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John’s playing on Grace and Danger by John Martyn is some of my favourite bass playing ever. Rest in Peace, John. Effortless fretless with the most wonderful, expressive playing.

Properly upset by this. For me he was the definitive voice of modern fretless bass; his work with Brand X, Kate Bush, Judie Tzuke, John Martyn and so many others moulded my own approach to the fretless instrument in a big way. For many people, Jaco was the ultimate fretless master; for me, it was this guy. Check out the mid part of this song, beginning at 2:22, and you'll see what I mean. Those fills give me goosebumps. Rest in peace, maestro.

If they'd banned jerks who went on endlessly about that which they knew nothing about I might still be there. There are three types who do gear forums: Those who want to learn, those who want to teach, and those who want to argue. I walked away when those who wanted to argue took over the place. 🤥

I suspect you won't feel like doing anything at all for at least a couple of weeks, let alone working out your usual lines for a keyboard. I didn't play a note for at least 6 months last time I had surgery and that had nothing to do with my arms / hands. Concentrate on recovery - and with anything nerve related it is vital to do the physio as ordered even when it is really hard work / uncomfortable. It will make a massive difference in the long run.

@Chienmortbb and I have had these two on the test bench and I use the Gnome myself; bought as a backup and for open mic/jam sessions I probably use it a little more than my gigging amps. The TC BAM is also very similar. I go through the PA so my bass amps nowadays are used for stage monitors at gigs and rarely get a run out at high power levels. The Gnome (hence all of them) is loud enough for most small gigs with my 12" LFSys Silverstone and for stage monitoring with my 10" cab. With a couple of 12's the extra 5db means it will cover all my volume needs and would fill a decent sized venue. In terms of measurement power output is the same for all three and as advertised. The voicing is different and somewhat surprising though with one similarity between all three. Set to 12 o'clock the Elf has a smiley face response with the bass and treble boosted and hence a mid cut. That's very nice sounding at low/medium volumes and effectively a 'loudness' boosted sound. The gnome has a small bass peak another mid suckout at around 400hz and a climbing treble response which makes it very clean sounding. the TC is the flattest response somewhere between the other two. The striking similarity between them is that the mid tone control works at exactly the same frequency in all three and the mid dip in all three is at this frequency. This means you can pretty much dial up the same sound in all three. The Gnome is more or less flat with bass at 2.00 mid at 1.00 treble at 10.00. You could happily buy any of these, I only bought the Gnome because the BAM was out of stock and though I preferred the colour it wasn't enough of an issue for me to wait. I think most of us would prefer the voicing of the Elf but whether you think that is worth the extra money is your choice. You can get almost the same sound out of all of them mine has been 100% reliable and has the blessing of a nice quiet fan.

Been taking advantage of the decent weather to make a start on putting the Wudtone finish on the body and neck. I'm working outside on a garden table with an old towel on top to protect both the table and the bass. The finish has been very easy to apply (using an old sheet cut up into smaller pieces. Whole sheet in one go would be a bit much...). Done a coat each evening from Sunday - so third this evening. Wil now leave it all until at least the weekend, maybe give it a light sanding (is that sensible??), a couple more coats of the base coat and then a couple of coats of top coat for the satin finish. Still waiting on hardware to arrive. Have decided to use Nectite inserts and screws for the neck, the control cavity screws and the pickups. Some shielding paint also on the way even though it's at least going to start life with an EMG pickup. I'm thoroughly enjoying the process and the fact you can't rush it and working with such a lovely piece of wood is so tactile and downright relaxing. Time to quit my job and become a luthier... if only.

Sasquatching the detectives. EC

I'd forgotten how good the OHMSS theme is. A much maligned Bond film too. I always thought Lazenby was very good as Bond and that ending... 😭

Shielding done. It was a bit tricky making sure everything was connected and the shielding on the pickguard made contact with the body shielding and making sure nothing was peeking out from under the pickguard. The overlap on the pickup route fits perfectly with the shielding on the pickguard. My advice... buy more than you think you need!

I don’t know about car wheel weights….. I think I need an actual car to balance my Thunderbird

It’s so much more than just a hobby (I hate that term), it’s a way of life. For me, playing bass, and creating art, gets me through a bad day and makes a good day better. I’ve had an awful week. It’s been very stressful, both at work and for personal reasons. I felt very low on soul coal. An hour on my Thunderbird put a smile back on my face. It’s therapy, it’s energy, it’s SO important for my mental health. I love it.

Calling Carl Douglas……

the fans are really silent. it's nearly impossible to feel them working.. even at low volumes and in the studio. Note that there are THREE fans!!! one works at low speed and is always on, inaudible, and serves to vent the heat of the valve from the chassis. the other 2 fans work in forced circulation and are intelligently managed by a microprocessor, they don't work before 48 degrees, so if you play at home or in the studio, they will never start. after 48 degrees there are 5 speed steps based on the power supplied. the probe that measures the temperature is placed in a strategic position inside the dissipator. another interesting thing, when you turn on the head, all the fans start at maximum speed for a fraction of a second, this is to let out any dust or dirt. The manufacturer, Mauro, is crazy and leaves nothing to chance, it took him 3 years to design this temperature control and management system!!! the head as an extreme test, was made to work at 1.6 ohm for 12 hours in a row, it gets to be barely warm, while other competitors get to boil much earlier!!! this head is world class made!!! I can't play anything else anymore

There are two separate issues at play here: Firstly the importance or not of having amps and speakers for the individual instruments on stage. IME if everything is going through the PA then at best your amplification rig is a personal monitor and at worst a stage prop that could be messing up the on-stage sound. As soon as you have multiple single instrument sources on stage trying to arrange them on a typical stage, so that all the musicians are able to hear what is coming out of them is nigh on impossible anything but the smallest of venues, and if you look at the typical band setup most don't even bother. If they did, the amps would be placed at the sides of the stage pointing across, but when was the last time you saw that? Once you start having to put anything with its own amp into the foldback, you might as well dispense with on-stage instrument amps and give each musician their own wedge monitor and their own personal monitor mix. Instrument amps only contribute to the sound of the instruments due to a historical accident, because amplified music became popular while the cheapest way of producing amps was using valves. Let's face it electrical engineers would never have purposely designed an amp to distort no matter how musically "pleasing" that sound may be. Their original intent was always to make the instrument sound louder without adding any additional colouration. This has also lead to the problem that both the amp and cabs become part of the instrument's sound which is a particular issue for bass players because the PA rarely mic's up the bass cabs and even if they do, they will also take a DI and you have no way of knowing which source is actually being used for the FoH sound. If you want the sort of colouration that ancient amplification operating outside of its intended parameter produces, then it makes far more sense to dispense with the on-stage amps and speakers and use signal processing instead to replicate the sound. These days IME in a band mix it is indistinguishable from the "real" thing. And. if you play in a band where having a large and impressive looking backline is still part of the image then get some light-weight, low-profile empty ones to use as stage props that take up less floor space on stage and can be folded away to save space for transport. As you can probably tell, I've dispensed with a dedicated bass rig. I found that I was playing two types of venue - small ones where I was being asked to turn down so much so as not to overpower the FoH sound that I could barely hear myself from my rig compared with the bass sound coming out of the guitarist's wedge on the other side of the stage; or the large ones where even my big and impressive-looking rig couldn't even begin to cover the whole stage and once again I was mostly reliant on the foldback to be able to hear myself. I was asking myself what was the point of taking this rig to gigs (3 items that were all ideally a two-person carry) when most of it made no contribution to what myself or my audience were hearing? I now use a Helix for my sound and an FRFR cab for rehearsals and the very occasional gig where the PA is strictly vocals only. I've done only a handful of these types of gig with any of my originals bands in the last 25 years, and the FRFR has been a massive improvement in terms of dispersion (and consequently on-stage balance) compared with my much more expensive traditional bass rig. I've gone from having to be so loud on stage that I could barely hear the other instruments in order for the bass guitar to project into the audience, to being just slightly louder than I would normally choose. So really the only bass players who need a traditional amplification rig are those who only play small-ish gigs with vocal-only PA systems, or those who play in bands where the majority of the other instruments don't require amplification (like big bands). It seems ironic then that much of the advertising for amplification relies on "big-name" endorsees for whom the equipment they are promoting has little real-world benefit. The other issue is that of IEMs: Neither of the two bands I currently play in have made the switch to IEMs even though I think both would benefit from it. One of the bands is definitely more open to the idea than the other, and I suspect that finances allowing, this one will be be using IEMs within the next 12 months. The biggest problem I see with IEMs is that the band really need to be doing their own foldback mix to get the best out of them. Quite a few of the bands that I have shared the bill with over the last few years use IEMs and all of them take much longer to soundcheck and suffer form numerous problems integrating their system with the house PA at the venue. This becomes even more complicated if you are also using the IEMs for things such as click tracks which are not wanted in the FoH. When I make the change it will be because the band will have also added the equipment required to do our own on-stage monitor mix that can be kept completely separate from the FoH and include things like click tracks, count ins and other band-only cues. TL:DR pretty much everyone who isn't playing in a small pub covers band with a vocal only PA would benefit from ditching the traditional backline and using IEMs. Ultimately it's going to produce a better sound on stage and FoH and overall there will be less equipment to carry and set up. It's early days yet but I suspect in 10 years time we'll be wondering why it was even necessary to discuss this.

David Arnold scored 5 bond films starting with Tommorow Never Dies. His reworking of OHMSS with the Propellerheads is awesome. The morse code spells out OHMSS.

New slant on antisocial behaviour Building blocks of flats separated by little more than plasterboard walls. Building huge swathes of semi detatched timber framed houses that are effectively no more than glorified sheds sold at inflated house prices. Granting planning permission on greenbelt land for the above moral crimes Artificially inflated house prices caused by the withholding of planning permission to private individuals who don't have the required hand shake. Trying to ridicule or troll people who expose the corruption of your establishment masters. We are fortunate enough to live in a semi bungalow built in the days when sheds were sheds and dwellings were built of nice solid bricks. Very little sound gets through our walls especially if our internal doors are closed. I feel for the peple living in the above who have to endure the neighbours snoring let alone having a late night shag. Who caused the noise problems? The bodies that built the badly thought out properties in the first place. One final thought. My mother and stepdad had a nice detached cottage in Dorset next to a farm. One of the neighbours passed away and his cottage was bought by an idiot that having moved across the road from a farm complained about the cows mooing. He also tried to steal a great swathe of thier garden by tearing our thier hedge and building a fence 10ft inside their boundry line while they were away on holiday. They had to use the legal system to get it back. Rant over. As you were.

Geez, absolutely huge influence on me so incredibly sad to read this. I knew him mostly through Simple Minds and felt he very successfully filled Derek Forbes shoes, not by playing like him but by bringing his own incredible style to keep the bass a driving force and key part of Simple Minds sound. I couldn't tell you how many times I've watched the Simple Minds live in Rotterdam video just to watch his playing. I later discovered what other artists he played with and was even more blown away by his playing. R.I.P John and thank you for being a huge influence on my own playing.

The trouble with sharing settings for compressors is that what works for me will almost certainly not work for you, moreso with compression than for any other pedal, unfortunately. There's too many variables to give a one size fits all answer even for a pedal as simple as the LMB-3. I can, however, give you some pointers but after that you'll have to figure out what works for you. For example, you mention a Stingray, which as far as I'm aware, is a pretty high output active bass whereas I prefer passive basses, which usually are lower output. This has a huge affect on the optimum threshold setting. First of all, make sure you understand what each control does. That's not meant to sound patronising or condescending in any way, but to get the best out of compression you really need to understand what each parameter does and how it impacts the signal and interacts with the other controls. Much of the misunderstanding that often gets said about compression is usually down to people not really understanding how to set them up properly. The most important control is the threshold, setting it too low and everything gets squashed leading to the compressors kill your dynamics argument. Too high a threshold and the signal gets through unchecked. I set my threshold so that the peaks are capped but the rest of the signal is untouched, that keeps things even but retains playing dynamics. Depending on the bass this can be anywhere between around 3-4 o'clock at the highest down to around 1 o'clock for my lowest output bass. The threshold control works backwards to what you might expect, when the control is fully clockwise you're adding the least amount of squash, and with the control fully anticlockwise you're crushing everything. The ratio controls how much squash is applied. The LMB-3 goes from 1:1 (no squash) to infinity:1 (where nothing gets past the threshold). I set mine around 10-11 o'clock~ish which feels like it's around 3:1 to 4:1~ish. For me this adds a pleasing punchy edge to the tone. The enhance control I tend to not bother with, or just add a touch for my darkest sounding bass. Volume to unity so as not to overload anything further downstream. Hope this helps, but as I mentioned earlier, you really need to understand what each parameter is doing to find your optimum setting.

Played with local rock band Rebel on Friday night at The Sun Inn, Beverley. I was depping for their bass player who was at a wedding, but managed to turn up in time for our 2nd set! Fortunately he didn't see the first - few technical problems threw the band a bit off kilter but they pulled it back after a few songs. Some good mates in the band, including ex-Bowie drummer John Cambridge who played so well. John is probably my favourite drummer to play with - solid as a rock, straight and unfussy style but very musical with a great feel. The sets were all dad rock stuff, which is what the near capacity crowd wanted. Plenty of dancing and singing, as well as catching up with a few musos I'd not seen for a while as well as Jan who is the guitarist in 'The ELO Experience' with me. Shame I was driving as it was just one of those great gigs when a few beers would have been very welcome. The landlord was well pleased, and also asked if I wanted some gigs there with my acoustic duo, so a worthwhile evening all round. The Sun Inn is a proper music pub, and well supported by many regulars who appreciate it.

Saturday was an odd gig. A huge pub in Bargoed. The main street was closed while a street festival cleared up and had to get access sorted for the load in - which was great, no steps and helpful punters who held the door open! The pub had had a great day with the combo of festival and sun, but we would be up against Eurovision. As I said, it was a huge single open plan bar, as in HUGE. It didn't feel like our audience but as we set up the tables in the middle section in front of the (HUGE, carpeted) band area filled up with people who were clearly interested. A few of folk asked questions and some leaving said they would be back later. Early start. Very odd to play with a large audience but only around 25-30 or so who were really into us, cheering, some dancing. While lots of people at either end for whom we were really just 'backing music'. We can't have been bad, if the sudden disappearance of most of the punters when we finished at 10:30 was an indication. A lot of appreciation for our young guitarist, Alex. The pub was open until one, but our guess was that the clientele changes from about 11:30 as other places chuck people out - a bit like a 'spoons. The load out was nice and simple, slowed down by half a dozen of the audience who had an extended chat with us. Why odd? Well it felt like playing to a half empty pub, yet even at a quiet point we were playing to well over fifty people, and it was much busier at times. It would have been nice to have the people who were really into their blues rock as an audience in a smaller venue.

Just wondering how you fastened your Bass to the spinning hub and where the valve goes?

Friday night we continued our tour at Bishops Stortford Mill Arts.... and Saturday at Rugby Benn Hall. Both cracking gigs and we had lots of wonderful comments from punters afterwards along the lines of 'best theatre rock show we've ever seen'! 🥰😎 Next stops.... Ilkley Kings Hall tomorrow (Tuesday) and Solihull Core Theatre (Thursday)!

Yup, what else would you do on a Saturday night. As we say, 4 blokes of advancing years who like to dress up in questionable clothing.

Of course. I learned early on (12 years ago) that I would be a rubbish bass player. So I focused on what I was good at and enjoyed - packing, sending and receiving cardboard boxes and selling gear at a loss. I could probably be as happy just sending myself empty boxes to open.

KGB = Keyboard, Guitar Bass. Super flexible fuzz that I’ve been after for a while. First impressions are that it does everything I’d want it to plus more. Full thoughts in due course as I compare it to the tall font muff. More info here https://valcofx.com/pages/valco-kgb-fuzz Not my video below but it shows the bass sounds

Big Log - Robert Plant

Mine arrives tomorrow and yeah thanks for the video albeit it cost me about £360 after watching it 🤣

Furry across the Mersey - Gerry & The Pacemakers

Aye, then I saw the Lusithand Alma comp - (diamond recreation) and I am torn! https://lusithanddevices.com/product/alma-compressor/

Best tune by black uhuru in a long time

Great stuff but what're you on about @bubinga5? Literally the first note he plays is the archetypical fretless "slide up and apply vibrato" I'm sure that like loads of us of a certain age, he was influenced even if only subconsciously by Jaco - just listen to the harmonic chords he throws in towards the middle - but he uses it well.

What a nice post. Yes, there have been quite a number times when I've really really enjoyed playing a gig, or even just a rehearsal that went well - a special moment when music lifted my mood, or even helped me feel great. Happily, there are far more of these than the opposite. My only problem, is that I just can't get as much time to play music as I would like to, including some of the other non-bass instruments I own.

Thanks to @Lozz196 - I now have that tune in my head! lol

The horns have a nominal 90 x 60 degree dispersion. The idea of using them vertically is to send more of the high frequency information to the player's ears. I've AB'd the two options and you can definitely hear the difference, as the low crossover frequency means that quite a lot of the sound of the bass comes through the horn. The orientation of the horn doesn't affect the sound in the far field (i.e., the audience). The idea behind all of this is to allow players to easily hear what they're playing. Even when you stack two cabs the way @GlamBass74 has done, a vertically aligned horn makes a difference to audibility - so if it were my rig, I'd rotate the top horn and leave the bottom one - best of both worlds. 😊

I need a full sized amp and cabinet otherwise I'd miss out on all the pi55ed punters saying 'that looks heavy' as I'm trying to negotiate my way out of the venue while they all stand right in the way.

Jeebus. OP has two amps and two 4 ohm cabs. The solution is trivial and has been given three times. Only requires a spare 1/4 patch lead to link the amps fx send of the bass input amp to fx return of the slave amp. Now that's four times. Give it a blimin bone!

I'd do your keyboard synth idea tbh, there's even the footpedals thing you can add to it... Hope the procedure goes well for you anyway👍

I sometimes wish my last band resignation had been delivered personally to the guitarist in a similar manner !

It does seem to be getting less safe on Amazon. My missus bought some of her fave perfume from them and it was fake - she spotted the box was wrong straight away. No problem returning and refunding it but it makes you think twice about it now. I always trusted them before.

The first was an Orange Little Bass Thing. It kept cutting out all the time at rehearsal so it got sent back to Andertons who thought it might be a power supply issue. Second was a Darkglass Alpha Omega 500. On this one, the light on one of the EQ sliders went out in its third use at home, this one didn’t even make it to rehearsal! I’d had reservations about this one before buying, as I had read reviews where it kept cutting out. I was disappointed in this, as the amp sounded amazing, but I thought that if a bit had broken already, it didn’t bode well for the rest of the amp. I have booked the hire amp again for our gig next week, but hopefully will have my own for the gig after that in June.

I used to love it when my Mum came to my gigs, too... 😀

I have some low moods and, when I was working, sometimes I’d not notice, just putting it down to being a miserable git. Then, during one episode, I noticed that I hadn’t picked up my basses for some time. This, of course, made me pick them up and bingo, mood started to improve. These days, I try to pick them up everyday.