Leaderboard

A birthday present from the future Mrs Rayman….. An Ibanez Jet King. I’ve spent two days on it. It was feeling pretty sorry for itself, however after a new set of Gotoh tuners, oiled board, new top hat knobs, new strings and a setup, it’s a stonker. Surprisingly high output, lovely low action, I absolutely love it. Such a nice fretboard. Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to touch it now until Tuesday morning (birthday).

I bought this recently because i will always be a jazz bass player at heart and wanted a back up.. This bass has totally blown me away. Ive had some really high end jazz basses from Suhr to Atelier Z to blah blah. I stinky poo you not this is up there. This bass through an Aguilar 212 and Eden 500 is just...

I've told this on here previously, so apologies if you've read it before. I used to play the fiddle (still do, butrarely do gigs these days) and frequently played for ceili bands. One Burns night, my band was booked to play at a Burn's Supper in a banqueting hall in London. It was quite a grand occasion - men in DJs and kilts, women in ball gowns. A tradition at the opening of Burns Suppers is that the haggis is carried ceremonially into the hall, accompanied by a bagpiper. It is placed on the top table, the MC will recite Burns's "Address to a Haggis" and then cut into it with his dagger, which signifies the start of dinner itself. The band will often play background music before and during dinner and then play for dancing once the meal is finished. We were sat on stage, playing, when the bagpiper arrived (we didn't know him. He had been booked by the organisers). He was completely plastered. Pipers on Burns Nights can often clean up - they play at a series of events (they are only needed for a few minutes), accept a dram (or two) and their fee and move on to the next one. Our hero had obviously fulfilled a number of prior engagements. He could still walk in a straight line and play, so he was sent into the hall, followed by the chef carrying the haggis and the MC. The procession arrived at the table, which was on stage on front of the band. They climbed the steps, the chef placed the haggis on the table and the MC stepped forward to read the address. The piper stood to one side and, no doubt due to the quantity of booze he had consumed, lost control of his bowels for a moment. He was wearing his kilt in the traditional manner, so there was nothing to catch the product of his lapse, which plopped onto the stage between his feet. He shifted to one side, stepped on it, slipped and his foot shot up, flinging pieces of it over the diners sitting at the front tables. The band rushed off stage and howled with laughter in the dressing room whilst the cleaning staff hastily did their stuff. The evening did carry on, but it took some time to sort things out.

1981? An unspecified pub in London, I was much refreshed when I got in the van, so I have no idea where I got out, Peckham came to mind so I'll go with that. Arrived to find we were the third band to play on a bill of three so I had time for more snakebite. I remember lots of people arriving who had come to see us from my home town, by gig time the place was rammed. I sat down behind my drums (yes, I was drumming in this band), counted the first song in with drumstick clicks and, on the third click, I vomited profusely over my entire kit. When I say vomited, I mean gushing geyser-type, dam busting style, a proper outpouring tinged pink from the blackcurrant in the snakebite. I managed, somehow, to complete the count in and begin the song which was mostly a floor tom/snare pattern and, as both drum heads were just lakes of pink sick, this first song was very splashy indeed. The throwing up cleared my head a bit and I got through the song, some kind soul took pity on me and brought me over a pint of what I thought was water which I downed before song two, it was actually lemonade and, half way through song two, the fizzing lemonade decided it didn't like my insides so it flew out spectacularly all over the back of the singer. Still, managed to finish the gig somehow, can't remember getting home nor how my kit got back but it did. We were finding little dried lumps of pink puke everywhere for weeks. Luckily for me everyone, including the singer and the people from home, seemed to find the whole thing hilarious so I counted myself lucky and did another years worth of gigs with them. I still have the t-shirt I was wearing that night that which I obviously used to wipe down the drums with, it is streaked like it's been bleached. Excellent.

Done 2 gigs this week with The ELO Experience. First one was at one of our favourite venues, The Severn Theatre in Shrewsbury. A superb venue, and our sound guys reckon it's the best sounding theatre we do, and must admit I'd agree with them. Great capacity crowd, all up for a good night. We played well and it was one of those gigs where everything just went great. Second gig was at Redditch Palace Theatre. Small stage so I couldn't have my amp where I usually prefer it, and wherever I stood I was in the way! (Maybe explains my serious face in the pic below!). Another sell out gig, marred again by the delays on the journey home due to repairs to the M42. Getting to be a regular thing now for us, nothing you can do though.

A couple spring to mind for me. One was driving all the way to Germany for a Forces gig in the Officers’ Mess, setting up, and after the second tune one of the officers sidling over and suggesting we let the DJ take over and to help ourselves to the bar. Still got paid, mind. The second was a gig with a blues band at at nudist camp in winter. I was playing drums for that one, so made sure to angle all the cymbals to obscure as much of the audience as I could. All the (mostly elderly) fellas were nude, and all the women were not. Even the bar man was in the raw, save for a fetching waistcoat. The worst bit was the finger buffet though. As we played, watching the fellas lean across the table to reach the plates at the back right meant when we were invited to partake, we politely declined. It was hilarious watching couples on the dance floor. The ladies held the fellas at arms length the whole time, whangs bobbling around while they were all in their evening finery. One of the stranger evenings I’ve had…

None more disco…

Light is rubbish in my room with artificial bulb.

A covers band I was in way back was booked to play at the nearby Conservative club (yes, I know, but a gig’s a gig!) but only when we’d set up did the chairman tell us that the committee had unfortunately forgotten to advertise the gig to the members, so no-one would be coming; however, the committee wanted us to play the 3 hour gig anyway, to just the four of them. At at the break I begged them to let us pack up and go, just give us some petrol money, but they refused, making us play until 11pm or no money at all. I’ve never played another Con club... Then for political balance there was the gig at the local Labour club where they’d hired in not only our band, but one of those electric rodeo bull things that drunken wazzocks try to ride but fall off. The first we knew of this was when the bull boss started inflating a massive bouncy castle sort of safety wall thing right in front of the band on the dance floor, then set up the bull inside it. As the inflation proceeded the walls got higher and higher (nice number, that) until our singer had to stand on a chair to see and warble to the utterly indifferent punters at the bar and the bull. The rest of the band was invisible. I’ve never played another Labour club...

Hi Matthew I am so sad to hear about your dad. I knew him very well in the mid to late eighties. I studied bass at Goldsmiths Uni of London under him and then studied privately with him at his place in Muswell Hill. He was a kind and very encouraging teacher who made the seemingly difficult and unfathomable a hugely enjoyable and productive learning experience. I was very, very fond of Lawrence. I became reasonably proficient and eventually ended up playing and composing for the theatre. This lead to me rather circuitously becoming an actor in theatre, radio abd tv. I then became a screenwriter and director in the film business and to date I have made seven features and won several awards including a BAFTA. I came from a very working class background in Wales and lost my dad when I was eight and my mum before the age of twenty. So I have to tell you that Lawrence was a hugely empowering and guiding influence at a time of huge self doubt and vulnerability. Without him and the hope he engendered, I’m not sure I would have gone on to have the career, or indeed the life, I have now. It fills me with immense gratitude that I know him. A very special man. A great teacher and a great player! He was a sublime educator and is a special human being. It is so very sad to hear that his health has deteriorated. Please, please send him my love and deepest gratitude. A lovely man. I am married, have a daughter and a grandson, but those years studying with Lawrence were hugely formative and filled me with belief that life could be full of joy and excitement if only we can find a glimmer of courage. This is how critical learning from Lawrence was to me. Please feel free to contact me at the email address provided. My very, very best wishes Matthew. Make Lawrence know I am sending him love and thanks!! Wyndham Price

I have mentioned this elsewhere but it fits here too - we did a last minute agent-booked gig in a pub of very well dressed but subdued punters. Ended the first set with our standard 'Knocking on Heaven's Door' to absolute silence. It was a wake.

It is time again to get those lug holes infused with the monthly offering. After a great month last time congratulations were due to @NickD with the added bonus of choosing us a pic for March... "I was messing with chiaroscuro style lighting for a photography project last year and asked the Mrs do do her best gangster impression for me. I think it might make for some interesting results." So without further ado have a listen to these and cast your 3 votes as appeases you 1 @AndyTravis I just got spy/hitman vibes and went with it. 2 @Leonard Smalls I done one! Seeing the pic had someone with a gun in their hand, I thought it best to do a cover of Hendrix' classic "Hey Joe" 😁 3 lurksalot. I tried to get a feel of a theme/title sequence to a TV show that might have the photographed person as main character. 4 @NickD I got a bit of a Bugsy Malone vibe from the pic, which pushed me towards a swing (ish) style. It's a minor 251 going to the relative major for the brief chorus. There are probably hundreds of jazz tunes you could play over the backing, it's such a standard form. 5 @Dad3353 Inspired really after watching the Markus Miller group in concert, playing Miles Davis 'Tutu' stuff. It brought images of this spiv; maybe it's the hat, I don't know. 6. @SH73 The song is about a CO2 air pistol and shooting cans , whatever words I scraped together. 7 @Nail Soup The gun pic got me thinking of despair at needless deaths in American school shootings and the like. In particular one quote from gun supporter saying that the best solution to a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun - hence the (ironic) title. So the lyrics went there, and led me to a Dylan-goes-electric musical setting. 8 @Nicko. I went through several genres but ended up going back to my initial idea which was to do something befitting a Tarantino sound track because the photo reminded me of his films. Not sure if I got there - its somewhere between the Shadows and a Spaghetti Western but that's the right ballpark. 9 @upside downer "Hands up! Nobody move! Hey, you! I'm Mrs D! Do a tune that has no chance of winning 'cus my fella won last month and now he's had the sweet taste of victory he wants more!" 10 @Wolfram Drawing some inspiration from the Godfather and the late great Coolio, I had two ideas for this one and couldn't decide, so ran with them both. Most definitely a song of two halves: an introduction from the hills of Sicily followed by a little story straight from the Valley of the Shadow of Death Well there we have it ,yet another fine crop for you to listen through and choose your favourite 3 Good luck all Voting will finish at midnight on 31st March

The Valeton always makes me think of these chaps...

Dad's car broke down in this thread. It seems, one or two would like it towed away.

Prepare yourselves...

So many to choose from but this stands out for me: It just fits the song perfectly. Just three different notes and five notes in each phrase.

I’m telling myself this is the set up for while but I give it until next payday before I decide something needs to change…

Papa was a Rolling Stone comes to mind. Just 3 notes but a belter.

Did anybody mention PIL? This not a love song

And I can show you mine!

Cast aluminum baskets are used for two reasons. With heavy ceramic magnets it's to be stiff enough so that the frame doesn't flex. With neo magnets it's to act as a heat sink. Steel is OK with lighter weight ceramic magnets, and with lower power neo magnet drivers that don't require much heat sinking. Eminence uses steel for their 150w Basslite series, cast aluminum for the 250w and higher Delta Lite and Kappa Lite. Where frame stiffness is concerned there are two requirements for very high sensitivity. One is a high flux magnet, the other is a tight magnetic gap. If the magnet weight causes the frame to flex it can cause voice coil rub with a tight gap. That was a problem with the 1968 Electro-Voice SRO 15, later re-badged as the first generation EVM. It had a cast aluminum frame, but with only four spokes, so it would flex under the weight of the 16 pound magnet structure. The second generation EVM cured that by going to an eight spoke frame.

I realise this doesn't answer your question but it might be an alternative, or suitable for others. I've recently bought a Nux Mighty Plug and it is now my go to practice tool as it's just so convenient. Plug it into my bass, short headphone lead plugged into it and I'm completely untethered. You can bluetooth your music source to it and there's an app to set up presets containing amp, cab and effects sims. USB rechargeable and lasts a good amount of time. As I said, not the answer to your question but possibly a cheap alternative. This it, bass, Nux, headphones. Can't wait for summer garden noodling. 🙂👍

Most music, there are exceptions, benefit from being organic rather than mechanical. Organic will in by far most cases sound more alive and interesting where as strictly mechanical will in by far most cases end up sounding clinical and boring. If it sound good it is good, and I am not convinced you actually would like the sound of everything being robotically/clinically straight dead on the beat. Now in certain electronic music there might be a point with everything being robotic/clinical, whereas most other music would suffer from this and actually offer a less satisfactory listening experience. As people have pointed out it is music not simple mathematics without any variables (there's a a reason why almost all new robotic technology is based on artificial neurological networks rather than simple rigid predetermined scripted algorithms, the latter completely lacking the complexity and flexibility that is needed to solve actual real life problems). Swing, groove and feel is a thing in music, even a very essential thing, especially feel, true musical timing (rather than being on time), and neither of those happen with everything being dead on clinically/mechanically straight on beat. Don't listen with your eyes, and don't look at the world through square glasses, the world is not made of nothing but squares (even if it might sadly appear that way sometimes ). Do you perceive your music as a (complex) living breathing organism, or a mechanical construct, a (simple automat) machine? Which do you find most pleasing? Which would you rather people associate your music with? That said, of course it is still possible that you do in fact have bad timing, just saying that what you have discovered by looking closer at those tracks isn't necessarily a case of it, and that it is still totally possible that there in fact is absolutely nothing wrong with your and your drummers timing. As said if it sounds good it is good, and having everything straight dead on beat almost certainly wouldn't give a more satisfactory result, likely rather on the contrary.

It’s lovely.

Noon position, or 5, would be approximately flat/neutral position. And the "Tone Shaping" switch is not actually a tone shaping switch but a Mids Q/Bandwidth switch, that is setting the width and angle of the curve around whatever center mid frequency you dial in to boost/cut, or put a different way how wide a frequency spectrum around the center mid frequency you select is also affected (the frequency bands on all equalizers works this way, the difference is just that not all equalizers let you chose Q/Bandwidth, but instead has a fixed value).

Really like the sound and groove of this JMJ Japanese mustang by Marlowe DK

I made it... just! I've never produced anything remotely like this before. Lots of firsts for me in this track; I hope it hangs together. It's been emotional. Drawing some inspiration from the Godfather and the late great Coolio, I had two ideas for this one and couldn't decide, so ran with them both. Most definitely a song of two halves: an introduction from the hills of Sicily followed by a little story straight from the Valley of the Shadow of Death. If you don't have the time to listen through, do click to the second half to get the gist. I give you "Godfather's Paradise". The tech stuff: DAW: Cubase 12. Bass is a new-to-me Dingwall 6-string that just arrived on Thursday, recorded with Line6 Helix. My vocals were recorded with a Rode NT1 straight into the interface; all the backing vocals are synthetic, as are all the other instruments. LOTS of VSTis in this one, too many to list.

We are not really a wedding band but occasionally people insist... We were booked to play at a reception so arrived in good time, set up and waited for the guests to arrive. ...And waited. ...And waited. For several hours it was just the bride and groom and the maid of honour. We didn't know where to put ourselves. After a bit of phoning round they rustled up a handful of people and we played a set. Obviously there were a few tensions between the families. I felt so sorry for them. Another wedding reception. This time the disco arrived before us and set up a couple of tons of equipment on the stage. Great - we ended up setting up on the floor next to the stage. That wasn't what made it a memorably bad gig though. No, that was near the end of the night when the groom's brother had a major altercation with his dad and kicked him unconscious. The police kept all of the guests in the room for two hours while they investigated the crime scene. It took us 3 months to get paid for that one too. We don't usually do weddings

Anyone welcome, with or without gear, and you're very welcome to rock up, talk rubbish and play bass. Put yourself down as bringing "Curiosity" 😃

I forgot how much I love Electric Six!

…. Not for sale on this forum 😅 So in all seriousness the Valeton and Sonicake sound identical to the OC2. My personal preference is the MXR which I’ve previously pitted against the MXR Vintage Bass Octaver (another oc2 clone). But it’s a wholly different sound, very far from the warbly oc2, but it is my preference when mixing in clean. The oc2 has become a requested sound so it starts to become irrelevant what you prefer you need an oc2. My test was basically playing the same riff and then turning them all on and off in random orders, probably would have been nice for me to record it …. But I didn’t 🤷🏻‍♂️ The zoom I’ve got passable versions of the MXR and Boss. It’s become my go to travel pedal as I can power it from basically anything and it will do anything. So in a pinch I can cop and OC2 but given what it costs and the fact it’s tiny and identical to the Boss and Valeton I’ve opted to keep the Sonicake. Also I just plain think the Valeton is ugly 🤷🏻‍♂️ So there you have it, my unhelpful review, with no videos, no recordings, just my ramblings. But if you want to try for yourself the OC2 and Valeton are both for sale right now so please please buy both and try and prove me wrong.

Absolute disco banger, this.

You can cheap out on a body but not a neck, Mighty Mite OK, Allparts better, Warmoth outstanding. You'll know why once you've owned all three brands for a couple of years, the Warmoth will be rock solid, the Allparts probably rock solid.....

I’m torn. So many I could choose from, and a few I could happily never hear again (‘My Way’ anyone?) - and this coming from a guy with a Rock N Roll Over cover tattoo. Honourable mention: ‘Who Wants To Be Lonely’. Winner for me is: Parasite. But honestly, they’re all winners 😀. I have a playlist on the iPod called ‘Kiss-a-thon’. It’s every studio album, solos included, in chronological order. My youngest, 11, puts it in shuffle in the school run. Too much fun.

Alas and alack; I rue the day (well, it was night, actually..) that this burden was laid upon me by The Seeker, cursed to roam the pages of forums (fora..?) to mete out retribution to those defaulting on the use of apostro... Ooo look..! A bee..!

I had never thought of a looper this way to find tones until you mentioned it in other conversations (I can be that thick at times). £40 sorts it, and uses the very last output available on my upcoming PSU and board, tighty tight but just great and a cheap pedal to guarantee I stop emptying my wallet on it

OK, Here is my entry. I went through several genres but ended up going back to my initial idea which was to do something befitting a Tarantino sound track because the photo reminded me of his films. Not sure if I got there - its somewhere between the Shadows and a Spaghetti Western but that's the right ballpark. Recorded in Cubase 7 Elements. A Fender Telecaster was used for all guitars because I don't have a Jazzmaster (a Trem would have been handy though) and the guitars are through Amplitube using Fender Amp simulations with loads of reverb. The lead guitar also has a bit of tape echo. Bass is my usual Squier 70s CV through a Amplitude Ameg SVX 15 simulator. Drums are MT Power Drums.

Due to the rise of and influence of The Smiths and other tuneless guitar bands IMO.

The song is about a CO2 air pistol and shooting cans , whatever words I scraped together. Drums- courtesy of Ez drums Two electric guitars recorded through Boss DS1 into Marshall clean channel , SM57 off the centre of the speaker into interface etc etc. left + right tracks Bass recorded via AmpliTube 4 Two acoustic guitars recorded with a C1 Behringer , left + right tracks Lastly vocals recorded with C1 Behringer, main vocals + supplementary/backing vocals , mid, slight left and so on Various mixing, eqs, comps, reverbs, limiter ,......for mix/master

My contribution to the March round of the Basschat Composition Challenge, inspired by the picture chosen by the previous winner... *checks notes* ... er ... Me. I got a bit of a Bugsy Malone vibe from the pic, which pushed me towards a swing (ish) style. It's a minor 251 going to the relative major for the brief chorus. There are probably hundreds of jazz tunes you could play over the backing, it's such a standard form. Tech wise - Recorded in Cubase Elephants 10, Bass is the NS EUB with just a touch of compression, Guitar is a Vintage Strat (Vintage the brand, not an inexplicably expensive old shed) straight in to the interface and treated using the bundled effects (amp sim, overdrive and octaver). Drums are the 'toothbrush' kit from Monster Drums and vox are through an SM58, treated with CLA Vocals to mask my wailing. Keys are Cubase VSTs.