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Last night was Going Feral For Mental Health at Gwatkin Cider in darkest Herefordshire. We played there last year as well, but have moved up the bill a bit, we were at 2010, just before @cheddatom's Headsticks, who as usual were excellent (though I had to sneak off early...). As Tom said, it's a slightly odd crowd - more people seem to sit outside on the benches, but we even had a dancing dog - though it's possible he was trying to get my sporran (oh yes...) and we only made a couple of minor mistakes (drummer keeps insisting on putting a 4 beat fill in where it should be 2) but nobody noticed enough to start throwing tomatoes. Otherwise, all fine - sound is great even on stage! I even had a chap afterwards very interested in my bass and how it made all those weird squealy noises... My Mrs took a photo when I got home, after driving through a serious lightshow followed by torrential rain...

We played Wigan Diggers festival on Saturday. Shame I missed you @jimmyb625 I had no idea another basschatter was on! I don't tend to read up on gigs, just get picked up in the van, go and play. That can sometimes have some unforeseen consequences, such as not realising I won't get to bed until 4AM, or not realising we're staying over at the other end of the country when I've booked a recording session for the next morning. Anyway, Wigan Diggers is a great festival. We've done it quite a few times in the past and it's always such a lovely atmosphere. The extremely warm weather can only have helped. The crowd looked huge to me, and everyone looked to be enjoying themselves. The only downer was some idiot causing trouble down at the front half way through. A giant fan of ours managed to gently escort him off but it always puts a damper on the atmosphere. The other negative was that I'd forgotten my hi-hat stand. There was a house kit, but set as high as I could get it, it was still 10 inches lower than I'd have liked. My fault, and pretty amusing Finally, a decent shot of my ridiculous kit made of 26" x 9" marching bass drum, and a couple of almost matching toms. The photo is by a lady called Kate who goes by "Late Developer" on facebook and she's very talented. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100091871011827 Sunday night at Feral Fest in Herefordshire. It was a pleasure to see @Leonard Smalls band Choked. When I saw them at Rebellion Festival the sound wasn't great but last night in this barn was brilliant. Two very distinctive bass sounds and styles, tight drummer, female Zach De-La Rocha at the front, and an absolute wah-wizard on lead guitar. There wasn't a massive crowd but everyone seemed to be in to it. The highlight was our man's glitter trousers and I wish I'd have taken a photo but I guess we've all see them in this thread by now Our set was just after and there were even fewer in the barn for us at first. It seemed to turn around after a couple of songs, no idea why, but people started to appear from somewhere and in the end it was a great gig. No photos as I forgot Now I'm trying to work my day job on 3 hours sleep

I'd like gear manufacturers to give preferential deals to bricks-and-mortar retailers so that it became cheaper to buy from a shop than order on-line.

I've always had a chorus sound in my head which is never quite matched by my pedals. Every time I think I'm there I'm left with nagging doubts. The ones I've liked seem lovely and gooey on their own but too thick and indistinct in a mix. The others are thin and too light to do what I want. Untill now! I took a punt on a £35 Demon FX copy of the Analogman mini chorus. I can't tell you if it's remotely similar because I don't have the cash to splash on the original. What I can tell you is it's the first time I've had a chorus where I've needed to reduce the depth. Even dialled back the sound was still gorgeously rich, and yet each note was beautifully clear. Will I stop trying different pedals? Probably not. Will this be hard to prise off the board? Absolutely.

Enroute home I decided for the very first time to visit the large Guitar Guitar store in Birmingham Found the store and good result it has a car park 👍 Walked in to a warm welcome from staff, found the bass gear down the end of the store and after 5 mins browsing I was offered and made a cup of coffee! I tried out the MXR M87 compressor with a Player Series PBass in Tidepool Blue same as mine at home. They left me alone for a good hour ( regular checks asking if I was ok ) and when I decided to buy the pedal they price matched it and I got it £30 less than listed I was very impressed with the staff, the store and the relaxed friendly and professional way the store is run. Well done Guitar Guitar Birmingham

Friday: Saturday: Sunday:

I just think gear manufacturers need to stop looking at sales when giving endorsements and adopt a 2023 approach of "the band isn't particularly big but I see that the bass player posts a lot of Basschat"!

Attitudes to change fascinate me. In terms of their impact on how a bass actually sound and feels both hi-mass bridges and laurel fingerboards make only small (or imperceptible to many people) differences. One is cheaper, the other more expensive than the traditional approach. If laurel was rare I'm sure boutique builders would be singing its praises. Equally, if high mass bridges were cheap, they would be derided as a gimmick.

Time to update the sofa shot... Changes since last time - Sire D5, Epiphone Korina Explorer, white pearl pickguard on the LB-100.

Popped in to Bass direct to trade a nice ACG 5 string with the intention of getting a beautiful status 6 string fretless And came back with this

I have hassled him before but I'd like Barefaced @alexclaber to do a vertical Three10T cab with kickback wheels, and a tweeter. Alex has kindly informed me that to get a sensible 4ohm impedance it would need custom ordered cones and that the demand probably wouldn't be there for the expense and R&D. So I'm counting on you lot to tell him that you'd all buy 3 cabs each! Narrow and tall, with wheels would be perfect for me. The Four10 doesn't have wheels and is short, the Six10 is just completely overdoing it and there are many venues I play I'd have trouble getting it through doors / stairs etc and with about 20 band members there isn't much room either. The Eight10 gives me funny feelings in my loins but it wouldn't fit in the car. My feeble attempts at saying "Well, Ashdown have made one..." didn't work in the slightest, but it was worth a shot. So I'm going to try "More people will want to have sex with you, Alex, if you make it"* * Those people are likely to just be Basschat members or maybe even me, but that's your risk!

For anyone in the future who searches for this, it was the saddles that had been put back in the wrong order by a previous owner.

On SansAmp products like our Bass Driver DI etc, the "Drive" control acts like the volume control on a vintage non-master volume amplifier. As you turn up the control in the first half of the rotation, you increase both volume and power amp style distortion. When you get around 12 o'clock (depending upon playing style, pickup output etc) you start to get to the point where increasing the Drive results in more distortion and volume increases become less and less as the circuit gets more saturated. We do have a few products like our PSA 2.0 that have "Gain" controls. Gain increases the input sensitivity. Drive=distortion Gain=input sensitivity Volume=level These terms can be interpreted somewhat differently for different applications.

Very nearly played to three men and a dog on Saturday, saved by the fact that our guitarist Dave brought his family and friends along. A good night was had by all and we played well with no techie dramas. Pic of the band post gig with said family+friends Not a gig we're keen to do again..beer was ok, toilets were antideluvian and there was a crowd of crack heads on the street outside. Also the pay was sh1te (but that's down to us I guess)

An afternoon slot at the Wigan Diggers' Festival for Fine Lines. https://wigandiggersfestival.org/ It was rather warm, much like the rest of the UK, which isn't my favourite thing to play in. We played without a drummer, as the regular one was on holiday and the dep we had arranged needed to drop out. As we're an originals band, it's a bit harder to make last minute substitutions. However we've played with this line up before, so it's not something we went into blind. Stage monitoring was a bit challenging to start off with For the first song, the only things audible were the piano/organ and one of the singers. I had to watch the guitarist's strumming pattern (not an euphemism) in order to follow the beat. Still, it improved eventually and we managed to survive until the end. Under normal circumstances, I would have been wearing a more "on-brand" stage shirt, however the setup time was limited, so we pretty much ran straight through setup, line check and performance.

Its surprising to see that someone with enough dexterity to play guitar would have trouble with shirt buttons.

I pay the extra just so we have a bass specialist still in existence. It means there is more choice and a higher chance of better quality gear to try. Worth it to me for a couple of quid. Same reason I’d rather spend £4/5 on a decent pint in the local than £2 for a Carling in Wetherspoons.

You're gonna need seven DBs Jack

Wife's 40th and Mum's 70th were a week apart, so I've been incredibly busy, but I've finally found some time today to finish sanding and apply a coat of oil. Once the finish is done I'll start on the frets. I'm also going to have a bash at making a brass nut, but I've got a graphtech blank as a backup! On the first pic, you might be able to see a dark patch in the upper cutaway. Its an odd one. It seems to be some kind of discolouration in the wood that really popped out as soon as the oil went on. Ah well. I'm looking forward to getting it strung up and plugged in, in any case! Probably won't be ready for Friday's gig, sadly.

Indeed. We want BBOT high mass bridges, 4, 5, and 6 strings, headless with nice headstocks, made with acrylic aluminium tonewoods, and with Precision Jazz Musicman Nordstrand Aguilar Bartolini pickups. In fretted, lined fretless, unlined fretless, and left-hand versions of all.

Yes i remember now, it was posh. Rummers has a lot of undercover outdoor seating, which of course on a hot sweaty night is the place to be so the audience was mainly outside, i hope enjoying the ambience we were providing inside. But as the night went on people drifted in and by midnight we had a bar full of hot sweaty bodies dancing and calling for "one more song". For me doubling up on sound it was great i have bought a backup xr18 mixer as my original one has been struggling on but getting sicker and sicker. The new one made all the difference, i wasn't struggling to find channels that still worked. Our main singer has taken to a wired iem and we mike up the guitar amp so the stage sound is a lot quieter and so less prone to feedback which was always an issue with 4 mics up front. So all in all we came away happy!

I would have liked the Chuckle Brothers to have done a cover of Joe Cocker's You Are So Beautiful to Me (to you, to me, to you, to me, to you).

Private festival yesterday - very well attended, I think it is private just so that they can save on the public insurance while still inviting everyone! There were two 'stages', ie flatbed trailers with haybales in front of them, like this: and it went on from about 3:30 until we stopped at ¼ to 12, but people were staying there in big premade tents and a couple of motorhomes / vans. There were two bands before us, a guy on a piano doing really impressive covers of large band songs, and a group of people doing general covers in a sort of hilbilly style. We were supposed to start at 8:30, but even though we were setup and ready by 7:30, the middle band just carried on until 8:25 which meant we had practically no time to get sound setup, other than line checks. Still when we went on it was good, although I was playing the bongo, and I couldn;t see the fretmarkers at all, so made some silly mistakes, and also while the sound was good at the front, the bass where i was was deafening, probably because of standing on the same bit of metal as all the cabs (but the guitarist couldn't hear the bass at all). Switched to the acrylic bass, as at least I could then see, sound not as good but overall the image was better. Went down a storm with people dancing all night, and really wanting us to not stop, and paid pretty well too.

Just a thought, but it’s possible this might not be the thread for you.

Decided I needed something new to inspire me to practice more. Ever get stuck in a rut and need something shiny to encourage you to get back to the bass shed? Well that was me and scratch definitely itched! My orange b25 was ace at outputting meagre fart impressions at low volume so decided to up it a bit. I’ve been keeping an eye out for a new amp on BC and FB for a while and this rumble combo turned up for sale a couple of miles down the road. I’m not gigging at the mo but wanted to get something that would work if the opportunity arose. I’ve had big rigs in the past and miss the weight (tone-wise) a decent size cab can deliver, even at low volumes. Fantastic enjoyable, easy purchase and nice chat from the seller led to me purchasing this 1x15 200 watt combo. Pretty much mint condition and barely used. It sounds great, is super light and works brilliantly at low volume. Initial preference is to run the gain really high, vintage switch in and eq mostly flat. No real tinkering to get a good sound. I get a lot more noticeable variation in tone now when changing pickups/ right hand position. It’s made practice fun again. I’m flicking through tuition books that I’ve ignored for years. For the first time ever my neighbour told me he could hear what I was playing and gave me a compliment. I think it was a polite way of telling me to turn down! Reminder to self to be reasonable with the volume. So far so good! If I actually get the chance to play out the house I’ll update this thread with thoughts.

Just replaced the Tonerider pups in my P with these G&L pups. Mahoosive!!!

Very rare footage of the original models for the Anderson 'Thunderbirds/Stingray/Four Feather Falls' characters, chilling out ... It's worth tapping one's foot to the drum solo, maintaining the 5/4, to see how it comes back in, spot on the beat. Class.

They tried - for all that people moan about it, noone will buy it

… which is why they were never allowed to go anywhere near a car radio/cassette player! Cleaning tape heads was a near-religious experience for me. Cotton buds (not too fluffy, so reducing the minute chance of bits of fibre actually finding their way into the inner workings) and isopropyl alcohol. Press play, and then carefully clean each head with one end of the cotton bud, and then lightly clean/finish off with the other. Once done, onto the roller and tiny steel part that came into contact with the actual tape. Use the tape counter to ensure each part of the process was afforded equal time to get the job done properly. The satisfaction when viewing the dirty cotton bud and seeing all the residue made the whole thing worth it! My dad walked in on me once, and when I excitedly told him what I was doing and showed him the cotton bud evidence I genuinely think he would have preferred that I was out on the town taking drugs…

I’m not saying I disagree with the examples shown above - it’s just a matter of perception by insurance companies trying to squirm out of coughing up. Give them any loophole to find as to whether the vehicle was being used for anything other than what it’s says on the insurance document and they will gladly spend time digging deeper. I know we’re only talking small amounts of money being earned by people gigging as a hobby, but as far as the insurance company are concerned it’s a grey area worth checking if it saves them paying out. It’s all numbers to them - they argue that even a part time musician is more likely to be out late at night than say an accountant, that the vehicle will be left parked up in dubious places other than on the driveway, that the vehicle may be used for carrying heavy gear etc etc. I know it’s all bolloc*s but that’s how they work. I once was involved in a debate with an insurance company years ago over my premium having been hiked considerably on renewal due to be my being a muso. One of the reasons they cited was that ‘I may be giving Mick Jagger a lift home’ with the risk of a massive claim etc. Unbelievable. ( Mick always got a cab…) 😆

I had one. It was nice, but I like the sound of their 10 inch cones more.

Pah! My Crown class D power amp is 1500W rms bridged into 4 ohms 😁 And weighs around 4 kgs... Do we have a large trousers emoji? 🐎😄

TDK made the SA100 tape - 50 minutes each side. The SA was my tape of choice for sound quality (on my fairly modest, 1984 Pioneer stack system and 1985 Ingersol "Walkman.") A mate of mine warned me against using chrome tapes as they wore out the play heads (apparently.) This may, of course, be bullshine.

US Stingray bought new end of 2018. Ultimate live bass. Custom pickguard from gig.ink. Drop D tuner because life is better when you can D tune quickly.

I've used GAK for strings a few times and get next day delivery too. Dave

My Aching Back — Lowell Fulson

Fortunately we didn’t have one on Saturday Dave but we need to get sorted for this coming Saturday as we’ve got a big room to fill.

I've personally never noticed any difference between different bridges. I've had Fender Precision's with a High Mass Bridge, standard bridges and ever the '51 design bridges and never noticed any difference whatsoever in sustain, playability or tone between any of them. The only difference tonally is the pickups where a '51 P-Bass sounded like a '51 P-Pass, a '72 Humbucker Telebass sounded like a Humbucker Telebass and a split coil P-Bass sounded like split coil P-Bass. In fact the best sounding Precision I have ever had is my Mexican Fender FSR 70's Precision which has a standard bridge and has sustain for days. Even our singer has commented on it. Its why its my main recording bass but I am sure that's more down to the 62 Custom Shop pickups and the Ash body.

This. I’m pretty sure 99.99% of an audience and 99% of bass players themselves wouldn’t be able to hear any noticeable difference between a rosewood/laurel board or different bridge. The decisions back in the day to use these now hallowed materials were almost certainly made using bottom line thinking rather than some tonal nirvana.

Strings Direct. Naturally I'm biased, they are about three miles from me and I've always had excellent service.

Hurtsfall played on Friday night at The Angel in Nottingham with Inward Strange and Cold In Berlin. Another really good one for us, not quite as bonkers as our last gig in Leeds, and we didn't play quite as well (we were probably the only people who noticed that) but there were plenty of people down the front dancing and cheering between songs. Only down side was that the foldback mix for our set was entirely different to the one we had sorted out during the soundcheck despite the fact that nothing had need to be unplugged in between and the venue has a programmable digital desk. It wasn't a big deal, but in this day and age the only reason I can think for this happening is user error on the part of the PA engineer. However lots of people came up afterwards and told us how much they had enjoyed the set, and we sold a decent amount of merch. I was expecting to be able to post some photos but nothing has shown up on social media yet. Next gig is on 16th September in Coalville at the Victoria Bikers Pub as part of the Gothic Gathering festival. We're on just before 6.00 in the evening.

We get it, you like rosewood. Well these basses don't have it, so don't buy one, job done, you can leave now.

Ah, you were with Headsticks. That's cool, we heard a lot of good things about you and people were definitely looking forward to your set. It is a great festival, it was our second time there and we ended up playing earlier, as there was a clash with something the violin player had booked in for later in the day. Or at least it was a clash last year, when we were originally scheduled to do it (before it was cancelled).

It was, thanks, although the surprise I wasn't expecting is that lit up basses actually attract flying biting insects outside!