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Had a FANTASTIC gig tonight at O'Neills Leicester - the place was packed otut, everybody up and dancing and singing, they were bouncing off the walls by the end. Prooper "This is why we do it" type of gig. Happy!

We played the Alice's Wicked Tea Party festival last night. There's scant information about this online, but it's an independent event held in a big field located equidistant between Corfe Castle and Wareham in Dorset. The site has two barns about 20m apart, each with a full stage set up; while one stage is busy, the other is setting up. The barns are both draped in camo and parachute silks. Line checks only and finger's crossed. We had an incredible sound guy, who said he were the best band of the weekend (so far...). Fantastic PA system in both barns. 45 minute set, I'd say 175-200 people in for us. Very appreciative and responsive. Took my Lull and Darkglass kit. Post-DI. Tone was nice and gnarly. My wife was out front and she said we were a firm 8/10. (I've dragged her along to enough gigs and if we were sh*t, she wouldn't hesitate in saying so.) Two hour drive home. Nothing better than sleeping in your own bed.

York Grand Opera House last night. Another of my favourite gigs! Beautiful day in this great city, with Pride festival making it extra busy. Combined with the Derby and the Cup final, plenty of folk enjoying the sun and the beer along the riverside area near the theatre. The gig went really well, another capacity crowd well up for a good night. Our sound guy Paul did well with the old fashioned theatre’s acoustics and the band played great (although I had to take over the lead vocals on ‘Roll over Beethoven’ to give our singer Andy a break). Home by 11.30pm too, result! All in all a great weekend of gigs, and a lot of happy punters.

Mmmm, can't believe that the ergonomic mistakes made on the original MIM, custom-shop Fender Rascal have been repeated on this Squier variant!! As with the original Rascal, the phrase 'form over function' springs to mind. I quote from the Squier model description: "Other player-friendly details of this model include a short and easy-to-play 30" scale length..." For me, this short-scale 'player-friendly detail' is completely cancelled out by the quirky body shape that adds needless weight, makes lower-fret access too much of a stretch, and places the plucking/picking hand on top of the bridge. Which is why I got our Andyjr1515 to transform my Fender Rascal into this. That was a few years ago, and it's still the best s-s bass I've ever played 🙂

My band 'Shreds.' had our show at The Fulford Arms on Sunday of last week (sorry, I've been busy and didn't manage to post this until now!). My family also came to York and listened to the show, but before the soundcheck we went around the city and made a short family trip out of it. The venue in York was really great, one of the best we've played so far. Ample parking right out back, great 'backstage' rooms upstairs for the bands complete with a stocked fridge and we were told to help ourselves. The sound guy was super easygoing and helpful. We record all of our shows live and sometimes this can cause complications (some sound guys consider this a very unwelcome intrusion/disruption and huff and puff about it). I bring some mics, my laptop running Reaper, and a 4U rack with 24 digital preamp channels and a transformer-isolated XLR splitter. We record guitar and bass using DI only, and then I re-amp and mix everything when I get back home. The Fulford Arms sound guy helped patch things into my splitter and didn't complain about it. This was only our 6th show,. but probably the best performance yet. The last few shows we've been saying the same thing... "best show yet!". As a band, we learn so much by listening to our show recordings... I give the drummer isolated tracks and he studies them. Sometimes ad-lib comments or lyrics by our vocalist sound great, and we can deliberately insert them into the next show. As a bassist, I hear every mistake and try to fix it the next time around.

Played a party in the lovely surroundings of Belgrave Hall and Gardens in Leicester. Beautiful summer evening here, and awesome vegetarian Indian cuisine. Mint.

Weird gig at The Gunner's Club in Sunderland. Turns out it's not just a name and they take the 'gunners' bit very seriously. This was not the place for a stray acab joke, that's for sure. The pictures were all taken during either set up or soundcheck, it absolutely filled up as soon as we started the first song and everyone came upstairs from the bar below. All in all a good gig, and when the free pint was drunk the next one was £2.90, ahhhhhh social clubs.

Wicked 😊 Pub gig. Crowd were in the mood. Played well.... (Yellowhouse)

We finished off our Northern trilogy with gigs in Bridlington and York. The Bridlington gig was at The Spa theatre, a full house and a glorious day. Fairly local gig for me, so home by midnight, with a full moon lighting the way.

Seek medical advice if it is bothering you. You will get a million different diagnoses from any Internet forum. I would get an expert's advice.

Picked the Aguilar up at 5 this afternoon and it had its first run out this evening at a wedding. Sounded as good as you'd expect.

On behalf of @King Tut - an excellent show by the Verity Bromham Band in Wimborne. Classic rock with a side order of humour, good fun and recommended!

Yo, I'm Natalie from Chester. I'm a very novice player. Back when I was about 17 I bought a Squier Affinity JBass new, and barely touched it. What I now know is that undiagnosed ADHD was having its way with my attempt to keep the hobby going, as it did with many other hobbies! Anyway, a couple of years ago I stopped neglecting the poor thing, but I tinkered with it more than I played it. I got it new pickups and some not-too-expensive new hardware. An EMG JVX set I got for a steal on reverb, some nice Wilkinson tuners, and a Fender HiMass bridge that Richtone Music had on clearance. Since about a year ago my now-diagnosed ADHD has been medicated, and I've found myself committing a lot better to practicing, especially in the past few months. So it seems appropriate a time now to set myself up an account here. You can call me by she/her if you'd like, I know the name Natalie makes that feel the most natural option. I prefer they/them these days if you want, but I won't be upset by she/her at all either. So just do whatever. I'm AMAB trans which you can look up if you don't know the meaning of, but without boring any of you too much with the details, over about a decade of introspection I just feel like it's easier and makes me happier if I think of myself not as a 'gender' but rather as just who I am. If you don't like notions like that or balk at pronouns being posted, you can probably safely assume that we wouldn't get along very well, and we can keep a healthy distance! But in my experience anyway, although media people seem to like platforming some very vocal opinions about this stuff, the real people of the general public are overwhelmingly friendly and accepting. Live and let live is way easier than being angry about things that don't matter to oneself, after all. I have no doubt that the good people of Basschat are a friendly bunch glued together by our shared passion, so I'm confident I'll get along fine with everybody, anyway! I'm not one for starting fights and if somebody decides they don't like me I will simply zip my mouth and report. But... that's enough rambling about a barely relevant subject. Back to something more interesting. I find myself gravitating towards pick playing at the moment, because many of the bands I listen to the most are metal and the harder ends of rock. In particular, I have a somewhat embarrassing fixation on Japanese groups... over the years, I've found myself in some slightly awkward situations with people asking about my tastes, but having shamefully little knowledge of the west's contemporary rock scene to talk about with them, haha. My head is too stuck in Japan's late 90s and early 00s scene. Visual Kei and Nagoya Kei bands' outputs from that era comprise a massive chunk of my favourites list. Bassists I really appreciate from that category are Yu~Ki from Malice Mizer, Hitoki from Kuroyume, and Toshiya from dir en grey. Toshiya is still going strong, with a style that has evolved a lot over the years. I think he's really underrated in the bass player anglosphere, thanks to an understandable language and culture barrier. As for more recent material (and by recent I mean... over a decade of range, I suppose, lol), the Japanese band that most stands out to me is 88kasyo junrei. Their frontman and bassist, Margaret Hiroi, is I think a bit of a genius. But if you're somebody who is reading Basschat and you have any interest in Japanese rock at all, I'm quite sure you probably know about him already, and don't need me to explain! Fingerstyle players like him, as well as, of course, Cliff and Steve, are the kinds of players who keep me eager to learn and practice fingerstyle just as much as pick. (I'll work on slap eventually too, but I wanna get some fundamentals solid first!) Cliff and Steve should be pretty telling as to what my tastes in English music have been; the Guitar Hero games landed during my late teens, and those are what got me into this kind of music in the first place, as happened to many in my middle-millennial age cohort... so, we were listening to lots of classic rock and I especially gravitated towards thrash metal. And the contemporary scene going on at the time was dominated by metalcore, so as avid watchers of Scuzz and Kerrang on the telly, I was given a massive dose of Trivium And Friends, and although I don't actively listen to much of anything from those groups anymore, I still feel a deep-seated fondness any time I happen to listen to the music I kept around me back then. This is way too long-winded, so I'm cutting it off here! Glad to be here, and looking forward to chatting with everyone.

This is my last update, for now it's been great!

Played a couple of gigs with my brother in law at the Leith Jazz & Blues Festival in Edinburgh yesterday. I've played on and off with him since the 90s but only a couple of times in last couple of years. His usual guys weren't available so he asked me and a drummer he knew from about 40 years ago to do the gigs. For a thrown together band we did okay, the crowd had fun and the manager of the second bar we played in, who'd obviously made a mint in bar takings from his bursting at the seams bar, offered us twice the agreed fee at the end of the gig (my brother in law refused due to some reason I couldn't understand).

I must have posted this before, but the surroundings looked so nice, here it is again. Ampeg PF350 & Barefaced Two10. Job done. Gig with a new drummist and a stand-in guitarist. Kept us all on our toes, I tell thee.

Local pub tonight (like, took me 3 minutes to drive home local), but had never been there before. only reason we got the gig was our singer went in to ask if they had rehursal space - they didn't but they did have gigs. I wasnt' sure what to expect, the place looked small, and when we set up it was right against the bar, so the drummer went in the corner and the rest of us were out from there (looking at other band pictures there, that is what everyone does). Really easy setup and by the time we started quite a crowd. We played well and the crowd were enthusiastic and energetic. Great night, they overpaid us and asked us back for their leaving night do in December. There is some video they shot but its on facebook, so no idea if people would be able to see it or not!

Absolutely 100%. Back in the day I recall reading an interview with then-Skid Row frontman Sebastian Bach, where he expressed his anger at musicians who complain about going on tour etc, he said something along the lines of "every morning when I wake up I never cease to be amazed at my good luck, actually being paid to do the thing that I love most... If you hate it that much, give up and be a janitor or something...". I always thought he was a tít TBH but he was bang on with that.

Dear diary, today I received the nicest compliment from a FoH: "We kept you on mute in the front because it was loud enough from the stage". Not a tiny bit angry, rather delighted. AWESOME! 🤘Meanwhile, the guitarist: "Turn up the volume." 🤣 Huge kudos to Quilter! I had bought an EBS Reidmar 752 especially for this purpose, which can safely deliver 2 ohms. Unfortunately, I had forgotten the most important speaker cable: Speakon to jack. The Reidmar has no combo jack, only Speakon. (A real shame if you ask me!) The Ampegs again only have a jack. This drives me crazy... Anyway, I got the little Quilter BB800 out of the car, rumored to be capable of 2 ohms, contrary to official claims. The result: it delivered! ❤️🤘

Nothing special last night. Local venue that’s a massive echo chamber. Nice appreciative crowd and an early night 🙂 Job’s a good ‘un!

+1 for the above. Dr Internet never graduated from medical school. 😃

I'll post this, but dunno why. This is pretty much what I've used at every gig for the last eight years 😄

Rig for my two gigs this weekend. It'll upset the OCD folk.

Nothing makes a stage look messy like white mains leads. I use black ones, and preferably black plugs too. That doesn’t answer your question but I had to get it off my chest!

Horses for courses I guess. I really like the simple basic look without scratch plate. The big thing for me with the recent FSR is the pickups are so much better than the lackluster ones previous Aerodynes have had. Only opinions borne of my own experience.

I've played short scales exclusively for a few years now and have always strung them with long scale strings, mostly because I bought a job lot of strings when they were on offer years ago so I have a surplus to get through! I've never had any problems with using long scale strings on short scale basses, yes you end up with an extra turn around the machine head post and the E sting can sometimes look a bit dodgy as you usually end up with some of the fat part of the string wrapped around the post, but honestly it's not a problem, IME. That's 6 or 7 different basses with maybe a couple of string changes each. And as a JMJ owner, rounds all the way. Mine came with Fender flats fitted from the factory and it always felt a little subdued but once it was fitted with a set of rounds it really opened up the high end without getting abrasive or brittle, just more clarity and definition. It makes the JMJ more Precision like, you already have a subdued top end from being a short scale, why dull it more unless you want that 60's vibe? You can always back your tone off too!

Two days at Epsom Derby, this wonderful set up didn’t miss a beat, unlike the plonker playing the bass 😀

You might say.. they shouldn't have Dundee gig? There's my coat, see you later!

On the off chance that anyone reading this is wondering what SNSSBDTW is supposed to mean, it stands for second new short scale bass day this week. I was enjoying playing my new Squier Mustang bass (bought new on Tuesday) so much that I decided to buy another Mustang yesterday. Back to Oxford PMT and left 30 minutes later with a Fender Player Mustang with P/J pick ups and a lovely natural finish. I haven't set it up yet, but hopefully will be rehearsing with my band tomorrow. I failed to post a picture of Tuesday's acquisition, but to make up for it, here is the one I bought yesterday:

First gig for the new band, Dirty Roses (rock covers). It was also one guitarist's first gig. Not perfect, but we got plenty of compliments and the audience stayed to the end. First real outing for the GR Bass AT800 Cube combo. It was also the first outing for the singer/guitarist's Les Paul that he won in a competition a couple of months ago, and for my Ibanez EHB1265MS/Aguilar. Had some problems with the power supply on my pedalboard so had to just go wired. The only real pink torpedo-up was the encore - our last number in the set is Sweet Child O' Mine, which we play downtuned a semitone. The other guitarist does that on his Variax by simply turning a knob. However, he forgot to turn it back for the encore, Angels, so as soon as I came in there was a horrible discordant clash, unlike the horrible discordant clashes I normally do. He quickly realised and sorted it out, and it didn't stop everybody singing along.

A very considerate way of thinking about people. Welcome Nat...

Here's a full sized comp. We're a punkyish/alternativeish four piece. Singer Eddie fronted Department S (and before anyone one asks, yes we do), guitarist is ex-Members (amongst others), session drummer (loads) and moi.

Or me, you cheeky bas! Edit: oh wait, I forgot, no-one wants to hear our songs regardless of who wrote them. Now I'm sad.

No one wants to hear songs written by the bassist (unless it's Lemmy)

Now that's a festival lineup I would pay to see.

You still can rewire the cabinet itself to change the overall impedance.

Nice rig, lovely bass. And, between the hairstyle and the axe, if your band ISN'T a Who tribute, it seems an awful waste 😜

Its all getting very techy now and even tho i have an electrical / electronics background its way over my head. Obviously there's far more going on than i ever gave any thoughts to. When i bought my Handbox WB-100 it was made clear on the instructions not to mis-match the speaker impedance to the amp so i'm a lot more careful to make sure no damage is caused by mis-matching. With SS amps i just plug and play as my cabs are nearly always 8 ohm. If i have a choice i always go for 8ohm cab versions. Its just easier for me to calculate things. 1 cab = 8 ohm 2 cabs = 4 ohm 3 cabs = my brain hurts 4 cabs = i give up and go home. For bass players ........... just keep it simple is always best IMHO. Dave

Wearing them as I type. Nothing else, of course, and this Blue Peter Badge pin stings a bit.

First outing for the GK Fusion 550 tonight. I’ve loved my ABM600 and I really didn’t need a new amp, but I’ve gassed for one of these for so long I couldn’t turn it down. All I can say is Jesus H Christ, this thing is just incredible! Wish I’d bought one years ago!