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I picked up some Bongo electronics. I have owned some (!) Bongos in the past but found them uncomfortable when seated. But I loved the electronics. Our own @Manton Customs did the routing work and all that malarky. New scratchplate, control cavity, battery and pickups. The control knobs are all sorts of wrong, but I will source some better ones. The before pictures are here. Share my joy.

Back in the Spector group again & it feels good. This is my 2nd Ian Hill…a few years ago arthritis had a go at the base of my thumbs, it’s still there but I wear a 6” wrist band pulled down over the thumb base & it helps a good bit….worth a try if you’re in the same boat. Anyhow roll on Friday for a practice session 👍

Sort of. I like shiny bright coloured basses. When the collection got to 10 following the purchase of the gold/yellow/cream Reverend, I realised I nearly had a rainbow of basses, so I arranged them in colour frequency order in my rack. Anyone else got some bright and shiny basses to show off?

To me, it's not a question of 'cookies or no cookies'. I'm from IT, and I know how and why they work, and what to do with them. It's a question of method used, cynically to obfuscate and render difficult the free and informed choice of the User (me, in my case...) as to what's really being done with the cookies, and by whom. I use CCleaner, and keep some cookies as being useful, either to myself or to a trusted site (BC is on the 'trusted' list...), so that, when CCleaner empties the cookie jar, the 'good ones' remain. The 'good ones' that I've retained have all informed me of their purposes, and I've agreed to those purposes. This Ezoic malarkey has a deliberate way of presenting this choice to me which I find objectionable, and inspires no confidence whatever in me. I would accept, as a bare minimum, a 'Reject All Non-Essential Cookies' option, an option available to many other sites, and that I use, if I am confident that it's truly rejecting all but the essential cookies. I no longer have any such confidence in this case, given the manner in which the current 'information' has been presented. It may well all be innocuous; I don't trust it to be so. If the site needs this so much as to not have any other option, it will continue to operate without me (with much regret, as it's a fine site ...). Yes, I could use work-arounds, and clean out any rubbish I find on my PC (without being sure that I've not missed some...).My opinion has not changed soooooo ...

Slightly smaller board than previously. I changed my vintage Mutron (which necessitated a loop switch due to leaky bypass) with the Mutron III+ which I prefer in many ways. It was a challenge to fit everything underneath but it all fits (after lots of mucking about). There's a Broughton HPF (you can adjust the knob through a hole in the side of the board), Warm Audio DI, MXR comp, power supply and junction box...

I've just spent a morning test driving the V3 and 1x12 cab and I have to say it's a marked improvement over the PF range. It's much better built (or at least higher quality materials from a tactile perspective) and a great deal lighter. The EQ feels more modern and useable and the 5 position switch is gone in favour of stacked sweepable mids knobs, again which are very useful. Before the EQ section there are some preshape settings based on the SGT DI circuit, though these can be defeated and it can be run clean (i.e. just 3 band EQ and hi/low switches). The SVT section sounds like an SVT (from smooth-ish to gritty, with the ultra hi/low buttons putting you into the SansAmp SVT world pretty quickly) and the B-15 section rolls off the lows and highs, but also makes for some pretty interesting EQ options if you use the presets as a starting point. The drive and level knobs work well together and can sound like a driven SVT if that's what you're into. If not, the amp and cab sound generally very good - articulate, clear, but with a strong hint of Ampeg flavour. The 1x12 is loud, light and felt as though it had a lot more to give than the 1 o'clock on the volume knob I was giving it. In fact, the small room I was in became very rattly above 1 o'clock but I'd rather not comment on the volume until I'd gigged it or at least had some live experience in a band context. At the shop volume I was playing it at, it held the B string well and I never thought the cab lacked in any department, even though I didn't get to really work it very hard. Not super hifi, but balanced, clear and articulate. For the amps, I'd say the price point is about right, if a little high. The V3 felt like a £400-£500 amp, so that's about right. Over £1k for the V12 seems steep, but we'll see what happens to the prices in time. Certainly pointed at the premium end of amp pricing. V7 may be the sweet spot, though they didn't have a demo V7 in the shop to try. Cab-wise, the 4x10 is hilariously light and those who have owned Ampeg cabs in the past will feel the full force of the hilarity when you pick it up. Certainly looks like it should throw a disc out but weighs about 15kg. Prices of the cabs seem VERY steep, though. Around £800(!) for a 1x12 and closer to £1500 for the 4x10. That's high end money for a relatively unknown design. Overall, a nice return to form for Ampeg - hopefully. Yamaha want to make an impression by improving quality, but I suppose we should give it a year to see what the reliability and support is like; SVT Pro owners rejoice. On that note, it feels much closer to the SVT Pro amps than the Portaflexes ever did. Very solid amps and great lightweight cabs, but pricey. 8/10. Would gig.

I think a good few people are nearing this position.

As someone who does ethics and data protection review for research projects as part of my day job, the interface design here is stunningly bad. In order to not consent to tracking, you have to individually click on dozens of tiny checkboxes - realistically, nobody is going to do that, so this is not meaningful consent. You need to ask a clear yes/no question, not attempt to force users into agreeing with what you want. (And, realistically, I think it's very unlikely that you can actually meet UK/EU data protection requirements if you are "sharing" data with that many "partners" - there is no way to do meaningful review.)

The difference was that in 1980 the tour was the promotional tool to persuade you to buy the band's records. Most tours actually lost money, but a successful band would sell more than enough recorded product to make up for this. Now the tour is the product and the recordings are essentially given away for free in order to persuade you to go and see the band. Consequently you are now seeing not only what it actually costs for the band to play a series of gigs but also be able to make a living from doing so.

I'm in France, with a VPN running from a UK IP address. The message came up in English, and all options pre-ticked to acceptance, with no option to refuse all but 'essentials'. This, to me, is unacceptable, and does not ispire confidence in the motives of this outfit. During the initial Test phase, I laboriously went through all of it and 'un-ticked' it all. I am not willing to do this again. Whilst this remains, I shall not be participating in Basschat; I'll be back when it's gone, or not at all, whichever comes the sooner. Meanwhile, my avatar and signature will be changed to ...

It's all purposefully obfuscatory language which is an attempt to confuse people into simply accepting. That behaviour is not something that the Basschat majority conform to so shouldn't be subjected to. 'This vendor stores cookies for up to 31536000 seconds'. They can also refresh that expiration once you've 'accepted' so that 1 year initial storage time is essentially moot. @Kiwi - Ezoics clearly are not a company who's morale compass points in the same direction at Basschat. There must be a better way? What do our yearly subscriptions need to be in order for Basschat to not need to partner with the devil?

Who are the following, what do they do, and why can't we decline their cookies? Skimbit Ltd Confiant Inc. Visarity Technologies GmbH DoubleVerify Inc. Adssets AB Mirando GmbH & Co KG Integral Ad Science, Inc. Polar Mobile Group Inc. Telecoming S.A. Seenthis AB HUMAN Papirfly AS NEXD CHEQ AI TECHNOLOGIES Adjust Digital A/S Adnami Aps Adsolutions BV VRTCAL Markets Inc Kiosked Ltd Protected Media LTD Oracle Data Cloud - Moat Wagawin GmbH Bannernow, Inc. Jetpack Digital LLC Acxiom GeoEdge Ensighten IVO Media Ltd GeoProve Limited Redbranch, Inc dba Fraudlogix Sirdata Cookieless Silverbullet Data Services Group Terminus Software Inc. Stream Eye OOD adbalancer Werbeagentur GmbH PML Innovative Media SmartFrame Technologies Ltd Vyde Ltd. Somplo Ltd Sqreem Technologies Private Limited TMT Digital Inc dpa-infocom GmbH Brandhouse/Subsero A/S Convo Ink xpln.ai SAS AdInMo LTD streaMonkey GmbH Alkimi Frii ApS Zeit Agency ApS Sitewit, Corp AccountInsight Ltd Aderize, Inc. fraud0 GmbH Viomba Oy Channel99, Inc. Videobot Ltd Appstock LTD. Dando online LTD EMBRACE Systems GmbH Zuuvi ApS Some of the organisation names are a little disconcerting to say the least...

Or you could promote the Scottish economy and buy one of these: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/175805626444 I have one. 24db/octave reduction, variable frequency cut off, operated by a stomp (though I leave mine as a permanent on at about 35Hz)

Does lecturing youths about how it was all better in my day count?

I did this and noticed that some of the “consent” boxes were pre-selected and greyed out so it’s impossible to withdraw your consent. Irrespective of the unfortunate UK position regarding GDPR, there are many users still within the jurisdiction of that regulation. The last time I had anything to do with that in my work, I’m pretty sure that consent has to be explicitly given and it’s not appropriate to pre-select the option, let alone deprive the user from deselecting it. As a supporting member it’s not entirely clear if I’m immune to any of this nonsense but regardless, the crass and apparently unlawful way this business partner operates gives me great concern.

"Sir, this is a McDonald's drive-thru. Can I take your order?"

I got mine on Friday lunch time. Took it out of the box, tuned it, put it in a gig bag and gigged with it on Friday night. First time I have ever had a bass set perfectly for me straight out of the box. Only issue I had were frets 4 & 5 had popped out slightly so there was a good deal of buzz but only on the E string so I had to avoid playing Ab all night. It was easy enough to tap them back in on Saturday morning and then gig it again on Saturday night. I had planned to make it a backup to my Sire D5 but since that still hadn't arrived, I decided just gig with it instead. The Sire arrives today 😁

What the hell? Have people actually seen the vendor list you’re potentially voluntarily and forcibly consenting to? I’m on an iPhone and I can scroll non stop down a list of companies I’ve never heard of for minutes, there’s hundreds of them, on my phone all pre consented to, and some vendors have an automatic consent tick box that you can’t untick? If you have a spare hour you can untick the ones that let you and suffer the rest. I don’t consent to any of these third parties having my data. There are no reject all options, so what are my options as a PAYING user on this platform? Is my only option to stop using the site? seriously what gives?

I discovered recently that I have been using one for the past 3 years without realising - my channel on the PA desk has the HPF engaged!

After a few days child-minding the said special little people, I'm back in the cellar For the bracing, I am using my home-made 25 foot radius dish although, for this build, will dispense with the Go-bar deck - I should be able to get away with just clamps and cauls. The bracing pattern is going to be pretty basic X-bracing with the standard-recommended tightly vertically-grained spruce. I've taken a bit of a guess at how much to scale them down. I started with the X-brace with gluing the cruciform and then sanding the bottom curve on the radius dish: This was glued to the top with a long caul keeping the curved brace bottoms pressed against the radius dish while the glue cured : After that was set, it was time to add the other braces and sound bars. All of the braces will be chiselled to create the nodes, etc, once it has dried overnight: And here it is ready for tomorrow's chisel and tap-tuning work :

Picks are not for bass anyway 😁

The screenshot wasn't big enough to include that bringing biscuits is not actually compulsory. But don't let that stop you 😉

This whole cookie thing is getting on my nerves. I will not log on to BC again for a week - if the situation is not resolved and and a ‘Reject All’ button available - I will terminate my subscription and membership.

I played one of these this morning in Promenade Music in Morecambe. Gary (the bass guru who works there) was rather excited about it and said he'd put it up against mostly everything in the shop and it was his favourite bass of the moment. In fact he keeps it in the demo room so he can go and play it often. I must say, it was light, felt good, looked good and sounded rather splendid. I currently have three P's and a J, but this has me thinking I might need a 5th bass. It was the vintage white one and the colour really did look like an old '74 Olympic white strat I had years ago. I really don't need this kind of dilemma at the moment! Rob

Until we get some explanation as to why there are over 60 cookies that cannot be declined and what those cookies are actually for, Basschat will have to go back into it's single use cookie flushing browser.

Nuclear Device - The Stranglers

Yeah I’ve sorted it hopefully. Mate of a mate lives 5 mins down the road from EB factory in Cali. Getting 2 sent over as they’re cheap, if anyone in near future needed one too 😀

Geddy Lee is an iconic bass player but £66 to go listen to him promote his book? Most of what he's got to say will end up on YouTube anyway, no doubt. The amount people are expected to pay to see live events and buy merchandising has gone increasingly crazy over the past few decades, and the public are partly to blame for being daft enough to enable the escalation in prices. There is no writer or celebrity from history or alive today that I would pay £66 for the privellige of dragging myself out of the house to listen to them selling their latest product.

It is a very strange type of world that you envisage, Douglas, where expertise, experience and skill count for nothing and not rewarded. What would drive people to achieve those aims other than altruism, which is all too rare? You are a rare and lovely human being, sir, and I take my hat off to you, but reality is a hostile environment.

If only they could make these at the same price as the 40th anniversary squiers!

Booked to play outdoors on the Prom at Girvan Beach but Ayrshire's beautiful bank holiday weather meant a late change to indoors. A local youth facility premises with a cosy yet lively atmosphere. Max capacity is 100 souls and it was full. Band mascot Roger approved.

THIS YEAR'S AMP SHOOT-OUT!! Phil Starr has PMed me what he's planning: "Hi Mike, Just touching base about the shootout. Give me half an hour after lunch. I’ll gather up amps in the morning plus what you, Stevie and I bring. We won’t be short 😀 I was planning three runs. Three micro amps because we know their frequency responses from last time, then maybe four best amps by reputation followed by valve vs class AB vs class D, just for fun. I would like to do the runoff with a live bassist rather than recorded bass, not scientific but more realistic and more fun. Who would be good do you think amongst those coming? I’m going to be busy with swapping leads and ‘compèring’ and amps are a lot harder to swap than speakers. So who is the best amongst us and not shy? btw I've talked this through with Stevie and we’ll be using two of his LFSys Monaco cab's (FRFR. Phil" So... let's have a good selection of your amp heads - I'll be bringing an Ampeg SVT-7 PRO, Mesa Subway D800 Plus, and Ashdown RM800 EVO. Last but not least, we need a volunteer or 3 willing and able to play a few short demo lines in different genres.

Fascinating to watch a master at work! S’manth x

Love Potion No.9 , the Clovers

Theres an orange tab on the left of my phone screen, and one on my PC screen. We've been tagged like cattle! 😆

I'm thinking of attending this as well although I've never been to one before or know how it works

Cheers dude. It’s a great starter bass (and has been setup excellently by myself :-)) Happy to do a deal to help out a beginner.

All my good friends are either musicians or people who are interested in music. What I do find interesting is that when I meet new people and they discover that I play in bands they are nearly always surprised that my musical interests for both playing and listening are quite tightly focussed and that I don't have a blanket acceptance of all music.

Oh my giddy aunt this thing slaps! IT'S ALIVE!

It’s worth noting that midrange frequencies sound 12-18db louder than some bass frequencies so 115db of Guitar is a lot louder than 120db of bass. You really don’t want to be on a small stage with a fully cranked Vox AC30!

Elixir Nanoweb for me - pricey but they last for ages and tension has always seemed ok for me. Tapered is handy for Warwick’s as the fat ones sometimes don’t fit through the bridge anchor without filing the bridge or squashing the string with pliers 😂

Violinly Happy - Bjork