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First rehearsal with it tonight. Will report back later.

Update: I just received this text from the band leader. "If Thelma leaves it up to us, how do you guys feel about playing to a small crowd in a big venue?" I'm opting to do it. I don't have anything else to do. Lol Daryl

People are quick to moan, but I also like to be quick to praise where it is due. All sorts of grief with the DHL (Damage Handling Loons) over the delivery of my new Fender Precision after a phone dall from DHL to tell me theyd damaged it. George at Andertons was cool, told me not to worry, they'd sort out any damage. Just get it delivered then make an assessment and let him know immediately and he'd sort it. Fortunately the hard case and bass within were fine, it was just the packaging that DHL had mullered. I phoned George back to advise the bass had arrived undamaged, and thanked him for his reassurance. I mentioned that G had been cut a little short and as I tried to tune it beyond F it just slipped round the capstan. Well, not 20 hours a later a full set of spanking new Fender 45's drop through my letter box, fortunately delivered by a different company who didn't manage to drive a forklift over it. I'd have been happy with the one string, but a new set was a very pleasant surprise. Even better as I actually quite like Fender rounds. So top marks to Andertons. Reassuring on the phone, poised and ready to help refund/replace if the bass or case had arrived damaged, and super generous with the strings when I only needed the one. Well done. If anyone from Anderton's is reading this, thank you. You'll be top of the list next time I get a tax rebate that the missus doesn't know about and I go bass shopping.

Just finished routing the pick guard and some finishing touches like countersinking the screws etc. Was just about to connect it up and realised all my flathead screwdrivers i need to connect the pickups and preamp have gone missing 🥲 Very happy with how it’s turning out, ended up spacing the pickups a little further than initially intended largely down to cosmetics and symmetry.

Updated board. Graphic EQ out and Cali76 in. Also pulled the Sledgehammer so I have easier access to the front row while trying to sing and play bass at the same time. Meathead also reversed for easier access. Will this alone for a while but always a possibility of a Rat or Muff type getting squeezed in there again.

Daughter's wedding on Saturday. Speech written, proof-read and practised. Suit collected from cleaners. Car getting valeted tomorrow. Fingers crossed for the weather.

A close run campaign for the April certificate was only split by a single vote, enabling @AndyTravis to receive another presentation by @Dad3353 for the prize. So early off the mark this morning Andy thus sent me the following image ... "There we go - spaced out, ejected etc " Simple rules ✔️ Entries must be <5 minutes and recorded between now and the deadline. ✖️ No illegal samples, copyright infringements or other snide goings-on ✖️ No Bagpipes/panpipes, everyone had the chance last month's previous month, so there! ✖️ No voting for your own entry. We'll know. And we'll shame you.. Deadline-wise, we will go for Midnight on the 25th (I'll get up sharpish on the 26th if I can ! ) A line or two of blurb as usual for the vote thread will be super smashing. Good luck, Have fun

Good morning! This arrived today. A MYSTERY YAMAHA FRETLESS. 1988, LOOK AT THAT FRETBOARD oh my goodness, never seen one of those before! Very little further info, just unpacked, played briefly (plays beautifully!) and I'm into meetings all day, eurgh. Curious - has anyone seen one of these? Any ideas of provenance / history / context? Others like this? Bought from reallygreatguitars, who thinks it may be a one-off / prototype. ANY THOUGHTS OR INFO WELCOME, what a stunner!

We are looking for ticketed gigs since we find people pay more attention to us when they e paid for the privilege!

You guys know I get worried about ticketed events. We're not that kind of band. We do fine when we stay in our lane, festivals and fairs. Anyway I got a text from our band leader yesterday. " Hi guys:) It’s looking like Thelma is going to postpone the show Friday🙁 not enough tickets sold. I’ll keep you posted but wanted to give you a heads up. I’m emailing with the event coordinator. We sold 13 tickets, doesn't seem like they have a built in crowd. I'll confirm when they give me a definitive." The same organization has a roof top summer music series. Every Thursday night they have a band, food trucks, booze vendors and it's free. Now that gig has a huge built in crowd. That gig would be in our lane . Oh well, I guess it goes with the territory. Daryl

For the past 15 years it's always been an equal 4 way split. Tips can be huge ( I've seen as much as $ 900.00) over here and we split that equally, however we will share some of our tips with the bar staff. Daryl

Well I had a chat with a Basschatter earlier who suggested that as I love the JMJs why not get the necks slimmed down. So tentative enquiries made to The Bass Gallery, have to take one in to get a quote but fingers crossed I’ll be able to keep the basses I love.

Jean-Michel Jarre? Or at least it is the accepted abbreviation on another forum I frequent.

They often get pigeon holed as 'dead' and 'muddy' or lacking sustain, clarity - not always detrimentally. However I have found that my Mustang with rounds sounds super 'alive', piano-like, with tremendous clarity and punch. I sold a Celinder J-Update because of how much I like mine. They're cool. I think the neck on mine is fantastic, and although the lighter weight is welcome on my (perfectly fine) left shoulder, my right shoulder does have some nerve damage and I think the smaller body and hand position is more comfortable.

Even when they do go, take the head out of the wooden case, pull the old valve out, plug in the new. It's a preamp valve, so no biasing is required. It's really easy.

Saturday night I played at The Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham, which was my final gig with The ELO Experience. Another grand old venue which first opened in 1901, capacity just under 1400 with two large balconies , the upper one being very high and steep. The gig went well, a good onstage sound despite a change of rig as I’ve sold my usual one! Used my GK800RB again, this time with my old standby cab - a Loud Inc 4x10. Really enjoyed using it, and pleased it was enough for such a big venue/stage. It was a near sell out gig which made it great for my last one, as well as being my 800th appearance with the band. I first played with them as a dep at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall in May 2009, and then joined permanently in 2011 - first gigs were a short tour of Northern Ireland which were very memorable. I couldn’t have found a better bunch of people to work with, starting out as a 5 piece & then adding 2 cellists and a violinist. It’s been an absolute pleasure throughout, and I really will miss the band and crew (pictured below) who have become like family. I’ll still be playing with the acoustic duo though, as well as any deps that may come my way so will hopefully be gigging more locally for many years to come.

Just picked up the 2 1x12 cabs and gave both one and both a test drive at home…amazing tone and responds to the flexibility of the Trace amp superbly. No gig for 3weeks but cannot wait to use them! And it’s a one-handed lift….anybody need a TE 4x10?

Have you tried Newtone Strings? Lots of folk on here rate them highly (I've only used them for guitar), and they will make custom sizes.

From a few weeks ago, supporting a band with2 drummers! Brought out the SVT Classic and it certainly didn’t disappoint!

Not a PJ set but I've put a GZR P in my Sandberg shorty and it sounds great, not quite the classic precision sound as the pickup position is 15-20mm closer to the bridge relative to my Mustang (which nails the classic P tone) but it sounds great, definitely no booming in the lows. It's a punchy low end, bags of mid range detail and enough highs to add clarity without getting abrasive. Dunno if it matters but I always string my shorties with rounds whereas a lot of guys use flats but I find flats are too dull and lifeless, which some may interpret as boominess 🤷

That sounds ace, both the bass and the track itself.

That is in no way a Yamaha, except for the neck. New body, those black stripes on the fingerboard were added later... A cheap (but good) RBX neck from the 80s and a homemade body. Looks very cool, though. EDIT: On second thought, the pickups are most definitely Yamahas too.

I see a few questions on spray painting enclosures. I find the MTN94 graffiti paint works really well with very little prep. Depending on the enclosure you may need to use a degreaser but otherwise there's no need to sand the case before or during coats. To get a nice shiny finish I get a good wet spray of their glossy varnish. I use a toaster oven for each coat but it will also dry pretty well in a few days on its own.

The Grand Old Duke of York ～ 'nuff said.

Another change over for me... I wanted that amp like quality to my cleans tone but not my synth stuff... Enter: Joyo Tidal Wave and Joyo Orthros Selector! Was hoping to take advantage of the two outputs on the ultrawave and have it in both chains, but it hasn't quite worked as I'd hoped. Signal chain is Korg tuner > Demonfx Call76 > Joyo Orthros selector (set A/B) > Source Audio Bass Zio Loop A (cleans): Source Audio C4 (for filters and phases) > Source audio Ultrawave (for overdrive and fuzzes > Joyo Monomyth > Joyo Tidal Wave Loop B (Synthy): 3 Leaf Octabvre Mini > Source Audio C4 (w/ tap tempo) > Source Audio Ultrawave I'm not 100% sold on the Tidal Wave until I gig it, but it has reaffirmed that I need more of a coloured tone on my cleans

Well that headstock doesn’t look a million miles away from my first ever bass in all its glorious 1980’s pointyness! I’m thinking rebodied onto an old neck… maybe

I've got the Cioks DC7 as well. It's excellent. Very quiet and will run just about everything. It can even be expanded later. There's little point in having high quality pedals like the Darkglass stuff and then feeding it with crap power. For power supplies my own view is: buy it once, buy it right.

Just saw this! I love your slanty bitsa. Yes I restored a Boxer PJ535, however I moved from Thailand to Australia before I managed to figure out the electronics properly. I was attempting a vol/vol/tbx with 3 way pickup selector (as original), but with an added series/parallel switch. I couldn't get it working properly before I left the country so it is sitting in my apartment waiting for me to finish the job. I will share videos as soon as I'm back and able to get it up and running. Good luck with the project - these basses are wonderful and should be preserved

The question is a bit like 'I can only have one pair of shoes, which ones should I get - Wellies or High Heels?' (not that either one of the pedals mentioned fit those descriptionsl!), so the annoying answer is that it depends on what your needs are. Saying that though, if I was only getting one pedal and the budget was about £100 I'd get a Zoom B1-Four. Then you have a Tuner, Compressor, EQ, Drive, Modulation, Octaver, Synth, Delays etc, and a decent practice tool with drum loops/metronome and can plug headphones into it, and can be battery powered. If you really need a XLR DI (which I've found is only really needed if you are doing long cable runs to a mixer/PA and you can't do it from your Amp XLR out) then there are seperate passive DI boxes like the SubZero for about £15.

The only way to know for sure without buying drivers is to use speaker modeling software to model both what's in there already and proposed replacements. The replacements are easy, most have the required Thiele-Small specs available. That's probably not the case with the Fender driver. With only 100 watts there may be no improvement to be had.

You may find it easier to set up patches using Tonelib-Zoom which as yet hasn't been updated to support the B6, B2-Four, or MS-60B+. It's one reason to stick with the older pedal until either Zoom or Tonelib starts supporting the newer one with external software (Zoom didn't support the old one so probably not much chance there). Edit: unless you have an iPhone or iPad, which do have an app to edit MS-60B+ patches.

I had one of these. They're noisy and not truly isolated. I now have a Cioks DC7 (hey big spender!) which is dead silent.

Just played my EUB for over an hour without any discomfort (not the cleanest playing, but small steps). I must be getting used to it.

There are a lot of brain-dead clowns on the internet ... sounds like you've stumbled across a few. As to the hopeless failed musicians who can't find a better job than working in music stores, don't get me started. Start by Googling famous bass players who used short-scale basses, then try to convince yourself that Paul McCartney would voluntarily play a POS instrument. Good luck with that. In anything to do with music you should always ignore the opinions of others (including mine, of course) and try using your ears. Even when they're the opinions of experienced musicians who you respect, ignore them - they aren't you and they don't hear what you hear. If you like the sound of a bass and the way it plays, then how much you paid for it, what it says on the headstock, what the scale length is, whether it's active or passive, uses flats or rounds, all that stuff is largely irrelevant. What matters is that you're playing it and you like it. If you play with others (in a band, jamming, whatever) then do remember that nobody else in the room gives a damn what you're playing. "It's just a bass, right?"

I’m on a Pablo one today, flabba on bass I believe

MTD Kingston is the first that springs to mind. Good range of models and you can get them for your initial budget of £600. Heck, I got my most basic one for £250

I have advised Andertons that in the event of my death they must not let my wife sell my basses for what I told her id paid for them.

The only problem with Andertons is they keep a list of all the things you've bought over the years... I'm terrified the wife may find it one day...