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First Xmas show tonight with BLOCKBUSTARZ Glam covers band at a sold out Longstone Hearts Club in Edinburgh. Great night. Few wee mistakes crept in for some odd reason. Xmas songs went well tho. Quite a small stage for us and had to watch where i was standing as i had my pedals in front of me and guitarists pedal behind me. Also had a the PA cab on my left next to headstock but all went well and didn't trip over anything or thump the bass of PA. Few pics on FB already but no vids as yet. Here we go. SET #1 SET #2

Two cracking gigs for The Bridge this weekend. Hereford was a capacity crowd of 300, up singing and dancing from start to finish, paid very well. Saturday was a party in a local bar here in Cheltenham with around 150 people crammed in, again all singing and dancing all night. No drama, no calamities. All good. 👍

With the Daz Kelly Band at The King William in Milford, Derbyshire. Dave, the landlord likes us and we had an appreciative crowd in spite of the weather. It’s an old, cosy pub serving good ale but on a tricky double bend of the A6, no car park and only one narrow door in and out. Only a 10 minute drive though. I played my @Andyjr1515 Swift Lite through a TE Elf and Bareface One 10, which was totally adequate for the venue. I managed to get home for a whiskey before the snow started, too.

At The Loft in Cleckheaton near Bradford last night. The band have played here before but it has had a change of ownership since last time so instead of being greeted like returning friends we got the usual indifference any other hand would get. Ho hum. We had to provide our own PA and managed to provide the services of a relative of our drummist to do the sound for us and it sounded mint. Despite turning down the volume on the monitor me and our keyboardist shared my ears are still ringing this morning, so possibly time to invest in some hearing protection for next time we're in such a large place. First set wasn't brilliant but went down OK. We all made a few mistakes but nothing too serious. I got distracted by watching a trio of young women dancing enthusiastically at the front and their attempts to fend off the advances of a similar sized group of drunken lads who were trying to pull them. The second set was much better and we had most of the place up and dancing to the end. Plugged my ABM in for the first time since April, DI'd through the PA as well as going through through my Two10S, and it sounded awesome. I'm a bit broken this morning after helping to get all the PA stuff out last night, but a gentle morning of Christmas shopping beckons.

A second gig depping with Stevie Daniels at the Blue Bell in Werrington. Small room but great crowd…lots of fun to play for.

Friday night at The Papillon in Southend, after a nightmare week trying to find a PA hire. Long story, we were told by a singer of another band that we can use his - before he backtracked 4 days before our gig. We suspect it was never ‘his’ to begin with… Anyhoo we played ok, few mistakes here and there, some not so noticeable, one or two very noticeable on some new tracks (Sabotage and Higher) but we had a good crowd dancing and singing along all night, and another encore request. We’re happy with the way it went down. Rebooking might be a problem as they’re booked every Friday in 2024 already so we’re on the cancellations list and hoping for them to start Saturday night gigs (as they’ve been mooting for a while now). Great crowd, good sound and decent pay. Hard to grumble.

Nice Christmas event last night, another only wanting the 6 piece, male singer not available so the client just asked for one vocalist (my wife) but she managed to navigate the set ok, including a multiple personality disorder version of Fairytale of New York, which went down an absolute storm. We only had the small HK elements PA so I beefed it up with an actual real amp, must admit it was fun having that at my back. Best bit was having our ‘winter’ drummer back, a really good musician who tour manages for a living so isn’t available all the time. A joyous experience, he can play.

Just got in from a short set gig. Was a mates surprise 40th birthday do and although there was a band booked his missus asked if a few of his old mates would do a few songs. She asked this last week! So 4 of us said yes, bass, drums, 2 gtrs, shared vox amongst us. We had 2 rehearsals, only 1 with the drummer who hurt his ankle last week (not good). We put together a 40min set of classic rock songs and am pleased to say it went really well, to the point where many in the audience (most of whom are old mates) said we should keep it going and we all feel the same which is great. A few timing issues but fortunately all of us are experienced enough to know “ok, add another 2 bars” rather than fall apart. I really enjoyed it.

Tonight: Depping on Sousaphone for a roaming/street brass band type thing at a fire festival in a park in Preston. Outside, in Preston. On the coldest night of the year. As you do. Me on Sousa, trumpet, alto sax and drums (marching drums type setup). Haven't played Sousy in public for a while, AND the guy on trumpet was their usual Sousa player, so I was pretty nervous... turned out to be an absolute hoot, the most fun I've had in ages. There were loads of people there, they all loved it, the band are all great players and lovely fellers, we sounded good and went down a treat. We did a real mix of stuff - couple of christmas numbers, a couple of trad jazz numbers, King of the swingers, Bear necessities, Seven nation army, I wanna dance with somebody... a real mix! Everything was in Bb, F or C (good brass keys) and mostly stuff I knew/could busk or three chord wonders. It wasn't as cold as I'd feared it would be, I even did both sets without a coat on because I'm a big brave boy. Two 40 minute sets, decent cup of tea and white chocolate & cranberry tiffin at half time, done by 9 and back at me dear old Ma's in Manchester by 10, good payer, and the band liked what I did so I'm on the dep list. For those of you interested in my feet, I wore two pairs of socks and my cow print DMs which also went down a treat.

Solo acoustic gig at the Organ Grinder in Loughborough. Surprised to find it was really busy despite the weather. People came and went throughout the evening but all up for a sing along. Then just towards the end of my second set an influx of about 50 students in antlers and Christmas jumpers piled in so I did the decent thing and launched into non-stop singalong cheesy tunes and the place erupted. It was brilliant, and slightly deafening. Had a great night of it. Voice is a bit of a mess this morning and fingertips are killing but it’s all for a good cause.

Pretty up close and personal! Last night of a local pub, and they had invited us earlier this year based on the strength of a previous performance. Couldnt move in the pub and considering how cold it was inside, this was one of the warmest gigs! Went pretty well all in all!

Depping for a local party band for a 50th last night. 2 sets of floor fillers and some very enthusiastic audience participation. Cab ride home in the snow was slow going though!

Well... today's 4-6 venue turned out to be huge, but the audience wasn't. We were not expecting much but the audience we had were great. Two of them came because they've seen us before a few times. We kept up a constant good-natured banter with the soarse audience "get ready, I'll do some crowd surfing in a minute". At one point we greeted a three year old and sang happy birthday to her baby sister via a phone. And we did a couple of requests. They were apologetic about numbers and desperately want us to come back. Shame for them as it was a good paying gig and they did a lot of publicity. Just looks like sunday matinées wontwork for them. To our surprise we all enjoyed the gig and ended up playing an 80-minute second set uncluding encores!

Another North Dorset gig for Mustang Sally, this time at Rocky’s bar in Gillingham. It’s a very well updated sports pub, but at first sight not an obvious venue for our melange of classic rock, country, soul and pop - but why? Well, the age profile was 18-35 for a start, and the hoooge flat-screen TVs stayed on all night showing (without sound, TG) Man-U losing to Newcastle. Add to this the arrival of an already-merry rugby team, rather ‘happy’ after a win, and this could have gone one of two ways... fortunately, after a slow start it got better and better, with table dancing, singalongs and many encores. Ok, it was a near midnight finish instead of 11:30 but no-one minded, it’s what good gigs are made of! Back home at 1:30am to a censorious glare from our cat. He was bought off with two very early breakfasts...

No bass for me today. Tonight's gig was outdoors at a foggy -2˚C morris dancing at a Christmas market. I would have been playing piano accordion but with the weather that stayed at home and I took a plastic recorder and did the best I could with stiffening finger joints and condensation in the instrument. It went down well enough though. Skiing thermals underneath, chemical heat packs in my pockets to pop my hands in between songs, and hot chocolate between sets saw me through.

This weekend I experimented with glue. I don't believe I have ever written that phrase in my life before I'm trying to simplify the construction but keep the rigidity in the frame. Floplast looks the business, easy to apply, doesn't immediately go off like superglue and is a solvent adhesive. To avoid using screws and embedded nuts, I designed a simple dowel and hole system I can print. With wood, this is relatively easy, with 3d printing, there are limitations. If you print a hole that is vertical, it is likely that the hole will become ellipitical as gravity comes into effect. If you print thinner layers, then the ellipse is less but is still there AND it takes a hell of a lot longer to print. If I don't print this axis vertical, then something else is compromised. In my case, I want the front of the guitar to be printed on the steel bed as that gives the best finish. Ironing looks rubbish in my opiion. YMMV So I design an ellipse that prints a 3mm round hole when printed vertically. In Fusion 360 this is a 3.4mm on the major axis and 3mm on the minor axis. I also print 8mm long M3 dowels which take 4 min to do each. This means that the components should align pretty closely when clamped together with glue. I have a load of decent hand clamps just itching to be used. I've now completed the top of the design. Got space for a three way switch at the top right, changing that from a 30mm hole to a 40mm hole took a load of work with cable routing. Small changes can mean a lot of unpicking in Fusion 360. Sometimes large changes are dead easy. The face closest to you has six holes, two are for dowel alignments, the other four are for the neck module. The neck module is designed to come out and is not glued in. This allows me to change the neck over. The four holes are for four embedded M3 square nuts. These nuts are square and not hexagons as they go in vertically and if they were hexagons, you couldn't get the shape filled in through 3d printing. You can also see the 40mm hole for the three way switch, a hole for the strap button and five M2.5 holes for the pickguard. The back has a cover plate recess. Again three M2.5 holes with embedded nuts. As these are laid horizontally, I can use cheap hexagon ones as M2.5 square nuts seem to be rare. The 5mm chamfer on the edges is printed at 0.15mm using variable layers in PrusaSlicer. This is the top left of the guitar in PrusaSlicer Just under 13 hours of printing with a pause six hours in to put one M3 nut for the strap button. Both these jobs will get started tomorrow as they do require me to intervene and put nuts into certain places. Rob

If I want it to, it sounds so brutal and so fierce, but it also can do pretty much anything else. It also works great on my son’s guitar! 👾🌶️👾

We are (Japanese) family. 1978 BB1000 1978 BB1200 Fretless 1985? (not sure) BB400s Fretless 1984 BB Vis. I also have a really nice 414 and a battered and abused 614... Some people have a crack habit. I have a bad BB habit... The first two are unbelievably great instruments. The 1000 has a replacement bridge as the original snapped in half! How? I have no idea. It came with that and the replacement gotoh which to be honest is a better bridge. I have the original black pickguard but I like the replacement. This bass has seen some action but it's just lovely. The 1200 is a lined fretless which I've only just acquired. I'm not sure if they did a factory lined fretless but the job that's been done is perfect and it wouldn't surprise me if that was a custom option. It's bee in a case for 30 years but will get an outing next week at a gig. The 400s is good but weighs as much as a horse. It could use a bridge pickup imo. The medium scale BBVis sounds tremendous and is mint condition with original hard case. I still find it a bit odd playing a medium scale after a 34". It does have a little bit of neck dive which I've never experienced with a BB.

A hearing test I suspect ☹️.

Our band is mandolin+accordion+drum. Some times I do melody plus simple root-chord oom-pah bass patterns, but sometimes I leave the melody to the mandolin and focus on more complex bass lines. Sousaphone or tuba on the bass... now that would something!

Here's the Noble preset. Noble is always on. What's going on in the preset: Stomp mode. FS1 is octave down on the parallel path, so it's always clean. FS2 is chorus. FS3 increases the ammount of octave/chorus in the mix. Snapshot mode. Snap1 is clean, no effect. Snap 2 is LA2A compressor (Stomp mode FS3 also increases compression ratio), Snap 3 is FX loop L. I have a COG Grand Tarkin in my FX loop Left for drive & dirt. You could use any external pedal you have here, or just put in a dirt/distortion block in it's place. The FS3 mix increase will affect Octave, Chorus and Compression at the same time. I only use FS3 to make single effects wetter, for me it doesn't work well on multiple effects at once. I have a Disaster Area Midi Baby switcher so I can flip between Stomp mode and Snapshot mode, I do this a lot, selecting a Snapshot then adding effects in Stomp mode if needed. The EQ block at the end of the chain is for fine tuning the overall sound. Here I have a 2dB 90hz lift, and my standard 50Hz HPF and 5KHz LPF that I use everywhere. Whenever chorus (in Stomp mode) or distortion (in Snapshot mode) is being used I can add in clean octave down (in Stomp mode). I have a near identical copy of this preset where I took out the chorus and replaced it with an envelope filter, FS3 giving me two flavours of filter too. NOBLE+LOOP.hlx

Sousaphone is good for Morris Dancing. I speak from bitter experience..

So, I’ve had surgery so I’m stuck at home. 5 days after surgery I realised that I’d finished reading the entire internet and an old, cheap P I have was sitting in the corner of the room begging for a rebuild. here it is, I’m going to strip it after this cup of tea.

I can hear my Two 10 reasonably well in either mode, even in tight spaces. Not sure what your solution is.

Is that a G&L bass?

Saturn On The Dock Of The Bay - Otis Redding

Dave, it’s a custom job made by our @Andyjr1515. If you want to know more there’s an old thread in the Build Diaries top called ‘A build for our own Len_derby’. I took it out last night because Andy only lives 10 minutes from the pub and there was a chance he might come. But he’s a busy lad.

So, you're an international touring musician but you're not earning megabucks, nor do you have an endorsement where they'll send you stuff wherever. The band you're touring with don't use IEMs and you want to set up a small board (say the ANT, a Helix Stomp and a couple of other pedals) that you can fly with and use whatever cab is available. Enter the ANT. If it's on your pedalboard, and you've integrated the kettle lead with your pedal power, that's one thing to set up. Plug in speakon to the cab, power, jack. Job done. Controls are all with you, so you can fiddle from a distance.

I see mode amps damaged by failed service attempts (where the problem actually had nothing do do with the amp) than amps that are just left alone. If it's working properly, leave it alone (IMO and IME).

Gordon Bennett’s

Jackie Mittoo.

Cablelength! 😆

Yes- 98/99 ASAT, basically an l-2000 with the top horn missing. I’ve owned it from new.

I play with the Widders Border Morris in Chepstow. You're not a million miles from us if you ever fancy a visit, especially when we're doing a dance-out.

Go Now! - The Moody Blues

I could hear it fine and I wasn't in my own monitor – I'd have left the amp in the car otherwise.

Zoom H4 will do that. Either 4 separate mono tracks simultaneously or overdub existing track.

Our singer was taking sips of honey tonight before at break and at the end as his throat was struggling a bit. Dave

It's Different For Girls ～ Joe Jackson

It seems fitting for me to put this here today, as it's his birthday, it was Rick Savage and more specifically his white Hamer Scarab bass that set me on my bass journey. I was watching the news (I think it was BBC six o'clock news) and Def Leppard had just released a new single and it was getting some news coverage, I suspect because the album it came from was doing stellar sales at that time, and I just recall seeing him playing that bass, and hearing that sound (which I later found out wasn't actually a bass guitar sound but a sequenced synth bass sorta sound) but I thought I'd be having me some of that. It was some time afterwards I picked up a guitar and tried playing that because I wanted to play rhythm guitar specifically - all the guitar soloing never appealed to me. I very quickly discovered that whilst I was doing great playing all the open chords, I just couldn't get my fretting fingers to work properly with barre chords, so after becoming deeply frustrated with my inability to progress as a rhythm guitar player, a friend suggested I try lessons, which I had absolutely no money to pay for, but luckily the place I was doing my YTS (remember that?!?) course at had someone coming in and giving lessons for free, so I made use of their availability, and after a few lessons I think he was fed up with my inability to play anything other than open chords too and suggested I try bass. Cue my memory flying back to the time I saw that TV news report and I went straight to one of the local instrument shops that weekend to try stuff out. It took me ages to save up for my first bass, I was only getting paid something like £35 every fortnight, but after placing a small small deposit and paying some off each month, I managed to get me a 4-string Squire. I detailed what happened to that original bass in my introduction post, so I'll not repeat here, but I still have the second (first 5-string) bass I ever bought. Mark

Had a run of four southern dates last weekend from Thursday to Sunday as part of my doom bands recent album launch. Played B2 Norwich, club 85 Hitchin, the Gryphon Bristol and Komedia Brighton. New material we'd only outed once live prior, and we ran two of the four gigs ourselves which added a bit of extra admin and messing around. That said, it was an awesome little run, well attended and we played pretty well (or at least it felt right on stage). Also had probably the best sound guys I've experienced every night which was awesome. Got to crank out amps a bit which was reeeeally nice. Sadly I had my first major live technical hitch mid set. Lost my bass signal between about minute 3 to minute 9/10.... Went through cables, patching, amp, Di box.... Think the gremlin was the bass...maybe the battery as it's active, but once I'd got my signal back, I was then too afraid to move for fear of losing it again - not great when you're only playing one 43 minute song 🤷‍♂️ Anyway, remainder of the nights were ace and back out next weekend in London. Just thought I'd share. Bristol and Brighton pics. ✌️ Streaming via Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/7lgXKxHzRflsK6LP0nbUJh?si=d-1hX7SwQrmq--vLQ0928Q

I would personally view the outcome of audition three as a bit of an insult. We don’t consider you to right for the permanent bass role, but you can be one of our deps, stuff that.

Enter Sanderman.