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You don't see many of these about! It has Humbuster pickups. 🙂

It’s even better than I hoped. Just had 10 mins with it and it’s perfect. More later! Of course huge thanks to Andy for his simply fantastic work

Been lurking around the internet trying to find one of these, my first non-budget bass purchase, after much googling and research I had decided a Sabre seemed to be a perfect match for all my wants (looks, the sound etc), I was particularly taken with the videos made by Lobster on the Sabre I wrote to Musicman and asked if they would be re-issuing the Sabre again and they replied saying "no immediate plan to reintroduce the EBMM Sabre" The bass, manufactured May 8th 2013 according to serial number, had been bought new by the owner and stored immediately and still had the shop tags, plastic wrap and stickers on when I picked it up for the first time, the strings had corrosion on them making it a bit unpleasant to play but were replaced by the seller with some nice zingy nickel ones. The seller is a professional musician and a big Stingray fan, he let me look at / try his Stingrays and tbh this has changed my pre-conceived ideas about Stingrays - was particularly taken with a blue 90's stingray he had, added to my bucket list for the future 😀 Its still early days for me and I am still getting used to the pre-amp and options, but I think its a keeper! J

Fred loves it too!

Recently acquired Sterling 4HH. 20221202_120109_001.mp4

We played at Brown Street in Salisbury last night, I really like this venue - it’s nice to see a venue invest when so many seem to be closing, particularly the case in Salisbury. We rolled out 5 new songs and all seemed well received by the crowd - I rarely used to gig Fridays as found it was always a bit of a rush, but now feel it a good way to kick off the weekend 😊

We stood in at short notice last night. Gig was local to me which was a bonus. Typical boozy Friday small town crowd. They liked the stuff they recognised and pretty much ignored the rest.

Me. By day I'm a cardigan wearing, pipe smoking retiree. On stage im a 6'5", podgy, bald, Geddy Lee wannabe who struts about like John Travolta in Night Fever. It's exhausting!

I don't play an extended range bass for the lower notes, it’s so I don’t have to move about the neck as much as I would on a 4.

And wondering why after pedalling furiously for 4hrs he’s still no nearer to the pub……

Believe it or not I'm one of the many that doesn't get moist over Jaco. He was good, but not the godlike genius that you seem to think he was. I'll just keep playing my way rather than comparing myself to a long dead and deeply flawed individual. If he gives you a hard on then good for you.

Maybe he just wasn't that good? I use a 5 for everything, apart from the part in the set of 2 songs with an instrumental section in between which are all in D. I use a 4-string in drop-D for this as it's just more fluid sounding.

I can honestly say i have never concentrated on muting the B string on a gig. I don't think I have ever had to concentrate on muting at all, apart from when I was first learning. that is something for my hands to work on, not my head. my spector 5 RST is the lightest bass I own, it was one of the lightest basses at the last bass bash - can't remember what it was but it is 3.3KG on the web, it is lighter than my Ibanez EHB1505, which is in itself not exactly heavy.

Had a short notice depending gig with a blues band in Kidlington (near Oxford) last night. I've played with them quite a few times over the years, and it was good to play with them again. Appreciative audience (we played two one hour sets and they still wanted more as we were packing up at a quarter to midnight). Half an hour's drive each way, no complications, slid into bed at two AM. Used my 2012 US Standard Precision, Orange Little Bass Thing and Barefaced Super Compact - all worked perfectly.

Skaville gig in Bradford on Avon last night. Not quite as busy as previous years, only 2 deep at the bar rather than 3 this time we sounded good and seemed to go down well. @BreadBin came along, nice to see a familiar friendly face! Doing it all over again in Swindon tonight. The usual gear... Skabass -> Shuttle 9.2 -> Barefaced Super 12T. Sounded feckin massive.

Lovely sound and nice groove. Refreshing to see a femal lead guitarist too.

Lee Sklar has talked about this in the past. Basically, his take is that even if there's only 1 song in the set that needs a 5 string, he'll use it for the entire show. Seems a sensible approach to me.

My new christmas song, "Putting Up the Tree on 1st September", is going to make me minted. "Taking the Presents Back To Marks For a Refund on Boxing Day" will be the surprise summer hit that sets me up for life.

Ampeg SVT-300 + 810 turned all the way up. You won't even hear the police helicopter launching missiles at your window.

So I recently picked up the Fender FullMoon distortion pedal to try out as a bass preamp as it features a 4 band eq BMT and a High Treble control which works like a LPF. There’s a switch for symmetrical or asymmetrical clipping and a bite switch which adds more gain/drive to the upper eq frequencies to help stand out in a band mix. Oh and it features a foot switchable boost function which is basically just a level boost rather than feeding more gain into the drive stage. At a basic all at noon setting and the gain down at about the 0900 position the pedal sounds great. Starting with the mids cutting or boosting works as you’d expect - it feels really well voiced for bass guitar. The scoop isn’t overly pronounced but helps sculpt a nice slap tone. Pushing the mid fills out that zone where the bass feels present and powerful without the honky or nasal quality some bass-specific mid eq points can emphasise. The treble sounds like it’s set at a ‘musical frequency’ none of this super high ‘unusable’ stuff at 12kHz but very mix friendly. The high treble allows you to fine tune the zing but honestly even with the treble dialed up and the the high treble ‘wide open’ it’s not shrill or unpleasant. Turning the hi treble down just tames the higher frequency in musical way and from what I can gather this is a feature designed to help fine tune the pedal to different the types of amp’s. The bite switch add more gain to the upper mids/high to help the sound stand out and for my taste both the bite and texture switch engaged delivered the most pleasing sound - I should add I’m doing all this tweaking with a passive Jazz bass and it’s a really good match sonically. The texture switch is a clipping selector as mentioned above. The Bass control also sounds like it’s in that musical frequency range (likely in about 100Hz rather than what you’d find on a bass specific preamp which tends to be in about 40Hz-80Hz) and keeps the bottom end intact with out being too flabby. I’ve a little bit more more tweaking to do in relation to the lows at volume and will definitely give the pedal a try out live this weekend even if only at sound check to hear it at volume and refine some settings. I have a TC Spark Booster and find it to be a very versatile two band bass preamp - voiced at frequencies which are bass friendly. I see this pedal as being a similar utility pedal with a four band eq which can work very effectively for bass without pushing the usual ‘bass specific’ frequencies but ones which compliment the natural voicing of a bass guitar. For a pedal which can be found used for £120 give or take a bit of a haggle it’s a very competent and complimentary unit which many bassists could happily use as an alternative to units specifically for bass costing much more. I’ve not really use the pedal for high gain sounds but I do have access to a clean blend and having the ability to add in the clean bass tone really takes the pedal to new heights certainly on the settings I’ve been trying. I’ll be trying out with some low gain sounds basically one with a slight mid scoop and a second setting pushing the mids to about 3 o’clock to hear how the fits in with the band with the other controls fine tunes accordingly. I’m quietly confident it’s gonna work a charm!

Saw The Cure in Belfast last night and it was a great show. I found it uncanny how RS's voice hasn't seemed to have aged much and he sounded fantastic. Of course, of most interest was Simon Gallup's bass sound. It was huge...and for many songs, really grindy and dirty sounding. Like, really gnarly! The sound quality was good and for some songs like Disintegration, by design. merged into a really powerful wall of sound. The set was pretty uncompromising for the casual fan (i.e. the thousands who seemed to be there just for Friday, I'm...), with several classics from their back catalogue and a few new ones as well, some of which were more memorable than others. Too many highlights to list but At Night, Burn, A Strange Day, Push and of course, A Forest were superb. If you get a chance, check them out.

Hey. Here's my bass board for Buried Sleeper. I'm currently rewiring all of this to work with the new Morningstar ML10X, which is amazing!

I will have time to properly play it tonight but so far it's the same as before but more balanced, more grunt and of course everything is straight! The addition of the splittable humbucker in the neck gives so many options. In humbucker mode it sounds pretty much the same as the P pickup did, something I've always quite liked about Tbird pickups which don't get enough love IMO. The bridge is a lot more balanced volume wise with the neck, it does a beautiful parpy sound with tons of fundamental, and mixed with the front it gives a sweet 60s jazz with flats sound. Split the front and balance 50/50 and it opens up a bit more towards a 70s spacing sound with a really woody growl. So happy with this thing.

My TI's have been on for about 5 or 6 years. I wasn't planning to change them for at least another 20. I dread to think how many thousands of pounds a set will cost when I finally go looking for replacements.

I use a movable anchor, if I have to anchor the thumb on the E string say, the thumb mutes the E and the upper side surface of the thumb mutes the B string above. I don't anchor my thumb on the B constantly, I move up when playing the higher strings, keeping the picking pattern over three strings. That's the grid I like. Picking the G string with your thumb anchored on the B, is too far away for me.

You guys were bloody great - my phrase for the evening was that you can't watch Train to Skaville without a smile on your face. Sorry I couldn't stay to the end, I really need to move nearer to the Three Horseshoes 🤣 Your bass was filling the room nicely 👍

"Tell me baby what do you see?"... I say "Cor baby that's really free".…

I've played 5 string basses almost exclusively since 1989. I bought my first because I'd previously been playing synths and I thought that access to the lower notes would be useful. Most of the time I never use the low B string at all. And TBH much of what I play could be done on a 2-string bass strung E and A. When I was playing in my Dad Rock Covers band I once took my single string Atlansia Solitaire Fretless Bass (tuned to E) to a practice. I found the fact that it was fretless was more of a hinderance than the fact it only had one string. The most use I have got out of the low B string was when I was playing in The Terrortones which is probably the most musically "conventional" band I have ever been in. In my current bands I use low B for the chorus of one song and for the very last note of another. And personally I don't care what anyone else thinks.

After two weeks of trying to play the 5 string, this has only just started to occur to me. And even though it looks like I'm playing a massive bass, it seems there's less stretch on my little hand if I play above the 5th fret on that B string...

This is what I use for busking. The sound quality and portability is very seductive. There are caveats though - 1) The new double4 's can't be used this way as they now contain an internal transformer. So you will be limited to finding a second hand double 4 with the external PSU. 2) it's also getting harder to find an external battery pack that doesn't have some sort of current protecting circuit in it. Again the newer current protected models cut out when playing louder making them useless for outdoors. I wouldn't buy a battery pack second hand as it's impossible to tell what life it's had - rather than lasting hours, mine is now incredibly inconsistent for example.

I smiled when I read what Lee Sklar said. I had already decided the same thing. I play a 5 string for everything, because I don't want to chop and change basses. I want to get comfortable with one bass and use it for everything. I have zero interest in trying to copy the gear that was used on the original recording. The idea that there are 4 string songs and 5 strings songs makes no sense to me. Just buy the best bass you can find, the one that does the best and most complete job for you.

Made a few changes since the last time I posted. I've swapped out the TC flashback for the Solidgoldfx EM-iii delay, which has a high pass filter and a feedback function. I've also swapped the Tru-fi Super Fuzz for the Colordriver. The main addition is the Noble Preamp that arrived on Wednesday. It's a tight squeeze! And it has to go upside down! But it sounds amazing (as expected) and means I can go full in-ears if need be (when the short XLR I ordered shows up).

Yeah I was selling that bass I got it for a good price thought I'd put it on here for a good price but didn't really get anyone interested So I traded it for a fretless Presision They gave me £625 so was very happy 😁 the fretless is amazing 👌

As above, tools for the job, songs in the set require the low B string so best it’s there & available. I rarely use the G, and in my last band I rarely used either the D or the G, doesn’t matter, play the instrument you like.

From the internet: Musician A person who puts £2000 of gear, into a £500 car, to play a £50 gig.

And...it's done! What's more, it sounds wonderful Here it is before it gets back into @ped's clutches tomorrow:

Monthly Bandeoke slot last night. The woman who organises and runs it was ill so we relied on the regular punters knowing the score and the landlady running around encouraging other folk to get up. It wasn't a total disaster. I played through the souped up TC Electronic 2x8 bought from @Stealthof this parish. He'd basically put in more powerful speakers which turned the cab into a 4ohm mini monster. People who've heard me play through every rig imaginable in previous months, came up afterwards to tell me it was the best sound I'd ever had. I said I was concerned a 250 watt amp might not cut it in such a big room but was told you could feel the bass in your chest right to the back. So my small rig solution is sorted!

Practice.

At this point I think we’re all interested in seeing pictures of the bass 😂

White Knights In Satin = Harum Procul

The Phil Jones Briefcase can be battery powered (motorbike battery type) and will give you an excellent sound. https://philjonesbass.net/cms/index.php/product_bbc/ But to my ears the GSS 06B400 Mini Bass Amp with its dedicated 7S35V2 intelligent Lithium battery pack sounds better https://www.guitarsoundsystems.com/gss-06b400-mini-bass-amp-c2x15043753 https://www.guitarsoundsystems.com/gss-7s35v2-intelligent-lithium-battery-pack-for-guitar-sound-systems-mini-bass-amps-c2x18346407

AER are the kingpins. My cheap 'battery amp' was a collection of stuff to run a regular cabinet. BDDI into cheap and featherweight class D 12V amp. Unfortunately I made the mistake of letting the deep cycle deer spotlighting battery self discharge and sit for over a year, which killed it dead. I should have got a trickle charger for it.