Leaderboard

So whilst my beloved was getting her eyes tested yesterday I went for a wander round town and found this hanging up in the local cash converters for the princely sum of £180. Would have been rude not to! Squier 60s classic vibe. Now I know why people bang on about these. Great instrument and finally have a P bass. Just need to find some low tension flats now.

Emergency Exit Punk covers band last night in The Cave in Glasgow. Brilliant staff who are always dancing away. Small venue but always a great friendly atmosphere. I'm at the stage now i just leave my amp set and plug and play. Mostly flat with a little bass boost and a touch of compression. Ampeg SVT7 into Mesa 210 / 115 cabs on a Gramma pad with Sandberg MarloweDK bass. Tried 3 new songs last night and went down really well. Few mistakes made thru the night but not too noticeable. Dave

Another gig with my band Mustang Sally (I know!), this time at the George Inn, Mere, Wiltshire on Carnival night last Saturday. The pub is in the centre of the town so the parade goes right past the front door. Although this means that we got a good view of all the Majorette teams twirling their batons and the gaily lit Tableau and Action floats before we played, it also meant that we had to get to the venue by 5:30 'cos that's when the roads were closed to vehicles not in the parade. I made it by 30 seconds after a 45 mile drive from Bridport, after leaving home at four - I got back at 1 am. We are in a handover period between our departing rhythm guitar/vox and incoming keys/vox, so both are doing all gigs up to the end of October making us temporarily a six-piece. We somehow managed to all cram into one end of the front bar. I'd been feeling rather fluey/brain dead that morning so was a bit away with the fairies when loading up to leave home; result, no Ag700 amp in the jeep on arrival! Calling myself a proper See You Next Tuesday, the day was saved by remembering that I did still have my trusty old TH350 in the all-purpose travelling spares box, thankfully with the right speaker lead, so I dodged a bit of a bullet there. The pub was absolutely rammed all evening, plus loads of people outside in the town square all singing along and having fun - I have added a pic (not very good quality!) of the bar area that I grabbed whilst our guitarist and drummer worked their way through the verse of encore All Right Now. The lady on the table is our singstresse, thank heavens for her carefree approach to pub furniture , sense of balance after a few bevvies and some decent batteries in her radio mic! We were immediately re-booked for 2024 - that's a plus - but on the minus side all three of us plank spankers in the band are still feeling a bit deaf today...

And bringing it up to the present state of play... To balance the purple of the headstock and fretboard, I added a slice of purpleheart to a cut block of ebony and carved the beginnings of the bridge. I also cut the fretboard end to where it will meet the soundhole: Next, I turned my attention to the decoration around the soundhole. Although you have to be a bit canny to maintain the accuracy, I actually find the Dremel radius accessory reasonable for this job: I used a 1mm bit to cut a circle at the centre and wrapped some 1mm b/w/b purfling into it after running a teeny bead of glue onto the bottom edge. After scraping the excess purfling off, I drilled an offset radius tool spike-hole that will be used to put in a second, larger offsett ring (you can just see the pencil check marking offset and outside the installed ring): And then another radius tool spike-hole in between those two to be able to cut - using a 3mm bit - a mid radius to create an offset channel for some curved abelone that, all being well, would fit in between the two other rings. It worked!! And finally, the radius tool spike back to the original hole, but at a slightly smaller radius to now cut right through and create the sound hole : And that's how far I've got so far. It's dinky, isn't it!!!! @Frank Blank might recognise the LAG next to it :

Phew that was a hot one...raising funds for volunteer fire service

It's funny how these things go. I played in a band that got a little label interest as a teenager and luckily didn't go anywhere (they shouldn't let 18 year olds ruin their life like that) then kicked around casual bands for the next decade or so happy to play the occasional interesting show. Turned 30 and decided I was 'retiring', then immediately walked into a session gig with a label band and within a year we'd done Wembley twice, two months on a bus round Europe, festival main stages, etc. Quit the day job to join the band full time and within another six months lockdown killed a couple tours plus a second label deal and I realised I hated everything about being in a band that wasn't playing music. Gracefully stepped out to do other things and like most recovering musicians ended up as a touring tech - turns out that people will actually pay you to tell them how not to make the mistakes you did first time round. I believe this is what the industry calls "a roller-coaster" of a career path. I have a day job now but it's not exactly a 9-5 and I get to do some interesting music related things plus gig at the weekend. The wages of sin have not been particularly lucrative but we do alright between the two of us. I've been extraordinarily lucky really because all these opportunities have just kind of drifted into my lap and while I'm a competent player I'm unlikely to end up making any Bassist Of The Year lists. Being polite and not making waves on the bus has been far more important to my career than being a shredder.

As the purpleheart gets exposed to the light it will pinken markedly. Originally, I was going to put a plain ebony headstock plate over the mahogany...but maybe a bit of purpleheart there too? Got me thinking and experimenting. Hmmm...and was there room for a swift in there too? : Then add some dots and frets to the fretboard - this might work: Then back to the neck. No trussrod needed but, as it is a mahogany neck, maybe a little extra stiffness would not go amiss - so I slotted the top for a couple of hollow carbon-fibre beams: With that sorted, I could bandsaw the neck and start shaping that. Before shaping the heel, I added an extension to its length. The fretboard is just laid on top - it won't be glued on until the neck angle is fully sorted (a long time yet!): Did a bit more carving to start sorting the neck profile and, in the same way that you can't have too many clamps, you can never have too many swifts! You can tell the age of my iphone by the colour aberrations of its camera!! Starting to look like an acoustic guitar neck

Just finished 2 days of running the PA for the stage at the annual Nailsea 'international' Bike Show (Bristol). Excellent weekend. 12 really good bands of different genres of music. They were all great. All went very smoothly and all the bands were happy with their sounds. We played last on Saturday night. Unfortunately, it didn't start so well for us. Guitar player broke a string 2nd song, singers mic went intermittent and a bit of feedback. But after that, we went down a storm. Great gig. If anyone on here played, thanks for a great time.

I ordered a tenor ukulele mould from Radius Dish UK - superb product but did take a long time to arrive: I also ordered a sitka spruce bookmatched pair, which I planed and scraped down to a touch under 3mm and joined: And also found in my small wood collection a full mahogany back and sides set - I have NO idea when and what I bought that for...but it would do nicely. Again, planed and scraped the sides down, this time to around 2mm and then out came the bending hot pipe. First a good dousing with water: Then on with the leather work gloves. With a bending iron, a hot pipe and a lot of patience plus plenty of spritzing is the key: One half nearly done: And now both! Once that was fully dry (overnight) I could cut the sides flush at either end and cut a mahogany tail block and neck block to glue them up: Then, having found the rubber-banded clothes pegs in a long-forgotten drawer, applied the kerfed (slotted) linings: And then that's the sides done ready for radius sanding :

I did this in the mid 90s. Our singer quit the band the week before we were due to send the master tapes and artwork off to have our debut single pressed, as the band all had jobs with a decent amount of disposable income we decided we'd advertise for a replacement in NME and Melody Maker with a one-column display ad. Now if you think that there's some weirdos on JMB, that's nothing compared with the ones hoping for fame and fortune in a band that was obviously ambitious enough to advertise in the weekly "inkys"! I wish I'd kept all the letters/photos/tapes that we received as some of them were absolutely hilarious. On the other hand we did nearly end up with the daughter of a very famous rock musician as our singer (unfortunately despite the fact that she was great, she wasn't impressed with our music as she had been with the ad to want to join). In the end our replacement singer came from an ad placed in the local record shop...

Also before you send the money my bank says that it’s found a match or not, if it goes somewhere else after that then that’s something beyond your control I would have thought

Bummer In The Summer — Love

A gig in a large ballroom on the outskirts of Rotherham for us last night. Sadly underpopulated which didn’t help in a hall the size it was. It had been programmed the same day as a local end of summer outdoor shindig and unfortunately good old Kimmy Wilde was a bigger draw than us 😂 Major problems again with PA crossovers, we’ve managed to blow 2 now despite them supposedly being rated above our max wattage. A loud bang in the second spot followed by smoke can be off putting….we managed through to the end but couldn’t do an encore.

I've read all of this thread with great interest, and I think my ambition is to be @Stub Mandrel * 🤣 I first picked up a bass in 2016, aged 49, because we were short of bass players at church. My goal then was to be good enough to play regularly in church without screwing up. Which I am and I do. My goals now are to 1) practice more and be good enough to play in a secular band with a mix of covers and originals. 2) find someone who writes good music and needs a lyricist partner to help take over the world. One of these is more plausible than the other. * just the music bits, not the divorce

Can't believe I've done this. I've been playing for 25 years or so (with a gap of a few years in the middle) but I'm no more than an enthusiastic amateur. My main 'gig' is in the band of my church. Always said that one day I'd love to get a really nice bass, and that day has arrived. Sold my previous pride and joy (motorbike) and have put some of the funds to work on this. Just had delivery of this beautiful Sandberg California TT4 in aged rochfort blue. Just getting to know it a bit, but overjoyed with first impressions on noodling about with it! I love the attention to detail which has clearly gone into the aged finishing.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted in here, but this is my board now. Why do they not stick the jack sockets higher up to account for pedal board lips? If they did, I could have had the Bassics preamp back another inch & the other pedals could’ve sat portrait. I might play about some more.

A lawn Again (Naturally) - Gilbert O'Sullivan

This is an odd one, it doesn't sound like a authorised push payment scam though? If you and your wife both verified the account details when you made the payment, and if the funds then went to a different account, whatever happened must be either an error by the bank or something to do with the recipient's account?

Peavey Standard MKIII Preamp:

As someone who had just reduced something to 95 quid I had a Kafka-eque moment there!

We are in the same club. It wasn't the main stage (hence 'technically'). The festival audience had the choice of my band, High Flying Birds or (under cover while it was peeing down) the Manics. Got me my Rotosound deal anyway!

Thanks Andy. Appreciate the feedback. not much progress over the last few days as I’ve been sorting this out. I call it the newborn. Named after the alien in alien resurrection as it looks like the concept art.

Quite right. Technically, I headlined the Isle of Wight festival at 52.

Never say never. I have friends who’ve got big gigs in their 40s and 50s so there’s always time. Of course you might not be in the young, hot new radio band in your 50s but you can still join an established band and make a living.

We only got the Dynacord new last year….not really looking to make another investment of that size at the mo. The retailer assured us the passive crossover route was the way to go….we’ll see.

Down In The Pube Station At Midnight ～ The Jam

We played this afternoon at the Shropshire Tattoo Show. In some ways a tough gig, because the audience were there for the ink, not the music, but we were made to feel very welcome and were well looked after, which is always a huge lift. We played pretty well on a very small stage, despite the room being very hot indeed and the sound was pretty good too. This was our first gig playing a split set, which meant re-ordering the songs to suit, but I think it worked well. We got talking to one of the exhibitors who is organising another tattoo show in Wrexham in November - he and his wife loved our act and he asked us if we'd consider playing there. It's a great feeling getting another booking at a gig, I always feel. I look very grumpy, but that's just a bad case of RBF!

My ambitions were lways modest and stepwise - play bass, jam, be in a band, write a song, play a festival, revord a demo... I probably had a few thoughts of "wouldn't it be cool if..." in my 30s, especially with the second originals band. We had a great songwriter as band leader and boy/girl vocalists wjo were good, although she was posdibly yoo young and not serious enough about it. But I decided to put career first and ended up married and away for over 20 years. Refinding music as the marriage collapsed saved my sanity. Fulfilled lots more ambitions as for some reason my playing is hugely improved. Finding I can learn stuff quickly, lots of styles, jam, dep, improvise. I suppose my two ambitions are to play a really big crowd/festival and it eold be nice to appear on a proper album. Oh... and one day to play a few songs live with my youngest brother.

Yes - I know, it's a guitar. But it's for a good cause - it's for my two grandchildren for them to pick up and try if and when they are able to or want to, or use as a cricket bat or wall hanging if they don't. And you never know - if they get hooked, they may well turn into bass players when they grow up I'm going tenor-uke size, but definitely a 6 string guitar. Nothing against uke's but this way - if they do take a liking to it - they can progress to larger guitars without having to re-learn all of the chord patterns and tuning. So spec is going to be : 17" scale Ball-end nylons tenor uke body size Sitka Spruce top Mahogany back and sides Mahogany neck Purpleheart fretboard 'Standard' X-brace And, broadly, it is going to look like this: I'm about halfway through - I'll do a few quick posts and then stuff will slow down to actual progress rate (that is, pedestrian! )

I've played bass for 37 years now and pretty much been in 9 serious bands and a few smaller projects. I tend to keep a list of all the gigs I've played, press cuttings, set lists, posters and more recently over the last 7 years, I've even been writing down what bass I played on each gig. I also keep memorabilia of the bands I've played in like t-shirts, press photo's, magazines, interviews etc. as well as every release, recording, radio sessions, demo's and rehearsals. I've also gathered all the photo's I can from each band and put together a photo book which looks pretty cool. I kind of done it more for my kids to have for when I'm long gone and maybe show there kids. I have very little to no information on what my grand-parents did or even know what they looked like as I never met them. It would be great to have seen photos or know a bit more about them and their lives. I also have very few photo's of my dad or many stories about him so I thought it might be nice to be able to pass stuff on to my kids and even grand-kids in case any of them are interested or end up being musicians. Anyone else collect or keep stuff or a bit sad like me 🤣

Nice work KK 👍

Bingo

My thinking would be that if somebody was able to change the bank details manually typed and doublechecked by the OP and his wife in their heavily encrypted banking apps/websites, that would mean -that they have the OP wife's phone or computer hacked, or the bank hacked -that they are very skilled, so they would probably try to sell a Fodera, not something that has been reduced to £95

Now that’s a good shout. I’ll go & have a look at those. 👍🏼 Yes, it’s a lovely bit of kit. I bought it on here off sk8 last month. Dunno why he decided to sell it, but I’m glad he did. Makes a great front end for my FRFR set up. I’m planning on finding a nice drive pedal to replace the BDI21. I do like the mid scoop & light drive that it gives.

I quite agree - at the time I bought it I was taking lessons with a classical double bass teacher and had a reasonable understanding of the correct technique - it very quickly became clear that I wouldn't be able to play an EUB so swapped to an acoustic.

Any second hand Yamaha or Cort. If you want to go new: Harley Benton indeed.

Twice! A&R told us “there’s only one incubus”, reviewing then bands finest work in my early twenties. Reject & exit stage right. 🤣 Reaching the age of 40 without headlining the Sunday night at Reading festival. Oh well.

Swings and roundabouts. I was coming down the escalator from a casino gig with sack truck piled up with Trace Elliot. At bottom is drunk fan waiting to "help me off". No amount of screaming at him to get out of the fine way was working until the penny dropped at the last second.

Gazpacho My Cloud Stones

Played with The 77s at The Shakespeare in Canterbury on Friday. pub was in the middle of a pedestrianised area so load in and out was a pain. went very well though, lots of dancing and cheering from the crowd etc. A highlight was a guy randomly wearing a Viking helmet and having to ask security to chuck someone out. He was very drunk and very close to spilling his drink over pedal boards, he had a couple of warnings to be careful but he wasn’t listening. As such we had to ask security to remove him. Its 5 weeks till our next gig and I am looking for any dep opportunities, but not having much luck.

Had been a bit anxious about numbers last night. We started a bit late as had to wsit for the first half of Tonga vs Ireland to end. Felt a bit empty but rapidly filled up, one of the rugby fans who went into the lounge abandoned the match and came to see us instead. In the end we had a really good turnout. Really enthusiastic crowd with lots of dancing - we aren't really a dance band but did a few up tempo songs. Good feedback, including from the singer of the new band I've started up who hadn't seen us before. What was really nice is we are starting to get people coming from further afield to gigs just to see us instead of just a random audience.

Just back from a gig. Small area for the band .... pub. Loud. Thought I'd take all the gear just to practice set up etc. But did we really need the Sub? Absolutely! Of all the improvements to the PA, the most noticeable, even in small pubs, is its effect on the kick drum. Tried it on and off and there's no question that it really solidifies the sound of the band. Not only that, but it's much better (under a PA top) at stabilising the PA when inebriated yobs fall into the band, baptising us in beer! Again. But the point I really wanted to make is that I suspect it's a much better option to buy one high quality sub that 2 lesser quality units. It avoids the positioning/interference debate, makes life easier in terms of transport and is likely to do the job well. I can fit my bass rig (2 cabs) Sub (RCF 705) 2 tops (932's) 2 bags of wires, stands, monitor, mixer me and me bass and pedal board into an ID3 (think golf with less carbon). Just. And drive over Wrynose Pass to last night's gig.

I was sitting in bed one Sunday morning, perusing Reverend basses on Glasgow's Merchant City Music website and Mrs BillyBass, sat next to me, started talking about going on a spa break. After a quick online search I suggested a spa hotel near Glasgow and she liked the idea. I then came clean and told her why, this was followed by a short negotiation and she agreed on a deal, she gets the spa break, and I get a new bass. On the first day in Glasgow I went to Merchant City Music and GuitarGuitar, which is just up the road from it. Both shops have a decent selection of basses; Glasgow puts London to shame on that point. In Merchant City Music I tried the Decision P and the Reverend Mercalli 4 and 5 strings. Lovely basses all of them, I picked the 'Venetian Pearl' Decision P due to its appearance, it didn't sound better than the Mercallis. They also have a couple of Reverend Thunderguns there too, these have set necks, which are glossy. The bass cost £879, which is a bargain. Reverend don't seem to have hiked their prices like Fender and most other brands. I've had the bass one week now so I've got over the initial 'wow'. This is a keeper, the pick ups sound right for the music we play, the neck is lovely, the string spacing/nut width is comfortable, and enables me to play root-octave-root-octave with a pick comfortably (my previous main basses-Charvels-have Jazz sized nuts)...and I love the look! Venetian Pearl, is actually a gold burst, going to a cream sparkle and the pickguard is a lemon yellow. It looks like a yellow burst in the website photos but it isn't.

Yep, whilst I was in my last band pretty much every weekend we were up & down the country, staying over in hotels, getting planes or ferries to other countries, was great. On the way to the gigs we used to discuss our day jobs and always end with “and that’s all they’ve got, where we’ve got this”, looking forward to the gig(s) we were on way to. Sadly the workload just got too much for me in the end but I loved all of it, where I’d like to have had more time doing it I got 6 great years.