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This Saturday Maple Road This Saturday 8/26 Zeigler Winery "Outdoor rockin' blues on Lake Winnebago @ Ziegler! We're thrilled to be playing this beautiful venue for the first time! Come enjoy some fantastic wine, (they have a great beer selection, too!) an awesome menu and a whole bunch of live music! Don't miss it! And we'll have Tim Sardina on drums." I'm looking forward to this gig. I've done acoustic stuff there before. This is the first time we're bringing the full Maple Road band. The grounds are beautiful. I'll let you guys know how it goes. Blue

Here’s my board. After much trial and error this is what I’ve decided are my core favourites that I’ll use with my new band. Really pleased with it - the board is meant to hold 7-10 pedals but they didn’t expect 4 with one underneath!

Worrying about what is and what isn't cool is defintely uncool

The most uncool thing possible, even if done ironically.

My philosophy in life is who cares, wear what you want. Your coolest reference point is always going to be someone's pet hate and vice versa. Life's too short. Every time I go onstage I always take the view that one member of the audience might think I'm the best thing in the band and someone else will think I am lucky to be there. Do you own thing. I didn't worry too much about what people thought when I was 14 and it concerns me even less at 50. I'm sure my world view is both a blessing and a curse to me.

After having to return my lefty VT, i've been the proud owner of this lefty Sandberg TM4 hardcore aged in roquefort blue since the weekend. With a three gig weekend on the horizon i'm looking forward to seeing how it fits in with the band 🙂

I am also a huge fan of Sandberg basses: L-R - VM5 ash/rosewood, VT4 alder/rosewood, classic booster 5 walnut top/mahogany/rosewood, classic special 6 cocobolo top, mahogany/rosewood.

The keyboardist can also conceal their uncoolness under their cape.

I picked up a lovely old 1984 Westone Thunder Jet yesterday. It's in need of some tlc as it looks like it's had quite a life. None standard knobs or bridge. New, more accurate, bridge is on the way. I've got some brass Thunder I style knobs on the way, but I am watching an auction for original ones. The pots are in dire need of a clean, or replacing. The logo has gone, I'll get one made, and the truss rod cover is worn, so I'll sort that too. I'll need to investigate why one machine head is wonky, and they're quite tight to turn. Fortunately they're not branded so replacements are easy to find. I've been after a Thunder Jet for a while now and I wanted a little project to keep my occupied while some work being done to the house means my music room is out of action. Through a preamp pedal and headphones this bass sounds amazing, the pickup has a lot of output. Westone were right to name them Hard Puncher. I might give the body a light refinishing, just enough to return it to a more flat finish it came with, but not enough to look new. If anyone out there has a Thunder Jet can you tell me if the logo is white or that flat gold colour Westone used. Cheers

I don’t normally use any pedals on the gig. My amp has built in preset high and low pass filters , but I’ve been running a tube preamp through the effect return input. Bypassing the front end of my amp. so I’ll place this between the preamp and the power section. Glad to be gigging tonight , I’ll give it a twirl.

If any of you subscribe to Desmond Doom on YouTube (and you really should), you'll be familiar with this fantastic item of clothing:

That’s a nice bass. My go to bass is an Ibby SR1000. Had it for 33 years & over that time, numerous basses have came & went. It’s just such a comfortable bass to play & since changing the pickups & pre, it sounds even better.

I suspect that's survivorship bias. Doesn't matter how good you are, if you don't turn up to rehearsals sober and ready to play or even not turn up at all, you'll lose the gig. Even the most patient of bandmates realise this eventually. No one is going to continue to pay out for rehearsal rooms that are abandoned 30mins into a session because of a no show. I've played with some guitarists who were very limited in musical knowledge and ability, but they practiced and they turned up and I knew they'd be able to reproduce that at gigs.

Just some bad a++ playing from all of these guys. Especially Jim Mullen and Francis Hylton. Jim Mullen used to play Guitar for the Average White Band in case anyone wondered who he was.

Way back in my youth I left a band by climbing out of the toilet window and running away. I know it sounds odd, pathetic or both, but that's what happened. I'd formed the band with a guitarist "friend" and we recruited a drummer and bass player / singer (well, he was a guitarist but everyone knows that if you can play guitar you can play bass, right?) and got some songs together, played some gigs, recorded some material etc etc. It was all good fun and I really enjoyed it. Then the "friend" began touting us to labels and one or two of them showed some interest, albeit in a very initial sense. That was it - the flavour of the band changed and the "friend" and the bass player started demanding that we wrote more commercial songs and that each song we wrote had to be a potential single etc etc. It went from a fun band playing some cool alternative rock to a job playing horrid, anodyne, radio-friendly dreck, and despite my protests they were firm that this is what we were doing, and that was that. So, I ran away after climbing through the bog window, and when I left I took all my gear (not only my guitars, but the bass and amp that the singer used, the PA etc etc) and that was the end of my time in that band. They continued for about another year with a few line-up changes but didn't get anywhere. The real kicker for me was that we'd recorded an EP of four songs, three of which I'd written, and when it was released, post-bog window, the only credit I got on it was "additional studio guitars", and they'd turned my guitar parts down anyway, the buggers. The "friend" ended up buggering off back to Canada after having stolen, embezzled, defrauded and unpaid a small fortune.

I loved him in Deep Purple.

Uncool / Cool... such a crock of cack. There is no law. Forget what anyone else says, it's just opinion. It means sweet FA.

I recently bought an active bass which was working fine. I checked the battery and it was dated 2016 (I thought I might as well replace it). Batteries in my various active basses live at least 5 years so I just carry on using alkalis.

I think we need more context. Covers band wearing same colour polo-shirts or tshirts with logo on breast? Definitely not cool. I was in a band in the early 2000s who did this. I had agreed to wear them to turn up and set up in as it identified us as 'the band', but once on stage I thought we should wear proper clothes depending on gig - I was overruled (not outvoted, you do what the band leader asks)... Originals band with different printed t-shirts as has been shown quite a bit since far looks great. In fact I'd go as far as to say if you all have different styles of print and they're available to buy - it's a great advertising spin. Slightly cool depending on execution.

Yep, totally uncool, no respectable artist would ever do that...

I'm playing (mainly) rhythm guitar with excellent Bowie tribute Rebel Heroes at the Old Court in Windsor on 9th September - tickets still available here.

That’s a great idea. I should get a t-shirt with the band name, date, venue and time I need to be there for each gig 😂

Duckie Simpson wearing the band T shirt here, so it’s definitely not uncool

Yes, I wear one. I am a fat, ugly, elderly twit for whom the pursuance of 'cool' long ago lost its appeal. Helps to remind me of the band's name, tbh.

I’m aware that it’s meant to be very uncool, especially for originals bands, but in lieu of a backdrop or bass drum skin (on multi band lineups) then at least it’s some publicity for what band the audience are watching.

Being a parent to a small child, this is immediately where I went when I saw Bluey...

Dave, What a coincidence. I put up room darkening panels today. I don't think they're the answer. I should have gotten black out panels Daryl

I started out with an Ibanez SR300 and after going through Fender, Epiphone, Squier, Peavey and Musicman, I'm back at Ibanez again. This time it's an SRMS805. I'm really liking it. It plays beautifully and I'm getting some evil distorted sounds out of it.

A mate of mine worked with them a couple times. Apparently they hate each other. Arrive at the venue separately, separate dressing rooms, don't speak to each other and leave separately.

' what about rigger boots then ? Essential for those of us who regularly like to punt a boot into the guitardist

Ritchie Blackhands?

They also did a limited edition DarkRay in a cool white sparkle finish with black hardware and an ebony fingerboard. I used to own one.

If you want total darkness blackout curtains might be the better way to go. I don't mind a little bit of light at the edges but when the cat pushes the vertical slats aside in the middle of the window and the sun directly hits your face its a bit of a nuisance to say the least. Dave

@Silvia Bluejay always wears gloves when setting up & breaking down, and tells me - quite rightly - that I should do the same. Trouble is, I just find it a bit of a faff so I never bother. I have rigger gloves in the car so that's not the issue; it's actually putting the bloody things on that's the issue.

James Hetfield got interviewed about this. The other members and some fans got at him for it but whatever shirt he wore on stage got huge sales so it served his purpose.

Oh yes. I'm same although with my cheap ibanez and yamaha. Ridiculous basses for the price.

New bridge arrived. Action is now lower, intonation spot on and no hand shredding bridge screws sticking up. @Shaggy I’ve email them to see if they’re getting any more in stock.

Awesome, looks like we're around for this one, all being well. @cetera - Charvel 3B, ESP Surveyor '87, Fender FSR PJ Precision, Hamer Impact, Italia Imola, Spector NS2, Spector Euro, Spector EuroX (Spectorbird), Spector Pulse II, Spector Dimension 4HP, Gallien Krueger 400RB & Legacy800 heads, GenzBenz Neox 2x12 cab @TheGreek - All short scale this year - a @Jabba_the_gut scale 5er, Mini Ray, Short scale P bass @Harlequin74 - Zoot Performer, Status Shark, Spector QV4 , Markbass TTE501 and Matching CAB. Maybe the Lehle Basswitch… @Frank Blank - @Jabba_the_gut short scale fretted and fretless, JMJ Mustang, QSC K12.2, Grace Design Alix @TrevorR - Mk 1 Wal, Wal Pro IIE, Aria SB700, Frankenjazz, pedals and MarkBass LMII & Traveler 2x10 @bnt - travelling light, probably a couple of pedals such as T-Rex Diva Drive, Orange KongPressor @bass_dinger - 1999 Washburn XB500, 1994 Washburn XB500, Washburn XB925 in zebrawood, Washburn XB925 in bits, Boulder Creek 5 string (likely to be for sale, SWR Workingmans 12. @greentext- 2008 Spector NS4-H2, 2015 Sandberg VS4, 2000 Trace Elliot T-Bass, my pedalboard and my tin of picks 😈 @prowla- Probably a couple of Rickenbackers and some interesting oddities. Amp-wise a Markbass EVO and a 1x12 (last year I bought some others to try and never switched them on, as the EVO sounded spot-on). @SuperSeagull- Status S2, Feline P Bass, Modded Fender Lyte, Flea Jazz, MB Combo @Merton - various short and medium scale ACGs, Zoots and Conway basses, Barefaced cabs, modern Trace Elliot amps @MacDaddy Shuker (probably no3), Snapdragon Folding Bass, possibly a Rob Allen Mouse. @neilp - matching pair of fretted and fretless 1980 Aria SB1000s, possibly my fretless Wal mk1, Ashdown ABM500/Ampeg 4x10, Tech 21 Bass Fly Rig @NickD - Strunal Schonbach 5 String DB, and whatever else I can shoehorn in the car around it... hopefully a MD CMD121 H, Zoom B6, and maybe a Maruszczyk Jake and a Shuker Series 2.

Connect the green and yellow wires to the tweeter, observing the polarity marks on the PCB. It looks like the cab was originally wired in series. If you have two 16-ohm drivers, you'll want to connect them in parallel. So, take the black and red wires coming from the Speakon and connect them to the first driver. Then take another pair of wires from the first driver to the second one.

And we are still projecting the attributes of acoustic instruments onto solid electric ones. Have none of you actually looked to see how different the methods of construction are? Take a typical acoustic guitar. The body will have been made from 5 pieces of very thin wood (2 back, 2 sides and the top) held together with the minimum amount of glue and bracing needed for the construction to not come part under the tension of the strings. It's a design and method of construction that has developed over hundreds of years. Other than a similar shape a solid electric instrument has nothing in common when it comes to construction. Several chunky pieces of wood slathered in glue to hold them together. Take a look at a typical selection of two and three piece bodies and your see that the joins aren't even consistently placed. It's done simply to get the greatest number of instruments out of the fewest number of planks. As I keep saying, the problem I have with assigning tonal properties to the wood used for solid electric instruments is that firstly every piece of wood is different - even pieces cut from the same plank. It is naive to assign those properties to a single piece of wood within an instrument without also considering all the other factors that also go towards making two instruments sound different. You simply can't isolate a single item in a guitar and say that it and it alone is responsible for making this instrument sound different from another one. And all the user experiences concentrate on why two different instruments sound different. There should be no surprise there. It's easy to produce two instruments that sound different. If wood in solid electric instruments behaved in a predicable way, then every Fender P-bass made with the same body neck and fingerboard woods would sound EXACTLY the same. But they don't. It's an universally acknowledge fact that you will have to try multiple supposedly identical instruments to find "the one". By the way, here's great sounding P-Bass: The only wood used in the construction are two soft wood fillets glued onto the back of the aluminium T-section that forms the bulk of the neck and fingerboard, and were probably used because they were easier to shape than aluminium to form the back of the neck. I could also post the Ritter and Bas Extravaganza basses made out of plywood. While each sheet of wood that made up Mr Ritter's bass was probably individually selected, the Bas Extravaganza bass was made from a couple of standard sheets of ply picked at random from his local DIY superstore.

shoorely that shood read, 'only two exshesh'. Shplendid.

I've never left a band on bad terms and only once did we have to ask someone to leave a band I was in. In such a tight community it should be obvious to all concerned that things aren't working and so the act of leaving/being asked to leave shouldn't really be a surprise. As has been said above, issues caught early enough can be addressed and as long as that is done in an adult manner, things should work out without the handbag moments, even if someone has to go. The only time we had a problem was with a bassist (I was the guitarist in the band) who couldn't see how his attitude of challenging everything and being late to rehearsals and gigs was a problem. The icing on the cake was when he refused to go back on to play an extended encore at a club gig and sat in the dressing room while we played another 30 minutes to a great crowd. He was asked to leave the following day and there was a hissy fit over returning my bass guitar to me (he didn't have his own) which was sorted with a visit to his house by the band. I hated every minute of it. The only positive from that episode was that having played bass for the encore, I played bass more often with that band and ended up being the full time bassist. And ultimately that led me here. 😃

Bedford Bandstand