctor J I could empathise with the lady in the picture. As a youth, I had many an adventure which seemed like a great idea to start off with, but quickly sped beyond my control and ended with blood loss. Something fast and violent seemed appropriate. 7 @upside downer It's 2023, sixty years on from the last big freeze and Britain is once again covered in snow and ice. One intrepid granny is determined not to let the inclement weather get in the way of her weekly shopping routine. 8 Lurksalot by the look on her face she was never going to do it again .. OK then that is your lot , but boy , what a bunch we have again . Cast 3 votes , the poll will close at midnight on the 30th September Enjoy

One of our regular haunts last night. It was worryingly quiet whilst we were setting up (only about 20 people in between 7pm and 9pm) and we were fearing the worst. Luckily the regulars piled in at about 9.15 for our 9.30 start and it ended up being packed out. We played well and the sound was great by all accounts.

Picked this up on eBay today. Did I need another stack? Absolutely not! However I couldn't turn down the opportunity to try a original MK1 ABM 500w head and two 408 cabs. What a sound! Can't wait to try them out in a band situation!!

As stupid as it is, this is actually not the worst Fender-adjacent headstock I've seen. Then they decided to make a 2+2 style headstock instead with the bizarre decision to make it practically as long anyway, to give a bit of extra pop to their carefully chosen gimmick. Then, of course, here's the worst headstock design I've ever seen. Remarkably, the makers were so confident in the superiority of their design that they had to include a miniature outline of the headstock, on the headstock!

A private function in a local hotel venue. Kinda weird when no one dances for the first set, as some people caught up after 30 years on seeing each other. Got better in the second half, set list went out the window, but the buffet was a highlight. 🤣 Off on two weeks holiday, so no rehearsals, let’s see how much I remember after two weeks on Pina Coladas. 😳

That’s not unusual…😉

Wilson Pickett's " Midnight Hour" 1966 with a 4 piece in my parents basement. I was 12 years old. Blue

It's very difficult to cut vinyl when there is stereo movement of low frequencies. The groove on a record contains the left and right channel information on opposite "slopes" If the bass frequencies are centred the groove will be close to symmetrical on both sides. As you pan this information from side to side you end up with a groove that gets wider and narrower as the low frequency information moves from left to right and back again. The wider the groove the less likely the cutting lathe is going to be able to create it, and even if it could be cut most record decks wouldn't be able to play it. for this reason Its recommended that all frequencies under 300Hz are in mono. There are mastering plug-ins that will do this for you, so we can use one to listen and see how much of the bass panning effect is going to be lost should we decide to put this track on vinyl in the future. On the whole vinyl is a very poor delivery medium for modern music when compared with CD or better digital formats. Lots of stereo effects are simply not reproducible - certainly anything using phase changes to make the sound wider and bigger will cause problems. Also due to the nature of record and the way the stylus moves slower in relation to the groove as it reaches the centre of the disc have implications for the running order of an album. Ever wondered why all the noisy high energy tracks are at the start of each side and the last track is nearly always more quiet and laid back? That's why.

It's ok, their new website is only a couple of weeks away😉

I had a salutary reminder that I can't drink a lot and play. A pre birthday gig + didn't have to drive = Oh dear.

Crowd were obviously royalists last night. 2 minutes silence after every song was a bit over the top.

Des A Kind Of Hush - Carpenters

Smiley face shape in the graphic EQ, or boosting the lows and highs over the middle frequencies. Sound great when you play your bass solo but generally disappears in the typical rock band mix.

Don't You (Baguette About Me) - Simple Minds

I must admit I would never buy a bass directly from the site, I would ring the shop up everytime. They can take the card details over the phone and arrange shipping there and then, rather than wait for the notification from the website. I recently bought a pair of shorts in a sale from an online retailer, only to get an email a couple of days later saying they had sold out and cancelled the credit card transaction. For a high value purchase, I will speak to a human every time.

Get Off - Prince

This has just landed from Sandberg with Mark at Classic & Cool and will be with me next week...

Is that better? Sorry about the singer getting in the way 😂

The Never 😤Ending 😢Tories 🤮 ～ Limahl

Sweet Relief - Kimbra

Dog glue - The Residents

Let’s Stick Together - Canned Heat/Bryan Ferry

The unit has quite a slope so the top buttons sit far higher than the bottom ones which makes inadvertent pressing much less of a risk.

US P Bass Squier FSR 50's P Bass, roundwounds tuned Eb Squier FSR 50's P Bass, Flatwounds Lovely jubbly!

Fair comment but, really, in this digital age how hard should it be for the retailer to click a button when an item is sold? Its not as if BD are ASOS with a gazillion transactions a day. Anyhow lesson learned.

Just on my way back from getting paint mixed at Jon’s. Should be sprayed in a couple of weeks now.

I'm actually in the middle of my first new recording since this thread started so here is the process so far. Program the drums in Logic using the Drum Kit Designer plug-in for the sounds. The drum patterns are based on what our ex-drummer played on the one rehearsal tape that exists for this song. This programming was done earlier this year and we've done 4 gigs playing this song with programmed drums and we're about 90% happy with the rhythms as they stand. For the recorded version I've removed some elements from the start of the song that we don't own the copyright for. We'll need to decide if these are going to be replaced with something else or simply left off. This week I recorded the Bass VI at home using my Helix as an audio interface. Since this song is quite slow and there's an E drone all through the verse and the main instrumental riff, I've done something interesting with the panning of the bass where the drone is centred and the other notes pan left and right. This was done playing the drone notes in one pass and the other notes in a second and then cutting the the second pass into individual notes so they could be placed on tracks panned left and right. That means that we probably won't be able to cut this to vinyl, but since the initial release will be as digital download single that won't matter at the moment. I've also added a low bass part underneath the high Bass VI parts in the "Middle 8" just to fill out the recorded sound. This may or may not remain on the final version depending on what synth parts get added. The Logic project has now been sent to our synth player who'll be adding his parts this weekend, before mixing it down into a handful of stems that we'll send to the studio where our singer will recording vocals next week. We learnt with our lockdown recording that the vocals really need to be done at a proper studio. I'll post more as the recording progresses. The next stage after the vocals have been laid down will be for me to have another look at the drum programming and make sure all the drum parts fit properly around the vocals.

Thanks to all for the advice. Went for the cheapest Harley Benton, which seems very nice for the money.

Do we have an update? Do you have a ukulele? Did you get a case? Are you playing tunes yet? Your public need to know.

Thanks for all the suggestions for gig bags. I ended up with a Gator Pro go guitar bag, Stingray fits a treat. plenty of storage pockets and waterproof too.

It's all about dispersion. All speakers have a falloff at 45 degrees off axis. The bigger the driver the lower the frequency of the roll off. You will not notice the difference if you are in front of the speaker. Your audience will if they stand at the side. For example below is the response curve of a faital pro 12 PR300, used in several bass cabs. You will see that at 3KHz the output is about -18dB down at 45 degrees off axis. A good tweeter, well crossed over, will restore that so that those people at the side hear you as you hear yourself. That includes your band members. The Eminence Kappalite 3012, on which the 12" Barefaced Gen 3 cab drivers are based looks like this: There is no off axis plot but being the same diameter as the Faital pro 12PR300, you can expect a similar roll-off. Even at 2 KHz ON axis, the Eminence driver is 2.5-3dB down. I will probably get hammered for this but this driver is close to unusable without a tweeter except for use as a subwoofer. I will get my coat...

I'm a fairly recent convert to the world of Bass VI. I bought mine originally to lay down some Glen Campbell type lines on a recording session, only for that song to be shelved. I went for the Burns baby blue and it does need a better setup but is generally a fun instrument. It sat in storage for a few months until I dug it out for a post-punk / goth duo that I do with the guitarist from my first band back in Sixth Form. We cut this short video recently for a bit of fun. The film maker was great but just to show my humble attempts at playing one. 100% agree, definitely easier with a pick. It's funny for me that the intention behind the purchase is a world away from the regular usage it is now getting.

There's hundreds of them. Noted author Mark Phillips aside, I saw these on eBay a while back and they were so awful it was worth taking screengrabs. No idea who made them. Lest we forget...

It’s not uncommon to get AC mains frequency feed-through noise on generic power supplies. Can you return it if it doesn’t work out?

Looks like what used to be a Caline one. Loads of people used them with no issues it seems. Having said that, you never quite know what you're getting with generic Chines stuff. Might look the same but.... Personally I would spend a few quid more and get something from Thoman like a Harley Benton or a Fame from DV247 - at least there's some backup if you need it