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Played tonight with the Daz Kelly blues band at The Boat Inn, Cromford, Derbyshire. A good, appreciative crowd out for a Friday night. My @Andyjr1515 Swift Lite bass through a TC Elf and Barefaced one10 was just the ticket. The landlady told us we were the first band, ever, to put the tables back in place after we’d finished. We’re not very Rock n’ Roll, but very polite boys. 😆

Played at the cavern, new Malden, Surrey with our AC/DC tribute’BAD BOY BOOGIE’ , great laugh as usual and my ole mate Mark ( rhythm guitar) very kindly drove some of us up so it was really nice to get beered up for a change too! Worthing tonight so my turn on the wagon 😊

Sorry no pictures, WE also played the wilds of Dorset last night. The Horns Inn near Wimborne has a band on once a a month. Again pretty full when we got there with folks dining but they soon left ( before we started playing) and were replaced by a few music fans. The Pub clear;y lost money on the gig but the Landlord told us he can "carry" the losses once per month. They have a stage in the garden and we hope to play that in the summer.

Played a village hall ‘Pub Night’ in the wilds of Dorset with the Otis Jay Blues Band. The audience came to eat, but were in decline numbers wise thereafter which is always difficult - you’re not the main attraction! But some nice comments from those who stayed. And what a stage! I hardly knew what to do with the room I had. Acoustically, brought my MIJ Jazz ‘Sonic’ and GK MB200 through two Barefaced One10. Sound was so boomy I used bridge pickup exclusively, but seemed to work ok. Image is pre-gig, obviously!

Here you are Dave 😊

@Rich are you able to make Alice aware of this thread, so she can read the comments and tributes from fellow BCer's? Nick was well liked and respected on the forum and I would imagine she would appreciate seeing this?

A simplified version of my board based on our current set needs. Channel 1 on the tri mixer is just the octamizer, channel 2 is the WA mutation phasor followed by the grape phaser ( I discovered the two together sound super funky. The grape is very mid heavy with faster mod rates and the mutation is more bass heavy and slower), channel 3 is the fuzz followed by the fwonkbeta (together it’s devastating). Channel 1 & 3 thru a double 18 bin will make you evacuate your bowels! Think Gary Numan polymoog on steroids. HoF at the end, also because the toneprint I use has reverb and chorus… nice bonus. Then off to FoH with a Radial stagebug. Oh, and spectracomp uses the Captain East toneprint which is the best comp I’ve heard.

My latest go at a pedalboard. I am pleasantly surprised at the quality of the X5 effects, but at present no OD hence the MXR (Inserted using the FX loop between the octaver and chorus, the X5 is chained R to L). The X5 tuner does not cope with a low B hence the KORG at the front of the chain. I have a lot more tweaking to do with the settings on each of the X5 toneprints to dial in my 'perfect' sound. And I need to sort a wider board so the KORG is not sideways! (Slight OCD). Sam x

Thank you very much. I watched Lobsters review and it nearly put me off but having done much more research found most people giving good reviews. So I have purchased an SR300 in candy apple red. It feels nice to me and plays nicely. I didn't want to spend a fortune on something that might never get used but also didn't want to buy a lemon that held me back. My brother, Rob Palmer had mentioned the Ibanez so I've gone with that. Thanks all for your help. Jon.

Quicl pic as I am now doing dinner for my family. I haven’t even played it apart from 5 minutes in shop.

When I only played a 4, all the best looking basses in the shop were 5's when I played only 5's all the best looking basses were 4's

I just took delivery of my Masterbuilt Alusonic J-Supreme. These are outstanding basses and definitely worth checking out! It has a great modern hifi sound and doesn’t need lots of tweaking with the 3 band eq. You guys have the luxury of going to Bass Direct to check them out, but I took a chance and totally relied on many discussions with Polly the owner of Alusonic to get the custom spec I needed. I’m going to sell my Sadowskys to finance another!

Interesting one last night... The Horn in St Albans doing a 00's night. I get on well with the soundman, he's a former bass player and knows his stuff. I told him I might like to go DI pedal into the PA and no amp, he persuaded me to keep using the amp and I'm glad I did, fantastic sound. Gig-wise it was one of those where all the songs we never mess up we really messed up! Lots went wrong, I missed loads of cues, guitarist did also, drummer did... Singer broke two guitar strings... But, the place absolutely rocked. We were recording the gig and we don't really want to listen to it, very few songs were performed without fault, but we had a good time.

I'm disputing it. I've never encountered it in over 50 years of owning and playing guitars and basses No-one has risen to my challenge earlier in the thread to produce actual evidence of their own instrument that exhibits this and furthermore has adversely affected the performance of said instrument. I call bullshit.

I've posted it before. Korg tuner should be here on Monday. You can see exactly where it will go, although i might swap the placement of the dmc and the freeze. Never had sideways pedals before, i dont love them but it really works in this config

He's just a lawn mower, you can tell by the way he walks

Bollox - you just made that up!

Hi. Sorry, Total stranger who happened on the thread. Im 63 (gigging since 15). Unfortunately my spine is calcifying and I can't stand up any more and will lose all bladder and bowel control within the next five years. If its any help i can tell you my basses have gone from two to nine, I've taken to learning all the bass lines I've loved over the years but never played live. A good friend of mine took me to meet Dennis Dunaway (absolutely a brilliant guy, no ego, stunning bassplayer) and it reaffirmed in me what a stunning instrument tha bass guitar is! Whatever your reasons for hanging up the spurs don't do yourself short. The very fact you opened this thread (imho) shows you aren't ready. Change the parameters, not the instrument. Very best wishes to you.

Complete stranger here, and I don't know the situation but I'm sorry to hear it's come to this for you. I maybe speaking out of place, feels like it and I hope you do not take offence of a stranger butting in.., but I think you should keep a your favourite bass or a bass you love the sound of as I think you're going to miss it. I mostly play guitar these days. No band. Sold my bass/es once. Missed it and I bought another and blew a lot of money on it. When making music and recording at home a guitar with an octaver soon becomes a reminder of..no bass. Ended up buying a new more expensive bass to rectify. Still miss the Sabre and will "never" buy another one. I wish you the best no matter what you do. Keep making music and enjoying it.

Five strings really are mainstream now! Flicking through the 'latest' activity I counted eight fivers, a four string and a double bass in the first ten istruments up for sale. I was going to mention I have two, but realused I have three. Personally I prefer four strings, but five seems to be the magic number where you can still play with a substantially normal tecnique and benefit from the extra range, especially when combined with 24 frets. Six and seven just start to impose impossible stretches if you want to keep your thumb behind the neck. Of course, my snapshot statistic could mean that everyone is trying to get rid of their fivers...

Finally bought myself a Yamaha BBNE2. The new stock is coming in at over £5k so I managed to find one from last year at a lot less. very happy.

Peavey Standard 260 Series Preamp: 2-Channel Preamp: Channel 1 "Effects" and Channel 2 "Normal". A rotary switch can be used to choose channel 1 or 2, or channel 1 and 2 parallel or in series

Here's a looooooong but interesting review of "ski jump problems" on Talkbass where a number of luthiers / repair people have tried to gather actual data and critically analyse all potential failure modes. The top and bottom I take from it is that it seems that the "ski jump" usually is the neck bending in the area around the 14th to 16th fret where the transition from the heel (rectangle profile) to the neck (circular profile) occurs due to the cross section of the neck (and therefore stiffness) is reduced by approx. 25%. We tend to think that the bend is in the heel area (at the last frets) as that is where the strings choke out. They also talk about the effect of adding shims and concluded that fitting a shim doesn't cause the ski-jump as the neck bending they identified was not in the heel area but slighly towards the nut in the transition area. YMMV

Nearly done!

I only started playing 5ers seriously about 18 months ago. I think I have 10

76.3% of statistics are made up on the spot...

That's my new drag name.

It's a bit sad that RCF are no longer making the M18. I'd buy another tomorrow if mine ever went down. We've recently switched to a Behringer and set up time is much longer as the control software is so much less intuitive. Our guitarist runs the mixer whereas I ran the M18 which is so simple to use. There have been a few mutterings from the rest of the band about going back to my mixer as it 'sounds better' if it's true that is down to simplicity because said guitarist is every bit as competent as I am, probably more so. Having it's own reliable wi fi is a blessing too, the M18 was designed from the start as a live mixer for small bands and it shows. Let's hope it's reliable as I won't be able to replace it. I guess the CQ20 would be my choice of the current crop of mixers.

Probably tempting fate but I’ve just finished what is, I hope, the final version of the V4.00 manual.

We had a good night last night: plenty of dancing and singing to 3 of the 4songs we did. The exception was “Everything but love” by Jaime Kyle. It’s a banging tune but I think the 4 of us were probably the only ones in the pub who knew it - now we’ve played it once hopefully a few remember it for next time we do it. “Price Tag” and “Perfect” (the one by Fairground Attraction) are good singalongs, and my bandmates covered my cock ups in “Perfect” well. I thought we might struggle with “You can call me Al” but we played it well and the crowd seemed to enjoy it. We had plenty of positive feed back afterwards. We performed for the 1st time with a band name: "In Progress" The video is less than 40s. It’s the only footage my mate took, but he managed to catch the bass solo in “You can call me Al” (not the original recording version, but something I could fit into 2 bars). You can call me Al.mp4

Shim at bridge end of neck pocket . Business card or similar . 1/2 in or so wide and full width of pocket . Don't be led down the rabbit hole of full pocket shims , angled shims or horror stories of ski jump necks . Seriously , this has been done for years by major manufacturers with no ill effects .

I was a solid 4 player before last year, I kept trying fives but never seemed to work. Until I properly sat down and went “hang on… this works!”. I don’t know if I’ll ever play my 4’s now either!

I thought that the reason Fender abandoned the micro-tilt mechanism is that at the time (in the late 70s) they were incapable to building instruments to the tolerances required for it to work properly which was doubly compounded by the fact that their worn router templates were producing over-sized neck pockets. The net result was that as well as changing the vertical neck angle the micro-tilt was also pushing the neck sideways in the pocket. In these days of CNC machined necks and bodies a shim shouldn't be necessary. Just cut the neck pocket and heel at the correct angles so that it is possible to get a suitably low action before the saddles bottom out. After all you only need to do the maths once and then the machines will create every instrument perfectly.

Zaphod Beeblebrox?

How was my gig last night? A struggle. Won't disclose location, but it was in a south western city where they like to chuck statues in the harbour. The venue was smallish, with a hollow wooden stage. The backline (provided, which was nice) was a couple of modestly sized and decent quality combos, so we thought it would be simple to play at reasonable onstage levels and let the PA take care of out front. Afraid not. The PA cabs stood directly on the stage. No stands or isolation. The top boxes were 15s+horns and the subs were 15s. The subs made the stage resonate like a giant double bass and the result was one note bass flub. The walls were bare, the ceiling was low and it was an echo chamber. The sound was horrible. The soundman's solution was to push the levels - out front and monitors - even harder when we explained we were having difficulty hearing what was going on during the soundcheck. Eventually, I asked politely if he could lose a lot of the low end and dial the subs right back. Everything cleaned up noticeably and we were reasonably happy. Problem solved? If only. The minute we began our set, the sub levels went back up and all the low end we had asked to be removed re-appeared. I had to play entirely by sight. Couldn't distinguish individual notes at all. Our singer did a great job. The way she managed without being able to hear anything she was doing was impressive. What is it about subs that causes people to crank them so hard that every bass note and kick drum beat results in a giant BOOOOOF? We wondered whether it was just a quirk of the stage sound, but when we stayed to hear a couple of numbers from the second band, it was the same out in the room. I'm getting too old for this caper.

Speaking as a person who has been asked back by bands I flounced from, and by band members who flounced from me, it can work just fine. We all change, circumstances change, and at the end of the day it's just music.

A great tip I read on here, possibly by Stingray Pete, is volume up, dial in the right amount of bass that suits your girth/heft/punch requirements, then think of the treble control as a passive tone control and dial in your tone from there. It certainly works and makes easy sense too! Great, now I've got Stingray gas again!

Dress up as sailors and call it "Aye aye, M80's!"