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Been on here years and seen you lot snagging vintage bargains, well today was my day as I spotted this old thing for £60 in a charity shop window. It's a Hondo II Professional with what I assume to be a Dimarzio, no Made in Japan on the neckplate so is this Korean/Samick or a later MIJ Tokai or something? Serial is 0110454. Sounds impressively loud unplugged, looks all original (to my untrained eye anyway) aside from the janky knobs. Pickup housing has cracks but not completely broken, parts rusty and definitely showing its age but should clean up to a less ratty state and the neck is straight. Some weight to it, given the rust and the fact I found it in the port town of Fleetwood I wonder if it actually has been used as a boat anchor at some point. Obligatory rubbish car seat shots.

hi! Marc here from Sandberg! first and foremost, I hope i’m not breaking any rules for the forum/this thread. if I am, someone kindly let me know (or give me a swift kick in the butt). as for your frustrations, I can assure you that it’s not intentional avoidance. some of the insight provided in this thread is spot on, in that we (like many other companies) have had a number of issues with emails either getting to us OR getting to people. anything from spam filters to the email servers people us (eg Google) rejecting our emails entirely for a variety of reasons, most recently the SMTP authentication certificate. these are just a couple very real and often very frustrating things we’ve encountered and are working to fix that! to address your specific concerns/inquiry, please don’t hesitate to contact me at [email protected] (yes, “.com” - I live in Chicago. you are also welcome to CC my personal email at [email protected] to make sure I see it). thanks for bringing this to our attention! -Marc

8 years ago I was smitten by a Patrick Eggle New York IV being played at a mate's birthday bash. I was so impressed by it's tone, compact attractive aesthetics and high quality build/hardware that I've been trying to get one since then. The only example I knew of in my home town got sold before I was aware and went to Nottinghamshire a few years ago . Anyhow, last week I spotted it on ebay and amazingly it's now back in Hertford . There's so little information on the Internet about this 1995/96 bass that I can't imagine too many were made or have survived? Anyone else had or still own one?

After a few weeks off we were back to the fore last night at a local charity event in a social club. Went for the set up in the afternoon as I’d agreed to let the band on before us use my bass rig, we were last on so that was fine. The soundcheck seemed to take forever, I guess I’m just used to us being quick and tidy on that at our own gigs….and of course as we were last on there were sound glitches when we started - no monitor feed, but we got through it. I was happy with our set considering our little lay off and the packed house loved it. In all the event raised over £2200 for blood wise and Weston Park cancer charities in the name of the bassist who died of leukaemia in a band our guitarist and drummer were in over 20 years ago. Things like this make it all worthwhile. I decided to use my EBMM Sterling on the gig, haven’t used it in years and it didn’t disappoint, made me wonder why I’m selling it.

my gig last night is actually tonight. Turned up a day early, this is the first time I've ever done this in 38 years of gigging. Luckily the gig was very local to me, 5 minutes in the car DOH!!

We did a Butlins 70’s weekender at Minehead last night. We nearly didn’t due to our singer all but losing his voice, but the gig was saved by bringing along a possible future replacement for him. He did very well considering the circumstances and at such short notice, so they shared the vocal duties along with me doing a bit too. Had the use of an SVT rig which I’d been looking forward to. Unfortunately it seemed to have a problem during soundcheck so ended up using my GK set up. We got through the gig okay - great audience of around 2000 mostly in 70’s themed fancy dress and up for a good time. After we’d finished some of us caught Bootleg Blondie on another stage who were really good. Plenty of beers afterwards and a good night’s kip in surprisingly nice lakeside accommodation. Dreadful journey home today though due to an accident on the main road in and out of Minehead, necessitating a massive diversion using very narrow roads into Devon! Took us over 5 hours to get home so absolutely knackered now, looking forward to a night in etc. ( Got a break of 3 weeks now before our next gig in Milton Keynes, one of the 5 left before I leave the band. )

I had a job once in which I had to sit in on loads of job interviews as part of the panel, but I wasn't really the key player in making the decisions - I was there more to ensure consistent and correct process. It was a fascinating experience. What jumped out is that there's always a specific situation going on for the employer that the new person will have to step into, so that the employer always has a strong idea of the kind of person they need, but the interviewee doesn't and can't know any of that. It made me much more relaxed about getting interviewed myself. You can't know what they're after, so you just need to present who you are and what you can do in a clear and friendly way, and if it lines up with what they need then great, and if not then there's nothing you can do about that. We turned down loads of great people because they weren't quite what was needed - no reflection on them at all.

@Aidan63 It’s absolutely everyone’s right to spend where they wish to spend, but as said before Sandberg are definitively not in the big company arrogance bracket - they are very much a family company with a small workforce, this I can say with great assuredness with personal comms, many stories from others and also having been out and visited the factory and spent time with the team. Build time is of course an issue, but, it’s due to the items being quality and a small team. Unless it’s changed the configurator is there to do that, configure a bass and then the code generated can be given to a relevant ‘dealer’ to get what you need. I can’t help thinking that Britains relationship with Europe may be a factor in how things proceed, but also Sandberg sits in that position of not being a big manufacturer like a Fender, but not being boutique/luthier/artisan type zone. if you go back to 2015 and the Sandberg subtle shape change on their basses it was driven largely by Fender saying to retailers, if you continue to sell Sandbergs we won’t send you our basses to sell. They are also not as aggressive as Hans at Warwick. Anyways - hope you get what you need, Sandberg will always be there and be quality.

This deserves to be seen in full, it's just a symphony of perfection. "Grab me guitar please."

Finally got around to labeling my @moose23 custom. It looks the business!!!

Stephen Jay has an interesting solution.

That's similar to my own 74 Jazz (currently on loan to Rob Harris from Jamiroquai)

Went to a local gig last night, was expecting it to be very quiet. A friend's new venture Nearly Steely (nine piece + new guitarist, guess what they play), their fourth gig, and it was packed at half eight. Usually the club has only half a dozen or so before 9. By the end of the night it was totally rammed.

Spot on, I'd say.

Recently turned 72 and still gigging. One local mentor has some years on me , and is still going strong. My barometer , if he can still manage some dignity and grace on the gig I feel there’s still some hope for me. He still nails it. I remain optimistic.

As usual I’m about 10 posts behind the game here but on the topic of being paid for gigs: I came back to playing guitar and then bass in my mid 50s, after a break caused by life, kids, work, etc. Strictly speaking I don’t need to be paid because I do it mainly for enjoyment and to keep active in retirement but apart from charity gigs, I insist on being paid. Why? Because there are people who do this for a living. If amateur bands play for nothing, it further devalues live music and musicians. Heaven knows, music is already ridiculously undervalued these days and we mustn’t encourage venues to believe they can pay little, or nothing for live acts. Obviously we shouldn’t charge so much that small venues don’t make a profit from putting on live music but we should charge something, even if it is just £50 per person (seems to be about the average for music pubs around my neck of the woods).

miniaturised the setup this week. Gone from a pedalboard Classic Junior to a Metro 16. I have removed a couple of pedals and swapped a few bits out that I wasn't really using much. so chain now is: Tuner (always had what tuning I'm in on it, due to a brain fart at a gig many years ago that I never want to repeat) "Erronaut " which is a Dunwich CTG PCB (DOD 250 & DS-1 & clean in parallel) which my last board had both pedals on instead. assembled and artwork by me, the name is my band. Damnation Blooper with Megalithic (clone of a mountain king megalith but with the heavy switch always on to reduce size) in the loop EQD Grand Orbiter Boss BF-2 Thumpinator (under the board) Broughton SV-PRE Omni IR (cab sim) Powered by a Cioks DC5

Hi Hutton, Sorry I didn't get back to you, I didn't think to respond as your message was just telling me about a bass you used to own. Thanks for the info on it and I have responded to you now on that message. Thanks Will

Rewired the gig board to bring my custom Moose Electronics SunHammer into it and put the Jam Red Muck on my recording board. I love the moose so much, i was really missing it as well as two different drive options. @moose23 Two big changes for me. First time ever putting synth before distortion. I've always put it right after, but now going compressor into C4 into sunhammer. It's also the first time EVER i have put pedals on sideways. I never liked the look of it, but it seems to be alright functionally. It also gives me more footroom for my size 14s. I can hit any button now with not hitting another. I might have to put some toppers on the drive pedal as the DMC is quite tall.

May I add my name to list for the next turn please? Is it like the pool table at the pub, do I need to put £1 down?

It's done the rounds over the past few years - Paul Turner (Jamiroquai) had it for a while, it then was loaned to Brinsley Forde (Aswad), then on to Rob Harris (Jamiroquai).

My worst job interview was when i asked too many questions about the job.

I've done a ton of interviews, and not gotten the job for most of them. Sometimes because I did a really bad interview (which was the case for almost every interview for a good 3 years in my early 20s) and sometimes because they simply liked somebody else for the role. It can be hard not to take it personally, but them's the brakes (and them's the clutch and throttle too). It will inevitably be worse when it comes to music and playing in bands, because there's no real expectation of fairness or that quantifiable metrics are going to seal the deal, more often than not, bands are going to want somebody whose personality fits with the band and requires little direction, and who is competent and reliable and all those other lovely things that I'm sure a million other auditionees could demonstrate. I think the worst situation is to be sat with a hundred good options and having to find a way to whittle it down. Sometimes it's good just to be able to take a few and immediately say "absolutely not" and throw them in the bin, so to speak.

Goth/Post-punk is a niche genre, but IME it's a very we'll supported niche genre, and it's not just people in their 50s and older trying to re-live the glory days of the mid to late 80s. Certainly both bands that I'm in at the very worst break even when gigging. It may help that here in Nottingham we are better placed to take advantage of all the gigs happening further north and as we all know "It's Goth Up North". Hopefully at some point one of my bands will be doing a gig with The InSect and we'll be able to catch up.

Oh no it isn't!

So it was quite quiet and poorly attended but the bass solo was great? 😂

It's basically a moxon clamp adapted to hold guitar bodies. Two outer pieces of 18mm MDF, then two inner pieces of 4mm MDF held in a curve. It means the clamping pressure is applied to the edges not the top/back of the guitar. Other than the MDF it's two 1 inch diameter pieces of pipe, two flanges which I've just screwed into the table, then pipe clamps. Like all my jigs it's ugly, but works really well. Here it is holding the last build:

I would ask the cat how he unzipped the gigbag

Aaarrrrggghhhh! He said 'literally' when he meant 'figuratively.' I can't watch any more.

I think it would start with C And end with UNT

Having tried this it’s just as epic and beautiful as it looks

I have had a fair few brushes with the famous but not much in the way of their magic-dust seems to have settled upon me! 1. 10 gig tour backing Ricky Valance (Tell Laura..) in the 80s 2. 8 gig tour backing Keith Harris and Orville the duck (OMG!) in the 80s 3. Joined the White Hor Airmen (a London Temperance 7/Bonzo type outfit) where I played sax alongside Rod Slater (ex Bonzos) for several months. We had a gig downstairs at the 100 Club and ex-Bonzo Viv Stanshall had agreed to join in - we went to his house and had a chat and a runthrough of the numbers, but he didn't show up! 4. One WH Airmen gig at he Grey Horse Kingston found jazz legend Ken Colyer with his cornet ready to play New Orleans stuff with another band, but he'd got his dates wrong and he was on his own. We invited him to play with us (very 30s dance band stuff with 'comedy') - he did and it went very well, tho' he looked a bit askance at Rod and I doing the Paul Whiteman-style sax harmonies... 5. Joined the house band 'Brix Six' - classic Bix jazz residency in the Bricklayers Arms Brentford. One night in walked Andy 'Thunderclap' Newman - he played piano with us for half an hour (we didn't do 'Something in the Air' - I wish we had...) 6. My edgy modern jazz group 'Moebius Band' that I formed while up at Oxford featured an amazing keyboard player (Dave Jarrett) who soon after joined prog-rockers 'Quiet Sun'. based in Dulwich. Their guitarist was to-be Roxy Man Phil Manzanera. My brother and I jammed with Dave, Phil and others for Mr Manzanera's birthday party. Healso helped mix a studio session my other Oxford Band recorded in Tower Studios London. 7. Quiet Sun's drummer was Charles Hayward - phenomenal player who I last heard still gigs as a solo percussonist mainly in Europe. He and I spent 6 months trying to get a QS follow-on band together after Phil joined Roxy , we auditioned many musicians but I think our musical genre was, well, a bit far-out for most, especially the bass + lead guys from the Foundations! Try the Quiet Sun album for a taster... 8. Depped for the Temperance Seven a couple of times when they had West Country gigs that their regular saxist(s) couldn't do 9. Honked a bit of sax on Jonah Louie's 'On a Saturday night' - well mixed down at the end! 10. Played in the jazz band that features in a crucial scene in the middle of David Essex's 'That'll be the Day' film - I'm stage right with a ridiculous beard... 11. My London band 'Sweeney' supported 10cc at the Scunthorpe Baths Hall in 1972 I think, and also supported the Pioneers at the RAF base in Northallerton. Their lead singer fell out with their two other frontmen and hitched a lift with us sitting on top of the PA in our freezing-cold diesel Transit to get back to London. The oil pump broke 15 miles down the road stranding us completely - he only had his satin stage gear on, it was -1 degrees. He phoned for a taxi and our guitarist abandoned us and went back to the Smoke with him... are you surprised? Rest of that story another time.. . 12. Lastly, the lead guitarist with my current band is Francis Lickerish, late of prog-rockers The Enid and composer of some amazingly good epic symphonic rock albums based upon the Arthurian legends - worth a Google and listen. Right, I'll STFU now...

Ordered a set of these in the dark amber colour, should look a lot better and only £3.41

I'd pay myself just for the opportunity to play with some of the headliners at the shows that we've got lined up this year... but don't tell the promoter that!

I’ve played on a few Butlin’s big weekenders, booked in for a couple more in Skegness and one in Bognor Regis this year - they’re really good gigs. There’s always a big crowd who get right into the swing of things and theres usually some other really good acts on to watch as well

Year of conception bass?

Laser alignment? You show off. Here's mine, I think they'd invented lasers by then, but they would have been as big as a house.

Opera; The Habanera, from Bizet's sublime Carmen: Another perhaps obvious choice; The Queen of the Night's Aria from Mozart's The Magic Flute. And lastly, the maestro himself: Not to everyone's taste, granted, but opera gives me something that I don't get elsewhere.

I think, from my experience and from comments made on this site, that the standard UK bar/pub gig is moving towards 2hrs+. When I started playing live, we were using an agent and the contracts were mostly on the working men's club circuit. Usually there were two acts (most of the time I played it was a band and a solo singer) and they'd share the bill with the bingo. Each act would have 2x45 minutes and often it would be Act 1, Act 2, break, Act 1, Act 2. The mid set break was to allow several games of bingo to be played. I don't know what the equivalent venue in the US would be, but in South Wales these places were clubs for the coal miners and other industrial workers set up as mini theatres. A village might have grown up around a mine and the only entertainment to be had would be in the club. As a result, some of these places were really well equipped with a proper stage, decent dressing rooms and subsidised bars. In the early 90s when I started, there were even rules that banned women from the bar (!) and that no one could dance during the first half of the act.

Thanks Stewblack, I'm not sure I've ever been cool. These days it's all about staying healthy. Without it nothing else matters Daryl

4.5 hours, I might have been able to pull off a gig that long 10 years ago. 4 hours use to be the standard for US bar gigs. Now its seems like it's mostly a 3 hour standard. Daryl

Maybe he got in to modding Harley Benton PB 50s? I jest, but that would be awesome.

When i joined BC playing in bands was purely a hobby for me. That was quite a few yrs back. Since retiring early i started playing more seriously with the bands i was part off. When i finally got the Glam covers band going i was kinda hooked into playing both for enjoyment and the income was certainly useful. Now i'm quite annoyed if the fee isn't what i'm used to. The number of gigs i'm doing in a year doubled in 2023 and has tripled for this year but it still feels more like a busy hobby for me and i'm happy with that. I have a lot more respect for musicians like Daryl @Bluewine who earn a living from playing. Its not an easy job to take on making sure the gigs are there every weekend. I can see it being quite stressful in that respect so all credit to all the guys earning a fulltime living from gigging. My respect to you all. Dave

Same way I feel, I'll be 78 in two months and love gigging with my DB and I've got a show, jazz gigs, some jams and three bluegrass festivals coming up this spring and summer and I'm taking weekly lessons and will be helping out my teacher's youth orchestra's bass section in a concert in May. I'm not sitting around because I know the clock is ticking and consider myself to be extremely lucky to be able to do this now.

I think it’s more like a job interview. Some people are very good at sussing out what the employer is actually asking when they ask a somewhat veiled question. Some employers already have a very good idea of who they want to hire for a role, and hardly any amount of professionalism and expertise will overcome that, and the process is there simply as an appeasement to those that insist on a “fair” process. Some candidates are a bit hopeless, as are some employers. I suppose you take the rough with the smooth, roll with the punches, push the envelope, to infinity and beyond, etc.