Leaderboard

With a landmark birthday imminent, I decided to treat myself to new bass. Which would be an upgrade to the two Squier classic vibe bases I’ve been playing for a while. (A Mustang and a Jaguar). I’ve been down many internet rabbit holes, thinking about options. But haven’t had much of a chance to try out any contenders, given the lack of shops that stock much more than the most popular models. Especially given I was trying to decided if I prefer short or medium scale. So I decided to make the trip from Cardiff to the Guitar Show in Birmingham last Saturday, to actually touch some basses. The plan was to check out some basses by Reverend, Sandberg, anything else that might be interesting and pay a visit to the Vintage Bass Room stand to try something a bit more classic (just to see). I was impressed with basses by Reverend,Sandberg and a couple of lovely medium scale builds from @Manton Customs. But none of them made me smile like the vintage basses that @walshy and @AndyTravis where showing off at the Vintage Bass Room stand. Turns out what I really needed in my life was a well played in 2EQ stingray. It looks fantastic, but plays and sounds even better. So it came home with me. I was planning to keep it in its case for over week to make the lead up to the big day exciting. I lasted 24 hours. Spent about an hour with it yesterday at home, through my Ashdown studio 15 combo. Happily the bass plays and sounds just as good I remember at home. I’m looking forward to getting into a rehearsal room in a couple of week to see how it sounds with drums and guitar. Just need to get a proper band sorted so I can get gigging with it. Here’s a picture at home, much better pics and more details can be found at Vintage Bass Rooms Thanks @walshy for making it possible for to own such a great instrument, and being great to deal with.

pic courtesy of Emma Bowden @armadillocentral.com Brilliant gig on Saturday at The Plough in Shrepreth. Good turn out, some lovely comments from the audience and staff and being not far from home. I had lots of friends and family in; which is always nice.Very good friendly venue; a great local pub that prides itself on on being a proper music pub- nice stage, good house PA and an owner who also knows his way around a desk; he did a great job on the sound while running a busy bar and looked after us really well. He also happens to stock some great beers and Mrs C was driving ! We had a great time one of the best pub gigs I’ve played.

I had an acoustic gig today. 2-5 at The Twisted Pear in Beachwood. Respectable size crowd and it was a nice place. Somebody spent allot of $$$ renovating. We were ok, my playing was pretty decent, I got paid and I was home by 6. Daryl

So, for a while I have been eyeing up the new ocean turquoise Gretsch junior jet ii bass, not having a lot of disposable income my wife had offered a couple of times to go halves with me on the cost of one but I had always declined. Anyway the other day my wife told me that she had a delivery and asked if I would sign for it when the courier turned up. Anyway the courier turned up I signed for the delivery and then my wife told me to open the box, I thought maybe it was a new computer chair or something, I opened the box and my eyes lit up when I saw a Gretsch box inside the box, I was over the moon. Anyway it is a great bass, the photo doesn't do it justice, in person it is much prettier and the colour is much nicer, it sounds great too and if someone told me this bass sold for twice what this sells for i wouldn't question it at all

I thought this was going to be about a urology problem...

Here's a good one in reverse. I auditioned for a classic rock cover band. This was years ago. They double booked my audition with another guy. I was able to watch his audition. A young guy, he didn't know any of the songs I nailed all three. They went with the other guy. He was a friend of the guitarist. He didn't last long. Turns out the guy had no transportation to get to gigs. They called me back and offered me the job You can imagine where I told them to shove their offer . The lesson, never audition for bands auditioning friends or relatives. Daryl

Altho i've posted the more odd ones earlier here are a few other reasons from my younger days :- Guitarist didn't turn up for our first gig. No phone call beforehand. Over-indulgence in whacky backy by singer and drummer at rehearsals causing guitarist to get pissed off and pack it in after 1st gig which was a great success. Bit of a shame that one. Great band too. Guitarist making more money doing PA hire during the Rave peak era and band fell away. I did help with PA hire and it was good money LOL More inexperienced guitarist in the band decided to take a gig in his village but wanted to change the full set from classic rock to pop rock with only a couple of months to go. I said i would do the gig but was leaving directly afterwards as i wasn't prepared to change full sets to suit different venues. I only agreed to join because they were doing classic rock covers. Guitarist didn't want to gig. Only found out after about a year of rehearsals and our one and only gig. Guitarist / songwriter in a Prog originals band didn't want to gig altho we did do a few studio rehearsals but he came out with it after about 6mths. Another Prog originals band we just couldn't find other musicians to play the songs. The songwriter just wanted to play the songs with his weird noises thru it rather than some of the excellent vocal tracks he had written. Eventually i left too. WOW its amazing how many i can remember Dave

Swindon. Nuff said. VID-20240302-WA0002.mp4

One from a guitarist mate.... 30 odd years ago. Drummer auditions, we will call him 'Trev' Trev appears, unloads van, VERY nice high end Tama kit, plus cymbals...its the 80s, it looks awesome. Trev plays, Trev is good, looks right, nice guy, fits... Gets offered the job, accepts it on the spot... "This the rehearsal space yeah? I might as well leave my kit here, cases and that!!" Handshakes all round, "See you next week!!" Trev, is never heard or seen from again, various calls to his number, no responses, word put about the 'Scene', uncovers nothing, even when visiting other towns and cities, if the band members recall, they ask the locals...give a description, nothing and nobody matches. About 8 years go by, My mates band have, obviously found someone else, gigged around, and the rehearsal space is getting leveled for an office block or suchlike,their stuff needs clearing out. Trevs kit and gear gets sold for the new, bigger PA...

Here's a nice story...... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-68440336 TL:DR - a band records a single in the 80s, but it doesn't chart and they disband. Fast forward to 2022, a DJ picks it up in a 2nd hand shop. Plays it in clubs that specialise in 80s music in LA & Paris, a record exec hears it and the band have just been signed. Maybe a record company will find my old bands MySpace page in 30 years time and I'll embark on a world tour......

Just received the moose sledgehammer... Oooff! this is a monster of a Rat variant ,super versatile . I don't have the lows like that on the B7k, must have caught the knob

Fender Perfomer 🙂 Aside from a jam night and a six-song 'weekend warrior' set, its first gig in 28 years - used to be my main axe ~1990-95!

Oh Donald ～ 10CC

That happened to me. I turned up for an audition with an established band. There was a guy sitting in the corner listening and making notes. Audition went well and I got offered the job. Three rehearsals later, the band said they'd offered the job to the keys player's best mate - the guy who was sitting in the corner at my audition. "Sorry - we didn't see it coming. He's a really good friend of ours". Sod you then. Bye. Three weeks later - I get invited back because "bass player has decided that he's not good enough." I'm sure you'll be able to work out the general gist of my reply.

No, that's what would happen to me if I were to contemplate a collection of Spectors at the minute...

The mechanics; the more windings on a pickup the higher the output but narrower the bandwidth. So a passive pickup will have enough windings for a usable output but not much response above 4k. To get around this an active pickup will have few windings, a full bandwidth and to get over the very low output, a built in op-amp to boost the signal (hence the need for a battery). passive pups also have an output impedance fixed by the number of windings (usually around 10k ohms) whereas active pups have an output impedance set by the op-amp which can be 10k or as low as 600/300 ohms, in which case it’s a line driver and the capacitance of the cable will not effect the top end (ie roll off treble). In practice it means active pups tend to have more top end and are brighter. There’s a good YouTube vid where someone goes through multiple types of replacement pups on a jazz, as soon as he plays the emg’s it’s a bright tone. If you want that bright hi-fi tone then actives are the way to go as no amount of boosting the top end will get what you want from a passive pup as it doesn’t have the bandwidth. Of course you can still eq an active pup but you might find a passive one does that for you. ‘Organic’ is a phrase often used for the tone of a passive pup but that’s basically because it’s applying its own eq by virtue of a limited bandwidth.

I've got to start gigging my 1991 Gibson Thunderbird. Daryl

Inauspicious start to last night's gig when we arrived to find the thugball was on the telly and there were a dozen or more Villa fans in our bit of room. It finally finished and we started loading in, trying to move through the thick as pigshit thugball fans who stood in our way with glazed expressions, completely unresponsive to being asked to move. Then Mrs Zero and the drummer's wife wanted to sit at a table close to us but a miserable old git repelled them. Still, eventually we managed to get set up and the gig itself went well, with just the one car crash when everything went wrong in "Place your hands" (we did manage to get to the end). I think our second 45 minute set finished up at 75 minutes. The gaffer loved us and wants to get us back - just hope the agency sorts us out some more gigs there outside the football season.

Particularly great stage sound last night…. Which is unusual for us, because we normally turn up and use the house drum shells and bass cabs, whatever they are…. but my TC BQ500 into the Ashdown 8x10 was ace…. and nice and loud.

After a few beers at Christmas I ordered a knock off Dingwall from Ali express.. I woke up the next morning to an email from the seller asking what “customisations” I wanted.. what a treat.. a custom bass!!… so I went to town, orange finish, 3 x pickups, maple neck… and a custom headstock logo! It arrived this morning - it’s awesome!! Obviously it’s not actually a finely crafted, custom instrument - but the finish is pretty clean and it sounds good, all the electrics work and it’s very playable!! The hardware is a bit lightweight… but for £279… it’s a lot of bass!

I mean the Zoom B1-4 is such a ridiculously good value pedal anyway - so feature laden. And if you have a key effect that you love like the B3K/7K it does well - well go for it! Worst case you pick one up for £50 used and sell it for £45 plus P&P... I've got one on my PB and another as a stand alone multi-fx tuner I can pop into my gig bag when I'm travelling light.

Right, that's not going anywhere fast! And I think that will genuinely be it now. Thanks to whoever it was who surfaced the idea of using bike chain links to secure pedals to boards!

Me last Saturday 😎

Design revision required - turns out my velcro is great at keeping pedals in place when gravity is working with it, not so much in the opposite direction. It was actually the adhesive that failed, not the velcro itself. Bugger. So a more permanent way of attaching the PSU is required. I could replace the tape with... better tape like 3M Dual Lock but I figured in keeping with the whole "make do and mend" approach I'd find a way to mechanically couple the PSU to the board. Someone on here, I'm sure it was put up a picture of using bike chain links as brackets to attach pedals to boards. As luck would have it, I had a small length of bike chain lying around so I spent a satisfying 20 mins or so bashing the rivets out of the chain. Thanks to T-Rex putting all the screws on the side and none on the bottom, I had to bend the links to make right angle brackets. This is when I found out that the outer links are too brittle to be bent, but the inner ones are fine? Anyway, some hammering and bending round the vice gave me this: Now, just need to find some screws small enough to get in those wee holes. Maybe tuner screws, maybe pickguard screws. Time for a rummage in the spares boxes!

I have 5 straps, including these: My favourite strap, however, matches the roasted maple neck/fretboards on several of my basses, not the body and I think it works quite well. I'll post a pic soon.

I used to have a purple bass, so I have this one in my spare straps box.

I wonder if Horoscope based face make-up featured anywhere...

Bluegrass: The Dillards - Dooley The Stanley Brothers - Rabbit In A Log Flatt & Scruggs - Foggy Mountain Breakdown

Band 1. Guitarist was a recovering alcoholic who relapsed. He had bought a new chromatic tuner and got so drunk before the gig that he couldn't tune up but that didn't stop him playing as he was too gone to actually realise he was completely out of tune. He decided the next day that perhaps being in a band that plays in bars was too much temptation. Band 2. Singer arrived at one rehearsal with a keyboard. Guitarist walked out never to be seen again. Band 3. Guitarist booked a NYE gig before checking that the rest of the band could commit. Drummer refused to commit and asked the guitarist to cancel but he wouldn't let down the venue even though it was only March. We eventually sorted it out around July time but the first time we went back to rehearsal it was obvious the situation was far from sorted and they actually couldn't stand being in the same room as each other. Band 4. Singer moved to Milton Keynes. The band was based in West London. Singer didn't have a car and had no intention of buying one. I had to point out to the rest of the band that this arrangement wasn't going to work.

I like to play but I live in a very rural area with the nearest large town (50,000) an hour away and so that is where most rehearsals and jazz gigs are although we travel another hour or two for some gigs. At 77 I want to play as much as I can because time is passing quickly, this summer I have a jazz gig or two an hour away and 5-6 days of rehearsal and performances for a stage show at the same distance. I somehow got into a bluegrass band 18 months ago and we have three weekend festivals booked and another possible one. The closest is 2 hours away and the farthest is about 6 hours and the others 4 hours but I will make a weekend of it and have a little holiday while playing at the festivals. I will be playing DB at all of these gigs. My weekly DB lesson is also an hour away. At this point in my life I want to play all I can while I am still able to drive and play and the driving is the price I have to pay for living in my little part of paradise, I've been here for 45 years now and still love it.😊

The biggest improvement to our sound came from drastically dropping the onstage volume. The guitarists went from 100w Marshall's with 4x12 cabs to 45w combos running on half power, and I'm down from a 1500W amp head and twin 4x10's to a 400w 1x15 combo. My back loves me again, the band love the fact we can hear after a gig, and the punters seem to notice no difference.

I’m half bored with the USA. The Clash

You've done an amazing job, Peter. No one'd going to deny that!

Sound quality is noticeably better. Oscillator sync patches are cool. (I can now share a clip; excuse the background noise as I had a ground loop as I was daisy-chaining.) If you do on-pedal tweaks there’s MUCH more variation available without ever having to load any patches on and you can save them permanently to the patch data. Sensitivity improvements are very welcome. Having release on the ADSR even when using a bass is a massive difference. You can pluck and stop a note but have the synth note ring out for ages. Audio-804.mp3

We are all just waiting to find out about the bookcase though. That’s the important information!

Oi! I live in Swindon. Yeah, fair enough.

Guessing I can finally post this family shot:

Quoted post: Dear Friends, I am happy to announce the most important step in the history of Future Impact, the FI4, with very significant changes in both hardware and software. While the production of FI3 has come to an end with all devices sold out, the new FI4 will be available at end of March. It comes with an optional cable set to connect to 1V/octave CV-Gate synthesizers, to benefit from the simultaneous sounds of the FI4’s virtual analog sounds and real analog synthesizers. We had to stop development of the FI3 software more than two years ago, as the processor had no more memory available for further enhancements. The new hardware and software structure of FI4 will allow the implementation of new synthesis models, effects and many more features, that we are already working on. Here is a preliminary leaflet about the advantages of FI4 at its release. I would like to thank you all for the support and wholehearted enthusiasm during all the years of the existence of FI, and hope you will be just as enthusiastic in the future with FI4. In particular, I would like to extend my warmest thanks to Peter Kenney, who provided irreplaceable help to the whole community by writing manuals, testing new features, creating sounds, and helping all of you with his advice. The Evolution of the Future Impact The Future Impact is the subject of one of those heartwarming stories of the internet as a force for good. It began life back in late 2014 when an enthusiastic member of the Talkbass forum tracked down Andras Szalay to ask him if he’d be able to reissue the discontinued Deep Impact, which he had designed for Akai. However, Andras had much more ambitious plans: the Future Impact was conceived of not as a reissue, but as an entirely new and vastly-improved pedal. The project garnered tremendous support from forum members who funded the first batch of 100 pedals in late 2015. From there, the FI’s popularity and reputation grew; ever more people clamoured to own one, including notable players such as Chris Wolstenholme (Muse), Doug Wimbish (Living Colour, The Rolling Stones) and Bootsy Collins. Thanks to the generous input of members of the online bass-playing community, the FI continued to go from strength to strength. With each successive update, we gradually added more and more features and refinements. With the v3.60 update of June 2021, we had to admit that we had finally squeezed every last drop of juice out of the pedal: we had completely exhausted the available code space. In order to continue developing our ideas further, we have thus had to move to new hardware and implement a new firmware structure. While the FI4 can load patches from all the previous versions of the FI, unfortunately v3 users cannot run the V4 firmware or V4 patches on their device. However, the good news is that our new platform gives us the breathing space to develop well into the future. We already have big plans, so stay tuned! New Features for V4 ● CV/Gate output - Simultaneously play a 1V/octave analog synth using the pedal; ● Detented Parameter dial with extended range - More variations on each sound; ● Sturdier knobs - The potentiometer shafts are now made from solid metal; ● Long Release - Audio-triggered sounds now use the full release time of the ADSR; ● Oscillator sync - VCO2 can sync to VCO1 for more harmonically complex sounds; ● Improved audio fidelity - Via an ultra-low-noise CoDec and noise-reduction coding; ● Overwrite programs - On-pedal edits can be saved to patch data before uploading; ● Superior pitch tracking - Greatly reduced latency and increased sensitivity to input instrument dynamics. Pitch detection can now be set to prioritize speed or accuracy; ● Octave transposition - Two new MIDI CCs to transpose the pitch by ±2 octaves; ● 63 new Flexi curves - Create a split point between any two adjacent semitones; ● Robust firmware update process - Now any MIDI interface can be used; ● Alternative quick access to Global Menu - Enter/exit menu without power cycling; ● Better Global Menu layout - Items are repositioned and more meaningfully labelled; ● Fresh Editor look - An updated color scheme with a clearer and more logical layout; ● Onscreen Mod Wheel - Send out MIDI CCs or Aftertouch directly from the Editor; ● midiBeam 4Control integration - MIDI signals from expression pedals and switches are automatically passed to the FI4 when connected to the Editor. Andras Szalay

Selling 175 tickets is huge ! Daryl

Which leads me back to Curry’s. I found a NAD CD player online that I was after, only problem was it was at a Curry’s branch 50 miles away. Eventually found a number for the branch and they said they’d keep it for me so I drove over to pick it up. It became obvious that they’d not put it aside for me, and as it was the last one I was lucky it was still in stock, according to the assistant who checked it on their system. Anyway told her I’d take it, and she went to get it from the shop floor, returning 5 minutes later empty handed. She then asked me what a CD player looked like! Bearing in mind this was some years ago when CD players were not exactly rare. Anyway, I went and got it myself, and she found the box and I paid and drove home with it. On unpacking it I noticed it was the wrong remote control ( for a large NAD amp I think), so rang them to arrange posting me the correct remote for my CD player, presumably in the wrong box. Said they’d send it to me once I’d returned theirs, which I told them was not going to happen. About a week later I received the correct unit, but looking like a 5 year old had wrapped it up! One layer of brown paper and my address scrawled on. Amazingly it survived the journey intact. I returned their remote a week later wrapped up in the same manner. Never been in their shops since.

Phew what a weekend! Shattered but what a blast! Thanks to everyone who stopped by and played some pretty cool basses. That’s what it’s all about! Great to finally put faces to usernames and man we have some killer players amongst us! Huge thanks to the splendid @AndyTraviswho made the weekend an absolute blast. We will do this again, although I must brush up on my disco/funk chops before the next one. Right, I’ve basses to unload and put to bed. Thanks again all 👏👏👏

As monitoring is everything to the band we’ve decided to take matters into our own hands. So when we have a foh engineer, we feed two di’s, one to the foh desk and another to our own stage box which feeds our iem’s which we are in control of. We even get the stage monitors turned off because we don’t need them, which also helps keep feedback issues at bay. It’s definitely made a difference to the our playing. BTW love it that your son is selling merch! Does he also play?

I have been thinking a while to install a set of wall hangers and keep my basses there instead of the rack stands. Not that I thought they are better or such but I have a suitable ( = empty) wall in my home office and this way I can see them in their full beauty. Ordered a dozen or so hangers from Th, put them on a board that was lying around since the last garden remodelling and installed them on the wall. There's going to be another on the wall facing this, albeit only for 4 basses. I'll paint it as I just kept the wood as it is since I wasn't sure if I get every measurements and placements right (both the hangers and on the wall) so I can cover extra holes and such later with the stain+ clear coat. But seems like first time is the charm and everything fits and placed just the way it's logiacal and comfortable. Anyway, I put my Spectors there and also realized I never took a group shot of them so here they are 😉 🙂

That's sexual assault. If a man had done that he'd be in serious trouble.

This was the pic I showed to Herself. She immediately said “get it”. And when it arrived thought it might well be the most beautiful bass she’d seen. I found this in Boston so it wound up being a little more than expected by the time it landed here in Halifax , but no regrets. I had been looking at these for about ten years , they never were offered here in Canada.

Stoner rock: Bringing the "go big or go home" vibes, let's start with Kyuss and the superb Demon Cleaner. From the sublime to the ridiculous (but fun), with Monster Magnet's Space Lord And let's finish with the mighty Clutch, and Electric Worry.

Back around '78, we auditioned a singer as our geetarist at the time was going through a 'strong, silent' phase and decided to give up singing to practise his playing more (whatever!) At the time, we were playing standard pub-rock fare from The Stones, Eric C, Roxy Music, blah, blah. One local hero was a big noise in the cabaret and working men's club circuit and thought he was the next Tony Christie/Elvis. So, we rent a rehearsal space, send out a set list with half a dozen well-know 'standards (for that time) and await the arrival of the great man himself. We, in the band, all resembled drop-outs from Lynyrd Skynyrd at that time, and he rocks up looking like John Revolta (shirt collar outside wide-lapelled jacket, etc.). He firstly needed to spray something into his throat, as this allowed him to 'expand his range', and then he went through a vocal warm up of about ten minutes of scales. By the time all this had been accomplished, the guitarist was giving me looks to let me know he was going to crumple with restricted laughter, and to say not a word. Meanwhile, Mr Fabulous is now bu**ering about with the PA amp, attempting to find echo, reverb, treble and lord knows what else. This 'search' for settings unleashed feedback, rumbles, parping whoops, and sounds Ron Grainer would have been proud of. Perhaps, 25 minutes into the audition, Perry Combover was ready to rock and first up was Brown Sugar by the Stones. 1,2,3,4. Intro goes well. He proceeds to hit the wrong note as he joins in. Not only was he in the wrong key; he was singing the chorus. You simply must accept at this point, that he was approaching the number very much in the style of Harry Secombe, as 'Mr Bumble' in 'Oliver'. It was akin to Leonard Cohen auditioning for Greenday. Possible because he was unable to breathe, our guitarist was on his knees, pretending to be doing something with his amp-controls. Seeing this, I decided to face the wall, but to plough-on regardless. Suffice to say, I planted the top of my head flat against the wall, to provide some measure of pain, in the hope it might stop me having convulsions of mirth - I swear I couldn't see, for tears of laughter running down my face, and daren't breathe in case I atrophied. After what seemed like the 'director's cut'/'festival version' of the song -which passed for me in slow-motion, allowing me to re-live my entire life to that point - we road-crashed to a halt. The drummer looked like he had been tasered, and all blink-reflexes were gone; the guitarist was a sort of crimson-peuce colour and probably now boasted a new world record in holding breath, long enough to impress a south-seas pearl diver. I was, as I recall, almost managing to stand with a ninety degree bend from the waist, being held up olny by the pressure of my head on the supporting wall. "Well guys," quoth the great man,"that sounded pretty good to me, but I don't think you've got the solo quite right somehow!"

I’ve been drunk many times in my life, but never Ali Express Dingwall with a Tesco logo drunk